they see three guys running, or he sees three guys running in the top of the valley and one of them has again. >> you can watch this and other programs on line at booktv.org. up next, lee lee stout recounts admit -- nixon administrations promoting women to executive positions in the federal government. the administration's initiatives was led by barbara frank -- harbor hackman franklin who was hired in 1971 to enlist female candidates to fill high-level positions. this is about an hour and a half. >> good evening. i am the -- of the united states and it's a pleasure to welcome you to the william g. mcgowan theater and a special welcome to our c-span viewers. tonight we have a distinguished panel who will take a look at a little discussed topic, the role of women in the administration

of president richard m. nixon. our panelists will discuss how the tenure of the nixon appointed cabinet would shape later generations of cabinets as assistance, geysers and heads of agencies and departments. we want to extend their thanks to barbara hackman franklin and the richard nixon foundation for their roles in making tonight's program possible. ron walker who is chairman of the foundation is with us tonight. where are you, ron? a special thanks to him for making this evening possible also. ron was in the nixon white house and he was the very first director of the white house office of presidential advance and he was responsible for a very important advance, the trip to china. before we begin the program tonight i would like to mention

to programs that will take place in the mcgowan theater later this month. on tuesday march 20 at 7:00 p.m. the charles guggenheim center for documentary film presents the film, california state of mind, the legacy of pat around the inside look into political power in california in the 1960's and takes a new significance now that pat brown's son jerry is governor. the film will be followed by a panel discussion with a historian michael beschloss frago on sunday march 25 at 2:00 p.m., state review of ken burns forthcoming pbs film, the dust bowl, will be shown and it tells the story of an ecological disaster, the limits of government and then wrote perseverance of people affected. sponsored by the guggenheim center in partnership with the 2012 environmental film festival being held here in washington. to learn more about these programs in all of our public programs and exhibits please consult our calendar of monthly events. their copies in the lobby as

well as a sign-up sheet where you can receive this by mail, physical mail or virtual mail. you'll also find our brochures and other national archives activities and events. another way to get more involved in the national archives is a member of the foundation for the national archives, the foundation supports all of our education outreach activities and their applications outside the lobby. finally, if you have not visited our gift shop recently, please do so. you can do that physically or virtually. a wonderful ray of reproductions from the records of the government and the most popular aired them especially significant tonight come as, is the photograph of richard nixon and elvis presley. [laughter] tonight's program is titled "a matter of simple justice," the untold story of barbara hackman franklin and a few good women. is the subject not largely discussed today. the next administration more than any previous presidency

broaden the opportunities for women in government. tonight's panel will take a look at this aspect of the nixon presidency. our moderator is judy woodruff coanchor of the "pbs newshour" and a veteran broadcast journalist who has covered, with cnn, nbc and pbs. previously woodruff served as an anchor for cnn, hosting a weekly political program inside how it takes another major news coverage. earlier in her career she covered the white house for abc news. in 2006 she was visiting professor at duke university's stanford institute of public policy where she was an undergraduate, where i was a library in. after serving as a visiting fellow at harvard university center on the press politics and public policy. currently she also hosts a monthly program, cumbre stations with judy woodruff. let me turn that program over to

you judy. welcome. >> thank you very much, thank you. [applause] i am delighted to be here for so many reasons, because this is a wonderful book that my friend are pro-franklin has produced. i urge all of you to read it if you haven't already. i am delighted to be here because this is international women's day so the timing is perfect. it is a day when we celebrate the copper schmitz of women, not just in this country but around the world. at the same time we consider in many regards and many respects how far women have yet to go, and i know this has been a day to think about that as we should every day but of course today in particular. but the timing barbara for this program could not be more special, more fortuitous. i have to say as i thought about

what we were going to be talking about tonight, thought about the day we celebrate women, i was reminded of what the canadian writer charlotte whitten famously said. she said, she said in order to be thought half as talented as men, women have to be twice as good. she said luckily this is not difficult. [laughter] so i thought that was an appropriate backdrop for our conversation this evening. as you just heard this is about what happened during the nixon administration with regard to women. i would argue that it really does have to do with the progress that women in this country ever since then because what happens in the late 1960's and early 1970s were so much of the progress in so many of the opportunities that have taken place for women in the united states since then so this was really in my mind a pivotal

