know, that question, it was in the real east room where nixon called together his friends and senior it was nixon unscripted. and he talked about his mother and his father. it was a very emotional -- no. it was. >> yes. >> it is nixon raw. there was a moment in that speech, which i think is so important to the nixon presidency and the legacy of nixon. and that is near the end -- he waved his hands kind of like, this is why i called you all here. he said "always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don't win unless you hate

them. and then you destroy yourself." now, think about the brilliance -- no, seriously -- of that statement. he identified hate as the poison that grows too much of watergate, too much of the mentality in his white house. and to his credit, at that moment, he's giving up the presidency, which he had fought all his life for. he is detached intellectually enough to realize what had happened, that the hating had an impact on those he hated and what occurred and investigations and so forth. but that it had destroyed him.

time, tosistant at the , k and to the same conclusion. -- came to the same conclusion. we'd like to take questions. let's go. >> ok. >> john, thank you. >> mr. woodward, where and when did you first meet mark felt? >> in the white house when i was in the navy. one of the jobs admiral moore, who i was working for, gave me the job to be a courier to take documents over to the white house. this was in my last year in the navy, 1969, 1970, and i went outside the situation room and i was supposed to deliver to somebody by name, and so i had to wait. there was a guy sitting next to me and it turned out he had to wait about an hour. as i said in one of the books,

it's like we were two passengers seated next to each other on a long plane ride. and so i introduced myself and he reluctantly introduced himself. and he was number three in the f.b.i. at that point, i believe. and we had a lot of time to talk, and i was trying to figure out what to do with my life and i got his phone number and kept in touch with him. and then the accident was first in my reporting career when arthur bremer shot george wallace before watergate. mark felt was an assistant -- assisted me on that work that i did, and then when watergate

came, he was right in the cat bird's seat. >> i'm going to take a question from the theater. how differently do you think watergate would have played out with today's instant blog media and 24/7 news coverage? >> interesting. >> well, i don't think a newspaper can hold the story as long as the "post" did without -- without surrendering it to television and to other stories. we really held it from -- what was the -- i forgot the dates -- the date we ran it was august -- >> yeah. i mean we were -- we would run stories and you would ask questions and it would be days or weeks before we would run stories sometimes. you, of course, could not do that now. >> no. because we wanted -- it was plain in see that we were dealing with something that modestly was earth shaking, and the compulsion to be right is born into a journalist, and even

more then. but we would -- if the -- if the -- there was another paper or another -- another -- yeah. if the "new york times" or the "l.a. times" were on the story and writing it today, it would have moved a lot faster. >> but if you had the internet and blogs and so forth, a lot of young journalists have asked about this and said well you can , just go to the internet and find out. the point is, this information was not on the internet. even though it didn't exist. and an equivalent story now, in 2011, would not be on the internet, that you need human sources, people who are there who are going to say this is what occurred and this is what it means. so the human element is

absolutely critical. people who are journalists now who spend all day at the computer and on those screens are missing something. >> well, and a related question. with newspapers becoming obsolete -- i didn't write this -- [laughter] today, what advice would you give a high school student thinking of pursuing a career in journalism? >> i don't know. [laughter] i've been asked that. i've had two children who became journalists, and i would go get a job on a small paper and learn how to write, learn how to write a declarative sentence so people could understand you and you could make it clear. [applause]

that ought to be obvious. senathouldn't it? work hard is so essential. i mean, really hard. i think -- i think there was a period when i went to the office every day for a year and a half. sundays, the whole nine yards, just as hard as i could go. this is when i was made assistant managing editor of the "post." i just had to -- i had to be sure i knew not only what was happening but who was the cast of characters, who you had to work with. first of all,ers

, it's the best job in the world. if somebody came and spent a year on this planet and went back and was asked, who were the people who had the best jobs in america, they'd say the journalists. why? because you get to make entries into people's lives when they're interesting and then you get out when it's not interesting. all the doctors and everybody, you have doctors see all these routine cases. the routine, bradlee hated the routine. that is boring that . find out something that we don't know, something that's interesting to you, always on -- you go to the news room in the morning and there's that electricity still. what is hidden? what don't we know? why does -- why did somebody say this or do that? >> who's lying? >> who's lying. exactly. >> a lot of people do not tell the truth. [laughter]

