Please silence your cell phones, and if you have or just to let you know, theres no recording, no photos allowed during our programs. And thanks. However, you will get a chance to see all this, because cspan is here tonight taping, so brush your hair, straighten your collars, you may be on tv very soon. [laughter] sally quinn is a longtime Washington Post journalist, columnist, Television Commentator and is one of the cap untils renowned social hostesses. Shes also the founder of on faith from the Washington Post. She writes for various publications and has authored several books including the party a guide to adventurous entertaining, happy endings and were going to make you a star about her experience as the first female Network Anchor in the u. S. Sally is in conversation with two good friends who are also authors, elsa walsh is the author of divided lives the public and private struggles of three women. Shes been a staff writer at the new yorker and a reporter for the Washington Post where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in the Investigative Journalism category. Bob woodward is an associate editor of the Washington Post where hes worked since 1971. He shared in two Pulitzer Prizes, first in 1973 for the coverage of the watergate scandal with carl bernstein, and in 2002 as the lead reporter for coverage of the 9 11 terrorist attacks. Hes authored or excuse me. He has authored or coauthored 18 books over the years with his most recent one being the last of the president s men. So please join me in a warm welcome for sally quinn, bob woodward and elsa walsh and enjoy the program. [applause] well, i get to start. I think in the spirit of full disclosure, western announce that you we should announce that you and i are married [laughter] right. And have been married a long time. In fact, sally introduced us. [laughter] it was right before the civil war. [laughter] speak for yourself. Yeah, speak for myself. It was 1981. And it was love at first sight, literally. Love at first sight. Yeah, you witnessed that. I saw it. I saw bob go, ah [laughter] that was a long time ago. You used to describe it as lust at first sight. [laughter] and were going to talk to sally about her book, finding magic, which i must confess, a book i love because its honest, its about the things in life that matter; your career, your spouse, your child in your case or your children, and your friends. So elsas going to lead the questioning, and ill interrupt. Yeah. [laughter] we were debating is that the way it usually goes . Yes, exactly. [laughter] so if he interrupts too many times, im going to tap him over here on the, on the arm. So its an honor to be here to talk to you about this book. I love it too. Thank you. Very fast read for those of you who havent read it. And it looks kind of at your whole life. And i wanted to start with something you wrote in the book that struck me. And you write, my childhood experience with magic planted the seed that grew into the faith i have today. Do you want to talk about that . Well, i am from the deep south, and i was born in savannah, georgia, and spent all of my summers in statesboro which is about 60 miles outside of savannah. And as you know, savannah is midnight in the garden of good and evil, and my parents, my family, they were scottish presbyterians. And my aunt ruth played the organ in the Presbyterian Church on sundays. But everyone in the family, there were eight or nine kids in the family, there was also another religion or faith or set of beliefs, whatever you want to call them, which were the occult. And so my aunt and all of the family believed in the scottish stones and time travel and psychic phenomena and ghosts and astrology and tear row cards and voodoo tarot cards and voodoo. So i had these two separate religions. I mean, i had my little christian religion, and i believed in god and jesus, and i prayed every night. But i also had this other belief, set of beliefs which i later came to learn even when i was finally finishing the book that were just as legitimate as any other religion. Because i think all religion is magic in the end. And so i watched them, i watched all of this happening in a house where there were ghosts. When somebody in the family died, the ghosts would rattle chains up and down. This was a great big, huge, white antebellum southern mansion with a plantation house, and the ghosts would drag chains up and down the hallway of the second floor, and everybody would cower. And then youd go upstairs the next morning, and thered be scratches on the floor. [laughter] and my aunt ruth had a heart condition. She had a dream one night about her mother, and her mother came to her and said, dont worry, youre going to be fine. And she said to her mother, how will i know that youre telling me the truth . And her mother said, well, ill leave something as evidence for you. And she got up the next morning and went into the parlor, and there on the divan was her mothers shawl that she had been buried in. [laughter] now, these are all, this is all family lore. But you believed it. Of course. Yes, okay. Of course. I mean, this is, you know, my aunt maggie so, and they were all psychic. My grandmother, my aunt ruth, my mother, my her sister, my sister, weve all had some psychic ability all of our lives. And my aunt, i mean, i tell the story of my aunt maggie who lived in florida, and she woke up one night to screaming, and she said to her husband, theres been a terrible plane crash in the swamp. They called the authorities they were living in fort lauderdale, and they called the authorities and said theres a plane that went down and we dont know where it is, and my aunt told them where it was, and they were able to rescue some of the people. So this is, so these are stories ive grown up with. And then id had my own i had my own experience. Ive had a number of experiences. But once i went to smith college, and i was in my dormitory one afternoon when i had this horrible feeling about my mother. I just knew something terrible was happening. I ran down the hall, there were no cell phones in those days, and there was one phone. I went to the phone, and i started calling. My father was a general in the