[inaudible] and barbara were always very welcoming to me. they always said when's your next book? you're on. [laughter] and it was lovely. and as david said, brad and lissa have carried on the wondrous tradition, the ingenuity and made it keep going, and the fact that all of you have come tonight is a testimony to the job they do and the reverence for books that we all share. richard nixon's a hard man to let go of. [laughter] i first -- i remember as a child on black and white fuzzy television seeing this odd man. he was on the ticket with general eisenhower, and there was some problem of his taking money from a secret fund. he was talking about his daughter's dog, and i thought, hmm, he's interesting. well, he never stopped being interesting. richard nixon was never boring. and as david mentioned, he was probably as interesting in his after presidency as he was during his presidency. i chronicle in the book the beginning with spiro agnew, remember him being in some trouble. and i had said to my editor at the new yorker, the very lamented and justly legendary william shaun had said to me what are you thinking of writing next? i said, i don't know, i just have this feeling we're going to change vice presidents and presidents within a year. this was labor day of '73. it was a very way out there kind of wild thought at the time. and so we agreed i would write a journal. not a diary, but watch the events is and interpret them and talk about them. and we didn't know where it was going. and as he said at the time, we don't know how to change vice presidents, because that would be the first order of business. we didn't know how to do anything. we didn't know how to change vice presidents, we didn't know how to impeach a president, we didn't know how to get another president. we -- it was all kind of made up as we went along. and one of the most distressing things about now is the way, the loose way in which this word impeachment is tossed around. and i may or may not get to this later because i have so much to talk about, but if there is such a thing, the way richard nixon was almost impeached was really a model. it came from the center, it was bipartisan, the country could accept it because it was arrived at in a very fair and methodical way. so rearview mirror ard nixon had no -- richard nixon had no choice, finally, but to resign. he held out and held out. mainly republican senators, they didn't want to conduct a trial. they wanted gerry ford in there before the election. so we had this iconic nixon good-bye as he got onto the helicopter to take him to the plane to go to san yes moment -- san clemente, his western white house, where he would retire and never be heard from again. [laughter] so we thought. well, that's not my nixon. he was -- when he got to california, he was understandably deeply, deeply depressed. he had worked for decades to get to this highest place that he possibly could, that anybody in this country possibly can in this country politically, and it had all gone smash. he kind of knew in his own head he'd done a fair amount to bring it on, but he always believed that people were out to get him. this was his, what really brought about his downfall. he could not distinguish between opponents and enemies. and this became a big problem for him. but he was depressed. he was not well. he had an illness from a trip to the middle east, but he was not going to give up. he had never given up. all his life he'd always seen himself as being treated as lesser and lower than others. he was poor. his family, dysfunctional was not a word then, but this was a really dysfunctional family. but usually they don't tear up the constitution. he had been looked down on as a kid. he was audiocassette world, he read a lot. -- awkward, he read a lot. he never really had friends. strange person to go into politics, but he was so determined about everything. this was not going to be the end of richard nixon, no, no. he was going to work husband way pack into respectability -- his way back into respectability. now, imagine, this was a situation which would have crushed most people, and yet he was determined -- so he drew up a plan. he always had plan. aides were sent out to california with him, and they group a plan called wizard. and this was to be the resurgence, reemergence of richard nixon as a statesman. now, he was smart enough to know how do you get to be a statesman? well, people are going to listen to you on foreign policy. not on, frankly, i'm sorry, education or the environment and these things. those issues bored him anyway. the opening to china, china was really the one dearest to his heart. so he began to make speeches, he began to take trips. he went to china, and he issued pronouncements as if he were still president, or he thought he was. our nixon never quite -- he didn't change though. he would write a secret memorandum to the president op his trip -- on his trip or on some issue and then you'd, of course, leak it to the press, and it would be in the papers. and he had the famous interviews with david frost which were not as portrayed in frost/nixon. you can look it up. i take that apart pretty well. he did not confess. they just left out a few words that were inconvenient to the story. he then began to get bored in san clemente, moved to new york where he'd been before after he'd lost the california governorship, after he'd lost lost the presidency in 1960 when everybody thought, oh, he's gone. but be he's never gone. but he's never gone. i wish he were back now, because he was so much fun. [laughter] and so interesting. in any event, he moved to new york, and he and pat nixon -- she was thrilled to be out of politics at haas. she hated -- at l last. he hated it. they bought a brownstone. they were vetoed at various co-ops, of course. and he began to -- he