>> did you find it difficult to sift through and determine what was true and what was simply made up? >> yes. it was. but, you know, i had actual corroboration in the form of documentation which i did with the king allegations or i had a source who went on the record and was named as i did in the ford allegations, that task mustered with not just my own standards, but with the publisher and the legal vetting that they did. >> thank you very much for your time. >> now, steven weisman presents the letters of the former democratic senator from new york, daniel patrick moynihan. the selection of correspondences span senator moynihan's professional career from his years as a harvard professor to his over 20-year tenure in the senate. daniel patrick moynihan died in 2003. steven weisman leads a discussion on the former senator at the museum of the city of new york with peter galbraith,

senior diplomatic negative at the center for arms control and non-proliferation, steven hess, former adviser to presidents ford and carter, richard avenuage, lieutenant governor of new york, and new york senator charles schumer. it's about an hour, 40 minutes. >> steve weisman is the editorial directer and public policy fellow at the peterson institute for international economics and previously was chief international economics correspondent for "the new york times." he was a journalist with the times for many years, first becoming acquainted with senator moynihan when he was reporting on new york politics and later as a correspondent in the washington d.c. steve also served as the bureau chief for the times in new delhi, india can, where he covered ambassador moynihan. steve hess is a presidential historian and senior fellow

emeritus in governance studies at the brookings institution which he joined in this 1972. he served on the white house staff of presidents dwight eisenhower and richard nixon, and he was an adviser to presidents jimmy carter and gerald ford. of his experience in nixon's white house as deputy assistant to the president for urban affairs, he once said, basically, i was the chief of staff to daniel patrick moynihan. [laughter] peter galbraith is senior diplomatic fellow at the center for arms control from be -- 1979 to 1993. peter was a senior staff member of the senate foreign relations committee where he worked directly with senator moynihan. in 1993 peter was appointed the very first u.s. ambassador to croatia but president bill clinton.

for 2003-2005 he advised the curds on the creation -- kurds on the creation of an iraqi constitution, and his father, john kenneth galbraith, also served as ambassador to india and was a colleague of senator moynihan at harvard. richard ravage is the 75th lieutenant governor of new york state, and he got to know -- [applause] and he got to know daniel patrick moynihan in the 1970s when he played a very key role in senator moynihan's future. in those days he was chairman of new york's urban development corporation under hugh l. kerry and later served as chairman of the metropolitan transportation authority, the mta, where he recapitalized the system and

created the metro north railroad. he is, and he is the staunchest advocate for moynihan station, and he's been very -- [applause] and he's been very dogged on this subject, thank heavens and thank you very much. lieutenant governor ravitch. lawrence o'donnell jr. is a political analyst, emmy-award winning writer and producer and is now host of msnbc's "the last word." he is, perhaps, best known for his association with the tv drama, "the west wing." but from 1989-1995 he worked with senator moynihan serving as the staff directer of the united states senate committee on the environment and public works and the united states senate committee on finance, both of which were chaired by senator moynihan.

richard eaton is my husband -- [laughter] and he is a federal judge on the u.s. court of international trade. he served this many capacities in senator moynihan's office including two stints as chief of staff. now, senator charles schumer is our keynote speaker. he's down at the end of this panel. [laughter] he is the senior senator from new york state, and his is a remarkable career of public service. he first ran for public office for the new york state assembly upon graduating from harvard law school at the age of 2. $-- age of 23. he has never lost an election. [laughter] [applause] he was elected to the u.s. senate in 1998 where he worked side by side with senator

moynihan. he has been and is an advocate for moynihan station, and he will report, i am sure, on today's groundbreaking which was made possible with federal stimulus funding that senator schumer helped direct towards this project, and we are all so grateful to you, senator schumer, for this. and one quick aside, i also welcome the senator's wife, iris, who i think is here. she's a wonderful friend of the museum, and now i would like to ask senator schumer to come and just give him the biggest round of applause for moynihan station. [applause] >> well, thank you. thank you, susan, and thank you for the great job you do as directer of the museum.

