Good morning. Welcome to the nixon president ial library and museum. My name is joe lopez, Vice President of Marketing Communications for the Richard Nixon foundation. Were pleased to have you here today in yorba linda and a greeting to those of you watching on cspan and youtube today. Todays legacy forum is copresented by the Richard Foundation and the nixon president ial library, National Archives and administration. Weve done more than 30 of these nixon legacy forums over the past ten years, and you can find all of them on our website. Nixon foundation dot org. Id like to start by introducing Geoff Shepard. Jeff served as, associate director of the Domestic Council in the Nixon Administration and now a member of the board of directors of, the Richard Nixon foundation. Jeff, kick us off. Thank you, joe. Geoff shepard beginning in 2010, we began seeing what we call nixon forums and theyre cosponsored in the past the Nixon Foundation and National Archives as. They are usually recorded, videotaped by cspan and rebroadcast on. What they are in essence are group oral histories. They bring together the documents that are maintained here by the National Archives and people who produce them. Weve done a concert. Joe, weve done 40 of these. Nixon legacy forums since 2010. And the the archives is particularly pleased with the work that we do because. They say we make their documents come alive and we do them here or we do them in washington, d. C. We are the only administration producing programs on various Public Policy initiatives of our administration. Todays forum is going to be moderated by chris to move to my right, hes hes he and i were there together. All the panelists were there at the time. But chris and i were young. Young colleagues on president nixons white house staff, and he worked for Patrick Moynihan on urban affairs. So chaired the White House Task force on environmental policy. He then taught at harvards school and then came back under the Reagan Administration and was, in essence, deregulation czar at omb. He spent 25 years at the American Enterprise institute, including 22 years as its president. And then he spent a little over ten years as, a distinguished fellow at the hudson institute, and recently switched within the last year or so where hes now a distinguished on american thought at the heritage foundation. Hes a close friend. Hes an accomplice, a scholar. And were most fortunate to have the moderate this legacy him. Chris, its all. Jeff, thank you very much and thank you to the Nixon Foundation and to the library for sponsoring this event and your good work in producing these forums the years. Richard nixon is best known for his achievements in foreign policy, but his initiatives in domestic policy were astonishingly innovative in environmental welfare and health care policy. Was politically avant garde. Well ahead of his times. His School Desegregation actions succeeded. Where others had failed. High on this list, and perhaps the most of all was policy. The revolution in human, which has us. The global internet, smartphones in every purse and pocket, hundreds of High DefinitionTelevision Channels. And that helped us survive the recent pandemic lockdowns was launched in the Richard Nixon white house when president nixon took office, america had only three Television Networks abc, cbs and nbc, whose news programs the president thoroughly loathed Cable Television was nothing but long extension cords from antenna towers to homes in areas where the terrain interfere with home antennas. Telephones were hard wired through ma bells vast highly expensive grid of landlines that made Long Distance calls a high priced luxury. The only recent innovation in telephones had been introducing the phone as an alternative to the black telephone. Satellite communications was a sluggish, ridiculously disorganized monopoly that had managed orbit one or two low capacity units the size of a carry on suitcase. In nearly a decade, what launched the technological journey that brought us. From 1970 to 2024 was a simple, radical idea that Wireless Communications through satellites and towers could replace all of those wires at far lower cost and in far greater variety. And that private enterprise and free Market Competition could do the job. But it was an idea that engineers Business Executives and government officials did not see. And when they got wind of it, they fought to preserve the lethargic status quo. This is the story we will be exploring today. Another remarkable feature of Richard Nixons presidency was the array of brilliant thinkers he attracted to the top ranks of his administration. Henry kissinger, george shultz, daniel moynihan. Arthur burns, herb stein and. Others. Less well known. Clay t whitehead. Tom who conceived and headed the White House Office of telecommunications and assembled his own team of brainiacs, including Antonin Scalia, who would go on to become one of the greatest of all Supreme Court justices. And