Getting in line. Maybe well see. Maybe not. I think if you have any further questions you can ask them of charles as he is signing your book, hint, hint and lets thank him once moore wednesday more for the preparation. [applause] thank you for coming, and safe travels. Friday, book if there features program ford fairs and festivals. At 8 00 p. M. Merchandizes marylands gaithersburg book festival. And then chicagos printers row on the biography of russell kirk. At 9 35 p. M. Eastern, the Los Angeles Times back festival on the life and times times times s offenses investigate. At 10 00 p. M. A panel on violence crime from the san antonio book festival. And at 11 00 a panel on from the harlem book fair. A taste of this years fairs and festivals starting at 8 00 p. M. Eastern here on cspan2. Friday, considering the impact of u. S. 308 si on the Domestic Labor market. Live at 9 00 a. M. Eastern on cspan2. If thats not going to happen. If the military for the foreseeable futurer is going to continue to be asked to take on this wide range of tasks lets make sure that the military is good at it. On sunday at noon eastern, in depth is live from Hillsdale College in michigan with dennis prager. The author of the nine questions people ask about judaism, think a second time. Pie pie why the jews and the ten commandments. Join in the conversation. And at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, indicate Anderson Brouwer profiles the ten first ladies since 1960 in their book first wimp the grace and power of americas first ladies. And on monday, mary roach on the science used to improve the effectiveness and safety of the u. S. Military. Elaine on why the public has lost faith in their political leaders and smith on the opportunitiure of george w. Bush and senator trent lott and john meacham talk about president ial politics. Good to booktv. Org for the complete weekend schedule. Next a panel on Richard Nixon. Two superb authors who have both been treating Richard Nixon. T nixon is back. Something more recently said of voldmort but also nixon is back, and i remember just after he got on the helicopter, the Vice President he appointed who became president , gerald ford, said, my fellow americans, thebe Long National nightmare is over. But like a lot of nightmares there are flashbacks, so its time we thought this through. I hope there will be a few remarks that reflect on our current crazy primary season, but in any case, these two topflight writers have given their sharply contrasting readings of Richard Nixon. Tim winer wean are on my far left in one man against the world the tragedy of Richard Nixon records in drastic detail how lawless and devious r nixon really was. His indictment is just excruciating and fascinating. Detailed. Deep, very convincing. And evan thomas, on my immediate left, right to your eyes, by contrast in being his book in being nixon man divided seeks to explain what it was s like actually to be Richard Nixon. He summons great sympathy and compassion in understanding that actions conflicted ultimately n. Selfdestructive person, theres plenty in tim weiners book about selfdestructiveness of the man, but the approaches are very different and thats why with these two major books by major authors, both of them experts in National Security, both of them had written books about the cia, these are people who really ought to be read together. Their books are very complimentary and its great to focus on dealing with brezhnev and then here when brezhnev stayed at the western whiteen house did not bring his wife but brought a bucksom miss sues who wore the same perfume as pat nixon and paraded up and down the hall after dark and pat nix john was not pleased. Especially when they ran interest each other on the way to the bathroom. Oh, so bad. Tim we squaring tim winers book about the fbi, enemies and his become about the cia is called legacy of ashing the history of the cia has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award. And evan thomas is a journalist and an editor with newsweek i for much of his career, and his book about the cia is called the very best men and he won the National Magazine award. I it strikes me that both men were just excellent candidates for nixons enemies lest. These were the kind of journalists with establishment journals like newsweek and the Washington Post, the New York Times, rather, in mr. Weiners case. Evan went to Phillips Academy and harvard and the grandson of man who ran six times for president as socialist, Norman Thomas help was not nixons kind of guy and yet he writes a very compassionate biography, and mr. Weiner went to Columbia University and Columbia School of journalism and the New York Times was almost as much the Washington Post, real antagonist of mr. Nixon, at least in nixons point of view. To my argument is just read these books together. One concentrates much more on specific events, like the war in vietnam, chile, the detente, dealings with china and russia, mr. Weiners book, and it very well complimented by evans study of what it was really like to be Richard Nixon, evan thomas book takes the entire life of mr. Nixon, birth through the full stenof this life and