Transcripts For CSPAN3 Tom Brokaw On His Career 20141225

Estate is less popular than hmos right now and Oil Companies in some polls but i promise the new generation is trying to do better on that. Lets talk to a Living Legend as i like to say, tom brokaw who if you ever mentioned him youll meet some of people that say i ate dinner with tom brokaw every night on nbc nightly news and that was where i was. I grew up it was tom brokaw at the dinner table every single night and it was so great to get all types of stories and instant History Lesson at any time. Were approaching the 25th anniversary of the fall of the berlin wall. I did some research today. You were the only network news anchor there, the only broadcast the west germans did not have time to get set up live. Amazing back story about how all that happened. But you took it upon yourself to go over there while there were midterm elections going on because you believed this could be the bigger story. You went to a press conference where the propaganda minister from east germany said these things. You had an interview with him. I want to play that right now. Can we do that . Then well go onto the question. Do i understand correctly citizens of the gdr can leave through any checkpoint that they choose for personal reasons . They no longer have to go through a third country. They are not further forced to leave gr by transit through another country. It is possible for them to go through the wall at some point . It is possible for them to go through the border. S are. Freedom to travel. Yes, of course. Good evening. Live from the berlin wall on the most historic night in this walls history. What you see behind me is a celebration of this new policy announced today by the east German Government that now for the First Time Since the wall was rerecollected in 1961, people will be able to move through freely. This crowd has gathered here tonight spontaneously from the east german side. They have been franing water can fon on some of the sell brans. Well show you videotape what happened earlier tonight when there were even more people on top of the wall. The west Berlin Police have suggested they move back saying the situation is already complicated enough but it doesnt seem to make any difference. The people are here to celebrate freedom for the east germans, freedom to travel a primary right for people anywhere in the world. Thats an amazing moment. Two things. Its the first time ive ever been interviewed by someone who i first saw on a sonogram. There you go. Tim came to me and said im going to have a son and here is the proof of that. It was a thrilling moment for everybody and im so proud of how luke has continued the legacy of his dad and with his mother maureen. Hes become a cherished not only surrogate nephew but also a great, great journalist. Im thrilled to be on the stage with him. I know that tim is looking down and says to us go get them tonight. Yes, indeed. Thank you. [ applause ] a couple of things about that at the beginning. Shah bow ski didnt know what he was talking about it turns out. He had been given this note at end of a News Conference and the politburo on the other side had a lot of restrictions how people could go back and forth through the wall. He read it not quite knowing what he was saying. Of course, that was broadcast across consist east germany so 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 a video of people going through one of the other exits so we needed to show that immediately. The water cannon didnt work very well. The guards on the other side didnt quite note what to do. At one point, they did drive everybody off except one man who stood with his back to the water cannon, big grin on his face. I said to my producer, go get him and bring him back. Hes the face of the new liberated east germany. My producer came back about ten seconds later and said not what we think. He said hes a drunk. Hes been living over here in the forest. And he hasnt had a shower in two weeks. So hes very grateful for whats going on. But that was the beginning of the fall of the wall and it was the symbolic end of communism obviously as a controlling factor in the satellite states and the soviet union was coming unrabled at the same time. Im a child of the cold war. I grew up studying it and thinking about what kind of world were going to have. When that happened, i have two really reactions to it. One is, it was a liberation the likes of which we had never seen before and a lot of people didnt expect it to happen till the 21st century. I dont think that the west then reacted in a way that they might have. Ive just gotten back from berlin and germany, i was there with dr. Kissinger and jim baker at the american academy. We talked about this. There was not the kind of effort that should have been made to say how else can we use nato. Nate would he was our western alliance, remains that but it has kind of come unrabled around the edges. Its not as unified as it once was and it was an incredibly important and impotent force in facing the east and dealing with issues together and not always as you perfectly but it was the alliance. Now it has a lot of parts to it and theyre often not greater than the sum of their parts, which they need to be. The other part of what were watching there tonight was that it was so thrilling and hard to explain about how the dramatic people who had such a terrible 20th century emotionally selfinduced wounds then were divided and youd have people in the west who had cousins in the east, the people in the west had depcracy and consumer goods and hope and when the wall came down, their cousins and the other fellow germans came through and acid washed jeans, twocycle lat tas and true