nations reaction. that is a look at some of the event that we will be covering this week and many of these events are open to the public. look for them to air in the near future and on book tv on c-span two. [inaudible conversations] good evening. and welcome to the national press club on a warm evening with the temperatures in the 70s just as they were on saturday june 171972. for those of you born will before that date you are still

remembering in the events of that time which began with the break-in at the democratic national committee in the watergate office building with the resignation of president richard nixon. tonight we will try to shed light on what our guest of honor writes in his newly published book of the watergate inside america's most infamous address. i'm here in three capacities as an adjunct professor. at the school of media and public affairs as at the 2014 president of the national press club when i have the honor of moderating my last book event for the club with senator john mccain in veterans day 2014.

and thirdly, i need to disclose or i want to disclose that i also am here as a resident of that most infamous address. we have lived 2004 after returning to the united states after a 40 year career abroad for the associated press. i learned about joseph from a conversation i had last week with dale caldwell the general manager of the cooperative and see he said he have met joseph when the author have come to fact check information for his new book. that worked at my ears. up my ears. take your that the author have taken the trouble to check and double check information in his manuscript. i have also been pressed that

the last 30 pages of the book from pages 371 to 400 are filled with detailed notes of every source he used in the book there is no deep throat. i have read the book from cover to cover and i have to say with all of the objectivity of my command in my view the book is a fascinating read filled with history and in the docs about the history of the watergate the controversy sounding and of course the scandals and other stories about the people who have lived there. including powerbrokers and other leading personalities from both political parties. although multiple members president nixon administration advocated towards the watergate including ambassador

john mitchell and his wife martha and a number of white house aides including rosemary woods. president nixon's confidential a secretary who you might remember. this is the first book joseph has written he is the founder and ceo of forward observer a consulting firm that does clinical research and he worked on the federal and state levels in the local politics for more than 30 years. he served as a writer and communications manager in the reagan white house and as a top campaign and government aid to california governor pete wilson and arnold schwarzenegger. yes you might say he has had

political leanings towards the republican party but i did not find any political bias towards one party or the other in his book. he tells it as history has recorded it in my opinion. and so, let me begin tonight with some questions for the author and then we will open the floor to questions from the audience followed by an opportunity to purchase the book and have joseph sign it. thank you again, for being here. joseph, my first question as the first time book author how did you decide to write a book about a set of six buildings in foggy bottom along the potomac river and what are the biggest challenges that you have. thank you everybody for being here. i have an experience that some of you head in this room where a scene at seen at the watergate for the first time.

for me it was a right after i graduated from college. and it came in from california. to start an internship and a colleague from my future professional office staff picked me up at the airport. drove me into drop me off at a dorm. they said that's the watergate. it really struck me at that moment because if you've only seen the watergate through the news you really have seen one building and that's kind it's kind of a black and white photograph so i saw this huge building right on the water and it did not look like anything else in town. of course it's all consequential and flash flood -- flash forward in about 2011 to 2014 and searching around for a topic i have a desire to write a book to write a book

under my own name. what might be a hidden story in washington. what might be very -- buried somewhere that would just be a great story and that was poking around in one day i headed to the kennedy center and i passed by the watergate. that's interesting. think looking for something for a topic. i discovered there's hundreds of books about the watergate scandal. but there were no books about the watergate. it is just scratching the surface. i look like a terrific story. i spent the summer writing a proposal. and when it circulated in new york and was grabbed up very quickly and i was on my way. the challenge is the big story. so many apartments and lives. and i have to figure out what

is a good narrative and then i have to find the paperwork so it built out of two sources. we have to find and track down material in the national archives here. the files of the district of columbia government. i also had to find the story about the building itself in the construction of the building. it was a challenge to find the material it wasn't much of a challenge trying to find people that would talk people were very generous all the way through people were generous with their time all the way through. if i said i really want to talk to. they were very open. members of the national press club as do all journalists love to hear about breaking news about new news while your