decided he would have a series of dinners with the poobahs of new york publishers, bankers, the council on foreign relations, whatever. well, these din ors are discovered -- this is just in the last few years i discovered this post-president is she which i -- presidency which i found as interesting as the presidency. so he would have these dinners, and everything was clockwork. at 7:00 he met people at the front door. they went upstairs, he mixed drinks. he really prided himself on the dry mar funnies that he -- martinis that he made. this was a man who was not very good at small talk, and subtly was not his long suit. the house was done up in chinese decor, the appetizers were chinese, the waiters were chinese, the dinner was chinese finish. [laughter] and then after dinner they would go upstairs, and it was an organized subject at the dinner, and then afterwards they would go upstairs, and there would be some more chatting. nixon would look up, at 10:30 he'd look at the clock, and he'd say, oh, it's 10:30, and i promised i would get david cohen to a house of prostitution by 11, so we have to top now. [laughter] and everybody knew to leave. everybody wanted to come. he became a celebrity. after a while he thought new york was -- he didn't like the atmosphere for his grandchildren on whom he doted. so he moved to saddle river, new jersey. but he wasn't finished. there was another generation the cultivate. so he had a series of dinners in the saddle river where he would, roger stone you may have read about, but he was his operative for this. they invited journalists too young to have been of age during watergate. nobody who knew about watergate was to be around. and he could be very impressive. he could, he spoke just with a microphone not even a note, and he was kind of name droppy about foreign leaders i have known, but even was very impressed. so in the end, he won on his own terms. he had a funeral he just would have looed. would have loved. three ex-presidents came. henry kissinger, you know, sort of choked as he gave his little talk. bob dole had a tear coming down his eye. now, bob dole while nixon was president had been asked would you like him to make an appearance in kansas, and dole had said a flyover would do. [laughter] so my nixon would have seen straight through these guys. he knew that kissinger was bad mouthing him up with his friends in cambridge and at the georgetown parties. he understood everything that was going on. he was on to them. but he would have been mighty pleased with his funeral, and i have to say i kind of miss him. he was so interesting. now, why did i write this journal in the first place? when i spoke to mr. shaun about we'd had this idea for keeping this journal at the time -- as i said, we didn't know where it was going. i came back to washington, and this is also why we're here again. my mentor at the time, john gardner, said to me: elizabeth, write it so that 40 years from now people will know what it was like then. it cannot be recaptured. now, i didn't believe -- i don't know that i wrote it any different hi with that in mind -- differently with that in mind. i didn't know where i would be in 40 years. it just happens that it's 40 years from now. this is not an anniversary book. frankly, the book was out of print, and i wrote the peter mayer of overlock press who had a very -- overlook press who had a very distinguished book list, and he wrote back and said it's idiotic for that book to be out of print, yes, we're going to reissue it in hardback. well, my heart leapt, needless to say. i said i'll write an afterword, and that's a 10,000-word addition. i also look back on what was watergate. what was it really? with all due respect, it wasn't two reporters doing outstanding reporting. that wasn't it. it wasn't petty crimes or a break-in. the break-in that was caught, by the way -- i learned this as i was doing my reporting many years later -- it was actually the fourth attempt of these burglars to get in the watergate they, the first time they planned a grand dinner inside the watergate, and that would get them in the building, and they could get up to the democratic national headquarters. there was just one thing, i don't know, one thing led to another, and they ended up locked in a closet that night. [laughter] the next time they went up, they went up and they didn't have -- they got there, but they didn't have any equipment the pick the lock. so one of the, one of the burglars, mr. martinez, went back to miami to get a good lock pick, and he came back, and they a went in. and they actually got in over the memorial day weekend -- the labor day weekend. no, the memorial day weekend that summer. but is often the case, pardon my english, they screwed up. and they put the tape -- the tap on the wrong phone, and they took the pictures, and the pictures were all blurred. and one of the burglars took us to john mitchell, our former attorney general, who was then head of the committee to reelect the president, nope as creep. known as creep. and mitchell's reporter said these stink. i doubt that that's the word he used, but that's it. go back and get better pictures and fix the tap. then they went in, and they were caught. so think about watergate, think about this. we had a white house where the president came in with a lot of hate, a lot of people he hated and a lot of people whom he assumed were enemies. so he on his wish, they hired this bunch of strange people -- [laughter] a former cop from new york whose first job was to tail ted kennedy because he thought, nixon thought ted kennedy would be his opponent in '72, and so he wanted to get the goods on him. .. they went out to california and they raided the office of dan ellsberg's psychiatrist to get his psychiatric files. imagine that. the white house sending someone else to get