Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tom Brokaw On His Career 20141122

On how the news media has changed in the 21st century. Nbc news correspondent luke russert conducts the interview which took place at the newseum in washington, d. C. It is about an hour and 10 minutes. [applause] thank you to all of you for coming out and supporting this wonderful institution. It is my Favorite Museum in washington. I might be biased because my father helped found it. When you walk in and you see the First Amendment plastered to the wall that can be seen from the capital. It is so very important that we come here to celebrate the role of the press and the Fourth Estate. I think the Fourth Estate is less popular than hmos and Oil Companies in some polls. I promise the new iteration will try to do better on that. Lets talk to a living legend, as i like to say, tom brokaw, who if you ever mention tom brokaw, some people say, i woke up with tom brokaw every morning on the today show. Or i ate dinner with him every night. It was tom brokaw at the dinner table every night along with my mom and dad. It was great to get an instant History Lesson any time. We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. I did some research. You were the only network news anchor there, the only broadcast the west germans did not have time. Amazing back story about how all that happen. But you took it upon yourself to go over there while there were midterm elections going on, because the believe this could be the bigger story. You went to a press conference where the propaganda minister from east germany said these things. I want to play that right now. Can we do that . And we will go into the questions. [video clip] do i understand you correctly . Citizens from the gdr can leave through any checkpoint that they choose for personal reasons . They no longer have to go through a third country . To leave gdr by transit through another country. It is possible for them to go through the wall . It is possible for them to go through the border. To travel. Yes, of course. Live from the berlin wall on this most distorted night in this walls history. What you see is a celebration now for the First Time Since the wall was erected in 1951, people will be able to move through freely. They have been spraying water cannon on some of the celebrants. What happened earlier tonight, there were even more people. The west German Police have suggested they moved back, saying the situation has promulgated enough. It does not seem to make any difference. The people are here to celebrate freedom for the east germans, freedom to travel. That was an amazing moment. I remember two things. It was the first time ive ever been interviewed by someone who i first saw on the sonogram. [laughter] there we go. Tim came to me and said, i am going to have a son. And here is the proof of that. It was a thrilling moment for everybody. Im so proud of how luke has continued the legacy of his dad. And with his mother maureen he has become a cherished, not only surrogate nephew, but also a great journalist. So, im thrilled to be on the stage with him. I know that tim is looking down and says, go get em. Indeed. Thank you. [applause] couple of things about that at the beginning shabosky did not know to what he was talking about. He had been given this note at the end of a News Conference. And the politburo had a lot of restrictive on how people could go back and forth. He read it, not quite knowing what he was saying. And of course, that was broadcast across east germany. Some people did go to all the exit barriers and start pushing back. There was a lot of confusion. As we went on the air, we had not yet gotten the video of people who are going through one of the other exits. We needed to show that immediately. The water cannon did not work very well. The guards on the other side to not know what to do. At one point, they did drive everybody off except one man, who stood with his back to the water cannon, arms outstretched, big grin. I said, go get him. Bring him back. He is the face of the new, liberated east germany. My producer came back and said, not what we think. He said, hes a drunk. He has been living in the forest and he has not had a shower in two weeks. He is very grateful for what is going on. But that was the beginning of the fall of the wall. And it was the symbolic end of communism. As the controlling factor in the satellite states, and the soviet union was coming unraveled. Im a child of the cold war. I grew up thinking about it, about what kind of a world we are going to have to when that happened, i have two reactions. One is it was a liberation the likes of which we had never seen before at a lot of people do not expect it to happen until the 21st century. I dont think that the west then reacted in a way that they might have. I have just gone back from berlin. I was there with dr. Kissinger and jim baker at the american academy. We talked about this. It was not the kind of effort that should have been made to say, how else can we use nato . Our western alliance and it remains that. It had kind of come unraveled around the edges. It was an incredibly important and potent force in facing the east and dealing with issues together. Not always perfectly, but it was the alliance. Now it has a lot of parts and they are often not greater than the sum of their parts, which they need to be. The other part of what we are watching there tonight was so thrilling and hard to explain about how germanic people who had such a terrible 20th century, mostly selfinduced wounds, then were divided. You had people and the west with cousins in the east. People in the west had democracy, consumer goods, and hope. When the wall came down, their cousins and the other fellow germans came through and in acid washed jeans, as if theyd come from the moon to venus. They could not believe what they were seeing. One of the most dramatic events in a 24hour period. There was a big debate about whether germany should be reunited politically. Much later, i was presiding at a conference at atlanta. We had gorbachev, president bush 41 and helmut kohl. Kohl got emotional and he turned to gorbachev and he said, you did not send the tanks. That gave us a chance to be a whole country. And he turned to president bush and he said, and you stood for unification and others, including Margaret Thatcher said, we have to keep them divided. It was one of those moments in history when you saw three men with courage and vision come together and they were so personal and their interaction. And it kind of gave me hope. We do not see a lot of that anymore. One amazing thing in that newscast, aside from you being the only broadcast anchor there, huge win for nbc news. Is i was reading a breakdown by a. P. He goes you asked for 15 seconds at the end of the newscaster give an essay. Why was that important for you to do . How did you come up with that in the commercial break . First of all, there were such chaos. I cannot hear myself. By the way, i was very welldressed in part because i gone over there with one of my raggedy outdoor jackets. This is the on tape for a long time. One of my colleagues have just bought a smashing topcoat in london. Im there in the blue topcoat. Then i just said at the control room im going to have to ad lib this. Youll know when im going to call for video. Then we get a special, i thought we have to put this in context. And the context for me was i was thought that 1968 would be the defining year of my career. 