offers a great deal of insight of him as a father, as husband,o as a man who was just always striving, whereas tim weiners book tends to capture the way he was truly a raging insomniac who as he just remark ted in his attempt to deal with insomnia by meds indicating himself with alcohol, not a good formula. So, each book is so convincing you need to sit down with the two of them together. In eave vietnams last paragraph he reminds us nixon was no saint but have seemed to have martyred himself in his selfdestructive behavior. I thought that i would ask first mr. Weaner to tell us, what it was that caused him to set out to write this book. Ell us w well, about three years ago, i was at the nixon president ial library and archives in his home town, an hour south of los angeles. Talking about nixons relationship with j. Edgar hoover, whom nixon called not fire entirely send searry, my closest person friend in allll political life over the course of 25 years. When hoover actually died sixfe week before the watergate breakin. Probably wouldnt have happened probhe lived. Nixon actually said, well, the old boy died at great moment, didnt he. He had been trying to figure out how to get rid of hoover for years but never summoned the courage to do it. So giving a speech three years ago, came up and took me aside and they were excited said, what is happening . And they said by the end of 20 4 , all the tapes, the quarter of a Million Words haldemans diaries, nixons chief of staff, that were classified top secret, everything will be out. And i said, thats amazing. A 40year struggle to get these material into the hands of the American People where it justly belongs. So i put aside what i was working on and the tapes began coming out in 2013. They continued to come out, and ive now listen to such much Richard Nixon, i will compare you. What i finally understood were two things i dont think had been fully understood, although god knows Richard Nixon has been written about and put on these analysts couch for lo these many years, something he detest of. Cou want was how the war in vietnam was fought on two fronts, abroad and at home, and how the war at home became the wars of watergate. It was nixon going after his political enemies. Those who opposed the war and who opposed him, that led too the crimes that brought him down. The two cars were as one. Vietnam, and watergate. Betwthe second was after listening to the newly released tapes, which cover roughly the end of the summer of 1972, until the taping mechanisms were revealed at the watergate hearings in the summer of 1973, the torment that this man went through. He knew before he was sworn in for his second term that he was doomed. That the president ial challis was poisoned. And the agonies that he put himself and this country through, trying to cling to power, must never be repeated. The violations of the constitution under the Nixon Administration were as grievous as anything we have witnessed since the civil war. And no Free Republic has survived for longer than 300 years, in the history of civilization. We have made it to 240. We need remember what happened, what really happened, in the nixon years. To make it to 300. Evan,s suppose theres kind of a story behind your book how you decided to do what you did. I worked for the Washington Post company for 24 years. And where i worked nixon was the devil. A view i shared. And but whenon meacham approached me. Writing about nixon, i felt that this wise would be 12th of 13 nixon biographies and the picture of nixon as a gad guy is pretty well established by now and rightfully so. But i want to see what it was b like to be him. To sort of put myself into his shoes. I so i set out to do that. An amazing paper trail, he hated talking to people. His aides called a yellow legal pad his best friend, he wrote a lot of notes to himself. An amazing paper trail within the white house, quite an excellent paper trail, nixon had quite grotesque action, the white house the of course nixon wrote literally thousands of pages of memoir in varying degrees of reliability and it takes 3,700 hours of tapes to cover a couple units of the presidency but they are a deep rich mother load so you can get close to Richard Nixon and that is what i endeavored to do. What i found was not the criminal mastermind. Yes he committed crimes, but rather someone who is pathologically shy and unable to confront. A big reason he dug himself such a hole in watergate was the inability to confront his own top aides. Nixon didnt know about the watergate breakin himself. He participated in the coverupe but he couldnt get everybody to ask what happened here for about nine months after that then it was way too late. Felonies were being committed. It was a coverup, and that was partly just shyness, not criminal but love im interesten hayes worldview and the way he got along with other people because i think its significant. Tim mentioned there was a nexus between vietnam and watergate. What are data begins at various places but one beginning is when they decide to breakin, nixon says three times he wants to break into the Brookings Institution after the pentagon papers had been revealed. You