someone's psychiatric files. there was one problem. they tasted. there were no files. they broke in okay, and they had a picture taken. two of them, the leaders have their picture taken and they were so proud in front of the doctor's office door. they were using cia's equipment, cameras, voice changers. and so the cia got these pictures and said, what's this? this is a violation of fourth amendment beyond anything we could imagine. that's what make nixon, that's t the cover-up was really about. fortunately, for the country the plumbers were stumblebum's but they messed up everything they did. or we would've been far deeper trouble. living through watergate it was just an amazing time. things are coming at you all the time. fortunately, with all due respect we didn't have cable or it would've been total chaos ass but we had the morning paper. we had the radio as an occasional bulletin, and when the evening papers and evening news. otherwise with the gossip, have you heard this? you won't believe what we just heard. it was just like that all the time. there was a famous saturday night called for saturday night massacre, and i refused to call it that. i was on a television program at the time, and we were sitting there, is like being in the banana shake the banana republic. the bulletins kept coming in, the president ordered the attorney general richardson to fire cox was demanding the president turn over the tapes. richardson has refused. next up, the deputy attorney come he refused -- he was fired. this would onto the night and the bulletins were coming in, and it was banana republic. downtown santiago someone else said. it was very disturbing. we didn't know where we were. the fbi surrounded the headquarters of the independent counsel's office. this kind of stuff, and so you just never know what was coming next. i did a reflection on this later about what kind of people were these, and how did this happen? we didn't have time to even think about that in. i tried to and i have there is reflections through the book about what are we to draw from this, and what kind of country is this, and how could this be? and i said there's too much going on to think these things through. we are absorbing one after another, events that run over our imaginations and trying to prepare ourselves for months of the bitter struggle to come. some indian and shenzhen have said to me the story of the nixon administration is full of people who are in over their head. there may be something to that but that does not explain. there was a fanatic of quality to some of the nixon and. the weaving together of the public piety and their venom. which may have deceived even them. one cannot escape the thought that the president set the tone. my feeling throughout this is, and you can look at any situation and say, well, you don't have to know who knew what when, who set the tone? how did this come about? one cannot escape the thought the president set the tone. lowly and suspicious, a man with a striking lack of deep human connections. he seemed to have gone through life as if in a constant combat. he confused legitimate opposition with vendetta, and so did his staff. most of us have what a friend of mine called and energy we. peoples whose judgment we trust and whose esteemed matters to us, and who we count on to level with us. nixon does not seem to have had an inner journey. he was also, well, he was very interesting but he was restrained. just to give you a flavor of what it was like to try to follow the nixon and see what he is trying to tell us, there was a rather famous event where he spoke at orlando to a group of editors, and just to give you the sense of the language of this man, david, you tell me when it's time to pull the plug, okay? now, we were in the disclosure stage and we had learned, okay, the break-in was june 17, and nixon came back from florida where he also had a place in the keys near his one friend, dd, he came back and he immediately said the extent of the with haldeman and we know that he called john mitchell, but this is when the cover-up began. but we didn't quite know that in because the tapes hadn't come out yet. the transcript didn't come out till later that summer. that told us a lot but there was still more to come and those do more that i learned in the last couple of years. tonight the president disclosed that he did called john mitchell on june 20, 1972 in order to cheer him up after the men were caught in the watergate. he goes on in detail why his tape and. suddenly we discover 18 minutes missing on a tape. so there's, he tried to pin it on his secretary, rose mary woods, in court trying to act as she's answering the phone and putting her foot on the panel but it didn't work. she couldn't do it. in the end it was nixon sitting at camp david running the machine and the racing eight and have -- 18 have been us from that day from the conversation. that's not anywhere except when i put it all together later. he goes into detail but why the tape ran out and we are further and further from the point. he explained the taping system was a little funny, and there are these little marks on my desk. he said he rubbed on his lapel. it was nixon who started the business of the flag in the lapel. i remember john garner saying we should all wear a flag pin. we should all put the flag decals on our cars. don't let them take it from us. but the democrats and liberals weren't so smart so they've appropriated that simple. so he rubs the flag in his lapel and he says with a smile, equipment president johnson had was much better material. there have been reports that kennedy and johnson had the phones. he added, i'm not criticizing. far be it for me to do what they want. that would be wrong. that's kind of the way we talk. an editor asked him his reaction on the discovery of the tapes, the