Youve laid out your position. You have laid out your youve taken your steps, and you put the interesting thing, you know we havent heard a the only cabinet member who has called, and this is 50 minutes after the thing is over, is cap weinburger, bless his soul. Hmm. Fmr. Pres. Nixon all the rest of them are waiting to see what the polls show. God damn strong cabinet, isnt it . Brian all right, what are you hearing . Evan well, he has had a couple of drinks. Actually, nixons alcohol capacity was low, so maybe it was just one drink. He could sound drunk on one drink. The other thing thats pathetic about this, hes just fired him on national tv. You could tell he was upset that no one was calling. In the old days, haldeman wouldve arranged for people to call. He asked if haldeman could get people to call again like in the old days. And haldeman says, i dont think i can do that, mr. President. And nixon hears himself and says all right bob, i love you. It is poignant, it is heartfelt. He actually does love the guy he has just fired on national tv. Your heart breaks listening to this. You can tell he is going down. He is going to be in office for another 15 months, so it will take a while. But he is finished as of april 30, 1973, and you can hear it in his voice. Brian these are not chronological recordings, just a way to see what Richard Nixon was like sometimes offcamera. This is from 1982, it was on cnn crossfire. Pat buchanan, who worked for him, was interviewing him and this is when they were in commercial. Evan i love this. [video clip] pat buchanan i think maybe we can get through lbj in that period. Fmr. Pres. Nixon oh yes, i think i can do this. You know, there is this terrible book out on him. Buchanan did you read it . Fmr. Pres. Nixon it has gotten some rave reviews. Bookofthemonth. Unbelievable. It makes him appear like a goddamn animal. Of course, he was. [laughter] director offstage quiet fmr. Pres. Nixon he was a man. Brian i dont how you get things like this, but we got it. Evan isnt that great . That is one of my favorite clips. That is the full nixon because he actually admired lbj and felt a kinship. Both were destroyed by vietnam. Both were politicians with capital p and both understood power with a capital p. Even though johnson had called nixon a traitor 1968, when nixon fiddled in the campaign and kept the north vietnamese government from going to paris and disprupted these peace negotiations arguably disrupted those peace negotiations to win the presidency, it is a murky and not good chapter in nixons history. Johnson called nixon a traitor for having done that. And yet there is still kind of an affinity. Nixon also you can see nixon also admires what a man lbj was. He was a man. Poor nixon wanted to be a man. He got himself in more trouble on those tapes by trying to appear macho. All that swearing and profanity, nixon wasnt even good at it. He was bad at it. It wasnt natural to him. It was natural to lbj. You could hear lbj swear, he was good at it. Nixon was trying to be something he was not. He was not like lbj, a crude macho guy. Nixon was a shy, intellectual, thoughtful. He couldnt let himself be that. He had to be something he was not. I think that is one of the reasons he destroyed himself. Brian how in the world can you be shy in the presidency . Evan that is one of the reasons why i wrote the book. How one of the most introverted politicians ever became one of the most successful politicians in the 20th century. He was on five national tickets, he won the presidency twice. The last time by one of the largest landslides in history. His record is equaled only by fdr. And yet he could barely make small talk. If he was here talking to you, there is a chance he would not have been able to talk to at all. Sometimes he would just spin his hands. He was a terrible blurter. He would just blurt things out. He just couldnt do small talk. He runs into Jackie Kennedy at Martin Luther king juniors funeral and he says to mrs. Kennedy, this must bring back terrible memories for you. This is cringemaking, and nixon would do that kind of thing all the time. We all do. I do this at cocktail parties. You just blurt things out because youre uncomfortable. But nixon would do this all the time. He was terrible at small talk, he liked to be alone. People used to say that he was always writing on yellow pads. His yellow pad was his best friend. He didnt have any best friends. Bebe rebozo, maybe. But when they were together, they would not talk. The secret service would sit on the boat with them and listen in florida, no conversation. Brian do you remember how he met bebe rebozo . Evan he was down in the dumps in 1951 or so, depressed he was subject to depression and this highliving senator, george smathers, a friend of jack kennedy from florida, a democrat, to cheer him up, brought him to florida to cheer him up and have a guys weekend out on the boat. Drinking and girlchasing out on the boat. Nixon was really not good at either of those things. At first, rebozo thought who is this guy, hes no fun, but a kinship was established. There was a vulnerability and a sincerity there that the public never saw. But rebozo saw it. He understood that what nixon needed was companionship without talk. That was the basis of their friendship that went on for years and years. Brian he was here in 1992 for his book, seize the moment. This is not too far away from when he died. We have some clips from that just to get you to reflect on what you see in this. Here is one where he talks about how he sizes up people. Fmr. Pres. Nixon yes, i am not one of those who believes in the psychiatric examination of people. I believe that most of these people, these psychohistorians should be on couches themselves rather than psychoanalyzing people that have never met. On the other hand, when i meet people, i dont judge them in terms of whether they have a Firm Handshake or make eye contact. All these are things that are learned. Things that you do. Things that come naturally. Or you do them, even though they come unnaturally. But what i try to do when i meet people is to listen to what they say. You dont learn a thing when you are talking, you learn a great deal when they are talking. Brian he is talking about you