>> tonight, "q & a"followed by the haitian president speaking to the european parliament. >> this week on "q&a," author and historian timothy naftali discusses the oral history he conducted as the director of the richard nixon presidential library and museum from 2007 to 2011. >> how would you describe your effort to put nixon on the record, on tape? >> i had the challenge at the

federal government was taking over a private museum and library. i was asked to be the first federal director. this was a library that was in place for 17 years. roughly 100,000 people visited a year. in addition, 10,000 schoolchildren. it had a certain message -- when you run a private institution, you have a right to any message you want. when it becomes a national institution it has to meet a different standard. i knew that one of my jobs was to change the newseum come up with in particular i was to change the watergate gallery. how do you do that? after a local community was accustomed to one particular description -- a museum might be a national museum but it is also a local neighbor. >> this is in california. >> yorba linda, california. i thought the best way -- i was a trained historian. i was not a nixon specialist --

was for the players, keep people living from that era to tell the story themselves. i thought the best way to do this was to start a video and oral history program that involves nixon players and also players in the watergate drama from the left and the right, to have them tell the story and use portions of the story in the museum to let visitors understand the complexity of this constitutional drama. the video oral history program was designed initially to help renovate the museum. what happens is it developed and acquired a momentum all of the sun. i never anticipated ultimately overseeing 149 of them. i had a very good assistant -- paul musgrave, who worked with me for three years. it became clear that there were a lot of folks that wanted to talk about that period since the

nixon library had been private -- it had not gotten the treatment a regular presidential library would have had. for example, neither the private library nor the nixon project in washington had run a full-scale oral history program. it was ripe for the doing. as it became clear people wanted to participate, it grew to be a much bigger initiatives and i had imagined. >> what was the time frame? >> i started it as soon as i started the job. i became -- i joined the national archives in october of 2006. i ran the federal nixon project until the library transferred to the federal government in 2007. i started the history with an interview right at the end of 2006. i did oral histories until i left in november 2011. >> this hour has no rhyme or

reason to it -- the clips were chosen by producers. the objective is just to show the audience a little bit and get you to explain them. before we start, i want to show video tape from 1973 -- alexander butterfield testifying before the watergate commission. >> i was aware of listening devices. >> when were those devices first in the oval office? >> approximately the summer of 1970. i cannot begin to recall the precise date. my guess is that the installation was made between, and this is a very rough guess, april or may of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall.

>> were you aware of any device is installed in the executive office building of the president? >> yes, sir. >> he was a senator and an actor and was the counsel for the republicans. where did you find alexander butterfield? >> some of them found through google people who knew people. we put out the word we were doing this. initially, the nixon foundation, the private foundation, provided the funding for the first ones we did. i was very upfront about what we were doing -- i promised the nixon foundation and the federal government that we would do a non-partisan oral history program. >> we do not see in these interviews. >> it is by choice. i remember going to a los

angeles festival --halverstam, this was 2005, before i got that job -- he was talking about the best interviews. he said the best interviewer disappears. i thought, what i would do would be to disappear. my job would be to help the interviewee recall of dense, encourage them in creating a zone of comfort, but to disappear. the goal was for this to be video that could be used for documentary's in the future as well as for use in the museum. you do not want to see me. >> here it is alexander butterfield -- you interviewed him back in 2008. today he is 86 years old. >> he did not go back to the residents very often. when he left the office he went to beef eob and had dinner over there.

four nights out of five. he only went to the residence if the young people were coming over, the children, with their spouses or boyfriend or girlfriend -- someone who is going to be there. otherwise, when he left the office around 7:00, the oval office, he went to his eob office across the street. they would fix in a drink, usually, scotch. they might start with a red wine. only two things he drank. he did not drink a lot. he had one cocktail and then red wine with dinner. he sat there just the way you are sitting there with his coat on. he never took his coat off. never took his jacket off. even on the hottest washington night. in a chair -- he wrote with his yellow pad. ideas, things that would be relayed the following morning.