conversations with mitchell didn't exist and the president replied, one of the greatest appointments because i wanted the evidence out. he said that the plumbers were established to stop leaks of information that were endangering national security. one so serious that senator ervin and senator baker agreed it should not be disclosed. what were the pentagon papers? they were a critique of the johnson administration management of the vietnam war. but, of course, it raise questions about the vietnam war which nixon and kissinger continued for five years, and in the end got about the same deal that they could've had when they first came in. but don't ask kissinger about or be prepared to sit for quite a while as he explains that's not the case. ask a watergate could happen, the president replied, 72 was a very busy year. arguing that measures had been taken go down the consumption of fuel on his trip to the south, he was in disney world, which was sitting. and he said that back a plan hadn't been brought down so they hadn't used up as much fuel. he did have a prices at the time. he adds if his own playing goes down, this is the president, if the goes down, then you don't have to impeach me. and he talks about his vice presidential papers, and he said this, i want to say this to the television audience. i made my mistakes, but in all of my years in public life i have never profited, never profited from public service. i have earned every cent. questionable. and in all my years of public life i have never obstructed justice. then came the famous immortal line, he said he welcomes this kind of examination because people of god and whether not their president is a crook. well, i am not a crook. now, this is the president of the united states. remember dignity? it was a period when it was funny, we are laughing in the same way. it was scary. we didn't know, some people's phones were tapped. some journalists the phones were tapped. a friend of mine, though wife of the colonists and she learned a very intimate conversations with a very close friend who was ted kennedy's wife were being listened to, you know, at the justice department or in the white house. this was not funny. a friend of mine went out on the front lawn one sunday morning in the paper had become and she said, he stopped the papers. nothing became fo preprocessed because it was all so preposterous but also scary. the presiden president suggestee aides that they blow up the brookings institution because he believed, and he was told by these eight plumbers, that some papers left over from the pentagon papers were still in the office, and they should set a fire in in the confusion go in there and get those papers. the president suggesting they blow up the brookings institution. well, there was somebody on the staff of the sense to stop it, but that was rare. so you also have what i learned later, you have a president who frankly was a very heavy drinker and he slurred his words, and is also on medication which usually for convulsion but it was not meant for depression, but someone had given it to them for depression. it enhances the effect of alcoholism. so he would pick up the phone at 3 a.m. and call david cohen. this is a president. fire everybody on the sixth floor of the state department. this is an order. slam. and then calling back, this is the president calling again. that order is not repeatable. slam. it was up to people to decide whether not to carry out these orders. this was a scary thing. we did note that the times would learn a lot later. as i told you, i have a passion about the subject of impeachment. it is thrown around so easily now, and it is very, very dangerous. it's a very serious business and serious people went about it seriously, and he would've been impeached by the house, but some people were so afraid. he still had a following. this was not an easily dismissed figure. it might seem so now but he had a substantial following, and republicans were virtually. and wanted out of there, just want him to go away but they also did followers to be coming at them when they were up for reelection. so they were saying, where's the smoking gun? i happened they the concept of a smoking gun, because that makes it to simple. that simplifies it. it was a whole array of things, but this one tape was found that showed him ordering and obstruction of justice. that gave the republican senators the excuse to go down to the white house and say, you've got to go. they didn't want to deal with it any longer. what is the moral of the story? the moral of the story is watch out. we have several occasions on which during the distinguished journalist would go to see him where he was living in california and say there's a new nixon. no there wasn't. read these stories with some care. we had some reforms that stayed with us, some that didn't, but at least they got campaign finance on the agenda, many other things, mr. cohen himself he was involved in. i have a passion for the subject. i wanted to keep the book ally. i hope you want your children to read about. we have generations who have no idea what happened in this extraordinary time when the constitution was truly at stake. and i hope everybody, if you read it before, you will enjoy it again. i found myself shrieking and laughing as i read it again last night and i hope -- [laughter] i hope i've made some contribution to your history and your children's understanding of our history. