resignation. this is about an hour. .. a testimony to the job they do and the reverence for books books that we all share. richard nixon is a hard man to let go of. by first -- i remember as a child in black and white fuzzy television seeing this odd man, he was on a good ticket with general eisenhower and there was some problem taking money from a secret fund. and i thought this is interesting. he never stopped being interesting. richard nixon was never boring. david mentioned he was probably as interesting in his after presidency as he was during his presidency. i chronicle in the book beginning with spiro agnew. remember spiro agnew being in some trouble and i said to my editor at the new yorker, thought lamented and just the legendary william shawn saying what are you thinking of writing next? i don't know. i have a feeling we are going to change vice presidents and presidents within a year. this is labor day of 73. a way out there kind of wild thought at the time. we agreed i would write a journal, not a diary but watch the events and interpret and talk about them. we didn't know where it was going and as he said at the time we don't know how to change vice presidents. that would be the first quarter of business. 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. it was all kind of made up as we went along. one of the most distressing things about now is the loose way we use the word impeachment which time they are may not get to this later because i have so much to talk about the affairs such a thing the way richard nixon was almost impeached was the model. it came from the center. it was bipartisan, it was -- the country could accept it because it was arrived at in a very fair and methodical way. richard nixon had no choice but to resign. he held out and help out but mainly republican senators, they didn't want to conduct a trial. they wanted to get this thing over with and journey forward before the election so we had this iconic nixon goodbye as he got on to the helicopter to taken to the plane to go to san clemente his western white house where he would retire and never be heard from again. so we thought. that is not my nixon. when he got to california he was understandably deeply depressed. he had worked for decades to get to the highest place he possibly could, than anybody in this country possibly can in this country politically, and it was all gun. he knew in his head he had done a fair amount to bring a non but he always believed people were out to get him. this was what brought about his downfall. he could not distinguish between opponents and enemies. and this became a big problem for him but he was the press, he was not well. she had phlebitis from a trip to the middle east that he took for the end but he was not going to give up. he had never given up all his life. he had always seen himself as being treated as lesser and lower than others. he was for. his family, dysfunctional was not a word fin but this was a really dysfunctional family. usually they don't grow up to tear up the constitution. he had been looked down on as a kid. he was awkward. he read a lot, he was not popular. in never really had friends. strange person to go into politics but he was so determined about everything. he was determined, this was not going to be the end of richard nixon. he was going to work his way back into respectability. imagine, this is a situation which would have crushed most people and yet he was determined so he drew up a plan. he always had a plan. some aides were sent to california with him at government expense and they drew up a plan called a wizard and this was to be the resurgence and re-emergence of richard nixon as a statesman. he was smart enough to know that how do you get to be a statesman. they are going to listen to you on foreign policy, education or environment for these things, those issues board in any way. is great triumphs, work with the soviet union and the opening to china. china was the one dearest to his heart. he began to make speeches, began to take trips, and he should pronouncements as if he were still president or thought he was, our nixon never quite -- he would write a secret memorandum to the president on his trip course some issue and you 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. he does 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 had been before after he lost the california governorship, lost the presidency in 1960 when everyone thought he was gone but he was never gone. i wish he were back now because he was so much fun. and so interesting. any event he moved to new york. he and pat nixon, she was thrilled to be out of politics at last, she hated it and they were vetoed at various kellogg's of course, and he decided he would have a series of dinners with new york publishers, bankers, almost all sides. these dinners are discovered -- in the last few years i discovered his post 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 in the front door. he went upstairs, mixed drinks, he prided himself on the dry martinis he may. this was not a man who was very good at small talk. he -- subtlety was not his long suit. the house was up, the appetizers were chinese, the waiters were chinese, the dinner was chinese, and after dinner is they would go upstairs and there was an organized subject at the dinner and afterwards they would go upstairs and more chat. and it was 10:30 and i promised i would get david code into a house of prostitution so we have to stop now. and everybody wanted to come. he became a celebrity. after a while he sought new york -- he doted on his grandchildren. in moved to new jersey, but he wasn't chase. there was