january, 2015. grabbed a camera and get started today. q&a," and, open quote then david cameron takes questions at the house of commons. later, dr. richard carmona talking about the response to ebola and other health issues. >> tonight on c-span, "q&a," with historian richard norton smith discussing his book, "on his own terms: a life of nelson rockefeller." then prime minister's questions, and at 10:10, ebola response. >> this week on, "q&a," our guest is author richard norton smith, who wrote the book, "on his own terms: a life of nelson

rockefeller." he explores the wealth, privilege, and power on the nelson rockefeller family, the influence on the republican party over the years, and his time as governor of new york state. smith also talks about rockefeller outside of politics, his marriage to happy rockefeller, and the murky circumstances of his death. >> richard norton smith, after 14 years of work on your book, what would you tell somebody who does not know about nelson rockefeller, who he is, what he did? >> he was a significant, indeed historically significant, figure in a number of fields. on one level, i gave him the name of "rockefeller republicanism," that i would describe as existing views of tens of millions of americans

who may not be aware of the phrase. in a nutshell, a combination of policies that are fiscally responsible and socially liberal. he said himself that he had a republican head and a democratic heart. nead esposito, who was one of them the more improbable of rockefeller's allies, he said that he was too liberal for the conservatives and to conservative for the democrats.

that is too middle-of-the-road politics, that is a worldview that we can hopefully get into, but it does suggest that he is not a figure consigned to the history books that he is someone who politically has relevance. something else that sets them apart that does make him someone out of the 21st century, he had this in norma's confidence that every problem had a solution. he believed that passionately. that is something of a product of a generation that overcame

the depression, won world war ii, was committed to winning the cold war, was committed to putting a man on the moon, was committed to building the national highway system. he was the most powerful member of the most powerful family in the most powerful nation, and arguably its most powerful moment in history. all of that, for starters suggest, he could win any office. he was 32 years old when franklin delano roosevelt invited him to become his latin american coordinator. during world war ii, he not only try to invent what friends called "a better capitalism," a capitalism that was both profitable in latin america but that also had a social conscience. he anticipated the cold war.

he anticipated our then-ally the soviet union of changing. he anticipated what we would call today as the third world that would reassess the capitalist mission. he spent a lifetime pursuing that, among all sorts of other interests. >> we need some basics. he died in what year of what age? >> he died in 1979 at the age of 70 after two rather dispiriting years as gerald ford's vice president, and 15 dominant years as the governor of new york. governor of new york. >> how many times was elected governor? >> he was elected four times, that is a modern record. and you have to remember when he was elected in 1959, when he first took office, it was to be regarded as a potential president. all the more so in his case,

because of the resources that he brought to the office and because of the personality. one of the hardest things for any historian or biographer to do is to capture, convincingly, on paper something as ethereal as charisma. it is a relative term. and different generations define it differently. >> how many times was he married? >> twice. it certainly affected his chances to be president.

i would argue that he would was probably in the wrong party. he never had been nominated by the republican party after 1960. but there is no doubt in a way that today we would find very difficult to understand. >> how long was he married to his first wife? >> over 30 years. they were married a week after he graduated from dartmouth, and they divorced in 1961. >> how long was he married to his second wife? >> 15 years, or so. >> how many children did he

have? >> he had five children, two children by happy. >> how many brothers and sisters did he have? >> one sister, abby, and he had four brothers, one of them was arguably his -- certainly his closest friend. there were some who would argue maybe his only true friend. >> and his brother david is a 99 and still alive? >> yes, that is a book in and of itself. he wrote with considerable candor in memoirs -- i was speaking with a quintessential rockefeller republican, and he had been told that the hardest part was writing honestly about nelson. they had a difficult relationship, particularly towards the end. >> who was nelson rockefeller's father? >> john d rockefeller, junior. he was the oil baron.

john d. rockefeller, jr. was the most complicated of all the rockefellers, i mean, none of us may be totally honest with ourselves, i'm not sure he may have recognize or was willing to acknowledge the degree to which his own philanthropic activities, which took a lifetime, he decided early on he was not going to go into business, he was not going to follow in his father's footsteps, except in philanthropic footsteps. he was never in any way redemptive. he never was trying to make up for some of the criminal activities that had been alleged against his father and the making of standard oil, which

was, of course, the world's first great trust. the mistake in the power -- he was also trying to make up for the mystique and the power surrounded the rockefellers. >> how long did it take you to write this book? 14 years? >> 14 years. >> what were the origins of the book? >> the origins of the book was traced back to a day in 1989, i was 14 years old in august of 1968, and had earned money and had managed to get tickets as a guest of the massachusetts delegation to the republican convention in miami where i was on the floor during a rockefeller demonstration. i can go back four years before the book opens, and there was an extraordinary confrontation on the second night of the 90's it before convention at the cal palace, where rockefeller is

almost booed off the stage by a newly triumphant conservative force led by barry goldwater of arizona. it is a extraordinary and rare moment in history where you can see the page be interned. i mean, the next morning, it was a different republican party. you could not know for sure where he was going to go. but you know you could never go back to the old eastern establishment of the party of dewey and eisenhower. >> we want our folks who are watching that i have known you since 1953. >> no no no, not 1963! >> 1923. >> 1863. [laughter]

>> you have done work for cspan on this. i am still fascinated by this. i'll going to show you some video that goes to the whole issue of 14 years. [video clip] >> 2006 nelson rockefeller book. >> the book is due to publishers in two years, but above all, i'm going to finish that biography of nelson rockefeller, and it should just take six years of my life. >> it will take about two or three years. >> i am up early working on a book that will take just a couple more years. i would like to finish by 2008, which would be the 100th anniversary of nelson rockefeller's birth. >> i have been for the last 10 years working on a biography of nelson rockefeller. >> still working on the nelson rockefeller biography.

