love bill clinton. i think he's got the largest -- whether you love or hate him, you have to learn hearing about him. lots of people enjoy hating hem. i think he has the largest personality of any occupant of the oval office. just a fascinating plan. as far as comments go, i didn't meet with bill clinton. he doesn't talk with biographers. i only wanted to speak to him about his post presidency. the book is everyone talking about him. he's the presence that lurks throughout the whole book. he didn't speak directly to me, but i did meet with an aid of his who looked me over and really checked me out to see that i just wasn't some sort of sleaze i guess. he gave the okay to friends. of bill. when you send out an interview request of bill, they call up bill clinton's office and say, speak to this guy. i spoke to many, many friend of his. a copy of the book has been given to bill clinton. i haven't heard from him. i hope i dent receive one of those 2 a.m. phone calls. [laughter] when he's on the other line turning purple in the face, but i am prepared. [laughter] nip else? -- anyone else? okay, well, thank you all very much for coming out. [applause] [applause] >> michael is the author of brave men, gentle heros, american fathers and sons in world war ii in vietnam. visit the author's wbt, michaeltakiff.com. >> from the c-span archives, a program from 2007 recounting the 37th president of the united states, president nixon. they content sp -- contend he was a man of contradictions. also active in relations with china and the soviet union, but adverse to ending the war in vietnam. he was born on january 9, 1913. >> we've been friends. this is just the first time we met. >> wow. that's a nice way to start, elizabeth. thank you. i want to welcome everybody to the first what i hope will be several joint programs between the l.a. public library and the new federal richard nixon presidential library museum. today i have the great honor and privilege not only to introduce a new e-mail pal who likes to e-mail late which is great, but a -- well, perhaps one of this country's, a handful of knowledgeable journalists and observers of our political scene who has been doing it for 40 years. you were a washington correspondent, elizabeth, of the "thrattic monthly" and in 1992 you were a washington correspondent of the new yorker. you have written and the numbers vary depending on what they count as a book, but at least 13 books. you have received many awards, and you have figured prominently on sunday chat programs such as "meet the press" to help us understand the week that was. i think you are the only journalist to have covered both the nixon impeachment hearings and the clinton impreachment hearings. >> that's some honor. >> and therefore, i can't imagine a better person to sit with and have a chat with today given that you're new book on richard nixon is important and people need to read, so thank you for joining us today. >> well, i'm delighted to meet you at long last. >> well, i'm sorry the traffic made it a little bit longer. >> not as long as you would have been. >> you'll have to come there. >> i'm coming. >> i'll tell you how to get there. it's much shorter than you think. i want to start by asking in 1975 you wrote a book called "washington journal" which was an observation of the nixon experience. why another book on nixon? why did you decide to write this one? >> well, to begin with, jim, i didn't decide to write it. as you're well aware because you're in on this, there is a series, a very distinguished series, of short books on presidents inspired by the late and very lamented author, the idea was to have short accessible books on presidents, each one. his presidency, his life. it had to be accessible to people who just wanted to look him up or in many cases people who were not aware of the very important period, not that this group was aware of philmore, but maybe he doesn't matter as much as richard nixon. our mutual editor at full disclosure, tim is writing the book on george h. w. bush, so i've been giving hints on what to avoid on this endeavor, but the editorial director of the series came to me. i said, paul, no more books. i'm not doing anymore books. no one talk about writing anymore books, it's do anymore books. he explained he was head of the series. how nice. i bought some. they are good. would you be interested in doing nixon? i couldn't resist. that's all. i was quite flattered because this was a highly sensitive choice, and i could not turn it down. it was also an opportunity to look at nixon from a distance. there's been so much material published since his death, even since he left office, and the idea is to look at him and also i think paul thought and who was very keen on the idea, you're the perfect person and so on, that this won't be too hard for her. she cover the water gate scandal and impeachment. i had to start over. for example, i covered all of that who covered impeachment, covered it from the outside in. now you had to flip it, and there were all these tapes. there were memories and memoirs, and now you could -- although the nixon white house was accessible in this period, they were not exactly reveling with us. it was a whole new venture. i ended up with a whole new view and take on nixon, and even on watergate. the other question implied in there is why do we need another book on nixon, and i would say that virtually all, i don't want to leave one out of the books that have been published about nixon since he left office probably many of them before he left office were about segments of nixon's life and presidency. they were about his domestic policy. they are