another generation to cultivate. he had a series of dinners in saddle river where he would -- roger stone you may have read about, they invited journalists too young to have been of age during watergate. no one knew watergate was to be around and he could be very impressive. he spoke with a microphone and was named dropping foreign leaders, everybody was very impressed. in this end he won on his own terms. he would have loved -- three ex-presidents came, henry kissinger sort of choked as he gave his little talk, bob dole had a tear coming down his eye. he had been asked would you like him to make an appearance in kansas and bob dole said a flyover would do. 9 nixon would have seen straight through these guys. the new henry kissinger was bad mouthing him with his friends in cambridge and that the georgetown parties. he understood everything that was going on. he was done to them but he would have been pleased with his funeral and i have to say i kind of miss him. he was so interesting. why did i write this journal in the first place? when i spoke to a mr. shaw about this idea about keeping the journal at the time, we didn't know where it was going. i came back to washington and this is also why we are here again. my mentor at the time also happened to be david, john gardner said to me elizabeth, write it so that 40 years from now people will know what was like then. it cannot be recaptured. i don't know that i wrote it any differently with that in mind. i didn't know where i would be in 40 years. it just happens that 40 years from now, this is not an anniversary book, the book was written as a print and i wrote to peter mayer of overlook press who has a very distinguished book lists. he rode back and said it is idiotic for that book to be out of print. they will be issued in hardback. my heart leapt needless to say and i said all right, i will write and afterwards to clear things up and then came the afterward, at 10,000 word addition of new material, part of which i told you but also look back on what was watergate, what was it really? it wasn't tweet to 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 the fourth attempt of these burglars to get into watergate. the first time they'd plant a grand dinner inside watergate that would get them in the building and get to the democratic national headquarters, there was this one thing, one thing led to another and ended up locked in a closet. next time they went up they went up and got their but they didn't have the equipment to pick the locks. one of the burglars went back to miami to get a good lock pick and came back and they went in and actually got in over the memorial day -- labor day weekend, memorial day weekend that summer. as is often the case, part my english, they screwed up and they put the cap on the wrong phone and took the pictures and the pictures were all blurred and one of the burglars took this to john mitchell, former attorney general who was then head of the committee to reelect the president. and the reporter said these sting. that is not the word used. go back and get better pictures and fix that. then they went in and they were caught. the thing about watergate, we had a white house where the president came in with a lot of people he hated and a lot of people he assumed were enemies, so he on his wish, they hired a rash of strange people, a former cop from new york whose first job was to tale ted kennedy because he fought -- nixon thought ted kennedy would be his opponent in 1972. he wanted to get the goods on him. he was always wanting to get the goods on people. the main person you want to get the goods on was dan elsburg to have leaked the pentagon papers. henry kissinger was very worked up about this and it got nixon all worked up. there was actually then committed probably the most dangerous, nixon understood this. was more concerned about the fall and having been found out, then the watergate break-in and that is the burglars, the plumbers, they were called, they were planning for leaks. they went out to california and they raided the office of dan gelber ag's psychiatrist to get his psychiatric files. imagines that. the white house sending somebody out for somebody's psychiatric files. there was just one problem. they had case it. there were no files. a broken okay and they had their picture taken, they were so proud in front of the doctor's office door and they were using c i a equipment, cameras, voice changers, wigs, so the cia got these pictures and said what is this? this is a violation of fourth amendment beyond anything we could imagine. that is what the coverup was really about. fortunately for the country the plumbers messed up everything they did or we would have been in far deeper trouble. living through watergate was an amazing time. things were coming at you all the time. all do respect, we didn't have cable or would have been total chaos. we had a morning paper, the radio as an occasional bulletin, and the evening papers and evening news and gossip, if have you heard this? you won't believe what we just heard and it was just like that all the time. that was the famous saturday night, the saturday night massacre. i refuse to call it that. i was actually on a television program at the time, we were sitting there, it was like being in that banana republic, the blossoms kept coming in. the president has ordered the attorney general richardson to fire archibald cox who was demanding the president turned over the tapes. rich edson refused and he has been fired. next up, the deputy attorney general refused, he was fired. this went on through the night and the bulletin's were coming in and do was banana