army, and he lived we lived at fort myer, virginia. So we had orderlies who were always at the house constantly. And i called, and there was no answer. And i called and i called and i called, and no one answered, no one answered. And i just wouldnt let the phone go. It rang 50, 100 times. And finally somebody answered, and it was one of the orderlies, and i said i was frantic. I said whats happened . Is my mother all right. And he said, well, no, shes not, actually. And i said, well, whats happened . He said, well, theres been an incident. And he then i could hear some other person come in the room, and they said, oh, jesus. He said ill put your mother on. My mother got on, and she was crying so she on the cocouldnt even speak so she couldnt even speak. What had happened was she had been in the bathtub, and a g. I. Who had been living in the barracks had come over and entered the house. I dont know how he got past the orderlies. They must have stepped out. Gone into the bathroom, and he went in to steal some things which he had done several times before from my fathers dresser, saw my mother in the tub, got scared, took his jacket and put it over her head and pushed it under the water and was drowning her. And she was literally about to drown when the phone started ringing. And it rang and rang and rang and rang and rang and rang, and it didnt stop. And it kept ringing and ringing, and finally he got panicked because he thought somebody would hear it and answer the phone, so he let her go and ran out of the house. And she was able to come up so you were always a believer yeah. Of magic or the mystical. Right, exactly. I mean, so this happened. They found the guy. He was sentenced to seven years, etc. So, i mean, so this has always been part of my life, this magic. And, i mean, the book has gotten some attention because i talked about voodoo, because i learned how to do voodoo in statesboro, georgia, too. And i dont know whether i believed in it or not, but somewhere along the line when i was in my 20s, i decided to put hexes on people, and i did it three times. [laughter] i didnt know what i was doing, and i just wanted them to feel uncomfortable or the pain i felt because they had hurt me or something. Unfortunately, they all died. [laughter] i know, everybody always laughs. [laughter] but just to be clear, they didnt i mean, they didnt die right away. Well, some of them did. [laughter] everyone eventually dies. Well, no, i mean, one of them died a week later, then one of them one of them got fired right away and lost his job and then died. And then the other one died shortly after. But i didnt believe that i was responsible for this, and ben was very funny about it because he thought the whole thing was nonsense and it was completely a joke. But there was this little thing in me that said, god, you know, did i really to this . And my brother, who was who got his ph. D. In religion at the university of chicago and studied under one of the great religion scholars in the country, and he studied mysticism, and then he became a lawyer. And he said you dont want to do this anymore, believe me. You have got to cut this out, because theres this law of threephiladelphia which is whatever of threefold which is whatever bad energy you put out, you get it back threefold. After the third time i got so freaked out that i just stop doing it. That was 35 years ago, and i have never done it again. And ive always been really nice to you. [laughter] i just want to say ben thought it was ridiculous, but whenever he got pissed off at somebody, hed say, go get em, sal. And i just want to say one more thing. That all of my friends are skeptical about this. In fact, nobody believes in this. And i dont either really. But i cant tell you how many skeptical friends i have in the last year who have begged me to put a hex on donald trump. [laughter] im not doing it. [applause] im not swore it off 35 years ago. Not going to happen. You asked me about magic. That was a long answer. So one of the themes in your book is there is a lot of anger at god. And that anger begins at an unusually young age, at the age of 4. And maybe its because your father was in the military, world war ii, south korean war. You saw and had an interaction with a lot of death. And i wonderedded if you could describe why this anger at such a young age and why it made you turn from believing in a god. Well, as i said, my father was in the military. He was in germany during world war ii, and he liberated dachau, and he had a Staff Photographer take photographs of all these piles of dead bodies and emaciated people. He made a scrapbook which is now at the holocaust museum. And hid it. And i found it when i was 4. After hed just come back. And i, i went to him and i said, daddy, whats this . Because we didnt have television in those days, and he explained about the nazis and what theyd done. And i said, daddy, did god know about this . And he said, yes, he did. I said, well, how could he have let this happen . He said, god works in mysterious ways, and we just dont know. I was devastated. I cried all night long because all i could think about were these young, these little jewish children in the camps praying for their safety and protection and their parents praying, and i was praying to the same god, and look what happened to them. And it became clear to me that there was no such thing as god. So i became an atheist at the age of 4, although i didnt know what that meant, and i certainly never told anybody that i didnt believe in god. But i stopped saying my prayers. I learned what the word atheist meant when i was 13. But then my father and i was an atheist when i started the web site 11 years ago at the Washington Post. And i was very angry at god. And then my father was stationed in korea, and i got very sick when he left. They never found out what was wrong with me, and they think it was probably psychosomatic, but i was so terrify my father was going to get killed. I was 10, and he was on the front lines, and he was always in the stars and stripes every day. He was buffalo bill, and the buffaloes were taking on the north koreans. And so i was in tokyo general hospital, and they were bringing in all the