hadnt automobiles as if they had come from the moon to venus. They just couldnt believe what they were seeing. So it was one of the most dramatic events i think of the 20th century in kind of a 24hour period and then it went on from there. There was a big debate bh whether germany should be reunited politically much later, i was presiding at a conference in atlanta organized by cocacola corporate lawyer. We had gorbachev, president bush 41 and helmut kohl. Helmut kohl got up, big bear of a guy, got tears in his eyes and he turned to gorbachev and he said you did not send the thanks and that gave us a chance to be a whole country again and he turned to president bush and he said and you stood for unification when others including Margaret Thatcher said we have 0 keep them divided. It was one of those moments in history when you saw three men with courage and vision had come together and they were so personal in their interaction. And it kind of gave me hope and we dont see a lot of that anymore. One amazing thing inning that newscast aside from you being the only broadcast anchor there, a huge win for nbc news if there ever was one, probably our biggest one in history is i was reading a sort of break down by the ep at the time, bill wheatley. He goes you asked for about 1 to 20 seconds at the end of the newscast to give a little essay, put it in the context of history. Why was that important for you to do at that time, and how did you come up with that in the commercial break is how it was described . Well, there were two things that happened. First of all it was such chaos, i couldnt hear myself. I was very well dressed in part because i had gone over there with one of my typical raggedy outdoor jackets and thought this would be on tape for a long time. One of my cohurt horts had just bought a smashing top cote and i asked for the topcoat. I said im going to have to ad lib this. Youll know when im going to call for video. We were doing the special later. I thought we have to put this in some kind of context. The context for me was i always 1968 would be the defining year of my career. 196, johnson stepped aside. 16,000 people lost in vietnam. Bobby and Gene Mccarthy were running for the democratic nomination. Dr. King was assassinated. Bobby kennedy was murdered. Check riots, Miami Convention nominated richard nixon. George wallace was also running. We had that heated election that fall. People forget the end of that year, a man stepped on the moon. So that was a very, very rich year and then i trace some of that and began to talk about what weve been witnessing in 1989 which was the rearrangement of the world if you will, which included china. I was also in Tiananmen Square that year and chezechoslovakia. I was in russia and interviewed gorbachev in 87 and persuaded he was the only american journalist he should talk to. So what i did was say we have to. You the this in the context so 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 radicalism and fundamentalist. Its changed how we cover the story because right now a lot of news organizations cant get into syria and parts of iraq because its so dangerous. The story has changed. Its not as clearcut as it used to be. Its the soviet union and satellite proxy cars. You have all these sort of tribal wars playing out in the middle east. Whats important for Media Consumer to digest from a, how were trying to do our best over there in terms of getting the story out and what does mean for future generations that the prolonged conflict in that part of the world in guerrilla style not only through newer technologies but also through radical religious ideologues about be my generations seems defining global struggle. Youve touched on the critical issue where we go forward from here and our National Security considerations. We are still locked in. Even those of house are journalist whos should know better to the idea of nation state confrontations that it will be between the east and west or it will be between russia and the United States. As i said, i was in berlin with kissinger and baker. Kissinger said when communism ended we could have aechted what would happen in the satellite states and even at privl of somebody like putin. We didnt see what was going to happen in the middle east. What we have in the middle east is not just asymmetrical warfare to deal with. We had highly trained extraordinarily motivated radical Islamic Forces that are moving easily too easily in my judgment across that part of the world. They all came out of artificial states, the states that were designed after world war i. The tribal culture is what defines them. Its faithbased in most instances and it goes very deep and its been there for a long time. When youre there with them and not just with the militia but with the people in the streets of the various cities, thats the first thing that they refer to. And the one place that they close up on, you can be talking to a shiite and talking to a sunni and theyll have have extraordinarily stark differences about you then you talk to them about the west coming in and they close up and they say this is our world. You cant tell us how to live here. And thats what we have. We have not yet in my judgment dealt with the culture. We dont get it yet because we have such an indifferent impression in the western culture about how life should be lived. You cannot overstate the faithbased motivation that they have and 80s ancient and its 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 weve been witnessing of beheading journalists and they think theyre doing it in the name of their faith. Theres nowhere in the koran that says youve got to behead somebody who doesnt necessarily agree with you, especially innocent