may god's grace be with you in all the day's ahead. . president nixon resigned 40 years ago on august 9, 1974. the "washington post" recently hosted a discussion about watergate, the secret white house tapes and the 37th president's fall from power. their conversation was about two hours. welcome, everybody, my name is marty baron, i'm the executive editor of the "washington post" and it is a real pleasure to welcome you

here tonight. you know, you can consider yourselves all very special because when the invitation went out for this event, it was sold out within a day and ever since, folks here at the "post" have been telling people that there's no more room and you can see that from the attendance here and the overfull crowd in the next room as well. there's not a single seat left for anybody, and there are many, many people who would have liked to come. and it's no wonder that this is a sellout crowd as well and this this is a must have ticket because you have an extraordinary panel here today. individuals who loom very large in history and in journalism and revelations about the presidency. this defining moment american history was also a defining moment for american journalism and a defining moment, certainly, for the "washington post," and a defining moment in its own way for people like me. not that i want to make anyone

feel old, but i was in college when nixon resigned. [ laughter ] and the "post" was breaking its watergate stories and it was that journalism that really helped inspire me to get into the field as it did with many others. i'm fortunate to be able to introduce your wonderful moderator, ruth marcus. ruth joined the "post" in 1984 and is now one of our most distinguished columnist ins. she is known for doing the hard reporting before offering her opinions, but she has strong opinions, too, and over the course of her career, she has covered every institution, it seems, in washington, from the supreme court to the white house to the congress to the justice department. and she's also deeply experienced on the campaign trail, has cover misdemeanor campaigns of every type and few know washington as well as ruth. so you couldn't hope for a better journalist to moderate this panel. well, you certainly couldn't ask

for a nicer person. so i'm going to get out of the way and i'm going to turn it over to ruth who will introduce the panel and thank you again to everyone for coming. [ applause ] >> thank you so much. thank you, marty. marty talked about making people feel old and i don't actually have a lot of opportunity to do that these days so i would like to trump marty by saying that i was going into my senior year of high school. >> thank you. >> sorry, guys. except for ken, who we'll get to later who i'm a little bit bitter about. on the night that nixon resigned, i have to say not in my wildest dreams could i ever have imagined growing up to be able to be here moderating this panel tonight with this incredibly distinguished group of folks. so this is not just a privilege

for me, it's just an absolute hoot. it's particularly a hoot since i think maybe somewhere in this audience are my two daughters who are the age that i was when president nixon resigned and i didn't have to twist their arms to get them to come tonight. let me just say, it wasn't to see their mother. [ laughter ] i'm going to start from that end and actually probably do bob and carl together because they, in fact, are together in the public's mind as woodstein. [ laughter ] this is the ultimate needs no introduction introduction in american journalism. bob and i -- he probably doesn't remember this -- we first met in 1981 when he told me i was very foolish to be heading off to law school and should just come to work for the "washington post." he was probably right then, but it all worked out just fine in

the end. bob's worked for the "post" since '71. he teamed up with carl since everybody in the universe knows to start reporting the watergate story which has been called, with no exaggeration, the single greatest reporting effort of all time. if there's one word to apply to bob it is "indefatigable." most of us having reported the watergate story would have sat back and rested on our laurels. woodward, apparently, does not have laurels to rest on because in addition to the two incredible pieces of work that he and carl produced "all the president's men" and "the final days" please buy them out front, he's written 14 other books that pierce everything, every institution in washington from the supreme court -- which i personally know how hard it is to pierce -- to hollywood to the federal reserve to, of course, multiple presidencies. and if you just want to get a

little bit depressed -- if you're me, at least -- he's written more number one national non-fiction best-sellers than any contemporary author. so there you go. [ applause ] i'm going to leap over ken for a moment because they really -- they are literally separated here but i think that's just to make them behave. [ laughter ] to introduce carl and i think only woodward can make carl bernstein look like a slacker because if you look, he has -- while woodward went after the supreme court, carl decided to tackle such easy subjects as the pope and hillary clinton. [ laughter ] two venerated but inpenetrable institutions. in addition, carl, this is a story you don't know, in addition to writing a book about his parents' experiences in the mccarthy era, many years ago one of my colleagues came back from a trip to barfingles and she'd

given her credit card to -- yes, garfinkles. some of us remember it was a department store. this colleague gave her credit card to a woman behind the counter who said "oh, you work for the "washington post." perhaps you know my son carl bernstein." [ laughter ] proving that behind every successful journal cyst a proud mom. >> and she regularly waited on john early. >> is that right? >> carl has written for "vanity fair," "time," "usa today" "rolling stone" and in addition to being an abc correspondent and welcome to him. i'm now -- it's so exciting to feel taller than somebody, thank you for doing this, elizabeth. elizabeth drew, whatever her actual physical height ñrhere, a washington institution.