then he would eat his dinner at a little table and have his wine and he might go down and bowl a line. there was the single lane bowling alley in the eob -- and he would go down -- home at 10:30. i never went home until he went to the residence. >> what you think of when you watch the former military man, mr. butterfield? >> one of the things that we do not -- those of us outside of the white house -- we do not really know how it works. to have the people who were with richard nixon described the day is priceless. we had the tapes, but we do not know what is going on around the tapes. it was not just butterfield -- you have colson, glen garmond, folks talking about what it was like. that is priceless. that is the part of history that

gives it context and meaning but then disappears. it is often not written down. one of the byproducts of these interviews -- i let the tape run. i let people, even if it was somewhat rambling, let people think and recall and speak. what you get out of it is color -- it is preserved forever. one of the things that was very important to me is i had experienced aoral history -- out of the miller center at the university of virginia. james young was conducting a program there and i was one of the interviewers. the way it was run by the miller center -- it was not their fault, just the deal they had struck -- the private foundation that controlltook control over e interviews and people could edit them. i know this for a fact because i participated with in interviews that were then edited.

once you edit an interview, the tape, an audio or video tape, becomes useless. you cannot serve it to the public anymore. when i went to the national archives, i worked with the lawyers and said, i do not want that. i want the bridges of into signed a deed that is not given the right to edit it. the participant knew this with in advance. but the fact of the matter is that if we did not do that you could not use these interviews. and i want there to be a sense of comfort, a sense of respect, and professionalism, that will allow people to continue to tell stories and the stories will be preserved forever. >> i want to run another alexander butterfield clip. he is talking about the taping system he set up in the white house. what would you say the result did? >> richard nixon's resignation was the result -- >> what is that background we are looking at?

>> actually, that was paul musgrave who did it. we decided we would use for the first interviews the standard collapsible backdrop. we interviewed people where they wanted to be interviewed. we did not have a studio. i did one interview with in the studio, but by and large we did not have a studio. we hired professional videographers and we needed a background. we thought it would be cool if it was always the same backdrop. we later discovered that change in the backdrop is a good thing. today, they will notice a lot of different backdrops. >> he said, make sure nobody knows -- nobody. and that was set a couple of times later. he and the president and i talked about it. there was never any doubt in my mind, although no one told me in so many words -- there was no

sinister purpose to the tapes. i sensed it was for the memoir -- that would be valuable. i went to him a couple times later, much later, when these things were accumulating so fast -- the secret service would come to me and say, we are having a look for a new place to put the tips. i said, we ought to have a couple secretary sunday for four of the eob and type of a long. this is a career here. all day, every day. he said, a good idea, but we never did that. it had to be a mammoth job. >> did you ever get a sense of what happened? the gap? >> i have a theory. i had to look into that because there is a section in the watergate gallery about it. i was astonished to hear that the tape -- the gap is in a tape

from the summer of 1972. june of 1972. rose mary woods took the tape to camp david. she also took the tape -- there are a number of people who could have erased it. the u.s. government hired a group of audio specialists to listen to the tape, to be erased portion. they concluded it could not have been an accidental erasure. there are too many starts and stops. it sounds to the educated year as if this has been the race eight times. -- erased eight times. someone in camp david or elsewhere erased it. i often wondered if it wasn't

one person -- >> was? >> his dear friend and totally deniable. >> if the audience is frustrated by these little clips, the whole interviews are available on our website and the archive and the nixon library. >> you cann get them at nixonlibrary.gov. >> the interview -- where did you do it? >> the library. one of the things, if you watch these, there is the story of the role woodward and bernstein played. the role the house played and the senate played. the prosecutors, his army of prosecutors. do not forget the role played by republicans in the nixon administration. he was one of them -- he was not alone. we would hear from a few more. >> here he is -- he was at the

time? >> deputy attorney general of the united states. >> it was clear he was not going to carry out that order. he turned to me and said, what are you going to do? i told him -- i do not think it is close. what he is asking and apparently subsequently needed to do was fundamentally wrong. he said, you do not have any choice if you refuse to do it -- that means they will find somebody else to do it. if bork had not done it, anybody in the department could have done it. your responsibility was fairly clear -- i do not think he resigned lightly.

you do have an obligation. there are lines over which you cannot cross. you have to -- sometimes you will not do. >> this is really important. i did my best to interview as many surviving players in the saturday night -- your audience may not now what do you here is talking about, but president nixon wanted to fire the special prosecutor archibald cox. he ordered the attorney general of the united states to do it and he would not. the next person in line was ruckleshaus, and he would not do it. elliot richardson had died by the time i was in the job, but ruckleshaus was alive and judge bork was involved with in the