i want to thank my fellow panelists. to have such a distinguished group of panelists and such a distinguished audience is one of so many tributes one can give to senator moynihan and thank them all for being here. i want to particularly thank my friend of over 35 years, steve weisman who, you know, this -- putting together these letters took a tremendous amount of intelligence, acuity, hard work, and throughout steve's career in whatever he's done, he's done that. and i think we're lucky steve took on this project, those of us who love senator moynihan, so thank you to the great job you have done. [applause] and last but not least, two strong and invaluable women, strong and invaluable in the pat's life and in our society in general, and can that is liz and moira. thank you both for everything

you have done. [applause] it is great to be here. and i thought i'd begin by telling a story about strong women. because two of the -- this actually happened this morning -- two strong women in my life are in the audience, my wife iris as susan mentioned and my daughter, jessica. [applause] and here's the story. i'm not very good at dressing. and so i usually ask whoever's in the house, does this look all right, does that look all right? and this morning i thought in the shower i had this brilliant idea, i'll wear -- i have one nice tweed sport jacket. [laughter] and i said, i'll wear that today in honor of senator moynihan. so i came out of the shower, and i said, iris, i have a great idea. i'll wear that tweed jacket. she said, that idea's beyond stupid. [laughter] meaning it wasn't even debatable how stupid it was. and i knew, i figured she meant,

you know, that there'd be some reporter, some smart aleck reporter who would say, oh, schumer thinks he's the next moynihan which, frankly, i know i could never be as much as i would aspire to be because of his greatness. so i was put in my place, but jessica had the final cue degras. she said, dad, do you wear one of those chinese jackets when you speak about chinese currency? [laughter] so here i am in this a gray flannel suit. [laughter] it was a ridiculous idea, it was beyond stupid. but it points out that senator moynihan was suis generous. he was up with of a kind. and i think -- one of a kind. and i think all of us who represent new york and try to follow in his footsteps can never duplicate who he was and what he brought to public life, but he's a great thing to aspire to.

maybe fist and foremost -- first and foremost, pat was a teacher. that was my fist experience with him -- first experience with him. i audited his government class when i was a freshman at harvard. i would have wanted to take it, they didn't allow freshman to take it, and then he was whisked off in the winter of 1968 and went to the white house. once i entered congress, i remember as a young congressman i got a call from senator moynihan. and he said, why don't you come over to my office later, his hideaway. i didn't know my way around congress, let alone washington, and there he was inviting me for a chat. i went over, we talked, he asked me what i thought of the house, gave me the first of many tutorials on congress and the many subjects that would be before us about legislation, about history, and that continued every couple of months for my entire 18 years in the

house. every few months i'd get a call, i'd head over, and over a glass of wine i'd learn a whole bunch of new, different things. in 1997 it was in one of those tutorials that senator moynihan urged me to run for the senate, not for governor. which i was thinking of doing. [laughter] his encouragement was very important part of my decision to run for the senate. and then just a final moment on his teaching and a little bit personal, so i was running in 1998, everyone knows the a tough campaign against senator d'amato. pat had a friendship with senator d'amato. they were different, obviously. [laughter] but they got along well for the good of new york. but he was still a full-throated supporter of mine. and the race was close, as you know, and can so we requested that in the last week of the

campaign pat go on a bus tour across the state with us. and he was in great pain at that time, as you remember, liz. his back was acting up. but he said, of course, he'd do it. and he got on a plane. he was in pain, but he did a great job at each of those stops. but what i remember most is while we were on the bus he sat with my 15, then 15-year-old daughter jessica, a student, a gave her a two-hour tutorial on the erie canal. [laughter] and he was so happy just doing that. [laughter] he was a great teacher. and that was him. he was a teacher for not just me and my family, but for all of america. we have a great tradition in new york of senators who have not just been forceful advocates for new york, but truly national