remember this is june 1971 and a secret history of the vietnam war. They never mentioned Richard Nixon that he is obsessed. Hhes running private diplomacy with Henry Kissinger and his obsessed with releasing and the times and the post. He thinks that its somewhere in the Brookings Institution there re a report that he himselff commissioned on a long convoluted story about how he did something illegal before the 1968 convention communicating with the south vietnameseovernmn government telling him not to make a deal with lyndon johnson. Nixon is obsessed that there is a report and he tells the folks to break into brookings. One of the aides said why dont we go ask them. Of [laughter] but nixon was crazy and at this time this is where the Historical Context takes hold. For a long time, welcome the first of all he should have just asked but if he wanted to get the political intelligence for a long time the fbi did that for president s. I did that thats how j. Edgar hoover stayed in office all those years acting as a political spy and also blackmailing them into getting dirt on them. But by 1971, the wind is changing. The war on chords, liberal wiretapping. The wind is shifting so when nixon says i want you to dig up dirt on Ellsberg Hoover refuses to do it. Hes out of the game into the fbi isnt doing that anymore so what does nixon do heres the thing about the plumbers. They sound like a bunch of criminals, they were in the classic washington fashion. He was an idiot who had been dumped on treasury and on the white house so those working were hung and libby run by eagle who isnt your criminal mastermind. He was a former eagle scout. This nickname at the white house was evil crow. It was a joke. W he wasnt evil at all that he was intimidated and ran thismi group of clowns and they screwed up and broke into the psychiatrists office and then they broke into watergate and ad got caught. And not criminal masterminds. Nixon didnt even know about these breakin attempts. There is some evidence of the top aides but nixon probably not. The records are little squishy on that. Little but mostly the point is it wasnt a master conspiracy to violate the constitution. Constitution. It was a bunch of helpless guys carry out the will of the deeply insecure president. This might be a time to bring you on stage. If you make it clear again and again to current politics. We may think of nixon just as a man is out of touch and had some totally ungoverned stumble bums working with him but you tell it in a much more sinister way. They didnt call him tricky for nothing and they called him tricky since the beginning of his political career. But what we get is on top of the insecurity, the deep personal security a sense of a man cominf apart at and there was no better witness to this van but crow. At the time i time as may, 1970. A few weeks later, hoover would say no to nixon im not going tr do your dirty work in the summer of 1970. Thithis may come in 1970. Thxon has just invaded cambodiaa in search of the nonexistent bamboo pentagon who was supposedly coordinating the supply routes on the ho chi minh trail. The campus is exploding. You all remember this. The National Guard and mixing at this point hasnt been able to sleep for a solid week and haldeman notes he really needs some good rest and then comes the shooting at kent state and then as the 100,000 kids are coming to washington to protest the invasion of cambodia, nixon is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. He stays up all night friday into saturday and in his own words making more than 50 phone calls and finally calling upon his valet to accompany him to the Lincoln Memorial said he can rap with the hippies about the war. Crowe was on duty that night at the white house and he vividly recalled in the history of the Nixon Library 4 30 in the morning i was in the secret Service Command post and then came the words searchlight is on the long been the code name. There were three women who are there. She didnt look anyone in the eye and was mumbling. In the structure, there was none. Theyve asked him to speak up wherever he was and he would look up and shake his head around but then he would go back to looking at his feet and he was gone again. There was no train of thought. Nothing he was saying was coherent. Rent. At first i felt in all but then it changed to respect them as he kept talking a it went to disappointment and disillusionment and then i felt pity because he was so pathetic to think hes the president of the United States. We all went through that. Most people went through that feeling. It is awful as in terrifying. A this is a microcosm of what happened to Richard Nixon as he disintegrated over the next four years. That shows the difference between then and now because it took an entire presidency to reach the point at the prospect of such a man in office where wed already gotten there we havent even completed theof primaries. Its amazing. That is the difference then and now it was never that you have these thousands of hours of tapes and we can hear you have listened to everything that was said in the oval office and nowadays we are not going to have tapes from the oval office or