it's unclear how they'll rule but they've been skeptical in the authority. >> a look the a the telecommunications issues at 2013 with the reporters who cover them monday night on the communicators. 8:00 eastern on c-span 2. >> on the record or on tape or on recording. >> i had this challenge, a federal government was taking

over a museum or library and was asked to be the first federal director. this was a library had a this been in place 17 years. about 10,000 school children. it had a special message. when you run a private institution, you have a right to any message. when it becomes a national institution it meets a different standard. i knew one of my jobs was to change the museum. i was told to change the watergate gallery. how do you do that after a local community is accustomed to one particular description? a museum might be a national museum but also is a partner and local neighbor. host: in california. guest: i thought the best way, i'm a trained had us torrian though i wasn't a nixon specialist was for the players,

the key people living from that era to tell the story themselves. but i thought the west bay to do this was to start a video history program that involved the nixon players but also players in the watergate drama from the left and the right to have them tell the story and then to use portions of the story in the museum to let visitors understand the complexity of the constitutional drama. the video or history program was designed initially to help renovate the museum. what hatched is it just developed and acquired a momentum all of its own. i never anticipated ultimately overseeing 149 of them. i had a very good assistant, paul musgrave who worked with me on this, he did a few interviews himself. it became clear there were a lot of folks that wanted to talk about that period. since the nixon library had

been private, it hadn't gotten the treatment that a regular federal presidential library would have had. for example, neither the nixon private library or the project in washington had run a full scale or history program. so it was right for the doing. and as it became clear that a lot of folks wanted to participate, this grew to be a much bigger initiative than i imagined. >> what was the time frame? guest: i started it as soon as i started it in the job. i joined the national archives in october of 2006, even though i didn't formally become head of the library i ran the nixon project until the library transferred to the federal government in the summer of 2007. but i started this oral history with an interview of alexander haig at the end of 2006. and i did oral histories until i left in november of 2011. host: this hour has no rhyme or

reason to it. the clips were chosen by mike holden who produces this program. and the objective is just to show the audience because we run a lot of these already a little bit and get you to explain it. before i start that, i want to show you some videotape from 1973, alexander butterfield, testifying before the watergate committee. it's very short and we'll come back to you. [video clip] >> i was aware of listening devices, yes, sir. >> when were those devices placed in the oval office. >> approximate the summer of 1970. i cannot begin to recall the precise date. my guess, mr. thompson, is that the installation was made between -- this is a rough guest, april or may of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall 1970.

>> you aware of any devices installed in the executive office building of the president? >> yes, sir, at that time. host: fred thompson who was a senator and a counselor for the republicans back then, where did you find alexander butterfield? guest: some of them we found through google or people who knew people. we put out the word we were doing these. and initially the nixon foundation, the private nixon foundation provided the funding for the first ones that we did. i was very up front about what we were doing. i promised the nixon foundation and the federal government that we would do a nonpartisan oral history program. >> we don't see you in these interviews. >> it's by choice. i remember going to a festival of the book and listened to

david halberstam. it was 2005, 200 -- before i got that job. i'm not in it anymore. and he was talking about the best interview. he said the best interviewer disappears. and i thought what i would do was to disappear. that my job would be to help the interviewee recall events to encourage them and create a zone of comfort and to disappear. the goal was for this to be video that could be used for documentaries in the future as well as for use in the museum. you don't want to see me. >> in 1:32, alexander butterfield, you interviewed him in 2008, today he's 86 years old. let's watch. [video clip] >> he didn't go to the residence very often. when he left the office he went to the e.o.b. and he 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 or whatever, or someone was going to be there, a friend. so otherwise when he left the office around 7:00, the oval office, he went to his e.o.b. office across the street with minola. minola would fix him a drink usually, a drink of scotch, might not. might start with a red wine, the only two things he drank. he didn't drink a lot but would have one cocktail and red wine with dinner. minola fixed him dinner and sat there the way you're sitting there, with his coat on. he never, never, never took his jacket off, even on the hottest washington d.c. night. in a chair and wrote with his -- wrote with a yellow pad, ideas, things that would be relayed to alderman the following morning. all this stuff.