Wounded Soldiers from korea, these kids, 17, 18, 19 years old. And they wouldnt allow us to see our parents because they thought it was disruptive because they didnt have enough staff to take care of the kids and deal with the Wounded Soldiers. Take them somewhere to the back of the plane but one of the most dramatic experiences that i have been through so it wasnt until jon meacham who was editor of newsweek and the various wellknown Pulitzer Prizewinning writer and also a scholar ended deeply profoundly Christian Person and we have this lunch before he started the web site. They said you are not an atheist and i said yes i am and said no you were not because atheists is too negative of the word and you are not a negative person. It means that you deny the existence of god and you cant deny the existence because you dont know. The word agnostic has never meant anything to me because i think it means we dont know and where all agnostic. He doesnt know any more than i do and my favorite Bumper Sticker is you dont know when i dont either and i think thats true. But john did say to me look if you are going to be an atheist you need to go out and learn something about religion because you know nothing about religion. Which i did and i read them and something was percolating inside me. He did say to me also how can you be angry at god if you dont believe in god and i thought oh an interesting question. Then i had this idea to start a web site. Lets stop here for a moment. You started the web site at around the same time that your husband ben bradlee, the great editor of the Washington Post, someone we all of you, began to fail and you did what many journalists often do. You made a journalistic exploration of something that was maybe more personal than you ever really were willing to admit. Lets talk about that but lets talk a little bit more about this first. I will just say that ben developed dementia and died in Something Like three years but he had been diagnosed eight years before eight, nine, 10, 11. It was the year that he was diagnosed that i started the web site and i had all of this right reading that ive been doing and i thought we werent covering religion because i thought it was such an important story from not only a political point of view but also Foreign Policy. I went to don graham and suggested i do a religion web site. He said why not you start a religion web site. This was in the dark ages when you could do anything on the web web. It wasnt anywhere near the post and i said i dont know anything about the internet and i dont know anything about religion and he said well nobodys perfect. [laughter] i got jon meacham to be my comoderator and shortly after that i started a trip around the world and one of the things that john and i, i wanted to do a panel so i knew for religious people. One of them was martin marty who was a teacher of my brothers, that dean at the university of chicago and i knew Karen Armstrong who was a scholar and Elaine Pagels and desmond tutu. I called them up and they said would you be on a panel. Nobody would turn it down. That your friend then didnt understand what your inch or so was. Been really couldnt understand. He was appalled. Nobody understood how it was that i could start a religion web site and shortly after that i took a trip around the world. It was a three week trip and we went to 13 countries. It was really important for me to do that because i saw it firsthand all of these different religions and all of these different things. What was obviously the viewpoint percolating in me was the beginning spirituality that was coming. I was looking for meaning to my life and i havent articulated it. I had read victor frankels book a mans search for which is one of your favorite books and that had a powerful impact on me particularly with my history with the nazis in the holocaust. But it just seemed to me that i was turning my wheels. I thought i got so involved in religion and then became more involved in spirituality and i began to feel more that i was looking for something more than than and i stopped calling myself an atheist at some point but i still wouldnt know what to call myself. I was yearning for something. The old cliche man and woman comes to god. , that . Its a known and you lay it out in the book the relationship you had with ben and the love for both of your lives and it went on and on and on for decades. Is there some kind of okay im going to. Thats a great question bob. We would like you to lie down on the couch. I didnt think of it that way. The odd thing was once that ben was diagnosed we never discussed it again and i kept looking at all these tv ads where the older couple goes into the doctor and 11 of them gets diagnosed and they hold hands and they start making plans for the future and all that. That didnt happen with us. He was the master of denial. He was the king of denial so we just didnt talk about it and we just went on as though nothing had happened. I could see that i was losing him and i needed something to fill that void. And i wouldnt call myself a seeker but i did have these moments of transcendence and i started a video interview thing called divine impulse and i interviewed people and i always ask them at the end what gives your life meaning . What is a sense of the divine . I dont know where i came up with that because its not anything i ever asked myself and in fact one night he was sitting with barry miller added dinner party and he turned to me and said do you have faith . My web site was called on faith and i didnt know how to answer because i hadnt thought about it myself. I really did have to start thinking about it and there were moments in my life when i just knew that something, there were something bigger than i was. I didnt believe in god but i did leave in a creator. I couldnt get my mind around the idea that of that first there was nothing and then there was something. And so i began to accept that there was something bigger than i was. As ben began failing i began to spend more time with them and the last two years of his life i literally became his caretaker. I never hired a caretaker. We had a housekeeper who helps me out and he was sundown in which is