emails, tweets, and facebook questions on c-span2. next on american history tv nixon white house alumni talk , about richard nixon's post-presidency. they discussed their roles in the nixon/frost interviews, the meetings in china the writing of , his memoir, and his return to public life. we also hear about his relationship with ronald reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign and has lasting impact on american politics. this is just over an hour and was hosted by next and -- by the richard nixon presidential library and museum in yorba linda, california. >> many of you will have it your place setting an envelope. you will find a record or two we were able to find about you. when you serve the president. the staff that we have, the

great staff inside the foundation had more fun. you can just imagine that they would cover something and never link to something and they would say wow. you would end up with the conversation around these documents. i can only share with you that it was a great discovery process for our people. i think we are reproducing for them to have at your table. it is a little bit different. we thought that would be fun. [applause] it's a great honor for me to introduce our first panel of the afternoon. we have two very significant up panels. one is start shortly and one that begins as near to 2:00. i am delighted to you are here for the dedication today. especially the nixon alumni reunion, i trust you would think

18100 yorba linda boulevard as your home away from home. we want you back. we are delighted to welcome the many c-span viewers all across america and around the world who are viewing this dedication. some of you were here for our opening ceremony in october. the film we introduced with representative of that and we give great credit to our boarding campaign efforts, and i think a credit to all of you. we asked many of you to contribute. trisha and ed cox joined us on that opening. the next generation of the nixon family was represented by two new board members that we have. melanie eisenhower and christopher next and cox. -- christopher nixon cox. it was a very special day for all of us. i think for president next and in the first lady for their legacy. the reviews for the new exhibit are in and they are excellent. immediate comment has focused on the new standards we set for

candor and objectivity in presidential libraries. increased number of visitors from visible classes to senior citizens clubs are getting us into zs victims up for being interesting, educational, entertaining, and relevant. i think we have arranged an very interesting panel for you this afternoon. the first panel. you know the protestants. -- participants. i'm sure you can tell as many stories about them as they will be telling about president nixon. the subject is the final come back, nixon in the post-presidency. they will be discussing his earliest stage in the years they spent and shared with the president and mrs. next and that mr -- mrs. nixon in san clemente. this begins as a very sad story with the president's brush with mortality that almost became a tragic story. before long, it becomes a true and truly inspiring nixon narrative of resolve,

resilience, and return. our moderator is hugh hewitt. a student of ray price as an undergraduate at harvard he , began working as a researcher. the former president chosen to be the first director of this library. congratulations on the launch. from the earliest landing stages 30 opening in 1990. from that auspicious beginning he has for stability career as an attorney, teacher, thinker, syndicated radio talk show host, a master podcaster, best-selling author in a pundit of national prominence. his latest book is a conservative playbook for lasting gop majority. it was published three weeks ago. is already number four on amazon's politics bestsellers. alchemy -- please join me in welcoming our good friend, our old friend hugh hewitt. [applause] hugh: thank you very much.

this is such a wonderful celebration of the 60's and 70's. i came dressed as the hathaway man today. i wanted to explain what that was about. can i please welcome my panelists forward joined the film. jack brennan, president nixon's eight, servant and friend. come on up, jack. frank gannon, leader of the wonderful memoir rn. come join me, gentlemen. please him have a seat. titledas a book in 1964 "i am in your chair because of -- i am in your chair because of the hathaway patch. ken, come over here. there is a book about woodrow wilson's last years.

it is a wonderful book and a final chapter and an amazing americans live. that book is not yet been written about richard nixon and his retirement. the three gentlemen to my left get easily write it and perhaps all of them will combine on it. it begins with a quickly want to show you of the post-presidency, a clip that will bring back memories to each of them. if we could roll that please. [indiscernible] abroad.e field and >> the question is what role will i play in the future in the political field at home and abroad? politically, my political life is over. as you know, under our constitution and can be elected to the office of president more than twice. [applause] i checked with him and he said

i'm too old to get into oxford. i can't run for president of the union. [laughter] when i hear what a spicy kind of election you have, even though i had some tough elections, i don't want to try that one. [laughter] politically in that sense, i plan to play no role in the party as a candidate, for a candidate, anything. while i have retired from politics, i have not retired from life. that means public life. the kind of role i will play would be in the public arena. i intend to speak on occasion, when the forum is a proper one. i will do some writing. i have another book i am working on. never agreed to write a book. it takes so much time. but i agree to do a second one. it's a second book on the future, having cover the pastor three years. what going to happen by the end of the century? the challenge to the west and not just consulting our fears but how we can build a better