>> so here it is. [laughter] was it worth the time? >> oh yes. it was an intellectual adventure of a lifetime. i often say that you start off writing a biography and you and -- end up writing an autobiography. one of the reason it took 14 years was because you obviously have an obligation to your readers to be as objective, to -- you want to be passionate about what you do and dispassionate about how you do it -- so it literally took a while to outgrow that mindset that a 14-year-old took on the convention floor in 1968, but then again, you don't want to go to the other extreme and get rid

of some kind of objectivity, however you define that. that takes a while. there was the best of reasons why it took as long as it did. that is because i was writing this at the same time that the rockefeller archives in particular were opening paper.

him there were millions and millions of paper at the rockefeller archives. in the course of those 14 years, extraordinary things became available for the first time. i lost a year, you could see -- lost a year, the archive open something called "family and friends." hundreds and hundreds of boxes of paper that was pure gold. after reading those, i tour up the first 75,000 words of my paper. it included 100 or more letters from the first wife of nelson rockefeller, known as "todd," to nelson. todd was extraordinarily private. i am not sure now that she would appreciate this invasion of her privacy, as she has been gone close to a decade now, i believe. on the other hand, it is the first time that she has been able to speak for herself. the letters are just remarkable.

they are funny. they are wise. and sometimes they are painful. >> you wrote on the train the picture you have in your book where she is on the far right of the picture and she is on the far left, and one thing you notice right away when you see it is the height rid her height compared to his height. what was the difference in height? >> she was -- i mean, she -- i found her passport, and it lists her height at six foot one inch -- six foot one inch, and her weight as 105 pounds. you can find it offensive. there are edited versions of some of nelson's correspondences with his parents. for example, this was the unedited version. so nelson, a few weeks before their wedding, is reeling off to his mother all of the reasons why he is in love with todd. and it is very sort of clinical, and then he says on the negative side, it is just the fact that she is slightly taller than me. and she is a year older than me, and is -- and she isn't particularly good-looking, which strikes me as a strange thing for a young bridegroom on the verge of his wedding to say to anyone, including his mother.

but that suggest that they were both ambivalent, i think it is fair to say, more than most young couples on the verge of betrothal. and she writes this extraordinary letter in which she says, "i don't know if i am in love or not, i just know that i don't want to be hurt. if you come to me within a year of our marriage and says that you are in love with another woman, it implicitly someone who is better looking than i, it would break my heart." i have this analogy, and if you are watching a hitchcock movie, and you were in the audience and you were shouting at the screen,

don't go in that room, that is how it is like. but they were married. they had five children. twins, unplanned. that was in 1938. and when the twins were born, there were five children, nelson commissioned a his friend to build a guesthouse on the estate, 500 feet from the house the family lived in. >> where is that? >> 30 miles north of new york city on the hazard river. the point is, in 1938, nelson moves into the guesthouse. he took his meals with his family, but he slept in the guesthouse. a permanent guest, if you will, at his own home. in the very real sense, in the fullest sense of the word, came

to an end. that was in the late 1930's. now, of course, the public had no idea of this. when the divorce was announced in 1961, a generation later, it really came as a shock to most people. >> what was he doing in 1961? >> he was governor. he was governor of new york. and he was a very successful governor. it was assumed that he was the front runner for the 1964 republican presidential nomination. >> how many times did he run for president? [laughter] >> depends on how you define "run."

certainly in 1960, he flirted with the idea and in 1964 he went all out, in 1968 he said he would not run and he ran, and there is very little doubt that he hoped to run in 1976 before he was picked by gerald ford to be his vice president. >> if you had to name the one thing he did as governor or as vice president that benefited the nation, not new york, but the nation, what would that be? just one thing. >> i think it was the example he set. it is particularly valuable, not only in the context of then, even more today. he used to say, "the primary function of government is to convert problems into opportunities." now stop and think. he did not have an ideology. he really didn't. the great jack lemond said that nelson rockefeller was not a liberal, he was a baptist. he was raised in a very baptist household and he had his

conscience about giving back. he saw the united states as the rich and powerful rockefeller family, rich and powerful. the united states had an obligation to the rest of mankind. he said that, in his view, "if you don't have good health or good education, i feel that society has let you down." now imagine that transposed to our own politics. arguably, nelson rockefeller was to the left of barack obama's presidency. he operated in a different climate, but imagine a republican among other things, who believed in society, and secondly, believe we should collectively together as a family should have an obligation to provide universally the best possible health care, and the

best possible education. >> where are the archives? >> the archives are at -- great story -- they are just outside the main estate gates at a house that was built for nelson's stepmother. his mother, whom i hope we can talk about because she is such a pivotal part of the story, abby rockefeller, died in 1948. to the muffled horror of his children, he remarried. uncle martha, as nelson referred to her, and whom he was quick to court, would eventually

contribute over $10 million to nelson's political campaign. uncle martha conditioned e-house -- commissioned a house located on the highest point of the estate overlooking the hudson, and it was the place were junior built a house for his father. >> but the archives are there and how extensive are they, excuse me, and how extensive are -- many times have you been there?