1968, Lyndon Johnson stepped aside. 16,000 people were lost in vietnam. Bobby and Gene Mccarthy were running against each other. Dr. King was assassinated, Bobby Kennedy was murdered. We had the chicago riots. Miami convention nominated richard nixon. George wallace was running. We had a heated election. People forget that at the end of that year a man stepped on the moon. So that was a very rich year. Then i traced that, and i began to talk about what we had been witnessing in 1989, which was the rearrangement of the world, which included china. I was also in chatham and square and tianenman square. I interviewed gorbachev and persuaded him i was the only american journalist he should talk to. [laughter] what i did was say we have to put this into context so that people can understand the warp speed at which the world is changing. In our present day, the main adversaries the u. S. Faces is islamic fundamentalists. It has changed how we cover the story because right now a lot of news organizations cannot get into syria or parts of iraq. So, the story has changed. It is not as clearcut as it used to be. Not the United States versus the soviet union and satellite proxy wars. You have all of these tribal wars playing out in the middle east. What is important for Media Consumers to digest from a, how we are trying to do our best in terms of getting the story out . What does it mean for future generations that the prolonged conflict and that part of the world, in a guerrilla style, through newer technologies, will be my generations defining global struggle . You have touched on the critical issue of where we go forward from here. Our National Security considerations. We are still locked in, even those of us who are journalist who should know better, to the idea of nationstate confrontations. That it will be between the east and west, between russia and the United States. I was in berlin with kissinger and baker. Kissinger said, when the wall came down, when communism ended, we could not have anticipated what would happen in the satellite states. We could have anticipated even the rise of putin. What we have in the middle east is not just asymmetrical warfare, in which we have these highly trained, extraordinarily motivated radical Islamic Forces that are moving easily, too easily, across that part of the world. They all came out of artificial states, the states that were designed after world war i. The tribal cultures is faithbased, and it goes deep. And it has been there for a long time. When you are there with them, and not just with the militia but with the people in the streets of very cities, it is the first thing that they refer to. And the one place they close up on. You could be talking to a shia and a sunni, and they will have extraordinarily stark differences. But then youre talk to them about the west coming in, and they close up. And they say, you cannot tell us how to live. We have not yet in my judgment dealt with it. We do not get it because we have such a different impression in the western culture about how life should be lived. You cannot overstate the faith based motivation which they have. And it is ancient and narrow, and we have a hard time understanding it, but it is a hugely motivational force and it leads to the kind of radical, unspeakable behavior that we have been witnessing of beheadings. And they think they are doing it in the name of their faith. There is nowhere in the koran that says that you have to behead innocent people. I think the hard problem for us is that we do not have that part of the world, we do not understand it as well as we need to, and we are losing what allies we had to one of the things i said recently is how do we deal with isil . I would like to take a lot of those idle rich young men that i see when i go to saudi arabia, put them in uniform and make them special forces. The king is saying its up to the west now. Its up to everybody. This is a deeply dangerous situation. Deeply dangerous situation. And moving into the political syria, its going to define president obamas presidency in many ways. Part of the success of the new forms of radical islam is based on their skillful use of new media. Completely bypassing any of the traditional forms, and even to some degree, their success in the United States has been in terms of recruiting people has been in that manner. What has surprised you the most about the new media age we live in . We all talk about how the barriers are now being blown away that exist. Its more free in some ways, but that freedom also brings with it a lot of liabilities. I think thats good news and bad news. I think during arab spring, twitter was powerful for people to stay connected, who were in the streets and not sort of revolt, but have an end of the revolt. My issue with the social media is it allows almost no reflective time. You dont have a chance to stop and think and have a real dialogue. Its, you know, 140 characters or whatever it happens to be, bang, bang, bang. And we dont know the sourcing of it. I mean, it could be some guy in his underwear who couldnt get a date, sitting there, and hes giving the impression he has hundreds of thousands of followers and saying anything that is outrageous that comes to his or her mind. And im telling you that in the middle east and the jihadist camps and other places, theyre ahead of a lot of where we are in terms of how they communicate and stay in touch with each other. If something happens here, bang, its all out over there. I said something on meet the press right after the Boston Marathon bombing where i said we have to reexamine, reexamine was my phrase, we have to reexamine our drone policies because if you hit one innocent in a village, then that rockets around the middle east. On all the social media sites. And bill oreilly among others came after me hard saying, oh, he just wants to fold up and hes the guy who wrote about the greatest generation and sometimes there has to be collateral indemnity. I wasnt saying we have to stop. I knew at the intelligence agencies and the military, they were concerned about the drone attacks and knocking on doors. Everything you do over there has consequences of some kind and were fighting a war the likes of which we have never fought before. Its very hard and were now on our third war. Another area we can turn to that seems to be constant war is american politics these days. Youre so good at having a Historical Context for all of us in terms of what you have seen and heard. I want you to go back to about 14 years ago, Election Night 2000. Closest election in history. Florida had gone to al gore, and then had been taken out of his column and gone to george w. Bush, and then taken out of his column. The 25 very precious electoral votes, run to tape about how it looks 14 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday because it was a defining moment in my household, but lets take a look. The networks giveth, the networks taketh away. Nbc news is now taking florida out of Vice President gores column. Its just far too confusing. Were about to make an official call, and its just too confusing. All night long, it has not been a sterling evening for both projections in that state. Oer originally, nbc and the other News Networks projected al gore was the winner, then at 2 18, we projected all right, were officially saying florida is too close to call