world. and then, in addition to speaking and writing, i will from time to time when individuals can find their way to san clemente on a private basis, i will talk to them and give them free advice. it will be worth what it costs. hugh: that is president nixon in november of projecting how he 1978 would spend the next many decades of his life. jack, let's start with you about the trip. did he forecast correctly what he would do with the rest of his life? jack: very much so. very much so. i want to comment that he did this -- what he said i will give speeches and make talks, never did he accept a nickel for all the talks he made. that frugality extended to

mrs. nixon, when she was the only former first lady to ever give up secret service. i argued with her. they think you shopping, what he complaining about? no, it costs the taxpayers money and we don't want to do that. i think it did what he said he would do. hugh: how deliberate were each of the steps he took along the way? how deliberate was the plan he rolled out? jack: i had nothing to do with the memoirs. i have a hard time writing a letter to my kids. at the beginning, it was not a period of elation. all of us were a bit down on the very first day. he showed the way by coming in coat and tie at 7:30 a.m. we followed suit into that from that point on. my job i thought was to make sure they were never exposed to catcalls or people harassing him. that was in my mind, anyway, we

plant. we don't put him in bad circumstances. that was my job. frank and ken contribute significantly to that. hugh: frank, let's ask about the beginning and the oxford speech. did he have a plan he responded to in a q&a at oxford? frank: jack and ken went to oxford with him. as you can see, it was a very unfriendly audience. there were major demonstrations outside the room. he won them over with his typical candor. speaking without notes, speaking in the well of the union. addressed all the questions. showed a sense of humor, which i think surprised people. the -- i was sort of in the memoir loop, which was separate.

jack ran everything. ken was in the frost/nixon loop. i was not involved in a lot of that planning. the first year, he was understandably a man at the end of his emotional and physical psychological tether. having to deal with that and then he got very sick. as bill said, he had two brushes with mortality. the first year was really devoted to getting healthy, getting back into form, which then turned out to be fighting form. the interesting thing we were talking about downstairs, when we got off the plane, he owed in

ongoing due legal bills half a million dollars. this source of income had ceased. he knew that in order to pay the bills and keep his lawyers going because his legal problems that only just begun, he was going to have to raise money. the two obvious ways to do that work to write a book and do some television. it became the memoirs. i still have trouble calling it frost/nixon. i think that billing is wrong. at any rate, the next un-frost interviews -- nixon/frost interviews to i'm exaggerating and being grossly unfair to lawyers, but somebody has to do it. the simplistic version is once the back bill had been paid in in the layers were back giving advice the best advice was don't , write a book and don't do

anything on television. then we underwent the nationalization of his papers, whatever it's called. the presidential recordings and materials preservation act, which froze and kept all of the presidential papers in washington. so, a provision of that law is a -- which the president contested in the courts, if he chose to contest it while he was contesting it, he could avail himself of access to the papers. his lawyers said, rightly, you risk undercutting your case if you avail yourself of a provision of the law you are trying to get overturned. but it was an exquisite existential dilemma. how do you write a memoir

about your presidency without any of the papers? i think it took a courageous and toky decision on his part decide to access the papers. hugh: you went to oxford. it is four years into his retirement any projects out the next 15 years. that is a remarkable clip. he is dream casting. it's almost incredible he would say that what was the room like? were you surprised by his statement that night? ken: the event itself was extraordinary. we had spent 10 days preparing for the trip. we had some sense of what the room would be like and what the audience would be like. we had no idea that 10 feet away behind the oxford union was another building where there was

a mob of about 50 to 100 protesters that were yelling and screaming throughout the entire speech. you have to know that there is no microphones to broadcast in the oxford union. everything is done just your normal voice. for two hours, all during his talk, they were yelling and screaming with epitaphs and he was talking without notes throughout the whole thing without any pause or anything else in answering questions, tough questions. it was the most extraordinary thing to see him standing there at age 65 giving forth data and exposition on salt and detente and foreign policy. it was a classic case of the

president of preparation and i don't think he anticipated necessarily all the questions. we tried to anticipate the foreign policy and domestic questions and some the local questions. i don't think he thought about they were going to ask you about what his future would be like. i think he had been thinking about that all the time in writing the memoirs. that was very much part of it. if i could go back a little bit and add on to what frank said earlier, i came out for about 10 days after he resigned. in addition to legal bills, it was pure survival. the president was broke. he not only hit legal bills, they were trying to get back taxes from him, which they claimed he did not paid. they tried to get money from him for "improvements on the houses in key biscayne." he not only had no money, he had all of these bills.

