Rehabilitated his image and set , precedents for what presidency life could involve. This evening, we are pleased to introduce an author on the postpresident ial years of Richard Nixon. This very important and often overlooked part of nixons life is worthy of a book of its own probably a series of books. ,not one to be written off, Richard Nixon rose from defeat to become americas elder statement. Andhis period between 1974 he reinvented what it means to 1994, be a former president , serving as advisor to everyone of his successors. He made 29 foreign trips and worked with World Leaders across the globe. To tell this remarkable story, were joined by kasey pipes. He is a historian whose previous book on president eisenhower is well acclaimed. He served in the administration of president george w. Bush and was later a senior fellow at gettysburg college. Would you please join me in afterng the author of the fall, kasey pipes . [applause] kasey thank you all very much. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Thanks for those kind words. I want to thank jonathan and chris and the entire nixon staff for making us feel welcome. After hearing all of the people coming up later this month, later this fall i want to come back. I want to hear neil gorsuch as well. Thats awesome. I want to thank hugh hewitt, president of the foundation, who was indispensable to me in writing this book and had me on the radio last week to promote it. You could not be in better hands with anybody else but hugh. I want to thank couple of the archivists who worked 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 files i needed. So many people helped me along the way. Walker fred ron , fielding. Just a tremendous number of people helped make this possible. I also want to say hello to linda and larry, parents of friends of ours in fort worth. Kurt is the pitching coach for tcu and we live right around the corner from tcu. You guys get the award for traveling the farthest. You came two and a half hours to be with us. I hope the book is worth it. Let me know. I will be asking. And thanks to all of you for being here as well. Gosh, it is great to be back. The first time i came back to the library was 1995, i was an intern at the Ronald Reagan president ial library. Richard orton smith, the director of the Reagan Library brought me down. John taylor was running things down here and john showed us around. I will never forget it. It was wonderful to be here. And then it came again in 2007 with the release of the eisenhower book. Sandy quinn was kind enough to have me come down. And then of course in 2010, once the book was out, i began and once the book was inked and i was able to research it, i began going through the files and spent a few months here doing the research. It has been amazing. When i first started doing this really an, is there audience for this . Is there a market for this . Does anyone care . We were the number one new arrival ahead of bill oreilly. It was awesome. I did an interview and the interviewer was a sports guy and he spent 15 minutes walking me through the post presidency and reagan and gorbachev and yeltsin and clinton and at the end i , said, i really appreciate you being on and you said, nixon is one of the most fascinating people. I have always been a fan of nixon. It is amazing how there are nixon people all over the world and we dont even realize that sometimes. An amazing man and an amazing career. Is tory as a historian try to tell the stories that have been untold but need to be told, and to focus on stories that we know something about but need to know more about. This first led me to the story of eisenhower and civil rights. The anniversary of the little rock crisis. Of course, the road less traveled has led me to nixon postpresidency. This is a story that needs to be told. It is a story that needs to be understood in a way that it has never been fully understood for. We have an idea of what nixon was doing during this period. We have an idea that he was active. Hopefully you will agree that he was even more active then you thought. He was somewhat successful during this period. Hopefully after reading this book you will realize he was more successful than you could have ever realized. Before delving into the book, and i will take your questions at the end, i think we 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. He opened the door on china. He is closing in on a deal to end the war in vietnam, has a talk with the soviets, and wins 49 states in the largest landslide in history. He is on top of the world. And yet less than two years later with public approval in the 20s, hes forced to resign and finds himself, as he says, really fighting for his life as he talks about in his diary and we will talk about that in a minute. There have been entire libraries of books written about his life. Entire libraries of books about his presidency and vice presidency. Certainly about watergate, but there has been precious little written about the last 20 years of his life. We have monica crowleys memoirs which are wonderful and yearsed, the last four since she worked with him. We have robert sam ansons book. Theres never been a 20your volume that covers the entire story of what happens to him after watergate. Historians will always debate whether nixon was a great president. I think this book makes clear i , think theres no debate he was a great expresident. Nixon is one of the greatest stories in president ial history, and the history of his postpresident ial years is the greatest nixon story that is never really been told. Why a book about his life after watergate and if it is so important, why has it never been done before . The answer to the first question is simple. He is a shakespearean character whose vices and virtues all mirror our own. Setbacksll experienced all experienced strife and tragedy. None of