book is about history going back to the 1960s what nuggets did you uncover in your research. there were several surprises in the book and i think it was spread out over 50 years. one that comes to mind immediately as on the eve of the break-in the democratic national committee that was on the verge of eviction. they were trying to evict the democrats for being chronically late on the rent in the local manager of the watergate he had been in the united states i consider myself a fully mechanized by now. he's trying to get approval

and it comes back. they could be elected president of the united states. and we will get rid of them after the election. and of course years later i kind of stopped could've stopped i could've saved at that moment. they could've been broken and someplace else. one of the other surprises for me in the book was came from the kennedy presidential library. it's pretty well documented that the vatican was the major shareholder in the company that built the rock -- watergate. how does that ricochet within political circles and towns. as i worked through the approval process i came across

in the kennedy library a very large file about the watergate. and what was a context was interesting. once the news had broken that the vatican was behind the watergate than the activism network built up. the letter writing campaign was launched. they had been a form of them still exists. at the time they were on the radar of the kennedy team because they were turning out during the campaign a little bit of anti- kennedy literature focused on his allied with the pope and not

with the country. the watergate. at this moment when it is sort of moving through the process and its controversial and it's too big and too close to them all of the subsidence issues are coming up. it's revealed in the washington post that the vatican is behind this company. in the place lights up. there's like hate mail that comes in. it's very aggressive. and to see it ricochet and how the aides to the president were trying to respond and then the answers they were sending out were not excepted. i came across a memo from one of his top aides. to kennedy saying hey boss, this is what's going on. it's a problem. here's what were trying to do. if you have any other guidance give it to me. otherwise the authorities are going to do with it.

in the late '90s i think most of us in this room recall what became known as the scandal involving the white house intern named monica lewinsky who lived in an apartment there is a chapter called what did you find out about how ms. lewinsky lived in the watergate while under siege from the press did you interview her for the book or reach out to her. a hard person to reach out for. because of what she's been through. i understand it. she has erected walls around her. my request to talk to her

didn't get through at least i never heard back. so monica's mother rented a duplex apartment at the ground floor of the watergate south. marsha's sister deborah and their mother also have an apartment sort of like the family had rates there. so marsha rents the apartment and then invites monica to come live with her. we actually got to interview the prior tenant. about how monica is introduced to the story. i interview bob dole. at the time it was very funny

reading the stories about him. he was joking with the press corps he would like to go out and entertain them. he started developing all sorts of jokes. look at all of these people. then he was a spokesman for duncan donuts. he would bring them out to the reporters and catch up with them. and then he would say where was gordon liddy when i needed him. there was one other notice. he tells one of the reporters. you know if they ever move i might be interested in buying that apartment and combining it with mine. it signals to meet these are famous people but they are thinking the way you and i would think about real estate.

he tells the story of it. i would hope everybody buys the book and enjoys it. he does tell me the story of the first time he walked in the now vacant apartment and then walked into monica's bedroom. the reason of the chapter is called monica land is he used to give to others worse when people would come over to the house. and that would be that dining room and the other part of the kitchen. you did not speak with monica lewinsky and you obviously couldn't speak with the likes

of attorney general john mitchell and his wife who are deceased but when i went through the book i felt like you have. i have to say it must be a great tribute to the research that you did. how long did it take to do the book from the conception to making the proposal until tonight. i would say about two and half your process. semi people lived there. in the news. it was just methodically going through. my team and i would go through the news article about the watergate and the people who are there every time we found the name have to find out what happened to that person. i they alive or dead. call e-mail or wrote. or all three.

a kind of took a a while to look through every name. there were a lot of dry leads. for example there was name one named betty bradley who i came across her name in the story one article and one obituary and that was it. wrote every member of the family and then a member of the family calls this gentleman and says our mom left a box of audiotapes we have never done anything with them. they shipped this box. the original tapes in the cds so they got to listen to their mom. maybe for the first time. they were fantastic stories and they were in the book.