one of my assignments was to find economic survival for he and mrs. nixon. it was a very difficult time. from that time until the time oxford was extorted pathway of -- extraordinary pathway of four years. hugh: i want to play a clip now to four years and three months prior to oxford. this is the president in the eastern re-created. 1974. >> [indiscernible] [laughter] [applause] president nixon: thank you.

you're here to say good night to -- goodbye to us. and we don't have a good word for it in english. we will see you again. [applause] we think that when someone dear to us dies, we think that when we lose an election, we think that when we suffer a defeat that all has ended. not true. it's only a beginning, always. the young must know it. the old must know it.

because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, the greatness comes in you really tested when you take some knocks, some disappointments. when sadness comes. because only if you've been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. and so, we leave with high hopes, in good spirit, with deep humility. and the very much gratefulness in our hearts. i can only say to each and every one of you, not only will we

always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you, but alwasy you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers. thank you very much. [applause] for the benefit of the audience, you're the military aid to the president. 1969 to 1974. he served as chief of staff for four years. valley he washe referring to on that day? jack: rather. sandy save my desert. , i will be back. the plane was very somber. the helicopter you've all heard first. this since then, the military

aid sat across from mrs. nixon. we lifted off the white house lawn and she looked down and everyone was in tears. she said it's so sad. it's so sad. that's about all that was said on the helicopter. we got on the plane and a lot of people were sad. but also a lot of people were thinking, this is a new era. how do we make it work? how do we make it happen question -- happened? there was activity going on. then he came out and talked to all of us on the plane. when we got to el toro, there was a marine base of course. there was a large number of people cheering. all good. they provided helicopters for us to get into saint clemente and we started life all over again. hugh: ken, what were you thinking? ken: how could this be happening to us?

this was the saddest day. after we had one that 49 state landslide victory and worked so hard to have an all come crashing down, i was part of the watergate defense team and was fighting until the end. i had the nickname based on that japanese soldier who had hidden in the jungles of the philippines, waiting 30 years thinking the war was still going to go his way. it all came to an abrupt end in wondering what was going to happen to all of us and wondering what he was going to do. it was just beyond sadness. within coming out to san clemente 10 days later, when he was president, you would come down that long driveway you would see the gleaming marine

helicopter on the helipad all , shiny. the day i drove down after his resignation, the helipad site was a tennis court and two coast guard folks playing tennis. it was the saddest thing i never -- i have ever seen. hugh: frank, what were you thinking that day? frank: those of us who were on the plane could not be in the east room. only the swells made it onto army one. i watched that speech in the president's cabin on air force one sitting next to diane sawyer, who was part of the group that went out. i remember they told us to the , as he came out and said to look at the window as we are coming in towards el toro.

five-mile lineup, the wind up on the freeway waiting, trying to get to el toro. that was the point at which you realize it happened. everybody was numb. that was the first time it was a concrete thing. out the window, on the ground. it was very moving. a group of several thousand people had assembled. it certainly wasn't advanced. it was spontaneous. the president -- you have stories. the president wasn't expecting it. he wasn't prepared to have to make a public speech. i remember, again, spontaneously people started standing around. there were bleachers. i think it were bleachers there anyway. not even bleachers.

there were some stands that people were standing and sitting in. they began singing "god bless america" a cappella. that was very moving. nor will be prepared when he passed in 1994 for the crowds that would spend all night long up and down your window boulevard to come into the library. >> more than 50,000 people. hugh: where were you? i want to go back to the drive home, how deep this was her people that went around. financial crisis, legal crisis, physical crisis. how close to the president to dying in the days after his return to send commenting? -- sent clemente? jack: i was in the room. outside of the president was lying. i heard, richard! and slapping

him to bring him back to consciousness. hugh: mrs. nixon had health crisis. jack: she had a stroke and the president called me at home, very early in the morning. he said jack, come down here. i was with eisenhower when he had his stroke. i know mrs. nixon had a stroke. and i called my old office in the white house. -- said call camp pendleton and tell them to send a cardiologist right away. they censure to i went down to the house and mrs. nixon is german irish and a bit stubborn. nothing wrong. nothing wrong with me. he was trying to talk to her into going to the hospital. finally they told me there is an ambulance here. a doctor from camp pendleton. she said no. if we go anywhere we're going to

long beach hospital. she said i don't need to. she had a stroke. her arm wasn't working. i whispered you are either going or i am carrying you. she got in the ambulance and president nixon got on the back of the ambulance. he rode with her to long beach hospital. hugh: get is from there, to the various crises to sitting down with mao in 1976. it was remarkable you go from that situation. how does that trip come about? what does president ford think about it? let's start with you, frank. how does this evolve? the first china trip after the resignation? frank: jack was the person in charge of that. the chinese invited him. and he it was the anniversary, in february. it wasn't convenient for the ford administration.