about his foreign policy. there's a new one about nixon and kissingger. there's a new one about agnu. it has those relationships in it, but it's the entirety really of his life and presidency. obviously, with choices having to be made, but here 1 this 150 page -- here is this 150-page book about nixon. >> well, what did you learn by revisiting watergate from the inside out? >> i learned two kinds ever things. one -- i learned to kinds of things. one was we all knew there was a slightly comic aspect to it because the watergate burglars, the four cubans and the two other -- they were all part of the failed bay of pigs adventure, and they have a lot of anger and bitterness, that though they messed up just about everything they did and in ways i didn't know before, this is a very sinister operation on two levels. watergate was not an event. it wasn't even the event, the famous break in of june 17. watergate was a mentality that permeated the nixon presidency. i think there's fair evidence that nixon brought this mentality to the presidency if you look at his earlier life and career. the second month after he was in office, he instructed aids to set up a secret investigative unit inside the white house paid for by outside and therefore illegal fund. now, think about it. we have to stand back. wait a minute, a with president is setting up a secret investigative unit inside the white house? the idea was to get the goods, a frequently used expression by nixon, on his perceive enemies. nixon perceived a lot of enemies, and the goons first # assignment was to tail senator ted kennedy everywhere because nixon thought he would be his opponent forever reelection -- for reelection. they broke into not just the watergate that i'll get to, but broke into the offices and stole the files of ed musky's campaign manager. think of it. you have to stand back. the watergate break-in itself, the one all the fuss is made about, by the time that happened, it was routine. they had already done the most menacing thing which was to raid the offices of the psychiatrist of danielelsberg who looked the papers. nixon thought it would reflect badly on his policy and he was engaged by leaks. that was what nixon was really trying to cover up. he was much more worried about that, but as for the watergate break in, i don't know what the mystery is about. he wanted to get the goods on lawrence and brian, the democratic national committee chairman, and there was also some thought that o'brian had connections with howard hughs on which nixon had taken heat because his brother borrowed money and in the course of the events, so did nixon, so these goons tried to get in. they had some e elaborate plan about having some banquet in the dining room of the watergate complex. it's hard to know how, but they ended up locked in a close et, so -- closet. they got ruder after that, athey got up to the dnc herd quarters, and they couldn't pick the lock, so one of these burglars went down to miami where most had come from, got better equipment, and they actually broke in on me moral day of 1972, and they planted taps, and they photographed documents, and gordon, one of the more ease centric leader of the group took the material to john mitchell, the head of the nixon reelection committee, and john mitchell is reported to have said that's junk. now, i don't know if he used the word junk, but say words to that effect, go back and fix the tap on o'brian's phone. he said, okay. i mean, it was perfectly normal by this time for them to go in to that head quarters. .. and because it is it is my life start to notice things, it didn't say who has broken in. who broken? i mean, why would anybody break and the other parties had orders. it just seems very strange until the story began to unfold. the 10, the big picture here is that was part of a systematic effort on the part of nixon, his aides, they are a, it was never clear, except in one instance, who gave specific orders. and people coming in saying macgruder said -- it doesn't matter. nixon said that the unit. he knew what he wanted to do. the people under him to wet his top aides wanted to do. you don't have to give a specific order to set the whole thing in motion. so what we had was a systematic effort to undermine and interfere with the processes of the opposition party. nixon. -- well, he feared that his opponent was going to be at muskie, a very statuesque figure in many ways. and he must refer to and against george mcgovern, the antiwar candidate. i cannot begin to tell you whether or not they are activities that do anything without the turnout. but they sure tried. they had this team of people. it was much more serious than that. he had a team of 20 people in 17 states, disrupt and democratic party event. and i go so far in the book has to say, this was a step on the road to fascism. the first thing you do when you want to deserve power is you rendell are helpless the other party. >> host: would use say this is unprecedented? >> guest: yes, i would say it is unprecedented and it succeeded. i think it's a unique moment in american life. it's not a moment. it was a period in when i wrote my first book, one idea and i was able to pick up was to get across with this. the site. i mean, there was the sort of nervous comedy about gumshoes that kept messing up. and there was a nervous tension about what was going to happen next, what would he do next, what would they do next. i remember a friend of mine went out to get your sunday paper and i guess it had come late. and her first book with a have stopped the price. it was a frightening. and break-ins -- this was a constitutional crisis. the question