>> i made 54 visits to the archives. nelson's is the largest single collection -- not only are they the rockefeller family archives, and if you want to study the history of philanthropy in america, you have to go to the rockefeller archives. they contain, for example, all of the documents of the families but all of the board member decisions. so it is a huge, world-class operation. they were enormously helpful in seeing to it that it did not last more than 14 years. the house in which they are located, it was decided that the archives would be located there, and it turned out that martha had this grand house till. -- built. she never spent a night there. there were two rolls-royce is in the garage, but other than that, there was no signs of occupancy, and it turns out the house led itself beautifully to the purpose of archival facility. >> 14 years doing is, random house is your publisher, did you get an initial advance to do this, and how much did this book do you think cost you?

>> i don't think anyone would be upset if i -- the original advancement was $50,000. but now, you have to remember, random house gave me something much more valuable than money. they give me time. no one -- no one ever pressured me, too, can we hurry this along, we are blank years behind schedule. i cannot tell you how critical that was to the final product. i am grateful for that. i put in a quarter of a million dollars of my own money. that was for travel -- first of

all, new york city is an expensive place to do research, and new york was my base as i went up to the property. i did 150 interviews which entailed a great deal of travel, i took about 60,000 pages of primary source and historical material, diaries, letters, memos, you name it, most of which, again, have not been available in the past. so, i mean, i consider myself fortunate. i am not complaining. most of the $250,000 was raising the question, which is out there anyway, but it made me think about -- i consider myself to have been very lucky. one, that random house was interested in the project at all, and two, you have to remember the first six of those 14 years i was working full-time. first at the gerald ford library museum in michigan, and then

starting two startups. the dole institute at the university of kansas and the abraham lincoln library and museum in springfield. >> one more question and we will go to politics. in the back, you mentioned john mcconnell for credit for maybe saving your life. >> well, that is no exaggeration. [laughter] i believe passionately that authors should stay out of their texts. let the reader form their own opinion. i guess you could say i let down my guard and wrote rather personally in these

acknowledgments. in november of 2010, i had been invited by a number of folks very kindly to various homes for thanksgiving and no one heard from me for several days after that. and this was a following tuesday on november 30. it was a tuesday and calls have been going back and forth, and apparently among this informal network of friends who were curious and then concerned. anyway, and john, who was a very distinguished speechwriter in both bush and ministrations, and before that for dan quayle, john lived in my neighborhood in arlington. and he said i will go and check on him. and he came and knocked on the door, and whatever he saw was sufficiently concerning that he insisted that i accompany him to the hospital. immediately. and it was a wonderful hospital, virginia medical center hospital center about a mile away. we get there, and i thought, oh my god, i'm going to send two hours filling out paperwork,

there was no paperwork, and there were no two hours, it turns out i had had a heart attack. the next day i had another. there were two blood clots. it was sheer luck that none of them headed north. i was told at the time that i had lost the spleen in the kidney and could expect to use -- expect to lose the use of my left leg. it turns out the spleen lucked

out, but in washington the last thing we need is spleen. frankly, i was well aware of how lucky i was, but certainly how grateful i was and if there any reasons that i should feel grateful, my first conscious thought that night in the hospital was i can die because i have to finish this book, you know? and then i wondered if there was a death curse on nelson rockefeller biographers. i had a very prestigious predecessor in this field, a gentleman by the name of cary reich, and he published the first volume in 1996, which covered the story up to nelson's election as senator. it was a great resource for rockefeller students. and then suddenly, tragically, at the age of i think 48 or 49, he was diagnosed two years later with pancreatic cancer and died two weeks later. i can be forgiven on this

for wondering if there was a curse on this project. >> we are about 30 minutes into a 90 minute conversation, and i still have not asked you about the last chapter. let us go to 1960, and here is the gop convention in 1960. >> as the gop convenes in chicago, nelson rockefeller of new york nominates in the early hours. his proposals for the republican platform, agreed to buy vice president in, touched off a storm of controversy. mr. nixon's overwhelming position was rose beyond early expectations. >> so you see that and think what? >> first of all, it is a remarkable fact that as late as 1960, richard nixon, the overwhelming favorite and unchallenged for the nomination,

nevertheless felt it was in his political interest in the middle of the night without telling anyone on his staff to fly to new york for a secret -- turned out to be a six or eight hour meeting -- at nelson rockefeller's apartment. first, he tried to convince rockefeller to get on the ticket as vice president, and when that failed, he tried to meet rockefeller's objections on the platform, which involved -- revolved overwhelmingly around two issues, seemingly opposing one, a stronger civil rights plank. that was an issue that always mattered to his family and to nelson. we will hopefully talk about that later. but secondly, he wanted a stronger military defense plank. he wanted the party, in effect, to repudiate the policy of

