iconic lives of first women. women who survived the scrutiny of the white house. a great summertime read. available as a hardcover or and the e-book or through your favorite online book sale of -- your favorite online bookseller. ♪ >> this week on "q&a," our guest is evan thomas, author of "being nixon: a man divided." he talked about the life and career of richard nixon, focusing on the personal stories that help define our nations 37th president. brian: evan thomas, your new book on richard nixon starts out in a way that i assume no other richard nixon book has started talking about virgil. why? evan: nixon was in that latin play when he was a high school or, and he had never kissed anybody.

in his role, he had to kiss. he never kissed anybody before and he lumbers across the states to kiss her and the high school students arrived in laughter derision, mocking. it was an early case of nixon having to deal with adversity. he was humiliated. afterwards, he tries to make up with the girl who becomes his girlfriend and he learned to deal with diversity and to come back and show people. brian: his girlfriend ola florence weltz. where did you find this stuff about her? evan: there are hundreds of oral histories about his high school and college years at whittier college and at cal state fullerton.

i mean, literally a hundred. week is he became president, they went around and interviewed everybody. she was quite touching about nixon. she found him and on.. she found him to be impressive and not to normal high school kid. she first wrote in her diary, i hate richard nixon, that was her first entry. but she was his girlfriend for four years. she finally dumped him and he was sad about that, but he found pat and was pretty happy. evan: i came away that there is an awful lot of personal stuff in here. mi accurate? why did you do it that way? this is unlike some books that only worry about the history part of it. evan: i don't think you can do nixon without doing the personal. you watch nick said you wonder what is driving this guy, what is it like to be nixon. i called my book "being nixon" because i was really curious about what it would be like to be richard nixon.

he seemed so possessed at times. he seemed haunted at times troubled at times, enthusiastic at times, proud at times, his chief of staff called him the " weirdest man i ever met. " he was, for better or for worse, a weird man. brian: we have a lot of video we want to show that parallels your book. first, we will go to a phone conversation and his chief of staff we just fired on april 30, -- who he just fired on april 30, 1973. that is after he gave an important watergate speech. it is an audio thing. let's listen to this phone conversation. >> hello? >> i hope i didn't let you down. >> no, sir. you got your points right and now you've got to lay it down. >> i'm never going to discuss a thing again. >> you have done it now, laid

out your position. you have laid out making your steps. >> interesting thing this is 50 minutes after the thing is over. waiting to see what the polls show. god dam strong cabinet, isn't it? brian: what are you hearing? evan: he has had a couple of drinks. nixon's alcohol capacity was low so maybe it was just one drink. he could sound drunk on one drink. the other thing, he just fired him on national tv. you could tell he was upset that no one was calling. in the old days, you would've

arranged of people call. he asked if you could get people to call again the old days. it is poignant, it is heartfelt. he actually does love the guy he is just fired on national tv. your heartbreaks listening to this. you can tell he is going down. he is going to be in office for another 15 months so it will take a while but he is finished as of april 30, 1973, and you can hear it in his voice. brian: these are not chronological recordings, just a way to see how he was like sometimes off-camera. this is from 1982, it was on cnn crossfire. pat buchanan, who worked for him, was interviewing him and this is when they were in commercial. >> i think maybe we can get through lbj in that period.

nixon: yes, i think i can do this. there is this terrible book out on him. >> did you read it? >> it has gotten some rave reviews. unbelievable. animal. >> because he was. >> he was a man. brian: i don't you get things like this but we got it. evan: isn't that great? that is one of my favorite clips. that is the real nixon because he actually admired lbj. both were politicians with a p in both understood power with a p. even though johnson had called

nixon a traitor in 1968, when nixon fiddled in the campaign and cap the vietnamese government from going to paris and disrupt that these peace negotiations to win the presidency, it is a murky and not good chapter in nixon's history. johnson called nixon a traitor for having done that. and yet there is still kind of an affinity. you can see nixon also admires what a man lbj was. he was a man. he was a man. poor nixon wanted to be a man. he got himself in more trouble on those tapes like trying to appear macho. all that swearing and profanity, nixon wasn't even good at it. he was bad at it. it wasn't natural to him. it was natural to lbj. you could hear lbj swear, he was good at it. nixon was trying to be something

