whatever it might be, we will send people who will have a method and a procedure to talk to people and listen. let -- it was carl when we were working on water gate who said these people won't talk in their office. let's go see them at night. let's knock on the doors without an appointment. i've asked a group of reporter the other day, how many of you have gone in the last five years to somebody you wanted to talk to and knocked on their door at home without an appointment? >> zero hands went up. when i was working on the fourth bush book, there was a general who would not talk. e-mails. messages, intermediariys, nothing. i found out where he lived. the bernstein method. when do you go see a four star general at home without:ró{elx

appointment? i think 8:15 on tuesday is the time to go because it's not monday. it's not the end of the week. 8:15 he probably hasn't gone to bed. you know he has had his dinner. so i knock on the door, he opens it and he looks at me and he says, are you still doing this -- [ applause ] i didn't say anything because i knew he was sincere. he looked at me and got a disappointed look on his face and then he kind of went, come on in. sat for two hours and answered not all but most of the question. why? because someone showed up and said i want to listen to your account of what occurred. he went from a firm no to

maybe .2 seconds to a yes in one second just because somebody was there. what's the lesson? i don't know what you do but if i want to find out and you won't talk, i'm going to be knocking at your door even at 71 years of age. [ applause ] i want to say this is the most fun i've had in ages. thanks to all of you. bob, ken, carl, elizabeth. this has been just absolutely terrific event thanks to your thoughtfulness and knowledge and memories of this amazing moment that is amazingly 40 years ago -- we can be back revisiting it ten to 20 years from now. so thank you all very much.

[ applause ] >> on this weekend's news makers, americans for prosperity president tim phillips is our guest e. represe guests. he represent one of the biggest spending conservative advocacy groups this election cycle. here what he has to say about politics and the 2014 mid-tterm elections. sunday at 10 a.m. eastern on cspan. >> with live coverage here on cspan 3 we compliment this coverage by showing you the most relevant congressional hearings and on weekends, cspan 3 is the home to american history tv with program that's tell our nation's story including the civil war's 150th anniversary. american artifacts, touring museums and historic sites to discover what artifacts reveal about american's past, history

book shelf with the best known american history writers. the presidency. lectures in history with top college professors delving into america's past and our new series real america featuring archival government and education aal films from the 19s through the 70s. cspan 3 created by the cable tv industry and funded by your local satellite or cable provider. >> more on president nixon's resignation 40 years ago and his secret audio recordings that came to be known as the nixon tapes. from washington journal, this is just under an hour. >> in this book the nixon tapes, it covers 1971 to 1973. you start off by saying that johnson, president johnson advised president nixon to put in a ftaping system.

he declined. >> very much so. fdr did somely. ing john f. kennedy did taping but selectively. kennedy looks great in the tapes. it shows him in command in the cuban missile crisis. it has helped lbj's representation because it shows his passion for the poor and shows the great society in action with civil rights and the rest. with nixon, he came in and said none of that taping for me. johnson is trying to convince me it's a good idea i'm not going to do it. but february of 1971 he couldn't help himself. he felt he was ending the vietnam war and making a break through with china. armstrong had gone to the moon. he had created the environmental protection agency and was dealing with segregation in the south and giving people the right to vote at 18. he thought he would be needing

to document his own greatness. it was his undoing because it was voice activated. he bugged the whole white house up. he bugged camp david. one of the reasons this book is coming out now because the national archive has been processing the tapes. in it you can find so much dynamite to destroy nixon's presidency in his own words because he's constantly using abusive language toward people. really it's the bigotry and anti-semettism that's doing the most damage to nixon's representation from the tapes. >> he is a friend to network in a accepsense that he participat a lot of our programs. he's always willing to come over and take your calls talking about different historical events. today we're talking about the 40th anniversary of the

resignation of president nixon. doug brinkley, presidential historian and professor of history at rice and james baker institute for public policy fellow. you've written several books on history. you're a contributing editor all over the map. your jimmy carter's official biographer. that fair. >> i would not say official but i did a book the unfinished presidency and he gave me access to diaries and papers . i'm working on a book on franklin rose ef veavelt. it's about how he attacked the drought and got very concerned about forest fires. there was a real fear that the japanese bombs would burn