it was right before the new hampshire primary. some problemswere there. but it was -- not only was it an invitation, the chinese sent a plane for him and wanted him to come. i think he was torn between not wanting to do something that would not be helpful to president ford, but not wanting to do anything that would offend the chinese. he made the decision to go. that was the opportunity. gave him the opportunity, a second opportunity, to see chairman mao shortly before he died. on the next trip, he was able to see the briefly tenured and short remembered chairman wa. and he got to see and deal with

them in the white house deng xiaoping. providence with china, almost the nixon franchise with china was maintained by going for the second anniversary, that anniversary in 1976. the fourth anniversary. hugh: how did you advance it without the white staff around to do it? jack: nothing was easy without ron walker. [laughter] let me go back. the chinese -- i would occasionally go back to washington and see people to take the temperature. i would visit the chinese embassy. they said to me we would like to invite president nixon and mrs. nixon back to china on the anniversary. this is way before we knew there would be a fight between reagan and president ford in new

hampshire in february. we did not announce it. they said very proudly we will send not an airplane, a boeing 707. they were buying our products now. that was impressive. the president wanted -- he said yeti guarantee that i see mao. all of you who have advanced in communist countries, you know the decision what is 11 this is what you do. i was not dealing with chairman mao. i couldn't guarantee anything. i think there was overreaction on president ford's staff saying we were trying to disrupt something. we had no idea it would be a fight. frank: after the trip, barry goldwater was asked what he thought about. this is the goldwater for whom president nixon had campaigned so heavily in 1964 and defended against all of the attacks about

being a crazy right-winger. goldwater said the best thing nixon could do was stay in china. he made those awful comments. i think president nixon fought his way through the political fallout. this is the time when he was starting to look forward. think he was going to persevere and have his life move on. we sensed that in our discussions with him, even while we were writing the book. he talked to us about the book. we have got to get this book done. why are we not getting the book done? he would spent hours talking about politics, talking about the future, talking about what he should be doing. it was a mixture of life like that. they would have conversations. eight minutes on the chapter in about two hours on what was going on in the world. he still wanted to be engaged all the time.

he loved these bull sessions we would have for hours and hours in his office. then he said we have to get back to work, i have to finish this book. hugh: he used to say that if we were writing the book in new hampshire, we would have finished a year earlier. it was too nice. the other thing -- rose woods kept the file of the supporters. people who went above and beyond the basic level of support. she kept it up and brought it out. march accor was here. [applause] and is here. acker was here. they had kept up this list of supporters, which was about 150,000 people. the president said that for as many of these people who support

me, there are an equal and opposite number who despise me. this book will sell 300,000 copies. it sold 310,000 copies. his frustration was that spending four years on a book for three the -- for 300,000 people as opposed to doing television where he could reach millions with less preparation, although with his great preparation, he could reach millions in an instant. i think he was frustrated by that. once he got better, he was champing at the bit to get back in the arena. hugh: i arrived in sacramento in 1978 to work with david and was hired on the staff. i knew everything. i had just graduated from college. i thought you were crazy to take him to kentucky. tell us about the first speech

in a little town in kentucky. jack brennan what were you , thinking? jack: i was thinking go to a safe place where people are not going to be harassing and jeering. we got a lot of invitations. a lot of them crazy, but they were going to name the school for him in this little town in hayden, kentucky. they are the heart of the earth. so we decided to go. it was significant. it was a little bit more emotional. hugh: let's show a little bit of a clip of the kentucky speech. help warm was it? nixon: all the very distinguished guest on the platform behind me. all the distinct was guests in the audience in front of me and , all of those outside who were unable to get in, may i first say how deeply grateful i am for

your very warm reception. [applause] jack: for hours which was unanticipated. every local authority and beauty queen and band played. he sat there for four hours in an un-air conditioned gymnasium in kentucky in july. >> you will recognize the name dick tuck. he was a democrat, a dirty trick guy. the republican convention was in miami. he arranged for a number of pregnant black ladies to walk around in circles carrying a

sign saying nixon is the one. dick tuck was in kentucky. they had a parade in the sky runs up with a book saying sign it for me. president nixon always signed with best wishes. he insisted didn't say from richard nixon. it said love, richard nixon. it's kind of like the fake news we are getting today. hugh: to get back to the meeting with chairman mao, jack has a wonderful story about that. one that is a particular favorite of mine. jack: president nixon wanted to make sure he saw chairman mao in 1976. i could not guarantee that. i was rather anxious for this to happen.