he was not. he was not an lbj crude, macho guy. nixon was a shy, intellectual thoughtful. he couldn't let himself be that. he had to be something he was not. i think that is one of the reasons he destroyed himself. brian: how in the world can you be shy in the presidency? evan: that is one of the reasons why i wrote the book. how one of the most introverted politicians ever became one of the most successful politicians in the 20th century. he was on five national tickets, he won the presidency twice. the last time by one of the largest landslides in history. he could barely make small talk. if he was here talking to you there is a chance he would not have been able to talk to at all. sometimes you just spin his hands. he was a terrible blur term. you would blurt things out. he just couldn't do smalltalk.

he runs into jackie kennedy and -- at martin luther king junior's funeral and he says to mrs. kennedy, this must bring back many memories. this is cringe-making. and would do that kind of things all the time. we all do. you just blurt things out because you're uncomfortable. but nixon would do this all the , time. he was terrible at smalltalk, he liked to be alone. people used to say that he was always writing on yellow pads. he didn't have any best friends. bb rebozo, maybe. but when they were together, they would not talk. the secret service would sit on the boat with them and listen, no conversation. brian: do you remember how he met a be rebozo? evan he was depressed and this : high living center, a friend of jack kennedy from florida, a democrat, brought him to florida

to cheer them up and have a guys weekend out on the boat. nixon was really not good at either of those things. at first, rebozo thought who is this guy, he's no fun, but a can sip was established. there was a vulnerability and a sincerity. he understood that what nixon needed was companionship without talk. that was the base of -- the basis of their friendship that went on for years and years. brian: he was here in 1992 for his book, "seize the moment." we had some clips from that just to get you to reflect on what you see in this. here is one where he talks about how he sizes up people.

nixon: i am not one of those who believes in the psychiatric examination. i believe that most of these people should be on couches themselves rather than to psychoanalyze people that have never met. on the other hand, when i meet people, i don't judge them in terms of whether they have a firm handshake or eye contact. these are things that are learned. things that you do. things that come naturally. or you do them, even though they, unnaturally. but when i try to do when i meet people's listen to what they say. you don't learn a thing when you are talking, you learn a great deal when they are talking. brian: he is talking about you there. evan: one of the many tragedies of richard nixon was that he was not very self-aware. there are endless ironies here. he did have a psychiatrist. he was an internist.

the doctor later said he was careful not to let nixon think he was analyzing them. but nixon went to him because he had psychosomatic illnesses in the 50's and he gave him some mild therapy. his head hurt and his neck hurt he couldn't sleep. even though he went to one, he hated his psychiatrist and was always denouncing them. he was afraid in a way of looking at himself in a realistic way. he said i don't carry grudges. hello? richard nixon was one of the greatest grudge carriers of all time. he could be very un-self reflect the. and this hurt him. because this lashing out of , enemies is what really hurt it. his last words were something along the lines of don't hate your enemies. because if you do, you it will destroy you. too late. it is self-awareness but it is way too late. he is about to get into a

helicopter and fly away. brian: you do spend a lot of time talking about his mother hannah, his brother frank. what did you learn about that? evan: his father was a bully and his mom was a saint, but kind of a passive aggressive saint. there are some oral histories that suggest that she was very withholding and it was hard to win her love. he was desperately trying to win her love. the older brother died of tb and what his younger brothers, who was very sweet, died. his mother said that he tried to be both of those boys and he couldn't be. it was something he could never do. so he was never very comfortable. he was very forlorn. he wore a clean white shirt and he carried his shoes at around in a bag. he never wanted to be picked up and held. he was a lonely forlorn boy trying to please his parents in a way that i'm not sure he ever succeeded before becoming president. brian: his brother had tuberculosis and went off to a

different part of the country and moved away from them. evan: nixon was accepted to harvard out of high school but couldn't go because the money held used to take care of the older brother. mom had gone out into the desert in arizona and rented a place -- in those days, tb sufferers would go to dry places because it was pre-antibiotics. nixon loses his mother to go take care of his dying older brother as a teenager. i think that was tough for him. brian: talking about the unusual nature of his personality. michael korda, who was his editor from time to time at simon and schuster has told a couple of stories about him. here is a story from when we did our in-depth. >> the only person i've ever dealt with always spoke himself in the third person.