story. for many of those who participated whor witnessed the event, this was the closest the country had come to a major constitutional crisis. the president of the united states was firing the official who was looking into his misdeeds. >> archibald cox. >> the question was, in a democracy, a republic where you have a responsible government, can the president fire somebody who is about to prosecute him for wrongdoing? >> here is a recording of one woman -- who was she? >> a magnificent, a great interview -- this is the example of where the backdrop changes and it really helps. she was part of archibald cox's team. she was one of the few female prosecutors. this is and era when there is a

glass ceiling, unfortunately -- she was ultimately the one who opposes rose mary woods on the whole issue. she is the one who asked for questions in court. here she is talking, i believe, about the saturday night massacre when she learns that archibald cox has been fired. her reaction is startling and shows the kind of attention these people went through in that period. >> the big discussion that i remember was, what is richard nixon going to do? it was particularly relevant because we were working basically seven days a week. i had a family wedding in new york that night -- the night of the press conference. i said, i cannot go, i have to stay here. after much discussion we said, what could he do? in order to fire archie he would

have to fire the attorney general, and he would never do that. so this could not be okay -- he is going to cave in. so i went to new york right after the press conference. when i came back from the wedding, the hotel, literally the desk clerk was waiting for me and sort of leaped over the counter and said, there is a message for you. the fbi has seized your office. i called george rampant -- heat -- frampton, he was the one i could reach. i got on a light the next morning to participate in discussions of what the office should do. what happened is he fired archie -- he did not fire us. there was a lot of discussion of, do we quit in protest or do we say, ok, archie is gone but we are still here. we need to do my job and we need to stay.

he will have to make a second big public-relations error by firing us. >> what did he do? >> what happened is that they closed the office for a nanosecond and then they reopen debt and robert bork, who was then solicitor general and acting attorney general because everybody about him had been fired or had resigned, he became the head of this, of this special prosecutor's office. i interviewed him -- he said, i was nervous because i could be charged with obstruction of justice. he kept it alive and they hired someone else, a texas democrat -- nixon hired him to replace archibald cox. in the end he would be even tougher on richard nixon.

>> did jill wine-banks work for him? >> she stayed, as did the rest of the team. >> how long were your interviews? >> most of them about two hours. sometimes they went under. sometimes they were shorter. the shortest one was with a very busy senator kerry. i asked him about vietnam and his work in the vietnam veterans against the war -- that was 23 minutes. the longest i had -- a couple of sessions with colson on different days and also ray price. six hours. >> who said no? >> henry kissinger. i was moderating a panel with him at whittier college. we were in the greenroom, which was not green -- greenrooms are rarely green. i was trying to be fair to him, so i let him know what kinds of questions i would ask. we went on stage and he did not answer any of them and afterward

he turned to me and said, i did not answer any of your questions, but you try hard. he made it clear to me he was never going to do a video oral history about this. he said no, gordon said no -- a very important watergate figure. he had not told his full story -- he would not do it. >> a lawyer? >> a lawyer. he was indicted but not convicted. he was -- the chief of staff, richard nixon's chief of staff, he was his point person to the committee to reelect the president. he was the one who could say to him, to g. gordon liddy, that the espionage plan had been approved. he knew what he tells nixon knew about the liddy plan. he would not do it. sadly, pat buchanan -- i tried very hard to get pat buchanan to do it.

he would not do it. >> robert bork, acting attorney general at the time -- this is an issue. he is 85, still here with us. this is the issue of spiro agnew. >> one of the things that happens is you learn things -- i thought in the beginning i was going to hear stories that many of them had said to the history channel. when you do an interview for the government, it becomes public domain. i was keen on creating free video -- it belongs to everybody now. i assumed they would tell stories that are in proprietary collections. what we started to get worse stories i had never heard. this is one of them -- this is unbelievable. this is bork talking about how he and the attorney general at that point, elliott richardson, are afraid that richard nixon is not going to go ahead with the prosecution of vice president spiro agnew. spiro agnew -- this started out in maryland but there was a

maryland prosecutor who discovered that agnew as governor had been taking bribes. he continued to take bribes even when he was in the office of the vice president. apparently this was an open and shut case. there was so much evidence, you could not walk away from this. richardson had to prosecute him. >> the attorney general. >> the point is, this has nothing to do with watergate, but the timing is it happens during watergate, hutchison of the three. fifth pacific before the fifth half and 733 fifth the >> he says, but both the president. -- let's go see the president. on the way down the hall, we