brian lamb, who would go on to found cspan and become one of americas greatest civic educators. Tom died in 2008, just shy of 70. Having lived to see the first fruits of his policy revolution, steve jobs had introduced the iphone just year and a half before and helping and having helped advance that revolution as. A pathbreaking satellite entrepreneur nor his legacy lives in his papers collected at the library of congress and the Nixon Library, and in the work our three distinguished panelists. Margaret whitehead was toms soulmate and his wife for 35 years. She part of his creative adventures engineering, economics, politics and business on a daily basis as ph. D. Cultural historian, she has been perfectly equipped to preserve and interpret cultural transformation. Her husband ignited. Henry goldberg was general counsel of the office of Telecommunications Policy following Antonin Scalia and was deeply involved in of its initiatives. He went on to found the washington law of goldberg godless weiner and wright, and is described as the dean of American Telecommunications lawyers. In addition to his brilliant practice, he has authored many articles and reports on communications. The First Amendment and the media and communications technologies. Thomas hazlett is hugh mccall, a professor of economics and director of the economic director. The information economy project at clemson university. Is author of the politic spectrum the tumultuous of Wireless Technology from Herbert Hoover to the smartphone and other influential books and hundreds of articles on communication policy, including regular columns for the wall street journal and the financial times. The two times white whitehead and haslett were colleagues and collaborators in the 2000, when both held professorships at george mason university. Let me say a long time student of professor work that it towers above Everything Else that has been written in the field now Margaret Whitehead margaret the flaw or i should say the airwaves are yours. Thank you, jim baron Geoff Shepard the nixon president ial library and the Nixon Foundation. This opportunity to examine the history of otp. And thank you, chris henry and tom for so generously sharing your universe acknowledged talents at this forum in 1967, when the Hubert Humphrey campaign sought the name an Economic Policy expert from the president of americas most modern think tank, rand he suggested the campaign engage rands 28 year old economic analyst Tom Whitehead after it when humphreys Team Approached him, thompson said. Im honored by your offer. But i am a republican. Having said this, tom thought to himself, if the people want me, perhaps i might help nixon. This thought changed tom writers life the story of toms path from the heartland to m. I. T. Rend the Nixon White House and later to pioneering entrepreneurship is especially american. Thomas in 1938 and raised in a small kansas town by parents trained as and the father who was a government worker on the edge of town. Toms father, with young toms help, maintained a cattle farm major events in toms life at 12, where he tested as having the highest iq, the state of kansas. For his age, and his mother gave him her fathers telegraph key. Key in hand. He bought a ham kit, built a radio, taught himself morse code, and applied to the fcc for a ham Radio License to enable his global reach. Tom and his father started the installation of a telephone pole in their backyard which tom somehow miraculously climbed without safety gear, attach his wiring, his technology in place. He proceeded to cover his bedroom with a qsl card from his ham. Rhythmic sounds of morse code dots and dashes began to pervade the way that hustled in the early 1950s, an era when laundress calls were expensive and internet tional trouble uncommon. Thomas captivated by the magic of expanding imagined universe with his ham contacts and the research he did on their countrys. This he did in three sets of prime reference books his family gave him as a for his academic achievements. Left kansas 18 to attend and my two were after his first semester. The faculty that all of his future courses at the graduate level in the ensuing 11 years spent between mit and volunteer military service, tom earned three graduate degrees. Among one was an Electrical Engineering and two more were in systems analysis and management. One of these degrees was a ph. D. In addition, these three degrees. Tom had an all but for a second page ph. D. One in economics. Im proposing that he move forward this to his mentor the legendary Professor William kaufman. Kaufman exclaimed. Tom you have done enough for, heavens sake. You are prepared. Kaufman famously defense strategist and budgetary had not mentored tom merely by teaching him, but by inserting him the work cultures of bell labs, the bureau of budget and rand. After m. I. T. , tom at rand for a year before calling bob ellsworth, a former chairman of the Republican Party in kansas who was close