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, elizabeth. as we said, from generation to generation, so this is perfect for lots of reasons. we are going to the questioning period. so just go to the microphone, feel comfortable, if you feel comfortable so your name. it's a public meeting, and elizabeth will begin to answer your questions. >> don't be shy. >> tom hughes, don't you have a question? you always have a question. >> you've got one coming. >> my name is gregory. i'm not from america. i'm from the caribbean, so i'm from a different part of the world. this really is a whole set of questions. the most important is, do you believe, based on your own experiences, that what happened to nixon, i mean, with ronald reagan, they went out to basically potentially also in the gym, right? >> speaking iran-contra. >> but they said it's too dangerous to do that the time but it's an important question. the constitutional question in my opinion. do you believe that watergate might show, might potentially show, that there are problems with the u.s. constitution that maybe there's too much power within the office of the president? and that if you have people that are surrounding the president, that things can quickly get out of control in comparison with a parliamentary system where understood and situations the prime minister is much more in control? i was wondering if maybe you thought about that and what you feel about it. >> i thought about it a lot and i read about in this book, too. the founding fathers were pretty smart men but there was a lot of they couldn't anticipate. and they certainly didn't spell out what they meant by the impeachment. they set high crimes and misdemeanors, and i just want to add here, a lot of time was spent discussing what did james madison mean. it was really kind of a heavy constitutional discussion that went on. your own country, -- iran-contra, you're right. i actually broadcast those with judy woodruff on pbs, and they made the decision that the country had just been to impeachment and shouldn't be one again. but i have to say i think there's a gigantic difference. iran-contra was a very series problem. it was an off the books operation that went against a congressional law. watergate was a series of events. it was across the board. i'm often asked and i'm expecting it, i will answer it anyway, what about now? this is nothing. we have had nothing remotely like it when the president himself condoned these, not just criminal activities but this whole atmosphere of fear and vengeance and enemies. and there was nothing like it, i pray there will be nothing like it. i think, no, we just have to be sure to hold the president accountable and get after the congress if they're not doing so. also get after them if they're going crazy on one particular issue. i won't even have to mention because they are still looking for corruption and they just sort of can't find it. so it should balance out, and in the end they did balance out. the constitution worked, barely, but it works. and i can't think of a better system, and i'm also very concerned about ideas for tinkering with the constitution and the first amendment. that's a whole nother subject to anybody can play and you don't want to start cutting politics with the first amendment, or any of its. >> hi, my name is richard. you think there was any truth to the thought when nick's and had a phlebitis -- nixon had a phlebitis answer that, not taking his own life but not necessarily fighting to live? >> no. i don't think -- did you alter the question? no, i don't think the. nixon was not a quitter. i actually had the final section with a code of is that quite struck me. a man isn't finished when he is defeated. he is finished when he quits. and i am not a quitter, and he never quit. he was asked down and out as a person could be when he landed in san clemente. imagine the shame and horror of being driven out of office. but he didn't quit. and for that i have a slight, i have some admiration for the. it would have crushed most people, but he just kept going. yes, ma'am. >> i've thought a lot, as you say, it did show, watergate did show that the constitution would be upheld, but i also feel that watergate then probably coming after the vietnam war also, or during the end of it, really kind of raw dose of respect for our institutions which i think has been a very long running thing. it may have opened the door for the problem, the government ideas that have been floated ever since. >> have done what state was floated. in other words, ronald reagan and the current republican party -- >> well, that's a long way from there to here. and, in fact, richard nixon was probably the last republican president who believed that the government could do good things. he was no liberal. he was a centrist kind of by circumstance. he leaned to the conclusion -- to the conservative side but he had a democratic congress, very strong o on the environment and strong on a number of issues. and so we compromised. and a lot got done domestically although it bored him to choose. he wasn't really interested. no, i think you can take watergate as you want to see it but you can also see it as, well, the institutions are. in the end this man and his government had gone so astray, to me the most important, there were three articles of impeachment to the first one was obstruction of justice was -- which was a procedural thing, very series. the second was abuse of power and to be that we where the story was. and should be today in certain circumstances. not here but in certain states. but under the administration of this person, these things when on. they list them. they were very, very careful about what they put in this abuse of power. i think we're going to do but to recognize it when we see it, and so it didn't discourage me. i didn't think it was a triumph that everybody else was saying because we almost didn't get it done and disposed of in the way that it should have been. i always thought that jerry ford did the right thing in pardoning nixon. as he said, enough of watergate is enough. enough wallowing in watergate i think you put him and the country had to move on. and i agreed with it. could you