a public service by america's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or splite provider. -- satellite ber provider. >> in an interview in 1997 the late publisher of "the washington post" katharine graham talks about her book, bookbook -- "personal history." other topics include the watergate scandal, the pentagon papers, and a journalist strike. brian: katharine graham, author of "personal history." did your children learn anything in this book about you? katharine: that's a hard question. i'm sure they probably did but i can't tell you exactly what. brian: all the stuff in here about your early life and your husband and all that, did they know that? have you all talked that out? katharine: yes. i think they understand that he was ill.

the oldest one was 20, and the youngest one was 11. so they had to deal with it then and always. brian: the question i had after i read the book, why do you want us to know all this? katharine: i really don't suppose that i meant to just tell everything to everybody, but once i sat down to write my story, i just tend to be frank and open and i wanted to be very truthful and i just wrote it the way i saw it and the way the research came up with. i told it as i -- the best i could. brian: when did you start it? katharine: about 6 1/2 years ago i started to do the research for this book. i actually had the idea even longer ago than that. brian: you addressed early in the book that you wrote it yourself. katharine: i did. but i also had very good assistance from a fine researcher, evelyn, my editor

so i felt like i had assistance from them but i wrote the words myself. brian: how did you go about it? katharine: well, for about two years we did research because i 's cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable or splite provider. -- satellite ber provider. >> in an interview in 1997 the late publisher of "the washington post" katharine graham talks about her book, bookbook -- "personal history." other topics include the watergate scandal, the pentagon papers, and a journalist strike. brian: katharine graham, author of "personal history." did your children learn anything in this book about you? katharine: that's a hard question. i'm sure they probably did but i can't tell you exactly what. brian: all the stuff in here about your early life and your husband and all that, did they know that? have you all talked that o 11. so they had to deal with it brian: you addressed early in the b the letters and luckily i grew up in the d my contemporary starting with schoolmates and working on up

to politicians and judges and other people that we dealt with and that helped fill in the record. brian: what year did your father buy "the post"? katharine: in 1933. he had just gotten out of the government. been out three weeks. been governor of the federal reserve board. started the reconstruction finance corporation under hoover and he stayed as federal reserve chairman under rosevelt and then resigned because -- roosevelt and then resigned because he didn't like roosevelt's monetary policies. the post came up three weeks later for auction on the steps of the building. and he bought it anonymously. brian: what did he pay for it? katharine: $825,000. brian: how many newspapers were in washington? katharine: there were five and the "post" was sixth. it had a circulation of about 50,000 in a pretty broken down building. so he started in. he was a businessman and thought he knew how to turn around businesses but he never had any newspaper experience and he encountered the most

horrendous difficulties in fighting his way up but he did a terrific job starting with nothing. brian: where is mount kisko? katharine: where they lived in the summer was about an hour -- it was about 50 miles from new york city in westchester county. and we went there every summer. and they had built this large house there thinking my father was going to live there while on wall street and going to commute to wall street but it just got built when they moved to washington. brian: when did your father meet your mother? katharine: in 1912. hey met in a museum. in new york city. my father had picked up a friend and they were driving downtown in an old car that he had called a stanley steamer

and he picked up this friend whom he didn't either know very well or liked very much and said that he would like to give him a ride but he was going to stop off at the japanese print show and they did that and they saw my mother walking around in the show and my father said to his friend, that's the woman i am going to marry. and so the friend said, well, then you have to speak to her. my father said, no, no. that would spoil everything. one of us is going to meet her and whoever meets her first will call the other one. and about two weeks later the friend called my father and said, guess what. and he said, you met the girl. and he said, damn you, i have. and i arranged we are all going to have dinner. d from -- two -- that was -- that was lincoln's birthday and two years later they were

married on lincoln's birthday. brian: how was it that he was jewish and she was -- katharine: they weren't religious. my mother a little more than my father. he had at the age of 14 or -- studied for a bar mitzvah and then he decided -- he said, i believe some of that but not all of it and i'm not going to do that. and he never -- he was very, very ethical, very driven, very moral but he wasn't formally religious. she -- neither was she but her family was and his family was. and so she took us to church but very -- not very formally. brian: as you grew older, from time to time, anti-semitism came in your life. how often? katharine: almost not the a all strangely when i was young.