because of a reca recall. Let me show you one more time. Florida. Its morning. It is, indeed. It was that kind of night. And then it went all the way to the Supreme Court case that happened in december that ultimately decided. We were working class kids. We love politics, we had grown up with it. At one point when i met big russ, your grandfather, he got out of a car where i was waiting for him at a baseball game and tim got a car to drive him out, and he got out and said my limo driver was late. It was a great line, and i thought, thats exactly what my dad would have said. Wheres my limo driver . I have these kids with limos. We were joined at the hip, the two of us. I still, especially at this time of year, i want to punch his number in and say, hey, what do you think about whats going on in arkansas . We were there together that night and it was one of the great confusing nights of our lives. We were both off camera saying how do we get out of this . And at one point, tim remembered me trying to make a quick break, and i came back with a mouthful of saltine crackers. And thats probably the only time i made sense all night long, by the way. I had never been through anything like that. Thank got the country has not gone through it again. It was kind of the beginning of the unraveling, i thought, of the american political system as we had grown up with it. It was drifting off in many parts. Were all looking at tuesday of next week, for example. And president obama has a world of troubles. I was just looking at a harvard poll today. Hes now losing the millennials, the young people. The white millennials. Still a racist divide, but hes dropped down to under 50 in the millennials who dont think hes taking care of them with education cost, with job training. They dont like obamacare. This is going to be a tough election for him. On the other hand, the republicans are coming into office with no grand plan about what we do. So for the next two years, well have a protracted run for the white house. And not much done in congress. You know, wednesday morning, rubio, cruz, santorum, jeb bush is now looking more like a candidate than he has in recent months. Theyll be out there getting ready to run again. On the democratic side, youve got hillary, obviously, but jim webb taking a look at it, some of the other governors taking a look at it because the landscape now is moving in a lot of different directions. And who knows . My favorite theory of politics is the ufo policy. Something could happen between now and the next election. A lot of democrats are already saying, you know, were going to lose the senate, and theyll go nuts to the white and then well get the white house back. Republicans are saying we have to learn some lessons from the past, and weve got to get our act together. I a very prominent republican strategist who is no longer as active as he was, but im telling you he was in the thick of it all, i asked what is your best outcome . He said, Mitch Mcconnell gets beat, we still win the senate. They think some of the leadership in the Republican Party has to be set aside. The next two years are not going to be great for the country necessarily, but its going to be rock n roll in the political arena. You dont foresee any chances of obama trying to savage some legacy domestically . Its pretty tough. Its tough. You have two years left. They know that. You really dont have the full two years. You have 16 months maybe. You run out the clock. Theyre already, reading the papers today, kerry and hagel are not happy with how they cant fit in there. Hes getting, seems to me, when he talks about the ebola quarantine, he seems angrier than he has been in some time. This is not unusual for a president in his second term. You may remember that george bush 43 in his second term hank paulson was trying to hold the economy together, and the president went to him at one point and said i would like to help you, but i would do you more harm than good if i stepped in at this point, because its a tough, tough business. And they take the measure of you very quickly. You can be the chief executive and commander in chief and live in the white house, but if you dont have the underpinning of power and support, you dont have a lot to play with. The president came in in 2008 with a resounding victory, came in with a huge majority in the house, a big majority in the senate. Filibuster proofs for some time, and then in 2010, the gop wins 63 seats and we seem to have been in this perpetual trench warfare where the big idea is the country is so changed, one could say, some change did occur, too much change too quickly. Ult mele from six years in as we go into the last two years which seem to be a lame duck, where do you fall in the sense of do you think this was a Republican Opposition from the beginning . Did the president have poor relations with congress . Is this a defining thing that has stuck to obama during his term so far . I dont think its one thing. I do think there are lessons in all of this. One is the lesson of president obama, brilliant man, obviously a charismatic campaigner with extraordinarily well organized Campaign Running against in the first instance john mccain, who was not the stronger candidate. He has all kinds of other qualities, but as a president ial candidate in the depths of the recession, he didnt have a lot to say about it and how he would handle it, but this president had no managerial experience, he had not run anything before. A state senator and Community Organizer and somebody who had been extraordinarily successful in getting elected to senate, but he hadnt been there for long, and hes made clear over the last six years hes not crazy about the political process. If you read those accounts of when he lost the debate to mitt romney the first time in denver, you go back and look at the preps, he said at one point to his team that was preparing, you know, guys, this is not who i am. Thats what president s have to be. I thought it was symbolic when he won that election, he wanted to reach out to congress. He took the people he wanted to talk to, the Jefferson Hotel for dinner. Take them to the white house. I have never seen anybody walk in there that their knees didnt buckle. Whatever side of the political spectrum they were on. And hes had a small, well contained group around him. National security and domestic affairs. No one wants a president to fail, republican or democrat, thats not good for the country. But once theres blood in the water, you know, then what happens is that everything is unleashed. So i think the next two years are going to depend not just on what happens on the republican side or in the democratic side or at the white house. Its going to depend on all of us. Where is the country on all of this . These are issues that go beyond conventional politics. I have said it before and ill say it again. I didnt think the tea party was good for the country because they were too narrowly cast and they were not interested in any compromise. But as a longtime political reporter, i was deeply impressed by their organizational skills. They got angry, they got organized, they stayed on message and stayed in the fight. Theyre not going to have a great year this year, but they rose up from the ranks and they then wanted to take their place on the political field. And we need more of those citizen kinds of movements if youre going to change things, whether its in the