that isn't even getting to the issue of sexual assault. that's the issue of sexual harassment. and i think we've got to do something dramatic to shift the culture. and with that, mr. chairman, i yield back. >> thank you. >> we're going to leave the last few minutes of this recorded program to take you live to a conversation with a group of authors and journalists who covered the watergate scandal. this event is being held at the watergate hotel in washington, d.c. >> history repeating itself may or may not happen depending which side. with that being said, i want to give you out tidbits about the history, the gossip and even the lore of the watergate complex. it's a complex of five buildings. there's an office where that happens to be famous burglars that broke in, as well as retail, as well as office buildings, and as well as a luxury hotel.

in this complex we have notable residents such as ruth vader ginsbering, bob and elizabeth dole, plusego domingo because of its vicinity to the kennedy center, and it opened in 1967. in 1967 a famous architect decided to mix-up washington, d.c. as this stately federal architecture and do something called avante-garde. and it started by making no right angles and hugging the curvature of the potomac, and it was very jetssons-like. and that started it. and with great media midcentury history is becoming cool again. so we had this fundamental challenge. do we embrace this as a theme park and embrace this scandal?

do we relive its original heyday? it was 1967, five years young when this scandal happened. but what people don't realize is ronald reagan had lavish birthday parties here. like the invention of the first michelin chef -- so people are nodding. so there's a lot of nostalgia here. there's so many generations i see. and what we noticed once we opened is people started saying last time i was at the watergate, dot dot dot. so it had nothing to do with a scandal but like this fixture in history. so, you know, we had -- just two months ago we had this guy morgan freeman. i don't know if you heard of this guy. but he said last time i was at the watergate, and i'm like oh, here it comes -- i walked down this hallway and in this suite,

and i sat down and disney was making this movie. and i just asked you if you could do me in this movie. and that say one of the fond memories he had. so there's new history, old history. but we're here to talk about a scandal. we've embraced history in so many ways. probably our most famous part is we took the original suite 214, lee howard hunt and g. gordon woody wer setting up these tape recorders and hired five burglars, we called plumbers to break in. we had tours of this. so after this kingberg will be open, and there's a small buffet if you want al-carte dinner.

and we'll be bringing people through then. we have some little neat antidotal things we've embraced in the past, that pencils say i stole this during watergate, the bathrooms say cover up, and our room keys say no need to break in. so that's sort of how we play an homage, but we really wanted to embrace the midcentury of what the watergate was a movement for. and only people in washington, d.c. understand it had many other lives other than this famous one and that's why we were here before. but it's not about me. i know your really anxious of this amazing panel. so without further ado i'd like to introduce the editor-in-chief of slate magazine, julia.

>> thank you so much for having us here tonight. hi, everyone. i'm julia turner. i'm the editor-in-chief of slate. this is our first ever live show. i'm going to be very brief and let leon and his esteemed guests out here very soon. i have a few brief words to say about this amazing possible doubt podcast and how it came to be. he covered the department of justice for slate. he was writing four or five pieces a week. you should go back and read his piece on rod rosen stein. he predicted everything. at slate we had a great idea that it would be great to do a mini series podcast about watergate. and we looked around our room

and we saw leon who has this amazing knack for spinning yarns and has a political mind, would be the perfect person to do this podcast. we were right. but we would not have been able to do this without the support of slate plus members. leon stopped writing for slate. spent basically spent five months researching it, learning h how to be a podcaster. and the support that slate cast members give us is what allows us to say let's do it. many of you in this room are already slate cast members. why don't you cheer and clap for gnat accomplishment? some of you in this room are not

slate plus members. ask i would commend you to find the slate plus table which is somewhere in this room, over there in the back, once our program adjourns and sign-up. and if you do tonight you will be eligible for a bag of slate swag and a special book from leon himself, two books from our panel tonight. and "washington journal" by l elizabeth drew. have a wonderful show. [ applause ]

[ laughter ] [ applause ] >> hey, everybody. [ applause ] >> hi, everybody. thanks for being here. can everybody hear me? is my mic awake?

great. so we're here about after a week after season one of the show ended, and i think none of us at slate certainly assumed but really even could have guessed we'd be talking about a season one and we'd be planning a season two. so thank you all of you for being here but also listening to the show. and thank you to the slate plus members who are here. it's really a dream to be here in the watergate hotel with all of you. so we have got a great show tonight. it's our first live show. maybe there'll be more. and we have this really fantastic line up of guests that i want to introduce without clearing my throat anymore. elizabeth drew on my left. [ applause ]

liz bgt covered the watergate scandal for the new yorker as it was unfolding. it was covered in the book "the washington journal" which julia held up a second ago. [ applause ] in the months following watergate he interviewed a number of key figures in the watergate scandal. here weave susan glasser. [ applause ] susan is a key international affairs columnist for politico. previously she was the editor of politico and politico magazine.

and all the way on the right he have evan thomas. evan has been a reporter and editor at news week and "times" for many years. did i leave anything out? >> susan's podcast. >> he didn't mention that i didn't cover watergate. >> well, it's true. we want a mix of people, people who covered watergate, people like me who weren't alive during watergate. you were just barely alive, right? >> very small. >> i want to know from elizabeth and dick how, if anything, does it feel to be in the watergate after all these years? did you ever do any reporting in here? >> well, for a while i lived in

watergate, in an apartment building. and without going into it i uncovered a difficulty and a cover up. >> what do you mean? >> well, i can't go into it but -- [ laughter ] -- it's for my next book. it felt weird. our focus on the watergate brake in leaves out the more important break in. >> the one before. >> the one before that, which was the break in of the offices of the psychiatrist of the man who released the watergate -- excuse me, the vietnam war papers. so this was really more serious. it was a violation of fourth amendment, right to privacy and you're secure in your home and

belongings. and they went right in and probably what saved the republic i think is they were such dopes. they were really stupid. it was their fourth attempt to get into the national democratic offices. the first attempt they decided to go into a banquet on the ground floor, and they were going to go up stairs to the offices, and they got locked in a closet somehow. the next time they got to the dnc offices but they couldn't break the lock. >> it's a process. >> it's an unfolding process. so mr. martinez, these burglars, most of them were alumni, so to peek, of the bay of pigs. failed in cubia, so their were

real angry with democrats and so on. and nixon told them they were going to fight communism. they got to right instrument for breaking the lock and they went in and they messed it up. they put the tap on the wrong phone and they took blurry pictures. and it was said that one of the two leaders -- howard hunt, went to the chairman of what was appropriately called creep, the committee to re-elect the chairman. >> they didn't call themselves that? >> they did call themselves that. they didn't get the joke. so a law partner of nixon's was running creep. and he said to hunt this is