fiscal restraint on the budget, including the military budget. it put nixon in a terribly awkward position, yet it was believed that nelson rockefeller and the wing of the party he represented, the old english establishment, had the clout to require this, but at least to be taken seriously. we now know that by 1960, that was probably not the case, it was a matter of perception. it was fed by what we would call today is the mainstream media. >> what did richard nixon and nelson rockefeller think of each other? the >> it is a complex -- they respected each other as rivals. there were certainly any number of occasions when i think each man tried the patience of the

other. oddly enough, during the eisenhower administration, they were allies. when eisenhower was overwhelmingly reelected, rockefeller writes to nixon, saying "thanks to you and the president, the republican party is emerging as the great liberal party of the future." in 1956, people forget that it was not very goldwater the broke the solid south, it was dwight eisenhower. in 1956, dwight eisenhower carried almost 46% of the african-american vote and the majority of southern electors, so because the party turned to goldwater and then in effect on to nixon and reagan and gingrich, because the party took

that turn in 1964, it does not mean that that had to be history. it could have been a very different history. >> where did you get the title of the book? >> in 35 years of writing books, i have got a title that i wanted. from the very beginning it is one thing that never change. >> how old was he in this picture on the cover? >> he would be in his mid-50's. >> "on his own terms," seemed to me to sum up his viewpoints on life, on politics, on women, and on life and on death.

a quick story behind that that goes to the heart of who he was, because it took me much of those 14 years to reach what i thought was an adequate understanding of this very elusive figure -- he was incredibly close to his mother abby aldrich rockefeller, and like i said, she died in 1948, and i was told by someone very close to him that he kept her ashes in his house. happy rockefeller was kind enough to spend half a day with me, and give me a tour -- both of the big house and the house he built for their retirement. every rockefeller house is built with the same floor plan. on the left is the mother's room, and on the right is the father's room. and at the end of the tour, i

see this funerary urn. so i relate the story to her, and she says, all that story is true. because she said that there was a funeral and the ashes were interred somewhere else on the estate, and she said, oh he just reached in and grabbed a handful. now, i don't know many people who would do that, and it tells me two things. two sides of his character. one, there is almost a childlike impetuousness. he was utterly

un-self-conscious. but the other thing that it also suggests that a sense of entitlement that goes beyond the norm. how many of us would entertain for a moment the notion at such a time and place of possessing one's parent in that way? that is on his own terms. he believed he could have life, and i believe death, on his own terms. >> who picked up the quotes at the beginning of each chapter? >> i did. >> i will begin with the quote from murray kimpton, who was he? >> he was someone who was left of center. of that generation, i mean, jimmy breslin -- first of all, new york was a newspaper town

and it generated great journalists -- when nelson rockefeller went into politics in the 1950's. i don't know how many papers there were, but he was a newspaper town, and it generated great journalists who were first of all great reporters, but secondly, political analyst. >> what night?

>> it was what he was that night. july 14, 1954, journalist referred to it as bastille day in reverse. >> it was not exactly a dispute that has gone away, i suppose, one that perhaps has been at least temporarily healed in the wake of 9/11. the fact of the matter is, the republican party, going back to 1912, the theodore roosevelt and william howard taft splitted us under and tr ran a third-party, progressive liberal, or we would call a republican campaign, throughout the century there has been a divide. it was geographical, it was more ideological, it was substantive, the conservatives in the midwest, for example tend to be isolationists in terms of foreign policy. the eastern liberals -- the eastern establishment -- tended to be internationalists, much more, for example, much more willing to get into world war ii before pearl harbor. they also, however, were divided about their reaction to the new deal. the eastern liberals were willing to accommodate the changes -- a much more active role for government.

the conservatives west of the appalachians, for the most part, held out for a more hard shell view, if you will. you know, the liberals believed -- and this is critical, nelson rockefeller, as i said, had no ideology -- he believed first and foremost that a problem should be taken care of through the private sector. if the private sector would not or could not, then he would look at the partnership for government. the idea being the eastern establishment, which first of all needed a strong, robust, growing, private economy, whatever it took, the government could be an agent is that.

that is an idea that is as old as alexander hamilton. if you had that, you could not pay for the compassion and you could not afford to do all of these social programs. so they put, what they thought was the horse before the car, and they felt the new deal was acting in reverse. >> let us go to some video from the convention in 1964, when they nominated barry goldwater. [video clip] >> these extremists feed on hate and terror, they encourage rigidity. these are people who have nothing in common with americanism. the republican party must repudiate these people.

[crowd noises] >> extremism. [laughter] then as now, a topic of much discussion. first of all, you have to have a little bit of contact. --context. that convention came one month after the past 9054 -- passed 1964 civil rights act, that was passed with republican votes and that nelson rockefeller strongly supported. in fact, he wanted a voting rights act at the same time, which would come about a year later. barry goldwater, who it must be said, had personally been a leader in desegregating not only his family's department store in phoenix but also the arizona national guard, nevertheless,

goldwater was of that rugged individualist school, and he did not campaign for the civil rights of african-americans. we saw a generation -- it was like a volcano. everything about new york that you hated, everything about the eastern establishment and the media, which exercise a much greater centralized, dominant position -- earlier in the evening, dwight eisenhower, by accident, he gets up and in an attempt to foster unity, mentions in a throwaway line "sensation-seeking columnists who could not care less about the good of our party." people started saying down with walter whitman, down with walter whitman.