was whether the president of the united states could be held accountable for his actions. and nixon took great effort to fight the courts, fight the congress, tonight than critical that he was accountable to no one. and while it's a subtle part of american history now, well he did the break-in. they did the cover-up and the system were. the feeling was that it almost didn't. there was nothing inevitable about defending. >> host: what were the turning points? why did it turn out the way it did? >> guest: i think a few things. i think in two different places, one with the prosecutors were going forward quietly. and everybody was focusing on into give them great credit, woodward ernestine in the press because they did their job and they did a wonderful job. somebody asked me, would nixon have been impeached without the press? it's a great question. i don't know that i know the answer, but i do know it was not just liberal media. when i was on c-span i got this unusual set of appellations. i was the "washington post" liberal. and all he did was the opd burglary in this little bitty cover. it's very important to understand it was much broader than that. so i think the turning points were one, when the federal prosecutors come into it. to common for nixon. they were getting too far along side of the counsel and the attorney general went down and was told to go do something really wrong. i felt like we were in a banana republic. i think a couple of court rulings may nixon turn over the case. i would go back to the european committee. i don't know that it discovered very much, but it went to this country this rather oddball group of slippery folk who had participated in all this. said the country got engaged. and i say the ultimate turning point was the house judiciary committee, which has been this portrayed in some books on the. i was there when i type -- talk to him about it. there is a lot of liberal hotheads who said let's get in. and rodino felt that this had to be and be seen as a collaborative process, as a fair process and as a bipartisan process. so the articles of impeachment that were voted by the house judiciary committee, all of them in one form or another about offenses to the constitution were voted on by a bipartisan group and i think that made a huge difference. >> host: in the book you say it was a wise decision. >> guest: i think so. i think it was widely controversial at the time. but i think ford did the right thing, knowing that he would not be able to govern, nothing would be able to go on until this was out of the way. for that nixon had been punished enough and i guess for some people there's no punished enough for richard nixon, but he was disgraced. he was run out of office. that's pretty high up there. ford felt the country needed to move on anything that was the right call. >> host: your book describes nixon as a transitional president, a transitional figure. because of course the book is about more than just watergate. it talks about how he has come to be viewed by some as a liberal progressive. >> guest: incorrectly. you cannot look at nixon. the people at back and call him a liberal progressive and the context of the current times. you can do it, but you can't do it. he governed in the pre-reagan. and reaganism was the turning point for the rise of the conservative holes on the republican party. in nixon's day, the republican party was particularly centrist. there were some isolationists, some primitives. whether that was a large block of republican liberals, virtually extinct today. and the democratic party, which controlled the congress the entire time was a much more aggressive in liberal democratic congress then we have today. nixon described himself as a pragmatist. i take him at his word, just based on what he did. a republican senator said to me in nixon's first year of office, he describes nixon as the man with the portable center. there were a number of domestic laws signed when nixon was president. he is particularly given credit for a lot of legislation about the environment. if you let behind it, most of these proposals team from capitol hill, particularly the outstanding environmental senators, muskie and taylor nelson. nixon really ignored. he turned it over to john ehrlichman except for the social issues of crime and so on. and he just told everyone, just keep me out of trouble on this. and everyone was constantly fighting under a youth who were fighting for a more conservative approach. i think she ended up quite disappointing. and so, at the end of this first year in office, nixon ordered a pool about people's opinions about the environment. a lot it happen. the cleveland river had caught on fire and had been a big oil spill on the california coast. rachel carson have long since written her groundbreaking book, silent spring. in the poll showed a dramatic rise in public support for dealing with the environment. in the next year the union speech he offered 47 proposals or something like that. and then he turned and said, just keeping out of trouble on the environment. he described the environmental movement has come excuse me, for clowns. and he was utterly cynical about it. he was utterly cynical about his seemingly radical assistance plan, where everybody had a guaranteed minimum income. this for nixon was astonishing. he went on television and announced the big fanfare. and not long after that, he turned to haldeman, his chief of staff instead make a big play for, but make sure it doesn't pass. we can't afford it. once it was defeated, that was the end of that. so i think this view of nixon as the great liberal conservatives is a very retrospect