>> let's take a question on the side that . yes, you right there. hello. you had a question? >> this is kind of along the same vein, newspapers and journalism. do you think a story of the magnitude that you had would be possible in today's newsroom? >> sure. it would be possible in today's newsroom. and -- >> what was the question? >> would it be possible in today's newsroom to do a story like this? i think absolutely. and you -- we have -- ben doesn't care for this point, but i'm going to make it, anyway. one of the sayings at the "post" was all good work is done in defiance of management. [applause] >> don't give me the finger. [laughter]

that is from the heart. that is from the heart. it doesn't mean you break the rules or you break the law. i mean, read "all the president's men" or see the movie about it. you know, there's a living walking defiance of management, and it is an aggressiveness, it is a curiosity. i mean, carl taught me, taught ben, taught so many of us about, you just don't sit by. i remember once there was somebody we wanted to talk to and this somebody was getting in a cab going to new york with a bunch of other people. and carl just dove through the window into the cab. [laughter] and he said,later i'm at the airport, i don't have any money but i have to go to new york with these people.

so it's not a defiance. it's a -- look, you're the master of this. you give people a lot of strength. go out, find out what's going on. you're not going to find out what's going on sitting in your office or going out to lunch occasionally. you can get a width of what is going on, but the real hard stuff you're not getting to. so you need to be in that position -- our judgment is this is a story. we're going to do this. and then you need editors and owners who say, ok, go to it. we're going to -- no. look, where was the risk in watergate? to catherine graeme and bradlee. they were established figures. carl -- if this had turn out to be not be provable, he could have gone to "rolling stone" and

been a rock critic. [laughter] i could have done something distasteful like go to law school. [laughter] so we were young kids. it was a risk on our personal level, but their risk was institutional. if you have to be willing to take institutional risk. if you're not, then you -- you know, you always said about it, it will come out. it is the daily miracle. >> the daily miracle? >> yeah. >> yeah. >> that's wonderful. got a question? >> yes. i wonder, if watergate would happen today, i mean, it's hard was the president resign over it? it's hard to believe that crime such as that has not happened ever since. [laughter]

have they -- have people -- would a president resign for this? >> do you know something? [applause] >> no come i don't, but i'm sure you do. >> you never know. always want to ask. >> over there. >> if the pentagon papers were to come before the supreme court today, how do you think the court would rule? >> well, all of the scalias and the originalists and the because

-- because it's already been decided, i would say it's already been decided and let the pentagon papers stand. that is a vital ruling to the democracy of this country. i think the biggest problem we have in this country is secret government, and the -- [applause] whoever said it, democracies die in darkness. i think that's true. if you have a group of people who say we now have the ball and we can use the government to our political will, and no one's watching, there's no accountability system, we're in trouble. >> one of the -- i mean, one of the outcomes of watergate that you all can benefit from in this library is access information

about your government, and that's one of the legacies. and it should strengthen and gladden the heart of citizens that they know they can get information about their government that perhaps their government would rather them not have. [applause] >> right on. >> is investigative journalism today the same caliber and when you worked at the "post"? >> i still work. >> i mean -- >> sure. we keep hammering at it. i do spend most of my time doing books. words,"t book, "obama's there are tens of thousands of words from top secret meetings and discussions in the oval office and private decision

moments for the president in that book, and it's not something somebody handed out to me. it's the process of going around. i some years ago saw all the "all the president's men" movie again, and i hadn't seen it for about 25 years, and i realized, all the good work -- or most of the good work is done at night. you get the truth at night and lies during the day more often. bush, andr books on when i was working on the fourth book -- i want to tell quickly this is story. there was a general who would not talk to me. e-mails, phone calls, intermediaries, i really needed him. so i found out where he lived, and the ideal time to make an unannounced, unscheduled visit for an are interview with a general is 8:15, because they haven't gone to bed. they've eaten dinner.