ball moment for women in the united states. and so that is why i think it's incredibly important to consider what is in this book. so let's begin by meeting the panelists. there is an extensive biography in your program so i'm not going to read all of it except to say to my immediate right is the distinguished former congresswoman, former chairman of the maritime commission representative helen dela spent way. let's welcome representative ballet. [applause] in the center, barbara had been franklin about whom the book is an barbour we will be talking a lot about you tonight, barbara. [applause] and finally, lee stout with the pittsburgh state university.

i'm sorry, penn state, penn state, forgive me, forgive me. penn state university in pittsburgh pennsylvania. i'm sorry, wrong city. i got the state right, pennsylvania. but the most important reason we are here is because this is his book, "a matter of simple justice," the untold story of barbara hatch and taylor and a few good women. lee, now that i have completely mangled your credentials i'm going to start with you and ask you to talk and to remind all of us what you wrote this book. what was it and what was behind this? >> the impetus was barbara. there's no question about that. penn state university archives has a program where we try to collect papers to distinguished alumni and alumni and one of their distinguished alumni was

barbara and nancy eaton had made contact with her predecessor, so i came to washington meet with her. and we talked. this was after she served as secretary of commerce and we talked about the possibility of her coming to penn state. she agreed that would be acceptable to her. we talked about her experiences in government. she was secretary of commerce and she had an extensive governmental career before that. i think just in the course of conversation i asked her, you know so how did she get started in this? she said i started in the nixon administration. i recruited women for executive positions in the government. i didn't know there had been such a program and as it turns out very few people seem to know there had been such a program. i kind of made a mental note that debuted this was something we wanted to spend a little more time on later.

we proceeded to take barbara's papers out of her storage locker to the basement of the watergate building. i thought it was wonderfully ironic to take the administration records out of the basement of watergate and from her home in connecticut and her office in washington. as we began to go through them i saw that this was quite liberally a very significant activity and effort and that is when i came back to barbara and said we really need to do something more here. i think a world history project would be the best approach. she agreed and she took it from there. >> so what you respect? >> that was 95. >> the middle 90s. >> so barbara what did she you think when he came to you from your alma mater and said this is what you should think about? >> well, i didn't know what oral history was.

at least our teacher. he convinced me this would be a good way to capture what really happened back then and by then it was the late sixties and early 70s, and that we had better get started as we were going to lose the people who were there and we wanted their stories. the women as well as the men. i want to say that a lot of people in this chapter a reality. i was in the personal shop but i became the house woman because there wasn't anybody else there. a lot of people were engaged in this and in my papers, anyway we decided this was a good thing to do. in my papers with a list of the women appointees. so we said okay we are going to start a project. dana white was instrumental in this and helen was there at the

outside. jean remy was the one who interviewed. there were 50 interviews in this collection and penn state archives now have the collection but it was quite a journey. we started at 16 years ago. >> we are going to talk about the project but helen i want you to help set the stage to med tissue were appointed chair of the maritime commission in 1969. >> i was appointed chair only after this battle. [laughter] i had worked on the campaign in 68 and i have done the seapower statement, and maritime was my background. the job i wanted was maritime administrator. i was offered that on february

february 41969. by february 11 of 1969 i had lost it. why? because i was told that labour had labor had to support me. i said well that's not a problem. and demand that i spent 10 hours with this office the day before talking to is the one who likes me because he was not given the opportunity to make the offer to me and he told me he couldn't control me. >> helen is not controllable. [laughter] >> the second one was assistant secretary of transportation for communications. the number two person in transportation wanted me in the number three person wanted me. the secretary of transportation said, a woman cannot handle that

job and i didn't get it. the man he hired had to be fired three months later. >> and there you were. >> and there i was. then we came to the federal maritime commission and there were two openings. one was the commissioner and one was the chairman. they offered me the commission position. i refused it. i said i will take the chairmanship or nothing. i fortunately had for republican congresswoman who had gone to the white house the day after i had turned it down, to talk to the president about we have got to get some women in office. and he said, go talk to helen bentley. so peggy hechler called me up. i told her this story. i said i will take chairman.