to a contextual and b. and c., the result of a lot of blurry memories. he thought of a lot of these bills, vetoed and try to hold up federal funding for them. so he was no genuine environmentalists. >> host: pat moynihan suggested to him that he become eventual israeli. >> guest: nixon has very big on flattery. you'll see this in the henry kissinger relationship with him, that when they took their first trip to europe, they are in london and nixon asked kissinger took him to his hotel room late at night. and he asked kissinger to tell him what a wonderful job be done that day. kissinger at this point wasn't so in that nixon, so he will evade it on. and this became a ritual. so moynihan, in order to bring nixon over to doing some things about these things lead to donham, so we say it, that he could be benjamin disraeli, the great prime minister, 19th century prime minister of britain, who is a conservative reformer intent but queen vic tori a to do various things. but nixon was no disraeli. this was suggested that moynihan was trying to put on nixon that he would want to assume that mantle, but it was very technical. post a list or what the relationship between nixon and him. >> guest: it was a very, almost tempestuous relationship. here you had -- downtown, i don't believe in psycho biography. but you cannot do nixon, much less nixon-kissinger without getting in there had. and i'll talk about my final conclusions about nixon because i really felt i was and have had. he had nixon and kissinger each in its way deeply insecure people. we could go into that, but there it is. each of them struggle to be seen as a great wise person on foreign policy. kissinger was utterly two-faced, starting with the campaign he was extensively hubert humphrey advisor, but he was leaking information to the nixon campaign. either he told nixon that's my kind of guy or should have been a warning. as in the white house, kissinger would flatter nixon and argue hard for a strenuous attempt to win the vietnam war bombing campaign and so on. and then kissinger would, among his old harvard colleagues, talk about the fact that i'm working for is not man. and i'm fighting so hard to end this war. and kissinger, who suddenly was a socially. i mean, here is this fat, dumpy, jewish professor. not a lot of people's idea of an instantly attractive man. >> host: you didn't sense that at the time. just no, i did not. but utterly flirtatious and flattering. and i can't in fact, so i was not fooled by it. but a lot of people were. so you would go out into the georgetown salons and again he would talk about and of course people wafted up, what a horrible, crazy not and he was working for. well, nixon is no fool. nixon is a very, very smart man and of course he got wind of this. also, he got wind of the fact that kissinger, when they would achieve something in particular, kissinger with the to his family columns, he had columnists lapping up everything he said, that this was achievement and of course nixon wouldn't know exactly where it came from. in the end, nixon and his aides were keeping logs on kissinger's phone calls, while kissinger had approved wiretaps on his own aides. i mean, this is kind of strange place. >> host: historians are very grateful for that because we have phenomenal records now. >> guest: is the end of it. >> host: tunics indistinguishably himself as a tough anti-communist. but these him to change his mind about how to deal with the soviet and chinese? >> guest: before nixon came to office, he wrote an article in foreign affairs, saying we really have to change our approach to china. look, since 1949 come you're the cold war expert. america had been denying the communists and taking over china and just frozen it out. this was not realistic. nixon, while he didn't care about domestic policy, he wanted to be seen as a foreign-policy president. and in his afterlife, he wanted to be seen as the foreign-policy altar statesman. and some people felt that way about him. i put it nicely. that nixon saw brilliantly that you had soviet union here and red china there and us here. and he and kissinger relatedly, afterwards deciding this model is the lock, nixon in particular realized you could play them off against each other. and so, i think that's where it began. i think i'm talking to the expert on this. and i think nixon also understood he may have been the only person who could have done this because his anti-communist credentials were so strong. if hubert humphrey had tried it, you know, nixon and the gang would've been attacking them like mad. he was more keen on this then kissinger was it turns out. so it was a smart, perceptive endeavor on his part to try to relax relationships with the chinese. and at the same time, play this off against the soviet. and they were fearing each other and the word that came into disrepute later, triangulation. and it was very smart. you cannot take away from nixon. he was a really smart man. now, some people think he oversold with the soviet union. they didn't get a good arms control, deals as they might have. nixon didn't care about the details of it and kissinger didn't know about the details of it, but was trying to dominate it. and so there was a slipping back on the soviet up front after nixon left office. there is no question that he changed the definition of things on those two issues. however, they also made gigantic mistakes in foreign policy. there's a strong argument that the vietnam war went on five years beyond where it need have. but nixon got in the end he could have gotten almost entirely in 1869. and have you heard this before? american prestige is on the