if you had dinner with him, he would say nixon will have another glass of wine. if you expected a change in a manuscript, he would think about it seriously. almost as if he were pantomiming font with a for a brow. he was a great actor in his own way. and he would say bowl -- oh, nixon would not like that. it was remarkable. he thought of himself as a separate creature altogether and referred it to nixon in the third person. even at home, he would say that as if it were a perfectly normal thing to say. evan: can you imagine what would be like for mrs. nixon? henry kissinger told me a very affecting story.

he was asked to go to dinner at the residence with mrs. nixon. as he was walking over, nixon asked him to tell mrs. the about some of his foreign-policy compliments. kissinger dutifully starts in and mrs. nixon says, henry, you don't have to. you know, i mean she understood about her husband. how awkward he was even with his wife. i actually think the marriage was much closer than we think. we have all seen these photographs of her looking pained and unhappy. i think late in watergate, it was pretty bad.

nixon even said in his memoirs that he doesn't tell his own wife he is resigning. he tells his secretary to tell mrs. nixon. you wonder how close they were in august 1974. but before that, in the early years, there are very touching love letters. she was the prettiest girl. if you look at old photographs of her, she was gorgeous. she became gaunt later but when she was 20 pounds heavier she was a knockout. she helped him a lot in the early years. she stood by him and when he thought about quitting she said you can't quit. it was a good marriage in some ways but i think in the white house. i have to say, the marriage resumed and after he left the

white house, when she died in 192 i think it was, he is just bawling. he's not just crying, he is convulsed with tears. brian: here's some more from the time he was here for his notes interview. >> what period of your life to -- did you enjoy the most? >> i don't like to psychoanalyze myself but let me attempt to answer them objectively. i like all periods. i went through college in the depression and it was rough. we did not even think of it as a depression. we had to scratch around to make a living. i can remember when getting a steak was considered to be something that was so unusual that we just thought this is the ultimate as far as food and so forth is concerned. all that has changed.

evan: he was a poor boy. his father made some money running a gas station so eventually they did ok. to the other poor boys at whittier college, he probably wasn't it that poor. he used his shyness to understand outsiders. at his college, there was a cool guys fraternity called the franklin's. nixon started a fraternity for uncool guys, knowing there were more uncool guys then cool guys. this was the beginning of the silent majority. nixon was elected president of this class i getting all the outs to outvote the ins. he did that 30 or 40 years later as a politician. he understood what it was like to be on the outside. he empathized with those people. he sold -- he understood their hope and their recent months.

and he knew how to exploit them. brian: how did you approach the research? evan: i needed to find people that were around and physically close to him. they were young men. so dwight chapin, his body guy. , his military aide, speechwriter. larry higbee who worked for hr halderman. there were a lot of people who were kind of in the office with him and who were around him. years later, they are a little defensive around the press and around me. i'm an east coast establishment. i work for the washington post company. but what the heck, a lot of years have passed and they were pretty generous with me. steve bowl talk to me about how it was like. they were sympathetic. i think that they wanted to -- yes, nixon was a weird guy. no doubt about it. but he was a considerate boss, a thoughtful boss.

he tried to buck up his troops. i think they wanted to get that side of him across so they talked to me. a lot of his aides -- he was always a good talent scout for young talent. threats scowcroft, later national security advisor, famous. kissinger talk to me. because he is interested in his vision of history. but also a thoughtful, receptive critic of nexen. donald rumsfeld was a young aide who worked for nixon. he talked to me. george schultz was a young cabinet secretary. he talked to me. a lot of these names became more famous later but got their start with richard nixon because he had a good eye for talent. someone i wish i had talked to was roger ailes out of fox news. roger ailes was a fairly obscure daytime tv producer when richard discovered him and put him in charge of his media team.