you get up in the middle of the night and you dont know where you are and you know finally he couldnt take a shower or change, and i had to change his his closing getting dressed and undressed and teach them how to brush his teeth every night and every morning. I slept with him every night until he died. He would get up and Wander Around and he would get lost and he would have blackouts and psychotic episodes where he would destroy furniture in the house. It was quite scary but oddly and i know this sounds strange that this is probably the most spiritual time in my entire life life. I dont think ive ever had the feeling because i felt truly needed and wanted and fulfilled. Then was this really macho guy and he didnt like being pushed around. He didnt like me telling them what to do and it was sort of a joke among our friends and they would say then you are the most henpecked man in washington and he would go crazy. But he let go and allowed me to take care of him and allowed me to love him and the way that i wanted to love him and he kept saying to me thank you you couldnt get enough of it td you so much. Yeah, yeah. He loved me always and he always needed me and wanted me but not in that way that i felt like this is what the meaning of life is. This is what is giving my life meaning. My son quan, our son quan my only child was born with a heart defect and had heart surgery when he was three months old and was severely learning disabled at a young age. And so i had to take a leave of absence from the posts post for almost 16 years to take care of quan because we were living at Childrens Hospital for most of that time. Again you know somebody once said to me were you resentful and i said no, i wasnt. I was wistful. I kept thinking what is the career that i could have had but to me taking care of quan was the most important thing i could do. In that and it became clear to me when i was writing this book and i was asked to write a the book about how an atheist started a religion web site but it was two years before ben died and id didnt have time to write and i didnt have anything in me to write. All of my energy was going toward taking care of them but it was two or three weeks after he died. I thought ive got to write this. Ive got to sit down and write this so i did start writing and i started writing about his decline and his death and that was just the most dramatic but also cathartic thing i have ever done. I cried the whole time i was writing it but i needed to get it out. Thats not how i was going to start the book and i thought i will leave it with that. I thought i didnt want to introduce it been like that but if he was so energetic and he was so charismatic. I wanted to introduce him the way he was in the beginning. This is a good place to interrupt to ask you, tell us about how you met done. I met him because i was hired by the editor of the editorial page of the post to be his secretary for which i was totally not qualified. What age were you . I was 27. I couldnt type or file so phil took me in to meet ben and i was completely dazzled. I was just blown away by him. We joked around and talked or Something Like that and i thought he was the most incredibly romantic exciting person i had ever met. The next day phil called me and said you are fired and i said why and he said you were a over qualified for this job. If you took this job we would hate each other in a month. So i didnt see them again until a year and a half or two years later when he called me out of the blue one day and asked me if i would come in for an interview. He wanted to interview me i had been a social secretary and he wanted me to be a Party Reporter. Im like the millennial now. I had 10 jobs report ended up there. A late loomer, failure to launch. As a pr girl for Animal Husbandry exhibition. He were a gogo dancer temporarily. Ui additions. How much would this get . [laughter] you audition to be the girlfriend of the father in the flipper movie. Yes and speaking of Harvey Weinstein. The director said part of my job upping the girlfriend would be that i would have to sleep with him and he actually said that to me in the interview or whatever it was. I said well i will have to ask my father. So i didnt get the call back. [laughter] in fact the day that ben called me i decided to go back for my first love for theater because i failed Everything Else i had done and i tried out for a part for joseph hellers. I got the phonecall from the director and he said congratulations you got the part. I said i would come and see him and we would start rehearsal and all that and then i got this call from ben saying this is ben bradlee and this deep voice in the set i want to talk to love being a Party Reporter and i said okay. [laughter] so i went down to interview ben thinking certainly he wouldnt hire me because we had to spend half the interview i were a little white gloves. How did you prepare for this interview . Well i looked up his astrological sign. I was very big and astrology and i still am. Bob is a taurus and so is quan. So he is a. And i realized virgos dont like artists of any kind and they like people who are straight and honest and dont try to show off so i went in for the washingtonian magazine and i said i did my. Numbered. I cant believe i said that. And anyway we have this wonderful connection. We started sparring with each other and i would be very sassy, very cheeky because he was 20 years older but we got along well and he asked if he could show me something he had written. He said while nobody is perfect. Why that happened. I started working. When you were a really successful. Reporter and in a sense kind of established that its something serious to read about in the Washington Post how did you do that . What was the key to being a great Party Reporter . Some just get stuck in the corner and obviously you werent. Some dont realize being a Party Reporter is the hardest job at the newspaper and Elizabeth Bumiller who i hired the Washington Post to replace me when i went to cbs news to be the first Network Anchorwoman and america which was a disaster by the way, yet another disaster but anyway elizabeth came down and she was at columbia journalism school. All of