and i think that that has had a massive trickle-down effect . >> i think that's a good if depressing place to end h. >> that's all everybody, thanks for putting you. >>. [applause] >> this week enjoy book tv on c-span2 along with our featured programs every sunday with leading authors discussing their latest nonfiction books li sunday at nn stern on index, th and pulitzer prize-winning journalist this case it was book tv toak your calls on political revolutionnincarceration in america . his books include: the farewell to her, our class: trauma and stress in most recently the greatest evil is more. science iter david roberts

on the efforts to create a vaccine for the virus in his book breathless. watch book tv all this week on c-span2 and find a full schedule on your program guide for watch online anytime book tv.for. >> good afternoon or good morning. it feels like afternoon already, summer. welcome back to the gaithersburg book festival, i'm a former member of the gaithersburg city council proud supporter of the petersburg book festival says its inspection. let us tend. it's really great to be here in person this year after two years of virtual tests. as you know teachers produces enough values and supports the arts and humanities please review the status part of the generous support of our sponsors volunteers.

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post in moscow. he's covered the collapse of the soviet union, written about the history of the cold war biography of marilyn all right. during the presidential campaign user supposed to launch online checker column so we havelabeled today . king richard, nixon and watergate tragedy is his most recent book compounding the days following the landslide reelection victory next to our investigation of learned blue it all up. reading king richard for me brought me back to college days when all this was happening when we crowded into tv lounges because that's how we watch tv. it was a sharedexperience . we watch the select committee hearings instead class educational was renting for many people there. let us i'll suggest this is a shakespearean tragedy euros one notorious figure in the

center of it all. watergate for me is like a car crash that you can't. this book michael shows it to us allb& read it again this in slow-motion. so i'm looking forward to hearing what michael have to say about his book the process of writing. please join me in welcoming michael goss to the gaithersburg festival. >> thank you very much. so as was explained i'm a former journalist. i used to work for the washington post and after 30 years of being mainly a foreign correspondent, i turned myself into a historian and actually to distinguish myself from all those presidential historians out there, i call myself a presidential precious historian and try to focus on not just the entire life of somebody, writing biographies

like biography of nixon but i try to focus on the most moments of that person's life. when they face an accidental crisis of one kind or another. i about the missile crisis pulled call one minute to midnight which is about the time in 1962 when the world came over to war sense, perhaps with the exception of correct time to some nuclear exchange. obviously that wasn't the ultimate crisis that a president could face. but nixon also faced a crisis . he is a personal crisis, the national crisis crisis that tried to describe in this book i. so why did i call it king richard ?

actually good titles but i think hiking richard is a great title some the spirit of what i was trying to do. obviously that frees u-boats the kind of cheese. tragedy y, shakespeare wrote king lear. he wrote two books or two plays which richard the second and richard the third. but also there's a connection to nixon's life because his mother out in california became as you probably know from for mixed family migrated to california from pennsylvania. she called her son, she needs her son, three of the sons after the kings of england. she richard after the first king richard, richard the lionheart . two others were named after other english kings. in fact, they died when

richard was very young. during his childhood. so he had a tough upbringing. and he climbed all the way from being dirt poor background family in california eto become president of the united states. and then the same qualities of persistence and driving hatred of his enemies aand determination to get even, qualities that had carried him to the presidency then ended up bringing him down. which is to be very shakespearean. i tragedy you have a tragic hero has a fatal flaw. and he has to be capable of greatness. the most fatal flaw can bring him down and i think that's the case with nixon. but that explains why i chose the title king richard because it's personal to

nixon's life and is also evokes the sum of the book is an american tragedy. we can talk in questions and answers about whether you agree with me that nixon is a real tragic figure. but okay. so i want to talk a little bit about my approach to writing because i'm a former journalist i'm not a professionally trained historian and therefore i tried to tell history as a story. using the techniques of fiction to apply to nonfiction. actually there are a lot of journalists who become outstanding popular historians. david mccullough is anobvious example . and the washington post, one of my mentors was rick atkinson who wrote a