so i knocked on the door and he opens the door. i'll quote him directly. he said "you! are you still doing this shit?" [laughter] [applause] and -- now, this -- i wanted to kind of say, well, i don't like your characterization of my work. but i just was silent. and he looked at me and literally just kind of -- come on in, i left three hours later with the answers to the questions. from somebody who supposedly would never talk. >> you have some -- there are some journalism students here. >> let me just say something about investigative reporting. all reporting is investigative.

the second question you ask, you're investigating. somebody gives you an answer and if that doesn't satisfy, you dig deeper, dig deeper. so i think you ought to -- we all ought to understand and government servants should learn to expect that all reporting is going to turn investigative along the line, and it's not the scariest word the english language. i mean, in your general conversation, if you're trying to get your child to tell you what the hell he or she has been doing, you're really investigating their version of it. >> bob, you're one of the most celebrated interviewers, and you've interviewed most everyone who matters. -- who mattered in a number of administrations. what advice would you give

aspiring journalists about conducting successful interviews? >> we talk about the internet cable news, the speed, i'm slow, i am patient. i think the key to interviewing people is do your homework, don't just google them. find out -- if i'm going to interview somebody in the pentagon or the state department or the white house, and they wrote an article in "foreign affairs" or one of your obscure academic journalists -- >> thank you. >> i will get it and read the damn thing. it's always hard. [laughter] and then ask them about it in the interview and they say, i thought only my mother read that . it's not a ruse. you have to -- i think the key description is, you have to take people as seriously as they take themselves.

and people in these jobs take themselves very seriously. in fact, i think most people take themselves seriously. and if you meet them on the terms of, i really want to know what you did and what you think and i'm not in a hurry. i'll stay for three hours or five hours or whatever is necessary, you can make in roads. and there is something about people in this country, most of them, even we found in watergate, people who had done -- committed illegal acts, who kind of believed in the first amendment and were willing to talk. sometimes extensively and sometimes in more limited ways, but there is this community of interest that everyone has, let's know what's going on and who are the people who have the levers of power.

>> tell them to do their own work, too, find out what the hell -- just don't sit there and ask questions that bounce in your head at the last minute, but pursue something and get them to explain themselves. and then try to get them to explain it again. see if their story changes a little. then wonder why. it's really fun. [laughter] >> gentleman in the back over there? >> thank you for coming today, gentlemen. with nearly 40 years of perspective, how do you view the president nixon pardon of -- or president ford's pardon of mr. nixon? and as a historian i see a lot of political figures as gray rather than black and white. presidentvements of

nixon still resonates today? >> oh, god, i hate to answer that question, because i don't really know. i think what was right in the thing probably was to -- you know, give him a second -- pardon him. >> can i tell a story about the pardon? >> go-ahead that ahead. >> the day that ford went on television about 30 days after he assumed the presidency, early on a sunday morning to announce the pardon, hoping no one would notice. it was noticed. and -- but not by me. i was asleep. and carl bernstein called me up and woke me up. now, carl, who has the ability to say what occurred in the fewest words with the most drama said -- "the son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch." [laughter]

i am just quoting. and quite honestly, i thought and carl thought and i think -- and i know ben thought for a long time that there's something the dirty about the pardon, evidence and an aroma of a deal. there was a question of justice, why does nixon get off and why do 40 people go to jail and dozens more have their lives wrecked? and 25 years later, i decided to take the bradlee method of neutral inquiry, what happened, and i did this book called "shadow" about the legacy of watergate and the presidency -- clinton at that time. and i called gerald ford up and asked to talk about the pardon figuring.