Republican Party or the democratic party. Last few minutes here before i open it up to questions from the audience, so if you have a pressing question, start thinking about it now. Thats your gift from me. Give you sort of a Barbara Walters type of question here. Please. All right. If you were any animal through your entire career, is there a story that haunlts you the most to this day . You know, its interesting. I have never been asked the haunting question. I have been asked a question about the most memorable interviews and that kind of thing. I think the haunting question for me is what i see when i go to the third world. And my wife has a project going now in malawi, one of the poorest countries in africa, one of the poorest continents. And i see the goodwill of the women who are running a canned tomato project is what it is. And she those of you who know her know how remarkable she is, but she went over there on some other project, loves doing the kind of things that we grew up with in the midwest, and she saw all these tomatoes and they didnt have anything to do at the end of the season, they didnt know what to do with them, they didnt have preservation, canning. She went back, shipped over, sold some property her dad left her, shipped over containers and canning equipment, organized women to go to africa and i went back with her. This is a very difficult country. I have been all over africa, this is about as poor as it gets. She organized a cooperative of these women. Some were great in the field, others were great at managerial stuff. They were just a speck against all this degradation of who they were and the aids that had infected their country, and the corruption at the top. And those are the stories that haunt me, while the rest of us in the west are moving with Silicon Valley and medical advances and all the other changes coming in our lives and theres so many people in the world who are just stuck in place. And they have real skills, and they have real intuition. These women, if you turned africa over to the women, men dont have leadership positions anymore, women are going to run the continent, wed be a hell of a lot better off. And you bring that up as important, because i think this point should be made. Its difficult to cover that story because theres not a lot of appetite in the United States. Theres an instant reaction that we have our own problems and our own things that are depressing. Dont depress us anymore. Theres a real challenge of being a journalist to sort of get that point of view out there into the mainstream. It is, and the ebola crisis is a perfect example of that. The real ebola crisis is not in texas or in this country, quite honestly. You know, weve got to have a system for dealing with it, its indisputable, but we really have had, what, one person die in texas at this point and a couple people quarantined. And weve got all these great agencies swarming all over it. Im on the board of the mayo clinic. The mayo system is now in a complete overhaul of what theyre going to do about infectious diseases, closing down icus and turning them into isolation units which may never be used. But in west africa, you have brave young western doctors going in there just trying to contain it in some fashion in these remote villages, and thats the really tough issue, frankly, that were going to be dealing with. And its hard for, i think, americans have compassion fatigue. And i understand that. You know, were in our third war. Weve spent so much more money in iraq and in afghanistan than president bush and especially dick cheney and don rumsfeld told us. It was going to be profitable, they were saying, then we spent a trillion dollars in the first year and a half we were over there, and its unending at this point. I think people are here withdrawing from the idea they have an obligation to the world and theyre worried about their children and if youll permit me this, the American Dream is still there, but we probably have to kind of reconstitute it. The American Dream was always seen in economic terms, my parents were perfect examples, they dream was i would go to college and have more Economic Security and a kind of grander life. They had a wonderful life, the two of them, but they could not have imagined the life i would have, but we had it. That was the American Dream. Every generation would live better than the last generation. But were kind of hitting the ceiling on it. How many houses can you have . And do you have the kind of working class job that my dad had, and does that pay for the house that you would like to have . And so we have to rethink what is the American Dream . The American Dream ought to be about other kinds of opportunities and how we come together and the government and other social agencies that are nongovernmental can do for you. Ill take 15 seconds and tell you well, it will take longer about one of my grand hopes. We kind of have it under way. I would reconstitute Public Service in america. I would make it a Public Private enterprise. I could create six Public Service academies in land grants across the country and have them governmental and private sector. John deere fellows, for example, in sophisticated farming equipment and water systems. Johnson johnson fellows, post graduate work in infectious diseases, nurse technicians, whatever. Ge fellows and small Power Systems around the world, and they get the special training, the Companies Get a tax break, and the kids get paid well. And theyre assigned domestically as well as internationally. Domestically because when we have a national disaster, we send in the National Guard. That National Guard unit may have been in afghanistan twice already and theyre not necessarily trained well to do this kind of thing, and then we give, it seemed to me, the younger people, the millennials a reason to care for the country and a hope they will get a skillset. We need a big idea, is what i think, as much as anything. So i would hope we are trying to gin this up and begin a Pilot Program at Arizona State and maybe as something that can excite the country again. We dont have many things out there that are exciting folks right now. Going through the cross tabs well, lets give the brokaw plan [ applause ] are you running for president . Going through the cross tabs on our latest state polling, what i found interesting on your point about the American Dream is were talking so much about isis and ebola and all these different issues, but the number one issue in all these states was job creation. And which candidate can help me there. And number two is breaking gridlock. Which are sort of two things the media does not talk about that much in the context of coverage. On your point about the American Dream, do you think were doing enough as journalists covering the real income inequality that exists now in the United States at levels we have not seen and the ongoing poverty occurring in the United States in historic levels . No, i dont. And were not going to turn back to happy days where mom stays at home and dad goes off to work, and you can afford everything. I grew up in that environment. You know, my mother did work because she wanted to work, but she didnt really have to, but it did give us an added advantage, but almost every friend i had, and a lot of them were quite poor, the mom stayed home and the dad was working. And now, you know, the mom may have two jobs, and there are more single mothers