us will experience professional setbacks like he did. In a sense, its a story about us. The other reason the story has not been written is because the papers are privately owned by the family. I was able to secure the cooperation of the family in writing this book. Not only is this a new book about a new period of life of nixon but it has new material in , it. This is a very extraordinary period in the life of a very extraordinary man. When Richard Nixon left the house the white house in 1974, he had no money and no obvious way to make a living. Within weeks of moving back to san clemente he faces a health , scare. He faces years of litigation through a case of what was certainly depression. Here is what he wrote in 1974 about how he might climb his way out. Write books, make speeches, and try to put things into context. This is the roadmap he would use for 20 years. Writing books, giving speeches television where possible, and , putting things into perspective for the people and history and its amazing how , well he did this. He did this so well and he become so effective and well known for his appearances and speeches that people begin to accept him back. The public begin to accept him back and the president do, too the president does too. Part of the story the book is the story of the relationships of three president s, reagan, bush, and nixon. Let me quickly mention three changes you will read about in this book. And one changed because of nixon. I think this is really the heart of what this book is about, is change. First, nixon in the post presidency changes the very , nature of the postpresidency. When he becomes postpresident , there are no post president s. They have all died. Died in 1963. Eisenhower died. Nixon knew all of these men, but he watched what they did in their retirement and what they did was very different than what he was going to do. They basically retired. Eisenhower goes to palm springs after year. He writes his memoir and then he writes another book in the spring much it. He becomes a doting grandfather. Johnson goes to his ranch. These are men that basically go away. Nixon has no such choice. He has no such choice because he has to make a living. He has no money. He has to resign from the bar in california and the bar in california. He wants to resign from the bar in new york and they wont let him because they want the privilege of kicking him out. He has to find a way of making a living. What he does with no template is he invents the template that all expresident s to this day more or less follow. He writes books. He travels the country and world giving speeches. , he stays in contact with other World Leaders. He stays in contact with political leaders in washington. He talks to president s. He uses the power of his ideas to influence events in washington. You think about the post president s today. You think about clinton with the clinton fund. You think about george w. Bush was his with his own think tank, trying to influence policy. You think about barack obama writing books. They are all, in some way, following the nixon model. Nixon did not have the option of retiring. He 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. He spent years writing book after book on his main area of expertise, Foreign Policy and becomes a trusted advisor and confidant to three president s. He doesnt just write books. He writes books that matter, books that people read and Pay Attention to. He did not just say something. He has something important to say when he was writing his books and speaking. He showed through this process that he had an Important Role to play as an outside counselor. The realgan read carried itn fairy ,round with him at one point and you have an even closer relationship with nixon and nixon relished the chance. The only power he had left, which was his mind and his ideas to influence policy. He gives counsel to president s. He influences them. Let me give you an example of something small that nixon did that we never knew about. Nixon, shortly after reagan becomes president , wants to have a way to take care of his ability. This is a guy with tremendous political ability. He can speak to the country. He can rally the country, and nixon sees this and wants to take advantage of it. Early in the reagan administration, nixon sends a letter to mike deaver urging the creation of a weekly 10minute radio talk to allow the president to dominate the monday papers. Nixon suggests they do this on sunday. Devers tweaks it, and the saturday morning radio address is born. That lasted from 1982 all the way until 2018 when trump discontinued it. Weve always known reagans started it. We never knew that the idea came from a letter from Richard Nixon. But his real contributions came from bigger matters of substance. When gorbachev comes to power, nixon meets with gorbachev. He finds that this could be a man that reagan could do business with, as Margaret Thatcher said. He senses there is an opportunity to move forward and end the cold war, and he wants reagan to meet with gorbachev, strength. Position of when reagan announces his intentions to build the Strategic Defense Initiative nixon immediately doubts the , science. He doubts it will ever work but , he loves the idea of using it for leverage in a negotiation, and almost from the beginning he as a key bargaining chip. When gorbachev threatens to pull pull out of to pull out of negotiations remember in reykjavik, gorbachev walks out because he tells reagan, this is contingent on you getting rid of sdi. Reagan says no. Nick and nixon helps come up with a solution. Nixon suggests to bud mcfarlane, reagans National Security , i feel very strongly the president could pull off a coup by offering to mutually share with the soviets the results of our research on sdi. This would undercut gorbachevs position. He was right. He essentially boxed gorbachev