i'm not going to take commission. i'm not going to make that guy look good. he has never been on a ship. [laughter] so this battle went on for three weeks. they were were back-and-forth. >> this is still 1969. >> this is 69, right, june and july. and at one point when they said, that job is a tiny town in ohio. so i said to congresswoman hechler, the chairmanship of the seabees open. i will take that. i have been covering the airport -- might airport and air travel. my whole background was labor and transportation. the white house came back and said a woman cannot handle that.

a woman can handle that. i said to the congressman, there is discrimination. you can tell all of them they can have it and i wasn't that nice. [laughter] at the same time i was fighting about making the trip through the northwest passage. they said they didn't have a place for a woman. >> were actually going to be on the tanker? >> i said i'm the best reporter there is in this business. i didn't think much of myself. [laughter] i said i've got to go. on the morning of july 31 of 1969, at about 10:00 in the morning, they called me up and said we have found the cabin for you.

i said thank you very much. i will be there. at 3:00 in the afternoon, flanigan from the white house called me and said if you want to be chairman of the federal maritime commission. i said peter i well but only after i had made the trip on the manhattan. [laughter] i realized there was nobody, no women around. i put together an 11 page single spaced memorandum to the white house about the need for women. >> made throughout the administration? >> throughout the administration. about what we needed in the government. barbara knows the memo. >> and i want you to talk about this because it's not that there

were no women that they were not in positions of responsibility. is that right? >> that's right. i would say the women in the leadership policymaking positions were very very few and they were not very visible and really what happens, and this never was a piece of it, you know we need to go back because there was a question that was asked at the press conference that is really important and one of the catalysts. >> shortly after -- coast be his second press conference. actually it was all men and if anyone knew her she was very attractive and well spoken. she got up and asked the question and i'm going to paraphrase it. i'm going to get the last part of that raid. something like this, mr. president out of your first 200 appointments only three have gone to women. can we expect some more equitable recognition of women's ability or are we going to

remain a lost sex? i can imagine what kind of a ripple of oh my word went through the room or maybe laughter or whatever else. we have for oral history in this collection. at first they were not quite sure what to do with that but then they got serious and said we will have to do something about it. there were a bunch of events that happened after that were documented in part one of these books. one thing that happened was a task force of women's rights and responsibilities was appointed and there was a tussle in the white house about what kind of people would be on that. there was a group that wanted to kind of, not a progressive bunch of people. the progress as one out and the recommendations that came out of that were really very forward-looking. one of them was my job.

the title of that report was "a matter of simple justice." that is where the title for this book has come from. >> who was behind is behind a progressive argument in the white house? he actually was a man named charlie clasp who is not with us but he was working for arthur burke. a lot of people were involved in this in one way or another. and i mean, he talked about some of the people who wanted to go the other way and let's say a phyllis schlafly kind of group on this task force. i think what would have emerged had that happened would have been quite different from what did emerge. >> that moved early on made a big difference. >> absolutely and charlie talked about the fact that we need to get some republican women who

could he, who could get some reputation out there for fighting the women's party. he said it felt like the democrats had been in control of this issue. president kennedy had had the president's commission on the status of women which had equivocal results but russell then they creation of the issues on women. president johnson had done a number of things but there were equivocal results there as well and no appointments of women. and so the task force and some people, some historians have said well this really wasn't a very meaningful task force but it was one of 17 task forces that mark burns established on a whole brady of different policy areas to help the president get

ready for his next date of the union address and to set directions for the administration's first-term. >> again this was under the payout, the civil rights act which included gender as well as race in 1954 but it just took time to work its way through the system. there was a task force and i began working or began to set the wheels in motion to do something to get more women and that was after the vera glassman question. >> the question was then february of 69. the task force came later that year. it reported i think at the end of 69 and it was released. the results were released and it came out in 1970. really, helen's memo came in the 70s. bob fish who it then in the secretary of what is now hhs and