wonderful truly trilogy of the second world war and then wrote, he is now writing a trilogy of the american revolution. but these authors, most of them former journalists, they set about applying these techniques of writing nonfiction or history but using additional techniques of developing characters using plenty of dialogue, creating scenes and moving from one scene to another. of course, if you're writing nonfiction it has to be every bit of it has to be accurate. you can't justinvent things . and one of the reasons actually i chose this subject of nixon and watergate is you don't have to accept anything because the historical record is so rich and it's much more interesting and much more colorful. i haven't got a great imagination but if i did i could invent many of the lines that crop up in watergate.

course we have to takes which is an amazing source for real life authentic dialogue. okay, so how do i read this? i focus on nixon's reelection . in 1972. this is after six months after the watergate hearings he was inaugurated a second time as president. he had one, one of the outstanding elections victories in american history. he won by the largest vote margin up until that date. so he has the country behind him particularly the second time he ran. he thought that he had largely put watergatebehind him . watergate is june 72. he's reelected in november n 1972 and my book begins with a scene just before his

inauguration in january 1973. actually 20 of january 1973. nixon has you know, he's feeling pretty good about rg watergate. he his plan includes a peace treaty with north vietnam. his claim does a great foreign-policy president and this little matter of f watergate hasn't seemed to be all that important even the washington post has run out to investigate. and then suddenly, in the space of just three months or actually 100 days, it's all part. this very disciplined presidency unravels completely nixon is facing the greatest personal crisis of his life and the country is facing one of the great political crises in american life.

so i was interested in how this happens, this incredible story just the unraveling of presidency which you are able to witness from the inside. thanks to these tips. so i begin the story, it's 1 am on january 20. at noon nixon came to take the oval office's time. he's in his, he had a favorite room in the white house which is the consuming. at the corner of the mansion on the floor overlooking washington monument. who actually was the smallest and most intimate room in a house and nixon love to go there. he would go up there, his daughter liked to joke that even in the height of summer on the day like this nixon would go to his cubbyhole, the lincolns sitting room hand he would have this fire going set by this retainer manolo

sanchez and he would have that air-conditioning full last to capture the effects of the fire he would settle in their and right on his yellow legal. so basically this is what he's doing in the early morning hours of january the 20th. he can't get to sleep to he's too excited. thinking about what he will tell the american people the next day at 1:0 4 am, he calls his k crony chuck colson and they start talking about everything he wants to do with a second term. and among the things they want to do with the second term is to screw all nixon's enemies . all the antiwar crowds they got this tremendous triumph in securing peace with north vietnam as they see it. and there also going to screw the enemies and really as

colson said, we're going to/ jesus out of them. then they start talking about how to screw the washington post because of course they thinkthe washington post . so colson has a plan to drive down the washington topost share price. i think it was $38. and coulson succeeded in driving it down to i think $35. $28. and he's boasting about this nixon. he's delighted to inform the time he was doing great, everybody's fortunes are up except those post . their stock has dropped three more points since i last.

that's too damn bad for our clients. isn't that ashame, coulson. in december and record " . keep them busy, nixon. today, time to go to bed. the president had to be upfor the inauguration day ceremony . he said good night to his special counsel and hung up e the phone . two floors below and a lot in the left-wing basement, were 4000 reels real tape recorder stoppedworrying . now if any of you did ap literature you know that's an example of i think it's called foreshadowing which means you put in a little detail to suggest what is going to happen laterin the story . and so i'm introducing the tape recorders and the tapes as a kind of character in the book. and there a very important character. they're all witnessed everything that happens but

there also and in and character of course. but there also the eating of the tragedy. because i'm convinced that had nixon penot take himself, dthen he would have survived. it was only the existence e of that smoking done, his own tape recording eventually brought him, led to his resignation. so that takes half an incredible historical importance. but they also have an importance for history because we forget again are going to get as intimate a look at what it's really like to be president as we do during this very crucial period of thenixon presidency . you know, no president because of the precedent of mixing is ever going to take himself away nixon did. that's absolutely, we can say that for sure. so this historical record is

