are emotionally involved it's harder. host: thank you forou coming back we appreciate it good afted

morning. good morning. it feels like afternoon already summer. welcome back to the gaithersburg book festival. my name's mike >> welcome back to the gaithersburg c book festival. if you joined us for the first tenre festivals, welcome back. great to be here in person after two years of virtual.

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foreign correspondent with reuters and the "washington post" and even history of madeleine albright do that he returned to the post to launch an online fact checker : we have michael toix think for that. keying richard nixon and watergate his most recent work looking at the days following the landslide reelection and how the investigation blew it up. reading king richard for me brought me back to college days when this was happening when we crowded into the tv lounges. as a shared experience was riveting and for many people it was traumatic, notorious

figure in the center of it all watergate is like the car crash you cannot turn away from. he shows us how to relive it again i am looking forward to what he has to say about his book in the process of writing it. please join me to welcome him to the gaithersburg book festival. [applause] a former generalist journalist and after 30, years the being at correspondent i turn myself into d a historian i call myself

a presidential historian. have writing biographies like the biography of nixon by try to focus on the most dramatic moment on that person's life when they face that existential crisis they wrote a book about the cuban missile crisis called one minute to midnight which is the time in 1962 when the world came closer than ever perhaps with the exception to a nuclear exchange. that was the ultimate crisis president could face has to face the personal crisis a national crisis and that's i

try to explain explained in the book i don't think i'm very good at titles that i think king richard is a good title but that spirit of what i was trying to do. obviously that invokes that experience tragedy and he will to place of which is the second and the third but also there is a connection to nixon life as you know coming from a poor quaker family from pennsylvania she named all three of her sons after the kings of england and she named richard after the first king

richard, richard thehe lion heart and two others were named after others but they died when richard was very young during his child and he had a tough upbringing and climbed on the way from this dirt poor background to become president of the united states. then the same qualities persistence and drive and the determination to get even and then ended up bringing him down. that is a very shakespearean story. and the tragedy that has a fatal flaw. but that fatal flaw brings him down and that is the case with

nixon. and also evokes the subtitle. >> and with that approach to writing i am not a professionallyan trained historian and therefore i try to tell history is a story using using the techniques of fiction to apply to nonfiction to become outstanding popular historians eric larson is one example and the "washington post" one of my mentors was

rick atkinson of the second world war and then learned and then is writing a trilogy of the american revolution pioneering the techniques the writing fiction or history of using fictional techniques and developing characters using plenty of dialogue and to create scenes moving from one to another and of course if you are writing nonfiction cream that has to be accurate you cannot just invent things. why i chose the subject is you don't have to invent anything because the historical record is so rich it's much more interestingf and colorful if i

was a novelist i don't think i could invent many of the lines that would crop up then watergate. so focusing on i nixon's reelection in 19726 months after watergate. he was and i give rated for the second time as the president. and with that outstandingng collection and one by the largest popular vote margin but he thought he had watergate behind him it was

june 72 then reelected november 72 and my book begins just before hisis inauguration january 73. and nixon is feeling good about watergate and he had his big openinged to china and being claimed as a great foreign-policy president and this little matter of watergate doesn't seem to be that important even the "washington post" ran out of leads to investigate. and then within 100 days it falls apart. a very disciplined president unravels and nixon is facing

the greatest personal crisis ofca his life in the country is facing the great political crisis of american. life. interesting and how this happens. everything you need to witness from the inside. thanks to these tapes. it is 1:00 a.m. january 20 at noon nixon will take the oath of office for the second time. he had a favorite room which was the lincoln sitting room and in the corner of the mansion on the second floor overlooking washington monument. it is the smallest a most intimate room in the white house. and nixon love to go there and even on a day like this he would go to his cubbyhole and

have the fire going in there would have the air-conditioning and write onic the yellow legal pad. so this is what he is doing in the early morning hours of january 20. he can't get to sleep. he's too excited thinking about what he will tell the american people the next day and then at 1:00 a.m. he called his crony and they start talking about everything he wants to do in the second term. and among those is to school his enemies and get even with them.