imagine if we had years of a nixon filed? we would've been able to think, pay attention to very little else. not a very distinguished judicial friend who said no, that's wrong. he should have been held to judicial account, and we could go on and on that way and everybody can have their opinion. i think it worked out kind of the way it should. a lot of his people went to jail. most of them went to jail. you see this parade of communism haldeman, mitchell, colson, the only future. said it was and accountability that went on. hi. my name is ted cobey, and i was a college student back and still remember watching president nixon when he resigned. i've read quite a few books on watergate, and i guess what it want to ask you, as an author when those books, is there anything still we don't know about watergate? anything you think still needs to be answered that hasn't come out? >> i don't think so. because i think in the end, it wasn't the little bitty details. i could get arrested for this, but i didn't really care who deep throat was. what's the difference? the story was what nixon and were doing. it was a little intrigue of who was leaking to these very, very hard-working, very, very smart, good reporters. but no, there's nothing that i'm curious about if there's some little detail i don't know. i think we have enough to really understand. i hope that's what this book does is it follows the events but also reflects on them as they're happening and then afterwards, i go back to what was watergate, who was richard nixon. and to think i got him at last. he was a complicated, the reconstituted person, he was. he was ousted and. i did not abraham lincoln so i think is the most fascinating president that i know of, and an extraordinary story. so no, there is nothing. i'm not a conspiracy type anyway. i think we have the big picture and that's the important pictu picture. >> my name is jack, and chris buckley's wonderful phrase, i am a self loathing republican. >> you don't have to be. >> it happens that i was running the house campaign committee, the nrcc come all during the watergate drama and so forth. and there for i was in a very tense position. but i'm taking this microphone for two reasons. one is to compliment you. i think you have dealt evenly with president nixon. >> thank you. >> who was an extremely public hated men, a wonderful intellect by the way. i admired his mind to mendoza, but he had a character flaw. we all have to admit. second thing is i had a lot of differences about haldeman. i hated his guts, but, but i am convinced that he was the man who stopped those idiotic, crazy presidential vocal orders more than anyone else. >> we don't know. >> he did what a good chief of staff would do. he disregarded his bosses orders when necessary spent you may know more about this than i do. i have not seen or recorded anywhere who stopped -- not a lot was stopped after all. some of the middle of the night calls i think, there i think, to get together and say what do we do not? it's the boss again. but except for the brookings order i don't know of any during that period that were stopped. there was this supposedly, supposedly, actual horrible plan that was drawn up early called gemstone, and even j. edgar hoover, no great civil libertarian, thought that this was a bit much and that he would not implement it. but bit by bit it was implemented. so there weren't a lot of governors or people who understood boundaries around the place. >> as you know, i am like you, a watergate junkie. and there are a lot of us around. i agree with you that it wasn't destined that nixon get caught and taken out of office. it might not have happened but for a series of lucky happenstance, and having the right people in the right place at the right time. so i agree with you on a lot. i'm still troubled about the gerald ford question, because the first one who tried to do something about stopping the watergate investigations was gerald ford when the first investigations started in the house. >> how else do you think he became vice president? [laughter] >> that's going to be my bottom line question. do you think that he was, that there was a quid pro quo? that there was a deal somewhere along the line? i know that many people who have looked at it, including the board of directors of the "profiles in courage" award, which awarded that honor to gerald ford came out and decided that what you said should win the day, that he help the country of what a protracted fight. but do you think there may be more that we don't know? >> i don't think so, jim. the question is, was there a deal? and it was very, very much a question when ford pardoned nixon. had they made a quid pro quo, and there were investigations. nobody has done anything. ford, as president, had to go up to fail, was it before your subcommittee, to testify on what had happened. jerry ford was picked i believe, a lot of people were nominating themselves because they saw the was a good opening there. likely. because he was sick. good old jerry. he hadn't been a big critic of nixon but everybody thought of him and i think this turned out to be true, he was a decent guy. decent man, good old midwesterner from michigan. i'm an ohioan so i have partiality for midwesterners. but he was no sparkling figure. i described the scene in the air in the white house when nixon is going to announce who is going to be his vice president after they got rid of agnew for accepting cash invalids and the vice potential office -- envelopes. so he was out. i remember, i described the scene there as nixon is talking, sort of building it up and people stand up and applaud and i thought there has to be some mistake. jerry ford isn't standing up. he must be confused, and sure enough it was jerry ford. .. >> he said some of the greatest books have been written there jail