Good evening, when. My name is jim byron, im the executive Vice President of the Richard Nixon foundation and it is always a pleasure to welcome you all here to the beautiful Nixon Library in orange county, california. I like to thank all of your president Society Members for joining us and if youre a remember, would you please stand up and be recognized. Come on, theres couple of you here. There we go thank you. [applause] the president society is an exclusive group of members that supports the ongoing works of president nixons foundation which applies to the legacy and the vision he had to opportunities facing the nation or world. If you are interesting in joining me, track me done on an associate and anybody can get you signed up. Want to tell you but a few special events. On august 20th, well host Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino for the new amazon number one best seller, justice on trial, but the Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings. On september 11th, well host two programs, the first is an annual commemoration of patriot day, and then well host Supreme CourtJustice Neil Gorsuch that evening for a discussion with Nixon Foundation president , hugh hughity, hewitt and then jams mattis will appear in congresses with hugh hewitt from the stage. This evening were pleased to host the author of a new book on the post president ial years of Richard Nixon. Its very important and little studied period of Richard Nixons life of achievement, setback and come back i deserving of a book of its and probably series of books. Not one to be written off, Richard Nixon rose from the worst of defeats to become americas elder statesman. In his 20year period of 1974 to 1994, he reinvented what it means to be a former president. Servings a advicer to every one of his successors he made 29 foreign trips and work with World Leaders across the globe. To tell this remarkable story we are by ka kasey pipes. He served in the administration of george w. Bush as a speech writer and later a fellow at the Eisenhower Institute at gettysburg college. Join me for welcoming after the fall, kasey pipes. [applause] thank you for being here and thank you for heying me, jim, thank you for the kind worded. Want to thank jonathan and which is and she internixon staff and after hearing aberdeen coming up i want to come back i want to her neal gorsuch as well. Thats awesome i want to thank hugh hewitt the president of the foundation who was indispensable to me in writing the book and had me on the radio to help promote it. You could not be in better hand with anybody else than hugh. I want to thank a couple of the archivei that work with me when i was working on the book. Greg cummings and Pamela Eisenberg who i understand is now retired. Did great work in helping me get the file i need. So many people helped. Sandy quinn, ron walker, fred fielding, just a tremendous number of people helped make this possible also want to say hello to drain and larry sarlos, the parents friend our inning for worth, kirk is the pitching coach at tc and we live around the corn and from kirk and christian, you guys get the award for traveling the farthest. They came two and a half hours to be with us so thank you very much for being here. Hope the book is worth it. Let me know. And thanks to all after you for being here as well. Gosh, its great to be back if the fir time i came to Nixon Library was in 1995, an intern at the Ronald Reagan president ial lie area and Richard Horton smith the director of the reagan library, brought me down his friend john taylor was runnings and john hed us around it and was beautiful to be here. And then i came again in 2007 with the lease of the eisenhower back. And then of cures in 2010, once the book was out, i began once the book was inked and i had a dale okay here and went through the files and spent a number of months near 2010, 11, 1, 13, doing he research, so, its been amazing. When i first started the project i wonder, there is really an audience for is . Do people and they we were the snub one new arrival ahead of ahead of bill oreilly. This is awesome. I did an interview last week in the dale dallasfort worth area with the under one morning show and he a can core if a football play by play guy and i wanted to he the mixon sports stories and he intent 15 minutes running through the postpresidency and i send him an email and said appreciate you have michigan on and he wrote back and said nixon is one of the most fascinating people. Ive always been a fan of nixon. So its amazing how there are nixon people all over the world, and we dont even realize that sometimes. An amazing command an amazing career. My story as historian has been to try to tell at the stories this are untold bud knee to be told, and to focus on stories we know something about but we need to know more about. And so for me the road less traveled in historical scholarship led me to the story of eisenhower and civil rights in a book called, ikes final battle, which came out in 2007 in con justification with the inch anniversary over the Little Rock Central High School crisis, and of course, the road less travel has also led me to the nixon post presidency. This is a story that needs to be told and its a story that need thursday be in other words a way it has never been fully understood before. We have an idea of what nixon was doing during the period. We have an idea he was activity. Hopefully after you read the book you will agree he was more active than you thoughtful. We have an idea he was somewhat successful and hope any after read the book youll realize he was even more successful but before delving into the book and ill taker questions enwomen have to understand how high he climbed as president to appreciate how far he fell at the end of his presidency. You think about Richard Nixon in 1972, opened the doctor to china, closing in on a deal to end the war in vietnam, he has day taunt with the soviets