I think where we are in his head is with the tapes. Thats as close as we want to come. The country was obsessed with vietnam. Lynn don johnson had abday kated as the president of the United States. We had had chicago, riots in the streets at the democratic convention. So the whole country was in upheaval of a kind that we had never seen. Antiwar movement such that we had never seen in this country. So thats the context. Yeah, but nixon was a smart politician. Well, now im going to go to this. What you hear on the tapes and if you read dougs book, if you read this book that these two jentle men, and i have not read the whole doorstoper, but im giving it a pretty good look. And what you see in the nonwater gate tapes, and doug and i were just talking about it, is the same darkness of nixons mind. Its about nixon, the dog that doesnt bark is what would be right for the American People. You dont hear that. What you do hear is what you just referred to. Nixons fine intelligence. You dont hear that in the watergate. You hear only the darkness. But, here, you see the intelligence, what you just cited about the strategy, the chinese, the russians, you know, a student of history, which he was. A great political analyst, which he was. But then the darkness protrudes and we lose another 27,000. Largely because of nixons vanity, to some extent. But you could have gone eerts way. Lets go back to 1968, 69. Youre absolutely right. The country expressed itself in an antiwar mood. Here, in washington, there was a time when the secretary of defense said that he is going to do something with his troops to protect the country. And not to tell the white house about it. In other words, we were in a particularly difficult moment. Nixon could have been a hero. You could have gone the other way. He could have said what doug was saying. That this is not my war. This is what the democrats did. Let me move on from here. Absolutely. And everybody would have cheered. But he couldnt do that. Look what we also know now from another set of tachs. It was the subject of another book. A private citizen is not to there is a big law, title 18, section whatever that a citizen is not to interfere with the conduct of the United States in Foreign Relations sabotages the negotiations. So its all a continuum. And then nixon gets to the white house, establishes and, again, on the tapes, he says there are things that i have done that are illegal. The same group of people who eventually break into the watergate. You have a criminal presidency. This is what bob was talking about in that review. Weve had president s who have abused power, but this is different. A criminal president of the United States from the beginning to the end. So the term watergate begins in those first days and goes to what we see up here. And there is one great triumph. And we need to say it. There is the opening to china. And there, again, we see nixons bill yans and how it could have been different. But what i see as a war that totally obsessed this politician. How you end the war, how you continue the war, the bombing. All of this in his mind was at a level of obsession. He didnt really learn the right lessons from johnsons failures. And he thought he was the smaller guy in the room. In our tapes, hes constantly saying nixon. Guts and courage. He figures i can do it all. Even if i dont win in vietnam, ill be able to get china and become this great world leader. Hes really a diabolical pragmatist. Hes doing whats good for Richard Nixon. He thinks you have a great knowledge of churchhill and a great knowledge of history. One of the reasons he doesnt burn these tapes is why would you burn the work of a great man. It was like evil on evil, in some ways. When kissenger works with jermd ford, he does much better. When you read the two of them together, theyre constantly back stabbing everybody and themselves. And to the point where nixon doesnt believe his own state department. The state department is filled with liberals. And nixon goes on antisemitic rants. Not once does kissen jer say mr. President , maybe youre not quite right about the position. I covered him, it seems forever. He comes through in these tapes in the most obama see kwee yous ways. You know, i go wac to the war. To me, thats the heart and soul, the beginning and the end of the presidency, although it began with watergate, i aappreciable dwrat that. He wanted so desperately to beat the North Vietnamese. He unlieshed a ferocious air campaign. We have one quote right now which i would like to play if you dont mind. If the tech person could play that now. Its an 18. 