then he'd eat his dinner at a little table and have his wine and might go down and bowl a line. there was a single lane or double lane bowling alley in the e.o.b. i don't know if it's still there, he would go home around 10e:30, 10:45 and never went home until he went to the residence. >> what are you thinking as you watch the former military man mr. butterfield. >> one of the things we don't -- those of us outside of a white house, we don't really know how it works. and to have the people who were with richard nixon describe the day is priceless. we have the tapes, of course, but we don't know what's going on around the taped areas. and it wasn't just butterfield, you've got collison and lynn garmand in and out of the white house and people talking about what it was like. that's priceless. that's the part of history that gives it context and meaning but that disappears because

it's often not written down. one of the byproducts of these interviews, because i let the tape run. i didn't interrupt. i let people -- even if it was somewhat rambled, i let people think and recall and speak. what you get out of it is color. and it's preserved forever. one of the things that i -- was very important to me, because i had experience in doing oral history. i was at the miller center of public affairs at the university of virginia and james sterling young was running an oral history program there and i was one of the interviewers, i wasn't running the program but was one of the interviewers and the way it was run by the miller center, it wasn't their fault but was a deal they had struck, was that the private foundations had controlled over the interviews. and people could edit them and i know this for a fact because i participated in interviews that were then edited. i didn't edit them. once you edit an interview, the tape, whether it's an audio

tape or videotape becomes useless, you can't serve it to the public anymore. when i went to the national archives, i worked with the lawyers and i said i don't want that. i want the participant to sign a deed which does not give them the right to edit it. of course the participant knew this in advance. we sent them the deed in advance. this wasn't a surprise. but the fact of the matter is it we didn't do that, you couldn't use these interviews and i wanted a sense of comfort, a sense of respect and professionalism but would allow people to continue to tell stories and that those stories would be preserved forever. >> i want to run another alexander butterfield clip when he's talking about the taping system that he had set up inside the white house and ultimately what would you say the result of the taping system did? >> richard nixon's resignation of the result of the taping system and great history for the rest of us. >> what is the history you're looking at, where was alexander butterfield when you

interviewed him? >> exactly paul musgrave interviewed him. i am responsible for the logo but we decided we would use for the first interviews, a standard collapsable backdrop because we interviewed people where they wanted to be interviewed. we didn't have a studio, though i did one interview in the studio with sir david frost but by and large we didn't have a studio. we'd set up and hired professional videographers and needed a backdrop. initially we thought it would be cool if it was always the same backdrop but later discovered varying the backdrop is a good thing. today, those watching this will notice a lot of different backdrops. >> eers that clip. [video clip] >> he said make sure nobody knows this, nobody. and that was said a couple times later when he and the president and i talked about it. there was never any doubt in my mind, though nobody told me in so many words was there was no sinister purpose to the tapes,

none. i sensed it was for the memoir, that would be valuable if you could have all of that. and i went to alderman a couple times later, much later, when these things are accumulating so fast, the secret service were coming to me and saying we're having to look for a new place to put the tapes. and i said bob, we ought to have a couple secretaries get up on the fourth floor of that e.o.b. and just type all day long because this is a career here. this is all day every day. and he said yeah, good idea. but we never did do that. so it had to be a mammoth job. >> did you ever get a sense of what happened to the 18 1/2 minutes? the gap? >> i have a theory. i mean, i had to look into that because there's 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. rosemary woods took the tape to camp david but also took the tape to key biscayne. and there are -- you know, 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 the erased portion. and they concluded that it was -- couldn't have been an accidental erase you are. there are too many starts and stops. it actually sounds to the educated ear as if this had been erased eight times. so somebody, either in camp david or key biscayne erased it. i often wondered if it was beeby robozo. >> who was? >> richard nixon's dear friend