never going to exist again some people say you are sorry tweets got nothing, the tweets were intended to be public in the first place is not intended to be, case documents that nixon never intended to become a when they did become was horrified by. so now nixon was not the first president to take himself. actually, keeping in the white house with roosevelt to take a few of his press conferences during the second world war as he was angry the press about misquoting and he had a device and his desks that he could turn it on but he got fed up with it after a few sessions and stop the practice but then after the war, kennedy take himself or

he takes meetings in the oval office, not in the oval office, in the cabinetroom . and i drew on the states to write my book about the cuban missile crisis. then there a very valuable source but again, kennedy was able to turn the tapes on and off. dan johnson take himself, he eltakes his telephone conversations the difference between all these former president nixon was some genius in the white house actually probably haldeman thought nixon is a technological klutz to say the least. he's very ham-fisted with technology and as haldeman put it the ones that are going to trust you and you're not going to trust yourself to turn on the tape recorder when you want to. so let's have a tape recording system without anon off switch , you it will do,

start recording g when you go into the room. that in your house if you tape recorders that recorded absolutely everything you said whatever you walk into a room is also. they this was the thing so that next and wouldn't have to worry about it but any and it proves his undoing that the system recorded the good, the bad, ugly, the illegal and it's not just all things okay. there's some intimate moments with his family, his daughters that show nixon in a different light there's also a course the illegal stuff . so with retrospect this was the biggest act of self harm a president could ever do to himself . but for a historian or i hopefully for our meter is that he's giving people have said it enables us to see this presidency unraveling

before our eyes and the president facing all these incredible strains. you stress in your healing as a president trying to deal only with the crises of the country but also crisis in your personal life that will be happier. i sometimes say my admission was to make the reader a fly on the wall to all these events but that normal people like you and me would never get towitness . and we can imagine ourselves as a fly on long in the white house for david for the link in the same room. actually i think a better analogy is bug in a desk because they actually drill holes in the desk in the oval office to plant their bonds. so the perspective we get is

exactly 'that, of being a bug in nixon's desk. actually manolo comes in he is moving around the table and you get a sort of look or nixon puts up his feet on the desk and it sounds like a thunder roll or something. so that's how the listening to this. so what interested me was how this very disciplined presidency for our and how one thing leads to another with all these intended consequences . now, after watergate happens in june 1972 election in november, there's no, nixon ordered a lot ofthings . there's no evidence nixon actually ordered watergate he said he hostage to happen create a culture you were writing . so have you honest with in

the summer of 1972 he had waited a few of his aides. probably. but is an election was in just two or three months time was to cover it up. that was what brought him down, it wasn't that it was a cover-up he understood that himself. he said, he is peoplebecause it happened in his case . so there's a guy called jim bruder who was as far as we can tell a person who authorized breaking. he was at the committee to reelect the president. and d mcgruder lies before the grand jury and before the fbi . and his rationale was well, we work covering up on

burglary, we were safeguarding world peace . and in order to take up our world peace is essential nixon bereelected as president . though it's the way probably a lot of presidential aides think. that was his rationale, his justification one thing leads to another so1973 nixon is reacted . he thinks his watergate by area but something happens is the trigger of this unraveling is called genes mccord was one of the supervisors of the former cia guy. and he been arrested as he had connections to the burglary in 52. he was sitting in the dc jail decided to place and had particularly in the early 70s . these injure himself he's an outstanding comedy considers himself outstanding member of the committee he lives not

very far from here. he thinks to himself why should i go to jail looking for this schmuck mcgruder is getting off scott free and what's more the washington post is writing flattering profile. he's writing the inaugural festivitiestime . so mcgruder, mccord is not willing to put up with so next to the e judge and set perjury was committed this crime. he writes orders for the break-in with much higher up, it was just these burglars that have worked break-in. the orders came from higher only mcgruder. so that triggers all long episode. one of nixon's aides running for cover 1x nixon aide using the other nixon himself powerful expression for this. he said my aides are going to