her friends made fun of her and said oh my gosh how can you be a Party Reporter . She is now the bureau chief of New York Times Washington Bureau bureau. And its a party. She said to me is the best training ive ever had because if youre in washington all the things you cover our official so you are out there with all the senators and congressmen and the white house invade Administration People the diplomats in the military and the journalists and lawyers and lobbyists. What i did every night before i go out and cover a party i would get the guest list to go to the National Desk of reporters in the foreign reporters and id say Henry Kissinger is going to be there and Strom Thurmond or whoever else it might need whatever senator whitehouse person and what do person and what you need to know pics i said we are working on a story about such and such so i would go and get a drink in my hand and i had my little notebook and i would go up and he was standing there were three or four people and they are all drinking and they are all job eating and laughing and talking. So are we going to bomb vietnam . Theyd say well, i dont know but it was the kind of thing where you could never get people to talk the way they did at parties if you made an appointment and went to their office and sat down and interview them. I ended up breaking a lot of stories but ultimately ended up being a political reporter and doing profiles of the powerful people in washington. You develop that as an art form which was never evident in the post until you came along and why did that were . I remember reading those profiles of people in the Nixon Administration for instance and going sally now understand to these people are. It was lively but there was a lot of political and emotional insight in those profiles. First of all i found out what their astrological sign was. [laughter] the first day that i went to work at the Washington Post with my little white gloves then had just started the style section 2 months earlier and it was revolutionary because itd been foreign about women and tea parties and flower arrangements in that kind of thing. Suddenly he he had mixed it up and hired a lot of hippies and they call them hippies in those days, people were smoking pot and he brought in half men but writers. We wanted good writers and one of the people have been a Police Reporter for 30 years on the metro desk and phil was a gnarly old guy who smoked 12 packs a day and his desk was just a mess and he was grumpy. He looks at me and he says let me tell you something kid i just want to give you one bit of advice. When you go out and cover parties cover parties the way you cover a crime. Theres always a victim and theres always a [laughter] and that was really good advice. When you cover parties or when you are interviewing people you think well bob you probably know that other than anybody. You realize youve got to decide who the victim was. Yeah. [laughter] now why was done a great editor . You know my father was a great leader and then was a great leader and they both had the same qualities. You knew my father really well but they both did have the same qualities of incredible confidence and assurance in themselves and what they did. They were both very courageous. They were really strong. They cared about the people who were working for them. They wanted success out of people so they encouraged people who worked for them to do their best work and they complimented them on their best work but they were also really tough. They were very demanding and i think my father was called buffalo bill but there was also, they both had great senses of humor. My father was an irishman and told great jokes all the time and then had a quality that i think was very charming. I never saw ben or my father afraid of anything ever accept ben was afraid that quinn was going to die. That was the only time i saw him afraid and we that quinn was going to die when he was having heart surgery. I fought he was afraid and i held him in my arms but those were the only two times i ever saw either one of them afraid or depressed. There was always this quality of optimism about them and we can do this. We are going to get out there and get the story. We will get it first and we have are going to get it right. A lot of it had to do with ethics. Both of them in their own ways had a strong moral guide, moral compass and i think people sense that about both of them and they both made people want to follow them. Daddy once said about ben you know your husband is a fivestar general in his profession. That was the highest compliment he could ever give anyone. In your book you say washington is a spiritual posts. Washington is all about power and power makes good people do bad things. A power center cannot by its very nature be a spiritual place place. That doesnt mean that the people who live here are moral, dont have values, dont have ethics. It does mean the quest for power in many cases. We have seen it all the time. And we have been disappointed by it over and over again. I was in Marthas Vineyard this summer and there was a young man who had been a navy s. E. A. L. And he was running for congress of massachusetts and he came to speak at a friends house. We all sat around and he was just so idealistic. I want to change the world and i want to do good things and i want to help people and i want to come to washington. He was just overflowing with enthusiasm in optimism and idealism. After he left i turned to this friend of mine is that i wonder how long hes going to remain that idealistic because i think the first thing you learn when you come here is in order to do the things that you need to do you have to make compromises and then i find so often people will make compromises and compromises and then outline that you cross starch to blur. People will go over the line and make compromises that they should never have made and do things that they should never have done. When the most insidious parts of this particularly for politicians or people who have to raise money. Ive had a number friends quit politics because they said the money raising was so horrific they couldnt stand it. Lets talk about john dower and your experience