the washington journals she wrote were really a citizens guide to watergate and washington as the nixon presidency was unraveling. and i have to tell you, though i read them at the time and i reread them some years later, i've been rereading them now and they really fit the goal that she had, which was to explain to people what was going on in a way that would be understandable and comprehensible and illustrative to them of what have that time was about 40 years from now. and she captured the anxiety and really the insanity of that era. and the thing that's really remarkable about elizabeth is she just never stops reporting. her 14 books about washington rival's bob. when i first started writing v

we all owe her a debt of gratitude for her work. [ applause ] finally, ken hughes is a recovering journalist. [ laughter ] and a researcher at the university of virginia's miller center for presidential recordings and, really, a big shoutout to the miller center for all the great work that they do. i'm a little bitter about ken because he says that nixon entered the white house the same year he entered kindergarten. [ laughter ] which, if you do the math -- which kent kindly did for me -- means that when nixon resigned he was only ten years old. so he says in his bio he had a lot of questions about the scandal, the biggest being "how could this happen in america?" ken has added azdççó really impt chapter and piece of history to that understanding. he's got a fascinating new book

out called -- also on sale out front called "chasing shadows -- the nixon tapes, the shin nault affair and the origins of watergate." and he's going to tell us more about the origins of watergate later. but in the age of really easily accessible video, we can't talk about nixon 40 years later without taking the opportunity to go back in time and actually see the events of that evening. so if we could do that, that would be great. we're going to give sound ten seconds to work and then we'll -- oh, there they are. >> wireless internet. >> okay, you know what? >> he never resigned. [ laughter ] >> if anybody can read lips they

can tell us what happened. >> it's all a trick. >> so without that dramatic moment, some of us remember it, some of us have seen it on tv when the wireless feed did work. [ laughter ] i just want to take a very brief moment, very briefly, for those who were immersed in the story at the time, elizabeth, carl, bob, just give us very briefly what that particular night of his resignation felt like to you. elizabeth? >> this is the night that he announced he was going to resign? >> the night he announced he was going to resign. >> it was the next day that was truly bizarre. when he had a good-bye farewell to his staff. and it was pretty mawkish and kind of embarrassing and he was reading from teddy roosevelt's memoirs. he associated with teddy roosevelt, the man in the arena and he never gave up and this

sort of thing. and he -- teddy roosevelt was this sickly boy who became this big strong figure and nixon had been a sickly boy and -- i leave the rest to you. [ laughter ] he was talking -- he read from teddy roosevelt about "when my dear wife died." i mean what was that about? it was very weird. now, i've learned in working on this version of the book that at the same time that was going on, he had a military aide in there stealing papers that he'd supposedly signed over to the archives but he wanted to write his memoir s memoirs like tr so was loading these documents into trucks and sending them out the san clemente. finally a ford person caught them and said "you can't keep doing that." so it was a very strange event. and then they went out to the helicopter and who can forget that? the iconic scene of our era.

>> carl, the night of the resignation? >> bob and i were in the newsroom. catherine graham, the publisher of the "post" had come down from her office. ben bradley, the editor of the paper. there were surprisingly few people in the newsroom because we knew what was coming. and catherine actually said to the group of us "no gloating." and -- [ laughter ] >> how'd that work out? [ laughter ] >> and there was no need, because my feeling was one of absolute total awe that it had come to this, that finally the country was going to be spared him in office. and also recognition of the fact that those in the room had had some real role in what was happening. but awe. total awe. and the fact that the system had worked.