emails. They learned about. Instead, the oval office is going to have all of our emails and tapes of us so its kind of inverse. Do we really need to bring nixon down so hard . It seems like after reading the indictment there is nothing left of the man. I get the idea that he was so so afraid constantly and also very effective in protecting himself but did you feel that it was necessary he sometimes comes h across as a kind of political dracula and each one of your chapters is another stake in the heart. It was nixon who finally said i gave them a sword and they twisted it. And i guess if i had been in their position i would have done the same thing. This is a man who said we all remember that afternoon in 1974 of his last words to the American People always remember others may hate you but those that hate you dont win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself. This is the story of a man destroying himself and doing serious damage to american democracy and its a lesson that we cannot forget. He makes a remarkable statement in which he says the future enemy is going to destroy you. I read that and said too late, you just realized that. [laughter] i looked and i looked in the record for some selfawareness, because this was all the way back to the childhood with his anxiety. Was he never aware this was the fatal flaw that was going toas haunt him . He says to his soninlaw a few days before he moves on its like a shakespeare play or played by the ancient greeks. I was curious to see if they ever read the play by shakespeare, its in yorba linda at the library and he ran Shakespeares Julius Caesar and he wrote a paper about it. He totally missed the point. We would talk about his own destiny but it was remarkably on selfaware. I would ask people do you think Richard Nixon knew of himself and prince brokaw said i thinkme sometimes he took a peek and he didnt like what he saw. I asked James Schlessinger and then the secretary of defense of the director and schlessinger said no but then he looked outkn the window and said who does. That is a fair question and an interesting question. If youre somebody that gets up every morning and thinks youre going to save the world you cant be too worried about where your car keys are. Often great men have blinders on. They are going in one direction and this lack of selfawareness that is haunting and ultimately selfdestructive is not entirel uncommon. So it raises interesting questions about the greatness of what inspired him to do great things if you are self reflective. Nixon is a tragic case that there is a lot of gray areas here. I was wondering i was just fascinated by this. It may be that he really didnt know. There is a 10,000 page diary still sitting behind closed doors. I asked nixons ghost writer on the memoir who spent three years working on this, i asked him who is already everywhere in the senate and he said no. But one of the wonderful things about history as theres always more documents. Onhethink youre done, youre not. You th this very thing he raised here about mixing and his enemie nics i found it so interesting. D was he so blind to his own weakness. I think so and we have as an authority on this none other than Henry Kissinger who once ot famously said can you imagine what this man would have been if anyone had ever loved him . And i think a virtue of that in the book is a i dont think that you can fault a man that produces two daughters asn who a marvelous were spectacular human beings and how they endured we will never know. Unlike he did cheat on his wife but i think basically nor did he sleep with her. [laughter] and that is true. W she claimed he was always getting up in the middle of the night making notes, so they slept in separate bedrooms. But that marriage is interesting because by the end of watergate its terrible. The end when nixon decides to resign the early marriage is pretty good. The love letters are real and go on for years and he depends on her at least five or six times he says im getting out of politics. Ive had it, im done. She says no, you cant because she understood him to know thatc would destroy him. That would be the end. She said you cant you wont be able to live with yourself. I think that he wanted her tofi say that but she did and she brought them up and gave good political advice. But unfortunately, when he became president , hr haldeman, the chief of staff who was a good chief of staff in many ways but not in some critical funds and in one of the bad ways was he really drove a wedge between nixon and his own wife. He spent a lot of my time moh the president and she did. Thats true. She felt isolated, now thatolat, haldeman and she knew when she heard about the tapes she knew her husband well enough to know what they were going to sound like and she wanted to destroy them. Then the question became are we going to build a bonfire on the white house lawn and if so, who is going to strike the match . The president s not very faithful settler [inaudible]. That would have been an obstruction of justice and whoever did that would have gone to prison for 100 years. Not true because without the. Data for the opinion arrived when they could have