referring, of course, to mine -- "mein kampf." i don't think there was anything untoward there. we done? [laughter] >> not quite. >> there's a question there. >> do you have a question? >> i have a question. my name is annie. i just wondered if you had a nutshell theory on why nixon was so paranoid. i mean, is there such a thing? >> the question is did i have a nutshell theory why he was so paranoid. i stayed away from psychobabble. you know, you really can't get into somebody's head. it just began very early. very early he felt people were looking down on him, and he was resentful. he wasn't surrounded by a lot of love. his family -- his father was very vie tube rahtive, and he kept failing at various businesses and the mother, whom he kept calling a saint, i'm not sure why because she was very cold, and it was very difficult for him to win his approval. even after he became president, i think she finally said something nice. he had two brothers who were dying, and she was focusing on them. who knows what happens in people's heads, but he just grew up resenting, resenting, resenting, resenting, and he didn't know when to stop. there's a wonderful little soliloquy he did after he got to san clemente that i have in the afterword about how it starts out as a piece of cake, and you get carried away, and you realize you don't need to stop, but you should have stopped. anyway, he did it much better than i'm doing. so,m= no, i don't know why. it was just so clearly there. he was very, very gig otted -- bigoted. i went back and read my conversations with members of congress on what they wanted to do about impeaching him or not. this was a scary project. but the language on the tapes, they said we heard that lbj had kind of bad language, but he was a piker compared to nixon, and there was a sort of crudeness that went on and hatred of blacks and jew, and the blacks are just down from the trees and things like that. and the language was not, i can't, it was not fit to repeat. so it was from a very early age, ask he just didn't -- he got away with punishing people he thought were his enemies, getting him off of tickets, elbowing him away from being his rivals. and he just didn't know when to stop. >> i'm going to get the last question. but first, a story. many of you will remember a fellow by the name of harold carswell who was an appointee to the supreme court who was rejected because roman -- [inaudible] said mediocrity is entitled to representation on the court. [laughter] and a fella by the name of richard harris wrote a book, wrote three articles for the new yorker and turned into a book, and it was sort of a case study of how carswell is defeated. everyone mentioned in that book and every organization mentioned in that book who opposed carswell was awed kitted -- audited on their tax returns. that was under richard nixon and john connolly as the secretary of the treasury, and that's, indeed, what happened. and system of those organizations -- some of those organizations, their tax-exempt status was threatened, and so it's a live example of what, how we move to vendetta and enemies and distinguishing between opponents and enemies. now, my question, elizabeth, is this was also a remarkable period of people rising to great public service and going well beyond what was expected of them. people in the congress, people in the staffs of the congress. share a little bit about that with us, because people ought to know there is such a thing as public service, and there is such a thing as outstanding public servants. >> and you don't know where it's going to come from. >> right. >> um, i dedicated this version of the book to those who rose to the occasion. the publishers, i guess to save of a page or so, put it on the copyright page, so you'd have to struggle to find it. but that was -- thank you, david, because that was one of the most important things that happened here. now, there was a lot of fuss made over the irving committee hearings because sam irving was -- he talked constitutional -- he taught constitutional law, but he was a bit of a ham, and so it was a great show. and he did show the country this parade of bizarre people who were populating the white house or running around doing deeds for them or deep sixing material in the potomac river. somebody told him to deep six material that had been found. all these bizarre things. but it was when it got to the house that it got very serious and very, very important. and there was a relatively new chairman of the house judiciary committee, peter rodino. now, he was from newark, so the press and cliches being what they were, everybody said, oh, he must be mobbed up. but nobody could find anything. he was a very quiet man, modest, and he set the tone. he hired somebody who was 27 at the time. he can't be here tonight, francis o'brien. he was just this very bright guy. i don't know really how they found each other. francis at the time lied about his age, he said he was 34. [laughter] he was really kind of the brains behind this thing. he, francis and his brother had to find a counsel. there was a very sort of partisan -- where are you, david? nod your head? >> yep. >> okay. a very partisan staff left over from seller who had been defeated, and this had to be seen as nonpartisan, as really fair. so francis and his brother, john -- very funny stories about this, but they went out and found the come for the committee in john door who had been in the eisenhower justice department and in the bobby kennedy justice department working on civil rights. he was a real hero, but nobody could call john dorr a flame thrower or partisan figure. and they understood that this had to come from the center, it had to be bipartisan for the country to accept it. and that's why the vietnam war, the invasion of cambodia, other things had been suggested