so i would not be asked every three minutes when we were going to see chairman now. mao.-- chairman fortuitously, the first night the foreign minister came to my room, which was adjacent to the nixon's room. he said chairman mao would like to see president and mrs. nixon. i started to put on my jacket. i would into the room and told the president. he was ready to go. he would also like to see brennan. i said why me? ,this tells us something about the chinese. he said we respect loyalty very much. when president nixon came in 1972, he had a staff of 80 and now he has a staff of one. chairman mao wants to meet you. so i went with them. [applause]

of course right after the introductions, president nixon dismissed mrs. nixon and i. she and i got in the car and went to where we were staying. she took my hand and squeezed it and that meant a lot to me. hugh: when you went to oxford there was a moment became afterwards when he went with jonathan aiken to the british parliament and you met the conservative party leader. tell the audience about that and if that made the trip a success and began to reintroduce the president to the future world leaders as well. with i was in a meeting maggie thatcher, soon to be prime minister obviously. i think she made a great impression on him and he made a great impression on her. there was one other twist about the speech at the oxford union. before we went there, he

assigned me to provide the names of all the well-known american officeholders in the u.s. who had been rhodes scholars. i provided the list. while he was there, i want to tell you that many of the same folks who have been in this room who have been rhodes scholars have ended up in very significant positions in the united states. one is a supreme court justice. one is the speaker of the house of representatives. one is a supreme court justice. one is the speaker of the house of representatives, one with a -- one was a famous athlete. i will predict that before the end of the century, a rhodes scholar will become president of the united states. bill clinton became president of united states. we never were sure about his predictions. he was always predicting. that is one that came true. [laughter]

hugh: let's go to the frost/nixon interviews. i loved the movie. i never asked you what you thought about the movie. what did you think of the movie? frank: i thought it was not accurate. i thought it was inaccurate as history. and i thought it was terrific drama. there were some accuracies and , to his credit, ron howard, the , he paid a lot of attention to trying to get things right and the atmospherics he got right. a number of the main events, the phone call, the shoes didn't happen. they captured the spirit. if those things had happened, they would've happen that way. that happened -- would've happened that way. i thought it was a good movie. it was not passable history. jack: i didn't like that i was played by a ham.

kevin bacon, anybody? [laughter] me, all i can say about the veracity is that it was based on an actual event. the rest of it -- the theme was fine, but the events were not true at all. frank: i was very disappointed there was a lot of gratuitous scenes in the movie that were negative about the president. ron howard came to see me. they had sent me the screenplay and they wanted to know what i thought about it. i pointed out this one terrible scene. you know, that never happened. peter morgan looked at me and said it is entertainment. hugh: let's talk about the real event. how important was it to get this

right? how much did the president prepare? it is different from the memoirs. how important is it? ken: this was extremely important to him and to all of us. we started preparing seven weeks in advance. i was taken off the book. as i recall, it was at the end of january. the taping started march 23. that was 1978. he gave me the assignment to be preparing briefing books as he had done for press conference. -- for all his press conferences. wehad all these issues and knew we had 24 hours to prepare in terms of the contract. we had a lot to cover, domestic

issues, vietnam, watergate come all the foreign-policy issues. we had to anticipate. i began working with one of their policy guys. bob, who i mentioned i became very good friends with. we started covering some of the issues they wanted to talk about. i started working on that. diane sawyer came off the book to work on the watergate portion of the preparation. ray price worked on several elements of the briefing books. we did a lot of it in a q&a format. a lot of it was also narrative, just a lot of facts. he wanted all of this prepared. he knew it would be a grueling process. it was a very strenuous day and night, six days a week. we went through a lot of effort to get him ready.

the reputation that he had in law school, he did it in preparation for this. tv was one thing. it's not like the book, you can rewrite the book. you can edit the book. he had no power to edit this television. hugh: he wanted for more hours -- four more hours at the end. jack: there are so many stories about this movie, how we had to get over the lack of trust to begin with. in any event, let's get to what actually happened. the contract was for 24 hours. at the end of 24 hours, david frost sent his producer down to see me. he said we've got nothing. this is a disaster. president nixon has taken over everything. we are finished.