republic, downtown san diego. it was very disturbing. we didn't know where we're. the fbi surrounded the headquarters of the independent counsel's office. so you never knew what was coming next. i did reflection on this later about what kind of people worry fees and how did this happen and i would say we didn't have time to even think about that then. i tried to and i have various reflections through the book about what we to draw from this and what kind of country in this, how could this be? too much is going on. we are absorbing events that run our imaginations and trying to prepare ourselves for months of bitter struggle to come. some close to the administration said the story of the nixon administration is one of people who were in over their heads. that might be true but that does not explain it. there was a fanatic quality to some of the nixon men. there public piety had and their venom which may have deceived even them. one cannot escape the thought that the president set the tone. my feeling throughout this, you can look-many situations and say you don't have to know who knew what when, who set the tone? how did this come about? one cannot escape the fog that the president set the tone. a man with a striking lack of deep feeling and connections, seems to have gone through life as if in constant combat. he confused legitimate opposition and so did his staff. most of us have an inner jury. people whose judgment we trust, whose opinion matters to us and to we count on to level with us. nixon does not seem to have an injury. he was all so -- he was very interesting but very strange. just to give you the flavor of what was like to follow nixon and see what he is trying to tell us there was a rather famous event when he spoke in orlando to group of editors and just to give you the sense of the language of this man -- tele when it is time to pull the plug, we were in disclosure stage and we have learnt the break-in was june 17th and nixon came back from florida where he also had a place in the keys in key biscayne near his one friend, he came back and had meetings that day with colson, we know that he calls john mitchell but this is when the cover-up began but we didn't quite know that zen because the tapes had come out yet, the transcripts to come out until later that summer, that told a lot but there was more to come and still more than i learned in the last couple years. tonight the president disclosed tical john mitchell on june 20th, 1972, in order to cheer him up. goes on in detail why the tape ran out. we discovered 18 minutes missing on the tape, so they tried to pin it on his secretary, rose mary woods, trying to figure out how to answer the phone and putting your foot on the panel but it didn't work, he couldn't do it. in the end it was nixon's sitting at camp david running the machine and racing 18 minutes from that day, from the cover-up conversation. that is not anywhere except what i've put altogether later. he goes into detail about why the tape ran out and we are farther from the point. he explains it was a little funny. a little funny that they had. he robbed the flag in his lapel. it was nixon starting the business as a flag and a lapel. i remember john garner saying we should all wear the flag pins, we shall put the flag on our cars. don't let them take it from us. the democrats and liberals were at that spot so they have appropriated that symbol to this day so he runs the flag in his lapel and says with a smile the equipment president johnson had was incidentally much better material. there have been reports kennedy and johnson had the phones. he adds -- i am not criticizing him, you see, far be it for me to do a thing like that, that would be wrong, that is the way he would talk. an editor asked his reaction to the discovery of the tapes, the conversations, and mitchell didn't exist and the president replied, one of the great disappointments because i wanted the evidence out, he said there were established to stop leaks of information that endanger national security, one says series that senator and and senator baker agreed it should not be disclosed. what with the pentagon papers, critique of the johnson administration, management of the vietnam war but the great questions about the vietnam war which nixon and henry kissinger continued for five years in the end got the same deal they could have had when they first came in but don't ask henry kissinger about it or be prepared to sit for quite a while as he explains that is not the case. ask how watergate could happen, the president replied 72 was a very busy year. by doing measures had been taken to hold down the consumption of fuel in his trip to the south, he was in disney world and he said the backup plane hadn't been brought down so they hadn't used up as much fuel. we did have a fuel crisis at the time. he answered it his own plane goes down it goes down. then they don't have to impeach me. he talks about his vice-presidential papers which he had held out from the government and finances and said this. i want to say this to the television audience. i made my mistakes but in all 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 never obstructed justice, then came the famous immortal line, he said he welcomes this kind of examination because people have got to know whether their president is a sucker truck. i am not a crook. this is the president of the united states. remember dignity? it was a period when it was funny. we were laughing in the same way. it was scary. we did note, some people's phones work half, some journalists's phones were tapped. a friend of mine, the wife of a columnist, learned her very intimate conversations