to be part of the impeachment proceedings set aside. and they had as much trouble pushing aside the lefties who wanted to go into all sorts of issues and the people on the far right who could find no wrong with nixon. and then you had these members that you really didn't know about. there was a man -- >> [inaudible] >> no. butler was one, but from virginia -- or south carolina, you know where i mean. >> james mann. >> james mann. he looked like a founding father. we thought they were all, you know, james madison, and they were very, very serious. james mann was a conservative on the southern side, member of the southern democrats. and mann was very, very involved in this. there was paul sarbanes from baltimore who was very involved in shaping article ii. and they worked together. and there were republicans. caldwell-butler, there was hogan also from -- larry hogan also from maryland. and they were, john railsback. i mean, the beforehand we saw the sort of average figures, you know, house members. nobody had done anything very outstanding. rodino was plain spoken, not a terribly eloquent man. and they all rose. and they took it very seriously. and we took them very seriously, and they reached this bipartisan agreement that the country accepted. now, i can tell you afterward i had dinner with one of these heroes to clear up some questions for the book. he invited me to this cocktail party on the hill, and it was a lobbyist party. and he started telling me stories about how people really wanted to get on the judiciary committee because there were such wonderful trips you could take all over the world. and some of the stuff that went on that would not be fit to print. and so this all just proved to me they were real, normal people who when the occasion came, they really rose to it. this was true of the staff. it was a very complicated thing to keep under control. i don't know if any of you remember seeing in your mind's eye that committee, watching it on television. you may not remember, you didn't see any cameras because francis o'brien got the idea, he didn't want people to think -- he wanted the people to be right in there with the committee. so he said to the mighty brass of the network, you want to cover it? you're going to do it through a hole in the wall. you're not going to be in the room. and that was things like that that most people, you know, don't think of. and it was, mainly it was the character that came out. they all knew, they all knew the gravity. the book will show you, i was talking to a lot of these members who truly couldn't make up their mind. but they talked to me because the deal was i wasn't going to write about it until afterwards. and they were very serious. what is a crime? what is a high crime? what is a misdemeanor? what does that mean? is it just, you know, they have to burglarize something, or is it beyond that? what is accountability? this was very, very serious set of questions. and, but it was sort of a model impeachment. the tough that goes on now and, of course -- the stuff that goes on now and, of course, it got ruined when gingrich ran that impeachment against bill clinton for ostensibly lying under oath, but we all know what it was. and it's really too bad that the thing's gotten out of control because it was very grave, and it was. public servants, regular people are not stars, and they made it happen, and they held the country together while they did it. is that what you wanted to know? >> yeah. that's what i wanted to know. [laughter] [applause] >> thank you, elizabeth. our public memory goes to those who rose to the occasion. elizabeth will be sitting here and signing books. we'll line up this way. as usual, please help us with the chairs. thank you again, c-span. >> and thank you for coming, every one of you. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you're watching booktv, nonfiction authors and books every weekend on c-span2. >> here are some rams to watch out for this weekend -- programs to watch out for this weekend on booktv. hillary clinton's new book, "hard choices," was released this past tuesday. you can watch the former secretary of state's talk from george washington university in washington, d.c. and look in at her book signing in pent gone city, virginia -- pentagon city, virginia. on "after words," ken adelman. and throughout the weekend we'll bring you previews of forthcoming books with authors and be publishers as well as a panel discussion on book selling and publishing from bookexpo america, the publishing industry's annual trade show in new york city. for more information on this weekend's television schedule, visit us online at booktv.org. >> christopher buckley appeared at the 2014 south carolina book festival held in columbia to talk about his latest book, a collection of essays written over the past 20 years. you can watch that now on booktv. >> we're in for a celebration of what critics call the rare contribution of big ideas and truly fun writing. a new yorker by birth, christopher graduated cum laude from yale. by 24 he was managing editor of "esquire magazine". by 29, chief speech writer to george herbert walker bush, the then-vice president of the united states. and later the founding editor of "forbes" fyi. his great books have great teat les, and i think that's -- titles if you're going to write a book. give it a great title. they include "the white house mess," good title, "no way to treat a first lady," not about you, patricia, i don't think. [laughter] "supreme courtship," what a great name, and "thank you for smoking, by the way." his literary circle is reminiscent of that celebrated group of new yorkers that met regularly for lunch during the 1920s, the likes of robert benchly, ruth hale and dorothy parker. the inheritors of that tradition included christopher buckley, but also the