and totally deniable. >> to our audience, if they're frustrated by just these little clips, the whole interviews are available on our website, our video library and a lot of them in the nixon library. >> you can get them at www.nixon-library dot goff. >> william luckles house, did you do that interview? >> sure. i remember it. it was at the library. one of the things -- if you watch these, there is a story of course in the role woodward and bernstein played, very important in baregate and the role the house played and senate played and the prosecutors and cox and his army of prosecutors. don't forget the role played by republicans within the nixon administration who said no. and luckleshouse is one of them. he's not alone and we'll hear from a few of them. >> here is william

ruckleshouse. who is number two? >> the secretary-general of the united states. [video clip] >> it was clear he wasn't going to carry out those orders who he maintained after cox's press conference. i remember him turning to me and saying what are you going to do? and i told him, i don't think it's close. i think that what he's asking you and apparently subsequently me to do is fundamentally wrong. and that you don't have any choice but to do it. and that will mean they'll find somebody else to do it and vefrpblly -- there was only one other person in the line of official command in the justice department, if bork hadn't done it he could have asked anybody in the department to do it. to me, if it came to that, your responsibility was fairly clear. i don't think he resigned lightly. i think you do have a obligation to the president, he is the one who appoints you. and you do have a duty of

loyalty. but then there's lines over which you can't step. and you have to tell yourself that, it seems to me, before you take one of those jobs. there are some things that i won't do. >> this is really important. i did my best to interview as many surviving players in the saturday night mass. many of you might not know what he's talking about. but in october of 1973, president nixon wanted to fire the special prosecutor, archbold cox. and he asked the attorney -- ordered the attorney general of the united states, elliot richardson, to do it, and he wouldn't. the next person in line was ruckelshaus and he wouldn't do it. elliot died by the time i was on the job but ruckelhaus was alive and judge bork was involved in the story. it's a remarkable story because for many of those who

participated or witnessed this event, this was the closest the country had come to a major constitutional crisis because here the president of the united states was firing the official who was looking into his misdeeds, archbold cox. and the question was in a democracy, in a republican where you have a responsible government, can the president fire somebody who is about to prosecute him for wrongdoing? >> here is a tape, or a recording of jill wine-banks. who is she? by the way, william ruckelshaus lives in washington and is 80 years old and jill is 67. >> i don't know how old she is but is a great interview and is an example where the backdrop changes and really helps. she is part of archbold cox's team. she is a prosecutor. she is one of the few women -- female prosecutors. this is an era when women -- there's a glass ceiling, unfortunately. she would ultimately be the one

who deposes rossmary woods on the whole 18 1/2 minute gap issue. she's the one that asks her questions in court. here she is talking, i believe -- here she is talking about the saturday might massacre when she learns that archbold cox has been fired and her reaction is startling and it shows the kind of tension that these people went through in that period. >> jill wine-banks. [video clip] >> the big discussion that i remember is what is richard nixon going to do? and 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. and i said well, i can't go. i have to stay here. and, you know, after much discussion, we said what could he do? in order to fire archie, he'd have to fire the attorney general and he'll never do that

so go, it's going to be ok. he's going to cave in. so i went to new york right after the press conference. when i came back from the wedding to the hotel, literally the desk clerk was waiting for me and sort of leaped over the counter and said, there's a message for you, there's a message for you. the f.b.i. has seized your office. and i called george frampleton. i don't know. he was the one i could reach. and i got on a 6:00 a.m. flight the next morning to come back to participate in discussions of what the office should do because what had hampled was he fired archie. he did not fire us. so there was a lot of discussion of do we quit in protest or do we say, ok, archie's gone but we're still here. we need to do our job. and we're going to stay. he's going to have to make a second big public relations

