What is this building is x. This is the original 1905 branch of the new york outlook library where the schomburg collection arrived in 1925 and behind that first board set up windows is where we saw the jacob lawrence. This is in many ways the historic home that is this amazing institution today. Its still a critical part of the overall facility and it is home to many treasures that we looked out. Host and the red dirt building is also part of the harlem hospital over there across the street. Khalil mohammed director of the Schomburg Center thank you for your time. Thank you peter. Is a former Washington Post out for myself is quite a treat to be introducing bob woodward. I first met bob when i interned at the post back in the summer of 1974, the summer of course that president nixon resigned and its really quite remarkable to look back four decades and see that watergate wasnt a onetime hit for bob but a Takeoff Point for what has turned out to be one of the most fun on all careers in the history of journalism. The last of the president s men men the last of the president s men bobs latest book is his 19th a miced up previous 17 has become a national bestseller. I think bob holds record the record for the most number one nonfiction bestsellers of any author. His ability to get people to talk and to reveal things never before disclosed his legendary trait i can tell you as someone who has on occasion reported in bobs wake and i have heard again and again those who were interviewed by bob how extensively he prepares and how hard he pushes. Like a number of other colleagues of dogs i have benefited over the years from his guidance and found inspiration and perseverance and investigative talents. He can be truly generous with his time and advice and many of us at the Washington Post were quite appreciative that he remained on the staff contributing to the paper when he could have chosen another career path. Also its especially fitting to have this event here at sig well which bob has come to know well to daughter diana who graduated last spring. Bob and his wife elsa have been big supporters of the school and a were honored as Commencement Speakers last june. So im going to move over to that chair and spend a bit of time talking to bob about his new book and then you will take questions. Gordon libby would know how to do this. [laughter] how many people know who gordon liddy is . We have a very experienced crowd here. Anyway its been 41 years. Its been 41 years since you and Carl Bernstein came out with all the president s men which of course chronicled the watergate scandal and your new book, the last of the president s men takes you back to that period. This time you look at what was going on in the Nixon White House in the eyes of Alexander Butterfield who was h. R. Haldemans deputy insert as the deputy chief of staff during the first years of the nixon administration. My first question, bob, especially after mark felt acknowledged a decade ago that he was didnt you think you were done reporting on watergate . Yes. This is really not on watergate that its about nixon and of course nixon is the central character and having written so many books on him and trying to decode him yeah i thought i was done and then i ran into butterfield who by the way is now 89 and has an better memory than you and i. Its astonishing because i ran into him four years ago at the conference and said next time you are in washington lets get together and so he called and we went off for a day and it sounded like he had a few interesting stories and the Washington Post gives me unlimited time quite frankly and so when i was out in california i said you all stop by, do you have any document in the said yeah i have a few so i went into his apartment there in la jolla and there were 20 boxes. Most people leave the white house and i have a theory that theres a box in the attic but not 20 and it was a treasure trove because some of these things that were original and that we didnt know about and so i started looking at them. My assistant evelyn went out and started looking and i went for more interviews and then i said to my wife elsa, lets go out to california to la jolla for a real fun weekend. And sit in this historic apartment and look at documents and what butterfield was in the Nixon White House 50 months and he kept his chronicle chronological file for each month and they are on onion skin papered. We would sit there and some through them and elsa methodically, more methodically then i frankly and finally she said you know this is not just a newspaper story. This is a small book and this is the result. Was illegal for him to do this . Was there any statute of limitations . My lawyer would say dont answer that question. But i will. I have done this for so many decades and you want to be careful with documents that are sensitive and a lot of these codes were topsecret documents, but then if they really tell you something new and you check with the authorities is this going to do real harm to National Security which you always did, right . Theres a tradition there at the post of checking and if you have Something Like some of these documents that are sensitive to the extent to which nixon and kissinger squandered their memoir. If you look at their memoirs you say oh yeah bears theres a document loaded from january 22 and it has some of the same quotes as the document i have but look at all the things they left out. It pushes me to that question of how good is history the fact and the more you dig into it, you realize that its not as good as it should be and of course if there is no, if the historical facts are not correct, then the historical understanding is reduced. Nixon and kissinger were up to lots of things and you know then theres this you say at one point in the book what you found in the butterfield papers is in a failure to tell the whole story particularly of vietnam and you say may be time for a fresh examination of the entire vietnam record particularly in light of nixon and kissinger substantial efforts to distort the record