people. I think the hard problem for us is we dont have that part of the world, we dont understand it as well as we need to know an were losing what allies we had. One of the things i said recently is how do we deal with isil or isis. I said id like to take a lot of those idle young rich men that i see when i go to saab, put them in uniform and make them special forces. The because the king is saying its up to the west now. Its up to everybody. This is a deeply dangerous situation and moving into the political, its going to define president obamas presidency in many ways. Part of this the success of the new forms of radical islam is really based upon their skillful use of new media, completely by passing 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. Would it surprise you the most about the new media age we live in . We all talk about how the barriers are being blown away. Its more free in some ways but that freedom brings with it a lot of liabilities. I think its good news and bad news. I think during arab spring, twitter was a very powerful instrument for people to stay connected who were in the streets and tried to have an end to the revolt. My issue with the social media is that it allows almost no preintricatetive time. You dont have a chance to stop, think and have a real dialogue. Its 140 characters whatever it happens to be. Bang, bang, bang. We dont know the sourcing. It can 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. In the middle east and in the jihadist camps an other places, theyre ahead of a lot of where we are in terms of thats how they communicate and they say in touch with each other. If something happens here, bang its all out over there. I said something on meet the press a year ago, i think 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 sights. Bill oreilly came after me hard saying he just wants to fold up and hes the guy who wrote about the greatest generation and sometimes there has to be collateral damage. I wasnt saying we stop. I also knew what was going on at the intelligence agencies in the military. They were concerned about the impact of drone attacks and knocking down doors. So almost everything you do over there has consequences of some kind and were fighting a war the likes of which weve never fought before. Its very hard. Were now in our third war. Well, another area we can turn to that seems to be constant war is american politics these days. But youre so good at having a Historical Context put forward for all of us in terms of what youve 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. It had then been taken out of his column and gone to george w. Bush, then taken out of his column, the 258 very precious electoral votes. Well run the tape how it looked 14 years ago. I remember this like it was yesterday because it was a defining moment in my household. Lets take a look. Networks give us, 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. Its just too confuse package. Florida has been in play all night long. It has not been a sterling evening for vote projections in that state. Originally, nbc news and all the other networks projected that al gore would win florida. Then at 2 18 this morning, we project all right. Were officially saying that florida is too close to call because of a recall. They need florida, florida. Let me show you one more time. This is it right here. Florida, florida, florida. Florida, florida, florida. Its that kind of night. Or morning. It is indeed. And it was that kind of night. And then we went all the way to the spreep court case that happened in december that ultimately decided. Your dad and i came out of the same gene pool. Were both working class kids. We loved politics. At one point when i first met your grandfather, got out of a car. I was waiting for him at a baseball game and tim got in the car to drive him out there and big russ said my limo driver was late. It was a great line. I thought thats exactly what my dad would have said. Wheres my limo driver. Ive got these kids that got limos. We were joined at the hip the two of us. I still especially this time of year i want to punch his number in and say what do you think of whats going on in arkansas. So we were there together that night and it was one of the great confusing nights of our lives and we were both off camera looking at each other saying how do we get out of this. And at one point, tim remembered me trying to make a quick break. I came back with a mouthful of salt tin crackers. Thats probably the only time i made sense all night long, by the way. I never had been through anything like that. Thank god 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. That it was drifting off into. Many parts. Were all looking at tuesday of this next week, for example, and president obamas got a world of troubles. I was just looking at a harvard poll today. Hes now losing the young people. The White Millennials so a racist divide but hes dropped down to under 50 in the millennials who dont think hes taking care of them with education costs 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 mou 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 and 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 theory, the unforeseen will occur and something might 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 right and then well get the white house back. Republicans are saying weve got to learn some lessons from the past and weve got to get our act together. A very prominent republican strategist who is no longer as active as he once was, but im telling you he was in the thick of it all. I asked him recently, whats your best outcome. He said Mitch Mcconnell gets beat. We still win the senate because they think some of the