error by firing us. >> what did he do? >> well, what happened is that they actually closed the office for nano second and then reopened it and robert bork who then was solicitor general and acting attorney general at that point because everybody above him had either been fired or had resigned. he became the head of this -- of the special prosecutor's office. i interviewed him for the library and he said look -- he said i, robert was nervous because he said, i could be charged with obstruction of justice if i closed it down. he kept it alive and they hired leon wajorski, a texas democrat and archie hired him to replace archbold cox and he would be tougher on richard nixon than archbold cox had been. >> did jill wine-banks work for

him? >> yes. she stayed right through like the rest of the team. >> how long are your interviews usually? >> most of two hours. which went longer and others went shorter. the shortest one was with a very busy senator kerry. i asked him about vietnam and his work in the american veterans -- vietnam veterans against the war. that was 23 minute. the longest, i had a couple sessions with colson on different days and ray price. >> who said no? >> henry kissinger said no. i never forget, i was moderating a panel with him at witier college and we were in the greenroom which wasn't green, by the way. greenrooms are rarely green. it was beforehand and i was trying to be fair to him and let him know what kind of questions i was going to ask him and then we went onstage and he didn't answer any of them and afterwards he turned

to me and said i didn't answer any of your questions but you tried hard. he made it clear with me he'd never do a oral history about nixon. he said no. gordon strom said no, a very important watergate figure who hasn't, i believe, told his full story. he wouldn't do it. >> he's a lawyer. >> he's a lawyer. he was indicted but not convicted. he was our chief of staff, richard nixon's chief of staff. he was his point person to the committee to re-elect the president. he was the one who conveyed to alderman the information that g. gordon liddy, that his espionage plan had been approved. so he would know what details alderman and i think nixon knew about the liddy plan. he wouldn't do it. and sadly, pat buchanan, i tried very hard to get pat buchanan to do it, he wouldn't do it. >> robert bork who was the

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

governor -- he was governor before he became vice president, had been taking bribes and continued to take bribes even when he was in the office of the vice president. and that apparently this was an open and shut case. there was so much evidence you couldn't walk away from this. elliot richardson had to prosecute him. this is in the middle of watergate. >> he was the attorney general. >> he was the attorney general. the problem is this doesn't have to do with watergate but the timing happens -- >> 1973. >> it was 1973. so the issue is it spiro agnew is thrown out, richard nixon has no vice president, and if he's thrown out, who is going to be president? >> this is brief. robert bork talking about the spiro agnew resignation. >> he said, let's go see the president. [video clip] >> he said let's go see the president. when they drop that on you, we were -- well, we were down the hall. elliot said, we have to go to the men's room.

not had to particular but go in the men's room and turned on all the faucets to defeat any listening devices. you have no idea of the atmosphere of the white house in those days. you had no idea whether something was turned on listening to you or not. so we turned on all the faucets and whispered to each other. elliot said i think it's a resignation issue, don't you, bob? and i said, it certainly is. so we turned off the faucets and want and left and went to see the president. now, the resignation issue is a hard one to deal with because you can't walk in and say to a president, you do this or i'll resign. because if he's any kind of a president he'll say he'll do it and make you resign. >> where did you do that? >> in his home. fantastic interview. he seemed very ill at the time. he's still with us. but this is four years ago. and he's a chain smoker and asked me if it would be ok to

smoke. and i love phil nwar. you see the smoke swirling around his head and makes for a nice interview. he was fascinating. he really wanted to do this. the interview lasted two hours. >> did he tell you why he stayed and fired archbold cox? >> actually, i will say this, he's a complex figure and we may get into this issue of my own personal views, because i never wanted the -- i didn't want my views to be part of the scene, and judge bork is somebody whose work i found troubling, to say the least. >> as a judge or as a -- >> as a judge. but it's none of my business. i was working for the federal government and it doesn't matter what i think. i will tell you, i was so impressed in that interview. what a mind. even though i disagree with this man. what a mind. and i also learned he's gotten