that's the thing that they mention today about betty davis walking through the watergate lobby. with airplane sized alcohol bottles which she drops in the middle of the lobby. probably pretends nothing has happened. and then also an interesting man named nicholas saga. he appears twice he is early on one of the key figures in identifying i tell the story of how the property came to be found and the two other competing projects to become the first project in america of this italian company. and then after the watergate scandal and apps are -- after the collapse of the company they come back. it is he who takes charge of the watergate in the mid-

70s and he recruits the famous shaft. again contact with the family. and his son who happen to live in california he said while, before our dad passed away he wrote on his life story. we've never really have the chance to do much with it. we decided maybe it will help you. i got this pdf. from this terrific guy telling his story of his life and also tied to the watergate. in the family was so thrilled all of these years later. i think it's now been published by the family. i got a year and a half heads up on the material that was

there. it was just terrific. i don't want to draw you out so much so that people will feel like they don't have to buy the book. we've covered in the last 25 minutes is the tip of the iceberg. i did had one question sent into me in advance about one of the personalities who is not at the watergate. my question is why didn't elizabeth taylor want to live in the watergate with her sick husband. i think it's printed here and there that she might have been a resident. i have to become the thing about this there is some meat biographies that make up this biography of the watergate.

a lot of going around people who feel they are coming on. a couple stories about that moment. it is not happy. she is married. she doesn't like washington. she's not happy. she's not happy being a senator's wife. and she has a lot of pets. it's unclear how many there are. they may not be double digits but there was always a lot of pets. after the 1980 election. the republicans that means that the watergate people start selling apartments to the republicans. john decides he wants to move

into the watergate to be near his buddy bob dole. that was the end of the marriage. and it was the pet policy. no more than two pets unless you had combined apartments and then maybe and then maybe you could grandfather a pet in. biographer said she was ask. asked. she to make a choice. she picked her pets. i have read the book and that's just fascinating again to hear it again through your comments here tonight. we are very appreciative that you chose the national press club to be among the first venues where you are discussing the book in fact, i mentioned at the beginning we

have the same whether tonight on february 21 that existed in happened in june of 1972. and as you all know the washington post broke many of the stories that led to president nixon's resignation in today, as you are here at the national press club. they have the major review about the book. i don't know if you study astrology. they would say that's good karma. >> before i turn over the event to questions from the audience joe said that he have brought some slides about watergate and some of the longtime residents and on the premise of that slides in pictures are worth more than a thousand words.

could you elaborate on what the images show. there's about five or six i believe. some people say a picture book that will be really cool. of course as such striking thing. it's not a coffee table book but there are some photos. a lot of them have never been printed. so there is some surprise about that. i thought i would pick out a few things. as a cartoon from the pre- watergate construction. this is the fear that the start of the news and the spanish political cartoonist and he is famous for doing a lot of cartoons about lbj. i got this cartoon and that is luigi ready.

this is an italian designer and he is meeting with skeptical bureaucrats. the rejected plans for the town project they like discarded on the floor. there is the original designer. it actually looks like a clamshell and he is holding this. perhaps if it looked a little bit more like this. it's the leaning tower of pisa. what's sweet about this. one is how i got it. i got this from the nephew. in the book. i was able to talk to someone very close to the architect. he is also an architect. he lives in rome in the same building where he lives.

this hangs in his room as a tribute to his revered uncle. when i met with him and have a really emotional interview with him he stepped out and he came back and presented this car soon. they have lost track of the cartoon. they said we don't have any cartoons about the watergate. because our father was long gone from america by then. the served as something to add to their own father's history. and one thing they say about this building. as talking about how a tie in this building is. the index for this book is certain the index and then you scamper around the book. starting with your own name and the people you know. and people you like and then people you really dislike.