in and brought him back to the negotiating table. This played a role in getting the soviets to agree to the inf treaty where a class of Nuclear Weapons were eliminated. With president bush, nixon privately went to china after the Tiananmen Square tragedy. Taking advantage of the goodwill that people had for him in that country. He met with chinese leadership and spoke brutally blunt language to him. Tiananmen, i told him would be the 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 many republicans place to put sanctions in on the chinese, something the president didnt want to do. But the fact that nixon deliver the message helped defuse the and to solve the crisis. Nixon working together with Boris Yeltsin to assist the fledgling democracy in russia, to assist the baltics. Said, it is the best meeting he ever had. President clinton marveled at the wisdom of nixon. So, he changes the post presidency and policy through his work with reagan and bush and clinton. Most importantly, this book shows that in many ways, he changed himself. During this 20 year period he came to terms with all he achieved and all he lost. Wisdom sayingal he accidentally confessed during the watergate section of the interview, it is a myth that david frost and others have perpetuated for some time. The reality is quite different. They talked about it in advance, what he wanted to say when this question came up and he apologized for his moral failures. He said, i screwed it all up, but he would never admit to criminal wrongdoing because he did not believe he violated criminal laws. This would be the message he would use the rest of his life when he talked about this topic. It came not as an accident during the frost nixon interviews, but as a planned answer to a question. He began to reveal himself more and become public with people. When Hubert Humphrey was dying from cancer, he consoled his former rival. This is fascinating. When the two men hung up the phone, nixon turned to his aide and said i dont care what it , takes, im going to his funeral. Start working on it. Humphrey turned 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 it would give the country a sense that there was forgiveness, that there was grace, that of humphrey was ok with nixon that other people should be as well. Firstneral marked nixons appearance in public since watergate. Then he emerged at another funeral, giving the eulogy for his friend football coach woody hayes. This is what nixon said in his eulogy of his friend he was never satisfied with success and he was never going to be discouraged by failure. There is a rule in life, nixon said of hayes if you take no , risk, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you will win no victories. Nixon certainly was describing woody hayes, but he was also describing himself. When Ronald Reagans security advisor bud mcfarlane survived a failed suicide attempt, where he when he woke up in the hospital, the first person he saw sitting by his bedside was Richard Nixon. You will need an anchor, he said, pointing at the bible on the nightstand next to the bed. Your strong faith will get you through this finally, after the dedication of his president ial library in 1990, nixon told friends who gathered around him afterwards about the time his grandkids asked him what name he wanted to be called. You can call me anything you want to call me because ive been called everything. Life shows of his nixon as a human. This shows him as someone who struggled through the failures of life, struggled through the setbacks of a Political Year career and yet came out on the , other side. Nixon in exile is a different man. A man in full. A man who can look back on success as well as failure, tragedy as well as triumph, defeat as well as his defiant response. He never gave up and theres a lesson in that for all of us. It is remarkable to think in august of 1974 when he left in disgrace and arrived here in san clemente, not even Richard Nixon could have imagined he would be back inside the white house giving president reagan advice, are going to Tiananmen Square delivering a message that was , important to the Bush Administration or meeting with bill clinton and becoming friends with bill clinton to the point that in april of 1994, bill clinton arrives at the funeral to deliver a magisterial eulogy in which he says may the day of judging Richard Nixon only by watergate come to an end. Nixon himself said only those , who have been in the deepest valleys can appreciate how magnificent it is on the highest mountaintop. In a life spent constantly navigating the peaks and valleys, nixon in his last 20 years could look back on his life and for once, enjoy the view. He had made it back. That is the story of after the fall. I hope you read it. I hope you like it. I hope you know how grateful i am that you came. With that, i am happy to take questions or comments. [applause] thank you, kasey. We will take questions if you will raise your hands. I will come to you with a microphone. I want to ask the first one. Can you give me what you think Richard Nixon would think of the Current Media arena . Is ini mean by that this day and age, we have media that is so instant and quick and spread viral instantly with social media, can you give me your take of how he would use that to his disadvantage to his advantage, or would that be a disadvantage . Kasey he would certainly be more diplomatic than our current president , but i do not know that he thought as highly of them that our current resident does. There was favorable biography. Richard norton smith wrote a favorable review and nixon says to his staff, you know, the New York Times once a decade will write something nice about me. I guess because it is they just 1990, wanted to get this decade out of the way. He always had a very skeptical view of the role of the media and i dont think that improved