with them. This is again the Harvey Weinstein moment. My fathers closest friend as Barry Goldwater and the goldwaters were very close with my parents. I worked for goldwater in capitol hill when i came to washington as a senior in high school and id love to Barry Goldwater and i loved him all the way through his life. I thought he was one of the most wonderful people ive ever met in a totally decent man. Then came to love him too because he kept it came and lived with my parents. We would have dinner with him a lot, then then i would have dinner with barry and mother and father a lot. I met john tower through my father and very and so we struck up a conversation. He was this tiny little guy and not at all attractive. It turns out i had a major in politics and it turned out he had taught theater at this college in texas. Why do you come up to the hill and will take you to the Senate Dining room for lunch. I was like 19. Senator tower how nice and its so great. I had worked on the hill for barry so i had been on the hill so we made the state for lunch in a day as secretary called and said actually the senators really tied up so we can do lunch. He wants to have dinner. I said, but i didnt know how to say no. I went up to the hill and it was late. It was 6 30 or 7 00. We went to this very posh restaurant and he started trying to hold my hand at dinner. I was married of course and i was frantic. He was really propulsive. A little short pudgy little fingers and squinty eyes. And this drawl and so anyway i ate as fast as i could have nice that ive really got to get home because i have to go to work tomorrow and he walked out of the restaurant and i started to hail a cab and he grabbed my arm and pulled me across the street to this nightclub called the espionage. All the windows were blocked out and the man at the front door had a cape over his eyes. And upstairs was this little parlor and it was so dark you could hardly see. We got in there and he started grabbing me and trying to hold my hand and everything. I grabbed his hand up when he took minas said let me read your palm. Im a really good palm raider by the way. [laughter] so he finished his drink and he said to the waiter he wants another drink. I said i have to go to work. I flagged a cab and the cab pulled over he comes over and he says im going to go with you. We were living in fort myer virginia. Etc. Thats okay. We got a cab and he started to try to rape me. He started pulling my clothes off, pulled my underwear down and i was screaming at the top of my lungs. This poor kathy, this old guy knew what was going on and was frantic. He was going about 100 miles an hour to get me home. He got up to fort myers and he was strong. He didnt look strong but he was strong and had clearly done it before. Anyway we pulled up and he jumped out, the cabdriver jumped out and open the door and i was there trying to pull my clothes on. He was just like an animal and i jumped out and ran inside the house. I think you get scared because he thought the mps were going to come after him. Iran and slammed the door and i would not stairs and i cried all night long. I was so ashamed because i thought i had done something wrong. I didnt tell anybody for a couple of years. I told nobody because i thought i had brought this on myself and i had given him some idea that he could do this. Of course this is a constant story. Look at the Harvey Weinstein story. He feel ashamed because you think its your fault. A couple of years later i told daddy and mary about it and they were upset but not as upset as they should have been. You told me about it when i was up for secretary of defense and i remember, i cant use this because it was you. In my head somebody who will do this and so we did lots of work. Would happen was i did tell a few friends after that and it sort of got around. When tower was nominated as secretary of defense which he really wanted, one day the doorbell rang and two fbi guys showed up at my door and they said we are here to talk about senator tower. We understand you had an incident with senator tower and we want you to tell us about what i said theres no way im going to tell you about it. They said its totally confidential. I said right. Where do you think you got the story . Poor anita hill didnt know any better and she told the fbi and she was up there and her whole life was ruined. I could have been anita hill if i hadnt known any better but as it turned out the one republican who voted against tower was nancy casselbaum. I was told by somebody as she had said i heard sally story. I thought not going to vote for that guy. Anyway thats in the book. Spin i know we were supposed to open this up to questions and we are about that time. Before that happens just one question. When you read a book like this which you traveled hard and long and the road has been prospective. What did you learn about yourself . I think writing a book i started out by writing these little episodes of my life starting with my childhood. They were like red crowns. Each one had some little epiphany or something that eliminated me spiritually although i didnt know that thats what i was doing. In fact they were leading up to where i ended up. In fact i have had to go back after he finished writing the book and write what i had learned from those experiences but didnt know certainly when i was experiencing them but didnt know when i was writing it until i got to the end of the book. Then i began to realize that i was actually, i would not say religious but i was a very spiritual person that i had very strong beliefs and ive i believed as i said in the creator but i believed in transcendence and i believe we all cant be in touch with the divine. I believe that love is the most important thing in our lives and it trumps everything and then my husband was in a study called the grand study. In the grand study they took four classes of guys and they studied them all through their lives. Jack kennedy was in the grand study and every year they won in these questionnaires and they would write about their relationships and their childrens their jobs and their health and all of that. Most of them are dead now. George going into did the study wrote