have to go to the men's room. room and turnen's on all the faucets -- for the listening devices. the penalty up for the state. you had no idea when something was listening to you or not. soulfully turned on the faucets and whispered to each other -- i think it is a resignation issue. he said, i think it is. so we turned off the faucets and went to the president. a resignation issue is a hard one to deal with. you cannot walk in and say to the president, do this or i will resign. he will make to resign. >> where did you do that? >> in his home -- it was fantastic. he seemed very ill at the time. he was still with us, but this is four years ago./

he is a chain smoker and asked me if it would be akin to smoke. i love film noir, so i let -- there are moments when the smoke swirls around his head. makes for a nice interview. he was fascinating. he really wanted to do this. the interview lasted 2 hours. >> did you ask him why he stayed and fired archibald cox? >> he is a complex figure but we made it into the issue of my own personal views. i never wanted my views to be part of the theme. bork is somebody whose work i found troubling, to say the least. >> as a judge? >> as a judge -- it is not my business. i was working for the government and it does not matter what i think. i will tell you, i was so impressed with in the interview -- what in mind.

even if i disagree, what a mind. he has had a bad rap for the massacre -- it is ruckleshaus and a few others. i interviewed john more -- richardson and ruckleshaus import bork -- implored bork to stay. bork had a different legal theory about what the president could and could not do. bork wanted to resign and go back to yale. he was convinced his college would never forgive him. ruckleshaus and richardson said, if you resign nobody is running this place. they were very afraid that alexander hauge, somebody in mistrusted, would choose a new attorney general who would be a disaster. they said, and they really put pressure on bork to stay. bork describes it, but the

beauty of these oral histories is you will see corroborating evidence from other people who do not have the same mistake as bork in his investigation -- reputation. >> what are you doing now? >> i am an independent historian. i had a book about kennedy i was meaning to write -- and needed time to write it. i have a couple of books i am working on now. >> when did you leave the library? >> november 2011. >> next is william saffire. he is jewish. he was an observer and -- tell us what you -- >> this for me is hard. this is heartbreaking. he was really mad at me. >> for the interview? >> afterwards. i had a terrible conversation with william saffire about a

month before he died. >> died at 79. >> he was so angry i had invited john dean to the library. i explained to him that in order to establish this as a nonpartisan space that people would take seriously as a research center -- the fight there had been over access to the tapes, missing tapes, the documents -- it is essential to establish beyond any doubt that this was a non-partisan issue. i thought it was important that john dean, an important player in the watergate scandal, comes to the library and speaks. saffire was furious. i was talking to him because i invited him to do a master class. every summer we had national intern's -- we had a national competition and said two students, come to the nixon library. we are changing this -- be part of this experiment.

we got great applications. 15 times the number of students we needed. one of the things i did was i brought these people for students to interact. i wanted saffire to come and it was terrible -- he said he will not do this, because for him to come to the library is to condone what i'm doing. it was not a pleasant discussion. the interview was alright -- before john dean's visit. the interview was alright except when i asked him about when he had been wiretapped. very uncomfortable. but most of the interview was very good. >> explain the jewish connection . >> i found -- i asked everybody about everything. if you watch the interview i did with frederick -- it was very hard for me because i was

going to ask him, president nixon ordered the be a list of all jews in the federal government. he told them, we have this on tape that jews are disloyal -- american jews are disloyal. it is a horrible tapes. he ordered this. the order was truncated and became an order to list all the jews in the bureau of labor statistics, which is the part of the labor department that is responsible for the unemployment figures. fred malick was tasked with doing this. i did ask him about it -- how do you broach the subject? after i had done that, and he speaks about it, i made a point of finding as many people who could talk on this issue as possible and talk on the issue of the role of jews in the nixon administration. but and there was a real divide among the jewish americans who were in the nixon

administration. some are convinced richard nixon was and anti-semite. some thought he was not. william saffire was among those who was not. >> he was a "new york times" columnist for years. >> when you ask, does it affect your opinion of nixon -- some. it was disappointing, but he was not anti-semitic. to be anti-semitic means semitic hatejews. to hate jews. >> how would you explain these discussions, ultimately, concerns about jews in the bureau of labor statistics? how you explain it? he saw jews as liberals, as new yorkers. he would look at me a

and others as exceptions. but it was liberals that he hated it -- it was liberals. jews and hollywood and new york -were part of the target. but i do not go for it. some of my best friends are jitters. ews.his ca it was the locker room kind of anti-semitism and not something he carried out. >> what was your reaction? >> i am proud to say that there are a lot of people interviewed on this subject and there is a lot for the viewer to make sense of. i will leave it to the viewer.