leadership in the Republican Party has to be set aside. So the next two years are going to be not great for the country necessarily but its going to be rock n roll in the political arena. So you dont foresee any chance of obama trying to salvage some legacy domestically . Its tough. Youve got two years left. They know that. You really dont have the full two years. Youve got 16 months maybe. You run out the clock. Theyre already read the papers today that kerry and hagel are not happy with how they cant fit in there. You know, hes getting seems to me when hes talking about the ebola quarantine, he seems angrier than hes been in some time. This is not unusual for a president in the seconds term. You may remember george bush 43 in his second term hank paulsen was trying to hold the economy together and the president went to him at one point and said id like to help you but id 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 the 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, philfilibuster proof fo some time. In 2010, he wins 63 seats. We seem to have been in this perpetual trenches warfare where the big idea where the country was so changed, some change did occur, it was too much change too quickly. Ultimately from six years in as we go into the last two years, where do you fall in the sense of do you think this was a Republican Opposition from the beginning . Does the president have poor relations with congress . Do you think fleas a defining thing that has stuck to obama during his term so far. Look, 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 strongest candidate in my judgment. He has all kinds of other qualities but as a president ial when we were in the depths of the recession he didnt have a lot to say how he was going to handle it. But this president had no manager year experience. He had not run anything before. He had been a state senator and Community Organizer and he had been somebody who had been extraordinarily successful in getting elected to the senate. And hes made clear on the last six years hes not crazy about the political process. If you read the accounts of when he lost the debate to George Romney the first time, to mitt romney the first time in denver, you go back and look at the preps he said at one point to the his team that was preparing he said you know, guys, this is not who i am. Thats what president s have to be. I thought it was symbolic to be. I thought it was symbolic that he wanted to reach out to congress and he took the people he wanted to talk to. Take him to the white house. No one wants a president to fail, republican or democrat. Thats not good for the country. When there is blood in the water, everything is unleashed. The next two years depends on what happens. It will depend on all of us. I said this in public before and i will say it again, i didnt think that the tea party was good for the country. They were too narrowly cast and they were not interested in any cameras, but as a long time political reporter, i was impressed by the organizational skills. They got angry and organized and stayed on message and stayed in the fight. They will not have a great year. They had more of these citizen kinds of movements chlt. Is there a story that haunts you to this day . Its interesting. I have been asked about the most memable 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 is a project going out in malawi, one of the poorest continents. I see the good will of the women is what it is. They know how remarkable it is. They love doing the kind of thing that we grew up in the midwest. She saw all of these and they didnt have anything to do with the end of the season and didnt have preservation. She went back and shipped over and sold property and left them and shipped over containers of canning equipment and organized them and went to africa and i went back with her. This is very, very difficult. I have been all over africa, about as poor as it gets. She organized a cooperative of these women and some of them were great in the field and they were against the degradation of who they were with the aids that infected their country and the corruption at the top. Those were the stories that haunt me. The rest of us, the west were believe moving with Silicon Valley and all the other changes in our lives. So many people in the world who were just stuck in place. They have real skills and intuition. If you turned africa over to the women, men dont have leadership. They will run the continent. We need a hell of a lot better off. Sure. [ applause ] i bring it up and its important. This point should be made. Its difficult to cover. There is not a lot of appetite in the United States. We have our own problems and our own things that dont depress us more. There is a challenge of being a journalist who get that out into the mainstream. It is and the ebola crisis is a perfect example. The real ebola crisis is not in this country. We have to have systems to deal with it. I am on the board of the mayo clinic and its in a complete overhaul of what they will be doing about infectious diseases. That may never be used. In west africa, you have brave doctors going in and they are trying to contain it in some fashion in these remote villages. Thats the tough issue. Its hard for americans to have compassion fatigue. I understand that. We are in the third war and spent coach in iraq and afghanistan, and it was profitable. Its unending. The idea that they have an obligation to the world and they are worried about their children and if you will permit me this, the American Dream is still there. We probably have to reconstitute it. My parents were perfect examples. And a grander life. They had a wonderful life the two of them. They could not have