a book about the grand study. In it he said i came to the conclusion after studying these guys for 80 or 90 years and he wasnt that old then that there was only one thing that led to happiness and that was love, full stop. Thats just one of the things i learned about myself that is the most important thing in my life and far more than my career and thats what gives my life meaning. Also i call myself a transcendentalist just because i believe in transcendence and i believe in mystery and i also believe so many people are looking for happiness and they are going about it the wrong way. There are all these books about how to be happy. I think they are going about it the wrong way because i think people look for happiness in order to find meaning when in fact we should look for meaning in our lives which will lead to our being happy. That is ultimately why because im a really happy person. Even though i lost to ben who was the love of my life and the hardest thing ive ever gone through i feel like im a happy person to kiss i had him in my life and i had that love. I certainly would like to have it again but for me that was something that is such a gift that i cant believe that i was so lucky to have and to have quinn and his love. When i talk about magic its that all those little incidents were the things that i did alter my life and moments of binding magic in my life which led to ultimately finding meaning and ultimately what i call magic. Before we go to questions i wanted to ask you to talk about before then died and its the first time you talk about feeling the presence of god with a big g. It was so weird because ben was in perfect health. He was 93 and he was in great shape. He came back to long island and we went to the doctor. He asked them to leave the room with the nurse and he said im being put in hospice care and i said why . There was nothing wrong with him. They said he is dying and i said that you know . They said ive been doing this a long time. We didnt tell them that he was in hospice care. We just told him that the nurses were coming to check on him from time to time. It was only two months and he just kind of drifted away and during that time the last two days during his life i felt i could feel him going and wanting to be with him and i could feel something supporting me. I held his hand the whole time. I never got out of bed except go to the bathroom and i would say to ben, dont die now. Im going to the bathroom. Dont die yet. Bob and elsa were the last people to come and see ben before he drifted into unconsciousness and they came to the bedside and then was there and they walked up and i said then bob and elsa and he said bob woodward. Yea. [laughter] i dont know where that came from. They stayed for a few minutes and then been left and i could see his eyes droop and i said i love you ben and he said me too, babe. He closed his eyes and never regained consciousness again. When i got up for the next two days to go to the bathroom he would go like this. I had his hand up my hand the whole time and he kept his hand like that until i came back. Our anniversary was october the 20th and at this point he had lost consciousness and i said you cant die on our anniversary, you just cant. He waited until the 21st until he died. During that time i felt so embraced and so full of love. I mean i just felt like i was levitating and of course i felt terribly sad. I felt full of grief in some way but i also felt truly loved and i said in the book god was in that room last night and that night when he died. I dont know what i mean by god when i interview people over the years. Everyone has a different idea and i think for me it was gods love but i did feel there was something bigger than i was in that room with the two of us that night that helps me get through it. Questions. We have a few moments. In the newsroom in 1990 he always seemed like he had a great sense of humor. He was really funny. He was very funny. He laughed a lot. We laughed a lot. The week before he died when he took him up to the shower. Can i tell them back . Okay. This is going to be on cspan. I took him up for his shower. I had to get in the shower with him at night because he would slip and fall. I got him washed off and out of the shower. I was drying him off so i accidentally touched his private parts and he looked at me and he goes ow. I said im so sorry and he said if you hit my balls one more time this party is over. [laughter] its been, he is there. He never forgot who i was. All of the people who were close. So many of them drift away that ben was always there. One more. On a trip around the world i saw a lot of different religions and what i did was cherrypick what i liked about each religion religion. There was something about each religion that really appealed to me and there were some things i really couldnt stand about certain religions. One that i did like about any of them was the world that women play in religion and organized religion. But there are particularly rituals that i really loved and i do find although i think the chanting and the prayers and all of that are things that give people a sense of being transcendent. Bens funeral was at National Cathedral. There were 3000 people there and i think it was one of the most transcendent moments ive ever had. It was high church. There were all the beautiful hem backs and the music was fantastic and the National Cathedral was gorgeous with those beautiful sunlight streaming in through the windows windows, the stainedglass windows. I go to yom kippur, the synagogue every year and i occasionally will go to a mosque or go to rituals of other faiths and i really like certain things about other faiths. I dont like the rigidity of them and i dont believe a lot of the words. I dont believe that jesus is the son of god. I think jesus is a great profit and i think its an incredible story but talking about magic if you believe that all religion is magic the way i do then you look at the stories that are part of organized religion like jesus walking on the water or rising from the dead or whatever or mohammed going in up to this guy on a silver horse and you look at this and its what gets you through the night. Those