american forests during world war ii. looking how fdr saved places like kings canyon, the olympics, all over america. i had once written a book on conservation and theodore roosevelt. this is a companion book looking at the new deal and conservation and how it put so much effort into the land where all of our top soil had blown away dealing with a lot of agriculture and department issues in the 30s and 40s. >> he had worked at cspan once. he is from perrysberg ohio. he is a professor at texas a and m. luke helped me find some of these conversations because he's running a nixon's tape project. he's trying to transcribe all of this. he points me in the right direction. he was doing some work on walter

cronkrite and he pointed me in the right direction. as we got to know each other and became friends, the idea is is this stuff is unbelievable. luke has better access to this material and understands it. he can actually hear the voices in the room. it's tough going for a lot of people. i talked to my friend the other day he said boy. couldn't listen to the tapes long because you just have to really strain but luke has an arm form to doing it. we tried to bring out now what's the most important from the tapes not water gate related. what else can we learn particularly foreign policy. this is nearly 800 pages of two years of tapes. one thing i notice is that president nixon interrupts a lot. >> all of the time. he never lets anybody finish a sentence. nobody ever stands up to him. actually henry kissinger is the

one who comes out badly in this book. >> nixon will say something half crazy and there's kissinger yes, boss. you're absolutely right it's strag er snaggering. nobody wants to challenge him. presidents have to be vousurroud by people who are going to challenge them otherwise they become very isolated. he really was a loner. i think if there was somebody within the white house structure that nixon was close to it was haldeman. he was actually fairly close to his speech writers. if he wanted a more intellectual speech he would turn to william sapphire and on domestic policy issues he would turn to ray price. he could not stand his own secretary of state william

rogers who wanted nothing really to do with the state department. he wants to run foreign policy out of the white house as himself as the master puppeteer. >> 1971, june 13th, 12:18 p.m. richard nixon and alexander hage he finds out about the pentagon papers for the first time. nixon gets very worried. one thing about the pentagon papers, they had nothing to do with nixon. they were all about linden johnson. >> it's an odd relationship that he has with johnson. he couldn't stand the kennedys. it comes bursting through the book. there's also jealousy toward the kennedys. at one point he says he had courage that he was well read. that he was a beat man. that he was a philosopher. this is bunk. i knew jack kennedy as none of

these things. he says i want to be known for guts and courage. >> kissinger says i think you're known for competence. he says anything can be known for competence. i want to be known for guts. >> he liked lid en johnson. he very much worried if these pentagon papers were going to tell secrets of our state of what's going on in vietnam. it would enrain the anti-war movement which was already hot under the collar. he tried to jeft sequester to pentagon papers. the administration does very weird things like have a break in of elsberg's psychiatric papers to get his files it shows nixon's outrage of leaks. all presidents hate leaks but i think nixon hated them more. in the pentagon paper it wasn't just a leak but it was the new

york times. he hated the times. >> in your note, prior to the transcript of the tape, you and mr. nictor write on another occasion it could have been a chance to score a political victory however nixon's department of yuf justice launca giant event of secrecy. >> it touches on a seminole point. nixon was vice president for eisenhower eight years. ike ran in 1952, he knew the korean war was raging. eisenhower said elect me and i will go korea. he said elect me and i will find a way out of the war that had

turned unpopular. sure enough eisenhower is elected six months later and we're out of korea. nixon had that korea in 69 or 70 or 70 71. he did not think it was winnable. the papers showed the malfeasance of johnson, he could have said this war was a mess. blame it on kennedy or johnson. instead he got more and more mired in trying to control the southeast asia situation and famously expanding the war into cambodia and laos. doug brinkley is our guest. ravel in minoa new york, democrat line. ralph you're on the air. >> caller: what an honor to talk to douglas brinkley.