line. we couldn't be the pitiful helpless giant. they mucked around in chile, with the overthrow of the leftist democratically elected president salvador allende, only to end up with a gusto penna j. hukill 10,000 chileans. in the middle east, they are record was a bit mixed. but i think the thing we have it back at that leads me to my somewhat surprising to me conclusion about nixon was i don't think he was fit for the office. if you look at the foreign-policy they had this thing called the man be in theory, which was scare the other side, have been thinking, what is he going to do to us next? and the problem with the madman theory was that he implemented in quite frightening ways worldwide nuclear words, bombastic threats to russia and china about what he would do to north vietnam. they didn't help. he didn't carry out the threat. so it didn't always work. and then he would take rash actions. i think it's gone down in history as the invasion of cambodia, which just destroyed this country, let it into the hands of cantilevers who murdered millions, was there? the reason i question whether nixon and all mayhem was fit to be president. one reason? he drank too much. he was drunk on the eve of the cambodia invasion. he was drunk on other occasions. his aide never knew when they received these drunken calls. this order is not appealable. >> host: i know i've heard that one before. so his aides were constantly having to figure out whether he meant it, whether or not to implement these orders on top of drinking excessively. he took this drug, dilantin. and i looked at this very carefully because i wanted to make sure it was true. but the opposite the man who wasted it on mtv so much a rose taking it without a prescription. they confirm that happen. dilantin isn't anticonvulsant drug. it's not a good altar. it's never been approved. but presumably nixon thought it would help him as an anti-insanity. the fact he felt he had to take it was rather interesting. taking the two of those together enhances the effect. you become all the more track, your words are slurred, your judgment is all the more worse. i'm getting ahead of myself, but showing you into the context of the foreign-policy, these bizarre things that happen because nixon was sometimes out of control. >> host: so, would you say this makes an unusual? >> guest: yes, the degree to which this happened, i'd do some things together to say i think nixon is generous. i really do. i don't have a modern presidents who was said to have been drunk that much, just to put that one out of the way. but this man was so tormented. and as they trace his life, you can see it starts early. he resents people born to more privilege. as he goes on, he hates people born to foreign privilege. he intellectuals. he hates jews. he's not too good about blacks. he thinks that anybody who was opposes them, even a legitimate political opponents or a critic, paul newman was an antiwar leader, that these are his enemies. now we get used to throwing the term around. but then again, imagine the president of the united states deciding all these people are his enemies. and now he has the instruments of power in his hand and he is going to come as you would use the term, crush them. thus we had teamed rather flagrant use of the internal revenue service, to punish these enemies. the political opponents were enemies. dust, all bets were off about trying to undermine and interfere with their processes. a lot of politicians have a lot of judges in recent mints and rivalries and politicians. and it's not always pretty. but if you indulge them, if you indulged them and you don't know how to handle them and beyond that you have the instruments of government in your hand, this is very serious business. i ended up feeling this was lined up with empathy forms. this is a very tormented man. it doesn't say he was ever happy getting the president to satisfy him. he had no real plans to govern. that to him was an opportunity to indulge his vengeance is and get his enemies. so i think he was tormented. he needs psychiatric definition of a paranoid personality. the psychiatrist guided me through this. the paranoid personality -- in fact come with her around the word paranoid. everybody is your enemy, but you don't always -- you often make rash decisions when you're in that mode and you can't confide in anybody. so there's nobody around to say hey, you know, this really is the such a good rate to think about it for such a good idea. he was also the most amazingly resilient figure i have ever known about. he came back to back them back from deceit. time and again, even after he was just raised in a fascinating. was his. in california and new york after he was run from office. in his methodical german attempt to get respectability back and to be seen as an elder statesman it's remarkable. it's rather funny. it's rather sad. i think he succeeded along some of the elites, particularly foreign-policy elites. but there was a desperation to it that was really quite touching in a way, which is why i ended up with some empathy for the man. >> host: did you ever meet him? >> guest: not close to. but i took some of his trips. i took his famous trip when he went to chicago and nashville and houston, trying to restore himself. he played the yo-yo on the stage. >> host: you were there. >> guest: i could see how bizarre it was. but i didn't meet him one-on-one. almost nobody in the press did. >> host: did any? i mean, did any of your colleagues have that chance? >> guest: yeah, i don't want to start naming names, but if you read some of the documents and frankly how they talked about using this journalist, this