figures in the 20th century we had robert wagner sr. and jack javits whose seat i now occupy, hillary clinton, robert kennedy and, of course, pat. and it says something about this state and this city that an irish kid from hell's kitchen whose father left the family when he was 10, who'd worked as a stevedore on the docks of new york could not just become a senator, but one of the truly great senators the nation has ever known. i think the work steve's done in putting together the book serves pat and his legacy so well and shows us how he became the man i got to know and we all got to know. how he became the senator the world got to know. and as susan mentioned, there couldn't be a better night for this event. i don't know -- we didn't plan it that way. maybe dick had something to do with it knowing of both events, but as susan mentioned, we broke ground -- at least ceremonious

ceremoniously -- on moynihan station which means that in the not-so-distant future pat's vision -- and it was his vision -- for a new, truly grand penn station and farley post office will become reality. it's one of the projects i've been proud to be part of in my time in the senate, and i'm glad that when we're done there's going to be a honest-to-goodness monument to senator daniel patrick moynihan. now, reviving penn station and giving it a home that was worthy of the original was something pat deeply cared about. you can read about it in this many of the letters that steve's put in the book, and i think in many ways it truly represents so much of what he fought for through the years of his career. it's a vital project for new york and for the future of new york. and one of the things that pat understood was the need for new york to keep growing and the importance of continuing to

build infrastructure that would sustain growth. it's been the history of our state and city whether it's the building of the eri sex canal -- eri sex canal, rebuilding the brooklyn bridge or the reservoir system that still quenches our city's thirst that new york has thrived as we always built for the future, and no one was more aware of that than senator moynihan. at the same time, the building rights a historical wrong, the destruction of the old penn station, and will be a great public work, a new landmark for the city and the region, to quote pat directly. it also represents the sort of thing that government does well, public works projects. and this is a moment when it's helpful to be reminded of exactly that. something pat understood and argued for almost better than anybody else. but above all, what i think

makes moynihan station so aptly named is that the project really serves as a metaphor for pat himself. like him, it was a truly grand project. [laughter] it's big in its thinking and in its construction. the original david childs' vision for those of you who have seen it was spectacular. if it didn't actually make up for the destruction of the old penn station, it came pretty close. now, unfortunately, we had to scale that back, and if i had to be honest, i'd imagine that would disappoint pat. but the very fact that we're even discussing a new penn station at all and that we will see it is testament to pat's grand thinking in the first place. and it's that grand thinking that above all else is in my mind pat's greatest legacy. and something we'll sorely miss in public life today. if you haven't had a chance to read steve's book, you should. you get a real sense for the breadth and the depth of senator

moynihan's intellect and the ways in which he was able to bring his intellectual interests into the public arena. i don't know anyone who has tone that. and then -- done that, and then used them for the public good. anyone who has done that so spectacularly. his focus on penn station, for example, was the culmination with a lifelong concern of not just architecture, but the value of great public architecture. he spent years agitating for the renovation of pennsylvania avenue in washington because of its importance as a national symbol and, was thanks to him, that it was finally renovated. he was the driving force behind the restoration and preservation of buildings throughout this state from the customs house down at the southern tip of manhattan to the creation of a new peace bridge in buffalo which we are working towards and making progress on. he saw these spaces, he saw these as spaces that represented the public and fought to preserve them for the public because he believed that grand

spaces matter. this was equally true of his legislative proposals and policy concerns. he was always thinking grandly and thinking big. he came to politics with an academic perspective, brought with him the belief that ideas, used wisely, matter. whether he was trying to push back against the culture of secrecy that had sprung up during the cold war or fighting to defend public welfare programs against cutbacks or arguing for the importance of stable families, he brought with him a wealth of knowledge and a concern with the ideas themselves. more than anyone else i've ever met in public life, he really was a philosopher/statesman in the true sense of both words and the phrase. and i think that's what we're going to miss -- that's what we miss above all today. as i was preparing for tonight, i kept coming back to the