and then to screw the enemy and then two / that the jesus out of them. and thenf they talk about how they will screwew the "washington post". so tolleson has a plan to drive down the "washington post" share at $30. and driving it down to $28. he's delighted to say everybody's fortunes are up that the point is dropped three more points. that's too dim bad was $38

with record earnings now dropped in points keep them busy and it was nearly 2:00 a.m. and finallyng time to go to bed and he said good night to a special counsel and hung up the phone. two floors below and a locked cabinet in the west wing basement 4000 real to reel tape recorder. you know that is an example of foreshadowing. you put in the detail to suggest what would happen later in the story.

is amp character in the book they are so the anatomy character. i am convinced then he would survive is on tape recordings that led to the resignation. so having taken incredible importance and also with importance for history because we are never again going to get as intimate a look at what it's really like to be president has we do during this crucial period because the president nixon trump

would tweet a lot but i'm sorry those were intended to be public in the first place but the tapes were not those are private documents that nixon never intended for them to become public and when they did he was horrified. so nowen nixon was not the first president actually taping in the white house began with franklin roosevelt who taped a few of his press conferences during the second world war because he was angry about the press for misquoting him and he had a device in his desk

and he was fed up with that after a few sessions and stopped and then after the war kennedy taped meetings in the cabinet room and i drew on those d tapes to talk about the cuban missile crisis. but again kennedy but the difference between all the former presidents some genius in the white house that nobody would ever trust you and you will not trust yourself to turn on the tape recorder.

so let's have a system with the on off switch. will tape everything and start recording when you go into the room so think of that in your private house if you had tape recorders that recorded everything you said and they thought it was a great thing next up and have to wait about it but in the end it proved his undoing because it recorded the good the bad and the ugly and the illegal. with those intimate moments with his family that shows in different light but also the legalt, stuff this was the biggest act of self-harm a president could ever do to himself but for a historian it

is an incredible gift and it enables us to see his presidency and rattling before our eyes and facing all these incredible strains think of stress in your daily life think of a president doing that only the crisis of the country but in your personal life. sometimes to say but normally people like you and me would never get to see to witness. we can imagine ourselves as a fly on the wall in the white house. at camp david are the lincoln sitting room. because they drilled holes in

the desk in the oval office to plant theirxa bug so the perspective we get is that and where nixon puts his feet on the desk and it sounds like a thunderbolt. that's how we listen to this. how the presidency fell apart one thing leads to another these unintended consequences than there is an election in november there is no evidence

that he did not order the break-ins. so being honest with the country in the summer of 72 he could have blamedre it on a few aids and probably got away with that. but then his instinct was to cover it up and that is what brought him down it wasn't watergate it was the cover-up. he said it is the cover-up that destroys people in a happened in his case. there was a guy named jim the one who authorize the break-in. but he lied before the grand jury and before the fbi. and his rationale is we were

safeguarding real peace. and ity was essential to be reelected as president so that was his rationale and justification and then one thing leads to another that nixon is reelected and thinks he has watergate behind him. but then something happens that is the trigger for the unraveling that james mccord former fbid guy. was arrested and was sitting in the dc jail.

and considers himself an upstanding member of the community. why should i go to jail when this #-number-sign is getting off scott freee and the "washington post" is writing a profile about him? so mccord will not put up with this. t perjury was committed and in fact the break-in went much higher up. the orders came from higher up. particularly magruder. so that triggered a whole long episode of one of nixon's aides running for cover.

and then to have a very colorful expression and said my aides will start kissing on each other and then they will start testing on i the president. the fingering of mcgruder leads to john dean being buried about his future and then cooperating with the prosecutors. and then shakespeare with the greek tragedy you have hubris and you have catastrophe and then a catharsis or resolution you have hubris and with the

letter to the judge and that catastrophe of the aides turning on each other and then nixon forced to part with his closest aides and nixon becoming very close at that point thinking he had to resign himself. he hung on for another year but he hangs on while there is a big fight over whether or not the tapes will be published. so to see the tragic story you have to see the here suffering. and we do see next send

suffer. and then to say i love you. and then like my brother. he is referring to his two brothers that died of tuberculosis. is crazy of him to get rid of older men as i was to lose his twoo brothers. and so to say to kissinger nobody will ever know what they put a president through the time like this and a true tragic hero.

once the toothpaste is out of the tube it's hard to put a backend. that's a problem they face. and then there is nixon this is after his resignation to say i give them a sword they put into my wounds and if i was in their place i probably would've done the same thing. there is nixon on his own downfall and tells the staff others may hate you but they don't win unless you hate them. then you destroy yourself. that pretty much sums up.