this is the only washington book where in order in the index you will see casey, williams followed by this is an italian building designed at the time where they are designing ms. kennedy's gowns. in the middle-class american families are enjoying this baloney. we have a couple versions of this. this is from the library of congress. we have another version of this that is spectacular. it's been reproduced while for the book. a picture of the original model for the watergate. there are a couple of things two-point out here. number one on the far right

for the watergate south residents this is the original watergate south design. as one building and is not split into. i talk about how watergate south comes to be two buildings. and then also in between watergate south in the watergate hotel our villas. the plan was to take most of the open space there and put townhouses facing the water. those are sacrificed during the approval process at the request of the commissioner of fine arts. who want to see more publicly usable open spaces. it was not space the public could enjoy. they just it want to do that.

that does not count as open space. those were sacrificed pretty early in the negotiations. this is a photo of martha mitchell and kathy stands in the watergate salon and then martha's daughter marty is sitting next to martha holding the family dog. from a moment in time that's really pretty interesting. watergate is really having its heyday. we produce some photos from this issue including one that was not published. in july of 69. the title of the article was a used to be in georgetown now it's the watergate just

everybody lives there. this is the best of the best and one of the key images from that. both of their husbands have very serious legal problems. as a result of scandals. it's interesting i read maury stan says memoir and was fastening because he talks about it in the book. his morning exercise routine and going out and getting the newspaper on sunday. that is what the 18th of june. and seen in the washington post that there has been a break and in the watergate. he did not even know that it was actually at the watergate he also wrote about his final night in the watergate when he and kathy had just barely survived. physically and emotionally.

this is a photo of looking through the glass door to the democratic national committee the transition between those two photos is interesting and reminds me of a washington post article from 1971 roughly a year before the break-in in the washington post i think the article was called a titanic so they will post compare and as a compliment. there really are some similarities in that it's a vast structure. very advanced. to design the exterior panels

in the glass and lay out the floor plans. and then the passenger list is phenomenal. extremely wealthy people. and powerful people. like the titanic except for two differences. there is no steerage. and there's no iceberg. and of course i gear later there is an iceberg but is not it's not a physical one it's this moment where the watergate has changed forever it's probably the two pillars of the watergate going into that night are luxury and privacy. that's what the watergate stood for. the scandal undermined the privacy almost immediately the building and that they descend on the.

and this is a photo from the monica lewinsky era. and this is the stakeout in front of the watergate south is people are waiting for her to come out of the building so that they can take her picture and of course they are waiting for their donuts if it's a monday. when i was reading about how hard it was at that moment and how she was taking care of within the watergate community very powerful people from both parties. there was nothing partisan about how people were responding to what was happening to someone that might have been at the age of their daughter or something.

it was difficult to live there. she's afraid of people taking her photograph from across the way. she is moving around and the fact that the watergate was self-contained was designed to be a city within the city. she could actually have a normal life within the watergate without having to venture out of campus. so physically it was helpful to her privacy and then also the residence i think were generally very protective of her and an expose her to the press of anybody exploiting when she left the watergate she left thinking outs for the

very -- for the various residents thanking them and apologizing them for the unwelcome attention. that is a simple sample. it is a great photo of lbj touring the watergate at the democratic national committee offices on opening day. they are showing up her packs lbj in the computer room. i did talk to two people i guy name spencer oliver who is one of the two that was bugged. about how the democrats ended up there. also talked to the last person to leave the democratic national committee offices who was a guy name bruce given her. at the time he was a ucla

summer intern. i love this guy. he was up in office: the family. and just hanging out. and across the way of course is mister baldwin with the binoculars saying there is still somebody there. joe, before calling out to the audience when one brief question well there be a sequel to the watergate inside america's most infamous address or can we expect a movie one day. the movie rights are still available. i'm delighted to be a new author. i've really enjoyed the process of writing the book

and hearing people react to it's just delightful. and as i learned about how to be an author one of the things i learned is you never talk about your next book. we shall see. i would like to follow the format that we do at the national press club which is the moderator always says we will take questions that make them brief and we don't want to have the speeches which is something i teach to my newswriting reporting class. try to get the information out of the person you're interviewing don't lecture them. ask good questions and i'm happy to say that if fellow press member and watergate east john gallagher has the microphone and when you raise your hand he will assign you. if you'd like to identify yourself it would be nice.