burned the tapes, all hell would have broken loose. That was his advice, burn the tapes and then you can weather the storm. Gordon would have eaten the tapes to see how much pain he could endure. There is an uplifting moment that we do want to take some questions. That we havbut we have anothn minutes or so. There is an uplifting moment that i would like to close onwo because i do not want people to think that this book is just blood and tears. I appreciate you doing that. V there was a young man thats gone now on the National Security council staff, a marine who went on to become a diplomat serving in iraq, lebanon, saudi arabia, syria, lebanon and was the American Ambassador in bahrain during the 1990s and he sadly died in 2005 at the age of 65. But before he did come he left this history. He was on the staff, he wanders into the east room making this tragic last final address about and you destroy yourself and he noticed dixon is in a trance. The military agents within sort of tell him where he is and whats going to happen. Nixon gives the speech and its a gloomy august morning. Gl the helicopter is waiting on the lawn. Nixon leaves the white house and says farewell to gerald ford and walks to the chopper. Young David Michael then 32 steps out onto the balcony toe watch an extended fly away and theres two people standing nexp to him. If youve ever been to the white house is quite nice, just enough space for the three of us to be there. One is this young aid, one is the chef that is about 6foot to six and the other is the secretary of defense, James Schlessinger smoking his pipe. Nixon flashed his signal of departure and then he turned and entered the helicopter. They cranked up very slowly, lifted off and disappeared into the gloom of the morning. As it faded, the three men looked at each other, schlessinger takes the pipe out of his mouth, brings it on the railing and says its an interesting constitutional question, but i think im still the secretary of defense. So im going to go back to my office. He looks and says what are you going to do and he says im going to prepare lunch with thel president. Lu and the young staffer remembers later the king is dead lon kinge the king. He had it right this wasnt a matter of arguments over the constitutional principles. The president would wan want luh in about an hour and a half so the cook went off and prepared. I always thought about something important about the country. We may stumble that we dont fall. Ten mentioned a man that had to switch doctors. Theres a passage i would appreciate it and reading. Evan has many details showing even though the man was running whe world, he was very concerned about the people closest mike rose mary woods. And i was really startled tond find in his book that at one point he dictated an entire letter so as not to include a word he was afraid she wouldnt be able to spell so he changed it and starts over. He was very concerned about the small details for people and she wasnt a small person in his life. Shes the one who i just forgot 15 minutes she must have been somehow in the most gymnastic position. Omehow i i think thats a bad rap. I remember a picture that might have been a newsweek that showed the position she would have to hold with a total in her hand on the phone because she was answering phone calls and forgot for 16 minutes left of it. In any case, this is about the day when the prisoners of war came to the white house for the released prisoners and mixing wants to give them a party that captures a lot of his styling. The full thing is awfully good. Awfully waste of time for questions. It was the return of the 591 prisoners of war in vietnam and a ceremony at the stateso department greeted them one by one. The firs first pilot to be shotn and captured recently in the wind mixing grabbed the arms and shoulders and began feeling them. He looked good hes headed to the aviator that had spent overd eight years in captivity looking down dixon said in a somber ton i tried. The president and first lady wanted to give the man who had beemen who hadbeen in brutal car years the Biggest Party in the history of the white house. On the night of may 24, some 1200 guests dined on the south lawn of the great white tent that was larger than the executive mansion. Before the course one of them had written in prison and the families were invited to wander through the private quarters on the second floor. Pr that presented him with a plaque inscribed our leader andleader, comrade. Among the invited celebrities, he toasted them by saying i will write into the sunset with you anytime. Nixon introduced the songwriter who led them all in his famous song God Bless America. They shouted and cried the last words God Bless America my homee sweet home. When the party was still going strong, and mixing just past midnight and went upstairs to the sitting room. Si sitting before the fire listening to the sounds of laughter and music coming from below he felt this is one of the greatest nights of my life. Then he thought of watergate and was struck by an almost physicaa force. Picking up the phone he called in their rooms and asked them to join him. My father seemed t to drain as