i just have a question. the focus looking at the blue collar worker. did mr. brinkley find anything in the tapes to vote for nixon if we focus on the blue collar working class worker to get the worker to think of their cultural values or their material needs in order to break them away from the new deal coalition. i thank you very much. bye. >> it's a good question. yes. i mean what you have with nixon is appealing directly to blue collar workers to the point where he would embrace people like johnny cash and marylle hag fwr art because he thought he represented the blue collar worker.

nixon had pretty good read of middle class america although he didn't hang out with them a lot. he kind of was a loner but remember his idea of the silent majority that nixon was saying that most americans want to win in vietnam. they want peace with honor. they care about american values. main street values. this anti-war movement in media, liberal elite based out of new york and washington were skewing what was really going on meaning most college kids in america were just going to college. it took five anti-war protesters to burn a flag. there would be the camera. it's on the nightly news. he had polls backing his action. he showed a majority of americans favoring winning the vietnam war. he constantly looked to polls and found a way to create a new

coalition. some people say seasonically on the issues of race is trying to appeal what was known in 72 as the george wallace voters. the regul the segregationists. pair doxically nixon is fighting but as like reagan you had to win over some of blue collar workers and go group by group. for example the teamsters were more apt to vote republican than say the united mine workers were. >> robby calling in from florida, independent line. how, robby. >> caller: hi, there. i want to thank you mr. brinkley on his hard work in putting out his book. i wanted to say one thing. nixon was the beginning of party against party. according to george washington in his fair well addresses when he was leaving office.

our founder said that the spirit although inacceseneinaccepterab nature that without looking forward to an extremity of this kind which would never be entirely out-of-sight, the spirit of this party is sufficient to make the interested duty of wise people discouraged. it serves to distract the public counsel in favor of the public administration. agitate the community. >> all right robby. i think we got the point. president nixon was a source of party to party conflict. >> we've had party to party conflict since 1800 when thomas jefferson and john adams rip at each other. i think one of the important

things is to always remind us that modern times aren't as uniquely oppressive as we think. look at the civil war in this country where we lost over 600,000 people dead. lincoln getting snuck into washington d.c. and the battle of bull run outside of washington d.c. water gate is looking quite small. it is true in 1968 he was very worried about humphrey becoming president and five days before the election johnson started doing a bombing halt in vietnam. there's some evidence that nixon didn't want the south vietnamese to make any deal at all with linden johnson because vietnam was the albatros around

humphrey's neck. in 1972 he see nixon hammering mcgovern for being for abortion and amnesty. he ran a tough and dirty campaign in 1972. i tell you there have been tough and dirty campaigns throughout american history. nixon in 1972 did take things to a paranoid level unseen before where his hench men broke into the water gate. that is true. after nixon they started feeling a paranoia toward politics and nixon contributed to that. >> in 1972, five burglars arrested at the democratic national headquarters at tin washington. 11:26 a.m. rich and nixon and

haldeman discuss water gate on the taping system for the first time time. it goes onto say an earlier portion of this conversation includes the 18 1/2 minute gap that his secretary contributed to but that is still not fully explained. the way that nixon starts the conversation suggests that perhaps the erased portion included a discussion of wire tap. >> yes. you know that is the beginning of water gate. we included in this book -- now water gate, a scholar named stanley cutler did a book of abuse of power. he's at the universility of wisconsin. luke and i put in this 19 st72 t

explodes in 1973. our book really is about 1971 and 1972. you're getting the early water gate conversations. by 1973 it's dominating the white house. we're hoping to do a second volume dealing with foreign policy in 1973 but also water gate as a primary focus. there's still new material to come out on water gate that aren't in their book. the 18 missing minutes. we don't have it. nobody has it. we don't know where it is. if anybody has it, please call me because it would be a big breaking news story. >> a little bit. >> some people think rose mary woods could not have been the one to erase it that nixon did it himself. it's a mystery but nevertheless, it doesn't matter a whole lot because nixon did enough things on the record that we have a lot of people are making noise in ken hue's book.

he spent a lot of time with the tapes. nixon is talking about get into the institute. i don't care whether you blow up the safe. get the dock uments out of ther. there's enough to diet indict n certainly on the cover up if not the break in itself. you write that any attempts to recover the erases portion have been unsuccessful up to this point. >> doug brinkley mentioned john dean in his new book, the nixon defense. john dean this weekend on book tv sits down with the washington post bob woodward. they spent an hour discussing the nixon defense and an hour discussing water gate. you can see that on book tv on cspan 2 this weekend. dan, bridgewater new jersey, republican line. you're on with doug brinkley.