i work at the watergate on the sixth floor during the break-in i don't know if you know i did a quick look through your book. in addition to not being evicted from the sixth floor they added the mcgovern headquarters on the first floor. the security we talked about in the privacy that you had is very weak because i worked at that young democrats office on the sixth floor when visitors sleep overnight. the third thing is. fake news really started back then you may remember that james mccourt testified that the reason that they broke into the watergate because the democratic national committee had links to violent youth

organizations the reality is you got it right. because you showed in the book by the photos of larry o'brien's correspondence that they were after the financial records. i salute you for doing that and wonder if you have any comments on that. this was one of the challenges of the book is how to write a book that's not been written before. so my perspective on the break-in as i wanted to do the whole book in fact has this perspective i'm giving the reader a junior one-bedroom apartment in watergate east here she buys in october of 1965 and that is your perspective on everything. watergate east the first

building in the junior one-bedroom studio apartments. that's like the 17,000-dollar apartment the average person does are now the guest rooms a billion-dollar apartments or more. so i don't chase the watergate scandal around the universe. how would it affect you if you lived there and you saw the brand what happens to you and how do you learn about it how do you worry about it. for example, there was a lot of press at the time. the vendors in the mall said all of this is great for business. and because we are selling watergate deemed beer and brandy. everything is great.

but he rates this is not good for the watergate. they have a very good brand at the hotel. the whole complex was exactly what they wanted. it was unwanted change. i sort of talk about that and then also there was two things that happened. shortly after the break and everything that has the word watergate on it is stolen from the watergate hotel. the staff set up the alarm. we are running out of everything. the towers have to be bought. someone told me about a housekeeper walking into a room and it had been stripped bare they were in a walk out with a king bed spread with a w on it. then you flash forward.

it sort of ends around the time of the shutdown of the hotel at the time it was an apartment. so i interviewed the man who liquidated the contents of the hotel and he talks about that. i do know don't know how you liquidate the hotel. he recently liquidated a plaza hotel. and made a ton of money because everything had to term plaza on it. we have almost nothing at the watergate that have the watergate on it. that is a lasting impact of the break-in is still felt in the mid- 2000's. they still appear on ebay from time to time.

but not often enough. if you updated it. and a long-term member of the national press club. two separate aspects. have you updated it given the rate and can reincarnation of the watergate hotel which is really quite magnificent and the second is part of the legacy of watergate is in the gate. many scandals since then many if not most maybe i'll had the word gate in them. that has put been been part of the language. can you comment on both of those questions. the book begins and ends with two options.

the first auction is in 1948 where the washington gaslight company decides they don't need this land it's prime. waterfront. land right before development. and they try to auction it off. .. ..

i think they've done a really nice job of embracing -- probably two things, feels really international and stylish which was the plan, and to make something that was never before seen in washington, and just beautiful, and then they also, i think, have done an interesting, good job in embracing the history, and it's in contrast to what was happening 20 years earlier when the hotel moves interest british ownership. i interviewed a woman who bought the watergate on behalf of the pension funds of the coalminers

of margaret thatcher's britain, and so -- >> they were her arch enemies. >> host: exactly. they still needed -- still had a pension fund and needed to invest the money. this young woman name wendy, came to the newt their late 20s to buy real estate. built a real estate poet e portfolio over a bill dollars before she was 30 and the watergate was jewel in her crown. they bring on the kinnard company, a nice little titanic tie, and they run the place like it's a british hotel. they actually put up a painting of queen elizabeth, rename most of the suites, the presidential suites become royal suites. the portrait of queen elizabeth is taken down when the

argentinians visit after the falklandss war. that would cut down on the banqueting. but the kinnard announces the renovation of watergate and completely leave out the fact that the scandal took place there at all. and so here you are, 50 years later, and i think there's a life lesson in that. something happens, you kind of have to own it. if you fight it, it may not work. so it's part of the lesson of the story of registering the watergate and the national register of historic places. this kind of comes up and it's in the book, where the building has to -- the effort was in the billing to register the property fairly early in the -- in its life, and part of that is to recognize that the scandal is

