Up next former Washington Post executive editor ben bradlee appeared on booknotes in 1975 to workaround his journalism career. Mr. Bradlee died this past week at the age of 93. This program is about an hour. Cspan ben bradlee, one of the last things you tell us in your book is that you gave an anonymous gift to harvard and nothings happened. Guest well, i didnt want to have any publicity about it while i was still editor of the post. I thought that would be inappropriate. And so i yeah, i tried to thank the two influences in my life; one was kennedy and one was phil graham and the Washington Post. So i thought giving something to the Kennedy School, endowing a chair, would be appropriate, and i did and theyve been looking ever since. Cspan why has it taken so long . Guest i dont know. Cspan when you. Guest theyll find somebody. Cspan when you give an endowment to a school like the Kennedy School at harvard, how does it work . Guest well, you have first thing, you have absolutely no say
This evening. Im welcoming you under our roof here at historic Decatur House, which is the home of the White House Historical association. We are honored to occupy this property that is owned this evening, im welcoming you under a written historic Decatur House which is the home of the White House Historical association. We are honored to occupy this poverty that is owned by chris for preservation, one of our partners and our work. It is terrific to have them here. We have three members of our board of directors were here this evening, martha kumar is here. Ive seen martha. And needed mcbride will be here shortly, if shes not here already. And david varia is on our board here, over on the right. Its an honor to have all of you here, as well as several members of our National Council on white house history, which we are always grateful to have. Well, this evening it is my honor and privilege to introduce a really terrific friend of mine and a friend of the White House Historical associa
A private individual rather than a public figure. Its about an hour. Nixon had written a very scathing memorandum criticizing the administrations handling of that transition, and he criticized it as pathetically inadequate; that he thought the administration was not supporting Boris Yeltsin enough financially. And he had written this memorandum, and it had leaked and it exploded on the front page of the New York Times. So president bush was going to be forced to answer nixons criticism at nixons conference so nixon was caught in the maelstrom of all these highly dramatic events, and i accompanied him to washington for that conference. And nixon hosted a Different Group of people at his head table for each panel discussion, and i was asked to join his head table during zbigniew brzezinksis panel discussion. And i sat to the right of president nixon, and to the right of me was james schlesinger. And i noticed that there was a camera above us that was trained on brzezinksi, and brzezinksi
I am wondering myself what we do as writers to meet that. That is another challenge. [laughter] one, i think you are right and i think the question had a lot of information in it. We have all become writers and we have been pushed into it by communication and we are all publishers to a large degree and to mitigate largely through text and increasingly through video and instagram but still videos. The only actual thought i have, i dont have a direct answer but there is another thought that contributes to the world you are talking about and that is what is the role and responsibility of the delineation of the writer versus the person previously known as the reader . There has been and bird collaboration and conversation that was never the case before. You wrote it like you thought it and you wrote it and you wrote it and then you would shift like a product. That was that it may be people talk about it and you dont know what they said. You dont know how many people said it and you dont kn