all i can say is that president nixon's comments on the tapes are about jews in a way that is different from how william saffire describes it. richard nixon is talking about how jews have exaggerated the holocaust because they want sympathy, and they have used it to gain sympathy. there is an anger towards jews that i believe cannot be explained simply in terms of liberal versus conservative, but i leave it to others to make up their own minds. i will tell you there is now a very good collection of people speaking on this issue that is publicly available. that is my job. >> here is chuck colson telling a story. >> kissinger had the right, it, to have abused deb

nobody announce it or take it. kissinger could walk-in when he wanted. nixon told him that because of the severity of foreign policy issues, feel free to come in and interrupt anything. henry would do it for trivial things. one day, nixon was really kind of ticked off at henry for a variety of things. in the executive office building -- i looked over, it was henry. nixon did not appear to look, but i knew he knew it was henry. he said, i think you are right -- i think it is time we use nuclear weapons. everything else has failed. kissinger stood in the doorway, absolutely paralyzed. that is on the tape somewhere. someone would hear that on the tapes. colson did bring up the dark

side of nixon -- everything they say is true. it was pure humor. he did that sort of thing often. >> he died in 2012 at age 80 -- how many hours did you interview him? >> it was a fantastic interview. i interviewed him twice. the first time, that is from the first interview, again, i let people talk. a number people who had been interviewed often had a set of stories. the first interview was basically a set of stories. the second interview was the follow-up. i knew more and could ask -- it was different. he is much less comfortable with in the second interview. i do not think chuck colson was candid. i think he is guarded and i think he -- i think that charles

colson decided what he would, what he would say he did and nothing more. there was a set of things he would apologize for, and there is a whole story out there he never talked about, that he took to the grave. he knew a lot more. the second interview, i tried to push him beyond the bounds of the stories he told the history channel and other places and he got very uncomfortable. i hope i did it in a professional way -- i will leave it to the viewer to decide that. >> where you always off-camera? >> always. there were the first two -- i did the hague interview, had a number of colleagues participate as well. it was just the videographer -- they included us in the beginning. i preferred to be off-camera.

when paul musgrave did the ones he did, he was also off camera. that is what gives the wonderful look -- it makes the interview useful in different formats. >> it comes up in the past that you being a canadian liberal, gay, and richard nixon might not be all that excited about you run in the library. i bring this up now because i run the dwight chapman interview. did dwight know you were gay? >> i never denied it, but i would not bring it up. i do not know if he knew i was gay. i was shocked and delighted when i recorded this particular anecdote, but i do not think he knew i was gay.

the interview is extremely important for the development of this oral history project, and we will get to that in a moment. >> this is almost two minutes -- for those who do not know, he was a columnist at one time. >> anybody who saw the movie "j. edgar," this story and the role that j. edgar hoover place in the story is hilarious. >> head of the fbi at the time. >> who is going to take a personal interest in whether there is a homosexual ring, a gay ring, at the center of the nixon administration. he was the deputy assistant to the president, a good-looking california guy. >> here we are -- i can remember going home, you are scared to

death. this is like a time bomb. this gets in the press and anderson gets going -- it is a disaster for all of us. and it is not true. the next day, each of us individually go into the cab that and sit across, right across -- we are sworn in. and then each of us are questioned by j. edgar hoover. he asks all of the questions -- the transcript of this was provided to jack anderson. that is how it was stopped. >> and hoover was planning to give this to anderson? >> no. anderson was going to go with the story -- jack anderson, the columnist. he was the one who is going to

put the photographer down there and -- i have always thought, if i ever see brit hume i will ask him, because he was working for anderson at the time. anderson is getting ready to go for the story. he tells mitchell -- mitchell goes and mean what else, i want to meet with all of you as a group. he says, i want you to get to the bottom of this, john. john comes up with an idea -- he brings j. edgar hoover over and has this to pose with the cabinet with j. edgar hoover during the questions. >>what these relationships were. >> i should mention this before -- what happens is jack anderson is about to go with the story that haldeman and his top aides are having sex with each other.