5 minute gap. Its only a. Everybody would approve of it and then he goes onto say well, i dont know about that. You get an odd sense that he was all there, of course. But not necessarily on all issues. He was bombing North Vietnam because of the vietnam war. And Richard Nixon. This is where this book is so terrific. It always comes back to nixon and how he will be viewed. Well, this is the points i was getting at. How, in fact, was he aware that he was playing a game . Was diplomacy a great game . A sport there are just a few moments, really, its the days before he goes to china in 1972 where he lets his guard down for a minute. Nixon read history. He said were like the british in the 19th century. The british always played the weaker against the stronger. And thats what were doing here. And thats why im going to china. But how, in fact, did that work . What was in his mind at the time . The chinese are not exactly stupid people. The russians maintain a rigorous kind of diplomacy. They, too, are not a stupid people. Couldnt they see through nixon . Nixon will backpack stan in the pakistanindo war. So by backing pakistan and dissing india. And he says the ugliest things on the tape about the people of india. But hes telling the chinese, we could be your friends, too. I could beat you up or be friends. In a way, he learned to respect the chinese partially because of how nice they were of him when he went in 72. H continues to dispiez the soviet union. You cant find him saying anything negative about ma orksz. Could you say the chinese took him to the cleaner sns what was it that they did . When they greeted him at the very beginning, he said time and time again to all of his people, weve got to be he used these words weve got to be exquisitely careful when we deal with the chinese. Theyre an exquisitely gifted people. Nixon bought into this. He wasnt all that brilliant. At a certain point, the chinese could see through him and the russians could see through him, as well. And i mentioned india and pakistan. India is our great ally, the great democracy. And he threw india under the bus, so that showed a lack of diplomatic. Nixon saw himself as a master strategist. Brilliant is the word, actually. It is a brilliant profile of degall that he wrote. But youve got to come back to basic, moral question of who died. You started the discussion there. You state it to everybody in the room. And you say but nonetheless, were going to use our troops and a couple hundred thousand yellow people, which is also in the tapes. And we are going to sacrifice them for a grand strategy. That goes to the question of what was in his mind. Which you see over and over on the fames, nixon was surprised at how quickly the ice was thawing. Theyll had the accelerator and the break. And, of course, nixon had china in mind as a kind of tool, a weapon, that he would use against the russians. And youre absolutely right. In his mind, china was an instrument. Russia was the essential enemy. And that was the dwie you had to deal with. For nixon to be the First American president to visit on a summer level, its a big deal. Nixons impetus was partly that he was going to have the greatest mem wors of any president of the United States. And he would be able to draw, verbatim, from these meetings in which we would see this brilliance. It did ultimately end up in his resignation. And he began to think about resignation way before he actually acted on resignation. He worry ied. The moscow summit which was in may of 1972. He had just been in china in february of 1972. He was a heck of a pr guy for himself. They were attacking ferociously in north veet that. And the question was are we going to have the summit . Will the russians pull out of the summit . Can we continue to bomb in vietnam and have our summit at the same time. If we cant, he was saying it may very well be that were going to lose the election. That, i think, was never in the cards. Never the less, that was in his mind. Id like us to play another tape now of the way nixon thought about veet. Thaukt about the moscow summit. Thought about the resignation, if it didnt all work well. So dear mr. Technician, could you run that second tape. Can i ask luke and doug about this . Ive looked at this quite a few times and am quite mystified as to this playing with ether that nixon is doing here. Theres about as much chance that he is going to abdicate the presiden presidency. But this is the point about nixon that is so fascinating. I think its one of the reasons that rooms fill up when people want to talk about nixon. Why there is so many books coming out now about nixon. You would think 40 years ago, the guy left. He was a disdwras. A humiliation of the country. The heck with him, no. Youre always drawn to a negative character. What im trying to get at here, this last sequence that we ran has a lot of pure nixon. Youre playing this against that. And i. s all connected to the next policy. Ill take this democrat from texas and turn him into a republican. And you have the sense of a man operating on many Different Levels with himself manipulating the game of politics and diplomacy. I want to go out and ask what hes really saying here. What is this thing about abdicating. It seems kind of silly. Was he really serious about resigning . Its kind of like president obama resigning over health care. In hindsight, we say he couldnt have been serious. I think this is partly why were still fascinating by nixon 40 years later. We have the top third and the bottom quarter and we put president s in boxes sometimes. I think which box do you put