he had an eye for talent. he did that kind of thing all the time. for all the craziness of watergate. nixon had a good staff. brian: chapin spent a lot of time around nixon and he also went to prison for six months or so for perjury in that whole thing. let's listen to dwight chapin on an oral history from the nixon library. >> it's very late at night, we went and got on the plane. he had one or two of those small bottles of scotch. and he was exhausted. and the next thing i knew, he was crying.

what brought this about, this emotional uprising, is that he was talking with ray, who i think was drafting some stuff for the speech in miami. they were starting to work on his acceptance speech and how that might work. this was the one in 68. he started talking about his mother and dad and his brother and this brother that he lost to tuberculosis. i mean it it was really bringing up stuff in him. it really this guy is a human resonated. i mean being. he's running for president and so forth but he is just not that different from us. evan: but of course, he was different from us. we don't have his ambition, his dreams. i mean, people who become

president are not like us. as much as the and tried to wear a mask, the mask olof from time to time. they say roman don't cry, but nixon cried all the time. i have five or six cases of him weeping when his emotions, which were boiling within him, when well up. he was very human. that's one reason why it is such a great story. brian: did you asked why chapin how he feels after he fell on his sword for nixon? evan: one detail i remember is that when chapin was being fired , he had run don segretti. chapin was tasked with running segretti, so he had to take the fall for this. when chapin heard about it, he wept.

he could not believe a comment that his boss was cutting him loose like this. it was early in watergate, when things were turning sour, and i think chapin just couldn't believe it that after all this loyalty he was being cast loose. but there is no bitterness and -- in chapin. chapin is realistic about nixon but loyal, and i think that after all these years, despite jail time, devoted to him. brian: did you watch many of those interviews? how many hours do you think you did of research? hours? days? weeks? evan: years. this is my ninth book and i usually spend three or four years. you know, you have helped. people like dwight chapin. scholars helped me. erwin gelman, the one nixon scholar who is actually read all

of the documents. he was incredibly generous with me. pointing me to this and that. mills mall is a great nixon scholar out in the midwest. you know, i'm a journalist more than i am a scholar, so i go to scholars and i asked them. and they help me. archivists help me. my researcher mike hill has helped me over the years. a little bit less on this particular project, but he has been in an incredible help to me over the years. mike and i were at the library i spent a couple months out of the library listening to tapes and the archivist there helped me. there is a mountain of material. the one thing that scholars, or rather journalists, need to know, is that if you want cold -- walk into a presidential cold library, forget it.

you cannot even read the finding aid. you need to spend a couple of years reading the secondary stuff and talking to people before you even darken the door of a presidential library. but then, if you befriend the archivist, they will point you in the right direction. brian: which book that you read did you find the most useful? evan: the haldemann diaries are quite useful. that book is great, because he is right at nixon's elbow. he had a great sense of humor. those are 40% to maybe half of the actual diaries. the haldeman diaries is great. he is a great observer. he was gentle and tender about nick in a way. he can also make fun of him a little bit. william safire, one of the speechwriters, observed nixon up

close, and was full of psychological insight. so i thought that was a , particularly perceptive book. it is sort of wheels within wheels, which is the way safire thinks. very useful. here is the surprise one. juliet said, the daughter, wrote a memoir of her mother. nobody uses the book because they figure it has to be a puff piece because it is his daughter. no. it is a really smart book about mom, but also about dad. brian: here is an interview we did in pennsylvania where she is talking about the happiest moment in her father's life. >> if i were to choose the one moment in the political years, i think the best is the election of 1968. because it was such a come back. my father had lost the governorship of california in a

humiliating loss and a lot of people thought he was a loser. with the loser image had to overcome in 1968. in so, he entered every primary and it was this great big adventure. that moment in 68 was a joyful moment. you just knew, at that moment, that this was the supreme moment for them to achieve that goal. even though we knew the secret service were there for good and all those horrible things. evan: not that joyful the night of the election. nixon typically in one room, and the family was in a different floor. nixon with his yellow pad, all alone. they heard that the votes were being held back in chicago. this brings terrible memories. because in 1960, you may recall mayor daley allegedly held back the votes.