essentially part of the identity of the building. the "gate" words will stay with us. that's a reference to ryan lochte the swimmer, lock lochtegate. william sapphire writes the firstgate scandal is wine gate, which i did not know, and so it happened to be -- i found the world's living expert on winegate, a professor at cal polysen lewis obispo and he is an expert on winegate and that's a scandal involving the doctoring of -- mislabeling of french wine to krups within the french wine industry and that ways to first one and they keep going. then we have koreagate and

everything else and they're in the book. >> and with all the research that you did, a lot, which of the watergate residents, live organize dead, would you most like to spend the saturday afternoon having lunch with and having a few drinks? >> that's interesting. so, just probably -- fascinated to -- still alive, anna chenault. she is still alive. i don't quite know what it would be like to have -- to hear what she -- she is in her 90s. she bought one of the lest penthouses in watergate east. she was married to a revered military hero named general claire chenault, who ran the flying tigers air force before

world war 2, and she comes to washington, brought here by tommy cork ran, who is close to late house, and she is chinese and was married to an american and living in louisiana, which still had misogyny laws and she moves into the watergate and she appears sort of throughout the decades in the book as somebody who is like uses the watergate as a platform for becoming famous, becoming wealthy, becoming known, and in the book i talk about there's this fairly well known indent, shows up in the ken burns documentary about the vietnam war, where she is

alleged to have passed instructions to the south vietnamese government to send away from at the paris peace talks and to rob lbj of an accomplishment on the eve of the '68 election, and that moment resurfaces periodically throughout her life. she really never shakes it. it was actually in the press about a year ago. she has had a remarkable life, very curious, and i have lot of questions to ask her. >> she threw lavish parties. >> and sally quinn covered her parties. so i was going how to their -- two "washington post" bylines. going through the newspaper articles of anna chenault parties in the style section and the buyline was sally quinn.

and i interviewed sally and she was a fantastic interview, she's in the book, and i thought, she was -- then i have a factual error in a carl bernstein report. carl bernstein covered the dispute over watergate south as a young reporter. he is actually in the meeting as the watergate south residents are arguing with the developer over whether -- the kennedy center over whether the last building should be built and the byline was carl bernstein. >> how do this foster such a warm, private, almost small town sense of community. >> so, i think some people think

it's brutalist, which is this square cement, boxy, l'enfant plaza comes to mind. so very boxy. so there nor right angles in the watergate, and the -- and it is -- i looked at a lot of the work of mer eh etti and the other building and sketches and they like -- he considered the oval, the modern shape. the progressive square to round to oval, and so to me always felt no -- felt more biomoric. the billing is in a way -- you have to remember, he is roman, mr. moretti, with the toga and

the leaning power of piasa. he studios in the most addresses a private citizen could have. he was chauffeured around rome in a convertible, andown walk into a restaurant, he was -- walked in like he was a renaissance prince. and watergate is roman in a way. it is black to the official side of the city and lines up with virginia na new hampshire avenue, but on the water side it's open. if you have had the opportunity to be in a by struck noor room, it's flat to the city, looks ominous, but when you walk into the big doors it becomes a garden and that sort of thing. also, moretti designed the watergate without visiting the

site. he came out several times thereafter but the initial design was based opinion study and photographs and drawings and the work of and it was parcel between the natural environment of the potomac and rock creek park and the official environment of the city, prim prime motherly lincoln memorial and the mall. this is a building really represents the transition intellectually from water and nature into official washington. to your question about why does it become this sort of center of intrigue, is because it's intended -- it's also a very modern idea to create a full -- call it city within a city.