a few hours later, there were delegates on the floor shouting at nelson rockefeller. "you lousy lover!" it was a reference in the fact -- to the fact that nelson rockefeller had divorced his first wife and had married a woman who in the press had abandoned her children in order to marry him. >> what were the circumstances about the divorce and the remarriage to happy rockefeller, and what is her full name? >> margaretta, who is married to james murphy. exactly when the relationship began is murky. i believe it began earlier than has been suggested until now. >> what is that mean? >> by that i mean the mid-1950's. most accounts suggest in the 1958 campaign when she worked in

a rockefeller's uber notorious -- rockefeller's gubernatorial campaign. one of the things that i discovered in the course of research of this book is a year went by between when nelson wanted to announce a divorce and the actual announcement. there were people around him who even then -- there were people in 1958 who had talked him out of getting a divorce before he ran for governor, they argued that it would kill his political career -- and he reluctantly went along. but it is very clear, that left to his own devices, he intended to end his marriage to todd, and, if at all possible, marry happy murphy. this is a different culture.

hollywood adulterers -- 10,000 people turned out for the world premiere of "cleopatra" a month after the rockefeller-murphy marriage. they were celebrated, but a politician -- that is actually an important part of nelson's unwitting legacy, because the fact of the matter is, beginning with his divorce and remarriage, and sort of spectacularly advancing to the circumstances surrounding his death, the media took a whole different approach to distinguishing what was public and what was private. and we could argue over whether that has been good for democracy, but there is little doubt he played a very significant role. today, i don't think the circumstances surrounding his divorce and remarriage would have nearly as great an impact.

but you have to remember, the republican party in 1962, '63, '64, was also a culturally more conservative party than the rest of the country. jack kennedy could not believe that rockefeller would risk everything by getting a divorce. he told ted graham that no man could ever love love more than politics. which probably tells you more about him than anything else. but it does sum up the prevailing view.

>> when you spoke with happy rockefeller, did she tell you anything about the relationship? >> yes, she was very candid about it. bill scranton, the former governor of pennsylvania, recently deceased, close to rockefeller personally, politically, and certainly because of his own mainline connection, he knew both mrs. rockefellers and ran for president in 1964. he knew both todd and happy. he thought todd was very intelligent and he liked her, but he always thought that she and nelson were mismatched. he said don't make the mistake of equating warmth with sex. nelson needed warmth. i understand exactly what he meant. happy is a very warm woman. happy could give him really what todd could not.

that is a factor. the thing about the whole relationship that i think this book really breaks ground, and it is only possible because of the passage of time, if you go back and read coverage at the time and read coverage since, every single account of the rockefeller divorce and remarriage is couched in political terms. it talks about what it cost him and why on earth did he take that risk. what no one has ever asked until now, and obviously what i was interested in getting from happy rockefeller, was to forget politics for just a moment. what were the emotional compensations that nelson got that made him overlook whatever risks? she told me that they never discussed the political consequences. i believe her. she also told me something very

poignant and shrewd at the same time. she went to new hampshire and campaigned in 1964. she was in the not so early stages of her pregnancy. she went to new hampshire, and for the most part people were very friendly, and she said you had no idea how many people wanted to feel the baby. that there were people who were anything but friendly. she was standing on the steps of a church, and these women come up and say, "oh mrs. murphy, you have not brought your children with you today." which was about as nasty as you could get. and she says she learned something wonderful at that moment. she said whenever someone he says something horrible to you, you counter it with a comment.

-- compliment. so she said, "my, that is a lovely dress you've got on." it disarms -- it is an interesting observation and dispose a popular notion that this woman was totally under first in politics. nelson rockefeller had the whole estate in her judgment. i still believe, although she downgrades her role in this, i think she was a pivotal part of his decision to move on the abortion issue. new york repealed its old abortion laws and when the legislature two years later, moved to repeal the repeal under pressure from the church, he stopped that action. and when roe v wade came about

two years later, he upheld a woman's right to choose. >> how old would happy rockefeller be today? >> happy would be 88. >> how many of all of his children are still alive? >> he had five children by todd, and two by happy. of those eight, six are still living. the eldest son, rodman, born in 1932, and died several years ago, and of course many years ago, there was a tragedy, almost a greek tragedy, it was like three days after they had announced that they were separating, that the word came from today's indonesia that michael rockefeller, the youngest son from his first marriage, and the one that everyone agrees to whom he was the closest and for whom he entertained the highest hopes, was lost. >> how old was he?

>> michael would have been 22 or 23. >> did anyone find out what had happened? >> no. as horrible as the experience was at the time, i think the family has been haunted to some degree and exploited but certainly haunted ever since by continual efforts to dredge this up and to spin all sorts of horrific theories about how he may have died. >> you noticed i have not asked you about the last chapter. >> i did notice. >> let us go to 1968 were he made an announcement for president. [video clip] and >> today i announce my active candidacy by the nomination for

the republican party for the presidency of the united states. [applause] i shall do everything i can, with all of my energy, now and in the weeks before the national convention, to bring before the people the dimensions of the problems as i see them, and how i believe as a free people we can meet them. i believe firmly that true unity is forged by full examination of the facts, and the free interchange of honest convictions, and very simply, by taking this course at this time, i feel i can best serve my country. [applause]