with her very close friend, ted kennedy's wife were being listened to at the justice department or in the white house. this was not funny. a friend of mine went out sunday morning and the paper had come and they said they stopped the papers. nothing became preposterous because it was all so preposterous but also scary. the president suggested to some aides that they blow up the brookings institution because he believed, he was told 5 these peoples that some papers leftover from the pentagon papers were still in the office and they should set afire and in the confusion go in and get those papers. the president suggesting they block the brookings institution. there was somebody on the staff with the sense to stop it but that was rare so you also have one island later, the president was drunk a lot of the time. was a very heavy drinker and he slurred his words and he was also on medication which was really for convulsion. it was not meant for depression but someone had given it to him for depression but it enhances the effects of alcoholism so he would pick up the phone at 3:00 a.m. and call david cohan, this is a precision. fire everybody on the sixth floor of the state department, this is an order. then he would call up, this is the president, that orders not appealable. it was up to people like colson and dean and such folks to decide whether or not to carry out his orders. this was a scary thing. we didn't know it at the time so we learned a lot later. i have a passion about the subject of impeachment. it is throw around so easily now. it is very dangerous. it is a very serious business and sirius people went about it seriously. he would have been impeached by the house but some people were so afraid, he still had a following. he was not an easily dismissed figure. it might seem so now but he had a substantial following and republicans are very coin. they wanted him to just go away but they also didn't want to followers to be coming at them when they were up for reelection. suppose they were saying where is the smoking gun. i hate the concept of a smoking gun because that makes it too symbol. that simplifies it. it was a whole array of things, but this one take was found that showed him ordering and obstruction of justice and that gave the republican senate the excuse to go to the white house and say you have got to go. they didn't want to deal with it any longer. what is the moral of the story? watch out. we had several locations when distinguished journalists would go to him in california and say there is the new nixon. no there wasn't. read the stories with some care. we had some reforms that stayed with us, some that didn't, but it got campaign finance on the agenda. many things mr. cohan was involved in. i have a passion for the subject, i wanted to keep the book alive. i hope you want your children to read about it. we have generations who have no idea what happened in this extraordinary time when the constitution was truly at stake. i hope everybody, if you read it before you will enjoy it again. i found myself shrieking and laughing as i read it again. i hope i made some contribution to history and to your children's understanding of history. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, elizabeth. you said from generation to generation. those this is perfect for lots of reasons. we are going to begins unquestioned period so just go to the microphone. if you feel comfortable, say your name. is a public meeting, and elizabeth will begin to answer your questions. >> don't be shy. tom hughes, you always have a question. you are a great questioning person. >> you got one coming. >> mining is gregory. i'm not from america. i am from the caribbean, a different part of the world. this is a whole set of questions. the most important is do you believe from your own experiences that what happened to nixon, with ronald reagan, basically potentially also in peach him. >> iran-contra. >> but it was too dangerous. an important question here. unconstitutional question in my opinion. do you believe watergate might potentially show that there are problems with the u.s. constitution, too much power within the office of the president and if you have people there surrounding the president that things can get out of control in comparison with a parliamentary system where under certain conditions the prime minister is much more controlled? i was wondering what do you feel about that. >> i have thought about a lot and i wrote about it in this book too. the founding fathers were pretty smart men but there was a lot they couldn't anticipate and a certain didn't spell out what they meant by impeachment. base set high crimes and misdemeanors and i want to add there are -- a lot of time discussing what did james madison mean and it was really a kind of competition oil discussion that went on. iran-contra you are right. broadcasting with judy woodruff on pbs, they lay the decision that the country had just been through an impeachment and you shouldn't do one again but i have to say there's a gigantic difference. iran-contra was a very serious problem, and operations that went against a congressional law. watergate was a series of the events. across-the-board. i am often asked -- i'm expecting it. what about now? this is nothing. we have had nothing remotely like it where the president himself condoned not just criminal activities but to set this whole atmosphere of fear and vengeance and enemies. there was nothing like it and i prayed there will be nothing like it. we just have to be sure to hold the president accountable and go after congress if they are not doing so, and on one particular issue, then i