was a longtime confidant and friend of the president came over to the white house. i really do believe that things picked up when bob got there. he received your memo. we have a decision memo that he put together for the president. yes, do this and do that. >> i'm asking because i think it's important to a identified the vintage -- individuals along the way who make the key decisions. >> and pat hitt was working very closely with bob lynch. >> pat was an earlier point he also. >> remind everybody who she was. >> she was the assistant secretary for longtime california supporters of

president nixon and bob fish. in 1970, the memo was 1970 but it didn't happen immediately. it still took a little bit of time. >> it took some germination i guess and yeah there was some tugging and pulling inside. not everybody thought it was the best idea in the world and one of the other recommendations in that task force was more women in policymaking positions. and we have that decision memo, where the president did get some of the wheels in motion as bob finch had drafted. then what emerged from that and early 71 or let's say in april was a three-pronged strategy to attack the appointment of women, the problem, the lack in the first thing was the memo that the president sent to every

cabinet secretary and agency had that required an action plan about how those secretaries of agencies were going to appoint more women, train more women in their departments. this was before you came on board. >> i am the second part of the three-pronged. and the thing about this memo, this wasn't just a memo. it has in it the peace in that. they wanted the peace backed by me something and he wanted to know who in his apartment was going to be the person in charge so that there was a managerial aspect to this. the second prong was me, coming to the white house with personnel, shop to recruit women for the policymaking jobs and to monitor the action plans of the department. that turned out to be fascinating. the third one was to bring jane

baker stain stained who had been a businesswoman in ohio into the civil service commissioner to watch over what was going on. >> but there it never been a previous administration under kennedy or johnson, there has not been specific individuals who are tasked with these responsibilities. >> is this the white house? >> that's right. >> and this whole period between beer glass' questioned and barbara's appointment in april of 1971 is a fascinating time to look at this. it shows not only the diversity of opinions amongst the white house staff, which is emblematic of the diversity of the kinds of people that the president had on his staff and his cabinet. i think today we have been

ideological purity about our politics and that was not the case then. >> tell us a little bit about that. who was on the different sides of this discussion? >> barbara has already mentioned several people, all finch and several others, don rumsfeld had coming from congress to be the head of the office of economic opportunity and was considered a person of interest for this. len garment had sympathy to this and there were several others. ray price i think. the speechwriter and a number of others. >> what about on the other side? >> the ethics thing same time we had pat buchanan, a speechwriter and a whole raft of other men. in interviewing some of barbara's colleagues in the office or in the personnel office, anne anderson who is

here and terry who was here earlier, said you know hey we were young guys. we were of our time. there was a lot of sexism and a lot of men, few men who are probably sympathetic with this and an awful lot of men who just simply it had not occurred to them that women would want jobs like this but once they discovered they did and could, it was okay, let's do it. but then there were was still an awful lot of men who said no. >> and let me say this. when barbara came in -- [laughter] those who did not want this to happen did not is anything to work with. she had no typewriter.

>> is everybody here know what a typewriter is? [laughter] >> we did not use them then. >> did you have an office? i had to create this. it took some doing. now i have to say i'm thankful for the support of helen who sent me dictating machine which was the size of this table and i was dick taking things. i had no secretary either. over the next few months i did help with recruiting somebody else to help with some of the external stuff and we got the mail answered for who i corresponded. >> before we get this -- to this, we talk about the state inside the white house. what about when i it got to the president? how did that decision get me? what did we know about that?

>> i have often been asked, why did the president do this? my answer is always the same, it didn't care why he did it as long as he did. but what i really think, and it was counterintuitive. people didn't think of richard nixon this way but if you look at his life, he had a strong, self-made life and he had some daughters andy at the mother who he really felt gave him a lot of the strength in principles. so there was something rather natural about it and then there was the vertical imperative going on too that women had become front and center and had raised some of these issues.