he said, sorry, i've got a golf tournament. no. he said come on. he was in new york that day, and i interviewed him for hours there. and in colorado where he had a home for hours. in california here where his primary residence was. at the time, again -- and this is the -- this is bradlee's gift. time to read all the memoirs, interview everyone who was alive, do a graph of what i -- a draft of what i thought, go occurred go back to everyone, go , back to ford again, go look at the contemporaneous coverage and simply put, ford convinced me, frankly. he said, look, i did not pardon nixon for nixon or for myself. i pardoned nixon for the country. we had to move beyond watergate. if nixon was tried --

investigat, further tried, indicted, convicted, jail, we'd have two or three more years of watergate. he said, look at the world i was living in. this is gerald ford talking. cold war, serious problems with the russians, serious problems with the economy. said i had to preempt the process to get nixon off the front page and out of people's lives into history. and i looked at all of this, examined it, and then shadow wrote i thought the decision was a gutsy one. caroline kennedy, the daughter of j.f.k., your long-time acquaintance and friend, the deceased president, caroline kennedy called me up and said teddy kennedy and i read what you wrote in "shadow," and we think that's right. and we're going to the get gerald ford the profiles in courage award.

they are the kennedy library months later, teddy kennedy at the time of the pardon in september 1974 had called it almost a criminal act, saying something that politicians hate to say -- "i was wrong." this was an act of courage in the tradition of a leader going against the grain and realizing what is in the larger national interest and the high purpose of the office of the president to serve the people and not himself and not the former president nixon, and i remember seeing that, and it's so sobering to me in my business to think something is this way and then you subject it to neutral scrutiny and it's totally the opposite. >> yes. [applause]

>> i was wondering, as someone editor in chief of my school newspaper and someone who's interested in a career in journalism, have you ever been threatened and feared for your life and if so, how would it direct -- and why you were doing journalistic activities? >> have you ever feared for your life? >> crossing streets? [laughter] >> no. -- that's -- i was -- i'll -- --e you a terribly personal the first time i was on a destroyer and attacked by a bunch of japanese planes, i was scared to death. and when i didn't embarrass

myself and i -- i was never scared after that. i mean, i was -- i would say, holy, you know what, is this going to be costly or is is going to hurt me, but i was never -- >> with that saying that after the navy, everything's easy. >> yeah. >> it is quite true. it's quite true. but happily, i mean, we talk warnedut how mark felt our lives could be in danger, i think it was more my paranoia. but no one did try to kill reporters. they do abroad all of the time. and we should thank -- >> what is it? 40 or 50 a year. >> yeah. >> mostly in south asia now.

and africa. >> yeah. it is a giant problem. and thank god not here. the first amendment operates. there was a white house scheme when nixon was president to try to assassinate jack anderson the columnist. >> oh, yeah. that was in colson's crowd? >> that was hunt and libby and we ran the story. >> i know, but even nixon wouldn't have let that happen. >> yeah. >> they couldn't figure out how to do it. [laughter] >> how did watergate change each of you personally? >> it brought me to this room. where i would never have had the pleasure of being.

it makes you -- i do not know how to say this without sonnet like a full, but it made you sort of a minor celebrity -- >> real minor, man. [laughter] >> that is enough. you answer it then. [laughter] >> no, no. advised -- take your work seriously but not yourself seriously. there is some truth in that. when you go through the watergate exhibit, which we have

done a little of, and i am going to do more today, it is factual, this happened -- i have often said this and often thought this, but if richard nixon had had one strong lawyer or aid mr. said mr.one in and president, knock this crap off. you can't think and act like this. it might have stopped. on the other hand, there was so much, such a mentality that drove it that maybe it was unstoppable and maybe the person who might say that would never be allowed in the oval office to communicate that message. i think always in watergate -- and your chronology and the

exhibit shows this -- if one thing did not happen, everything after at least in terms of being disclosed, disclosure hangs on the most fragile, thinnest of threads. somebody cut it like that. i am -- repeatedly find myself, withholding judgment, and case you think it is one way and it turns out the other way. -- how issh once history going to judge your iraq war? he is standing in the oval office has his hands in his pockets, and unthinking i'm finally going to get this sob s.o.b. out of here, and i asked how do you think history will