to nixon. Through him, tom was able to join nixons top Campaign Advisers in new york. Later, when drafted by the nixon team for six months. Toms unique credentials prompted a unanimous request from the team that he be responsible for the six science agencies reporting to the president. Among these were the Atomic Energy commission nasa and the federal Communications Commission. Once in the white house and eventually nominated by the president and confirmed by the senate as special assistant, he dealt with all six agencies. Realized as he had for some that the most burning ones not addressed by the Prior Administration were those in telecom. Tom had begun to research the difficulties and possibilities telecom, even before entering white house. Delving deeply, he deemed these issues broad and deep enough to warrant policy analysis says by an independent Agency Within the executive branch, approving toms proposal for this agency. The office of Telecommunications Policy. President nixon signed. An executive order to launch it afterward. Disappointed in not finding the able candidate he had envisioned to help. Tom finally took the job himself in 1970 at the age of 31. He was by the president and by the senate as director of otp, the immensely talented people tom due to otp. Nino scalia, henry, brian lamb, pierce, owen and dill hatfield is fundamental to todays topic. Otp transformation of telecom and, the us. And as a result, International Telecom otp allowed these brilliant people in one way or another to partake of a reformed understanding of the technical, legal and media aspects of telecom. Otp mantra many voices was in all of this. Nina scalia on to be an associate justice of the Supreme CourtHenry Goldberg to establish the signature Telecom Law Firm carved into the flourish of new telecom businesses. And brian lamb founded, the groundbreaking Major Cable Network cspan, for which he won the president medal of freedom. Bersamin gained an even greater distinction in academia. Still, hatfill continued to, operate as an agent of significant and government and went on to become a national and International Telecom pioneer among. His achievements was designing and founding what today is still the largest Satellite Company in the world. Besides these brilliant colleagues, tom achieved what he did otp because he was blessed an extraordinarily good nature, intellect and country. Most especially he was blessed by Richard Nixons trusting support for tps creation and its policies of reform. Margaret, thank you very much. We will we will turn now to Henry Goldberg henry. Thank you. Thank you, margaret, for the kind words. Yes. You describe the Trump White House that i knew. Let me go back to something that chris opened up with, and that is the state of the Telecom Industry in the United States. When Richard Nixon took the oath of office, it was terrible. We had one Company Called 18 end to you that provided all of all Telecom Services in the United States except for. And more than they provided all consumer equipment that was used on the at t network. So 80 gave you a phone. Sometimes it was blocked. Sometimes. And chris said it was. But you had no choice. That was your phone. On the video side, again, as chris said, we had three national tv networks, some would say two and a half. But they call themselves three. There were local broadcast stations and there was that rudimentary cable industry that more properly was called the Community AntennaTelevision System that did make for clearer signals from the tv broadcasts that there was a third element, and that was the federal government. And the form of a regulatory agency, the federal Communications Commission, federal Communications Commission in those days viewed itself as protector. At t monopoly and assuring that there was no competition to national networks, particularly cable. So what what happened was the Nixon Administration and as chris called it a revolution. Yes. A revolution resulted. And it was a revolution that was based the notion that rather than a nationalized telecom system, heavily regulated, that there was more of a role for enterprise and more of a for competition. This revolution, the early 1970s, planted the seeds for the telecom indications industry that we have today. Yes, i was saying there is a direct cause of the line between the Nixon Administrations telecom and the incredible telecom indications that we have today with, well, more choice than consumers can handle and more equipment than we can afford. And. What is it relayed . How did this happen . Well, happened with the Nixon Administration, the president s choice of tom had a visionary to lead. And this made all the difference in the world. Tom believed, like the president , that a competitive market place was much better equipped and much more motivated to welcome the new technology that was on the horizon. Technology he had not been fully formed, but tom saw its potential. So while otp had this this visionar