>> now this is off the subject right there, but as i watched him reading, i go back to the very first thing you wrote, the very first two words, you wrote, "nelson rockefeller suffered from dyslexia." >> that is right. >> he did not hear the word until he was 50 years old. he had always thought he had a low iq and intellectual deficiency. so he took his mother's advice from a very early age, and that was always to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, which is to explain the task forces and the experts and the panoply of gurus who surrounded rockefeller.

he could not spell, he was not a natural speaker from a text, but he compensated. he learned to compensate. he was extraordinary off-the-cuff. he was really one of the great, as i say, street campaigners of all time. 1968 is fascinating because one month before he got into the race, lyndon johnson pulled out of the race, and martin luther king was assassinated, and by the way, one of the things i discovered, he was very close to dr. king. he had come to the rescue of king's birmingham crusade financially, and that of course, meant that nelson called mrs. king and the follow-up was that he sent his advance men and organized and paid for dr. king's funeral.

>> when was the first known? >> he did not want it known. he said to the advanced man that i talked with that we don't want to take advantage of the family's suffering. >> so when was it first published? >> when he died. there was a little story to that effect, but the other critical thing that happened between during that month was on april 23, he was smuggled with happy into the johnson white house. i talked to the man who took him in and took him out. >> who was that? >> larry temple. he is with the johnson foundation out. but then he was a young staff member.

lbj wanted nelson to run for president. they had a very -- >> he was a democrat. >> oh yes, he understood he was not going to change parties. later on, hubert humphrey approached nelson regarding the campaign. >> by the way, you use a book from lyndon johnson, and it says that nelson's wife is not going to let him get off the ground, that was in 1964. >> that was part of the political realities of the time. it was funny, because people also have the contemporary connections. remember the mississippi elections when senator cochran won the him probably with the

support of african-american voters who had registered. the great climactic, epic battle of these 64 campaign was goldwater versus rockefeller in california. which, and boasters, believe it or not, there was a poll but said that 70% of california republicans considered themselves moderates through the but it was the primary campaign to end all primary campaigns. groundwater was way ahead, and stews spencer, the great political strategist from the several campaigns, including ronald reagan, told me that were almost turned it around were african-american voters, mostly in los angeles, 50,000 of whom reregistered as republicans to vote in the primary for nelson rockefeller. that was indicative of the appeal that rockefeller had to minority americans.

>> was it over for him in 68? >> the problem was, twofold. one, it was a conservative party that was moving further and further to the right. they were simply uncomfortable with nelson rockefeller's positions. secondly was his failure to understand the difference between running for the nomination and running in the fall. every time he ran for president, he ran a november campaign. a campaign reaching out to the general electorate. but it is delegates that select the nominee. the great line -- he had an ironic sense of humor, which he mostly controlled.

someone asked him at the end of 68, after nixon was nominated, that night he had a press conference. it was a young reporter, who said it is a resume, and said, why have you been nominated for president? and rockefeller looked at him and said, young man, have you ever been quite republican national convention? >> did you ever meet him? >> three times, and passing. -- in the passing. in 1968. at the ford white house. we had a 45 minute meeting with him. i notice how much older he looked. he was one of those people -- if you look at pictures, certainly when he first ran for governor, he looked younger. h began to catch up with him, which is one reason why the later years were increasingly difficult.

>> at the end of his life, much money was he worth? >> the estate was valued, for taxation purposes, at around $215 or $250 million. the book was from trust from his father and grandfather. the only time in his life that he made money, oddly enough, was at the end of his life in an art reproduction business. which horrified purists. but which showed real promise. he started what is called the nelson rockefeller collection, and was selling reproductions.

paintings and furniture and hejects d'art that owned. >> you mentioned earlier about civil rights and his interest in it, and then in 1971, we have video of a conversation between nelson rockefeller and richard nixon that i have heard you say, and the last 14 years, that your attica chapter is your best. >> it is the one that i am proudest of, because i think it is the first time, first of all, i have the benefit of perspective. 40 years have gone by. it is a different culture. for example -- >> before we get there, attica was what? >> it was a correctional facility in new york, east of rochester and buffalo. it was overcrowded, disproportionately populated by african-americans, underfunded.

>> he is governor. >> he is governor. interestingly enough, he had brought in a man named russ oswald to run a new department of corrections and reform the system. but new york was in a budget crunch. the two priorities collided.

but it is hard to make people, 40 years later, understand, immerse themselves in the culture of 1971. not only the prison culture, but not only the real sense of grievance held by african-americans about the justice system in its entirety. but also a culture in which, once the takeover occurred, in september 1971, part of this was just fate. rockefeller was out of state, he was in washington, d.c. it was not a part of the unfolding process as it took place the first day of the takeover. the critical decision that was not made, the critical decision that oswald prevented from being made, was using force to immediately retake the prison. the fact is that there was

president for this in new york state. -- precedent for this in new york state. herbert lehman was faced with identical situation in a prison takeover, and you don't be steps that rockefeller took, that the state would not negotiate, and was was acclaimed for it. >>, troops were sent in -- how many troops were sent in? >> there were hundreds of prisoners involved. there were 43 that died in the retaking of the prison. >> who retook it? >> 11 were security guards and the rest for prisoners. >> who retook it? >> than a backup a bit. the criticism against rockefeller is twofold. the takeover, which was badly botched, and the argument is made that if rockefeller had been there, gone on bc and, at the very least, he could've prevented things -- he had representatives that were there were beating him information and