judge the iraq war? he says, history, we won't know, we will all be dead. comforting thought. [laughter] he is ducking the question, but we don't know how it is going to look. >> that begs the question. in your work on the president, s, have you changed your mind about a president over the course of investigating? >> certainly with ford, i went through a sea change. it is much easier, just as is my nature to ask questions find out what happened rather than judge. >> i'm curious, in your conversations with president ford, if he imparted to you a

feeling or notion that he knew he lost the election because of the pardon. >> the question is whether ford knew or suspected that he lost to jimmy carter in 1976 because of the pardon -- yes. but we don't know because there was a pardon and it was part of the effort. talk about the nixon-ford administration -- >> didn't i just read something about how american opinions have changed and now there is a sizable 70% majority that approved -- >> of the pardon? >> yeah that . >> yes. i think that's right. >> that was not true when it was much closer. >> my name is laura and i work on the paper at the university. i want to say thank you to both of you for being here this evening. my question is, what are your

thoughts on the media and government's reaction to julian leaks.e and the wiki >> wikileaks. >> let us say that neither one of us is the world's leading authority on wikileaks. >> yes, that is right, but now i'm going to pretend i am. [laughter] >> i don't dare. >> it is important that they mid-level classified documents that were secret only and what the ambassador thinks, those documents rarely get to the white house and don't get much standing in terms of the decision-making by the president where it is incredible in the obama white house, the bush white house, how much is controlled by the white house,

it is a white house-centric who make, so people claims that wikileaks are the sort of documents that tell you how the big decisions are made and government are exaggerating. that is not the case. at the same time it is useful information. the initial idea of the wholesale publication of hundreds of thousands of classified documents -- you would never do it, you would say read them. vet them. are we going to tell somebody about secret operations and get people killed unnecessarily? you were always in panic about emphatic about that. i think wikileaks is kind of being more careful now. wikileaks probably won't go down in the history books. the pentagon papers do and will always.

>> sir. >> i have a three-part question -- >> just one part please. [laughter] >> ok. what was in the watergate towers of they were after, and it makes and have a hit list, and how much did labor unions play a part in all of this? >> thank you. >> what were they after when they broke into watergate and to president have a hit list, and what roles did labor unions play? >> no knowledge of labor unions. i don't have a clue what they were after or what they thought they would get. i think the testimony of the burglars and others, as you know, it was a general fishing expedition to get dirt on the enemy. don't you think that is the best -- >> yeah. >> they all testified to wanting something different.

it all comes under dirt. >> find something that will give us leverage against -- >> imagine the decision to go ahead with that, breaking and entering. i don't think that will ever happen again -- [laughter] i hope to god it won't. >> we have to talk. [laughter] [applause] gentleman has been trying to ask a question for a while. >> i have to ask, after reaching such a pinnacle of excellence at a young age, have you suffered a letdown afterward? [laughter] and if you did, how did you make yourself come back and do all of the thoughtful work you have done since? >> that is interesting, did i suffer a letdown after watergate and so forth. let me tell you the story about

howard simons, who was then deputy. this was after nixon resigned, it was about lunchtime in the androom in ben's office howard simon's office had these was thates -- transparency? >> of course. >> so that people could see who is meeting with the bosses. howard simon would say come on, so i came in. and he had an obit page open from "the new york times" and said, see that, that is you. and i looked at it and it said john jones, 72, died, won the pulitzer prize in 1941. [laughter] that's me?

he said yeah that's you, see , that guy, 1941, it is now 1974. ever hear of anything he did since 1941? [laughter] i said, -- >> he didn't like you? said i thinken he you like this business, now get your ass out of here and get back to work. >> i have to tell one story about woodward, which tells you something about him, there was a time when i had both the head of the cia and the head of the fbi in my office at the same time. woodward could not stand it. [laughter] he had not heard about it, didn't know what the

conversation was -- it was not important, so important that i've now forgotten it, but one of my favorite times in life is to remember woodward walk -- i have a total glass window on the newsroom, woodward walked in front of it this way -- [laughter] all during the conversation. >> i don't know how many of you remember robert penn warren, but he wrote "all the king's men" and some wonderful poetry afterwards, and i was at an event where he was being interviewed, and this very smart professor named harold bloom, a great elizabethan scholar, turned to him and said penn warren, i was convinced that you