columnist or that, to get their story out. also, they kept being created throughout this career new mexicans. this in itself bears that cannot. and various distinguished pundits, one who is great very honored in his time coming to your door at each weight with go out and come back in alpine on a new nixon. well, the kind of person as he is being new. >> host: let's open the floor to some questions. are there any? sandy has been made. are there any questions for the audience? >> guest: surely we can while somebody a. [inaudible] >> i was wondering if you could expand on that a little. >> guest: yes, both personally and politically if you look at nixon's early career, you can see the traits that he brought into the white house. as a kid, he was really a loner. he didn't have friends. he -- i don't want to do the freudian thing about the parents, publishers say they were wasn't a lot of love around his house. henry kissinger uttered the famous line, can you imagine what this man would have been if somebody had left me? he was very rockish, which is good. and then when he got into high school and college, you could see the beginning of improving himself. he was constantly improving himself. so he went out for football. he was about as built for its sim. and you know, he never made the top squads, but he was proving something. he ran for and got what to do high school and college offices. people who attack and not enough of them did to his classmates were told that he was collect did not because they liked him, but they respected him. he was so smart and he worked so hard for these offices. when he got to college, interestingly enough, he formed a group that led a rebellion against the dominant social group at the college called the franklin quote. these are people, kids came from more privileged. and nixon beat them and formed his own club. but if you look at his early campaign races, that's where you really see it. in both cases of us running for the house against the incumbent jerry voorhees and for the open senate seat against alan kay hagan douglas, you see a man who had very close to the edge if not over it in smearing non-as instruments of the communist party. in the case of douglas, is rather famous. he took for his staff took boats that she had cast in the house, that were similar to the most left-wing member of the house. marcantonio. and they printed it on a pink slip, pink being highly suggested in those days. and he became known as the pink lady. these were campaign not as some of that. but these were very close to the edge, if not over the line. and he had with him merry chatter throughout all of this, kind of his karl rove. and they stop is very little. so it's almost a straight line. with all these crutches and all of this, boy, you really go against people who are your opponents, your enemies. it's a straight line from thereto in february 1969, setting up the secret investigative unit. that's why i'm just really trying to explain that the watergate break-in was coming in now, not very much in the context of the whole thing that was going on. >> host: well, we've got the next question. did you in the press corps have any hint that so many fewer being wiretapped? william beecher and others? >> guest: well, i wasn't. i wasn't important enough and i didn't leak anything that mattered. bill beecher at "the new york times" leaked the information about the so-called secret bombing of cambodia. i was little mischievous around and. i was on "meet the press" mla or, the secretary of defense was on. and i said well, why did you insist on calling these the secret bombings? surely cambodians were aware of it. and actually it turned out later that day.this is a very bad day to try to keep his secret. some people knew they were being wiretapped. these tended to be people who are let's say the king kissinger, marvin cobb, joe kraft, henry brandon. kissinger approved some of his own staff, approved it has to go to the fbi to institute these wiretapping. the idea i believe was to another quirk in the relationship to nixon and kissinger was kissinger had to keep proving to nixon how hardlined he was about ellsberg, about leaks against the press. it was quite a funny little footnote to the hotels are business. and that is the reason all straight -- i didn't notice until i i worked on the boat. the reason all of her had access to the pentagon papers, which were stored at the rand corporation is because he was doing a study for kissinger. >> host: i'm curious to hear little bit more about the madman theory and specifically whether or not it worked. i mean, do we have any knowledge they resented their about nixon at the top levels of the soviet or chinese government? about what you're saying about the mainstream can in temperament, if they might actually affect reason to be concerned. >> guest: that's a good question. i haven't seen much documentation because we don't have their tapes and holy moly, this guy is out of control. i wouldn't be surprised if there were some of that. there were some mutual blustering in the middle east, tanks coming in, worldwide alert, but i don't think we have -- i don't know of, maybe it's soviet scholars do, evidence that they said we've got to be careful with this guy. and in fact, during the negotiations, kissinger was holding negotiations in paris with its north vietnamese counterpart. and nixon told kissinger, he told him to tell the go that if they did make some concession by christmas time -- they kept overestimating the influence the russians and the chinese, the soviets and the chinese had on the north vietnamese. and i kept thinking they could get things