question; is that sort of grand thinking really possible anymore in the political arena? and what have we lost as a result? our politics are far more partisan, even today, than they were seven years ago. far more petty where the trivial seems to dominate the news cycle. we're confronting real problems, and we don't seem to have a public dialogue that any more matches the seriousness of the issues that confront us. i was struck, for example, by how prescient some of those regular letters pat sent to his constituents were in the late '70s and 1980s when he was worrying about the difficulties we'd face with competition from the developing world, our declining savings rate and the danger of an excess of fiscal austerity in the face of economic crisis. sound familiar? now as we face many of those

same problems, we could use more of that thoughtfulness, and instead we seem to have more sack cuousness. -- vacuousness. i wonder what pat would make of the political world today, so different than it was even seven years ago since his passing. what would he make of the rise of the tea party, the media absurdly dominated by blogs and insider gossip masquerading as sophisticated analysis? i have no doubt that he would have figured out a way to rise above it. but i can also see him eloquently railing against it. and we could use that eloquence today. too much of what we talk about is an inch deep and a mile wide driven by ideology whichever way the wind is blowing. one of the things you get a real sense for in the letters is how more than anything pat staked out his position on what he firmly believed in, his knowledge of history regardless

of where that, where that meant he might get pigeon holed on the ideological spectrum. i describe it sometimes for myself as having an internal gyroscope. it's not an easy thing to maintain in washington. but his career was a testament to the fact that it's not only possible, it's vitally important in the '60s and '70s he was attacked from the left even though as anyone who knows him could have testified there were probably few members of congress who cared more about the plight of the poor in america than pat. but he was also concerned, rightly, with the danger of overreach, of the failure to understand that we cannot expect government to do everything to solve every problem. then in the '80s when ronald reagan came into office, he was one of the few peert in our party who really stood up to him in thoughtful ways and ended up being attacked from the right. i think at one point he was rated one of the most liberal members of the of senate.

that was, obviously, partly because he was standing up for new york and trying to make sure we were getting our fair share of tax dollars. but it was also because he believed in the importance of government. in the power of government to do good, and he stood up for that in the face of oversimplified arguments against it. so i think that goes to the core of who he is. of he thought deeply about things, and can those thoughts motivated his actions. today our political society desperately needs a few or at least one pat moynihan, someone propelled by a knowledge of history and a faith in reason sailing strongly and steadfastly against the prevailing winds. maybe there's some person out there today who will read this book and think to him or herself, that's who i want to be. we'd all be better off for it.

[applause] >> don't forget your speech. well, thank you, chuck. thank you, senator schumer, and thank you all for being here to honor senator moynihan and to honor this book. you know, i'm just not going to be able to improve on what senator schumer said, and i just wanted to offer a few personal thoughts before we open it up to this wonderful panel and to your questions. and have a conversation. but first, of course, i want to thank the sponsors of this evening, especially susan jones who has been such a tower of

strength and a brilliant organizer in bringing, getting the word out and having all of you come here. and, of course, like the others i want to pay tribute to moira and liz without whom this book wouldn't have happened. it was moira's idea, it was liz's confidence in me and assistance, it was the help of the moynihan family friends who helped me shape this book and helped me to a better understanding of pat moynihan's life and times. you know, writing and even editing a book as many of you in this audience know can be a very solitary experience. and there were many time when i was surrounded by stacks of binders of these letters wondering how this was going to

become a book. and the fact that it now i is a book and that it has brought such an, amazing for me, outpouring of warm support for the way the letters reflect his life and times is profoundly moving to me. liz, at one point when it was over, said to me, i'm so glad you were able to spend so much time getting to know pat. at another point we were talking about his amazing life, and she said to me, oh, i'm so glad i wasn't awed by him when he was alived louisiana laugh -- alive. [laughter] this was a journey for me through his words and thoughts that was unlike one i've ever taken and ever will take. and i'm often asked, okay, we