and? we need more time. we need him to open up more. i said we made a deal with you. did i keep my part of the deal? i sent him on his way. i first confided in ken. he said screw them. we made a deal. we kept it. then, frank and diane came to me. diane did the talking. she knew i would pay more attention to her. [laughter] said, if this thing airs the way it is, the world is going to say there goes richard nixon stonewalling again. it's a disaster. this is bad. i went to president nixon and one of the few times he was gruff with me. i repeated diane's words. he says, i know that.

but, what are you proposing? take as much time as you want and we will set the date. decide what you want to say and we will give them more time. that's how they got the extra four hours. without any compensation, nothing. i will bring this to a conclusion. in any event, he really prepared. he knew what he wanted to convey to the american people, saying i'm sorry without saying i'm guilty. he planned it all out. i was doing all of the fighting about when it would happen. i said may, he said no. we got to the point and agreed upon it. i would always ride with him up to the place where we were doing the screening. this morning, i looked at him and he was so uptight. i called ray price. i said you ride with him and tell him how good he is.

e with him in the car. we got up to the screening. david frost started off. president nixon was so ready. he is going to him, president nixon, just ready to go. i was so frustrated. all of us were so frustrated. i made a sign and it said "let him talk." i held it above the camera, which was facing david frost. later in his book, he said he thought it said "let us talk." he saw the sign and he took a break. ken took the president to his room. i went to frost and talk to him like a marine. i let him know that all he has

to do is send out a sentence, just welcome him. don't be confrontational. just be nice, be pleasant. ask him and he is ready. frost went back and did that. hugh: before i come to that conversation, he wanted to say he was sorry without saying he was guilty. would you expand on that? did you and diane sawyer -- what did that mean? you are his lead guy. what does that mean? frank: i think we have to ask diane and i would listen to her more than i would listen to me. we were not part of that. i'm not just being diplomatic. we weren't part of that loop. diane was. i was not. i stayed working on the memoirs.

, and ray came out at a later point to help. i think our feeling was this was going to be the first time the president had spoken to the nation since the resignation. a lot of the basic questions, did he lie, did he tell the truth, how did he feel about what had happened, not just what had happened to him, but what had happened to the nation as a result of this? unless he addressed this, the nation would be waiting. it was the other shoe that the nation was waiting to drop. there was also the element that in the previous frost interviews, frost adopted this beginning that watergate was going to come up in the last

taping session. frost began by saying why did you bring the tape's. ,est -- frost began by saying ?" y did you burn the tapes immediately, there was an aggressive relationship. frost became a prosecutor. the next questions were about cambodia and he adopted the book about cambodia. frost was extremely aggressive. the president, as was his legal training, responded in kind. that was their frustration. they felt nixon had run the clock out. he had dominated the conversation because he had been there. he had more information. from frost's point of view, this was not good. it didn't make frost look good. they were concerned it wasn't going to make great television. again, they knew and we knew the people waiting next and to

dust for dust waiting for nixon -- the people were waiting for ixon to address what had happened. hugh: in that 10 minutes, what are you talking to him about? ken: the way we got to 24 hours is we had agreed to 12 two-hour sessions. we were recording on our end and timing all of the sessions. frost would go on and on. each session would go to hours got does go hours -- would two hours and 18 minutes or two hours and 14 minutes. we got 24 hours by the 11th session. when he was talking to frost, i was talking to the president. basically, we were addressing two key points. frost wanted the president to say that he lied and that he was guilty of a crime. those with the two essential elements they were really looking for.

jack made it so frost backed away enough to let the president tell the story, for lack of a culpa,term, his mea without him going to the edge without actually having to say that he lied or committed a crime. we had a midway point that satisfied both parties. at the end of the day, that worked very well. hugh: i want to talk about the memoir before we talk about him in 1980. his memoir is widely recognized by historians. it is at least among the top two or three along with grants. -- along with grant's. you are the lead on this. what is his objective with the memoir?

how did you get it done? ken: the initial impetus was to pay the bills. it provided that function. he originally wanted to do two volumes and the publisher said no, it had to be one volume. watergate had to be mentioned in the first volume. so, that was the decision to write a one volume book, which worked against it in many ways. it's a 1038 page book. there's a story about when dick cheney got an advance copy of it, he was in the hospital and the doctors told him the book was too heavy for him to lift up and read. i think that worked against a volume of that length. he wanted to get it down. watergate was not his favorite topic.