done through this great power of discussions. there is little evidence that they did. so nixon sent the message to the north vietnamese through kissinger, through the soviet ambassador. there is a secret channel. same time either you agree -- i think it was to an arms control control -- the meeting negotiation or you get the north vietnamese to pull back. you need to negotiate with this better or were going to buy christmas or else. this is a book for christmas deadline, november 1. and the deadline came and went. the north vietnamese didn't cooperate and nixon didn't make good on that threat. so it worked the other way, too. but then there was this humongous christmas bombing over christmas, at the end of which everybody was out of weapons on the united states looked terrible said they would recommence the negotiations. so it wasn't a policy. i don't see that it was wildly affect to. and yet, it could get us into things that might as then like the cambodian invasion. it might well have better been left alone. >> host: what effect did the christmas bombing have on the terms of final settlement? >> guest: very little. very little at all. and in the end, the north the knees over in the south, took over the presidential palace. and i think what haunts policymakers to this day are these pictures of americans being lifted off, getting on helicopters off the roof of the american embassy. thursday picture -- actually a smithsonian attached to something a kissinger and brent crowe craft in black tie, looking like this. would you like to talk about -- then i would like to talk about his after presidency and the chinese dinners. >> host: sure, why not. >> guest: well, in nixon's desperation to be rehabilitated and have his reputation rehabilitated -- by the way, typical to nixon, this had a code name called operation wizard. and after he was in san clemente for a while, you begin to feel very isolated and he wanted to go to new york, where as he said the action is. so he moved to new york, bought a brownstone, actually right behind arthur/and or who said there goes the neighborhood, but anyway, that's not in the book. i thought it was a little too cute for this, but it's to tell it. nixon commenced to have dinners. this is a far from gregarious man. he was painfully shy and awkward and capable of smalltalk, which weighed me lead off with you as an improbable president because he just -- he couldn't mix of people. he just didn't like to talk to them. his one friend, bebe legros was he was not to talk unless nixon asked them to. they would sit for hours in silence until nixon would say, you know, you want to drink or something like that? he was a major drinker and somewhat aggressive. anyway, so nixon got his brownstone in new york. lest anybody not remember his great triumph, the houses do not in chinese to court. his longtime valet, melisande chas was gone and he was chinese, butlers and waiters and so on. and it was to voelker and nixon was quite vulgar. and so they were stag dinners and nixon would elders around the theme. he would invite the movers and shakers of new york, banking people, corporate executives, publishing executives, anybody who is a big deal in new york. he would doted around a theme. one night he had a shakespearean scholar in from england. and this and everything else about nixon, these went like clockwork. 7:00 he creates his guests at the foyer. awkwardly. and he leads them upstairs to the library where he mixes the drinks he prided himself on really really good martinis. then there was chit chat and the dinner, where they would be one topic. i sat there for dessert and a little this discussion. same thing every time. at 1030 on the dot, he would look at the clock and take out the most upright person in the room and he would say, i'm just guessing. [inaudible] >> guest: and he would look at the clock at 10:30 and i promise to get into a house of prostitution by above and, so we have to break it up now. >> host: boy, that would have been funny. last night well, always the same? >> guest: yes, routine. he had his routines. sometimes he would ask for meetings, like with somebody who's still around washington was a young congressman and nixon asked new gingrich and the sky to get a group of younger people now in their rebellious phase. at midnight in in some hotel room in washington. nixon without the foyer, awkwardly. and then he would sort of be at a loss for what to do next. so in a good site, with why don't we all go into the living room? okay, so they all went into the living room. and then there would be silenced because nixon didn't know what he wanted to say. and happily for him -- and he always loved what it happened, tell us your views of foreign policy because that was his nickname. we talked about leaders see it down. he would take great pride in that. then one of the congressman said, tell us how you foresee the next election. i can see this when reagan was running for the first time. nixon knew the country county by county politically. he usually knew who the county managers were, county chairmen were and he'd call it off county by county. and at that point, it was thought that the republicans were going to win 40 seats but hey. i don't remember the number. and nixon said it's going to be more like ford team. yeah, nixon said it's going to be more like 14. it was 14. he would call a political advisers were even politicians would be rather taken aback that nixon was on the phone. and he would offer them advice. he spoke before a group of publishers, many of whom had worked to get him out of office. and he did a political tour. he had a largely wrong, which they