start pissing on each other and then are going to start at five on the president. this is my nixon's language. this describes how this happened. the fingering of mcgruder leads to john deane coming worried about his future and john deane ecturning trader and cooperating with prosecutors. it's like in shakespeare you have one greek tragedy. you have hubris and then you have crisis and then you have catastrophe and then at the end some boxes for resolution . so this is what happens. you got the hubris, the opening scene of them thinking everything is wonderful they have to solve this watergate problem and you have the crisis of the

job you got that', all the aides turn on each other and finally nixon being forced to park with his closest, 2 closest aides, haldeman and ehrlichman. and nixon coming close at that point to thinking he had to resign himself and he manages to hang on for another year but that takes, he hands on for the big fight on whether or not the tapes will bepublished . so we see the other quality or characteristic of a tragic story is you have to see the hero supper. i think we do see's and soccer. we see a human sideto him . with all the men, he says i love you and then there's applause, like my brother.

so i think there he's referring to his two brothers who died of to workb as a young man and it was as painful for him to get rid of haldeman to lose his brothers . it was like fired people like to, for nixon. he says to kissinger no no what they put president through in atime like this . so when you talk about whether or not nixon was a true tragic hero we can talk about the great minds of watergate. i love the line that haldeman says to deane. once the toothpaste is out of the two is going to be hard to put it back in which described the problem they faced the cause once the

aides started talking and deane starts talking in particular it was hard to put the toothpaste back into. there's nixon to david frost. this is after his resignation . he says i gave them a iesword, meaning his enemies which they twisted with relish into my wounds. i have been in their place i would probably have donethe same thing . there's nixon on his own downfall where he says, he tells his staff always remember others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself and i think that pretty much sums up the tragedy of richard nixon. so thank you very much. let's have a niceconversation .

[inaudible] >> i was wondering how you handled the erasure in the tape. did you do it novelisticlay or skip over? what did you do ? >> you're probably referring to the famous 17 and a half minutes of the race take. that's actually from one of the first tape recordings. one of the first sessions after watergate. in july 1972 . and my story actually begins in january 1973 in the way i tell the story on not trying to include everything from the beginning of watergate. i'm focused on the downfall of the president and unraveling of the presidency but since you asked about i think it's obvious that was a deliberate erasure.

the national archives did the investigation into that it's not just one accident or so the pressing of the recording button but about 30 pressings of the recording button. and it was probably either nixon or it could have been rosemary woods, is very but wasn't done very. finally they were trying to o calm down. on 17 i don't think it was a t really more embarrassing alone. on this case. the reason is next and review himself a lot. so you wouldn't have found just one little bit of very damaging stuff on monday with no reference toit somewhere else . those, that meeting with haldeman we have another source which is haldeman kept a private diary. and then that was typed up

and that was meant to be a private diary. they had no reason to hold things back and he writes what happened in that session . suddenly there was discussion of cholera. but it wasn't, my point is it wasn't any worse than a lot of other tapes. so i'm inclined not to pay so much attention. of course, everybody was interested in what happened. how this had been erased is one of the big mysteries of watergate but it's been sort of exaggerated actually. >> i hope you'll get on a nice long answer on the historical perspective. i see this as an undergraduate and maybe shed more information for us, this really is nixon's self implosion and he had thoughts . he did lots of dirty tricks

for years. he was biased . he says i feel like we've learned nothing as a culture. there's been revisionism andrehabilitation . diane sawyer and all these people is using but if you look , to be honest the republican party and it up taking vengeance for it. they felt like they were decapitated as their leader the washington post day and s it was a self implosion my funds so there's a cultural discord from this moment to talk to us from your perspective now . did we learn anything? >> actually we're 50 years from the watergate break-in. june 1972, next month will be the 50th anniversary of the watergate break-in which gives you a certaindetachment and historical perspective . you know, everything is relative . and of course nixon committed criminal acts while in office for which he was worst to

resign. and as i say, the cover-up is technically called obstruction of justice and his aides went to prison for that. since some people say that my book is more sympathetic to next and then other books, actually i don't think that he is the right word but i do think it's important for a writer to tell the story through the eyes of the protagonist. so a lot of it is through nixon's eyes or things that happened in nixon's presidency. i would like since you obviously are not a nixon fan i'd like to just mention a couple of redeeming qualities . first of all, nixon never hustled that election.