and stole the election for jack kennedy. into nixon always believed the election had been stolen. in 1968, the year that the chicago votes were all coming in on razors edge, this is the years this and her daughters -- mrs. nixon hears this and her daughters can hear her vomiting. finally at about 7:00 in the morning, they find out they won, and nixon is happy. he goes home to his apartment on fifth avenue and he puts "victory at sea" alone out the window. no family there. all alone. it is just dick. brian: before we more -- 01 mark lippert julie, you say in your book that nixon thought georgetown was out to get him.

you say he was right. evan: today, the georgetown set does not exist. but back then, in the 1950's, and 1960's, very powerful. a group of cia, harvard and the yale alumni, very charming pleased with themselves. mrs. graham was at the center of this world, and joe also. i used to, i came in at the end at newsweek. i used to go to dinner and see them. they hated nixon. they said they were out to get him, mrs. helms, cynthia helms wife of the cia director richard helms, said there was no mercy for nixon at these dinner parties. henry kissinger was often the honored guest. kissinger, who could be shamelessly flattering of nixon

in the white house, would go out to dinner with the georgetown set, and make fun, gently, but make fun of his boss. nixon knew this. he knew, he rationalized it. he said, henry needs this. he needs it to be popular. but it hurt him. he would say, there goes henry. talking to the georgetown crowd. the georgetown people, and the washington post, out to get nixon. and you know what? they got him. brian: another clip of julie nixon eisenhower. >> was your father unfairly treated by the media? >> there is a great book called "it didn't start with watergate," which was published in 1976. which is really worth looking at because his thesis is political scandals always happen in administrations.

political blogging's, etc., a laundry list of mistakes and abuses of power that happen in modern presidencies. it is the question of, whether you want to go after the issue and pursue it. i think my father was controversial because of the war. i think he, those who opposed him probably pursued him very hard and it worked. whereas, they may not have pursued another candidate or another issue might have come along. certainly, he made mistakes with watergate. brian: the basic point is true. evan: nixon was hardly the first president to wiretap. one of the things that afflict did nixon is he was envious of the kennedys and johnson, he thought they were better at dirty tricks than he was.

he was trying to catch up to them. he wasn't wrong. i wrote a kennedy biography, the kennedy machine was tough. bobby kennedy did more wiretapping than nixon. including martin luther king. it wasn't like the presidency was innocent and all of a sudden there came evil nixon. executive power was concentrated, in the 50's and 60's, in the white house. the rules about wiretapping were blurry at best. the fbi was happy to be an instrument of the white house and spy on the president's enemies. j edgar hoover. nixon was not the first guy. there are endless our news about nixon, but one of the things that destroyed him was the fbi got out of the business for working for the president doing this bugging. hoover said, we will not do it anymore. hoover, smart guy who knew about a his legacy, he could feel the lawsuits coming on.

hoover said, the fbi is not doing this. so what does that mean? he creates the plumbers. in-house capabilities to spy. unfortunately, the people his aides hired, hunt and liddy, were not that competent. hunt's reputation was pretty bad. he was one of the chief plumbers. g gordon liddy was a colorful figure but kind of a screwup. those guys made lots of mistakes. they were not good at what they did. it were not competent at what they did. they got caught and nixon got caught with them. brian: what more interview clip, maybe i have one more click left. let's try one more. he talks about his real friends.

nixon: we had difficult times in office, as everybody knows. not speaking just of watergate but presiding as president over a war that was divisive and not easy. the time since then has been, it has been an ordeal, but it has its compensations. when you are down, you discover who your real friends are. i have some great trends out

-- friends out there. i hear from them by mail, some come to see me. when i think of people being for me at a time when most of your friends in the media were against me, which is not unusual, they always have been. it is very reassuring. evan: after he left office in disgrace, he almost died. the nurse was slapping him richard, wake up. richard. he was near death. to his credit, he came back, he started playing golf with jack brennan. he talked about his friends, he had a few. bb rebozo, ammenberg invited him to his house. but he did not have a lot of friends. nixon was so broke that tricia and ed cox had to help them. i was told that there was literally a question of whether they could pay for their groceries. evan: going back to your comment about tricia and ed giving their father money, that is an anonymous quote.