there. Evan one of the many tragedies of Richard Nixon was that he was not very selfaware. There are endless ironies here. He did have a psychiatrist. He was an internist. Not technically a psychiatrist. The doctor later said he was careful not to let nixon think he was analyzing them. So it wasnt but nixon went to him because he had psychosomatic illnesses in the 50s and he gave him some mild therapy. His head hurt and his neck hurt, he couldnt sleep. Even though he went to one, he hated psychiatrists and was always denouncing them. He was afraid in a way of looking at himself in a realistic way. He said i dont carry grudges. Hello . Richard nixon was one of the greatest grudge carriers of all time. He could be very unself reflect ive. This lashing out at enemies is what hurr hurt him. His last words were something along the lines of dont hate your enemies. Because if you do, you it will destroy you. Too late. It is selfawareness, but it is way too late. He is about to get into a helicopter and fly away. Brian lets go back to the book because you do spend a lot of time talking about his mother hannah, his brother frank. What did you learn about that . Evan his father was a bully and his mom was a saint, but kind of a passiveaggressive saint. There are some oral histories that suggest that she was very withholding and it was hard to win her love. He was desperately trying to win her love. The older brother, who was quite charming, died of tb and one of his younger brothers, who was very sweet, died. His mother said that he tried to be both of those boys, and he couldnt be. It was something he could never do. So he was never very comfortable. He was very forlorn. Very clean little boy. He wore a clean white shirt and went around barefoot, but he carried his shoes around in a bag. He never wanted to be picked up and held. He was a lonely forlorn boy trying to please his parents in a way that im not sure he ever succeeded even becoming president. Brian his brother had tuberculosis and his mother went off to a different part of the country and moved away from them. Evan nixon was accepted to harvard out of high school but couldnt go because the money had all been used to take care of the older brother. Mom had gone out into the desert in arizona and rented a place in those days, tb sufferers would go to dry places because it was preantibiotics. Nixon loses his mother to go take care of his dying older brother as a teenager. I think that was tough for him. Brian talking about the unusual nature of his personality. Michael korda, who was his editor from time to time at simon and schuster has told a couple of stories about him. Here is a story from when we did our indepth. [video clip] Michael Korda the only one of my authors, the only person ive ever dealt with who always spoke about himself in the third person. If you had dinner with him, he would say, nixon will have another glass of wine. Or if you suggested a change in a manuscript, he would think about it seriously. Almost as if he were pantomiming deep thought, furrowing a brow. He was a great actor in his own way. And he would say, oh, nixon would not like that. It was remarkable. You got to accept the fact that he thought of himself as a separate creature altogether and referred to nixon in the thirdperson. Even at home, he would say nixon will have more coffee, as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say. Evan can you imagine what would be like for mrs. Nixon . He would write letters from the president to mrs. Nixon. Thats a minor thing. Henry kissinger told me a very affecting story. He was asked to go to dinner at the residence with mrs. Nixon. As he was walking over, nixon asked him to tell mrs. Nixon the about some of his foreignpolicy accomplishments. Nixon goes to the restroom and kissinger dutifully starts in telling about his Foreign Policy achievements, and mrs. Nixon says, henry, you dont have to. You know, i mean, she understood about her husband, how awkward he was, even with his wife. I actually think the marriage was much closer than we think. We have all seen these photographs of her looking pained and unhappy. I think late in watergate, it was pretty bad. Nixon even said in his memoirs that he doesnt tell his own wife he is resigning. He tells his secretary, rosmary woods, to tell mrs. Nixon. You wonder how close they were in august 1974. But before that, in the early years, there are very touching love letters. She was the prettiest girl. If you look at old photographs of her, she was gorgeous. She became gaunt later but when she was 20 pounds heavier, she was a knockout. She helped him a lot in the early years. She stood by him and when he thought about quitting and she said, richard,you cant quit. She did that four or five times at key moments. It was a good marriage in some ways but i think in the white house, his natural aloneness and the terrible pressure he was under although, i have to say, the marriage resumed and after he left the white house, when she died in 1992 i think it was he is just bawling. Hes not just crying, he is convulsed with tears. Brian heres some more from the time he was here for his booknotes interview. [videotape] brian what period of your life did you enjoy the most . Fmr. Pres. Nixon i dont like to psychoanalyze myself, but let me attempt to answer that objectively. I liked all periods. I went through college in the depression and it was rough. We did not even think of it as a depression. We had to scratch around to make a living. To have anything. I can remember when getting a steak was considered to be something that was so unusual that we just thought this is the ultimate, as far as fine food and so forth is concerned. All that has changed. Evan he was a poor boy. His father made some money running a gas station, so it got better. And relative to the other poor boys at whittier college, he probably wasnt that poor. He used his shyness to understand outsiders. At his college, there was a cool guys fraternity called the franklins. Nixon started a fraternity for uncool guys, knowing there were more uncool guys than cool guys. This was the beginning of the silent majority. Nixon was elected president of this class by getting all the outs to run against the ins. He did that 