Richard Nixon in. Who else is in that bloxz . Nobody. You have to remember he rides the national consciousness. But im wondering if he deserved all of that striding and emulation and admiration. Its not just emulation. If you go back to looking at herb blocks cartoons of nixon of the dark shadows. This is a man about whom the country was passionately divided. It was passionately divided when he made the checkered speech during the eisenhower years. It was passionately divided when he lost the presidency to kennedy. He came back and won the presidency. It was passionately divided over the war. And then over water gate. No one in history has caused this kind of visceral reaction. And thats part of the fascination. I was going to say, i get asked a lot of times, what makes a human being listen to Richard Nixon for ten years now. We have it especially at your age. There are a lot of other things to do. We have a baby now and probably has heard nixons voice and thinks hes a grandfather or something. But i think, though, there are a lot of questions i dont have the answers to, even after ten years. None of us. And i think is Richard Nixon really this interesting to us 40 years later . Or is it just because hes the only one who left us all of these recordings. Now, he did say that 1972 is the year that a great book ought to be written about 1972. And you guys have laid out the spade work. Water gate was a wac waterer story but they just kept building and building and building. Nixon survived, won the lan slide and he thought that water gate was a back burner story and, of course, he didnt. He did a lot of other things. His ego was high. I called him a diabolical pragmatist. And then add paranoia to that. He did the southern alignment. Hes paranoid about mcgovern in 72. He was breaking in to larry obrian in 72. Hes par noied. His sense of paranoia and politics is not good. Hes par noied about the press. Lets look at the people you just talked about. You know, at first, we thought we wrote in october of 72, that the water gate breakin was part of a Massive Campaign of political espionage and sabotage to undermine the democrats. The candidates was sabotaged. Tried to undercut ted kennedy as a figure of any kind of respect through smearing and investigations and one thing and another. And then all of these dirty tricks out on the campaign trail. And then you find out its after the water gate hearings. Not only was it a campaign to undermine the very basis of doe mock ra sill, which are free elections. But, from the beginning, it was to undermine the Antiwar Movement through illegal means. To undermine reporting. To undermine the democrats and his political entities through the use of the ir which we also hear on the tapes. And then the break in at watergate and then to undermine the very system of justice through the cover up. The cover up is worse than the crime . Not a chance. The crime is on going. And then, the last war, these five wars of water gate. And we wrote, bob and i wrote on the 40 thd anniversary of the breakin, a piece for the post. And afterwards, to a new addition of all of the president s men. Its about how what we know now is so much worse. Back to your diabolical notion here. Its astonishing what we know. Can i just add one quick thing . I think, also, he thought it was blood sport. And you slaughtered your enemy. Thats what life in the arena was like. You thought the kennedys manipulated himts in 1964. That election he should have won. But they outfoxed him. And Jay Edgar Hoover was doing all sorts of nefarious things. And, yet, was this respected figure in washington. So nixon thought that was kind of part in parcel about the big boys playing and im going to be a big boy, too. And those guys didnt go and take on the press of the United States and try to destroy them. I write about president s for a living. The good ones know how to work with the press, rose velt, f. D. R. , ronald reagan. Nixons war in the press with agnew was insane for somebody who wants to stay in there. But he was going to war with them. He was going to be crumbled bec the pace. This might sound surprising. One of the things you hear over and over is it goes back to his case. The liberals, jews, out to get me because of the case. Nixon, indeed, was pill oried for his whole career for being a smear agent and terrible liar, and manufacturing evidence. Because of the hist case. Nixon knew he was right about this. And its very interesting, you see how hes animated by that. And we didnt know that. Of course, we now have whats called the winona transcript of the soviets. In which its pretty definitive. Thats an interesting point, carl. I would like to go back to 1972 for a minute. Nixon was very high in what he had accomplished in 72. Because right toward the end of the year, he had, as doug was saying, this stunning political victory. But right after the stunning political victory, he had to go ahead and launch a murderous Bombing Campaign against North Vietnam, in order to take a negotiation this is my point again about the total lack of ethics here he had to take you