had reached an shipment 15 years ago and would not write again, what say you? he said, i'm happy i didn't know you 15 years ago. [laughter] i think that is part of the response of people who say you did well at a young age. so sad that it is all over with now. and 11 bestsellers after that for you, and you still write them. another question? >> what was your reception of david frost's interviews of richard nixon? >> remember the frost interviews of nixon? >> yeah. they were pretty good as i remember them. >> they were. nixon point, frost asked about carl and myself and nixon says, they work for "the washington post." and that is a liberal newspaper.

politics in washington, that's the way it is. then he said, what they write is trash and they are trash. i was sufficiently disturbed to call my mother. [laughter] >> that's what you do in moments like that. >> and i said did you see next ixon, and she said yeah, and i said did you see these sharp things he said about carl bernstein and myself and she said, yes, but you know that is washington, that's politics -- [laughter] and one of the things nixon had said was that we work for "the washington post" a liberal newspaper. it is washington, it

is politics -- what is this about being a liberal? >> come on up. >> oh great. >> hello. >> do you think nixon was a good president? [laughter] >> do i think what? >> do you think nixon was a good president? [laughter] >> i think -- it turns out he was a terrible president, but after watergate, his presidency was so scarred by what he did, watergate that he couldn't save or rescue his reputation. after watergate if you can

somehow excise that, which you can't, i think in certain foreign situations he was ok. >> young man, how old are you? you have a job in journalism. [laughter] that is a great question. this is the judgment question. what we know factually -- particularly from the tapes, i mean there is so much of nixon on those tapes. there is anger, and rage and the regular ordering of illegal and abusive activities, you can go hear it, i brought some examples . you do not need to hear more about nixon's tapes. my problem was what happened during that presidency, and i

agree with ben, some very poor important accomplishments are included, but what happened in the presidency, you listen to the tapes and it is always about nixon. it is so often using the power of the presidency to settle a score with somebody. let's screw so and so, let's put him on the tax audit list. i mean, they got the secret service to bug their telephones, nixon got the secret service to bug the telephone -- of his brother. the secret service that is supposed to be a protective agency. when the dog that never barked on the tapes, i have not heard them all, you don't hear the president or his aides say, what would be good for the country? what does the country need? what is the next stage?

of good for the majority of people, the country? in a sense, maybe the tragic part of the nixon presidency is its smallness. that it did not reach on many levels that sense of goodwill people feel whether they are republicans or democrats, -- i have seen it for decades -- that there was this anger and this insecurity and as a result, the office was diminished because they were talking about so many small things when they should have been talking about larger things. >> could you speak a little bit about john dean? >> what about him? [laughter] >> about john dean and when he broke rank?

>> dean was the white house counsel who blew the whistle on nixon early. >> nobody likes a whistleblower, and he certainly wasn't very popular in government -- i didn't know him well. was he good at all? >> he paid the price, as you say he was a whistleblower. he was a snitch. >> he was a snitch. >> it turned out that this testimony was proven -- the details, it was quite remarkable and he did not know -- he had that there was a taping system that he is somebody that the nixon in the highest disregard.

i spoke at the nixon center a couple of months ago and they invited me to speak their and there and nixon hands were there, and they said the only person who will not invite here is john dean. >> the last question. >> you and carl bernstein sold your watergate archives for what, $1 million? what kind of stuff is in their that is waiting for historians to find? >> what is in the watergate papers at the university of texas is how we did it. you can see the trail, and in one interview somebody says

something and then the next a is going to somebody else and making phone calls and putting the pieces of the puzzle together. it is a pretty large archive under the terms, or contract of the university of texas, we maintain the files of people that are still alive. later this week we are going down there to do some symposiums with academics and with robert redford who did the movie "all the president's men." we are taking a bunch of files of people who passed away and there is one in particular, you can't say until later, but people will be surprised the extent that this person helped us on the second book we did on the final days. it will show how people at the

very top of the nixon administration felt disappointed, felt a sense of inevitability that because of what went on he was going to have to leave office. some people felt the sense of inevitability very early. 1973, moreo early than a year before the resignation. it is a kind of how to rather than what happened, and then you see people's real language and exactly how we undertook our inquiry. >> ben, any concluding thoughts? >> i'm not good -- i don't write editorials -- so, no. i'm very impressed by all that you are still interested.