joke, i don't think he said joke, actually. so they go back in, and they were actually in there on memorial day that weekend. so similarly when they were invading the office of dr. darther zealdig. imagine somebody getting into your psychiatrist's office, breaking in there and taking the records. they said they cased the place, but there were no files there, so they messed up everything they did, so that's why we're still in here today. >> one of my regrets about the show is i never mentioned the break in into the psychiatrist's

office. and in many ways it was more serious. >> it was one of the articles of impeachment but not the same one as the break in of watergate. but the term watergate stuck. actually, when nixon met with holderman and so on, nixon was in florida. and the cop comes along and moves it, in any event when they met, which was three days after the break in, that's when the cover up was hatched. and what nixon said what they were worried about -- what he was really worried about is those guys, the plumbers, they did that other stuff, they know about that other thing. and that's what he was afraid was going to be found out. so that began the cover-up to

shut them up. >> i had no idea you lived here. you know who else who lived here? marke martha mitchell. i wanted to include that fact, but i thought it would be too confusing because how do you even explain that? >> i'm glad elizabeth mentioned creep. because it came out that i fancied nixon saying what is this creep thing? it was the committee to re-elect the presidents. >> one thought i had tonight as i was planning this event is what are the itches i didn't get to scratch in the show? and one of the major ones is i don't still get richard nixon very well. he wasn't really in the show.

the show is sort of about what it was like to live through it. but i never asked before i answered what was it like for richard nixon to live through it. i wonder, evan, if you could tell us a bit about what kind of experience it was for him. starting with the first couple of weeks when the cloud was just starting to gather. >> nixon had, obviously, many flaws. one of them was that he hated confrontation. he liked to pose as being a blustering tough guy, liked to swear a lot, you could hear it on the tapes. but he was actually a very shy person. and one of his failings was that he from the very beginning did not confront his own staff. he never -- john mitchell was the guy running it, and nixon never talked to him or had a conversation with him for nine months. and nishen was just unwilling to

confront his own people. had he in june 1972 said what the hell's going on here, nixon didn't actually know about it. >> is this an absolute fact? >> it's a 99.9%, i think. the evidence was overwhelming. that's not to exclude him. obviously he created the conditions under which it happened. but he could have cut this off. he was ahead in the polls by 34 points, and there was no way he was going to lose. he could have fired everyone in his cabinet and still won. in fact, he should have. so that was one turning point that he blew partly out of his own shyness. >> you mean because he couldn't face it. >> he couldn't face it, he didn't want to face it. and nixon's a complicated guy. i'm not saying that's the only

reason. nixon is a devious guy. he also thought he could get away with it it. he believed in executive privilege, and he thought -- and people scoff at this, but he's hardly the first president to use dirty tricks. what would really happen, nixon's timing was bad. >> that's all it was. >> i mean like the 20th century. >> here's what i mean by that. why did he have -- elizabeth proved what idiots they were. the fbi had taken themselves out of the it business of doing this. j. edgar hoover and the fbi had been illegally wiretapping and stealing and spying for earlier presidents including franklin roosevelt, certainly lbj.

and by 1970 j. edgar hoover was a very smart politician and realized the winds were changing here. and the war in court is now coming on strong, and they're beginning to enforce the fourth amendment. and they are cutting down on wiretapping. and hoover knows this, and he's getting the fbi out of the business of doing black bag jobs period but also of spying on presidents. so nixon has to go in-house. the famous break in -- >> has to. >> if he's going to do this, he's got to hire hunt and liddy to do it because the fbi's not doing it for him. so he hires these, or his minions hire these incompetents. >> so hearing you say that he was so allergic to confrontation, one thing sort of

reports about how our current president never can fire someone directly to his face because of his catchphrase, i think a lot of people listening to the show had fun sort of picking out parallels between some plots, and i think also personality traits that nixon and trump seem to share. but then when i read your book, and i have to admit later in the process of recording the show, he felt differently to me than donald trump. and i want you to talk about how they were different and how they were similar. >> well, for starters nixon read. [ laughter ] [ applause ] >> a lot. i've been through nixon's personal library. he was unbelievable. because he didn't like talking to people, he read a lot.

most presidents don't read anything, certainly trump. but most presidents are busy getting briefed. nixon read a whole lot. and he read deeply, and he read deeply into political philosophy and anything churchhill ever wrote. he actually was an intellectual himself. he would say none of those harvard people but he actually hired harvard people to work with him. he postured as an intellectual, but he actually was one. nixon was deeply strategic. trump lives by the tweet, just totally by impulse. nixon thought deeply about the shape of the world, correlation of forces, china, russia. he thought strategically, so that's another thing. where they're alike is they are

both arguably crazy. [ laughter ] >> a lot of people have been implying about this, trump has a narsistic disorder if you believe half the psychiatric community. and he had words and motions and he didn't like this about himself, and he tried to control it but he could not control it. and you could hear it on the tapes. i spent hours listening to tapes. and he can sound quite rational talking about world events, and he's actually a deep thinker, and then he'll go off on these cra crazy tears, i'll wonder what the hell's he doing. and then he'll swing back into being coherent again. he just could not control his own emotions. >> the tweet is very much it same, that idea.

imagine trump's library. you have to. [ laughter ] you could use that. >> susan, how do you explain given these differences that evan just enumerated, the to my mind quite striking similarities with how the white house seems to be run and the chaos that determines decision making, and again, sort of the alignment of various subplots is quite uncanny. how did two men who are so far apart end upsetting into motion events that seem to have so many echoes? >> well, if i had the answer to that, we could all just go home. but probably 16 other subplots have developed in the short time that we're talking to each other. so i don't know if anybody's

checking twitter, but please let us know if there's a white house shake-up that's happening while we're talking here. and by the way, you might have messed it, but did you notice who was on president trump's public schedule today for meeting in the oval office? henry kissinger. and to me that was sort of the perfect setup for this conversation tonight. right, washington is something both nixon and donald trump loved to bash. nixon as you said love to set himself up to opposition to the georgetown set, he hated the elitist in washington, but the politicians just didn't get him. donald trump ran against the swamp. but we're seeing one year into trump's experiment on all of us. but washington is always -- it's like a casino, right? historically the house always finds a way to win.