and he wins 49 states in the largest landslide in american history. On top of the world. And let yes than two years later, public Approval Ratings in the 20s, hes forced to resign and finds himself as he says, really fighting for his life as he talked about in his diary. There have been entire libraries of books written about nixs life and entire libraries of books one about his presidency. Even the vicepresidency and certainly watergate, but theres been precious little written about the last 20 years of his life. We have the monica crawly enter slurs detailed. We have the book which cover this first few years in exile. Theres over in been a 20year volume that covers the entire story of what happened to him after watergate. Now, historians will always debate whether nexton was a great president. I think this book makes clear theres no debate he was a great expresident. Nixon is one of the Great Stories in president ial history, and the history of his post president ial years is the greatest nixon story thats has never really been told. So why a book about nixons life after water gait and if its so important, nye why has no one doesnt with . Nixon is a shakespearean figure. We aller andend triumph and tragedy, all suffered setbacks but none will experience professional set baecks the way he did. So in a sense the story is about us. Its bow how we all come back and all find or way when we get lost. But the other reason this story has not been written is because the papers are privately owned by the families, theyre deposited here and i was able to secure the cooperation of the family in writing the book and so not only is this a new book but a new federal, of life for nixon but has new material it in so i think that makes is interesting and makes it worth reading and think can about because this is a very extraordinary period in at the life of a very board man. When richmond inningson left the white house in august of 1974 he had no money no future, and he indiana no obvious way to make a living. Within weeks of moving back to san clemente he faces a health scare that almost claim is his life and after thats faced years of litigation and battles through a case of what was almost certainly depression. Heres what he wrote in his diary in late 1974 but hoe he might climb his way out. Write books. Make speeches. And try to put things into context. This is the road map that he would use for 20 years. Writing books, giving speeches, television where possible and putting things into perspective for the people and for history. And its amazing how well he did this. Does so it well and becomes so effective and so wellknown for his books and his speeches and his appearances that people begin to accept him back again. The president s do, too. Part of the story in the book is his relationship with three president s, reagan, bush and nixon, and his advice and council to all three of them and how it helped change policy and change history. Let me quickly mention three changes youll read about in the book. Two change that occurred because of nixon, and one change that occurred because of nixon. And i think this is really the heart of what this book is about. It change. First, nixon in the post presidency changes the very nature of the postpresidency. When nixon becomes Vice President there are no other postpresident ,s. They odd dial. John john died in 73. Truman died in 2. Eisenhower died n69. Nixon new all of the men but had watched what they did in their retirement and that they did is very different if. They basically retired. Eisenhower goes palm springs half of the year, gettysburg the other half. Write thursdays his memoir and thats it. He becomes a doting grandfather. Johnson goes to his ranch. These men accept retime and go away. Nixon has no such choice because he has to make a living. He has no money. Has to esign from the were in california, has to resign from the bar at the Supreme Court. Wants to resign from the bar in new york and they wont let him because they want the privilege of kicking him out sew cant practice Law Enforcement no way of making a living and has to find a way, and what he does with no temp plate in front of him, what an expresident should do, he invents invents the tempt all president s to this day molter follow. He writes books, travel this country and world gives speeches. Stays in contact with other world lead he. Stays in contact with political leaders in washington. Talks to president s. Uses the power of his ideas to influence events in washington. You think but the postpresident s today. You think about clinton with the clinton found george w. Bush with his own think tack. Barack obama riding backs, following nixon model. Nixon didnt have the option of retiring. He wanted to remain activitiful told john taylor that he had to remain active for his own health. And to keep his mind as sharp as he wanted it to be help spend years writing book after book on his main area of expert tress, foreign policy. And he becomes a trusted adviser and confidentant to three president s. He doesnt just write becomes. He writes books that matter, that people read, and people on soand they Pay Attention to. He didnt just say something. He had something important to say. When he was writing the books and when he was speaking, and he showed through this process he still had an Important Role to play as an outside counselor. Ronald reagan read the real understand 1980. Inspire by him. Confirm his own view of soviet union and carried it around with him at one point and this led him to have an even closer relationship with nixon, and nixon relished the chance to use the only thing he had left, the only power he had left, his mind and his idea to influence policy. He gives counsel to president s help influences them with his ideas on things big some small. m something small that nixon dade. Neverrics certainly after reagan becomes president , once defined ways to take advantage of reagans ability. Nixon