every generation live better than the last generation. We are hitting the ceiling. How many houses can you have . Do you have the working class job my dad had . We have to rethink the American Dream. It ought to be about other kinds of opportunities and how we come and what the government and other social agencies that are nongovernmental can do for you. I take 15 successes to do that. One of my grand hopes they have it under way. I would reconstitute it in america. Make it a public and private enterprise. I create six Public Service academies across the countries. Both governmental and private sector. Most graduate working in infect us diseases. Whatever. She eats all the small Power Systems around the world. These people come in and get the special training and the Companies Get a tax break and the kids get paid well. They are welltrained to do this kind of thing. It seems to me that younger people gave a reason to care about their country and some hope they would get a skill set. We need a big idea is what i think. As much as anything. I would hope that we were trying to begin a Pilot Program at Arizona State and maybe something that can excite the country again. We dont have many things that are exciting folks right now. Going through the cross tabs. Its good with the brocaw plan. You are running for president. Going through the cross tab, i found interesting and your point, the number one job and the number one issue. And number two is breaking gridlock. Thats the two things that they didnt talk about that much. Do you think you are doing enough covering the income and equality that exists in the United States. And the ongoing poverty occurring at historic levels. No,i dont. We are not going to turn back to happy days where mom stays at home and dad goes off to work. I grew up in that environment. My mother wanted to work and a lot of my friends were quite poor. The mom may have two jobs and there more single mothers out there and the dad doesnt have the job that paid the benefits he got before. A lot of that is economic reality. The disparity between the people at the top in corporations and the working class gets done in the middle is quite extraordinary. Truth in advertising. I get paid a lot of money. I understand that. I like it. Im enough of a working class background that i think there is a huge difference between what im earning and what these wonderful people i work with, the technicians with the editors and others are getting. We opened up the big gaps between the earning and then it becomes the goal to have the house that cost so much money. I cant imagine whats going on in manhattan right now. Real estate has gone nuts. All of our working class people in the building are living further and further and further out. They cant afford anything in the city. One apartment is sold. For 97 million. You look at the small apartment and it has 2 million, nothing less. This feeds unrest. Ever more crowded urban america is. More renters going on and we are in a seismic shift, but what expectations are, unemployment is coming down. They are not great jobs. There a lot of service jobs. How we saw that is liability to nail it. Before we open it up to questions, that will be my last question. Who is the deceased individual that you interviewed throughout history that you found the least impressive. There a lot of them. When columbia was trying to change from being a cartel to a new democracy, they go down there and opened with the question of the guy and he went blank. He couldnt even talk for about 40 seconds. I looked at this Public Relations guy and we spent a lot of money to come down and interview this guy. There were people that tim and i used to talk about. He would show up and he was slick and a courtroom performer. Your dad nailed it. He started talking about support and didnt have a clue about what was going on. The problem was interviewing now. Most of these people have been so wired in a way and preprogrammed that you dont get the spontaneity about them. You dont get the stuff out of them. Are we on or off the record . I just want to tell the joe biden story. I interviewed joe biden who i thought he was a great legislator. He was in the thick of things in the senate and he cared about it passionately. I was at a critical time in the iraq war. There were a lot of claims coming out of the pentagon. And they were going to take care of their own country and security. I was watching these people coming in and joining the iraqi army. How do we know who they are and how they are coming from. We are counting on the fellow warriors to tell us. Not a good vetting system. Joe was running the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time. I went to interview him and he had the team evaluating how the Training Program was going. They didnt think it was very well. I came to interview him. He was right on top of his topic. This was the best part of journalism. Joe turned to me as only joe could and said how are you doing with menopause . That comes out of the question i did not expect. I said well, like everybody else. He said god, i was blindsided by this stuff. I got my camera crew there and all my producers there. Joe has been around for a while and thinking about getting a federal study. Dont go there. Its in every womans magazine and you dont have to do that. That was the joe moment. It was not that he was unprepared and not that it would be out of his mind. There lots of people who are around. Tell me about putin. Putin i interviewed twice. Your mother was at the dinner that i gave to them and dad was there as well. They went right after him. A wonderful article. Mother was here right now. God bless her. We had a big dinner and he never cracked a smile. The first