bomb North Vietnam in order to get an agreement, which he did get, and was signed on january 23rd of the following year in 73. In 1971, in april, Richard Nixon told Henry Kissinger who was negotiating with the North Vietnamese in paris, he said, look, up to this point, the key part of the negotiation was that we would pull out when we had a ceasefire, and the North Vietnamese pull out. But i have a feeling thats not working fairly well. So we have to try something different. And what they did was to lay out before the North Vietnamese in paris the following idea. Well have a ceasefire, and we, the americans, will pull out. And he never added the next sentence. That the North Vietnamese had to pull out. So the North Vietnamese, very smart, pocketed that. And they wanted in a way, they could absorb the bombing. But they wanted to destroy this guy, in the way they destroyed Lyndon Johnson. Whats fascinating to me, time and time again, is an underestimation on the part of the brilliant Richard Nixon and the brilliant Henry Kissinger, about something as fundamental as vietnamese nationalism, which propelled this country to take on the United States of america, and to beat it. The United States has lost in its entire glorious history one war, and that was the war in vietnam. And what im just advancing as a thought here, and really leaning on you guys for the expertise, but is it entirely possible that were giving too much credit to nixon and to kissinger, for what it is that they did in Foreign Policy . Who gets the credit . Everybody is giving credit. I havent heard a lot of credit up here. But i think youre totally wrong. Totally wrong. Richard nixon is praised for his Foreign Policy. Here, i think you might have succumbed to too much revisionism. Too much what . Too much revisionism. I dont even know how to spell the word. I think you got that entirely wrong. I think that there is a lot made about the opening to china. But the idea of Richard Nixon being a Foreign Policy, i think has been i dont know where youve been the last 40 years. I mean, thats been the book line, thats been the narrative. There have been many, many authors say it. How many people here thought Richard Nixon was a Foreign Policy genius . Thats why theyre here. Look, Henry Kissinger wrote a lot of books and been professing notes that he wrote. And hes working very hard to argue that i was the genius. He won a Nobel Peace Prize for vietnam. And hes been working, after he left 40 years ago, moved back to the east, to new jersey, and spent time in new york, and not just the prost interviews, but trying to write books to get back in the game to the point that bill clinton started saying, well, im going to talk to nixon about russia. Exactly. So there were people who were starting he was starting a rehabilitation when he died. And when he died, all the president s came to the grave. And he was able to rehabilitate himself to a degree. Yes, he did. In the last years of his life. I also want to point out, because we have a wonderful tape which i would like you to listen to about the great mind of Foreign Affairs and domestic policy. And ill give you a book on this one day, carl. This is Richard Nixon talking to haldeman about girls cursing. And id like to play that tape now. [ inaudible ]. Never tape yourself. Yeah. And maybe we didnt make clear, but i think all of you know that nixon had a voice activated, that yes, fdr did a little taping, and kennedy controlled the exxon meetings and cuban missile crisis, and johnson did some taping. Nixon started bugging everything. There were microphones picking up all these materials. You get these really awkward, almost crazy moments that you have to scratch your head about. Theres something oddly and i dont want to be ever quoted on saying, but at times, nixon you dont want to be quoted . Saying it as a joke. I guess the word was, aware, talking about cursing and all this. Pat and Richard Nixon could be as oldfashioned square kind of thinking, and youre getting that there. I dont think he was putting them on. Really . Girls do swear. And it shows just the disconnect in a way that he had. But it was oldfashioned. Were going to have some questions from you all, if you wish to ask questions. And i note theres a microphone here. And theres one over here. If you want to ask a question, please come to the microphone and identify yourself. And if you decide that this is an opportunity for a speech, ill probably cut you off. But identify yourself, and here are the two microphones. If you would like to speak, please. Carl, vigil. Com. I dont make a speech. Ill try to keep it on point. The kennedy assassination aspect of the watergate tapes, when Richard Nixon sent h. R. Haldeman over to the cia to meet Richard Helms and try to pressure the cia into getting the fbi to shut down its investigation of watergate, he said, tell helms if they dont shut down their investigation, it will blow the whole bay of pigs thing. Haldeman wrote that he learned whenever Richard Nixon said the bay of pigs thing, he meant the kennedy assassination. And there were named