out there, which is another issue. And the dad doesnt have a job that pays the kind of benefits that he got before. And a lot of that is economic reality. Theres no question about it, but the disparity between the people at the very top in corporations and what the working class gets down in the middle or, its quite extraordinary. Truth in advertising, i get paid a lot of money. I get that. I understand that. I like it, but i have enough of a working class background that i think, man, this is a huge difference between what im earning and what these wonderful people that i work with, technicians and editors and the others, are getting as well. We have opened up all these big gaps between the earnings. And then it becomes the goal to have the house that costs so much money. Cannot imagine whats going on in manhattan right now. Real istaestate has gone nuts. All of our working class people in the building are living farther and farther out because they cant afford anything in the city. One apartment was sold the other day now, 90th floor now for 97 million. You look at a small apartment in new york, its got 2 million, nothing less than that. And this, it seems to me, feeds on rest. Its not just manhattan, its the ever more crowded areas around america in which this is going on. More renters going on. And we are in a Seismic Shift about what expectations are. Unemployment is coming down. Theyre not great jobs. There are a lot of service jobs. So how we solve that is kind of beyond my ability to nail it. Before we open it up to questions from the audience, ill give you my last question. Who and well keep this to deceased individuals. Who is a deceased individual you interviewed throughout history that you found the least impressive . Well, there are a lot of them. I mean there are a lot of them. I remember i went down, when cl colombia was trying to change from being a cartel to a democracy, and i opened with a question to a guy, and he absolutely went blank. He couldnt even talk for about 40 seconds. I looked at the Public Relations guy, and he said, i dont know what were going to do. I said, we spent a lot of money to come down and interview this guy. You know, there were people that, and tim i i used to talk about them in washington, who were not as prepared as they thought they would be. Im not picking on him because hes had certainly enough of his selfinduced troubles. John edwards was not as good as he thought he was. He would show up and he was slick and a courtroom performer, but your dad nailed him one of the first times he came on meet the press because he started to talk about support for israel, and he didnt have a clue, quite honestly, about what was going on. The problem with interviewing now is most of these people that youre interviewing have been so wired in a way, so preprogrammed, that you dont get the spontaneity out of them, you dont get the stuff out of them. Are we on the record or off the record here . I wanted to tell a joe biden story. I interviewed joe biden, who i actually i thought joe biden was a great legislator. He was in the thick of things in the senate. He cared about it passionately. And i was this is at a critical time in the iraq war. There were a lot of claims coming out of the pentagon we were really training the iraqi army and they were going to take care of their own country and their own security. I was over there a lot and i was watching these people coming in in tennis shoes joining the iraqi army, and i said to petraeus, how do we know who they are and where theyre coming from . He said, were kind of counting on their fellow warriors to tell us. Not a very good vetting system. Joe was running the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the team, and he had his team evaluating how the Training Program was going, and they didnt think it was going well. I came down to interview him. He was right on top of his topic. This is sometimes the best part of journalism. When the interview ended, joe, who i have known forever, turned to me, his only joke, and said how are you and meredith doing with menopause . Thats comes out of the heading of a question i did not expect. And i said, well, like everybody else. And he said, god, i was blindsided by this stuff. Now, ive got my camera crew and all my producers there and everybody. And i said, well, you know, joe, its been around for a while. He said, yeah, im thinking about getting a federal study. I said dont go there. Its in every womans magazine every week. You dont have to do that. That was, for me, the quintessential joe moment, and it was not it was not that he was unprepared for the topic at hand, but he just loves to talk ability whatever happens to be on his mind at that time. And there are, you know, there are lots of people who are theyre not impressive. Ill tell you about putin. I interviewed gorbachev and we really did become quite close. Putin, i interviewed twice. Your mother was at the dinner that i gave for him, and your dad was there as well, and your mother had done the thing on the Banking System in russia. Wonderful vanity fair article, shes here right now. God bless her. Thank you, mother. We had a big dinner at 21, and he never cracked a smile. Did he . And the first time i interviewed him in moscow, same thing. I didnt look into his eyes and see the soul of a christian. I saw a russian nationalist who had been a kgb agent. He was very tough and very determined. And you must remember, he was a guy who carried out orders and worked for people who had more standing than he did. So you get these different kinds. On the other hand, the most remarkable man i interviewed under the most remarkable circumstances was nelson mandela. When he came out of prison, i was with him 24 hours after he had been released. For 25 years he had been in prison. It was if he had just gotten back from a trip to zurech representing his country in some way, in his backyard in soweto. He was charming, completely versed in the western media and who we were and what we were interested in. And one of my treasured pictures of the two of us laughing as were sitting there. You know, he had never met me before, obviously, but i had a soundman who had one of these boom mikes with a big, fuzzy thing on it to cut down on the wind. I said, mr. Mandela, this is not a weapon. Its a microphone. He said, im so glad to hear it. I thought it was a shotgun pointed at me. We broke up in laughter. I thought, that was one of the moments that you kind of live for. You absolutely remember those, without a doubt. My father and you, you would have a descripter, brought this up when you mentioned john edwards. No socks for a politician. What did that mean . Real quickly. What does no socks mean. Tim and i had a lot of short hand when we talked. And there was a candidate running, i cant get too close to it, the identification of it, democrat who was running in the midwest. And tim said, how is he going to do . I said, i can make a couple calls to find out. It was a guy who had a place in the east as well. He had gotten infatuated with the eastern seaboard south where luke spends a lot of time on nantucket. So i called one of my friends in the midwest, and i said, how is he going to do . He said, one line, he said, he doesnt wear socks. And it was that summer kind of thing that you see in the eastern seaboard. You cant do that in farm country. Right. So that became for tim and me, shorthand for a candidate who didnt have