are the things that get people comfort and solace and if that works for them then thats great. I have no problem with any religion as long as it doesnt hurt anybody. One more question. You know i told quinn when he was old enough you would go to my parents. They were atheists or lease my father was so they gave him his religious education. They used to read bible stories to him all the time. I said you know i want him to be as exposed to as much as he possibly can but when he asked me about it i said to him i find it hard to believe in god but i think people are lucky if they can because they get a great deal of comfort out of their faith. If you can, thats great and if you cant thats also fine. I interviewed him for my web site about 10 years ago and i asked him what he believed. He said he believed in god and it was really important to be safe and secure to know that somebody up there loved him and cared about him. I said do you think that i did the wrong thing by telling you that i was an atheist and he said no, think was a great because you told me what you believe and you also told me he wanted me to find my own faith and what i believed then and i do. He said that was the greatest gift you could have given me. I think sally when you were interviewed not too long ago you were asked what would you want for your epitaph and the interviewers that i will call you back in a couple of weeks and you can tell me. I said no, i know right now. Yeah i said on my epitaph or my gravestone i would like you to read good mother, good wife, good daughter, good friend. The guys said that the fastest anyone has ever come up with anything that id ever thought of that boring he said most people talk about their careers or Something Like that. A couple of weeks ago i decided i had changed my mind. [laughter] i decided i wanted my epitaph to read she was never boring. [laughter] that is true. Thank you very much. [applause] thank you. Thank you. [inaudible conversations] i was home one day and my cell phone rang and i looked and it was a really weird number. So i didnt answer. I picked up the phone to check the message and the message said this is not a prank. Its the white house. Will you come down to d. C. Tomorrow to meet with the president. I said, okay. I had this feeling about doing this are not doing this so i said okay i will go and i went down and i was reading at the time and i had this have the artistic impulse. I thought why are people trying to write a beautiful narrative. I got back on my mind and i went to the white house and it was me and a bunch of other journalists. I was off the record that there were meetings at the time. Have assigned seating. You have to sit where they tell you to sit. You dont get to choose so my nameplate was here and obamas nameplate is right there. I kind of knew what this was. This was like say it to my face. [laughter] i wasnt a fool but i was a little shook. He comes in and shakes hands with everybody. I cant really say what i was thinking. I am in church. [laughter] i asked some really weak, moist question to the president and he answered the question and by the way tana has but he didnt say my name right. He said by the way i saw what you wrote the other day. It was terribly unfair. So it felt like an hour. It really felt like that. So i went home and told my wife. I hated those speeches pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I hated those speeches. I said you know what, im not shut. They think that you were going to talk you down and thats the least worst thinking in my head. I wrote it again. Not the same thing but i wrote it again. I get another phonecall and its this strange number. This time its can you come down tomorrow . The day of a told my wife im going down but im not sure this time. And she is like yeah, yeah. Thats you baby, youve got it. Youve got it. I got on the train and i bsu not i had on my iphone per gram listening to that. I had malcolm going. I said im going to do it. I get down there and its raining that day and i catch a cab and the cabs in traffic and im way way late. I get out of the cab and i dont have enough umbrella. I was totally inappropriately dressed in everything. Its raining and they are calling me while im in the cab. Are you coming . Show some respect. I get there and its like a roomful of its all white except for him. Again its assigned seating and this time he is here in my seat is across from him. I am ready now, im ready now. Im not shook. Im late but im not shut. So he says its night this that you could join us. So i sit down and this time i get from acrosstheboard like highlevel people in that room. You have to remember not seeing myself like that. So i sit down and im watching this dude. They are asking about the economy, Foreign Policy the environment, tax cuts and he is taking every one of these dudes on. I mean it was a display of trillions and a black part of me is like yeah im watching this black dude do this thing. The other part of me is like i have to get ready to go do what i have to do. So my time comes and i ask you my question and this time i was like im running down statistics about obamacare like an mississippi theres twothirds of unemployed. Hold on, hold on. He gives his response and usually this doesnt happen. I look around and i cant tell you its in the book but i cant tell you what my reaction was. Im just looking like oh my god. These dudes are fighting. Its now a spectator sport. So you are going to be the president. They leave and im thinking about this and im thinking about how fortunate i was to be there. And to take that change directly to the highest office and i called my editor and i told them about it. They said this is the moment. Not only is this the tax that this should be the inspiration. This is the moment and this book doesnt exist and he said to me, chris is my friend and he said the road is littered with writers. Just go google it. A lot of folks have tried this. They didnt quite get there. Nobody remembered and then he said i think you can do it. I think if anybody can do it you can do it so we went five drafts later we didnt quite do it but but we got it. [applause]
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