have this beautiful tapestry that senator schumer just laid out of his career on issues, the incredible array of issues that he stood for. what is it that we learn there these letters, and be i'll just offer a few thoughts. the first is that the moynihan that emerges from these letters is a different pat moynihan, but as i tried to say in the introduction, he's somebody who although he talked about exterior spaces, lived in his own interior space of his anguish, his vulnerability, his inte massey -- intimacy, his combativeness, his passion and his, yes, a little bit of self-absorption. we learn from his early diaries how some, about his troubled childhood, that it was so

painful, that his anguish over his mother and father, his disappointments, his talk that grew out of that of seeking father substitutes as he at one point put it. and from this i think we get clues that the other side of the great intellect of pat moynihan which we pay tribute to was also a man of genuine emotion and heart. because from here, from this inner sense of himself grew his lifelong commitment, his rock-solid commitment to family stability and, also, i think his commitment to the strength of institutions and the strength of government and the importance of bringing people together in accommodation. his passion for the presidency when he served two presidents --

four presidents, two democrats and two republican -- is wondrous to behold. but he believed in government. he wanted people to believe in government even though he was one of the greatest skeptics sometimes of government. the second thing i wanted to do with this book was to create a narrative of his life. i am sorry he never wrote his memoirs. he would have written fabulous memoirs. he would have sat down with these letters, i imagine, and other things and composed a narrative of his own life. but i guess he wasn't interested. in that. so i wanted this book to be a narrative of his life, and i wanted it in turn to be a narrative of the 40 or 50 years that he lived through. and what i found in thinking about those years was something

we say today, what would pat moynihan make of today's tea party and economic struggles? i think it would be very interesting to ask him and wonder about that period that was so formative for him of the '60s and '70s and into the '80s, these issues of culture wars where he was on the ramparts with nixon, sometimes encouraging nixon to be better than himself, sometimes fighting with him against what he viewed to be the liberal elitists. i don't know about you, but in reading these letters, these anguished letters to nixon and to others and to friends, i actually think that that period was so toxic and that we actually can thank ourselves that we've grown out of a lot of the culture wars from the '60s and '70s.

and although this may seem counterintuitive or a strange thing, you can throe tomatoes at me, we're back in the sort of funny, familiar ground of the economic battles that pat, that were formative for pat moynihan especially in the 1940s and 1950s. that was a period when people wanted to repeal the new deal just as they now want to repeal a lot of the obama programs. ..

what you see again here is a man who wants presidents to succeed no matter what party, who want to give them the best device he can even if it is in disagreement. there's that great moment where the first president bush let him know i know you disagree with me but come around anyway. i want to see if i can persuade you. had written memo about this, tries to persuade the first president bush why he was wrong to wage a first gulf war. that reminds you that it was not so long ago a period of civility, conversation, dialogue, integrity to the public debate that these letters in his career signal to us that we have to try to restore and i

think that is why this book has struck such a chord. i am quite amazed by it but i think that must be why. because of what we are yearning to recover. so with that grief i hope introduction i would like to call on our panel to make a few comments and i will sit here. let me introduce lieutenant governor richard ravitch who told me his first meeting with daniel patrick moynihan was when he ran for city council president in 1965. a little remembered episode of his political career. probably something he would be happy not to remember. tell us about the 1976 campaign where you were so instrumental in his running for said that and reminding that he had earlier announced interest in that job.

>> first of all, on behalf of everybody here, you are to be congratulated for an extraordinarily prodigious effort that was immensely successful. [applause] what i remember about 1965 was that was a point in time when the so-called political reform movement was a very vigorous in new york. at had nothing but disdain for the elitists who were trying to throw out the irish district leaders in manhattan at the time and i have to say -- i can never prove this in 1976 -- would have

been one of the first stops in the march to the senate. i appreciate the references suggesting that i had some unique responsibility for his decision to run. i think i was one of many voices urging him to do it but to give you a little context, you may remember, some of you might remember -- most of you were too young -- to remember that after the mcgovern debacle of 1972 there was a great deal of intellectual fermenting in the democratic party constituencies about which direction the democratic party was going to go. should go in the isolationist direction people fought george montgomery espoused or was it going to be the strong