a bad wrap for the saturday night massacre. and it's ruckelhaus who made this clear to me and a few others. i interviewed jonathan moore who was elliot richardson's chief aide. richardson and ruckelshaus implored bork to stay. now, bork had a different legal theory what the president could or could not do. but he wanted to resign. bork actually wanted to resign and go back to yale and he just was convinced his yale friend, his colleagues would never forgive him. ruckelhaus and richardson said no, if you resign nobody is running this place and they were afraid alexander haig, someone they mistrusted, would choose a new attorney general who would be a disaster for the country and they said -- they put pressure on bork to stay. bork describes it but the beauty of these oral histories,

you'll see croob rating evidence from other people who don't have the same stake bork does in his own reputation. >> what are you doing now? >> i'm an independent historian. i left and i had a book about kennedy i had been meaning to write, i had a contract for it, and i needed time to write it. i went back to writing and i have a couple books i'm working on right now and i'm a fellow at the new america foundation. >> when did you leave the library? >> november of 2011. >> next is william sapphire. and part of this -- william sapphire is jewish, he was an observer, and tell us what you -- >> this is actually -- for me it's hard. this is heartbreaking because he was really mad at me. >> for the interview? >> oh, afterwards. gosh, i had a terrible conversation with william sapphire about a month before he died. he called me.

>> died in 2009 at 79. >> 79. he was so angry that i had invited john dean to the library. i explained to him in order to establish had this as a nonpartisan space people would take seriously as a research center, given the fights there had been over access to the tapes, the nixon tapes and the documents, it was essential to establish beyond any doubt that this was a nonpartisan space and i felt it important that john dean, an important witness, an important player in the watergate story actually come to the library and speak. and sapphire was furious. i was talking to him because i had invited him to come to the library to do a master class. every summer, or most every summer we have national interns and have a national competition and told the students across the country, come to the nixon library, we're changing this, it's an experiment in public history, be a part of this experiment. we got great applications, 10,

15 times the number of students we needed. one of the things i did was i brought nixon veterans for the students to interact with. i wanted sapphire to come. it was terrible. he said, i will not do this because for me to come to the library it was not a pleasant discussion. the interview was all right. before john dean's visit. the interview was all right, except when i asked him if he'd been wiretapped. but most of the interview was very good. >> explain the jewish connection. >> this was -- this was -- i found, because i asked everybody about everything. if you watch the interview i did with fred malek -- it was very hard for me because i was going about --d ask him

president nixon ordered there be a list of all jews in the federal government. he told bob haldeman, we have this on tape, that jews are disloyal. american jews are disloyal. it is a horrible tape. he ordered this. in the end, 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 malek 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. and there was a real divide among the jewish americans who were in the nixon administration. some are convinced richard nixon was an anti-semite.

some thought he was not. william safire was among those who thought he was not. sa-fire, a "new york times" columnist for years. >> when you ask, does it affect your opinion of nixon? >> some, yeah. it was disappointing, but he was not anti-semitic. to be anti-semitic means to hate jews. he certainly didn't. going back to your question -- >> how would you explain these discussions, ultimately, with haldeman, concerns about jews in the bureau of labor statistics? where does that come from? how do you explain it? >> he saw jews as liberals, as new yorkers. people had been against them from the start. he would look at me and others

as exceptions. but it was liberals that he hated -- shouldn't hate, but it was liberals. and jews and hollywood and new york were part of the target. but i don't go for this some of my best friends of jews argument. but in this case, i think it was the towel-snapping locker room kind of anti-semetism and not something he thought of or something that he carried out. >> 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 safire describes it. on the tapes, 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 was my job. >> here is chuck colson telling a story. >> kissinger had the right, although he abused it, to have come into the oval office

without having somebody announce him. kissinger could walk in when he wanted. nixon told him that because of the severity of foreign policy issues, to 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. we were in the executive office building, the far door swung open. i looked over, it was henry. i caught a glimpse of him. 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 tape and say oh, my lord nixon is a mad man. colson did bring up the dark side of nixon -- everything they say is true. it was pure humor.