and, you know, henry kissinger will adapt to any power that is is the white house, right? and he's still getting access at the age of 93 or whatever it is. and, you know, they're not the same. we do seem to be engaged in this incredible moment of history echoing or rhyming or maybe just laughing at us. and, you know, i will admit one of the first things i did after january 20, 2017, was i picked up a copy of elizabeth's book that was sitting on our bookshelf. and reading that in parallel to remember the 24-day tenure of michael flynn as a national security advisor? >> i barely remember it. >> exactly. it's barely longer than the ten-day tenure of anthony scaramucci. referred to as the scaramucci

era. this is sort of the comic opera version of it, and trump is sort of this comic opera version. he's not like nixon. he doesn't seem to be an extreme introvert, for example, which clearly nixon was. to me that tells me a certain part about it is power whereby and the abuse of power. and when you say certain white houses are similar, that may be because you're looking at people's responses to the institution and to what happens when you're in the court of the czar or the court of the president and there's something wrong in the middle of it. >> can i make a -- i with the greatest respect differ that their white houses are similar. haulderman and ericman, nixon's two top assistants were known as the berlin wall. and there was a very strict discipline in that white house.

so it wasn't the zoo that this one has been. and it didn't have all these departures. evan is right. nixon was a deeply shy man. he was a deeply shy little boy. he grew up lying in the grass and reading, and he was considered, you know, the word "dork" didn't exist then, but he was a dork. and the other side of that is he ran for student office all the time. he was student body president. why did he win? he didn't have any friends? he wasn't a charmer to be sure, but he worked so hard at it. he wanted it so badly, ask so this kept happening. he kept being elected to these positions that he was unfit for. i would argue he was unfit for politics. he didn't like people and people didn't like him and it didn't

work, all the suspicion. the other thing is, yes, he was shy. but if he had to fire his closest aides, halderman and ericman, he did it. >> he cried when he did it. >> he cried and he cried. >> he said he didn't want to wake up in the morning. >> he had a habit of calling aides after he made a speech at 1:00 in the morning, 3:00 in the morning whatever are and saying how did it go? he called halderman and said how do you think my speech went, the speech in which he fired him. [ laughter ] >> and i believe halderman said, listen, i can't do this for you anymore. >> can i assume i'm not the only one sitting here who met this great man? >> i was just about to turn to you about this. did you interview him? >> i met him. we weren't close.

>> she said they weren't close. were you close? >> you were not enchanted? yeah, i met him way back when i was still pursuing -- at the white house which didn't work out. this was a formal event. an actor was brought over because nixon had seen him in london. and so you were invited to an evening of shakespeare in a room one sixth the size of this. and i met the great unindicted coconspirator, and i was right as the second person in the receiving line. usually it's something you'd give to say to the person, but he recognized me clearly. and he said who's doing your

show tonight? and i said joe namus is sitting in for me. yes, how are his knees? [ laughter ] >> wasn't there another interaction you had with him? >> that wasn't the only one. that night we then went in and saw shakespeare. and about ten minutes after it was over for some reason the room filled with sort of a smoke smell, kind of the alarming kind. like someone was burning their newspapers and looked around and no source but the smell went away and the show ended. up the aisle came kenneth heilemann, i said to him, ken, i

knew him, what do you think that burning smell of paper was? and he said they let -- into the library. [ laughter ] >> i love it. >> that sounds like he was quite polite to you. from listening to the tapes. >> nixon? >> yeah. >> the damnedest thing happened in montog. i went to a seafood reeranstaur and it was early. there was a dark figure that looked like a seabird peering out to sea, and it was nixon and his lovely daughter julie. to amuse the waiters -- i was

not drunk -- i went up behind me and i said now for deserts we have the yorblinder cream pie and -- and i got so he could see me. and what does dumbo do, but we suddenly had nothing to say to each other. i said, oh, the last time i saw you was that wonderful night of shakespeare at the white house, and you may have wandered that the room started to fill with -- i was like i shouldn't be telling him this story. anyway, i finished the story

somehow. julie said i hope your nightclub act was funnier than that. and i remembered something i had to do that home. [ laughter ] >> i want to go back to evan's point of nixon not knowing about the watergate break-in. evan made the key point that he created the conditions for it. how did this stuff happen? my point is it doesn't matter. it didn't matter whether nixon knew about the break-in ahead of time. as evan said, he created the conditions. he would say things like he always wanted to get the goodies on someone. it's something we haven't said i think is terribly important is that nixon's downfall stem a lot from the fact he could not distinguish between opponents and enemies. anybody that ran against him was an enemy.

what are some of the first things that the plumbers did, one of them, tail ted kennedy around in cape or paris, taking pictures of him with various women because nixon worried that kennedy was going to run against him in 1972. so this inability to distinguish marched through his presidential career. and he would say i want to get the goodies on lawrence o'brien, the kennedy man, the chairman of the national democratic committee. why he wanted to get the goodies on larry o'brien, there are various views on that, having to do with howard hughs -- >> my favorite one. >> where was i? my is because he couldn't make this distinction he kept getting

into trouble. and so why were they so obsessed with elsberg? the pentagon paperers were under vietnam under linden adjusten. but it questioned the foundation of the war. it was kissinger who was worked up about this. so this was the atmosphere of this white house, who are we going to get? and that's what led him down this trail. now, one of the articles of impeachment that i think is fascinatingly important. let's just say if, to me the most important article of impeachment there were three that the house judiciary committee approved. and one of them held the president accountable for the acts of his aides. now, not a one-off thing. it had to be a pattern or

practice of a certain kind of activity, just as in the obstruction of justice. it won't be this one thing or another thing. it's ten things if that comes up. but that's what was building. and that's what was building under nixon. the first one was obstruction of justice. but the second was two very important things. the use of government agencies for his own political purposes to get his self-designed enemies. and the other was that he was responsible, he was accountable for that. now, if you fast forward to now, we don't know if there was aclusion. collusion means conspiracy if it's going to matter as an impeachment offense. it doesn't matter what really what trump knew at a certain point or did nixon know ahead of time, they were going into the watergate? he created the atmosphere, and he encouraged them by saying i

want to get the good on larry o'brien. he did this about various people. they broke into ed musky's office or his campaign chairman's office because he thought musky was going to run against him. these are two things to keep in mind. that a president can be held accountable of the acts of the people who work for him, and the other is playing with federal agencies. now, trout -- i don't know where that came from. [ laughter ] >> trump didn't do that, but he didn't know enough about government. seriously, but you know you could use the irs or do this wiretapping. so in his innocence, he seemed rather innocent in all that until he started messing with the justice department. so now we have that also as a very serious possible