time i interviewed him, same thing. I didnt look into his eyes and see the soul of a christian. I saw a russian naturalist. He was very tough and very determined. You must remember he was there for most of the time he was growing up. He was a guy who carried out and worked for people who had more standing than he did. You get different kinds. The most remarkable man under the most remarkable circumstances was nelson mandela. I was with him 24 hours after and for 25 years he was in prison. As if he just got back from a trip to zurich representing his country. He was in the back yard and he was charming. He was completely versed in the western media and who we were and what we were interested in. I had a treasured picture of them laughing as we were sitting there. He never met me before, but i had a sound man with a boom mike with a big fuzzy thing cut down. I said mr. Mandela, this is not a weapon, its a microphone. He said im glad to hear that. I thought it was a shotgun. We broke up in laughter and that was one of the moments we lived for. My father and huh a distributor that brought this up when you mentioned them. No socks for a politician. What does that mean . Real quickly. What does that mean . We had a lot of short hand when we talked about it. There was a candidate running and i cant get too close to the identification of it. A democrat running in the midwest. Tim said how is he going to do . A guy had a place in the east as well. He had gotten infatuated with the eastern seaboard cell where he spends a lot of time. He doesnt wear socks. He cant do that. For tim and me and the candidate didnt have a clue. The distributor for the sandidate. Lets open it up to the audience. The wonderful eulogy for bradley at the Washington National cathedr cathedral. I wondered and it was great for the cathedral. You are in a temple of free teach. If you had another couple of anecdotes of ben and what it was like to be with him t resembled being with james bond. We would love to hear those. A question from shelby there, any more anecdotes about bradley . You eulogized him yesterday. You couldnt do it in church. And i talked about it. I left out one of them about the whole business of profanity. I really had kind of figured out how to do it. I skipped over and its just as well. Its a couple of stories. I said he had his personal system that involved various digits in his hand he would use to express himself to people when they didnt agree with him. A british friend of mine didnt know him. They came to me and said i have been reading all of these and i said the profanity overstated. I said impossible. Impossible. I think it grew out of the car experience. They talked about what it was like to be on it with kids from the farm and the inner city and all these places. I remember the story vividly, he was on the phillip. They were in the thick of it in midway. They had a kid onshore. He was down out there by himself. They had no idea who he was. They pulled him out night time and he said my god, i was about 53 and couldnt have weighed more than 120 pounds and from a small town in texas. He was the link. The guy who put himself way out front so we could hit the target and it made a huge impression on him. On the way home, ben said, they all gathered to talk about what they wanted to do when they got back. He was hearing aspirations and dreams he never heard before. I think it was a real education. One of my favorite social stories about them was now i have another one out there. They go to war and go to paris and news week and conducts the greatest investigation journalistic investigation and the greatest political scandal in history. And everybody loved him. I have been in journalism and never have known reporters the way thigh swooned. It was important because of how they handled it. It was the second year i was in washington. I was invited to a party. I got there late and i walked in and meredith said do you have an idea of who you are seated next to . Its the writer who just had a sex change operation. Its now miss jan morris. I vagarie read about it. Could not have been more charming. She said i have been watching you cover watergate. How has that affected you . I said, not thinking, it changed my life. Now, im just im red in the face and ben over here is bailing me out. Thats who he was. He was always joyful and wood ward and i have talked about it a lot. We came from the same protestant guilt. He said ben never ever looked back. If they made a mistake, they said clean it up and we go on. Instead of anguishing over it. He said okay, i have to keep going. Thats what they would do. Someone come up to the microphone here. Dont fall down the stairs. Lets do this and we will come right back. Sure. Since you retired, there have been changes. The Celebrity News personalities and much more controversial loud personalities. Im curious about the new personalities and the tv shows you watched to get the news now. You have a cable news machine and a lot more opinion on the news and not what they used to be. What do you watch . I surprised people. I think we have so many more choices now than we ever had, representing so many points of view. You cant be a couch potato anymore. You have to be aggressive about what you watch and test it for the credibility. Is it good for the country . I think Free Expression is good for the country. At the same time i think there is a lot of mischief and a lot of deliberate destructiveness that goes on out there. My recommendation is to the audiences to create a virtual newspaper. I get up in the morning and i have a friend who runs the Financial Times and i get to see the great newspaper and i run the traps and all the standard american establishment papers and read