nixon loved it. 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 experience with collison. >> was he honest with you? >> 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. it's not because of age. it only happened a year later. 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, i think, ocean, a whole story out there that he never talked about and he took with him to the grave. he knew a lot more. that's just the sense. 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 haig interview, had a number of colleagues participate, as well. it was just the videographer -- they included us in the beginning. but 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. that's what i wanted. >> it comes up in the past about you being a canadian, a liberal, gay, and that richard nixon might not be all that excited about you running the library. i bring this up now because of the dwight chapin 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 chapin 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, jack anderson was a columnist at one time. the largest number of papers in the country. >> anybody who saw the movie "j. edgar," this story and the role that j. edgar hoover plays in the story is hilarious. >> head of the fbi at the time. >> the head of the f.b.i. 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. dwight chapin is the deputy assistant to the president, 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. so the next day, each of us individually -- separately, i should say, we go into the cabinet room. we sit across, right across -- we are sworn in. and then each of us is questioned by j. edgar hoover. he asks all of the questions -- and 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. you're familiar with him? 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. so anderson is getting ready to go for the story. anderson calls cline. cline calls and tells mitchell. mitchell goes and sees nixon, meanwhile, tells haldeman, i want to meet with all of you as a group. the president says, i want you to get to the bottom of this, john. john comes up with the idea of how to get to the bottom, brings j. edgar hoover over and has us deposed. 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. in key biscayne. >> and bob haldeman is the chief

of staff? >> he is the chief of staff -- he has these young california guys and it is a homosexual ring and they all have huts, not huts, but little cabins near each other. in key biscayne. 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 -- was for him to interview each of these young california guys, blonde haired california guys, to ask them about this sexual preference, well, i nearly fell over my -- all you can hear is me 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. >> dwight chapin was in his 20's then and was the assistant to the president and went to prison.

>> oh, yeah. >> what's he like today? >> what a story. mr. chapin, whom i didn't know before, was unlike charles colson, chuck colson, disarming 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. chapin felt he needed to tell some stories to set the record straight. it was an amazing interview. it got chapin, i believe, into trouble among his colleagues and

led to a controversy for the oral history program because chapin said something on tape that he did not say to the senate, he didn't say in the trial and 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 order it, but he was sitting in the room with haldeman. it was done in haldeman's office, which is why it wasn't taped. >> that was donald segretti. >> the dirty tricks campaign in in the 1972 campaign -- the 1972 election, president nixon wanted it, knew about it, and wanted dwight chapin whom, by the way, dwight chapin 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. dwight chapin was his advance man. chapin later was the head advance man before he went into the white house. this man was extremely close to richard nixon. >> donald segretti -- >> they went to school together at usc. >> let's talk about donald segretti. >> he was a prankster who had done tricks on 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 and he's sitting there with haldeman. they say, bob says it, did you know anyone who can do that type of stuff, we should have somebody like that. so i said, well, let me think about it. so i went out and i thought about it -- i thought of donald

segretti. don had been a roommate at u.s.c. and was just leaving the judge advocate's position in the army. i thought, don -- he is very anonymous and would fit in and could do this kind of thing. >> what happened to segretti? >> he went to jail, too. i actually met segretti. he was that close to doing an interview -- i talked to him twice. he was almost ready to do an interview and he didn't do one for the project. >> why? >> i don't know why. he didn't tell me why. >> he lives in california now? >> i really should not say. i found out where he lived as a result of my job. >> for the record, a couple of things. people who want to see the entire interviews should go to nixonlibrary.gov, or come to us and our video library.

and find a lot of these interviews. also for the record -- you are now an american citizen. >> yes, i was when i did the job. i became a u.s. citizen in 2005. >> you were educated at harvard and yale and johns hopkins. >> i have a b.. a. from yale and an m.a. in john's hopkins and m.a. and ph.d. from harvard in history. >> george shultz was secretary of treasury and secretary of state -- in the nixon administration he was secretary of treasury. when this event was talked about. he's 92 years old, alive, lives in california. here he is talking about john dean. >> johnny walters came to me and said, john dean, the president's counsel, has just brought me a list of i think 50 names of people and wants a full field 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. so they never brought it up with me although on the tapes there's discussion between the president and john dean about who do i think i am holding this up but it was an improper use of the i.r.s. and i wouldn't 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.