impeachable offense. >> i feel compelled to tell the story of our interview that came very early in the reporting process. and your book was one of the first i read, too. and i wanted to introduce elizabeth for the first episode, because that's the one i needed material for. and i wanted to talk about 1972 and the first five months leading up to this election. and we talked about impeachment, and i have to thank you because by the time i got to episode 8, and i didn't have any time to talk to anybody else i said i got this great interview about impeachment. so you really saved my neck. >> you have to remember this is serious history. it's only been tried three times in all of american history. why do we have that clause? article ii of the constitution -- article i is

about the congress. because the congress would be at least equally important as the presidency. this is part of what's gone wrong. they didn't anticipate what we have now. where was i again? >> you were talking about impeachment. >> so the first one was against -- the idea was the founders were obsessed with not establishing a new king. there was going to be a presidency accountable to the people. my last article in the new republic was about this, do we have a presidency that's aeb accountable to the people? and i think the jury's out on that. i'm not sure we do anymore. and so the first article was how to impeach one, because they fe felt that was very important.

it should be extremely hard to overturn an election. i don't care how badly somebody has behaved or what if we made a mistake? a mistake in whose eyes, who's going to decide this -- >> but he ran a landslide election back in 1972, correct? >> no, i'm talking back in 2016. yes, a landslide elections, that too. so the first one was against andrew johnson who had been abraham lincoln's vice president. >> we can't talk about andrew johnson. >> we're not going to. but it was a political impeachment. he was undoing reconstruction and so on. and it was supposedly about cabinet firing, but it was so political that those impeached in the house, which was indictment, he was not convicted in the senate.

and when you're convicted you're out of office. he failed by one vote. fast forward, didn't happen again until nixon. and that was an impeachment -- if you come back to it, it was an impeachment that worked in the sense the country largely accepted it. we didn't have a war over it. and there was a very reckless and partisan i think impeachment of bill clinton -- >> season 3. sorry, 2. i misspoke. >> in any event, and they said it wasn't about sex. it was ability sex. but it was highly partisan. newt gingrich led it, and he wanted to get clinton out of there. i mean i was told by two people who were close to gingrich but not to each other, he had some swell ideas.

he would get clinton impeached and then gore impeached for supporting clinton. and guess who would be president? the speaker of the house. but he was having a little affair on the side, too, so he didn't become president. but in any event we've used it rarely, we should use it rarely. there have been proposals to make it easier to vetting against that. with the change in political mood we change throughout presidents. we don't want to do that either. >> looking at the ages -- sorry, it's your show. [ laughter ] >> i was just going to say since we brought up the landslide of the 1972 election, i want to ask about those first couple of months, your favorite topic, i know. the period of time when reporters were writing stories. people, you know, "the washington post" was publishing them, "time magazine" was

publish, there were things "the new york times." and people didn't care. they were publishing them anyway. what lessons do you think that period has for contemporary journalists covering the administration, and what lessons did it have for consumers of news? how could that have happened and what does it mean for us today? >> well, i have to say listening to your fantastic podcast, that to me is a part that certainly resonated the most in present day even between direct comparisons between nixon and trump. the slow nature car crash in washington -- >> the slow burn, if you will. >> absolutely. that's a good title. you should think about that. [ laughter ] but we're hearing so much in the political atmosphere that surrounds the story, that's not in the story itself that is similar. and, again, to me that's why

it's fundamentally true that washington, in many ways elizabeth's book is a store a about the political institutions of washington and what they do when confronted with this basically unthinkable mess of a problem? it's in the constitution but there's so much that's left to the interpretation of those that confronts it. and the institution, the congress, the mead yudia, the w house itself comes under this enormous stress and behave in a similar way. and when you look at what's been happening in the last few weeks on capitol hill, you see a lot of echoes of what congress was doing, and even though that was a congress that was a democratic congress and a republican president in the watergate era, and right now we have a republican congress and a republican president -- but, again, that to me is where the parallels are even more striking. you hear almost verbatim, you play these fantastic clips on

the podcast from right wing talk radio, defenders of the president, talking points of the president. talking about the collaboration even up to the point some would argue of collusion between republican members of the committee and white house staffers receiving talking points. i mean, this stuff resonates very much. and i think that the critique that was aired to "the washington post" coverage in watergate is very, very similar to what we've heard over the last year when it comes to coverage of the russia-gate story, for example. >> we knew so much by november of '72. >> we know a lot now. >> that's what i'm saying. and sometimes i wonder -- >> what we don't have is a political process yet that tells us what's going to happen with it. first of all, we don't even know when it comes to mueller investigation, while impeachment itself is laid out and described in the constitution, there had

no set formula. judicial impeachment of judges is governed by regulations that have been set forth. there is no set forward or straightforward procedure by which, for example, robert mueller could transmit his report to capitol hill. actually, ken star was authorized by a law that doesn't exist right now. he was an independent counsel and robert mueller is a special counsel of the trump administration justice department. so there are processes thater t aren't even set in motion yet. the public cays about the economy, and the public cares about the stock market, that part echoes with most washington scandals, frankly. and i think one risk that we have in looking at the waterigawatergate

parallel, and to think that the political parallels being used are similar, that's the outcome that's going to be similar. we can talk about it later, but i think the biggest change is in the media environment between now and what happened in watergate. and, you know, can anyone break through the noise? tell us what's been happening in the last half-hour? >> evan, what do you think? what can we take from the fact these stories were being written, these people were going onto his show, lying through their teeth, and people didn't seem to absorb it? i assume there are journalists in the audience, but mostly not. what does it say for consumers of news, how we should engage with this information at this stage in the process? >> i know the answer to that. >> what is it?