don't have to mention because looking for corruption, they just can't find it. it should balance out and in the end did balance out. the constitution worked, barely, but it worked and i can't think of a better system and i am concerned about ideas for tinkering with the constitution and the first amendment. that is another subject. anybody can play and you don't want to start playing politics with the first amendment or any of it. >> my name is richard. do you think there is any truth to the thought when nixon had phlebitis that he was sort of not taking his own life but not necessarily fighting to live? >> i don't think -- you all heard the question. i don't think so. nixon was not a quitter. i actually had the final section with a quote of his that struck me. a man isn't finished when he is defeated. he is finished when he quits. i am not a quitter. he never quit. he was as down and out as a person could be when he landed in san clemente. imagine the shame and tour of being driven out of office but he didn't quit and that that i have some admiration for that. it would have crushed most people but he just kept going. yes, ma'am? >> as you say, watergate did shows that the constitution would be upheld but i also feel that watergate, probably coming after the vietnam war also, during the end of that, really kind of involve thus -- robbed us of respect for our institutions which has been a very long running thing, opened the door for the problem is the government's ideas that have been floated ever since. in other words ronald reagan, and the current republican party. >> that is a long way from there to here. in event richard nixon was probably the last republican president who believed government could do good things. he was no liberal. he was a centrist by circumstance, he leaned to the conservative side that had a democratic congress, very strong on the environment and the number of issues and so he compromised and the lot got done domestically although it bored him to tears and he wasn't contested. you can take watergate as you want to see it but you can also see it as the institutions worked. in this end this man and this government had done so astray, to me there were 3 articles of impeachment, the first was obstruction of justice which was a procedural thing, very serious. the second was the abuse of power and to me that is where the story was. and should be today in certain circumstances. not here but in certain states. i don't know. i wouldn't want to say but that under the administration of this person, these things went on and they were very careful about what they put in this abuse of power. i think we're going to be a little recognized when we see it. it didn't discourage me. i didn't think it was a triumph that everyone else was saying because we almost didn't get it done and dispose of its in the way it should have been. i have -- i always thought gerald ford did the right thing in pardoning nixon. as he said, enough of watergate is enough, enough of wallowing in watergate and the country had to move on and i agree with that. imagine if we had had years of a nixon trial. we have would have been able to pay attention to very little else. of very distinguished judicial friend that is wrong, he should have been held to judicial account. we could go on and on that way and everyone could have their opinions. it worked out the way it should. a lot of people went to jail. most of them went to jail. you see a parade of them, mitchell, colson, they all went to jail so there was an accountabilities that went on. >> i was a college student and can still remember watching president nixon when he resigned. quite a few books on watergate, what i want to ask as an author of one of those books, is there anything still we don't know about watergate? anything that still needs to be answered? that hasn't come out? >> i don't think so because i think in this end it wasn't the little details. i could get arrested for this but i don't care who deep throat was. what is the difference? the story was what nixon and the white house where it doing and the intrigue of who was leaking to these hard-working and very smart reporters but no, there is nothing i am curious about. we really have enough to understand it and i hope that is what this book does, it follows the events the also reflects upon them as they are happening and afterward in the afterword i go back to what was watergate, who was richard nixon, and i think i have got him at last. he was a complicated, very complicated person. he was no abraham lincoln. he is the most fascinating president that i know of, and extraordinary story. so no, i am not a conspiracy tight anyway. i think we have the big picture. >> my aim is jack collins. in chris buckley's wonderful phrase i may still floating republican. >> you don't have to be. >> it happens that i was running the house campaign committee, the nrc see all during the watergate trial and so forth and therefore i was in a very tense position but i am taking this microphone for two reasons. one is to complement you. i think you have dealt evenly with president nixon. he was an extremely complicated man, a wonderful intellect by the way. i admired his mind tremendously but he had a character flaw we all have to admit. second thing is i have a lot of differences with bob haldeman. i hated his god damned guts. but i am convinced he was the man who stopped those idiotic crazy presidential focal orders more than anyone else. he gets credit for is that. he did what a good chief of staff should do. he disregarded his boss's orders when necessary. >> you may know more about the night to. i do not see recorded anywhere