evan: it has to remain that way. the person who told me does no one to reveal their identity. brian: why? evan: i can't say. it would give it away. i have a single anonymous source. everything else is -- brian: only one? evan: maybe one or two. he had a friend named elmer. you have this in your book. you have to set it up a little bit. brian we have leonard talking : about what happened, but how did they get into elmer's house? evan: elmer was a pharmaceutical guy. he became buddies with net -- nixon. he was a friend of nixon's and

was in florida with a fellow lawyer. they are preparing to argue before the supreme court. they are down there, and nixon is supposed to spend a night in a development in florida. but nixon with his antenna nixon realizes the owners of the development of going to use him to promoting. at the last minute, he says come on, leonard, let's go to elmer's house. it is like 40 minutes away. they get to his vast estate and it is all dark and locked up. nixon says, it's over the wall we go. in their wingtips with their briefcases, they climb over the wall and they spend the night in the pool house. apparently it was like summer camp. they laid awake -- evan: here is leonard -- brian: here is leonard. >> later i found out in much greater, somber detail, he had trouble sleeping.

he was an insomniac. he would talk, maybe have a drink or a sleeping pill like most of us do in times of tension or illness. at any rate, he did quite a bit of talking, free association. i was in the other bed. it was like being in camp and having a friend talk about his life and problems. >> what did he talk about? >> he talked about his ambitions and his mother and her love of peace. and the troubles, his brothers. the kind of stuff everybody knows that so well. and he made it very clear that he was going to, if he couldn't, he would do anything to enhance his energy and his ability to maintain footing in public life with a view, doing the things he felt he was destined to do. his mother's image in his life

in the world of in a world of foreign affairs, bringing about stability and hope for peace in the world. he wasn't kidding around that night. there was no point to it. he gradually became more personal, talked about his hopes and aspirations. then he fell asleep and i fell asleep. brian: that was in 1965. evan: he lost for governor. people thought he was finished. but he wanted to come back. he said to some people, if you -- he didn't go back into public life, he would be mentally dead in two years and physically dead in four. he read a book about a psychiatrist called "the will to live." the book suggested that people who are destined for greatness have got to be in public life or they are going to

die. nixon believed he was destined and this is a positive thing. we think of next and as being a bit of a hack. we think of him as being a hack. as a young congressman, when everybody else was isolationist, he was an internationalist. he realized the united states has got to be confronting communism, saving europe. he was pro-marshall plan. his constituents thought it was wasting money. nixon went against his constituency because he believed in american power for good to save europe in that case and stand up against communists. he had a grand vision of himself as helping the united states fulfill its destiny as a great power. with nixon front and center. brian: when monica crawley was 21, she worked for him in college. she is now on fox news. she wrote two books. she wrote down everything he

said when she was around him. here is a story i want you to see and fill in the blanks. >> nick's always claimed he never watch television. of course, he did. he liked to watch the news, he watched sports, he is to watch football and baseball avidly. he never admitted to watching sort of mindless entertainment. i was five minutes late for our meetings at the residence in the afternoon, so he expected me to be late. what day, i was five minutes early. i was walking up the stairs, and before i could clear the stairs to the third floor, i heard the television going. then i heard laughter coming out of the television. i realized he was watching something meant to amuse. i was surprised by this. i looked at him, and he had his shoes off, and his feet were in stockings, on the ottoman. he had the remote control in his hand, and he was laughing. he was enjoying the show and the moment so much.

i observed him for a couple moments, because i wanted him to have those few extra minutes when he didn't have to be on and he didn't have to be the serious richard nixon he presented to me most of the time. i enjoyed seeing that. but i cleared my voice, i cleared the top of the stairs, and he looked at me and he was horrified that he had been caught in the act of watching television. the dick van dyke show, no less. he tried to shut the tv off with the remote control in jam his feet onto his shoes. he dropped the remote and it was chaotic. he said, well, he was red-faced and said, well, you have caught me watching the tube. brian: this is why -- this is when he lived in new jersey after the presidency. he also talk about his television habits in your book. -- you also talk about his

television habits in your book. evan: it is a charming story. i think nixon was half in love with her. you can see why. in a totally innocent way. he liked having her around. he was sheepish and bashful. he got caught in the white house watching television, "all in the family" he watched. he was embarrassed by that. he was a sports fan. he would yell at the tv watching sports. he was a huge fan. he was a joyous, explosive fan. you think of him, when he bowled, he bowled alone and with a necktie on. when he was watching again, he could explode. i have a photograph in my book of him and a ballgame, leaning forward in his chair, roaring out something. he was friends with the coach of the washington redskins, george allen.