>> but first you just got to hear this. it popped into my head. when you go home, assuming you all have homes, on youtube only you can now get a replay of a wonderful documentary i did about a year ago called nick b cabots, watergate. it's really good. but today looking back at it to come here, i saw something i've never seen and i've seen it now four times. there's a card omitted with little phrases that nixon is famous for. but each one something he said, and i'm reading ask i come down to right-hand corner and i see is cabbot a jew?

i'm not going to tell him. >> that's not even the worst thing he said about you. >> his anti-semitism is one of his well-used or frequently used trades. that and his foul language, if you heard any of the tapes. but if i were a little down, i'd go to my computer ask i'd go to youtube, cabbot, nixon and see the great unindicted coconspirator in the oval office, and it's still -- but the language, the dialogue appears on the screen even as you hear it from the tapes. and the line that i like best, well, it begins with what is it with cabot anyway? oh, he's the worst. that's h.r. halderman, and it ends with a line that will live forever. cabot, how can we screw him? [ laughter ] >> did they try?

do they have any ideas? >> actually, they didn't -- here's what happened, and i'm so glad you asked. about a year ago -- i mean, about a year later. way back then, a lady on my staff ran into another lady on my staff and she said i've got problems. i'm really suffering from having been audited. and the other lady said when were you audited. and she told her, and she said i was, too. i realized the son of a b -- the president had decided to use, in one of his hobbies was using the irs illegally, punish my staff. and what the late joan crawford would call the little people, would suffer quite a bit from the audit.

but he still did. [ laughter ] >> i'm sorry. >> evan, how old were you when all this was happening. >> watergate, so i was 22, 23, 24? >> so were you already a reporter then? >> i was briefly. i was a reporter for the borgen record. and i got arrested -- they didn't want to arrest the kids, and they arrested me, the report instead. and when i free from jail i went back to had newsroom and i thought i was in trouble, and i

was a hero because it was a watergate summer and all reporters were heroes. and it was such a different, a different time. we were all kind of martyrs and heroes, even if it was something trivial like being arrested for the little ferry new jersey police. >> did watergate change your sense of government? obviously, it did. but did it change how you reported on the government after that? do you think it informed your coverage of washington, just having seen what is possible in the years that came after? >> i wish wasn't so high-minded. we saw all the presidents men -- >> i don't even mean that, but you saw what the government could do, you saw what the president could do.

you can say no. >> you know, this didn't start with -- the disbelief in government really starts with johnson from my generation, vietnam, the credibility gap, the late '60s. i soured on the idea of government watching linden johnson not richard nixon. it was a continuum. so i was part of a generation that had already been turned off to what washington would do by the time nixon got there. >> right. >> and i think that's an important point when we think about what's going on today. part of what we're all responding to, in a way, is just how donald trump is. there are echoes in history, but what we are responding to is the fact we've never had a president like donald trump. and we're still looking for a phrase and narrative which to

place him. and i think the exceptional events that are happening every day, there's no continuity. there might be reaction or barack obama zigging and zagging of history, but we didn't -- we weren't in the middle of vietnam and now we're going to watergate. there's no linear progression here. donald trump is more like a asteroid in that sense that's descended on the oval office. asteroid. >> i decided something. [ laughter ] i forgot it. you ever do that? i think it's going to come -- >> it'll come back. >> oh, yes, last week i had a sentimental reunion with one of

my great heroes who's still with us, by the way. mortsal a meteor back in the -- woody allen and i used to go see him every night at the basin street east along with ella fitzgerald. i remember this show, nixon, he said, is the sort of man who if you fell overboard 20 feet from shore, he would throw you a 15-foot rope. [ laughter ] and kissinger would announce the president met you more than halfway. >> wasn't it mort sal you told me was also the person who said to you two days after the burglary, i hope this is the thing that brings him down? >> i don't recall that, but i'm willing to pretend i did if it makes you comfortable.

>> i was going to say a second ago, is that it's very in a funny way cathartic for me to be making all of these comparisons to trump and nixon because in the show we tried so hard to restrain ourselves and sort of just, like, say what happened and not run too, you know aggressively towards the parallels. it feels quite good to be finally speaking openly about it. but i do wonder, and elizabeth, i wonder what you think since you covered it then and you're covering it now. is there any point in finding those connections? is there anything -- is it misleading as susan was saying to try to feel reassured by -- by the story that -- that ended the way it did? >> no. >> all right. >> i don't think so. i think we can, you know, it's interesting because that was about a president who had

committed some problematic deeds, and the question then, with all due respect to the movie, in which i have a small role. remember the lady with big hair was interviewing the attorney general. that was me. it was very chic at the time. anyway, it's very different. the thread that runs through it, and although watergate is often played as the cops and robbers, and it's a great story, and woodward and bernstein did great journalism, so did a lot of other people. it ended up the way it ended up. this is really very different from that. it's a different kind of -- the question behind both of them as i said earlier was can we hold a president accountable? and i always felt that while watergate was still a -- can you catch him? where is the smoking gun? you were referring to this earlier. the hint of the proof.

the room was full of smoke. all sorts of things had gone on, but a very big change -- i thought then and i think now the big thing is we had and we have a constitutional crisis. this one has not come to a head yet, but it's building towards that. something is going to collide one of these days if mr. mueller does find things that he feels that trump should be held accountable for. it was nixon that was a constitutional crisis in the sense that could the president be held accountable for the acts that were going on? he was denying the courts for awhile. he was defying the congress. this wasn't the way it was supposed to work. we're kind of back at that now, and that's the thing to watch, is can this man -- i just wrote a piece -- i don't know that he

can be held accountable. the big difference, susan said it was the press and she's absolutely right about that, but i think the big difference, the enormous difference, is the nature of the republican party is totally different than it was then. then you had moderates, republican moderates, you hear about them every once in awhile, but they're very scarce. whereas there was a great many of them in that era. the republican party has done a huge turn since that period. so whereas the founders kind of counted on congress to act as a check on the president, and they did during nixon's period, they're not -- obviously not doing it now. and this is what i don't think any of us expected. at first i thought impeachment was more likely than i now do because i didn't expect, i don't know that anybody did, for the republican party to actually not en masse but largely be the president's defender. they're afraid of the base. they're afraid of this.

they're afraid of that. so it's a totally different kind of situation. that's why i don't think -- i don't know that impeachment will happen because of that, and this amendment, the 25th amendment, where some people were looking to that because the theory is if trump is crazy, and there is a lot of evidence of that, he has some very serious mental challenges, let's say. but that's not what the 25th amendment was about. it was about what happens if the president bottoms disabled? eisenhower had a couple of heart attacks or strokes. so it was about that. it wasn't about saying he can't govern because he's nuts. it wasn't -- it wasn't meant for that. you can argue he's doing what he told the public he was going to do, including building this stupid wall. so i don't know that what worked then can work again because of the political change and nixy

was no pussycat, but he had come out of the political system. he had been in the house. he had been in the senate. he had been vice president for eight years. and though, sure he fought the independent council and he tried to withhold the tapes, he didn't go on this crusade of smearing and trying to wreck the reputation of the investigators. nixon looks like a pussycat compared to what trump is now doing. so you have a totally different reaction on the part of the executive branch, which is very serious. >> yeah. trump -- i said that trump was not strategic, but nixon was strategic and trump was not. that may be wrong. nixon -- trump does -- seems to have one strategy, and that is to delegitimize anybody who attacks him. that's a -- it's a gamble. i don't think it's going to work. but he's trying to delegitimize the fbi, the justice department, anybody who gets in his way.