one when i was in school and somebody was casting the merchant of venice and said maybe i should play shy lot because i was jewish and i didn't have any idea i was or there was such a thing. i knew nothing about it and at some other point they said my father was a millionaire and i didn't know what either one meant. i had gone home and asked my mother what it meant to be jewish and what it meant to be a millionaire and i don't think i got an explanation for either one at that point. then later on in college it came up because of course hitler started and it was more of an issue. but i spent my whole youth unaware of the issues or anti-semitism or anything. i mean, i should have known a lot more about it. i should have known both their heritages and what it meant to be jewish, what it meant to be lutheran but it simply wasn't mentioned.

by the way, i'm sure they weren't ashamed. nothing intimate was really talked about in my family. brian: how many other kids in the family? katharine: there's five of us in all and i was the fourth. brian: how many are still alive? katharine: i have two sisters. one older, my sister elizabeth, and young, my sister ruth. she was four years younger than me and two years between all the rest of us broifment and you grew up where? katharine: in -- well, we spent our first years in new york and that's kind of a strange part of the story because my family moved to washington but they were there for almost four years before they moved us down to washington so we were living mostly with governesses and nurses and teachers in the new york apartment. in fact, they had come up in between and visited us and occasionally my sisters would go down to washington but i was a baby. when i was 4 we all moved to

washington. brian: where did you go to college? katharine: i went for two years at the university of chicago and two years at vasser. i changed. brian: and who taught you? katharine: mort and the president of the university taughts together. it was -- the great ideas in the western world they thought utchins had a series i think started at st. johns college in annapolis. learned the great ideas of the western world, but that would be your education. so this course started with plateo and aristotle and worked all the way up to st. -- through st. thomas and to freud and marx and they drilled you.

it was a sew krattic method and you had -- socratic method and you had to stand up for yourself and defend yourself. it was rigorous, very hard. brian: who game your favorite philosopher? katharine: i liked the greeks. i liked aristotle and life. i was interested in that. brian: after college what? katharine: well, i had proudly gone off and gotten myself a job at the university of chicago. labor i'd use my relations professor, paul douglas, who later became a senator, knew the publisher of then "chicago times," the afternoon tabloid and i went down there and asked him for a job and he said he would take me but if i wasn't any good then i shouldn't think he was going to keep me and i said that would be fine, i would love a tryout.

then i went home and my father asked me to go out to san francisco with him on a train trip he was taking because he was going to the dough heemian grove. i said -- bow peoplian grove. -- bohemian grove. i said, i love this town. if i swallow my pride, leave chicago, would you help me and he did. brian: you married harry bridges. katharine: well, i covered a labor dispute, a lockout, on the whole waterfront of everybody who was working in the warehouses. it was after -- two years after the very bloody well-known longshoreman strike and i was asked by the labor reporter to do the leg work on this. and i went up and down the waterfront and got to know the negotiator for the union, sam

cagel, and the head of the warehouse union, and occasionally harry bridges will have to say, although it's not correct these days, i socialized with him at night and we went drinking up and down boilermakers. brian: and they were boilermakers? katharine: i fear they were whisky and beer mixed. ou could get one free if you paid 25 cents for two. brian: my political outlook developed as a committed liberal, primarily passionate, anti-fascist and anti-sympathetic toward the labor movement. still there? katharine: honestly not. i mean, i am -- you deal and want to deal with organized as r and we do, but i think it -- then they were just getting organized and the

industrial unions were all new. the steel and miners were unorganized and they were just getting organized. nd so their labor conditions were quite bad. right now some of the unions are fine where they are and some like many businesses i feel have gotten into practices that are not particularly constructive but have to be rethought like featherbedding when it's not needed. brian: after all these years, what's your political philosophy today? how would you define yourself? katharine: i think i am just about where i was. i'm centrist probably more democratic than not but i'm independent. i voted for republicans as well as democrats. but i feel strongly about issues of racial justice and poverty in cities and i feel

strongly that there has to be something done within the context of our -- of the way this country is. and i'm obviously committed to all the values such as freedom i speech and the things that feel enlightened and semi liberals are for. brian: do you think people would be surprised that you voted for george bush in 1988? katharine: i suppose so. i think the most surprised person would be president bush. brian: why do you think he would be surprised? katharine: well, i think that most presidents get sensitive about "the post" and "newsweek" as well, and he had his issues with us but i think any president does. but i suspect he would not think i voted for him. brian: give us just a thumbnail sketch of "the post" company