a clue about where they were going. How are they going to do . He doesnt wear socks. Okay. And i use that to this day. Its a great descripter for those kinds of candidates. Lets open it up to the audience. Shelby. Shelby coffey, mr. Brokaw. You delivered a wonderful eulogy for our friend ben bradley at the Washington National cathedral this week, and i wondered, it was great for the cathedral. Youre now in a temple of free speech, so if you had another couple anecdotes about ben and what it was like to be with ben, kind of resemble being with james bond, wed love to hear those. So question from shelby there, any more anecdotes about ben bradley . You eulogized him yesterday. You couldnt do them in a church. And i talked about it. I actually left out one whole paragraph about the business about his profanity, and about, you know, and i really had kind of euphemistically figured out how to do it, and i kind of skipped over it, and its just as well. But a couple stories. What i said was he had his own personal system that involved digits on his hand he would use to express himself to people when they didnt agree with him. But a british friend of mine had read, who didnt know him, had read all the obituaries and came to me said and i have been reading all these obituaries of benjamin bradley, the profanity, overstated . I said impossible. Impossible. I really think it grew out of his war experience. I really think, ben and i talked a lot about what it was like for this harvard graduate to be in an area with kids from the farm and the inner city and all these places, and i remember this story vividly. He was on the phillip, and they were in the thick of it, and they had a kid onshore who was an artillery spotter for him. He was down, really out there by himself in the jungle. Giving him japanese locations. And they would talk to him radio, clandestinely, and the kid said i have to get out of here, i need a break. They had no idea who he was, so they sent a zodiac in after him, pulled him out at nighttime, and ben said he was about 53, he couldnt have weighed more than 120 pounds. He was from some small town in texas. He was our link. A guy who put himself way out front so we could hit the target, and it made a huge impression on him, and then on the way home, ben said, they all gathered on the fantail and talk about what they want to do when they get back. He was hearing aspirations and dreams he had never heard before because of how he had grown up. He wanted to be a journalist, and there were School Teachers and farmers and all these other people. It was a real education. But one of my favorite social stories about him is that well, i have another one like that. Here he comes out of that brahman background, goes to war, goes to paris, invents newsweek conducts the greatest journalistic investigation on the greatest political scandal in the nations history and everyone loved him at the post. I have been in journalism for 52 years. I never knew reporters who swooned around their boss. And it was in part because of how he handled them. This must have been the second year i was in washington. I was invited to a party, and i got there late. I had been at the office, and i walked in. Meredith said to me, you have any idea who youre seated next to tonight . I said, no. She said, its jan morris, the writer who has just had a sex change operation. Now ms. Jan morris. I kind of vaguely read about it. And i say, oh, my god. And were immediately sat at the dinner, and she couldnt have been more charming. She said, i have been watching you cover watergate. How has that effected you . And i said, not thinking, its changed my life. Now, im just, you know, im red in the face. How do i get out of it . And ben overhears this, and he bails me out. He leans over and says to her, when was the last time we saw each other . Was it in algeria . I thought, why cant i Say Something like that . Thats who he was. He never he was always joyful. Woodward and i talked about him a lot because bob and i come from the same kind of midwestern protestant guilt, and he said ben never, ever looked back. He only looked forward. If they made a mistake, hed say, okay, clean it up and we go on. Instead of anguishing over it, hed say, okay, got to keep going, guys, and thats what they would do. So he was really quite remarkable. Who else do we have in the audience . There, come on up to the microphone here. Dont fall down the stairs. Oh, great. Lets do this. Well come right back. Go ahead. Sure. I was just wondering, since you have retired, theres been a lot of changes in the way journalism is presented, like the rise of the 24hour news cycle and sort of Celebrity News personalities and just much more controversial sort of loud personalities. Im curious like what you think of these new personalities and the tv shows, perhaps, you watch to get the news now. The question is, in our current day and age, we have this sort of celebrity journalist driven cable news machine, a lot more opinion on news, not like it used to be in a capacity also derived from social media. What does that mean for the country, and what do you watch as a Media Consumer . I surprise some people. I think we have so many more choices now than we have ever had. Representing so many different points of view. But you cant be a couch potato anymore. You have to be much more aggressive as a consumer about what you watch and test it for its credibility. Is it good for the country . I think Free Expression is good for the country, but at the somtime, i think theres a lot of mischief, and i think theres a lot of deliberate destructive mischief that goes on out there. My recommendation to audiences is kind of create, if you will, your own virtual newspaper. I get up in the morning and i, you know, i have a friend who runs the financial times. I like to check in, see whats doing there. Then i run the traps on the standard american establishment papers. I read the post and the wall street journal and the New York Times right away. I go to the counsel of Foreign Relations where im a board member and we have a very good overnight look at whats going on, and there are terrific websites that are attached to think tanks or groups of one kind or another. I love the idea i can in a keystroke read the dallas times herald. I want to see what that paper is saying and i can get it from them. But i have to be proactive about it. I just cant take what comes at me. We have a ranch in montana and a wonderful couple working for us, but theyre real ranching, isolated family in a rural area, and theyre quite apolitical, and about twice a week, karen comes across the bridge, her eyes are about this big, and shell say to me, youre not going to believe what i read on the internet this morning. My answer is always the same, karen, youre right. Im not going to believe what you read. And you have to have that attitude a little more, i think. Its a very important point. In this day and age, everyone thinks its easier to be a Media Consumer, and thats not necessarily true because you really have to separate fact from fiction and be much more cognizant of who is delivering you the product. Over here, what do we have . Mr. Brokaw, i really enjoy your time here this evening. And you may not remember, but i have sent you some pictures previously when you were in town for the tenth anniversary of the fall of the wall. Pictures of you in berlin because at the time, i was a young Army