democracies depend on some faith in the legitimacy of the institutions. we have all these rules but they don't really work unless there is some trust in them and some belief in them and some credence. in 1972, most americans had faith in this institutions by and large. that's less true today if you look at the polling numbers. if you ask the question do you believe in the congress, the press? the military is still up there but everything else is down. there is already some shakiness baked into our faith in our own institution. trump is making this headlong attack on these institutions. it's so outrageous i don't think it's going to work. >> seems like it's working. >> our capacity for shock has also really diminished. i think, again, listening to some of those voices that, you know, the moments that you highlighted in watergate, the john dean testimony, the discovery of the taping system, these were moments of collective

both national experience, because the media was a different beast than it is now and it wasn't the fragmented thing. so it was a national collective experience, those hearings, number one. number two, people could experience the shock of it and now we're overwhelm by sort of the amorphis chaos theory that trump is playing. i think that -- even a determined committee chairman, where there to be one on capitol hill to convene and tell a powerful, coherent narrative, story in a way that will build to the conclusion. which is why i say we should be wary to a certain extent feeling because there are some political parallels in how we're talking about trump versus how watergate was talked about that that means that the conclusion or how it will play out will be the same. but i want to flip sides quickly

and actually be the optimist for one second. to elizabeth's point about is this congress basically unable to impose accountability? is the republican party today so fundamentally changed that it will stick with trump forever? on this, i think the jury is really still out. i took heart from actually reading her account and realizing that literally up until days and even hours before the house judiciary committee voted on the articles of impeachment against richard nixon there were republicans on the committee who were talking with elizabeth and saying, well, i'm not sure, you know? i mean, i know it's bad, but, you know, i'm not sure i'm a yes on this. this was a good substantial percentage of the republicans on the judiciary committee who remained not only uncommitted but gave at least a very decent semblance of being uncommitted

until hours before they did, in fact, go ahead and vote en masse for nixon's impeachment. so, you know, the politics don't change and trump doesn't face an accountability moment within his own party until he does. we just don't know what that trigger might be. but i don't think that it's preordained one way or the other at this point. and i also -- i think it is important to say, like, it's rhyming, but it's definitely not going to be the same thing. i mean, you know, whatever this accountability moment is that we're building towards, the facts of the story are very different, and, by the way, we did a great interview, elizabeth and i, for my podcast, and she made the argument in that conversation that this could turn out to be worse than watergate in some significant way. we don't know what the answer to it is yet, but the allegation of systemic russian interference in

our election in 2016, possible hacking that we're still not aware of into our state electoral systems, as well as obtaining the internal e-mails of the democratic national committee and releasing them, allegedly, in collusion in some way, shape or form with the trump campaign, these are very serious facts out that actually go to the heart of the electoral process in a way that you can argue, you know, nixon might not have even known about the burglary at the watergate. so, again, i don't know the answer to it, but i don't rule it out. >> yeah. so we're going to open it up to questions in a second. so if you have questions, we have a mike here. do we have a mike there? no, just over there. so while you guys think of your questions, i want to ask dick one last thing. dick, i think you gave me one of my favorite moments in the show in the first episode when you said, you know, i look back on

watergate as almost like you would your summer in paris when you were a student. [ laughter ] because it was just so fun. it was this strange mix of dread and anxiety and fun. >> yeah. >> are we ever going to look back on this period with nostalgia? >> well, it's so bursting with fun right now that we can't be sure. one of the best moments on "dick cavett's watergate," youtube, is gorvy dahl. he said on my show, when i get up in the morning, i can't wait for my watergate fix. >> people identify with that now, i think. but it's -- >> it was such fun to wake up back then. >> you know what it was? >> the next chapter in this. >> it was really a mix of

nervous laughter and fear and we'd laugh at -- we'd laugh at the latest absurdity, you know? these brilliant guys who were running the plumbers, how did they find out they were there? they had pictures taken of themselves in front of dr. fielding's doors. here we are using cia equipment. these were not long-term thinkers. but we would be on the phone and sort of hear a funny noise and, oh, i wonder if i was being wiretapped. it was a nervous fear, laughter at the absurdity, but it was a very uneasy, uneasy time. we didn't know what they would do next. dick mentioned being on the enemies list. this is considered an honor, kind of, but it was -- if you were on the enemies list, you

were rife for being wiretapped and getting audited by the irs. it wasn't funny, the president picking out enemies to go after. >> it's true. >> what did you stay? >> i stead 'tis true, 'tis pity. >> i've been a big fan and grateful for your writing for decades since i was a teenager. i wanted to ask you guys about the pardon of ford -- by ford of nixon. and specifically -- like, i remember it at 8 being furious about it. [ laughter ] >> at 8? >> at 8, yeah. i was -- my mother had me very politically animated. but i remember reading later, i didn't know this at the time, that ford would carry around with him a line from early 20th

century court case saying if you accepted a pardon it was an admittance of guilt. just wondering what you know about that. if you can illuminate whether it was healing for the country as he said. was there any sort of teal between the two of them? anything you know from your time in reporting or journalism then. thank you. >> i'm the fossil who was there yet. i was unfashionable. i thought it was the right thing to do. there is no evidence that the fix was in. nobody ever found it. ford even as president had to go up and testify before the congress. i thought it was the right thing to do because i thought ford was right, if we went on with another year of being totally distracted by a trial of richard nixon, it just would have been, you know, it was enough and it wasn't that he didn't suffer. this man had spent his life wanting to be president. he finally got there and then

look. he's thrown out. he's the first president, the only president thus far to have been thrown out of the office. he was sick. he was out of money. he had big legal bills stack up. being nixon, he made the greatest resurrection since you know what. he made a lot of money off his books and went around making speeches. he moved to new york and became the toast of new york, but that's new york's problem. [ laughter ] so there were five presidents at his funeral. endured his funeral. it was wonderful. all these presidents turned out. bob dole had a phony tear coming down his cheek. henry kissinger managed to make his voice crack and all that, but as far as the -- i don't know, you've done a lot of journalism about this, too, but i don't know if anybody found anything. and i think -- i thought ford did the right thing. it was time to calm down, put it