today, how many newspapers, television stations, how big is it, what is the gross revenues in a year's basis? katharine: we are about $1.6 billion in annual revenue. the company holds mainly "the washington post" and we have a small newspaperings the everett harold" and half of the "international harold tribune" and then we have "newsweek" and we have six television stations. a million and a half cable connections. and we also have digital, ink, which is our direct -- digital, c., which is our digital website. brian: are you chairman of the executive committee? katharine: no. yes, i am chairman of the executive committee. brian: how long were you chairman of "the washington

post" company? katharine: 30 years. that's a little bit average. brian: go back to san francisco. then you come back to washington. hen was your first job at "the post"? katharine: in 19 -- well, i worked there summers in college. brian: after school? katharine: after school in 1939 when my father came out and suggested i come back from san francisco and work on "the post" and i was -- it was time or me to leave there in many week" and we have six television stations. a million and a half cable connections. and we also have digital, ink, which is our direct -- digital, inc., which is our digital website. brian: are you chairman of the executive committee? katharine: no. yes, i am chairman of the executive committee. brian: how long were you chairman of "the washington post" company? katharine: 30 years. that's a little bit average. brian: go back to san francisco. then you come back to washington. when was your first job at "the post"? katharine: in 19 -- well, i worked there summers in college. brian: after school? katharine: after school in 1939 when my fath letters to the edi i wrote a few editorials of no great moment. brian: when did you meet phil

gramm? katharine: that year when i came back. i was really surprised because when i left washington to go to college it was still a very republican town and it was kind of stuffy, you know. there were parties of my parents' age and our parties third nd of dances and generation real estate and when i got back the new deal had come and it was prewar. and the town was just full of attractive young men. and it was not the town i remembered. i was simply thrilled. brian: how did you meet him? katharine: i met him in a house where i got to know some of the people -- two of the people who worked on "the post" that were living there. there were 12 bachelors in this house. and he was one of the 12. i didn't meet him until he was going out with some other women -- girls. and i actually met him one night when we had all gone to a

restaurant and we were coming back. they were living on s street. they hadn't moved to arlington which they later did. i met him with a lot of other people. the tail end of the party was coming in. unfortunately a screen fell onto his head and he was startled and looked up and we -- i looked at him and in fact i met a girl that night when i went to the bathroom and she said she went to law school and i said how marvelous. i could never do that. tell me about it. how do you do it? she said, well, i'm engaged to phil graham and he comes back and picks me up and that helps a lot. i just said oh. and then he -- they broke up and he went out with a friend of mind called alice and she said, did i know phil? i said, no, i didn't. she said, you should. he's just the greatest. i said oh.

and then about new year's my sister gave a party and invited everybody at the house where they were then living at. there were 12 of them, and he was in the party. we first got to know each other that way. and this developed rather quickly because the third time we went out together he discussed marriage. brian: third time? katharine: the third time. brian: and how much later did you marry him? katharine: well, i said this was a little hasty. i was really intrigued by the idea but i said we had to be very deliberate and wait a month. and i think we hardly did wait a month. and we were married that june. after the -- he was working for justice -- supreme court justice stanley reen and going to clerk for justice frankfurt the next year so when the court adjourned we married june.

brian: and both justices were at the wedding? katharine: they were. brian: justice frankfurter was how close to you and your husband during those years? katharine: he was a mentor to phil who had gotten to know him when he was still at the harvard law school and who chose the first five clerks from the law school boys he knew of which phil was one. i had know him because my parents were friends of him too. i didn't know him well. we were great friends. he was simply wonderful to us. and he was so funny. and so intimate. he liked the boys to argue with him. and particularly law clerks. if they didn't agree with him they would all indulge in

screaming fights. i was shocked by some of their manners. he liked this confrontation. he liked to discuss issues like that. and he was wonderful to me and to us and both you and mrs. frankfurter who became a friend too were very, very close to us. brian: how many children did you and phil graham have? katharine: we had four. i have four. my oldest is elizabeth who is a journalist and writes for "the post" on foreign affairs. brian: known as lally. katharine: donald, executive officer of the company. william called bill, who has an investment partnership in los angeles but who lives on the vineyard in the summer and very interested and loves the vineyard and lives next door with his children which i love