now, the presidential election of 1962 was much more close wrong election that the last election and nixon certainly had some basis for challenging in illinois and texas but he didn't. but he bore a grudge from. have ought the democrats screwed me and i'm not going to allow myself to bescrewed again . he resigned. i think the system did actually work in 1972. and i think the system came close to the breaking point in recent years and particularly the question of the stealing of the election which nixon never and the question of challenging the results which nixon never tried to do. the reader wrote to me and he said thank you for your book. it was well researched and interesting, however richard

nixon was not a tragic figure anyway. he was a spiteful, eating and conniving sleazeball. no moral compass in any way. i'm 74 years old and i wish i could kiss on his grateful for i. so that obviously reflects a r certain strength of opinion out there about nixon. i'll read my reply to him. i said ask for your. glad you liked the book even if you take next. as i hope you noticed d i wrote it on the principle of show don't tell. i tried to capture a particularly dramatic dperiod in nixon's life and the country's life as vividly as possible only dollars for my. while sticking strictly to historical. it's up to readers like you to decide for themselves what lessons to be drawn from history.

from the story. as for the subtitle and american tragedy, that can be interpreted in different ways . personal tragedy, a political tragedy or a national tragedy . perhaps all three, take your pick. that pretty much describes my approach. >> i haven't read your book yet but i was wondering did you bring spiro agnew into the story and did his action sort of add to the corrupt aura around the nixon administration and make it all worse for nixon? >> the former governor of maryland, you're talkingabout . agnew makes a sort of bit part entrance. actually, at the same time this is all going on with the president the vice president is using his own investigation.

nixon also used the joke. nixon could be quite humorous and he says one thing i've got going for me is that if they get rid of me they'll get agnew. do they want him? but then eventually as we know agnew was forced to resign so that clear that so i mention agnew in passing. >> thank you michael, a couple of comments on technology and about tape an recorders in our homes. they are in our homes and igher name is alexa. i'm curious about when you're developing this project, how are you able to work with work collaborate with carl bernstein and bob woodward on this project atall if you did

? >> i knew both of them from the washington post, particularly woodward . i was interested. actually i asked woodward for our blurb and then he agree and said he had his own book to write and focus on so he didn't even give me a blurred . but anyway, no hard feelings. i really didn't feel the need to do a lot of it, i thought to woodward often about watergate and the whole question of mark, the question of who was the rose that all comes out in this book. i didn't really need to talk to people 40 years, 50 years after the events because i had enough problem listening to these tapes. contemporaneous material is so rich and it's much more valuable and authentic than peoples memories 50 years

later so if you want to read woodward's perspective he's written a lot of quotes and you can go and buy his books. i didn't feel the need. it's not woodward story. plus this unraveling of the presidency i think and all the presidents men has created a distorted version of spraying down the president and the journalists certainly play a role washington post label will work bernstein label. the dow was the investigators, there was just sure, why mentioned. and all these people. there was an internal dynamic inside the white house twe did a lot of the time but all these people turning on each other. mcgruder turning on dean dean aye router that was all in the left eye. so i like to think well, all

the presidents men was the first rough draft of history told from the perspective of the reporters but 50 years later you get many more interesting perspectives. so i didn't want to rehash alexa. >> i think your book is very evenhanded for a criminal like richard nixon. but i would say there were heroes in the story in the way we look at it as a story. some people think john dean is a. it was interesting to hear the rendition of how you came up with his testimony and how he used takes to create his own testimony but the central one year, perhaps the most important one was even though we all of these tapes that basically once he explained

that these dates were there, it's confirmed everything dean said and all the other expenses so maybe you want to, i think there are heroes in the story but it's certainly not the protagonist . >> you mentioned but if myou read butterfield is not your a average political hack. he had been in the us air force: recruits into the white house. but he was not a sort of rei. he was, he was in charge of thepaperwork but also happened to be in charge of the dating system . he was not going to blow the whistle on the next and but if he was called to congress and he was asked a direct question about theheating system he was going to answer honestly . so i think is a great perspective for a civil servant.