a mixed use development and everything was there you have your super market and your drug store and your dentist and your book store. the book store later becomes a refuge for martha mitchell's daughter, from what i assume was mayhem at the house. the liquor store, the florist, a hotel, and it's a complete place, and at the time it's important to remember this. '61 -- the lan was purchased in early '60 and the last buildings finished a year before the break-in in '71. this is not the prime years of american urban life. people are leaving cities. so, the idea is like you have to get out of there. you have to go -- the modern living is in the suburbs. that's where you'll have your cool mid-century house and all

your conveniences, your library is modern, going to drive your door the mall, all going to be great. the watergate is designed to bring people -- to push against that and to bring people back to the city and give them a modern life that is sort of in the city, and that factors into it. lastly, i think it's -- there's a lot of people on ten acres. so, they're powerful people and interesting people and smart people, especially the area liars are 0 lot of highly educated women. single women. the billing was marketed to -- building was marketed aggressively to women, the wifes and single women, and a place where you can, a single woman in washington, you could buy an apartment and can have security and style and all these things at your convince.

so very modern. and everybody sort of packed together. so in a way, it is part pressure cooker, part fish bowl, because you can see everybody, and i would also say it's sort of like everybody is freshman dorm. >> john, over here. >> what would you say the status now? when apartments become available, does it still have the same lust center do the apartments sell quickly, become availablary often? what is the current status. >> probably about the best expert on -- what i would say -- i come from -- i'm a californian so i have had two tours in d.c., and i'm a californian. my next visit -- my next talk in

the book, go to palm springs to talk about the book at modernism week which is a 20,000 person festival around modern architecture. there's just this sort of world of people who love rediscovering -- learning about and rediscovering and preserving mid-century architecture, and so i'm hopeful that the watergate, which i think is one of the premiere examples of creativity -- architectural creativity from that era becomes over time and more and more and exciting because in california, premium. a mid-century building, carries a premium now over some cases a brand new home and 30 years ago, i -- i live in a 1962 house, and

so 30 years ago, who is going to want that? that's -- you have 1962 house? that was great. so, i'm hopeful that that's going to be in the watergate's favor, and i think -- i'm hopeful, frankly, the become contributes to people's deeper underring what the watergate means, how did it come about, what was that moment like, why is it -- the question, why does it look like that? i just -- and there was a lot of thought that went into the watergate, and a lot of amazing people helped bring it to life, and also after the break-in and the change of ownership, tried to rescue it, and a lot of amazing people lived there. it is was very -- the early

residents were people who fled virginia because of the conservative attitude towards race. so people -- like, there was one family that said that we had african-american friends who couldn't visit us on the weekend and swim with the kids in the pool so they wanted to move to the district where that was not -- their lives would not be segue being grated for them and -- segregated for the family. so people, some or famous and unknown and very specialist, and a lot of journalists there over time. >> joseph, the national press club this year is 110 years old, having been founded in 1908. organizational meeting took place just across the street in

the hillard hotel if you go through he lobby, they have an historical exhibit, you'll see a reference to that organizational meeting and we have had a tradition of having outstanding speakers and guests and we're so happy you could join that list tonight and we have a tradition, as a token of our deep appreciation to present you the coveted national press club mug. >> thank you, thank you. [applause] >> please stay on, those who want to purchase a back or have joseph sign it. thank you again. those who aren't members, please look at our open web site, press.org and you can see a list of the many events we have each week. have a good evening, and -- >> thank you very much. [applause]

[inaudible conversations] >> this weekend on booktv, human rights campaign press secretary sarah mcbride discusses lgbtq and already rights as a transgender person. she is interviewed by the civil rights department during the obama administration. also this weekend, authors from the newmer foundation, m.i.t., discuss the fate of democracy. we have the presentation of the national book critic circle

awards. ben steele chronicles the efforts to rebuild western europe after world war 2. former ambassador vicky huddleston talks about the relationship between cuba and the out, and microsoft president, brad smith, offers his thoughts on artificial intelligence and how it will impact society and the work force, all that's weekend on booktv. for a complete schedule visit booktv.org. >> good evening, can you hear me in the back okay as well? i'm the event coordinator here at politics and pros. thank you for coming out. if everybody could please silence your cell phone. we are recording with c-span so don't want to be that person whose tone goes off in the middle of everything. also, for similar