that. steven which is married and lives in new york and getting a postgraduate degree in literature and is -- in teaching but he has been in the theater and has produced and has an experimental theater going. brian: you lost a son, though? katharine: i lost our first baby which was tremendously traumatic who was born full term but because it was in washington during -- at the beginning of the war, hospitals were very busy, and it was -- it was an accidental thing in the hospital. it really shouldn't have happened. and phil went in the army right afterwards so it was pretty devastating, yes. brian: what impact did it have on you? do you remember? katharine: well, it was just awful because i thought phil was going in the army, it was the end of everything. we'd never have any children. something might happen to him. it was a pretty awful moment. brian: how long did you -- how long philgraham spend in the

army? tharine: well, he went in -- it was 22 1/2 years, i think. brian: when did he go to work for "the post"? katharine: my father talked to him while he was in officers school. he had by this time invested heavily of both financial resources and energy and effort in building up "the post" and it was very discouraging because they were losing money every year and he was making progress of great kinds, both in circulation and to some extent in advertising but it was terribly discouraging. e wanted to make sure he had a successor in place so there was a point to all this work. my brother by then was a psychiatrist and interested in medicine and so he asked phil if he'd be interested. we had long talks about this and i said he has to decide and

he did finally and he said what did i think. i loved washington but i was willing -- he wanted to go into law and politics in florida. brian: is that -- his brother was senator bob graham? katharine: and phil kind of aspired to what his brother was. i think he's a great and very fine senator. brian: how many years was phil graham publisher? katharine: 17. and during that time he became publisher when he was not quite 31 because my father -- he went on "the post" right after he got back and we had terminal leave. it was january, 1946. and six months later my father was offered to be president of the world bank by president truman and he said to phil, i won't leave if you don't want me to but this is kind of my first love because that was the

kind of thing he had done for the government and he thought somebody ought to start the world bank. and phil said, no, that's all right. he should do whatever he wanted to do. so my father did that and named phil publisher. so he took up the struggle and from 1947 to 1954 he, too, had the same kind of time, really, really difficult time. and in 1954 my father, who had come back from the world bank where the -- six months after he went because he did get it started and he did get the regulations changed that made him really frustrated. and he felt he couldn't do any father he'd done

talked to him while he was in officers school. he had by this time invested heavily of both financial resources and energy and effort in building up "the post" and it was very discouraging because they were losing money every year and he was making progress of great kinds, both in circulation and to some extent in advertising but it was terribly discouraging. he wanted to make sure he had a successor in place so there was a point to all this work. my brother by then was a psychiatrist and interested in medicine and so he asked phil if he'd be interested. we had long talks about this and i said he has to decide and he did finally and he said what did i think. did i think. i loved washington but i was was. i think he's a c first love because that was the come back from the world bank was at the world bank. katharine: he left it to the bank because it was huge and cumbersome and he left it there. bob inherited it. i believe took it with him to his own office? brian: to his own office, yes. i bring this up because you are close friends with bob today? katharine: i am. he's a good friend. brian: did he serve on the board eventually? katharine: yes, he did. yes, he did. brian: you devote a lot of time to your husband, deceased husband. had the story about his death been told in the detail that you told it? katharine: no coherently -- not consecutively. i think most of what i told had been here and there. brian: had you -- was it hard to retell that story, rethink it, relive it? katharine: it wasn't easy, not only because of the sensitivity

of what i was writing but because i wanted to be sure to put it in context. it was a comparatively short period in which he was finely -- did some quite aberrational things. and -- but most of our life together was wonderful and he was wonderful and i didn't want the bad part at the end to overshadow the very, very good part. i wanted to tell -- one of the reasons i wrote this book was to say how great he was and my parents were each in their own way. i thought there were three people that deserved to be remembered and to be written about. brian: what were the circumstances of his death? katharine: he was subject to manic depressive illness before lithium -- i think it was being experimented with but certainly wasn't being used. and he went to a psychiatrist

who didn't believe in drugs of any kind or electric shock or anything. and so phil himself didn't -- because of the psychiatrist, because he thought it left you not as -- as human as he had been, that it affected your mind. so he didn't want -- i don't think they -- anything was available. he didn't want it eitherly. he suffered from untreated manic depression. at the end he went off with a young woman, a researcher at "newsweek" whom he met and very quickly picked up and took up with and it was finally after some hesitations and backs and forth he left with her and said what the matter with him was me and he wanted a divorce and he was going to keep the paper. and he was going to marry her. and then as i kind of thought might happen, because this was

pretty spectacular, as you can imagine, in 1962 -- brian: was it public? katharine: yes. it had to be. it wasn't at first. but we had successfully hidden his illness which had started getting serious in 1957 and from then the cycles were getting closer and worse. but people didn't know about it until this very public event happened. so they thought, well, this is what happens sometimes. i even said to one friend, you know he's ill. she said, don't say that. everybody says that when their husband leaves them. so i realized that i better not say that but i knew this was part of it. in the ot depressed summer of that year in july.