behind us and get on with sendisend attending to the country's other business. >> i think ford definitely did the right thing. it was politically brave. he dropped the largest one-day drop in gallup history. he dropped 26 points in the polls when he pardoned. politically courageous. there is an argument it cost him the election. there is actually a tiny bit of evidence that the fix was in. that al hague went to ford. it's all inference and signals and winking and nodding. i don't know what to believe about it, but there is a little -- there is a suggestion that ford signalled to al hague, to the president's chief of staff that if nixon went, hague would pardon them. >> wasn't there something where al hague said if you don't promise him a pardon, he's just going to off himself? >> i don't remember that. >> if he doesn't remember, it's not true. >> there is a winking and

nodding scene between them. you can interpret it different ways. depends how they cast the movie. but i don't make that much of it. the real point is that ford did the right thing. he spared the country trauma. it was politically brave. he deserves credit for it. >> should we take one more? >> first of all, thank you so much for the podcast. it was wonderful. >> thank you. >> and to all of you, you know, for the part you took. i was wondering if just because this is such rich material, and only eight episodes. i didn't live through this. i've been reading about it since i was 10. i wonder if you would consider revisiting this? >> already? >> i think it was alive for the impeachment of bill clinton, but i would love to see -- i would love to hear more on this. because i don't want to leave out mr. cavett, is it true that you were the first person to realize spiro agnew's name was

an gs -- >> thank you for letting me get the laugh. people say dumb things like, who has been your favorite guest? when they say who is -- >> everybody sits down. >> did i take your question? but they're -- i realized last time somebody said who was your worst guess? i said that one can be answered, spiro agnew. he was new on the scene. they booked him on the show. the white house put him on the show. and said he would be fine. and we had a punch board, what do you call it? they had put up cartoons of his because he was being caricatured by all the great caricaturists

and they said he'll have amusing things to say. the first one, the cartoonist makes your eyes sort of a narrow line, and he said yes. [ laughter ] he didn't elaborate. >> which one was the annogram? >> i'm coming to that one. nothing. i cut the thing shorter than it was supposed to be. thanked him very much for being there. just as he was pulling away in the limousine, i realized with my anogram gift that spiro agnew also spells "grow a penis." check it out. gorvy dahl said it could also

spell grow a spine, but yours is better. >> all right. >> how do you follow that? >> yeah, okay -- [ laughter ] >> how do you like that introduction? >> so i think that one of the things that scares me personally about this administration that i think might have -- that is different from any other is this idea of an enemies list and who is -- who is american and who is un-american. we're starting to see little whispers about mccarthyism. and are these members of the fbi, are they conspireing? it kind of reminded me of, you

know, what i learned in school was, there are, you know, ex many communists in the department of defense and x -- i wanted to get your thought. are we going towards that line where someone is going to have to go up to capitol hill and say, you know, have you, like, no decency? >> susan, do you want to take that one? >> well, they're not going to go up to capitol hill and go to the senate trump hearings unless there is a political change in the country, but politics is a tribal business and, you know, trump has succeeded in becoming a very unlikely president by being very good at defining tribes and getting people to believe that he was -- that he was leading one of them. and i think that it's not, you know, for one person, it's an enemy's list. now it's cataloging all the nasty nicknames that donald

trump, you know, calls people he doesn't like. they're not really different things. i mean, i don't think in that sense that there is a big difference between richard nixon and donald trump in that sense. they're doing what successful politicians do, and negative campaigning works. defining your tribe as against another is what works in our politics. it's what works in other countries' politics. and, you know, i think it was elizabeth who earlier this evening pointed out that richard nixon couldn't tell the difference between opponents and enemies. i think it's a good line. it's a fair question to ask about donald trump as well. >> anyone else? next question. >> i think one of the key differences, i think that i've noticed between trump and nixon in terms of just the water they're swimming in is the difference in the media landscape now versus then.

not having lived through it, i'm sort of asking for the wisdom of the panel, but my perception is that back in the day of nixon, the media was morme monolithic, meaning you had cronkite people saying, you know, i think it was john saying if i've lost cronkite, i've lost the nation. you don't have that. you don't have that one voice or even that sort of one movement. whereas now the media seems to be broken up into clearly delineated fiefdoms of power trying to vie for access and the ear of the nation. i was wondering if the panel could speak to that in terms of the difference between the time period? >> elizabeth? >> well, one big difference is that as you say back then, there were three networks and they reached everybody. i think at 6:30 p.m., something like 90% of all tv sets in america would be on to three networks. and they tended to be -- because

they had such a mass audience pretty middle of the road. there was an argument that they were left, but they were -- if they were left, they were still close to the center. there was no fox in those days. now it's more tribal now. you know? the fox and right-wing media is much more powerful obviously than it was then. so the media is more divided and more -- and more split than it was. there is more of a media to carry trump's water, so to speak. but, but "the new york times" and "the washington post" are still pretty powerful. people listen to them. maybe not the whole country but a lot of people listen to them. and they have a legitimacy still that's important.

and the media will work with agencies of government in this way that it always has of basically investigators and congressional people leaking to them. that is still powerful. trump is a fool to make an enemy out of the fbi. you? they are the ones who have the power to investigate. and the intelligence community, same thing. they're going to leak to "the new york times" and "the washington post" and "the wall street journal." that sort of hasn't changed. that's a powerful deterrent force still, even though trump can count on breitbart and fox and all of that, and that's -- i'm not minimizing that. that's significant. i wouldn't count out the old lamestream media has got some real power still. [ applause ] >> you know -- >> well, one -- >> i agree, but i think it's important to say that the problem is for our attention.

and i think this issue of being overwhelmed in, you know, the chaos and the confusion and the just deluge of information that we're living in makes it much harder to follow that story line that is being reported so very well right now by "the washington post," by "the new york times." you know, it's not -- i think you're absolutely right that the power remains of those institutions, that the power of their journalism is significant, but i think our ability to process it as citizens, you talked about us as the audience in effect for this journalism. our analybility to process it i think is daily compromised by an information flood that didn't exist, even if arguably, you know, our politics weren't all that different, we were a partisan, we were tribal, we were all those things before. so i worry about that a lot. when it comes down to the evidence being presented, are we even capable of processing it

anymore? >> elizabeth, were you going to say something? >> well, i've been asked, do you wish that during watergate you had had all of these various outlets? and i said, god no. there was no internet. there was no twitter. there was nothing like that. susan is right that what we have now is a kind of overload of all of this stuff coming in, but i think we do sort of process it. you sort of get to, you know, there will be a ron johnson who thinks there is a conspiracy in the next room because here are all these journalists and people gathered and we're probably cooking up a plot, but then someone will say, no, you actually misread it, it's -- i think the basic themes are still there. what are the questions? the main questions. being did our president obstruct justice? i think the answer to that is in.