>> he is the chief of staff -- he has these young california gas and it is a homosexual ring and they all have huts, not huts, but little cabins near each other. that is the story. i had never heard this. the fact that j. edgar hoover decided that the way to determine whether it was true -- j. edgar hoover has its own complicated sexual history -- but for each of and to interview these young california guys, blond haired california gas and ask them about their sexual preference -- i nearly fell over in my chair. all you can hear is the stammer -- i'm trying not to express my surprise at this story, which frankly i had never heard before and i have not seen anywhere else. so there it is. >> he was in his 20's then -- he

was assistant to the president and went to prison. what is he like today? >> what a story. mr. chapin, who added that no before, was unlike -- i did not know before, was unlike charles colson. he was charming, and i think candid. he came to the interview which we did in new york -- ready to talk. and to preserve his story. some will say that he was just going to defend himself at the expense of the president, but he had remained close with the president. president nixon interacted with him after the president left the white house. he felt he needed to tell some stories to set the record straight. it was an amazing interview. it got him into trouble among

his colleagues and lead to a controversy for the oral history program because he said something on tape that he did not say to the senate and did not say in the trial. something that the nixon group had always denied. >> that was? >> that it was richard nixon who was there when the dirty tricks campaign was ordered. that nixon was too smart to ordered -- he was sitting in the room. it was done in his office, which is why it was not taped. >> that was donald sigretti. >> the dirty tricks campaign in the 1972 campaign -- president nixon wanted it, knew about it, and wanted him -- he had worked for richard nixon for a long time. he was very close to nixon.

nixon had a small staff in the 1968 campaign, a personal staff. he was his advance man -- he later was the head advance man before he went into the white house. this man was extremely close to richard nixon. >> donald sigretti -- >> they went to school together at usc. >> he was a prankster who had done it some republican candidates over the year -- tricks being crazy little things. nothing harmful. one day the buzzer goes off and i go into the president's office -- he is sitting there. they say,bob says it, did you know anyone who can do that stuff -- we should have somebody like that. i say, let me think about it.

so i went out and i thought about it -- i thought of donald sigretti. he had been a roommate at usc and was just leaving the judge position in the army. i thought -- he is very anonymous and would fit in and could do this kind of thing. >> what happened to sigretti? >> he went to jail, too. i actually met sigretti./ he was that close to doing an interview -- i talked to him twice. but he did not want to do the project. >> why? >> he did not tom why. >> he lives in california now? >> i really should not say. i find out where he lived as a result of my job. >> people who want to see the entire interviews should go to nixonlibrary.gov, or come to us

and art video library. also for the record -- you are now a american citizen. >> i became a u.s. citizen in 2001. you were educated at harvard and yale and johns hopkins. >> i have a m.a. and ph.d from harvard in history. >> george schultz was secretary of treasury and secretary of state -- in the nixon administration he was secretary of treasury. here he is. >> he came to me and said, john dean has just brought me a list of 50 people at once a full investigation of them. that is a very unpleasant thing to have happen to you. what should i do?

i said, do not do it. he said, what shall i tell john dean if he asks me how it is going? tell him if he has a problem he has to go to me. in the tapes there is discussion between the president and john dean about who i think i am. but it was an improper use of the irs, and i would not do it. >> did you speak to the president about this? >> he never brought it up. >> this is really important. the private library made the argument -- and this is an argument school kids absorb -- that all presidents break the law and the difference is that richard nixon got caught. i felt that this was a terrible lesson to be teaching students,

that their presidents are corrupt. i thought it was to -- let's say the president's break the rules. i thought it was a sad lesson for two reasons. one, that was not ready should teach kids. secondly, it is not true. third, it gives presidents the possibility of redemption if they commit real crimes. frankly, sometimes precedents are bad, and we should not think they should all be venerated. i knew that i did not want to be a carpetbagger. i did not want to be a east coast progressive who came to orange county and decided that if he was so smart and he knew it all and that was that. what i always dreamed of was an interview like this, where you have somebody of the grub a toss

of george schultz -- gravitas of george schultz to explain that sometimes the president tells you to do the wrong thing and you say no. it shows the way our system works. our system could not possibly work if presidents always got their way. >> a long question about the controversy in the library system and the foundation and the knicks and loyalists. but here is a quick question -- i do not want to show more take -- did any of them try to interfere with your request to these people to the interviews? >> my goodness, yes. what happened is not only did this project on mostly to me being fired -- >> you worked for the federal government, not the nixon -- >> yes, but when you have senator who takes a personal interest in your work -- his point was that he felt that i