anti-communist force that people felt it had traditionally been? that was formed the personal and organization called the coalition for democratic majority. at scooped jackson, tom foley, a group of people in politics, group of people in the right, irving kristol published public interest in those days, sort of a common feel among a group of people, the democratic party could end up being a perpetual loser in the competition of american politics. it was really in that context that many people urged hat to synch about running for said that in 1976. the incumbent senator was viewed

as an extremely right-wing republican and so there were a number of other people who ended up running in the democratic primary in 76, the name that was perceived to be the most popular was bill who was a symbol of the new left if you will, of the very forces in the democratic party that pat and i and others felt were putting the democratic party in jeopardy. there were many conversations with pat. i remember a dinner with liz and pat at their elegant suite at the waldorf when he was still ambassador to the un which is the first time i think i raised a question with him and he told me he had a couple other friends whispering that kind of outrageous conversation to him at the time but nonetheless suggest unlike wanted to talk to

them. but he really did not think about it too seriously. i don't remember the exact date he began to change his mind. i do remember several visits to the madison probe on 80street and on madison avenue which we discussed the subject and when he ultimately decided to do it, he did it with a zest for politics that be lied some of his intellectual academic friends on the right but he loved it and he genuinely cared about the port in society. he was really unique. he didn't fit conveniently into any of the molds people were used to talking about in u.s.

politics at that point in time. just one other incident and then a conclusion. at one point he received a letter if i remember correctly, he was notified that his tenure at harvard might be in jeopardy if he were to run erase, he had to make a decision by a date prior to the primary as to whether or not he was going to return to harvard and there was one night when he said it isn't worth it for me to risk my tenure arvard to pursue this silly course of action. the polls show belt slightly ahead. there was a widespread fear that the new york times was going to endorse him. that is a whole other story which steve could tell.

and i remember a night in which we talked at great length about that and i had to tell him it there wasn't a university in the country that would be honored to have a scholarship with his intellect and that was a silly reason and he must be motivated more by his fear of losing than losing the option at harvard. he read on have no doubt that all his friends said the same thing to him i said and i can't in any way take credit for it but that was the moment of greatest anxiety and indeed the election as you all know was close. he won the turtle as others can talk about, was a spectacular participant in the politics of all the years he served in the senate and was a wonderful friend to me and most of the

people on this panel and i would like to say one of thing without intruding on larry's subject but he was -- i am conscious of this everyday, he really cared about new york. he was fastidious in pointing out the inadequacy of the way federal way it was apportioned to new york state and he did more work and larry probably did have -- he did more detail work about how this formula was unfair to new york state and. it is a battle we continue to fight. i remember that very vigorously. we look at the problems the state has to face in the future. [applause]

>> when daniel patrick moynihan arrived in the nixon white house he was a veteran with the battle scars of battles over race and economic inequality but he wanted knicks and to succeed. what was it like to work there? >> i drew the fun assignment. richard nixon and daniel patrick moynihan. surely the august couple not scripted by neil simon. i may be the only person who knew both of them before they knew each other. let's start at the beginning. nixon felt he needed a democrat in the administration. scoop jackson had turned him down for secretary of defense. his theme he hoped was bring us together so he asked pat to come

down from cambridge and they would talk about the possibility of his joining the white house staff. hy came up from washington to review this with pat immediately after he had seen the president elected down the street at the hotel pierre which was transition headquarters at that time. pat came down the stairs. we had dinner. i said well. he said i can't believe it! i can't believe how ignorant he is! he doesn't know anything about domestic politics. it was true. nixon was a very smart man who had totally devoted his mental thoughts to geopolitics and the world. i remember 62 he was running for governor, called me on election day and i said you still think you are going to lose and he said yes, but at least i never