but that you don't go out with a knife in your presence that even if but if you're called to testify and by another branch of the government or by investigation and you answer honestly that's what butterfield did. agreed that these hero not misty nixon wouldn't have beenforced to resign . >> is interesting, deane comes up as a quote hero and has been rehabilitated to a commentator everywhere he goes. there's a series on right now called gasoline. which is really kind of funny because it's as much about being as it is about mitch. i wonder if what we're seeing in ghastly which is deemed as this not comfortable in his own skin, very low-level thinker but not a very high level player is actually the

deane that was in the white house. >> deane, to me is not a hero nor a villain. perhaps even a mixture of the two. sometimes there are c ray i think that deane, mark also illustrates this people have different motives for operating on whistleblowing. and they're not always honorable motives. in his case he came to the test enixon but in his first motive was he didn't want to, actually he's a smart dean was smart because he thought to him. which was up in the prison. so he was not there along with that he personal reasons. so you know, somebody like deane is a good example of in life there are many people with mixed motives.

they're not always hi black-and-white, there somewhere in between and deane is a good i haven't seen ghastly. mark on two. she's an interesting character she blew lewis early on but she was also to be honest a pretty impossible woman to be married to imagine. i have some sympathy for john mitchell. i have to say i have you all, who's seen ghastly here western mark rick i've had enough of nixon with water to . anyway. >> five more minutes for questions. >> thank you. >> ..

>> i mean, as a setback i do be even headed to nixon. personally i consider trump to be far worse than nixon. i mean, because nixon, of course he hated this. he hated being forced to resign. he hated his enemies. he hated everybody else. but in the end he respected the system. he respected it in 1962 and he respected and get and i consented to. there are many elements in nixon politics. you can draw straight line between silent majority, the race card that he played, southern card.

you can draw straight line between nixon and trump in many ways, but in terms of, i mentioned one of them, dixon is to be a more human character. you seem nixon and suffering. you see nixon in these tapes having conversations with his daughter. of course he had family. i going to some of the family crises they faced. but he was a loving family person ultimately. perhaps nvidia some will get a different view of trump, but i'm not sure we will have, i can't see the human qualities in trump that i can seek to nixon. i can't see the suffering. i can't see the basic respect for the system. i certainly can't see, i nixon what else you think of him was a brilliant mind, was in kissinger who opened up to china. of course that might not have been such a great idea now that we are problems with china. nixon was a very creative

foreign policy thinker. he read deeply about american history. you know, so i am perhaps too close to trump but i put them in 22 and ali, not entirely different categories but in different categories. >> i think to me, there's a lot of things i could accept from trump but to me the end of it was january the sixth and question results of the election, which is a continuing threat to american democracy, in my view. >> lets thank michael. [applause] >> all this week enjoy booktv on c-span2, along with our

featured programs every sunday with leading authors discussing their the latest nonfictionoo. live sunday at noon eastern on "in depth" authoringzer prize-winning journalist chris hedges jointed booktv to t and take your calls on political reon and incarceration in am his books include america, the farewell tour. our class, trauma and transformation in an american prison. and most recently "the greatest evil is war." then at 11 p.m. science writer recounts the efforts to trace and create a vaccine for the covid-19 virus in his book breathless. watch tv all this week on c-span2, and find a full schedule on your program guide or watch online any time at booktv.org. >> thank you, everybody for being here. the best and worst thing about the bookaz festival is that thee so many amazing panels and a lot