was, that i did not like richard nixon. he held up president obama's nomination for the archives of the united states and put a hold because of me. he admitted -- the archives of the united states, the nominee met with senator lamar alexand to he complained t about me him. but lamar alexander did not ask david to fire me. but he wanted to raise his consent. -- concern. credit, he did not ask me to change what i was doing, nor did they curtail the project. >> lamar alexander had worked for richard nixon and in the white house. >> i interviewed william timothy, who has been the head of the congressional office, and he did not like the interview. >> lamar alexander did not? >> i interviewed lamar alexander

and there was no trouble. i interviewed him in 2007. he enjoyed the interview. i interview timmons in 2009 and he did not like it -- he felt there were too many questions about watergate. he was in a sense the rabbi -- alexander's got father with in washington. he is older. t i. immons -- i think timmons asked him to do this. >> usually the question he tells us about the oval office -- here is another one the people my age will remember. the lincoln memorial story in the middle of the vietnam war. >> we follow him up to the lincoln memorial -- could not have gone there more than two minutes after he did.

we went up to see what was going on and found him in discussion with 10 to 15 young people who had come in from all over the east coast. i believe that was set -- only four secret service agents. it was a scary time. we got up there well was still dark. he spent 45 minutes, maybe longer, talking to the student's. i heard a lot of it, listened to it -- wrote down some of it after it was over. basically, it was a time when i was really afraid for his safety. i know he wrote later on that he had never seen the secret service quite so frightened. he certainly got that right. we did not have a sufficient

detail to protect him. somebody had -- if somebody had decided to attack him or assault him. it was totally unplanned and unscripted. his own notes of the meeting are extraordinary. what he covered in that time -- it was not just that, it was a major effort to communicate with the young people. and the crowd grew. we began to realize this is not rich little -- this is richard nixon. >> what time of the night was that? it is after midnight. this is one of the greatest presidential stories i have ever encountered. the president of the united states is overrun. just after -- just after the kent state massacre. it is may of 1970. and he cannot sleep.

and he goes to his valet and says, the most beautiful sight in this country is the lincoln memorial lit at night. let's go look at it. and he leaves the white house without his staff. they do not know about it. they are asleep. there was a fear -- there was a march on washington, and it was a real fear the white house might be besiged. there were all of the is buses that had been lined around the white house to protect the president. the president decides autozone to leave the sanctuary and go among the demonstrators. this is unscripted, this is raw history. richard nixon mentions it in his memoirs. i'm very happy to sit beside

bud krogh, nbc located the one student who took photographs -- there are four or five students. one of the last things i did is i interviewed him about his experience that strange night, meeting the president of the united states on the steps of the lincoln memorial. >> we are really running at a time -- any of what you have found in your interviews has been kept from the public? >> unintentionally on my part -- there are about 15% -- 85% is completely open. 15%, some of the interviewees mentioned security matters and the relevant agencies have to review the interview. but i did not intentionally engaged in discussions of national security. where it was appropriate, asked him questions. to my surprise, they apparently

mentioned things that agencies want to review. >> last video -- the youngest of the people we have shown today, 70 years old. here's a quick story. >> we watch the speech -- it was shortly after the farewell speech. i cannot rubber exactly what he said -- but he said he forgot one thing. what was that? we forgot the resignation letter. that was very interesting -- it would be interesting to read it. he said, you do not get it. you need to write it. don't you think the president ought to write his own resignation letter? they said look, if he is in no place to do it. we need you to write the letter. i said, i do not know what to say. first of all, to whom does the president resigned? >> how long was the letter? >> it is very short.

they did not spend much time writing it. there is only one copy of that letter. it was sent to henry kissinger, secretary of state. there are many xeroxes of the letter. richard nixon would later signed things -- you will see on ebay lots of copies of the letter for sale. there is only one. it is in washington -- not at the nixon library. we borrowed it. >> after all, 149 interviews -- a total of what? 300 >> 300 hours. >it is all public domain. >> y 12 writing a book about this? >> i was not doing it for that reason. >> but you could. papersy could get the and write a book. >> of course they could. i thought it was really

important to create this archive. i wanted to show that you could use the power of government to create in this multimedia age, free video. and there is no hidden agenda other than the fact that i wanted to create it. i was not alone. i had real support in washington. that was my goal. the beauty of this is that i touch on all kinds of subjects. i will tell you, there were a couple of things i focused on. obviously watergate, but also domestic affairs. poorly understood, richard nixon's domestic affairs. i rain might -- raise money. at a certain point the foundation did not want to pay for this anymore. a group of alumni work in a group of alumni work in domestic policy --