have to talk about crap like dope addiction again. january 22nd, the president was inaugurated and pat moynihan became assistant of urban affairs and executive secretary of the urban affairs council made up of the president, vice president and appropriate members of congress. i should add at the same time the president was appointing a counterweight to pat, arthur burns, conservative eagle distinguished columbia professor of economics. what would happen was going to be a dual between two ivy league professor is. patch had something that parter didn't have. he had a process. he had the urban affairs council if he played right he could have the president move every policy moves through his body, pick the

appropriate subject, the appropriate cabinet officers. we didn't win them all. act was at one point very anxious to takeover the problems of the reservation indians who were moving into the city. to do that he had the secretary of interior on the council. he kept sending memos to the president people the president avoided them. finally the third time around the president agreed and pat and i went over to the department of the interior to welcome walter hickel. anybody who has been there knows that the secretary of the interior's office may be the largest office in washington. it looks like a football field with a desk in the middle. so we went across to the desk and pat said welcome to the urban affairs council. i would be honored if you would

become the chairman of the committee on urban indians. and he said indians? i don't have the indians. i have water. the two of us -- the two of us wanted to run. we backed out of the office and we never did get a committee on that subject. what came through the urban affairs council which of course was the family assistance plan, this had been opposed by the president in the campaign. this was a guaranteed income for all poor families. as one of my colleagues called it, absolutely revolutionary. the president opposed it during the campaign and now we were in this dueling contest with arthur burns. he had the process so the program had to go through the urban affairs council so that always on the defensive in that

way. we had these marvelous memos that you have read. when you read them in chapter iv you will be inside the white house. you will see what pat is sending the president. memorandums to the president the digital totally mislabeled. a memorandum to the president is nearly one page, move in as quickly as possible for a busy man to get from here to there. these memos you will see are really essays. they are long and complicated and often convoluted april petition .

this was not the white house that larry was writing for the west wing. the president went off in do lie i guess to san clemente. a wonderful time, very quiet to get our work done. had got off to go swimming in the white house pulled. suddenly i get a call that both of our offices -- come up to the oval office. i went up one flight to the oval office. the door was open and we look at it and is redecorated. redecorated like an mgm technicolor musical. my children later said he felt it was so bright you was hurting his eyes. and on every chair there is a

seal of the president. hat picks up the phone and says can you get me mr. haldeman please? i am outside the oval office, i know, very famous new york interior decorator and a great friend. if you don't do something every member of congress is going to be flirting on the seal of the president. [applause] the seal came off. we had process and humor and a funny thing happened that only if you had been part of the nixon group would no. we said to each other the boss is in love. every spring for a short period of time nixon had somebody, some person who was going to be so creative he wanted that person

around. it might be pete peterson. in april it was pat moynihan. they retired to talk about books. the president said what should i be reading? pat said read blake. everything is going fine except presidents know that they have 100 days before they are attacked and moynihan and burns are fighting this thing out and it is may, june, july. the president wants to be rid of both of them at that point and it comes to be aug. 6 and he calls the cabinet together at camp david. he is going to tell the cabinet that he has decided for moynihan. spiro agnew was furious. he said mr. president, that is political suicide. you are supporting everybody who voted against us and continue to vote against us.

the president said after the fact he only has three of the cabinet with him. fortunately he has george shultz, by far the brains of the cabinet. so he announces that to the cabinet. the next day, august 7th, he announces it to the staff and he says as randal churchill said about is really -- tory politicians and liberal policies are what they created the world. on august 8th, he announced this remarkable proposal to the american people. arthur burns was a very honest man. he offered the president a question. he may have been right but he offered the president great as. offered him a chance to dream. offered him a chance to dream

greatly. and the president at that moment took that opportunity. the rest of the history is not happy. the bill went through the house easily and ultimately it was defeated in the senate finance committee where ironically pat would someday be the chairman. that is the story. [applause] >> see if you can top that. one of the great memos, thank you, senator, again. [applause] one of the wonderful memos in this book is one that grew out of a trip that pat moynihan took into the heart of the balkans as it was