highlevel people as involved. Nixon on the watergate tape says, hunt, you pull that scab, theres a lot of things. He knows too much. We know hunt was involved. So what are you trying to ask . Im trying to ask, weve got trivia of the nixon tapes, but in the index of the book theres no reference to the bay of pigs. That was probably the most important thing nixon ever said in those tapes was telling the cia the whole bay of pigs thing will be blown if they dont shut down watergate. My question, is it time that we released all the cia records concerning the kennedy assassination . And mr. Bernstein, you wrote in the last days what george h. W. Bushs reaction was when he heard that of the transcripts would be released. I wonder if you could recount that quotation, please. I dont remember. I wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times about remind me. Apparently pointed to his laundering money through mexico, to the burglars. Sir, sir, please. Thats not what it was about. Okay. You guys want to pick up the point about the bay of pigs . You want to start . Go for it. All ill say is, nixon was i read the question a couple different ways. Nisksson was often interested to ask his people, could we release some prior records from president s kennedy and johnson that he thought would look embarrassing to him. And he wanted the bay of pigs records themselves out. It was not a high moment for kennedy Foreign Policy. So i think nixon does talk, does scheme at times to release records out about democrats, and predecessors that he thought would make them look worse and him look better. Let me add one thing about the kennedy assassination. I had the privilege of getting to interview gerald ford. He became president 40 years ago. And president ford, ill always remember, he called me over, i did my interview and he said, come here. I went over, and he said, you see this stack . He had a huge stack of papers. I said yes. He said, you see this stack. It was this small. I said yeah. He said the little one is about my presidency, the letters on the kennedy assassination and warren commission. That many people were writing him. People are obsessed with kennedy assassination. It goes on, and people will read anything. What ive seen of the tapes of the bay of pigs, it means the bay of pigs. Like luke said, embarrassing kennedy on the context, actually, i think we know fairly definitively that it was, the whole idea, and there are other discussions on the tape about it, is that part of the that was the essential illegal act in the coverup. The purpose of it was to say that, oh, we did this breakin. This breakin occurred because, or its related to Real National security concerns that have to do with the bay of pigs and go all the way back. And that now, nixon tried to initiate a coverup and keep the fbi from investigating. At the same time, you can certainly make an argument, we dont know definitively what happened in the kennedy assassination. And are there possibilities that castro was somehow involved . We dont know. But to use this as the meat of putting something together is it aint there. Okay. Thank you. Please, your question . Bruce guthrie. Quickie point. We did lose another war, the invasion of russia, after world war i. But ignoring that, did the tape, gerald ford as you mentioned replaced Richard Nixon. Did the tapes talk at all about how much he brought gerald ford in on discussions of vietnam and how he felt about how things worked out once he left, and ford presided over the demise . Thank you. Unfortunately, the taping system did not run for nixons entire presidency. It ran until we saw at the outset of the program, butterfield revealing the existence. The taping was turned off in july of 73, even before ford became Vice President. As minority leader of the house of representatives, though, he was called over for both republican events and bipartisan congressional leaders, and they received a very basic briefing from time to time on vietnam. Not the details like kissinger discussed. Fortunately, not everything is dependent upon the tapes. Theres an awful lot of other material around. Enormous amount. As far as the way in which nixon dealt with ford, it was in a nice way. But he did not bring him in to serious discussions about the war. As far as nixon was concerned, he was already out of office. The vietnam war ended more or less january 23rd, 1973. He then left office in 74. The war went on until april 30, 1975. But Richard Nixon at that time, he was out of it. He was trying to recuperate at that point. Gerald ford had the problem of being the president at the time that the war was finally lost. Richard nixon lost that opportunity. You know, nixon once said one quick line, Richard Nixon once said about gerald ford, he played football one too many times without his helmet. Not that smart a guy. Remember how he got to be Vice President , and that was agnews resignation. And there was a lot of talk, knowledgeable talk at the time, and some of nixons people will tell you it is the case, that ford, he viewed ford as impeachment insurance. That they