this stopped, not a lot worse stopped after all. some of the middle of the night calls, what do we do now, it is the boss again. but except for the brookings order i don't know of any during that period that were stopped. not supposedly a horrible plan that was drawn up early called gemstone and even j. edgar hoover, no great civil libertarian, thought this was a bit much and he would not implement it. but bit by bit it was implemented. there were not a lot of governors or people who understood boundaries around the place. >> as you know, i am like you watergate jumpy and there are a lot of us around. i agree with you that it wasn't destined to that nixon get caught and taken out of office. it might not have happened but for a series of lucky happenstances, having the right people in the right place at the right time so i agree with you on a lot. i am still troubled about the gerald ford question because the first one who tried to do something about stopping the watergate investigation was gerald ford. when the first investigation started in the house. >> how else do you think he became vice president? >> that is 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 many people looked at it including the board of directors of the profiles of courage award which awarded that honor to gerald ford came out and decided that what you said should win the day, that he helped the country avoid a protracted fight, but do you think there may be more the we don't know? >> i don't think so. the question is was there a deal? it was very much a question when ford pardoned nixon, had they made a quid pro quo, there were investigations of it. nobody has found anything. ford as president had to go to the hole before your committee, subcommittee to testify on what had happened. gerald ford was picked i believe, a lot of people were nominating themselves because they saw there was a good of pinning their likely. because he was safe. gold jerry. he hadn't been a big critic of nixon but every thought of them, the standout true, as a decent guy, a decent man, good old midwestern air from michigan. i have a partiality for midwesterners and -- he was no sparkling figure. i described the scene in the white house when nixon is going to announce who is he going to be his vice president after is they got rid of and new, cash envelopes in the presidential office, in the executive office building from some contractors in maryland. it was like that so agnew was out. and i remember i described the scene, nixon was talking and building up and people stand up and applaud and said there has to be some mistake, gerald ford isn't standing up. he must be confused and sure enough it was gerald ford. he was no star but he turned out to be just right for this. he was steady, he set the right tone, i think the pardon was right, let's put this behind us and keep going, there was a big discussion, big argument with the new prosecutor as to whether or not nixon should be prosecuted. i don't know what would have been gained by that. i don't know how the man could have been ashamed anymore. he would have written another book, he did when he was at san clemente but as impeachment was closing in on him, a certain name is thrown around too much, the greatest books have been written from jail, referring of course to mine kampf. i don't think there was anything untoward. are you done? >> not quite. >> one question. i just wondered if you had a nutshell theory on why nixon was so paranoid? is there such a thing? >> that i had a net shelf theory why he was so paranoid? i stay away from psychobabble hearing, you can't get into somebody's head. it began very early. he felt that people were looking down on him and he was resentful. he was surrounded by a lot of love. his father kept failing at various businesses, she was very cold, it was difficult for him to win her approval even after he became president, she finally said something nice and two brothers who were tubercular and died and she was focusing on them so this just -- who knows what happens in people's heads? he grew up resenting and resenting and he didn't know when to stop. there was a wonderful thrill after -- starts out as a piece of cake. and you get carried away and realize you don't need to stop but you should have stopped, he did it much better than i am doing. it was so clearly there, he was very bigoted and it came out in the tapes and this affected things. i read my conversations with members of congress about what they wanted to do about impeaching him, it was scary but the language on the tapes, we heard that lbj was kind of bad language, nixon -- there was this sort of crude crudeness that went on and his hatred of blacks and jews and the jews are all psychiatrists and the blacks adjust down from the trees and the language is not fit to repeat. and he got away with punishing people for, getting them off of tickets. >> the story of -- -- farther the name of richard harris wrote a book, three articles for the new yorker and turned into a book. and everyone mentioned in this book and every organization mentioned in that book who oppose -- was audited on their tax returns. that was under richard nixon and john connally as secretary of the treasury and that is indeed what happens and these organizations, tax-exempt status was threatened. it is a live example, how they move to vendetta and enemies and distinguishing between opponents and enemies and my question is this was a remarkable period of people rising to great public service and going well beyond what was expected of them, people in congress, in the staffs of congress cheryl little bit about that with us because people ought