those were the two reasons. it was to fill the time until he got better physically. it and the television interviews were sort of boxes that had to be ticked. he decided to tell the story of his entire life, which i think was important. the mored it -- remarkable that we only got those presidential documents in july of 76. -- july of 1976. for the first year and more, we were writing very interesting stuff about the pre-presidential life. and the answer is we were immensely and particularly talented and devoted and we ran a 24 hour operation. i hired a very distinguished

naval historian and i asked him if he had a couple of graduate students. he produced mark jacobson and huberty and they had access to the library and they provided basic research packages. the president would assimilate these. and we had pre-presidential documents because they were already out there. we would give him the research packages, the documents and he would go to ground for two or three weeks and dictate 100,000 words or more on a particular topic. his dictation would become the basis. we would fact check the dictation. and then begin to home that down, work with editors and the publisher. it worked very smoothly. hugh: did it satisfy anything in the president's need to explain himself?

do you think it was his full story? ken: i think to an extent it was. we cut two thirds of the book. it was edited out. the book would have been 3300 pages if we had left everything. we kept cutting out and cutting out as we went through. i think it told the story. he just wanted to get it behind him. he wanted to get it out there. the main thing was to get it finished. that was the ultimate goal, to get it done and behind him. so he could get on the next step. i think the story was told. the narrative was out there. it was done very well and the president is a good writer and an excellent editor. i do have one more reminiscence about the frost interviews. after the interviews, we came back and he wanted to wind down and do a postmortem.

and ray price was in the room and diane. i don't know if jack or frank were there. we were just talking visiting and he was winding down. just chatting and chatting. and so, he was talking to ray about doing speeches at the white house. he is talking about billy graham. remember how he always used to get god in our speeches? we had a hell of a time getting god in our speeches. remember that? we all looked at each other. did he just say that? [laughter] >> one of the things i tell people is that after frank and diane left and you are helping president reagan lunch his -- launch his campaign, president

and some of the commonly man. he would always invite the pows to come. you are managing a back story that i don't think many people quite get in that gap. tell people about that. >> we all know that he loves sports. one of the ways to get him out without harassment, somehow i was appointed to the advisory board of the california angels. the baseball team. i advised and they ignored. the owner of the team was gene autry. one night, i approached him and said, would you invite president nixon to a game? i think i had had it few beers. of beers. a couple it was like asking the prom queen for a date. he said absolutely, i would do anything for the great man. i finally convinced him to go to the game.

we went to the private elevator. the elevator operator wanted to hug president nixon. mr. autry had cataracts and couldn't see. he had a television on the third tier. as a guest of the owner, president nixon had to sit next to him. i sat in the first row. the first time we went, nolan ryan was pitching. a foul ball came up and i did one of these. i caught it one-handed and the crowd cheered. jack caught a foul ball. the political instinct came out and president nixon got up and walked down to the front row and signed the ball. you could hear them murmuring in the audience. they all cheered again. he got feeling good. we would go to ball games quite often. almost any sports celebrity i

could bring in, he would love it . athlete, himself. we spent a lot of time doing that. they would come in and tell him how wonderful he was and he would know this statistic and all of that. >> after the move to new york , you made a good move by sitting in the front row. i sat behind them and everyone comes to the box to pay their respects and steinbrenner and the president stand up the whole game. we don't see a dang thing. what about the move to new york and the planning of it? that is the key move. how did it come about? >> he told me he was going back to new york to be near the kids. one was in pennsylvania and one was in new york city. the grandkids were starting to come. he was going to have grandchildren and he said mrs. nixon wanted to go back to new york. he really wanted to get back in

the action, also. i went back to new york to make the arrangements. i met with the deputy director , the guy in charge of office space. it took ben to the federal office building. he showed me this great office overlooking the city. penthouse, beautiful. i said, that's what we want. i went back and told president nixon. no, jack. can't you see what criticism we would get if we took the penthouse? so, we took the federal office building. later, the same character said nixon wanted to be in the penthouse and we forced him. i have a whole chapter in my notes saying media malpractice. here was so much going on -- >> it was a miserable office. the presidential campaign was underway.