he once allegedly called a play for the redskins, there is some dispute about how it played out. nixon loved sports. he would call up arnold palmer. just to chat with him. it was great that monica got just a glimpse. nixon did not let down his guard easily. monica was around him all the time and even she barely saw the kind of relaxed, it was hard for him to unwind. even with his own family. brian: what was his story about running in place 300-400 times? evan: it nixon did not like exercise but before he gave a speech, he would jog in place to get his wind up. he would have a little bit of wheat germ to get some protein. he was very ascetic in his way. he always had the same lunch. he would have a pineapple ring

with cottage cheese for lunch. imported from california. he was proud of that. there is a debate about how much he drank. i can't resolve it. he had a low capacity. i think towards the end, even julie in her memoir says both her mother and her father drank more than they should have. i don't think he was a crazy drunk. lakey merges and some of the literature. although i have to say, there is a conversation between kissinger and another man were kissinger casually says they can't put the president of the phone to the prime minister of britain because he was loaded. that is october 1973. nixon is in the throes of watergate, it is getting ugly. i was told that henry kissinger passed cables were presented to

nixon, and sometimes he would say, go bomb them. he would ignore the order. because nixon was not capable of giving the order. i was shocked that i was told that story. that is a pretty ugly story. i don't know the depth of this. this is late in the game, i don't think it represents his whole presidency. but towards the end, nixon was not terribly functional. brian: an attorney worked at -- gerald ford and negotiated four the pardon with the nixon people, i found this on youtube. i highly recommend people to watch it. it is an hour and 39 minutes. michigan did it. he tells the story about going out there with final negotiations for the pardon. he has gotten the signatures and he left the house and went to his car. then, somebody runs out, and called him back. here is benton becker and that story.

benton: whenever i tell that story, all of the imagery comes back to me very sharply. he was standing behind his desk and he said, before he left, i wanted to give you something. because you have been a gentleman. i said, that is unnecessary, mr. president. he said, no, i want to give you something. then, he made a gesture. a gesture, symbolically to say look at this room. look at this office. and he said, i don't have anything anymore. they took it all away. look at this room. before i could respond, he said, but pat found these. he reached in his desk and brought out a small box. i want you to have them.

there aren't any more. she had to get this from my dresser drawer. he gave me a small box which had the presidential cufflinks, the presidential seal and his name on the back. they are usually given at state dinners. it was a very poignant moment, it really was. evan: when we think of him, he has become a cartoon version, a monster. he did some monstrous things. listen to those tapes, anti-semitism and all of that. it is terrible. but nixon, he wanted to be a better person. late at night, he would take those yellow pads and he would write what he wanted to be. he would use words like joyful inspired, confident and serene. these are adjectives that did

not describe him. that is not really who he was but who he wanted to be. brian: did you see the pads? evan: they are preserved in the nixon library. you can see those notes. when i first started doing this book i was struck by this. , it was such a contrast to the idea of we have of nixon scheming. rubbing his hands, doing anti-somatic things. it was very different. -- anti-somatic things. -- anti-semitic things. both nixons are true, but you have to see the whole man to understand him. the good with the bad. it adds a kind of poignancy. i think becker saw that. nixon is so awkward he needed things to hand people, like cufflinks. he would get a pen and say, give this to your wife or girlfriend. we won't tell. completely inappropriate, not funny, awkward lines.

because he was so uncomfortable with people. he needed props to deal with ordinary people. it is laughable, we can make fun of it, i don't make fun of it. -- and i do make fun of it, but it is also kind of touching that he is trying that hard to be affable, to be things he is not. inc. of what a struggle it was to be him. brian: where do you put this book on the nine you have written? evan: the most fun. because he is so endlessly fascinating. i didn't expect that. he is the great american novel. you can't top richard nixon. you can't top his american story, a poor kid who climbs to the very top, and overcoming all obstacles, defeated many times then destroys himself. brian: i want to switch and run some video now. you may or may not have seen this.