collapsing, with peter. just shows what a great writer he was. peter, tell us about the evolution of senator moynihan on foreign policy issues. he was not the same at the end of his term as he was at the outset. >> thank you. congratulations on bringing this all together. i was just looking at that memo. what an extraordinary piece of writing it is and how visibly he captures that trip and will come back as we ask the question. there is the superficial paradox of pat moynihan who was as dick was describing recruited by the new conservatives to be their

man. having been known for vocally bashing the united nations and as a strong cold warrior, who by the time he left the u.s. senate had written a book on international law, was the strongest defender of the united nations and the advocate of the preeminent cold war institution, the cia, because it had been so incompetent on the issues of the cold war, because it failed to predict the dissolution of the soviet union and 1987, per-capita, gdp in east germany exceeded that of west germany. two years before the fall of a wall failing to notice there were not a great number of people crossing the wall west to

east. i could go further. this was a man who started with elliott abrams as one of its administrative assistants. i suppose later i became a close associate. but there isn't actually a paradox. it is a superficial one. the fact is that pat was never any a conservative because the new conservatives, his objection to the soviet union was to its wallace behavior. it's a lawless behavior internationally and internally. where he differed with the knee of conservatives is they believed the soviet union was strong. jeanne kirkpatrick famously wrote -- reagan's first ambassador to the u. n wrote an

article in 79 that dictatorships and double standards, the essential argument was communism was such a powerful force in the world that once our country became communist it would never escape. it was like a black hole. whereas past, this is what distinguishes him, he simply looked at the facts. he thought two things were important -- history and the fact. even from 1980 or 79 as he was asked to write an article for newsweek he basically said the problem with the soviet union is not that it is so strong but it is so weak. what are we going to do when it dissolved and what will happen to all those nuclear weapons? with regard to the united nations, his objection was not that it was a bad institution but that it was one that had lots of bad people.

that it was a place where countries would go against the united states and he was not enamored with some of the leadership of the united nations in the secretariat. a plan to have a certain sympathy for even as i continue to believe in the united nations as an institution. one of the points that he brought out and captured wonderfully in this memo, what i think is one of the things we totally miss in foreign policy is the importance of ethnicity. i see it today. we went to war in iraq describing a country inhabited by iraqis and today we discuss afghanistan in terms of afghans. and of course one reason we are not succeeding is that is our read. when iraq is a country of kurds,

shi'ite since his knees, kurds who don't want to the iraqi at all but want to be independent. shi'ite sense to me that each other's throats. afghanistan's problem is confined to the pest in part of the country. something that is missing from the dialogue. i would like to conclude with a word about our trip to sarajevo. which is that subject of a memo on november 28th, 1992. i was a staffer with the foreign relations committee. i didn't work directly for senator moynihan but we enjoy each other's company. he would like to go with me and i was popular with the moynihan office because i would take him away twice a year for a year or two and this is when there were no cellphone 4 internet.

he called me up in october and said i would like to hear the thunder of the guns. i want to go to sarajevo. i have a certain reputation going to places that are a little dangerous because i have been caught in northern iraq when saddam hussein's troops went to put down a kurdish uprising. hi had inspired him to take this trip. she wouldn't speak to me. if you know in the moynihan world if you are in the staff if whiz is angry with you you are in big trouble. the senator was forgiving. it wasn't true but my protestations were of this. we went to india and pat and i flew to frankfurt. the memo describes the efforts to get into sarajevo.

we thought we had a military flight and the secretary of defense yanked it. it culminates about the lying secretary of defense richard cheney. we finally got in thanks to the canadians. the city was besieged. there was no electricity, basically no food. it was november. in the morning we went out the next day. the fog was across the city so you could wander around the city because the fog was in this city and the snipers were in the hills. pat wanted to go to the spot where the 20th-century began, where the archduke was shot. he went with the bosnian deputy foreign