has great admiration for reagan. They had a complicated relationship but nixon said i have great mind, reagan as a great gut. He can speak to to country,al the country and nixon sees this and wants to take advantage of it. So early in the reagan administration, nixon sends a memo to mike disease dr. Eaver urge the creation of a weekly tenminute radio talk to allow the president to dominate the monday papers. Nixon suggests they do this on sunday. He tweaks it and the sad morning radio address is born. It lasted from 1982 to 2018 when trump discontinuedded it. We have known reagan started and never known the idea came from a letter from Richard Nixon. His real contributions to came from other matters. Ben e when gorbachev comes to power, rig rig senses theres an opportunity here to move disburden practices ins the cold war and wants reagan to meet with gorbachev but from a position of strength. And so when reagan announces intentions to build a strategic defense initiative, nixon immediately doubts the science of this. Doubts the technology will ever work. But he loves the idea of using it for leverage in negotiations. And am from the beginning he sees sdi as a key bargaining chip for reagan. Later on, when gorbachev threatens to owl out of further negotiations unless reagan abandons sdy. At rake reykjavik, gorbachev walks about because he said is contingent on you getting rid of sdi and reagan says. No nixon suggests the bud mcfarland, quote, i feel very strongly that the president could pull off a real coup by formally offering to mutually share with the soviets the results of our research on sdi. This, he wrote to mcfor dan, would undercut gorbachevs position hitch was right. Reagan took the advice, offer to shared the technology with the soviets publicly and booked gorbachev in and brought him back to negotiating table. This maneuver helped get the soviets to agree to inf treaty where an entire class of Nuclear Weapons were eliminated. Witch president bush, nixon privately went to china after the tianimen square cath, take can advantage of the good will that people had for him in that country met with chinese leadership, including ping and spoke brutally. He said tianimen would be the, quote, death of the relationship with the u. S. If it happened again. Upon returning home, he reported back to the president , who was faced with a political crisis in washington, democrats and men republicans wanted to put sanctions in place on the chinese, something nixon want to see help and the president didnt would to do. The fact that nix wherever thread message helped diffuse the situation and help the president out of a deep crisis. And with president clinton, politics makes for strange ped folioes. Richard nixon and bill clinton working together assist Boris Yeltsin and assist the fledgling democratic, and clinton said it was the best meeting ive ever had as president clinton marveled at the wisdom that nixon gave him as he urged him to be brave and sport the Democracy Movement in ways that frankly he didnt believe president bush hads done enough to do. So he changes the postpresidency. Changes pollsive with his work with reagan and bush and clinton, and this book shows in many ways nixon changed himself. During the 20year period he comps to terms with all he had achieved, and all he had lost. The conventional wisdom says he accidentally confessed during the watergate section of the interview with david frost this has been a myth that frost and others have perpetuated for some time the reality is quite different, they talk about it in advance, whan he wanted to say when the question came up and the apologized for his moral failures and says i screwed it up but never admitted to wrongdoing. This would be the message he would use the rest of his life when he was asked and it okay. Not during an accident, it came as a planned answer to a question that he and ken had wordsomething id together the moral failures weighed on him. And the dealt with itself in his own way. Began to reveal himself more and more could become public with people. When hubert humphrey, from. The 1968 election called him to let him know he was dying of cancer, nixon coal sold his former rival. Consoled his form are arrival. When they hung up nixon turned to this ace and said im going to his funeral. Start working on it humpfully hung up the phone and turned to his wife and said, no former president should have to live in exile. He wanted nixon to be seen in public at his funeral. Because they knew it would give him a sense give the country a sense there was forgiveness, there was grace, if humfully was okay with nixon, would people should be as well and the funeral marked nixons first public appearance in would since watergate. Ten years later nixon emerged another another funeral, these to deliver the eulogy gore his friend, woody hayes. This us what nixon said to in his eulogy of his friend. He was never satisfied with success and he was never going to be discouraged by failure. Theres a rule in life, nixon said of hayes, if you take no risk youllll suffer no defeat but if you take no risk you will bin no victories. Nixon certainly you will win no victories. Nixon was describing woody hayes and almost just as certainly describing himself. And when reagans National Security adviser, bud mcfarland, survived a failed suicide attempt, when he woke up in the hospital, the first person he saw sitting by his bedside was Richard Nixon. Youll need an anchor, he told theving mcfarland, pointing at the bible on the night stand next to the bedle. Your strong faith will get you through this. Finally, after the dedication of this president ial lie flare 1990 where we are today, nixon told friends who gathered around him afterwards about the time that his grandkids asked him what name he wanted to be called. And you can call me anything you want to call me,ed sacker because ive been called everything. This period of his life shows nixon as a hum