thank you very much. [applause] >> how you handled the erasure of the tape cracks and novelistic lee or skip over it? >> you are referring to the famous 17 and a half minutes of the race tape. that's from oneap of the first tape recordings one of the first sessions after watergate. in july 1972. and my story begins in january 73 in the way i tell the story. i'm not trying to include every single detail from the beginning of watergate.

and in that incident and that is a deliberate erasure. is not just the ones that are accidental. pressing the recording button and it'sel either nixon or rosemarie would. but it was donerd very efficiently and then suddenly they do embarrassing stuff but i don't think it was any more embarrassing than a lot of other stuff on the tapes. because nixon repeated himself a lot. you would not have found one bit of damaging stuff with no reference somewhere else. and that meeting we have

another source that he kept a private diary. every night he would record. then that was typed up. there is no reason to hold things back it was meant to be private and heis wrote what happened in that session. they were in discussion of cover-up. and so i am inclined not to pay so much attention. everybody was interested in arwhat happened it is a big mystery of watergate. >> . >> i hope you give this some perspective and then a couple of comments so it really is

nixon self implosion. he did dirty tricks for years and biased and said everybody does it. pat buchanan and diane sawyer. just look back and then they felt like they decapitated their leader. and there is a cultural discord from the moment and your perspective now? >> we are 50 years from the watergate break-in june 72 next month will bech the 50th anniversary. with a certainin detachment and everything is relative.

next in created criminal acts while in office for which he was forced to resign. andly the it was called the obstruction of justice. some people say it is more but i don't think sympathy is the right word so it is true through his eyes are things that have happened and since you are not a nixon fan a couple of redeeming qualities. first of allou nixon never questions and election.

[laughter] and now the presidential election is more than the last election now suddenly he had a basis to challenge in illinois and texas but he did not that bought a graduate. the democrats are screwed and i'm not allowing myself to be screwed again. but he resigned. and the system came close to a breaking point in the stealing of the election of challenging the results that nixon never tried to do.

a reader wrote to me and said thank you for your book it was well researched and interesting however nixon was not a tragic figure in any way. the spiteful and hating and conniving space bar. [laughter] no moral compass and anyway i'm 74 years old and i wish i could kiss on his grave before i die. [laughter] [applause] so that obviously reflects a certain strand of opinion out there about nixon. my reply. thanks for your note. [laughter] glad you liked the book even if you hate nixon as a hope you o noticed i wrote it on the principle of show don't tell. i tried to capture a dramatic period inn his life in the country's life as vividly as possible. the way and playwright may

stick to historical fact it's up to readers like you to decide what lessons should be john from history. from the story. as to the sub tile american tragedy could be a political tragedy or a national tragedy. perhaps all three. take your pick that describes my approach. >> i haven't read your book but did you bring in spiro agnew? to that add to the corrupt aura? spent the former governor of maryland. [laughter] >> he does make a bit part

entrance. at the same time the vice president is facing his own investigation and crisis. if they get rid of me they will get agnew and do they want him? but then he was forced to resign so than that clear the deck for getting rid of nixon. so i mentioned him in passing. >>ge the recorders are in our homes and her name is alexei. [laughter] when developinghi the project how can you collaborate with bob woodward?

>> any both of them from the "washington post". and i asked woodward for a blurb and he agreed then said he had his own book to write and focus on so he did not even give me of that. no hard feelings. i didn't feel the need. thatno mark felt the question and then it comes out in the book i didn't need to talk to people for the 50 years after the event because they had enough problem listening to all the tapes in dealing with the contemporary is material

is so rich and it's much more valuable and much more authentic than people's memories 50 years later. so if you want to read a would get woodward's perspective on something he's written lots of books and you can go and buy his books. i didn't feel the need to you know, it's not nick's woodward's story plus. you know this unraveling of the presidency. i'm i think you know all the president's men has created kind of distorted version of the journalists bringing down the president and the journalist certainly played a role and the washington post played a role and woodward and bernstein played role, but it was only one role that were other people. there were the investigators. there was the you know, george chirico who i mentioned and all these people, you know, there was an internal dynamic. inside the white house, which we didn't know about the time, but you know all these people turning on each other magruda turning on dean and dean turning on magruder. and that was all hidden from