and -- brian: 1962. katharine: 1963. brian: jack kennedy was killed in november and you were all close. katharine: they were friends. phil knew the president pretty well and i knew of him too and we did see something of him. and he was also good friends with the vice president. and so he came home and asked he girl to go back home and came back to us but he was so ill and so depressed and i had seen him through two of these depressions. i just felt unequal to doing it again. he was asked to involuntarily go to a hospital for which he succeeded in getting a day off

which he did and killed himself. brian: you talk about your life together and all the people you knew. i guess it was the moment in the eisenhower administration where your husband was actively involved in the civil rights movement. d the influencing of the arkansas situation, central high school? katharine: he had gotten involved a little bit. i think he was very -- he felt southern and he was very involved in civil rights and in l liberties and actually become involved with then-majority leader lyndon johnson in passing the

1957 civil rights law. he had very much helped him get that law passed by talking to by rall and the naacp and telling them -- there were no voting rights act and it was -- there were voting rights and not school desegregation. and there was a jury regulation. you could appeal to a jury which at that time were largely white. it was a weak civil rights law but it was the first one in about 84 years. and persuaded joe and the naacp to accept this and that's the way it got passed. brian: he also was first chairman of comsack? katharine: yes. during -- actually during the eisenhower period which you referred to, he had become

involved in the desegregation of the little rock school and he wanted to prevent eisenhower sending the troops in there. very hard and somewhat fratically to try to get everybody together and get the school desegregated. and when it failed, which was going to because the governor was standing against the school desegregation, i think it threw him into his first depression in 1957, actually. brian: the reason i mentioned the com sls sack thing, how do you think people in the media ought to be involved? katharine: he was head of the communications satellite, incorporated. brian: right. katharine: he was head of that. katharine: half government,

half -- brian: half government, half private. katharine: and yet maintained his role as publisher. i don't think it's something people would dream of doing these days. before that he was heavily involved in politics. involved with lyndon johnson. involved, as you said, with little rock. and involved actually -- i tell a story about desegregation of the swimming pools in washington which he kept a story out of the paper and made a deal with this interior department that if he acquired a story of a riot had been taking place about swimming pools they would desegregate them. that was using the paper and influencing the news. i think that's unacceptable these days. because you have to influence events by telling -- giving people information by which they can make decisions. and so i think it wouldn't happen today.

brian: you wrote on page 140, it wasn't until years later i looked at the downside of all this and realized perversely i had seem to enjoy the role of dormant wife. for whatever reason i liked to be dominated and be the implementor. katharine: i meant the way it was written. i didn't feel put upon. i adored our life. i liked being what i call the chief operating officer. i did everything at home. i kept the houses running. i took care of the children. i made the decisions about summers. i bought and sold houses and moved. i did everything that most families i think share because he was so -- working so hard and i was trying to take the pressure off by doing everything at home. i was interested in our life. i was interested in meeting the people we met. i adored the family. i don't know that i saw myself

the way people would view that situation now in which you were brought up to think men were intellectually superior and you kind of live intellectually awesome which is of course ridiculous. even -- you can work or not work these days. women have choices, that's the main point. but you have to have your own identity and your own interests. brian: you point out in the book that he's buried literally right across the street from where you live. katharine: that's true. brian: how did that happen? katharine: in a really weird way because the cemetery is a perfectly beautiful cemetery across the street, oak hill. weren't many places. and it's an old cemetery. he got kind of interested in having a plot there for us. it was kind of like getting into a club or something.