of not explain what they are up to. It sounds like a job for bob woodward. There are so many documents. I called the library of congress while doing this research to this particular memo that we should talk about and i wanted to see if they have it because kissingers memoirs, i mean his documents are in the library of congress and he chuckled when i said can you tell me if theres this particular and he said there are a million documents in the kissinger file. Can you imagine going through and million of Henry Kissingers papers . Somebody should. He has a biographer who is off actually working on those yes, ferguson. The first volume of kissingers life from birth to 1968. Its called the idealist. I thought this was the mad magazine edition. [laughter] anyway back to butterfield. You have actually tried way back in 1973 when youre working on watergate and working on all the president s men to reach butterfield. He tried knocking on his door. I actually was able to knock on his door and there was a kind of little peek from the drapes and living room. Did you say lets forget about him . I didnt try again and i should be faulted for that and then after being nixons counsel made the allegations against nixon and the Senate Watergate committee was trying to find out if theres something to verify or refute the dean testified to. I told two people on the staff slammed who is the general counsel to talk to butterfield because a couple of people carl and i have talked to including mark feldt and hugh sloan who is the Nixon Committee treasurer said that butterfield is in charge of security and thats a kind of work that is used for wiretapping in the justice department. So they called him and there is a very long section in the book that is kind of a psychodrama upheld waterfield didnt want to come forward as a volunteer but he parsed it in a way that if they asked a direct question he would say yes there was the system. He credits you with encouraging the senate committee. Actually he said it more likely. He said you fingered me. [laughter] do you agree with that . I dont know whether they would or not. Perhaps not. He would look at all the people they didnt interview and they did an extensive interview with him quite early, so. There was a time when butterfield would tell his own story back in the 1990s. They actually had a contract with the publisher writing something and the project didnt go anywhere. He wrote a lot, hundreds of pages. Its a memoir but he didnt get to the Nixon White House until chapter 7 and somehow like all the people who write memoirs he thought his life was interesting until they got to that moment at the Nixon White House and so the publisher said no. Why do you think he has never really im not sure. We started talking and reading and going through documents with no signed agreement and there was never a signed agreement. Im 72, not 89th but i think when you get to be 89 you realize its not going to last much longer and these documents and the story should be told. So he finally ceded to you tell my story and there was no we read sections. He didnt read the book until it was published and in print and relinquished control. I said you know i cant do this if this is not as told to. This is my research in the context of all kinds of other information and what people have said. You spent 40 hours interviewing him. Whats he like, other than having an amazing memory for somebody who is 80 . What has he like . Well, he looks younger than i hes an honest witness and thats whats interesting because in the book he talks about some of his own failings like putting under nixon orders theres a tape of this were nixon says put the spy in the secret Service Detail of teddy kennedy. They will catch teddy and paris in bed with somebody or something and nixon ordered this and butterfield yes sir and did it. He was in charge of part of this internal security job was liaison with the secret service so we walked down to secret Service Headquarters and they had a person who had done in the secret service who is working with rosemary woods and they put them in there as a spy. This was a guy who told haldeman i will do anything for you and then butterfield to this day feels remorse because he knows he could have been indicted for this clear abuse. Ironically it also showed up on the page. He feels very conflicted than a number ways. E i mean thats the best witnesses somebody who has remorse, has a good memory and has written their memoir but it isnt published and he has thousands of documents. [laughter] is anybody else out there like that . Exactly. You were saying earlier this is the last of the president s men. How does bob know actually . We had formal interviews with this agreement and countless breakfast lunches and dinners. If anyone wants a restaurant recommendation in la jolla biking give them to you particularly this do not go list. Its big. The image of nixon that comes across through butterfields eyes as significantly to the portrait of the president as someone who was really quite strange, lonely, obsessed. Nixon could be petty and duplicitous, paranoid an awkward read much of this is the picture that we have gotten about nixon from the white house tapes. And other sources but butterfield adds more to it. What an notes about nixons behavior most surprised you . First vietnam issue. He has this topsecret memo which is printed on page 116 in the book where kissinger reports to nixon and just routine about vietnam. Its a document that the topsecret codeword, sensitive and nixon writes kissinger and his own handwriting. He said we have had 10 years of control of the air and vietnam loves cambodia. Whats the result . The result zilch. Total failure and that he wants a report back on this in two weeks. Theres no evidence of the report. I talked to kissinger and i think one was not made, but this memo in itself takes history and turns it on its head because nixon for three years said the bombing was militarily necessary the night before he wrote this memo there was a nationally televised interview with ann landers because of intensified bombing before in 1971 and nixon said its very very effective. And went on at some length about how important the bombing was. In fact it was so important that he was going to announce the removal of combat from vietnam. At this point all the combat troops were out and the president declared the Bombing Campaign and the strategy a failure. So what did he do in 1972 . More and more bombing and another 1. 