so on. -- feeding him information and so on. the negotiations involved a number of outside observers. today, it would not happen. you were not inviting people like william, who clearly had a political agenda of his own, to be a outside observer. >> a liberal activist. >> and proud of it, in the current sterile tradition. -- clarence darrow tradition. you would not invite in tv cameras to observe this. strategically, a strong case

could be made that, had there been force applied originally -- a part of the prison was retaken. oswald believed he was a negotiator, editor that he could not negotiate. >> let's little of the conversation between him and general rockefeller. [video clip] >> the courage that you showed, it was right, i do not do what the paper says. do it that way, because if you are granted amnesty in this case, you are about prisons in an uproar all over the country. >> that's right. >> it's a tragedy. >> i only called you because i want to alert you that we are going in.

when we went in, we could not tell that all of the hostages would be killed and maybe two or 300 prisoners. the whole thing was led by the blacks. >> i'll be darned. were all the prisoners that were killed blacks? >> offhand, yes. we only did it when they were attacking our people. otherwise, we recaptured all be cellblocks without shots, and no troopers were wounded. well, one was, in the leg. >> what are you hearing? >> in some ways, rockefeller at his worst. he is telling the president what he things he wants to hear. back up just a bit. amnesty, they talked about. that became the issue around which this revolved. the prisoners who had taken over the facility submitted a list of demands.

various lists of demands. they included, among other things, the right to fly to a non-imperialist country. and amnesty. the latter was pretty quickly dismissed. many of the demands were met. the observers got together, spent a day, went through the list, and most of the prisoner demands -- which, by the way, were perfectly legitimate. one of the problems of looking at attica is that for most people, that amount, it was the first time there were exposed to how horrible conditions were in those facilities. and then people conflated before

-- the horror of the facility with rockefeller's refusal to go and then the botched retaking. what they overlooked was, to rockefeller, the matter of principle, which was amnesty. if you are granted amnesty, he believed, or if he went to the first thing is they would demand that he would come into the cellblocks with them. then they would be asking for the president. what were the long-term consequences if government gave in? >> we still have not talked about the last chapter. we are going to. first of all, there is some video that we have found that shows how the rockefeller name lives on. this has to do with some hip-hop artists. [video clip]

>> my mom with to prison in 1991. my mother, 1991. somehow, my momma ends up serving a mandatory minimum sentence of 14 years. my mother gets out in 2002. that is 11 years on a 14 year sentence. that happened all across the hood. >> rockefeller laws are unjust laws that have been on the books for 30 years. they take nonviolent offenders and mocked them up for a very -- lock them up for every long time. people who are guilty of abusing themselves, they go to jail for up to 20 years. >> the rockefeller drug laws. >> that is a part of the legacy. put it in context. this is a dark side of his conviction that every problem had a solution, and that included drugs.

he told a friend one day, before the laws were introduced, you know, i wasted $1 billion trying to eliminate the drug scourge. there have been two separate rockefeller programs to attack drugs. both of them failing. on the third try, he took this punitive approach. people gasped at the time. the sweeping, as you heard -- first-time offenders typically were sent up for 15 years. and the law enforcement was all but precluded from plea-bargaining. it was a drastic approach to a problem that appeared to be insoluble. the interesting thing is, if you

-- if you talk to lawrence rockefeller, he believed that if nelson had served a fifth term, realizing that the third program had failed, there would have been a fourth. call it a strength, call it a weakness, he was incapable of acknowledging that there were problems that could not be solved. or that he -- that sometimes the only rational response was to do nothing. that was not in his vocabulary. >> looking at chapter 26. the title of the chapter is the day of the dead. we have talked about this a lot, but how important is this

chapter to this book in terms of what people expect. >> there are people who will look at it first, rent or noncurrent. i know people who will look at it to decide if i am . there are people who will look editor decide if i am honest. whether i am a part of the cover-up, in effect. i came to the conclusion that the historically significant aspect of nelson rockefeller's death is the cover-up that was improvised that night by a man named hugh morrow, his communication director, who thought, at the time, that he would protect the family from embarrassing revelations regarding the fact that

rockefeller, at the time of his death, was with a woman not his wife. what morrow did, unintentionally, and with the best of intentions, produced the worst of result. this is a post-watergate world, and there are first rate reporters. people who are out there investigating the discrepancies, and cracks appear. unfortunately, for a generation of americans -- sadly, i think -- it defined nelson rockefeller. i had the advantage of time. 30 plus years, i have the opportunity to talk to a number

of people who were more candid they had been the past. i went through joe, a speechwriter for rockefeller, a wonderful man and a great writer, a great scholar of world war ii. joe, in his memoir, which was published just after all of this, clearly pulled his punches, and appropriately so. there are questions of taste and loyalty. he had been a part of the rockefeller inner circle. i had an opportunity to go through all of his notes, and i was not interested in peeping through the keyhole, either. there is one historically significant question that needs to be answered. did nelson rockefeller die needlessly that night?