to know if there is such a thing of public service and such a thing as outstanding public service. >> and you don't know where it is going to come from. i dedicated this version of the book to those who rose to the occasion. publishers save a page or so put it on the copyright page and you struggle to find it. that was one of the most important things that happened here. there was a lot of fuss over the irving committee hearings because sam irving was -- he was a bit of a ham. it was a great show and he did show the country a parade of bizarre people who were populating of the white house, indeed sixing material in the potomac river, and it cannot carry serious and very important and it was a relatively new chairman of the house judiciary committee, who was from newark. so the press appreciated what they were, 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 a very bright guy, don't how they found each other, france's at the time lied about his age, he said he was 24. he was the brains behind this thing. francis and his brother had to fight a council. there was a very harsh partisan -- do you want to get ahead? a very partisan staff leftover from many silver who had been defeated. this had to be seen as nonpartisan, as really fair. so francis and his brother john, had funny stories about this and they went out and found the council for the committee, in the eisenhower justice department and bobby kennedy, justice department working on civil rights, a real hero but nobody could call him a flame thrower or a partisan figure. they understood this had to come from the center and be bipartisan for the country to accept it and that is why the vietnam war, the invasion of cambodia and other things that were suggested to be part of the impeachment proceedings were set aside and they had as much trouble pushing aside the ones who want to go on all sorts of issues and on the far right who could find no wrong with nixon. then you have numbers you did know about. there was -- caldwell butler was one but from a virginia, south carolina, you know what i mean. james man looked like a founding father. james madison, they were very serious, james man was a real conservative on the democratic side, southern democrat, died in the will, 7 democrats, he 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 they were republicans, caldwell butler, hogan, also, larry hogan from maryland and they turned the rails back. before hand we saw the sort of average figures, house members, nobody had done anything outstanding, a sort of very plain spoken, not terribly eloquent man and they all rose and took it very seriously and we took them very seriously and they reached this bipartisan agreement that the country accepted. i can tell you afterwards i had dinner with one of these heroes to clear up questions for the book. they invited me to this cocktail party on the hill and was a lobbyist party and he started telling me stories about how people really want to get on the judiciary committee because they are 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, this all proved to me they were real normal people who when the occasion came, they rose to it. this was true of the staff. it was a complicated thing to keep under control. i don't know if anybody remembers seeing in your mind's i the 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 -- you wanted 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 will do it for a hole in the wall. you won't be in the room. things like that that most people don't think of. mainly it was the character that came out, they all knew the gravity, the book will show you, i was talking to all these members who couldn't make up their mind that 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? is a high crime? what is a misdemeanor? what does that mean? they have to burglarize something? what is accountability? this is very very serious set of questions. it was a model impeachment. it got ruined when newt gingrich ran the impeachment against bill clinton for ostensibly, it is too bad that it has gotten out of control. it was -- public servants, regular people, not stars and made it happen. is that what you wanted to know? [applause] >> they rose to the occasion. gee elizabeth will be sitting here in books, they line up this way, help us with the shares, thank you again, c-span. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> you are watching booktv with nonfiction books and authors every weekend. booktv, television for serious readers. on booktv on c-span2, 40 years ago this weekend president nixon resigned, and on the afterwards program you can watch bob woodward who broke the watergate story, interviewed john dean, president nixon's white house counsel. also this weekend booktv visits new york public library and sits down with its president and ceo anthony marks to talk about the library's past, current operations and its future. adele levine recalls her experiences as a physical therapist at walter reed army medical center. you will see todd taken defend his controversial rape comment and books on the last days of the confederacy. all this and more, 48 hours of nonfiction books and authors on c-span2. booktv, television for serious readers. >> booktv takes a look at the new york times list of best-selling non-fiction evokes. first on the list is laura homan brand's account of an olympic runner turned army air force bomber in unbroken. next is lynne vincent with heaven is for real followed by daniel james brown's boys in the boat, a look at the crew team and their quest for gold in the 1936 berlin olympics. .. and cheryl strayed ramps up the list with her remembrance of an