view at the time. so, you know, i like to think that well all the president's men was the first rough draft of history told from the perspective of the reporters, but i've you know 50 years later you get many more interesting perspectives, so i didn't want to rehash all that stuff. so i think your book is very even-handed for. a criminal like richard nixon, but i would say if there were heroes in this story in a way. we look at it as a story. it's john surica. some people think john dean is a hero. it was interesting to hear. the rendition of how he came up with his testimony and how he used the tapes to create his own testimony. but the central one here the most perhaps most important one was alexander butterfield. it doesn't get a lot of credit even though we have all of these

tapes that basically once he explained that these tapes were there. it confirmed everything that dean said and all of the others actions, so maybe you want to comment on that. i think there are heroes in the story, but it's it's certainly not the protagonist here. yeah. well, you mentioned butterfield. i mean butterfield was not your sort of average political hack. he had been a colonel in the us air force i think and he hold him and recruited him to the white house. but he was not a sort of party guy. he was you know a he was in charge of the paperwork, but he also happened to be in charge of the taping system. so he was not going to blow the whistle on nixon, but if he was called to congress and he was asked a direct question about the taping system. he was going to answer honestly. so you know that. i think that's a great

perspective for a civil servant. that you know, you don't go out and put a knife in your president's back, even if but if you're called to testify and by another branch of the government or by investigations, then you answer honestly and that's what butterfield did so i agree with you but field is a hero and without his actions and without those tapes nixon wouldn't be have been forced to resign. yeah. thank you so much that it's interesting dean comes up as a quote hero. and and has been rehabilitated and is now a commentator everywhere you go. it's there's a series on right now called. gaslit. yeah about martha mitchell. yeah, which is really kind of funny because it is as much about dean as it is about north at the metrics, and i wonder if if what we're seeing in gaslit, which is dean as this.

not comfortable in his own skin, very low level thinker but not a very high level player is is actually the dean that was in the white house. well dean i think is an he's neither to me. he's neither a hero nor a villain or perhaps he's a mixture of the two, you know, sometimes there are shades of gray and i think that dean mark felt also illustrates this the people have different motives for corporating, you know was whistleblowing and then not always honorable motives. i mean in dean's case he came to detest the nixon but you know his first motive was he didn't want to he and actually he's pretty smart dean dean was smarter than of the other guys because saw the threat to him the legal threat. which was of him going to prison and so he was not prepared to go along with that, but he had personal reasons for the for that. so you know somebody like dean

is a good example of in life that many people with mixed motives, they're not just you're not either black or white. you're somewhere in between and i think dean is a good example for that. i haven't seen gaslit but i mean martha mitchell too, you know, she's an interesting character, but and she's sort of blew the whistle early on. but she was also to be honest a pretty impossible woman to. to be married to i imagine. i mean i have some sympathy for for john mitchell, but i am say i should see the have you all seen who seen gasoline here. okay, great. i'd had enough of mixing and mortar gate then. so then anyway so thank you. so you talk about the nixon

story as a shakespearean or a greek tragedy. but i mean, it's really the elements of human nature. it's the elements of human nature and that just kind of repeat themselves over and over. i was wondering if you care to talk about any similarities with the situation with trump and january 6th. yeah. you know, well tell us what you think is gonna happen with the various players. yeah in their mixed motives to right cooperate or not. i mean as was said i tried to be even handed to nixon personally in terms of rating presidents. i consider trump to be you know 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 again in 1972. of course, there are many elements in nixon's politics. you can draw a straight line between the silent majority the race car that he played the southern card. you can draw a straight line between nixon and trump in many ways, but in terms of the you know, i mentioned one of them nixon is tamia more human

character nixon you see nixon suffering you see nixon in these tapes having conversations with his daughter. you know, he had a of course he had family i go into some of the family crises they faced. um, but you know, he was a loving family person. ultimately. i mean, i see perhaps in 50 years time. we'll get a different. view of trump, but i'm not sure we'll have the you know, i can't see the human qualities in trump that i can see in nixon. i can't see the suffering. i can't see the basic respect for the system. i certainly can't see the i mean nixon whatever else you think of him was a brilliant mind. it wasn't kissinger who opened up to china, of course, you know, that might not have been such a great idea now that we have problems with china, but that was nixon was a very, you know, creative foreign policy thinker he read deeply about american history. i i'm in perhaps my too close to trump, but i i put them in