what is the president's relationship with soon-to-be president reagan? what's the back channel like? >> well, i started traveling with then -governor reagan. the third week of september 1980. by that time, president nixon had already sent one memo to governor reagan about the debates. and then, about the third week of october, the chief of staff called me and said there was another memo that he had for governor reagan. so, he wanted to get a meeting. at this time, it was very

sensitive. because of the sensitivity in the press about president nixon, appearances or connections with any candidate -- they didn't want anybody to know that he was sending any messages. nick called me up and he set up a secret meeting. he gave it a secret codename. i think it was chapman's friend. we had a private meeting in kansas city in the way somewhere. he sent me this long memorandum , a strategy memorandum for governor reagan. i think the contents of it -- i read it several times -- the strategy wasn't exquisite or terrific. the main thing was that it gave governor reagan a lot of confidence. it made him feel good.

it talked about how much better a candidate he was than jimmy carter and his appearance would be much more important. i think reagan took a lot of -- it gave him real self-confidence and strength during the rest of the campaign. there was one element of that memo that did bother me. i was writing speeches for governor reagan at this time. i thought i was doing a pretty darn good job. in that memo, he says, in this period, use your best chair lines, even if you are tired of them. the time has passed for using important but dull lines preferred by speechwriters. [laughter] >> there's a great book to be written about that. six years into his retirement and he becomes the dominant counselor of the era.

frank, i'll start with you. what was his contribution after that decade and a half to the world? >> i want to take one minute. an unsung hero of the comeback in san clemente was ron ziegler. he came out and stayed with us and gave all his time and all his papers to us for the preparation of the memoirs. notis gone, but certainly forgotten. [applause] and cindy and his granddaughter are keeping up the usc tradition here. [applause] >> i wasn't really involved in that post after he moved back to new york. we had dinner in the house

surrounded by packing crates with jimmy roosevelt and mary roosevelt about the week before he left. i only saw him occasionally , other than doing the interviews in 1983. i think he said in the east room speech, is only beginning -- it is only a beginning always. this whole postpresidential period is an exemplar of the nixon resilience and spirit and discipline and dedication and patriotism that he felt he had a mission, and mrs. nixon felt that, too. they had something to contribute. it's meaningful that six weeks before he died, he was in russia. that very moving picture with his photograph of him standing on the charles bridge in prague looking into the distance and a month before he died he was in the white house making this report to president clinton.

the morning he died, the galleys of his most recent book which was then published posthumously had been put on his book in his office, waiting for him to come in. it was really part and parcel of his life which was one of dedication, devotion, resilience and patriotism. >> jack, i would add loyalty. he went to the shah's funeral with sadat. he was always loyal to the people who stuck with him from the beginning to the end. >> i found my successor. i handed him the sword and i didn't interfere again except on those rare occasions where i would be invited to something. so, i was always talking to a staff. always very pleased it was

always moving forward, always accomplishing something, always doing the next right thing. , thosehe 1984 campaign of you who might recall the first debate that president reagan had with walter mondale . it was sort of a disaster. he didn't do very well. she looked old and disoriented. stu spencer, who was the chief strategist of the campaign, told me to call president next and up -- president nixon up and said, get a message from him to president reagan. so, i called president nixon and he sent me a personal note that i transmitted to president reagan. it was that personal message from president nexen to president reagan that gave him uplift and strength and spirit and self-confidence. once again -- president reagan had great respect for president nixon. when we opened the library in

1990, the day before i took president next and in to see -- president nixon in to see president reagan, it was the most congenial meeting i had ever seen. two people who had extraordinary respect for one another. >> the library opened in 1990. ixon's chief of staff, john taylor who was also my successor at the library after i took over from john whitaker. the month before president nixon looks up at john taylor and i and realized they were going to have four presidents, first president, first ladies and tens of thousands of dignitaries and taylor and i hadn't really put it together very well. he said, call up ron walker. ron walker called all of those guys who stood of earlier and best stood up -- who stood up earlier and they blew into town and at the end of it we called it a goat rodeo. we presented ron walker with a bull whip, the library opened on time with a magnificent day, and

four years later, when the funeral happened, ron stepped up. i just want to end by saying ron walker is so central to what happened. why don't we give ron walker a nd ann walker a salute? [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2017] weekend, on american history tv -- today at 6:45, james haley talks about the life of the last queen of the kingdom of a white. -- thengdom of hawaii last queen of the kingdom in hawaii. >> she went back to the palace

and announced her new constitution and that is the beginning of the overthrow. willian on the effectiveness and legacy of 20th-century presidents. the american presidency was in the late 19th powerful anhow office it was when theodore power in surrenders order to shoot lions in africa. >> the 1961 encyclopaedia britannica film "the ordeal of woodrow wilson." had agreedugh they to mr. wilson's 14 points, they were not going to let idealism stand in their way. >>