>> caller:. hi, i definitely will buy this book. i will read it carefully as i do all of his books. i am really afraid of where if you have a hole in your retina. your brain fills it in with what it thinks should be there. i'm afraid that the tapes are of such superficial readings in a history is now painting a picture of nixon devoid of that. having dealt with him and having known him, i think it's a big mistake so they that haldeman was his friend. the fact is that he had ideas and policies an he trusted no one within and/or outside of this camp. he may have been skizoid and there may have been a lot of things wrong with him. he did have a mult itide itude ideas that i would say went to the betterment of this country. unfortunately as you pointed out, he's facing this great

opposition but historians will not understand and why so long as they have the dynamite quotes and connections so in the end, the depth of nixon -- some of it would be somewhat madness so it would have to be very deep depths. these tapes did not represent that. they represent the sliding over the ice on top of a very deep wound. >> thank you dan. >> you make a number of very important points. henry kissinger has famously said don't trust the tapes. it's a side show because what you get in the tapes often -- nixon is the only one in the room ultimately in most of these conversations that knows what's going on. kissinger didn't know he's being taped. it's sort of one sided game.

i also think that when somebody does a crime, you focus on the crime. if somebody goes to jail for a crime, it doesn't mean in their whole life they didn't do a lot of good things. they may have raised a family well. there's much about nixon can like and admire. i mentioned earlier in the program conservation. nixon was a reluctant environmentalist. he created the environmental protection agency and working on oceans. he has to rank one of the top five environmental presidents. there it is. with all of that said, look if we can't as scholars care about the fly on the wall history of everything that's taking place in the oval office being able to

listen to the transcripts inside the sausage factory what can we trust. the tapes, i think, are more raw and real and more val automobile but yet you're right. they are what is going to destroy nixon in history because people will find quote that's are very damaging and they live on. it is an i got you culture. nixon provided the swords for everybody. it's almost suicidal that he did not burn these tapes. that points out to a kind of madness in the man. >> at one point he tells henry kissinger in the tapes, let the chi chinese think i'm a mad man. there's a lot of grand strategy in this book. a lot dealing with china and how he orchestrated that famous 1972

trip so there's a lot of high policy in this book. it's not just the i got you. i hope you get a chance to read it. you might be impressed with the way nixon dealt with diplomacy at various times. >> doug brainkley. any proof that post nixon anyone used tapings in the white house. >> you'd be a fool to use them. i don't think they help. i'm sure when you're dealing with a call to putin it might be taped because they want to dissect every word. the idea of capturing every kind of word. it's gone. it's a form of extinction now. i did ronald reagan's diary.

he kept diaries going. bill clinton made tapes with historian taylor branch where it was a historian coming in and talking to him. that's all very different than doing this voice activated pick up everything in the room. why did nixon do this? he didn't think it was a petty politician. he thought when he left office he would go back home and maybe do a five or six volume memoir. henry kissinger has made a career out of writing books like that. nixon would have used the tapes. he could quote what somebody said to him and it would have been accurate. his down fall was that he never thought anybody could take the

tapes away from him. imagine his surprise when the supreme court votes unanimously that you don't own the tapes. that's the moment nixon realizes his presidency has sunk. >> when did he stop taping. >> he started taping in august of 1973. there became a brief moment, people use the phrase, destroy them. what do we do? just like the 18 1/2 missing moments, even liberal icon nelson rockefeller, he was telling nixon, get rid of the tapes. nixon wouldn't do it. it was his golden egg. he was not a rich man. he thought this is what he would have as a record for his time in government. his ego was very large. the narcissism of nixon