f the emotion of the evening had been too much for him. Nixon telephoned his friend, tv producer paul keyes who had organized the evenings performance. No girlie show as the first ladys instruction. With the creator they tried a few jokes and it was almost painful for us to see how sad his face looked despite the laughter in his voice, sheoo recorded. Nixon hung up and there was silence. The president asked his daughters do you think i should redesign. They burst out with a wave of exit one nations. Dont you dare, dont you even think about it. Trisha who wrote in her diary he wanted us to give him reasons. The next phone call he made us after midnight is to al haig, and he says and hes really exhausted or drunk or both on this tape he says wouldnt it be better for the country to just check out . No, seriously, nixon says, im not at my best. Ive got to be at my best and that means fighting the spamam battle and i cant fight the damn battle. The god damned thing has got to me. He got to the point if you cann get the god damn job done, you better put somebody in that it can. This is 15 months before he steps down. You keep hearing him deliver these lines to his daughters or getting his wife to assure him he must stay in the presidency and you wonder has he just pulled off a setup . Has he just gotten them to tell him what he must do because thats what he wanted to do. To i think that he psychologically does that repeatedly. I think its time for some questions. I would note a as they read whas going on in the papers today, there is an operative for mr. Trump who decided he wanted everyone to know that might be wavering in their dedication to him that they would be collecting the phone numbers of delegates in cleveland and publishing them so that people could find them in their rooms and punish them for their infidelity. Roger stone is his name i and hs first good political job working for Richard Nixon. Calm but not forgotten. Ne but b i think both of your books are valuable in terms of looking at the individual and the effect on him. Thank you. At the same time, i think about essentially all the victims of this elisa nixon and kissinger not just beginning with mixing but going back at least five years specifically in vietnam, and the program in the United States. That goes back to 56. I wondered if you could comment on that aspect. These were individuals just as much as Richard Nixon. I think that Richard Nixon along with j. Edgar hoover was the most powerful anticommunist in america for a very, very long time. And that, as terrible a system as it was, american anticommunism did destroy lives and a lot of people in this country were ruined by fbi programs that Richard Nixon was fully witnessing in the watergate hearings and by the unamerican Foreign Policy that really goes back to the the rise of the right immediately after world war ii and Richard Nixon coincides with the time. Also, with mixing he is also the one that goes to china. He leverages his 80s communist reputation to make him the one who cant go to china, which was a pretty bold diplomatic stroke using Henry Kissinger asked his front man, but it was nixons idea, not kissinger. Nixon is also the first president to go to moscow where he signed, negotiates and signs the first option trainee. Detente is a mixing creation. He loved to compound his enemies and outflank them off to the west. One thing thats hard to pin down about nixon is theres a famous expression not from nixon but his attorney general watch what we do, not what we say because his rhetoric was rightwing and temperate but his actions could be moderate and he liked to make deals and was always making deals with the democrats on capitol hill. Mo they passed a lot of legislation. Nixon created the Environmental Protection agency. Did he do that because he wanted to save the rivers headwaters . E not entirely there yet he did it because the senator from maine was cranking up to possibly the 1972 president ial candidate for the Democratic Party and he saw a way to outflank him by coming up with the epa. Nixon refused to invite ed muskie to the ceremony for the clean air and water acts. Thats why you have to watch what he says. The environment isnt an issue that is worth a damn. Im thinking also beyond the political aspects but youre talking about but just as the individuals that typify things like the soldiers that were pushed to the point basically for mass destruction beingas dropped on hundreds of thousands of people for example just for the tragedy that didnt start with nixon by any means. Thatbut thats part of the tray of life. I think if you just want to talk about domestic policy instead of foreignpolicy as the attorney general mentioned who went to prison for three years and eight months for his obstruction of justice also said this country will go so far to the right that you wontt recognize it and he said that i 1970. Depending on the shift every 30 years or so. And the country did go quite a ways to the right. But we had as the young staffers had a way, we stumbled but we dont fall. We have a selfcorrecting mechanism in the constitution. Just a couple quick questions. Regardinregarding that in nighto the