the post and the wall street journal. We have a very good website attached to think tanks and one kind or another. I love the idea that we can read the dallas times. I want to see what i can get it from. I have to be proactive about it. I cant take what comes at me. We have a ranch and a wonderful couple working for us and they are rarching and isolated family in a rural area and they are quite a political. About twice a week, they come across the bridge and say to me, you are not going to believe what i read on the internet. The answer is always the same. Youre right. Im not going to believe it. You have to have that attitude a little more. Its very important. In this day and age, everyone thinks its easier to deliver you the product. Over here. Where are we . Mr. Brocaw, i enjoy the time here this evening and you may not remember, but i had sent you pictures previously when you were in town for the tenth anniversary of the fall of the wall. Pictures of you in berlin and i was assigned there until may of 1992. I brought you additional photographs attesting to the fact that you were there and also for the 20th anniversary, i published a book and its from the perspective of what the western allies played which really hasnt been documented in many ways. I would be honored if you would accept this for me and i enjoyed the fact that you came here this evening and i had a chance this time to see you. Thank you very much for your service. God bless. A young Army Intelligence officer in berlin and wrote a book about the role the western allies had in the fall of the wall that is too often overlooked. What do you think about that . It was brought on by the people in the gdr. What was overlook side what happened the week before. There were hundreds of thousands of people demanding change. What happened with them in the soviet union, it spread quickly. I give the generational change that were willing to push back. I interviewed a number of key people that was a photographer who was getting out video to the west to say heres where we are and this is whats going on and we need your help. It really was a revolt that came from the bottom up. That News Conference, for example, the east german press that was very aggressive that afternoon. They were pushing him hard on policies that are about to press him and have the freedom to travel or not. When he made the announcement in the room, it was stunning. Everybody nodded off and he was droning off for an hour and he pulls this piece of paper out and reads it. It seemed to us that he was saying you can come and go through any entrance. It turns out that they did have all kinds of stipulations on it and they honestly thought in their bewildered way of returning to their own lives. They drove out to the compound where the members all lived. They had all gone to sleep. Here their world was klcrumblin around them. There is a good book out where they trained at oxford by the collapse. Its a wonderful new book because they give great credit for how they cover the story. They had an unbelievable detail of behind the scenes. Its quite riveting and takes you all the way through it. We will be doing things at harvard this fall. Right there . Yes, sir. How do you account for the news medias failure to challenge the basis for the invasion of iraq. How do you counter for the news medias failure challenge for the basis of iraq, something that got a lot of attention paid to it. There is the bill moyers documentary. Thats the question that has been around for a while. My personal judgment, i was in there a lot beforehand. I didnt know about weapons of mass destruction. No one did. The un couldnt figure out whether they had them or didnt have them. Could they have been hidden . All these bunkers all over the country. What i did think was and i said this on the air, we will be successful militarily in the shortterm, but the country will begin to break up into the tribal thiefdoms. It will be a lot harder to hold it together than we do. 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 hold up a vile and talked about it. When the drum beats of war start and especially after 9 11, there was an emotional tide and the only person who had great credibility was we did put them on the air and had them talk about it a lot. You were not in the congress. A lot of people were voting for it at that time. There was so much that was unknowable. It was six or seven months later, i was over there and he thought they had gotten so many computer print outs they thought they were going to find the weapons of mass destruction. He said they were 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. I think the secret Bank Accounts all over zurich now with the money they got. And the Mushroom Cloud we heard a lot about. There was never a compelling reason for us to do it now versus wait. We were not threatening the United States. There was no impetus to do it immediately. He was in a box. We had him in a box. If you saddam was in a box. At the time rumsfeld will say we couldnt take a chance. He was getting closer and closer. Thats now the revised view of it. Now he is saying intelligence when colin powell he thought he was going to get another. They had him in their cross hairs. Two things became clear to me. The country is a lot more broken than they thought. It would be hard when they took control to make it work again. The second thing was there was a complete misinterpretation about the sunnis and shiites and how they would fight each other. The Larger Population and went out to a university. This was a month before the war began. We had 1,000 kids who were sending the american culture. They were all by john denver and it was graduation day. We were having a wonderful time