not crooks, but let's say that the presidents break the rules. i thought it was a bad lesson for two reasons. one, that was not what you should teach kids. actually, three reasons. one is it's not what you should teach kids. secondly, it is not true. and third, it gives presidents the possibility of redemption if they commit real crimes. frankly, sometimes presidents 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 an 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 gravitas of george shultz to explain that

sometimes the president tells you to do the wrong thing and you say no. i can't tell you how proud i am of that because it shows why our system works. our system could not possibly work if presidents always got their way. >> it's a long story about the controversy within the library system and the foundation and the nixon loyalists but here's a quick question on it before i show more tape. did any of them try to interfere with your request to these people to the interviews? >> my goodness, yes. what happened was not only did this project almost led to my being fired. >> you worked for the federal government, not the nixon -- >> yes, but when you have senator of the united states who takes a personal interest in your work, you can be fired. >> which senator? >> senator lamar alexander. >> what was his point? >> 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 which you can do in senate, because of me, which he admitted because the archives of the united states, the nominee, when the senator lamar alexander and lamar alexander complained about me to him. david ferry is his name. but lamar alexander did not ask david to fire me. but he wanted to raise his concern. to david's ferio's 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 in the white house. >> what happened was, i had interviewed william timmins, who had been the head of the congressional office and he didn't like the interview. >> lamar alexander did not? >> timons. i'd 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 didn't like it. he was in a sense the rabbi -- if you will -- alexander's rabbi or godfather in washington. timons is older and alexander had worked for timons back in the nixon era. i think timmons asked him to do this. but it was because of the interview i did with timons. >> eagle bud crow went to prison. usually the question he tells us about the photograph of elvis in the oval office but here's another one 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 gotten there more than two or three minutes after he got there. 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. and dr. decash was there and min ola sanchez was there and i believe that was it. plus only four secret service agents. it was woefully understaffed. it was a scary time. we got up there while it was still dark. and he spent 45 minutes, maybe longer, talking to the students. 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 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 a drop-by, this was a major effort to communicate with these young people and the crowd grew. it got bigger. as they began to realize this is not rich little, this is richard nixon. this is the real guy. >> 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. overwrought. this is 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 besieged. there were all of these buses that had been lined around the white house to protect the president. the president decides on his own to leave the sanctuary and go among the demonstrators. this is unscripted, this is raw history. i'd heard about it. i read about it. richard nixon mentions it in his memoirs. i'm very happy to say besides bud krogh, we also have one of

the students. nbc located the one student who took photographs -- there are four or five photographs of president nixon's visit. 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 out of 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 crossed international security matters and the relevant agencies have to review the interview. i did not intentionally engaged in discussions of national security. but where it was appropriate, with people who had done it, i asked them questions. to my surprise, they apparently mentioned things that agencies

want to review. >> last video of david gurgen, the youngest of the people we've shown today, he's 70 years old. here's a quick story. >> we watch the speech -- it was shortly after the farewell speech. al haig, chief of staff, called me. i can't remember exactly what he said. but he said we forgot one thing. what was that? we forgot the resignation letter. i said that's very interesting, al, i'd be interested in reading 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, he is in no place to do it. we need you to write the resignation letter. i said, al, i do not know what to say. first of all, to whom does the president resign? >> 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, many, many xeroxes of this letter. richard nixon would later sign them. 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 hours. 350 hours. it is all public domain. >> why aren't you writing a book about this? >> i was not doing it for that reason. >> but you could. anybody could get the papers and write a book. >> of course they could. that was the point. 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. it wasn't to write a book. 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. it's poorly understood, richard nixon's domestic affairs. i raised money. at a certain point the nixon foundation didn't want to pay for these anymore. and a group of alumni of the nixon administration who worked in domestic policy, they helped