didn't necessarily know at the time. he said gary hart would be the nominee and stuff like that. and they gave him a standing ovation in huge applause. they were so thrilled by his mind. i think it was a little guilt going on. and he even went over to katharine graham, the publisher of the "washington post" who played a heroic role during all of those, wanted to have her picture taken with him. and so, she did. and she instructed somebody at "newsweek" for the editor of "newsweek," which they also owned, do a piece on nixon's comeback. there were a gazillion pieces on nixon's comeback. nixon said he would not cooperate in the peace unless he was on the cover of the magazine and so he was. he bought mailed bill clinton, who was about to go up to a summit meeting in that way to clinton, unless clinton called him into the white house for type on how to handle the still soviet t., nixon, would write an op-ed in a major paper, attacking clinton's foreign policy. and so, clinton called him in. i was covering the clinton white house at the time. it was really rather funny. they made sure it happened in the dead of night so nobody would see nixon or then there would be no photographers. healy and memo to "the new york times." marvin kolb has hurt a nice little book about that at a site in the book about his effort to spread this memo of his views of what was going on and how many people fell for it and whom they use to try to do it. it was they were luckless, somewhat successful. i would say among the elites, if it should foreign policy establishment. but i doubt many of you had your eyes glued to his funeral. nixon would've loved to see in their own. and he had -- there were six presidents they are and kissinger gave the eulogy. his eyes tearing added beloved figure. bob dole, who actually said to me, dole is chairman of the republican national committee. i believe it was then that -- it was for a midterm election while nixon was president. i'm sorry, it was with a group of people and people were saying -- press were saying to dole, senator dole, do what nixon to stop in kansas? and dole said, a flyover might work. but he gave this very emotional torrent of speech at the funeral. he was quite a scene. clinton said something to the effect of, let's just let him rest in pews and let us have forgiveness and the sound off a big series among the democratic party. so you is controversial to the end, although a lot of people i become more mellow about 10. and as they say, i ended up with empathy for him because he strived so hard all his life. and he was so determined to be accepted, which he never quite was. and he was such a tormented man that i couldn't help but feel some real empathy to him. >> host: are there any other questions? well if not -- may be love. [inaudible] >> -- how does that compare to the clinton impeachment? >> guest: night and day. the nixon impeachment effort was very serious, was very deliberate, was very rooted in serious study of the constitution. the name james madison was constantly coming up in what the founding fathers meant. frivolous or seemingly less important aspects of nixon's the were put aside. i mean, father drinan, who really started this and was quite to the left wanted to impeach him on the invasion of cambodia. and the people who are really running this in the center block of the committee felt no, that's not the kind of charge that we should be impeaching and we should go for the most serious assault on the constitution. so it was select this and they went for the most serious and it was a very deliberative careful process. clinton's anti-impeachment was i think the only word to use was reckless. it was highly partisan. it was almost the culmination of gingrich and his crowd, determination to undermine their president be, even before they took office. when hillary said there is a vast, giant right-wing conspiracy, she was absolutely right. i mean, there were these movements in the spec tater magazine that were out to get them. what he was impeached for too many of us did not rise to the level of an impeachable offense. they were just going to get him on something. the interesting thing is because they conducted it that way, it backfired. the republicans lost seats in the 96 -- were among? the 98 midterm elections and gingrich was dumped as the speaker. so that's why the watergate one was real. it was serious. there have been only one before that of andrew johnson has succeeded lincoln as we all know. and that true was fairly partisan and grounded in the lower politics, very partisan. and this was when the country was so rent over how to treat the south. and he was impeached in the house and the conviction -- you have to get convicted in the house-senate comest failed by one vote. so nixon sort of had the prize. i have just something else about the out-of-control president. the fear was so great that toward the last days before nixon resigned, jim/and your, who was then secretary of defense put out an order. he is not in hysterical man. jim schlesinger put out in order to the whole pentagon, the military in particular. do not act in any workers that coming from the white house. in other words, there were rumors of a coup. and i didn't think that, but it was scary enough that that kind of an order went out. >> host: do we have any other questions? >> guest: i think i'm about to -- >> host: well, elizabeth, i went thank you very much. this was a wonderful conversation. i'm didn't naftali, at the presidential library and museum to look forward to welcoming all of you. >> host: >> guest: i will be there. and you don't look about like i expected you to let. it's not a