will never impeach me if gerald ford, and the contempt that youre talking about, is part of that. And, of course, it didnt work. And not only that, i mean, i think where shelby was reading this thing about the son of a part, that what we see in gerald ford is one of the most courageous acts by a modern president , to pardon Richard Nixon. Because he knew that but he knew that he could lose the presidency if he didnt. Its amazing. Question, please . My name is louisa holden. Im quinn holdens mother of environmental planning. And i want to thank you for your discussion tonight. And what this does for me is it really brings a question of who can we trust to light. And here we are 40 days, 40 years later. And i was 16 when nixon got impeached. So i remember it. And im thinking to myself, and im going to personize this a little, my son is kidnapped from massachusetts to new york on june 6th, 2003. And internationally kidnapped to great britain. And im here in washington because this has been a 12year coverup. I reached out to everybody in the press. Cbs, nbc, the Washington Post, and im wondering, 40 years later, from nixons impeachment, are we better off, and is the press asking the right questions . And why is it that george w. Bush and president obama, who run the department of justice, and have totally obstructed justice from the felonies, havent been impeached or held accountable or had to report their misconduct, intentional . I think your question has been posed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Actually, hasnt your case been written about . I believe it has, hasnt it . No, actually, theres only been one article on the boston globe yeah. I just wanted to make sure what i was thinking of. I dont want it to get off track too far. Shes raising a very good question about the press. And what did the press do back then. What is it doing now. Exactly. That sort of thing. I think thats a very legitimate question. What did we learn from back then. And are we better off or worse off . Youre a big reporter. I mean, you actually did pretty well 40 years ago. I think that there is a lot of great reporting going on in this country. I think, lets look at what the boston globe did on pedophile priests, and the secrecy of the vatican. The notion that there isnt great reporting, look at todays new york times, todays Washington Post, wall street journal. On the web, great independent reporting. What we lack are the strengths of journalistic institutions that are respected by consensus for giving readers and viewers what Good Journalism is, which is the best obtainable version of the truth. And i think that the view of the press reflects the same cultural and ideological divisions in the country. But to me, the really big difference between the time of watergate and now is people who are looking for information, rather than looking for the best obtainable version of the truth. More as, again, that happened eventually at the time of watergate. You cant quantify this, but i think the huge numbers of people in this country are looking for reinforcement and ammunition for their own ideological beliefs. And political beliefs. Right, left, center. But theyre not looking for good reporting. Theyre not open to good reporting. So i like to turn this question around a bit. I think weve got a cultural problem, not a repertoirial problem. Yes, please . Hi. Im from santa barbara, california. The question i have is, a similar question. Today what you see is a lot of what theyre calling the war on the press. The guardian, president obama is prosecuted twice as many whistleblowers as any president prior to him. Im going to ask you for a question, please. The question is, does shock of watergate and all that spying give context to the nsa and the government having spied on everyone in the room here already . Do you feel if watergate happened today, it would have the same impact and shock to the American People . Thank you very much. Thats an interesting question. Look, watergate and nixon stands for the great cynicism of the American People about government. A great new mistrust, that governments corrupt. Kennedy did not leave that feeling, one now can go back and look at the things, but at the time eisenhower didnt leave that taint in a sense the way that nixon did. I think everything after watergate becomes a problem. And theres one way to look at the breakin here at watergate. Its almost quaint when youre teaching the cold war history, the thirdrate burglars and all this kind of stuff, compared to look how widespread spying is now. Weve got the Obama Administration spying on merkel and all this. Yet the nixon tapes show a person operating without character and moral. Ronald reagan and gerald ford, certainly and barack obama, jimmy carter had a moral fiber to them. Morality of some kind. You cant just be real politic, i dont care, bomb them, get rid of them, spy on anybody, break anything, because president s have to be accountable to the law. Nobodys yet found barack obama and the nsa doing anything wrong in the snowden incident. Its government as usual. He doesnt