Intelligence officer and assigned there from december of 88 until may of 92, so this evening, i brought you additional photographs attesting to the fact you were there, and also for the 20th anniversary, i published a book, but its from the perspective of what the role the western allies play, which really hasnt been documented in many ways. So i would be honored if you would accept this from me, and again, i enjoy the fact that you came here this evening. And i had a chance this time to see you. Well, thank you very much for your service. God bless you. I mean, a young Army Intelligence officer who was in berlin at the time of the fall of the wall and has just written a book about the role that western allies had in the fall of the wall that is too often overlooked. What do you think in terms of some western allies not getting their Due Diligence in terms of the fall of the wall. It was brought on by the people in the ger. What was overlooked was what was happening in the week before. There were hundreds of thousands people out there demanding change, and there was a strike, and it spread quickly to the satellite states. So i give the generational it was a generational change going on in the east. They were willing to push back and making it harder and harder for them to be controlled. I had just gotten back, as i indicated earlier, and i interviewed a number of key people, a photographer who was clandestinely getting out video to the west to say heres where we are and this is whats going on and we do need your help, so it really was a revolt that came from the bottom up. And at a News Conference, for example, the east german press, which had been necessarily kind of toady like, they were very aggressive that day, that afternoon, and they were pushing him hard on policies, about the press and whether they would have the freedom to travel or not. And that was unusual for them. And when he made the announcement, not my interview, but when he made the announcement in the room, it was stunning because everybody kind of nodded off at that point. He had been droning on for an hour, and then he pulls this piece of paper out and reads it, and it seems to us it was saying you could come and go through any entrance. It turns out they did have stipulations on it and they honestly thought in their kind of bewildered way of looking at the world that the east germans would go to the west and then return to their old lives, come back to the east again. When he left the News Conference and drove out to the compound where the Bureau Members all lived, they had gone to sleep. And here, their world was crumbling around them. A wonderful new book out by a harvard historian call ed the collapse. Its a wonderful new book, in part because she gives nbc credit for how we covered it. She has unbelievable detail about what was going on behind the scenes. Its quite riveting. The narrative take said you all the way through it. Well be doing some things at harvard this fall with that. Yes, sir. How do you account for the news medias failure to challenge the basis for the invasion of iraq . How do you account for the news medias failure to challenge the basis for the invasion of iraq . Something thats got obviously a lot of attention paid to it. Theres the documentary. You know, thats a question thats been around for a while. My personal judgment, i was in there a lot beforehand. I didnt know about weapons of mass destruction, and no one really did. The u. N. Couldnt quite figure out whether they had them or didnt have them. Could they have been hidden . There were all these bunkers all over the country. What i did think was, and i said this on the air, was that well be successful militarily in the shortterm, but then the country will begin to break up into its tribal feastms, and its going to be a lot hoarder to hold it together than we knew. The state department had another point of view about the consequences of the invasion, but never said no, there should be no invasion. Colin powell went to the u. N. And held up the little file or talked about the file. So it was when the drum beats of war start in this country, and it was especially after 9 11, theres this kind of emotional tide. The only person who really spoke out, who had great credibility in this area, was brent scrocroft. We put him on the air and had him talk about it a lot, but you werent getting much out of congress. A lot of people were voting for it at the time. Theres so much that was unknowable. In fact, it was six or seven months later, i was over there with david kaye, and he thought that they had gotten so many computer printouts, he thought they were going to find the cache of weapons of mass destruction, and two weeks later, he said theyre not there. My own judgment is that, a, saddam was trying to persuade iran that he was prepared to fight back with weapons of mass destruction. And that his colonels and the others around him were coming up with plans, getting money for it, and i think there were secret Bank Accounts all over zurich now with money they got for weapons of mass destruction. There was never a danger, in my judgment, of a Mushroom Cloud that we heard a lot about. I was going to ask. There never seems to be a compelling reason for us to do it now versus wait until they either came up or discovered something. We were not threatened, the United States. No direct threat. No impetus to do it immediately. It was sort of a rush. He was in a box. I mean, and we had on a box. Saddam was on a box. At the time. Rumsfeld will say we couldnt take a chance because he was getting closer and closer to our overflights. Thats now the resize erevised it, and rumsfeld now is saying, intelligence, boy, when colin powell went to the u. N. , that kind of told us those were not facts. Thats what passes for intelligence. Theres a lot of sliding away from it from people who were in fact thought he was a grave threat from the moment they arrived in this administration. They had him in their crosshairs. The other thing, having been in there a lot, two things became very clear to me, first of all, the country was a lot more broke than they thought it was. It was going to be really hard once we took control to try to make it work again. The second thing was there was a complete misinterpretation about the sunnis and shiite and how they would fight each other. He was a sunni. Shiite, larger population. I went out to a shiite university. This was a month before the war began. And ditched my minder and had 1,000 kids who were sitting, the american culture, listening to voa and they were all about john denver, and was a graduation day. And were having a wonderful time together. And at the end, i said to this one particularly voluble young man, what are you going to do now that you have graduated . His eyes went cold and he said im going to join jihad and fight the United States. I said, im the United States. Im going to fight bush. And then i went down to a suk in baghdad, and it snakes through the heart of the city for two miles. If you wanted a windup for a 1948 studebaker window, you could find one there, and they were all really tough shiite. And i had been there a couple times. Now they knew me, and then they would corner me when i walked in. They say, you know, we dont need you telling us what to do. But i said, saddam, sunni. And they said, yes, its our country. Its not about him. Its our country. I came back and my exchanges with members of the