together. At the end i said to this young man, what are you going to do now that you graduated . He said i will join jihad and fight the United States. I said im going to play. Then i went down to a suit. It was my favorite in baghdad. It maked through a part of the city. If you wanted to wind up for the window, you could find one there. They are all really tough shiites. They walked in and its about our country. I came back and our exchanges with members of the administration and trying to figure out what was going on. This is what i have been hearing. People who had been assigned to get in there immediately after they got to baghdad and they had issued a paper about the task of trying to put it back together again, but there was such division between the state department that there was a meet the press clip and he asked the question, what if we are received not as liberators, but as occupiers. They said thats not going to happen. That was sort of the response of not only the administration, but those who backed the war on the democratic side as well. The media did put that out there and in retrospect could have been covered more thoroughly. Everything in mind sight is 2020. That mind set was out there. The last one here . In some circles, there is a belief that the berlin wall came down because of ronald reagan. Others dont know that. Whats your attitude . It came down because of ronald reagan. They were all players. They all kept the pressure on. I think the enduring legacy will be that he came in a real hawk about how to take down the soviet union. They were seeing what was going on. One was nancy, by the way. That was what it was all about. It was clear they come around. Its the one and you couldnt have both. That was the best guy to be dealing with. We never dealt with anybody like that before. I do think that reagan and the pope had a role in all of this. They were on the other side as well doing smart things. Its a perfect example and your dad and i were there when the president there was and there when the pope was there. There is its great. When the pope was there, what the pope was doing was sending messages through in poland to we are not going to have them in the streets. One quick story that some of you may remember, not yours, but the polish president who just died. Help me out with this. And i had interviewed him and i had an interview with him. Who is the history man here . Anyhow, hes a man who kept the lid on things and he came into the room. He was a stately career military guy and came from a distinguished family with shaded glasses. I had a producer with me. I had a sense of humor. They said to me, i have been interviewed by Walter Cronkite and i have been interviewed by Barbara Walters and the editor of the new york times. Now im about to be interviewed by the most important american journalist of all. I just interviewed gorbichev. Mr. Tom brocaw. Before i could respond, they said no wonder this guy is in so much trouble. Thats great. One last to end the night on. You have been a wonderful audience. We are going to get this flight out of here on time. Real quickly. One reason for optimism for the future of the United States. The biggest reason for pessimism that keeps you up at night. The big reason for optimism. People were desperate to come here and bring them here at a hospital in new york. They were working up and down the corridors and have come here from everywhere. From china and russia and south america. This is where they can exercise the skills they developed. Thats a snapshot of how we are constantly renewing this American Dream. We need to figure out how we are going to deal with immigration and how we can keep that going on. The reason is the withdrawal from taking an active role in their own destiny. I think there is something going on. I cant cotify completely, but i think there is such a rejection of washington that that is important to us. Seattle is an urban nation. They have their own culture and economy and trade policies with the specific rim. The political system works quite well. Thats recharming them. Find new ways to do things. Dont be afraid. Los angeles is an urban nation. South america is an urban nation. Texas is an energy of urban nation with what they have going. Move across the country and its true in all of the areas getting larger every year. Atlanta and miami up the earn seaboard. Not quite as true yet and with the constant are you newall. These were seismic shifts that will have consequences. Tom bra cocaw, Living Legend. Here are the featured programs you will find this Holiday Weekend on the cspan networks. Saturday night the Supreme Court justice at princeton university. The fact checker author glen desler from 2014 awards. On cspan 2 at 10 00 on book tvs afterwards and the long standing battle of Supreme Court activism and judicial restraint and 10 00 p. M. Eastern, Jonathan Yeardley who retired after 33 years with the Washington Post and on American History tv on cspan 3 saturday at 6 00 eastern. Historians and authors discuss president lincolns 1864 reelection campaign. Sunday at 4 00, a 1965 film that chronicles the infantry decision. Find our schedule at cspan. Org and let us know what you think about the programs you are watching. Call us email us on commends at cspan. Org or send us a tweet. Like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. Join us for lectures in history from henry fort publications on jews. He describes antijewish articles published in a newspaper by the noted car maker and industrialist tonight at 8 00 and midnight here on cspan 3s American History tv. Throughout 2014, they feature the history of communities with the help of our local partners. Heres a look at one of the cities