have his fingerprints on things the way nixon did. Thank you, doug. Thank you very much. Final question. Thank you. Its a good setup about Good Journalism. Mr. Bernstein, you and bob woodward did Good Journalism. The deep throat, the person we now know, mark phelps, incredible source. Can you enlighten us about that . And tell us how incredibly helpful was he in expediting your reporting . Deep throat, mark phelps, the Deputy Director of the fbi, with whom bob met maybe ten times, a dozen at the most, during our watergate reporting, theres too much mythology. Were probably partly to blame for it. What the great thing that phelps did is more than more often than not, he confirmed information that we had obtained elsewhere. If you read the book, look at the movie all the president s men you see every night were going out and knocking on doors, and people who worked for Richard Nixon are saying, theres a secret fund. It paid for this. It did terrible things. And then deep throat would confirm, yes. And maybe add a little more to it. But the great thing that he did was, for us, is gave us a sense that we were right. You know, we had what we called the twosource rule. Then it came to be a three source rule. We had these things nailed down. And yes, deep throat was helpful in terms of context on a few occasions. But no, this was really lets look also for a minute and give the Washington Post the institution of the Washington Post what it deserves here. Forget about woodward and me. That here we have a publisher, catherine graham, and an editor, ben brown, and this goes to some of the differences in the press today. Because i dont think we have the leadership in the press about commitment to the best obtainable versions of the truth, as many levels as we had then. But think about this. That when we discovered this secret fund, as it were, that was the beginning of the unraveling, a few days later a subpoena server came to the Washington Post. Called me up, i got a call from the guard at the desk saying theres a guy down there for a subpoena with me and woodward and our notes. I said, dont let the guy up. And i called ben bradley, and ben said, dont let the guy up. Let me do something. Hold off a minute. And he called me back in a few minutes and said, bernstein, you get the hell out of the building. Thats the first thing. And i just called catherine graham, and she says, those are her notes, theyre not your notes. And if anybodys going to go to jail, its going to be her. That was fantastic. Fantastic story. [ applause ] fantastic story. I think we are out of time now. But i want to thank all our three marvelous panelists and all of you for showing up. I wanted to make the following point. It kind of grows out of what doug just said a moment ago. I learned in 1974, i believe, that my phone was tapped by Richard Nixon. I knew that on two occasions my office at the state department, cbs, had an office at the state department, as did most of the reporters covering the department. That that office had twice been broken into. Once i actually saw people running away, because they had seen me approaching. Four or five times our income tax was audited. Not a penny found out of line, but it was a terrible problem each time. There were a lot of things and i ended up on nixons enemies list. And every time that one of these other issues came into play, my two daughters would ask me whether they could respect president nixon. Because he was president of the United States. And i said something like, you dont have to respect nixon, but you ought to respect the office of the presidency of the United States. Because with all of the madness that he represented, there was still a system in play that could get him out of office, that could squeeze him out of office, that could lead to his voluntary resignation. Because his own people were saying to him, you dont have the votes. And at the end of the day, no matter how bad nixon was, the system itself could not be perverted even by a guy like Richard Nixon. So i take my hat off to the guy for a couple of things that he did, but not for too many things. And i dont want to go overboard on praising this man, but he was our president , and from that point of view, what the heck. Thank you all so very much for coming. Thanks very much. [ applause ] about 50 years ago on august 10, 1964, president Lyndon Johnson signed the gulf of tonkin resolution which in lieu of a declaration of war gave him broad powers to wage war in southeast asia. That resolution was passed by congress in response to an august 2 attack and an alleged august 4 incident involving bme torpedo boats vietnamese torpedo boats. We visited the National Archive at George Washington university to learn more. Im tom blanton, the director of the National Security archive. We are on the top floor of the main library at George Washington university which is where we live. We are in a room full of boxes of declassified documents. Its really an artifact because most of the documents we get today are digital. Born digital and made digital. People that use our collections