administration, trying to figure out what is going on, i said, this is what i have been hearing. Oh, tom, they have to tell you that. I have been doing this a long time. I know when they have to tell me something and when they dont. They would call up people like chalabi who had not been there for 20 years or other experts who had been stuck in princeton and hadnt been there for 20 years. And they said, these guys know what is going on, and i said, not like in the streets. But they were so determined to conduct the war that they were going to go ahead anyway, and people who were assigned to get in there immediately after they got to baghdad, including he had been a principal aide to james baker, said we had no idea about how broken this was. Now, the state department had issued a big paper about the enormous task of trying to put it back together again, but there was such division between the Defense Department and the Vice President s office and the state department that they werent listening to each other. And on that point, theres a famous meet the press clip of my father interviewing dick cheney. He asked the question, what if we are received not as liberators but as occupiers . And cheneys simple response is thats not going to happen. And that was sort of the response of not only the administration but those who backed the war in congress and the democratic side as well. So the media did put that out there. I think there in retrospect, it probably could have been covered more thoroughly. Everything in hindsight is 20 20. People forget its a post9 11 mindset, but that was out there. Last one. In some circles, theres a belief that the berlin wall came down largely because of Ronald Reagan. Others dont really understand that. Whats your attitude on Ronald Reagans involvement . So, the belief that the berlin wall came down because of Ronald Reagan . And the pope, we could say, but Ronald Reagan specifically . They were all players, and they all kept the pressure on. The enduring legacy of Ronald Reagan is he came in a real hawk about how to take down the soviet union with star wars and all that, and then was persuaded seeing what was going on over there by among others, nancy, by the way, and soviet analysts, that the system was crumbling from within, and it couldnt be sustained, and we could continue to put economic pressure on them and make them spend money on sdi, and that was what that was all about. And it was clear that they couldnt pull that off. Now, gorbachev, who i admire, was a guy who didnt give up on communism. That was the one flaw, thats why he you know, he lost a lot of his inner circle because he wanted to keep the system in place that he knew they would have to change. You couldnt have both. But he was the best guy to be dealing with at that time, and we had never dealt with anybody like that before. So i do think that reagan and the pope had a role in all of this, but there are a lot of players on the other side as well, who were doing smart things. A perfect example in poland, your dad and i were there when the president was there and there when the pope was there. I have pictures of you guys with beers which are at my moms house, which is great. When the pope was there, there was a big movement on the left in poland about the church was hand in glove with the rulers. And in fact, the church was a pipeline. What the pope was doing was sending messages through the catholic hierarchy in poland to were not going to have blood in the streets, and they were the church was very important about bringing that out peacefully. Ill tell you one quick story that some of you may remember. The polish president who has just died. David ignatius, help me out with this . Ouelletsky . So, i had interviewed gorbachev, and so i go to poland, and i have an interview with who is a history major here . Anyhow, hes a man who had also kept the lid on things. And he came into the room. And he was a stately, career military guy in poland, came from a distinguished family. In shaded glasses, and he said to me, i had a producer from chicago with me who was a kind of unmade bed of a man, had a hilarious sense of humor, and he said to me, i have been interviewed by Walter Cronkite in translation, and i have been interviewed by Barbara Walters, by the editor of the New York Times, now, im about to be interviewed by the most important american journalist at all, because i just interviewed gorbachev, mr. Tom brokaw, and my producer said, no wonder this guy is in so much trouble. Thats great. One last one to end the night on. And thank you so much for coming, everybody. You have been a wonderful audience. And were going to get this flight out of here on time. Real quickly, one reason for optimism for the future of the United States and the biggest reason for pesism that keeps you up at night . A big reason for opt mrcimis were the most inventive country in the world and people are still desperate to come here and bring those skills with them. I have been dealing with Health Issues for the last year. At the hospital in new york, i have yet to meet a native born american, and these are the best people there are, all the scientists and the people in the corridors have come here from everywhere, from china and russia and from south america because this is where they want to live and where they can exercise the skills that they have developed over the years. Thats just a snapshot of how were constantly renewing this American Dream. Theres no other immigrant nation in the history of the world like what we have. And we need to figure out how were going to deal with immigration and how we can keep that going on, it seems to me. The reason for pessimism is the withdrawal of people from taking an active role in their own destiny. I think theres something going on. I cant codify it completely, but i think theres such a rejection of washington that federalism as we have known and is important to us, is in some peril. If you go around the country, we have become a country of urban nations. Seattle is an urban nation. It has its own culture, its own economy, its own freight policies with the pacific rim. And its a place where theres such vibrancy in terms of getting things done, and the political system at the municipal and county level works so well. In san francisco, its still developing, but there are great universities and medical systems and the money coming out of Silicon Valley is really recharging it. What is the mantra in Silicon Valley . Be disruptive, find new ways to do things. Dont be afraid. Los angeles is an urban nation, south american urban nation. Texas is an energy urban nation with what theyve got going on. Move across the country, its true in all of these big metropolitan areas getting ever larger every year. Atlanta, miami, all the way up the eastern seaboard. Not quite as true yet as far north as it is in the west where theres it is in the west where theres constant renewal going on. But these are big Seismic Shifts in the country. That will have consequences it seems to me. Tom brokaw, living legend. [ applause ] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming on American History every weekend on cspan3. Forow us on twitter information on our schedule, upcoming programs and keep up with the latest history news. Tvsweek, American History railamerica rings you archival films that help tell the story of the 20 century. On november 6, 19 61, a fire broke out near bel air los