we will listen to about a minute, then i want you to talk about it. i want the audience to look closely at this person talking. >> eisenhower's well-deserved reputation in europe was made by his extraordinary success in pulling together men of different nations and points of view. therefore, i expected from him at least a greater effort than we have had to pull together our allies in france. the one fact you can't escape is that we have simply got to stay with the non-communists of age -- asia and europe. not just the french, the whole lot of them. i don't think that is always reasonable right, but we are not strong enough to ignore this.

evan: that is my grandfather norman thomas, who was a socialist who ran six times for , president. he was not a very good father to my father, but a good grandfather to me because he had more time for me. amazingly, the only time i ever met richard nixon when i was at "newsweek" and nixon came over to me and said, your grandfather was a great man. i said, what? i was caught by surprise. he was a good grandfather. typical nixon, he did his homework. he had the guest list, someone told him that my grandfather was norman thomas. he made a beeline to me. and of course, it made me feel good. i was flattered that he knew my grandfather was and that he had a view different from him. brian: your father was editor of kennedy's book "profiles in courage here: and a lot of other books. is it hard to live up to?

evan: yes. i am still working on it. [laughter] in i am 64-years-old. brian: your father and grandfather went to princeton. you went to harvard. then you went back to teach at princeton. evan: i taught there for eight years. i have a soft spot for princeton. i am the kind of person nixon would have hated in a lot of ways. i'm an east coast establishment guy. that made me more curious about him, and i was just touched, the one time i met him, that he was able to fight through, he could have been, i was the grandson of a socialist. yet, he made the effort to be personable with me and be friendly. that gave me a bit of insight

into how he became more successful than you would think. he can remember names, i wish i could do that. he studied. he was a great politician. he was bad at small talk, but he knew your name. he knew your dad and your mom. it made him more effective. it was i think a very, he was a very catching figure. i know my grandfather and father disapproved of richard nixon but i think if they had known him personally, they may have had a different opinion. brian: of all the people you wrote about in your book, if you could write another long treatise about who was the most interesting character? evan: he was surrounded by interesting people. henry kissinger, you can't top him for shakespearean greatness and tragedy.

brian: somebody who was surprising. evan: pat. we think of pat as being a sad figure with the long face. she was a good, loving wife. she stood by him. she is a figure in my book. a poignant figure. i got from julie's memoir, at the top of the stairs at the state dinner, they are dancing below. she is dancing alone, all alone dancing at the top of the stairs. that was a very moving image for me. brian: what is next for you? evan: i am thinking about writing a book about the decision to drop the atom bomb. i'm interested of the idea, and the question, who controls technology? does man control technology or does technology control man? the atom bomb was a good case of technology controlling man. they used it to end a war.

but there attempts -- but their attemps to put the genie back in the bottle after the bomb was dropped. my characters would be cure -- hirohito and truman and stalin. brian: if there is a show like this 50 years from now and one of your children is talking about their father, what would you think they will be doing? evan: one of my oldest daughters as a writer. the other is a construction manager. who knows? i hope somebody is still writing. i hope the written word lives on, because great as tv and film and the internet is, somebody still has to write books. brian: the name of the book is "being nixon: a man divided" and our guest has been evan thomas. thank you. evan: thank you. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute,

which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q hyundai.org. transcripts are also available as c-span podcasts. ♪ >> if you enjoyed this week's interview, here are some other programs you might like. former director of the richard nixon presidential library scott berg on his biography of woodrow wilson and talking about theodore roosevelt and william howard taft in her book. you can watch these anytime at c-span.org. monday night on the

communicators, we visited microsoft's washington, d. c. office we will talk about i'm hopeful that at some point congress will take on high skilled immigration. h1b is still important. but when we have some of the innovators here, the researchers that are here, we have from all over the world that make contributions for microsoft scientists and engineers and for other companies as well. it is still a need when you look at it from a job perspective. >> the application of project premonition is actually to collect mosquitoes that have bitten people and to determine