could he have been saved? first of all, what people did not know, was that rockefeller was dying. he had very serious heart problems. he knew he was dying. he had acknowledged as much to members of his family before he died. it is entirely possible he would have died that night, wherever he was. >> so, where was he? >> on that day, he had been putting his house in order in any number of ways. he was working on a series of art books, one of which was about to be published. late in the afternoon, he left the room at 5600, the rockefeller office, went to the buckley school for a fundraiser to be addressed by henry kissinger.

his sons both attended the buckley school. i talked to people who were there talked about how grey he seemed. he usually you only drank dubin eight. he asked for something stronger. he was clearly not well. he went home, he had dinner. i talked to mrs. rockefeller, and most of them difficult for her to relive the evening. her view was that he did not want to die in front of his boys, corrupted or the -- he did not want to drop dead at the apartment. you have to remember that his mother had died of a massive heart attack at the ability for a perfect weekend with her family. nelson foresaw the same. that is the death that he wanted

when i say "death on his own death on hiso--- ." she also told me that she heard him pick up the phone and called megan, who had joined his staff as vice president and who had been working as the head of an editorial team on this series of books. it was very clear to other people that they were a part of it romantic relationship. she was 25 at the time. and she lived in an apartment three doors down 54th street from the rockefeller townhouses. they were twin townhouses at 13 and 15 west 54th. anyway, that is where, according to the story, they met, were working on this book. he had a heart attack, died instantly. it was reported that the police found him on the floor, fully clothed, papers -- that was the story that was given out to the press. hugh morrow, for reasons that we have discussed, said that he was stricken at room 5600.

for whatever reason, they claimed that he had no history of heart disease, which is simply wrong. and of course, literally, there were press going to the rca building, expecting a body to be brought down. the whole thing unraveled over the weekend. the importance of that, 35 years later, is this. that night, in my opinion,

marked a transformation as great as the second night in the cow palace marked a transformation. only this time instead of a , political party, it was the way that journalists covered the private lives of politicians. you can draw a line from january 26, 1979, to gary hart and the monkey business. and anthony weiner, you name it. i believe that, beginning with "the new york times" and it is important to know why they did what they did. i interviewed someone at the times, who shall remain nameless, who was close to rockefeller, who told me that he had a call from "the times."

they said, you people have never lied to us before. you may have spun things, but you have never lied. we are sufficiently outraged that we have five reporters working the story and we are subjecting the 911 call to electronic analysis. and with the information, and one other confidential source, there is a missing hour between when the call was made in the story was put out. the whole story revolves around what happened during the missing hour. it was strongly intimated to me that the call, the 911 call, was not made by megan, but was made by a second woman who lived in her building. a prominent journalist.

i asked to talk to her, and she declined. >> did you talk to megan? >> she did not respond. those are really the only two people. i did 150 interviews, and they are the only people who declined. the third person, by his own admission, was joe, the more advanced man, the ultimate fixer. a very competent man. his codename was little caesar. and you could be trusted to take -- he could be trusted to take care of anything. he told me that he was one of three people who knew what happened that night. he would not go into detail, but he dropped clues.

i subsequently learned from friends of his that the story that he had told over the years is, in fact, not true. but he told people, close friends, in later years, that he himself had actually gone to 54th street as a part of an emergency effort to clean up the scene and to redress the body. >> the body was without clothes? >> that is what i was told by the paramedic. the one who was first on the scene. >> you are naming jim? he is still alive today. >> had a distinguished career in medicine. he is associated with yale. >> was he there? >> yes. and here is the remaining, if you well, mystery, because there is a clear discrepancy between his account of what he found, which i find completely

credible, and the original story put out by the police. and the missing link just may be one other source, who indicated that there was a man, unfortunately deceased, a history professor, a lifelong new yorker, who taught a class at john jay college of criminal justice in new york. one night, two members of his class, police, offered him a ride home. as they approached was 54th street, they began reminiscing about that night, and suggested that, in fact, they were called not to 13 west 54th street to 25

-- but to 25 west 54th street. and that the remains were moved from 25 to 13. i do not know if that is true. i think that it fits. my approach to it is as a cold case. i think that the historical significance lies in the fact that, based on what i have learned, that historical question that i mentioned earlier. i believe nelson rockefeller died instantly. i do not believe he could have been saved. i do not believe anyone was responsible that evening. and the only other real historical significance, and it is lasting, is the impact on journalism. >> you quote happy rockefeller in the book, heading up one of

the sections. "once, a small creature came into my world. he took the largest fortune in the world and decided to enjoy it." did you say that to you? >> -- didn't she say that to you? -->> she did. i understood, and the time i spent with her, much of what rockefeller found irresistible in this woman, including a kind of wisdom. i pointed out that she did not go to college, like lots of women of her class at that ime. but she is a lifelong reader, a voracious reader, especially of history and of literature. the on to that b -- --beyond that, there is the streetsmarts, and instinctive grasp of human motives. you can understand why he relied on her judgment of people.

>> this book is 14 years in the making. " on his own terms" is the title. if you have something final to say, you can, but i want to finish by showing a video clip of your first appearance on this network, because you had a tremendous impact on this network on history as your help guide us through these years. here you are, and again, but may mention, it is "on his own terms: the life of nelson ockefeller." you won't wake new city. best you are on to a new city. what are you going to do? >> i want to move back to grand rapids michigan, or the next six years of my life is neatly programmed out. i will be working on in writing -- and writing a biography of