i don't know why lawyers are still saying, well, it's a big question, you know, again, it's a partner and practice. we can all name five or six things already that he has done. and evidence -- taking on the fbi is very stupid. the thing is, it doesn't make any sense to me because there is also the possibility that the fbi elected him by coming out with this we're re-opening the clinton investigation ten days before the election. meanwhile, they were also investigating trump but nobody knew it. so i think trump ought to take them a plaque and say thank you very much. [ laughter ] but it is more confusing now because rumors will start. many off the wall, and there are some, members of congress can come up with these crazy theories. you're finding out there are some very good ones. people very serious about it and

trying to get the straight story. >> i thought you meant good rumors. >> i don't know that there are good rumors. there are some we call too good to check. but, i mean, there are -- i'm quite serious about this, there aren't peop are people in the congress who know that something went terribly wrong and that russia did interfere with our last election. i notice that everybody always says, but there is no evidence that it affected things. we don't know that. you don't know what happens when they listen to 100 podcasts or whatever it was. you don't know. and i think -- so it's a deathly serious question. and the next question is, not are we doing anything about it, we're not, why aren't we doing anything about it? the next layer of question is, did this presidential group conspire, forget collude,

conspire with the russians, and, you know, did they play with each other to get this done? i think there is pretty much -- there is a lot of smoke that suggests that they did, but we don't know yet. i'm sure someone could fall for the lack of a smoking gun, which is kind of a silly point but it's still a point. it's still confusing but i think out of it the basic themes are coming through. the really quite stupid stuff, i mean, ron johnson's fake conspiracy, that kind of went down the drain after a little while. i think now nobody's going to listen to him anymore, but it's vastly more confusing. but i think we can still get to the point. >> thank you. >> hi. >> we have time for one more. sorry. >> no pressure. >> we'll be around afterwards so -- >> my favorite episode was the one where you talked about the people who stayed loyal to nixon and really stuck with him despite all this evidence. i know how you talked about how

they ultimately fell and why, but i'm just wondering if there were any legitimate figures politically or in the country who stayed loyal even after nixon stepped down and what their reasoning was and why they didn't get with the rest of the country around not supporting him anymore. >> episode 8 ends with the resignation so i don't know. >> there were. there were a couple. there were a couple of republicans on the house judiciary committee who did not vote for the articles of impeachment. i don't -- i can't get into anybody's head as to exactly why they did it. they may have thought that the punishment was too severe. they may have thought he was getting a bum wrap. they might have liked him. there is always a possibility. the point is, i always said nixon had a base until he didn't.

he had a base, too, but when he didn't have it -- susan -- there was no fox then. there was no organized backing of nixon the way there is now. and they didn't have the outlets that the far-right has. there certainly was not this kind of noise on the hill. there was nobody up there doing this kind of defending. >> who are these people in new york you were mentioning who toasted him in the town? >> i can spend a lot of time on this. it's a lot of fun. it's in the afterwards to my book, after he left office. how did he get from the bottom to being listed as one of the eight most influential people in the country, in the world kind of thing. nixon moved no -- various co-ops wouldn't have him. they said it was because his security would be noisy. that could also be true. so he bought a brownstone in the

upper east side. his great triumph, of course, was the opening to china. no one can take that away from him. it was a far-sighted and a smart thing to do and he did it well. he got a little carried away with this. he deb rated his house, his townhouse in chinese -- i guess sanchez was no longer with him. he had chinese waiters and once a week or so he would have a dinner, chinese food, and he would invite certain people of new york. it got to be the point, hardly ever a woman -- you were always stag. i think barbara walters was invited once, but it was all men other than that. and he had a routine and he thought he was the greatest martini mixer ever and he mixed the martinis and -- i can go through the whole thing. served chinese food. and nixon thought he was quite a card.

so at about 1quarter of 11:00, they were return to the living room to continue the discussion. at quarter of 11:00, he would figure out who was the most famous person in the room and look at the clock over the mantle piece, it's quarter of 11:00 and i promised to get henry kissinger to the house of prostitution before 11:00 so we have to stop. he was very funny. >> who ever asked if we are going to revisit it, that might be a good subject. maybe you have an answer to this, too. who were the people that stuck with him and continued standing by him? >> oh, you know what i wonder? you might have been about to ask this. i wonder how many of the young people not versed in all of this realize that he was pardoned. >> what do you mean? >> he was pardoned of his crimes. gerald ford pardoned him. >> yeah. >> and stewart alsop

well-remembered for the other folks, stewart alsops, i did a show with stewart alsop as he was dying and he was beautifully spoken and a charming man. i said, what -- how do you feel about nixon as a man? that was one of nixon's favorite words, has a real man. psychiatrists don't have much trouble with that. he said, he was here late one night,alsop said, and i said, dick, is there anybody in the world, a friend that you can relax with? and he said no. i said, there isn't anybody? not even pat?

and he said no. and he felt sorry for him. which was not my goal tonight. >> sorry, he lied then, too, because he did have one friend. and what he liked about bibi is that they got out for hours. he had another friend robert who invented the aerosol spray. they would go out for hours on this boat that he had. what he loved about bibi is that he never talked. they just didn't talk. that made him wonderful company as far as nixon was concerned. >> i want to end there. that's the clip i wanted to use in the episode so badly that i had to cut at the last second. i'm so glad that we could end there. so thanks to everyone on the panel. thank you so much for being here. [ applause ]

we're going to be milling around. so if you have questions. thank you to faith smith for organizing this lovely event.

coming up tonight, a senate hearing on u.s. strategy in afghanistan. from "washington journal," a look at the historical mix of politics and the olympic games. the undersecretary of the army discussing military modernization efforts. and the senate energy and customers committee holds a field hearing at the washington auto show to look at energy efficiency technologies for cars. >> at a senate foreign relations committee hearing on afghanistan, deputy secretary of state john sullivan discussed the administration's strategy of finding a political solution in the country and the role of pakistan. assistant defense secretary randall schriver testifies about

how to train and advise afghan forces. senator bob corker chairs this two-hour hearin . senate foreign relations committee will come to order. we thank all those in attendance. in rolling out its new south asia strategy last august, the administration underscored the united states' hard fought security gains in afghanistan and reiterated our commitment to helping establish a foundation for political