>> bob? >> i was sitting on the floor of howard simon's office. he was the managing editor, watching the speech, and this was before the bezos era, it was grahame a. [ laughter ] so they handed out sandwiches that night. [ laughter ] and i remember the very bad bologna sandwich that i was sitting there eating and not only did catherine graham issue the "no gloating" rule but ben bradley did and he was kind of going around the newsroom slowly not showing any emotion and ben and i went to the elevator because we were going to go down and get something to eat and the elevator opens and there's sargent shriver who has somehow broken into the "post" security system. [ laughter ] and shriver being -- was head of

the peace corps in the kennedy era, married to one of the kennedys. very much a kennedy person. he sees ben and he goes "yay!" [ laughter ] >> blew the cover. >> and ben is just kind of, you know, trying to pretend and shriver just wouldn't stop and he just said "oh, i had to be here this night with you." [ laughter ] and i think if it kept -- the moment was one of, you know, what's happening here? what does it mean? and that was 40 years ago and to a certain extent carl and i have spent those 40 years, elizabeth, too, you know, what was watergate? what does it mean? what is it's ultimate impact?

and what's so fascinating is there are always more and more tapes that come out. in fact, i think -- aren't there 800 hours of tapes that the nixon library is going to release in a month or so? is that right? >> there's about 800 that they have no plans to release. but we'll be trying. >> well, somebody told me they're going to be available so we'll be back with the headphones. >> if they are, i'll be there. >> the headphones never go away. >> there are always more tapes and they never fail to astonish and revolt in their -- elizabeth, did you want to say something about that? >> but they don't fundamentally change the story. watergate is so complicated. it was about some big things which i hope we'll be asked, but being very caught in the minute knew shy and realize that nixon said oh, my god, did he say that? did he talk towuz billy graham about the jews controlling the networks? yeah, he did. it's not astonishing really of anything that comesrbb out but

basic outline of what it was about and what mattered hasn't changed. i've seen nothing that says, oh, i see, it was all different than what i thought. so we have to be careful. >> that is the perfect segue to the way i'd like to structure this discussion. i believe it is an unwritten rule of moderating watergate panels that it is incumbent upon the moderator to channel the very well-known questions from howard baker, what did he know and when did he know it? we see that every time. i'm not going to raise that question. but i'm going to rewrite that question as a way of structuring our discussion so i want to do in the two parts. what do we now know about watergate and nixon? and why does it matter that we know it? and in that regard, i think i'll start with bob and carl. you guys can bicker about who goes first. you wrote a few years ago in an

afterward to the book "the watergate that we wrote about in the "washington post" [ 1872-1974 ] but i think that's wrong. it was 1972 to 1974. it's not watergate as we know it today. it was only a glimpse into something far worse. by the time he was forced to resign, nixon had turned his white house to a remarkable extent into a criminal enterprise. so talk about that a little bit and address the question, if you would, what do we now know that you most wished you had known back in the day and could have told people then? >> well, i mean, real quickly, what's interesting is watergate started before the watergate burglary. and that's very important to understand. and when we did this piece and looked back at watergate, you -- watergate burglary was in june of 1972. in 1970, nixon authorized what

was called the houston plan which he had requested which -- top-secret plan to expand wiretapping, openings and clearly illegal. in fact, in one of the tapes that is coming out in john dean's new book in 1973, nixon is talking to his new chief of staff al haig and he says on the tape, he said, i authorize the houston plan. it was to use any means available including illegal means. and then nixon with kind of a sense of, oh, my god, what did i get into, says, no president of the united states can admit that. and so watergate started much before watergate because it was a mind-set of doing anything to

advance nixon's policies, his political stature and there was no barrier, including the law. >> the notion that the nixon white house, and you hear it on the tapes. and i use the term advisedly, was a criminal madhouse. and the more that we learned, the more it becomes apparent and it goes to nixon. it always goes to nixon. never an those tapes do we hear nixon say -- and bob calls it the dog that never barks. never do we hear nixon say, what would be right for the country about almost anything? not just what's happening, but

what is happening is a whole presidency in which the focus is retribution on enemies real and imagined going back to the early 1950s. and that there is an assumption made that various institutions from the press to the democratic party to the anti-war movement are undermining the nixon presidency and the prospects of re-election. and everything that we hear on the tapes is about somehow finding a way, usually illegal, through criminal means to thwart those other democratic processes and institutions. you know, we thought early on and we wrote by october 10th, 1972, that watergate, the break-in was just part of a massive campaign of political espionage and sabotage to undermine the very system of free elections in this country.