it was a long time ago. i don't think there is another historical -- how long ago, 40 years? >> almost 40 years. >> next year will be the 40th. >> you are all -- you show a detailed knowledge of it that is very impressive. i think that is fabulous. it was an interesting story and it still is. the president of the united states getting his you know what in a crack like that. [laughter] i mean, holy moly. [applause]

>> bob, in conclusion, tell us a little bit, this question came from the theater, you have been thinking about watergate lately and have you come up with a new formulation? >> let me make it very quick. if watergate or the mentality that was nixon and the people around him, a series of wars. the first war was when nixon took office, he inherited the vietnam war. he did not like the anti-vietnam protests in the people who were it was ao the war, and mounting movement, so he declared war against the antiwar movement. the usual techniques of following and wiretaps and so forth. then it turned out the press was

in the second war reporting extensively on the vietnam war and the antiwar movement so they tapped the telephones of 17 reporters and white house aides, . then in 1972, what they did was the burglary, because it was the fury that the press was publishing the pentagon papers. in the third war -- nixon is running for reelection and the apparatus that had done the burglary and a lot of the secret work was just directed at the democrats because they were a threat to nixon staying in office and the vietnam war. then watergate occurred and it

was the fourth war, which was the war on justice, the orchestrated, well-funded cover-up, denial of what had occurred. the fifth war was after nixon left office in 1974 for 20 years of his life, he conducted a war against history to try to minimize watergate, to say it was a blip, and to avoid confirming what was in his own words and dozens of hours of tapes, and to a certain extent the sixth war was fought here at the nixon library where the question was -- how are you going to deal with watergate? as a journalist who tries to undertake neutral inquiry, let's

find out what happened, what the facts are, in that sixth war the professional historians and archivists have said we have to deal with reality and that sixth war is the watergate display out there, which tells the history but it tells it in its complexity. it is not linear, it is not always clear, and there are lots of people saying -- wait, this means that including nixon, that by and large what i think history -- i think it is kind of etched permanently because of the tapes and because of that display and once you are in the library, people will find things that sicken them and people will find things that

make them stand up and say, because there were moments in nixon's presidency when he rose to the occasion, particularly in foreign affairs where he had a vision with china and the soviet union, which was historic. and when you are gone and when we are all gone, as bush says, history, we won't know. we will all be dead. [laughter] [applause] note, let very happy ben bradlee and bob woodward. thank you. thank you very much.

have a great day, sign-up for our mailing list and visit us again. thank you for coming tonight and thank you both. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] our campaign coverage continues, new york 11th district house debate between michael graham and domenic recchia -- recchia, jr. later, governor rick scott and charlie crist. then representative brad schneider and former representatives bob dold followed by the 18th district debate with republican sean patrick -- with representative sean patrick maloney and nan hayworth. 8:00day night, live at eastern, the iowa fourth district debate between

representative stephen king and jim mowrer. campaign 2014, more than 100 debates for the control of congress. quest coming up in a moment on "washington journal," we will take a look at today's news and take your calls. the health and human services department takes a briefing on youth homelessness today. we will hear from singer cyndi lauper who cofounded the true colors fund. watch live coverage at noon eastern here on c-span. california.axman of we will have that live from the university of california law school. this hour, we will look ahead to the midterm elections. sheila krumholz examines money spent this campaign season, then daniel garza discusses the influence of latino voters. later, our spy little magazines

features matthew cooper of "newsweek." you can join the conversation on facebook and twitter and by phone. "washington journal" is next.