30 or 40 years later as a politician. He understood what it was like to be on the outside. He empathized with those people. He shared their hopes and their resentments, and he knew how to exploit them. Brian so, how did you approach the research on this . Evan i needed to find people that were around and physically close to him. They were young men. So, Dwight Chapin, his body guy. Dwight brennan, his military aide; ray price, his speechwriter. Larry higbee who worked for hr halderman. There were a lot of people who were kind of in the office with him and who were around him. Years later, they are a little defensive around the press and around me. Im an east coast establishment. I work for the Washington Post company. But what the heck, a lot of years have passed and they were pretty generous with me. Steve bowl talked to me about what it was like. They were sympathetic. I think that they wanted to yes, nixon was a weird guy. No doubt about it. But he was a considerate boss, a thoughtful boss. He tried to buck up his troops. I think they wanted to get that side of him across, so they talked to me. A lot of his aides he was always a good talent scout for young talent. Brent scowcroft, Later National security advisor, Henry Kissinger talked to me. Because he is interested in his version of history. But also a thoughtful, receptive critic of nixon. Donald rumsfeld was a young aide who worked for nixon. He talked to me. George schultz was a young cabinet secretary. He talked to me. A lot of these names became more famous later, but got their start with Richard Nixon because he had a good eye for talent. Someone i wish i had talked to was roger ailes, head of fox news. Roger ailes was a fairly obscure daytime tv producer in 1968 when Richard Nixon discovered him and put him in charge of his media team. He plucked him out of the crowd. He had an eye for talent. Ailes had a lot of talent. He did that kind of thing all the time. For all the craziness of watergate, nixon had a good staff. Brian you mentioned Dwight Chapin, who spent a lot of time around nixon and he also went to prison for six months or so for perjury in that whole thing. Lets listen to Dwight Chapin on an oral history from the nixon library. Dwight chapin its very late at night, we went and got on the plane. He had one or two of those small bottles of scotch. And, he was exhausted. And the next thing i knew, he was crying. And, what brought this about this emotional uprising, is that he was talking with ray who i think was drafting some stuff for the speech in miami. They were starting to work on his acceptance speech and how that might work. This was the one in 1968. He started talking about his mother and dad and his brother and this brother that he lost to tuberculosis. I mean, it it was really bringing up stuff in him. It really this guy is a human being. Hes running for president and so forth, but he is just not that different from us. Evan but of course, he was different from us. We dont have his ambition, his dreams. I mean, people who become president , really, are not like us. I think what Dwight Chapin was trying to say was, as much as nixon tried to wear a mask, the mask fell off from timetotime. Nixon liked to say, real men dont cry, i dont cry. But nixon cried all the time. I have five or six cases of him in there weeping when his emotions, which were roiling within him, would well up. He was very human. Thats one reason why it is such a great story. Brian did you ask Dwight Chapin how he felt after he fell on his sword for nixon today and all that . How did his life work out . Evan one detail i remember is that when chapin was being fired, because he was caught chapin had run don segretti. Segretti was a dirty trickster that bernstein or woodward had exposed. Chapin was tasked with running segretti, so he had to take the fall for this. When chapin heard about it chapin wept. He could not believe it that his boss was cutting him loose like this. It was early in watergate, when things were turning sour, and i think chapin just couldnt believe it that after all this loyalty, he was being cut loose. But there is no bitterness in chapin. I dont think you heard it in that tape. When i talked to him, i didnt hear it at all. Chapin is realistic about nixon, but loyal, and i think, after all these years, despite jail time, devoted to him. Brian did you watch many of those interviews . How many hours do you think you did of research . Hours . Days . Weeks . Evan years. I mean, i have a pretty normal this is my ninth book and i usually spend three or four years. You know, you have help. People like Dwight Chapin can help. Scholars helped me. A guy named erwin gelman, the one nixon scholar who has actually read all of the documents. He was incredibly generous with me. Pointing me to this and that. Nell small is a great nixon scholar out in the midwest. You know, im a journalist more than i am a scholar, so i go to scholars and i ask them. And they help me. Archivists help me. My researcher, mike hill, has helped me over the years. A little bit less on this particular project, but he has been in an incredible help to me over the years. Brian hes the same one that David Mccullough uses. Evan yes. Mike and i were at the library i spent a couple months out at the library listening to tapes and the archivist there helped me. There is a mountain of material. The one thing that scholars, or rather journalists, need to know, is that if you walk cold into a president ial library, forget it. You cannot even read the finding aid. You need to spend a couple of years reading the secondary stuff and talking to people before you even darken the door of a president ial library. But then, if you befriend the archivist, they will point you in the right direction. Brian which book that you read did you find the most useful . Evan the haldeman diaries are quite useful. Those are 40 to maybe half of the actual diaries. The actual diaries you can get on a cd. The haldeman diaries are great. He is a great observer of the p as they called him. The president was known as the p. He was gentle and tender about nixon in a way. He can also make fun of him a little bit. William safire, one of the speechwriters, observed nixon up close, and was full of psy