1 million tons of bombs dropped in Southeast Asia killing thousands of people. The war continues and then you connect all the dots here to some of the other documents and tapes and nixon and kissinger talk about how popular the bombing was in the polls. The harris poll is 21, 2. 51 in favor of the bombing. And then you see when it gets most intense which was may 8, 1972 when nixon really went some of the most intense bombing ever and in it i wish i had a tape of this, nixon is talking with kissinger and kissinger says you won reelection on may 8, not the war, the election. Certainly in fairness to nixon he wanted to win the war but the war was lost and he knew it, kissinger knew it and they developed a kind of you know well we are going to get the p. O. W. S back, and its very important to do that. He talked about peace with honor and you know no combat troops virtually, ineffective bombing and what was the other part of the war strategy . So when you put this together i think its the other side of watergate. Watergate was sabotaged for him to win reelection by me can sure that the democrats nominated the weakest candidate. It turned out to be george mcgovern. Nixon won 49 states and the other side of that was to use the bombing in the vietnam war as a hey im tough, im leading, we are going to get peace with honor and when i put all this together i felt a kind of repulsion and sadness that there is an unwritten contract which means everyone in the military, you do your job and all do my job. This is a level of cynicism. Thereve been a lot of awnings studies after the war and nixon was right. It achieves zilch except killing lots of people. Lets fastforward to the present day. Obviously we are in the middle of a president ial election campaign. Are there any lessons to be taken from butterfields account . How do we find out about the character of some of these people who were being asked to elect without having to wait 40 years . Yes, exactly. If it were 1968 and you had somebody saying you know, there is Something Weird about nixon, could you have found out all of this . Now and theres a ceiling but you could find out more. I think the answer to your question is to find and Alexander Butterfield and put him in each of the campaigns and hope that obviously that isnt going to happen. So it falls to journalists, doesnt it . To do a kind of intense biography of each of the major candidates. Did you see the charlie rose interview with putin last month . Anyone see that . I think charlie rose went to moscow on putins territory and charlie rose said to putin, and putin is sitting here like this, kind of tearing him to tread into parrot tory. Charlie rose said you were in the kgb and theres a saying once in the kgb, always in the kgb. Putin said not a single base or stage of our life passes without leaving a trace. Whoa, this guy is really well prepared and thats true. Not a single stage or phase. The rage he expresses in some of these scenes, its beyond the tapes. These were things that were not on tape about it received when he was in new york and none of the slbs would invite him to their country club. Its almost the lament of no one asked me to the prom. And hes just on fire about it. And so, i think its true. Do you think its true . You spent so many years reporting. Not a stage of our life passes without leaving a trace. Some of it is getting at those traces. No one should go into the voting booth next year. And be able to say journalism did not lease provide me with the basics and trace it as best he can. As i say theres a ceiling but in the internet culture of impatience and speed and tell me 140 characters we have to go the other way. To two other questions and we will go to the audience. With regard to butterfield disclosure of the tapes, he still wrestles with what motivated him which you write at length about in the book. There is a moral dimension and people of all levels should think about it and think is this right . I have often wondered if nixon had one lawyer who had credibility and authority the ingenue of some of these things ever going on like watergate and management of vietnam and said you are president of United States you can do these things, he probably would have been shot but no one did to my knowledge. But its you try to fit your behavior and your performance and your job into a sense into a government calling of powless luka on the front page of the Washington Post . You dedicate this book to bill bradley who passed away year ago. What would he have thought Going Forward and you tell his story . First then i would have had to tell about it and say let me go with you. [laughter] he did that whenever somebody would walkin with the speaker from the 80s with the secrets it was so secret that they can be published today when i told them they said want to meet this guy and i am sure he would have wanted to do this but you work for him for how many years . And was that the post 30 years and he was not there in the final years the very much a presence when i started. Yes. His motto was the truth emerges and essentially the directions to his reporters was go faster and get the story. Why did you have 40 years ago . It is about time. [laughter] that is good. He is somebody who always had this since of what is hidden . Your not getting the full story so he would have looked at this to say you basket of question of anecdotes and there are so many and i intentionally kept the book dash short as i could. And there is one that went almost heard it i thought that it sounds a little extreme but then there are documents in the book that are pointed to substantiate and Christmas Eve 1969 ni