Lincoln Memorial is there any indication it could have been alcohol fueled in any way, didnt kissinger report he was loaded. [laughter] something along those lines. He hadnt slept well for days and he had a few. Regarding the tapes, what was his initial thought that would be happening with the tapes,s, what use were they going to be put . Its interesting they didnt put the system in until february 1971. He took out the jobs, nixon ripped it out because he didnt want to be eavesdropped by the pentagon. The system had been installed by the pentagon and mixing with grade. Actually he was right, the pentagon did spying on them. They were going through the burn bags of the staff and the joint chiefs of staff, you cant make it up. Everybody was spying on everybody. But the winter of 1971, nixon became particularly upset about Henry Kissinger boasting about his foreignpolicy achievement. Kissinger was a skillful National Security adviser t adve big ideas came from nixon, that was his idea, not kissinger. So nixon wants to be able to read of him when they write their memoirs he wants there to be a record that shows what really happened. That is the impetus for putting in the tapes as kissinger later said he paid an awfully high price for that. Absolutely right to guard against the inevitable and continuing memoirs of henrymselg kissinger. And also to write a multimillion dollar white house memoir. It never occurred to him that these were going into the president ial library many people would be able to listen to him. It was like 17 billion. He fought for years and years to keep them out and he ultimately lost but it took forever. I used to be a student here back in the day when a lot of this was going on but i have a question not so much looking back looking to the present and future i think you made a comment that democracy maybe three or 400 years. That was a unique time. You had the riots in the cities and in a lot of ways himself he wasnt just in the personal background o but at times it waa reflection. The advancement from back thenim until now, thankfully we dont have riots in the cities, but i wonder and my question goes to the system. You see we have a selfcorrecting system dot what we have is a system where back in those days you have liberal republicans who sided against the president and to a great extent responsible for him stepping down. T if we had the organization then that we have now, what we have ended up with a constitutional crisis and an end to democracy what does that say about the future . [laughter] the polarization that gripped washington where you had a process in full swing and theres no question that he would have been impeached and criminally convicted as a private citizen for a obstructin of justice among other crimes has now spread thinks in hard to the political strategies of Richard Nixon specifically the southern strategy where he is peeling off the conservative southern democrats that voted for the racist former governor who was shot and nearly killed after winning primary afterng primary in the democratic race. So come if you put the conservative republicans together with the conservative democrat on the essentially a segregationist platform, then you can build a coalition that lasts. I think that coalition was l broken the 2008 election and we will see if anybody can reform it in the 2016 election. Qn [inaudible] unusually loud enough and donyoudont need one of these. The question is process. You both listened to a lot of the nixon tapes after whom theyve been transcribed and indexed and things like that. An are they Available Online on the internet now, how did you go about it, thats the question. You can go online and looked to thlook tothe professor at te. As one person thats listened to the tapes and put a lot of them online and its fun to roam his site. Amazingly it was because they were so hard to decipher. I did my listening with a headset so that i could actually hear them on the tapes out there at the president ial library. The blood of the best tapes were from nixons hideaway in the executive Office Building and they were rumbling past each other and the transcripts varied depending on whos doing them. Some people use the word ambassador and its did he say he ambassador or bastard. So the difficulty is you have to spend a lot of time on them to understand them. I think there is a talk of getting been transcribed. Nk thee theres other sources thee library itself is everything Available Online. There is also a remarkable feat that has been accomplished by the state department under law since the civil war the state Department Published a series with the United States and theyve done an astonishing job of trans leading to the Foreign Policy that has never previousl been transcribed and they are stunning and derogatory and terrifying. We have time for one more question i think. S. Those of you mentioned whenou the president talked to the general and he said isnt this time to give it up was he meaning to resign or did he have something darker in my . This was the summer of 1974 nixon brings u up the whole imae of the military tradition where an officer leaves a pistol on a drawer and mixing apparently