our great friend, the bruces, and people we knew had these plots there and he made jokes about this and said we should be sandwiched in there somewhere. one day he came home from a school meeting and said, well, i got this plot because i've become acquainted with somebody on the school board and we can get in. it became a family kind of joke. and he even made jokes about, you can just wheel me across the street. i mean, you know, with what happened, of course, it's appalling. you never thought of it as a reality. and so we were at the church, at the funeral, and my -- one of my sons and other people made the arrangements so i had no idea that this plot was literally across the street from the house in front of the little chapel. and i was pretty startled when

we arrived there after the service to find it was right there in front of my eyes. and first it bothered me but now i really like it. brian: and you lived in that house for the last 34 years? katharine: 50. brian: and you never remarried. katharine: no. brian: but we learn in the book you had some suitors like stevens at one point? katharine: well, i had friends, put it that way. brian: has it been hard to be in a job like yours and resist the -- you know, attention you would get from men? katharine: actually, no. because i really worked terribly hard and i moved around where i had to and i lived a life that was really essentially work even if i went out in the evening, it was either something i had to do or really did want to do or i stayed home. and i don't think there was room in that life to get married to anybody that was

very strong and wanted me to be there more than i was. so it really never came up as a practical fact. brian: after your husband shot himself, how long was it before you took over "the post"? katharine: i went away for a month and came back and went to work but that wasn't to say i took over "the post." i went to work to learn the issues. i didn't really see myself as taking over "the post," but i did go to work right away and gradually i learned you couldn't sit there shunning the thing and i was encouraged to by some of the executives and ainly by fredric whom phil made the chairman who had been our corporate lawyer. and he said, you have to come to work. and i was happy to do that because i cared a great deal about the company and about

"the post" which i lived, struggled for its existence. it had been part of my whole life and i knew what had gone into making it as successful as it even was which was still competitive. gradually having gone to work to learn, i worked with him and worked as president of the company. and i became publisher when john, who had been publisher -- made publisher when phil left nd then fitz died 10 years later just after we had gone public and so then i became -- then i did take over the company. brian: you call 1971 and 1976 the turbulent years. why? katharine: well, because

rapidly we went through the pentagon papers and watergate and just as i thought things had calmed down we went through a very violent pressman strike in 1975. so those were three really cosmic events that happened and in public, so to speak. brian: the pentagon papers chapter when you read -- i wrote some names down the back because there are so many people that people heard that were involved at one time. i wanted to see if you can explain it. people had been in the government and out and law firms and out. i just want to know how you kept all these people straight. for instance, you had your lawyer at one time was bill rogers who had become secretary of state during the time of the pentagon papers. in other words, you -- katharine: no. brian: he wasn't your lawyer then but secretary of state but had been your lawyer? katharine: yes, right. brian: paul, was he president of your company?

katharine: yes. brian: he had been secretary of the navy. katharine: yes. brian: kilpatrick played a role in your company. katharine: he was involved with us as a law partner. and before that he'd been in the government. brian: was he deputy -- katharine: yes. he was deputy defense secretary. brian: and ed williams had been your husband's attorney. katharine: when he was -- when he was thinking he wanted to divorce. brian: divorce and take some of your money and go the other way. and you ended up leaning on him at a time. katharine: we became very close friends and then he came in as a lawyer later. actually with fitz and i brought him in together. brian: and bob mcnamara was at scottie's home the night the pentagon papers was published in "the new york times" and asked him advice. in addition to that, scottie was a very close friend of

yours who ran "the new york times," washington bureau, tried to get to work for you. and your national editor who you went on to not think so highly of in your book, as i remember, critical of "the post"? katharine: no. brian: anyway -- how do you deal in a town like this when one day somebody's your lawyer and next day in the government and you stay pat but everybody else is moving around, do you ever get confused? katharine: no, because once people are in the government, the relationship changes. you can be friends with people in the government but you have -- they remember and you remember the paper comes first. sometimes the paper attacks your friends or does things even that you think are unfair to your friends. and sometimes you can reason with the others but mostly you have to just stand by them. brian: when you travel and as you go around talking to people on the book tour and you lived in sioux falls, you lived in

chicago, you lived in san francisco. where else? any other cities for very long? katharine: not much. it's mostly washington for most of the time. brian: what i'm getting at, people look at "the post" and they look at washington, they're cynical about all the power and control and how do you -- how do you tell them about the folks that are away from here saying you don't have too much power? katharine: i try to explain what the power of a newspaper or magazine or a television station are. for instance, "the post" has . e power to inform people and where they play a story matters probably if they cover it well, it matters, because you're talking to the government as well as people in washington. but you don't have the power -- sometimes people think you run downstairs and talk to editors.

you don't. i mean, about a story. you never see stories before they get in the papers. you have the power to pick an editor you think or a publisher or whatever it is that will do the job well and is in your general mold of thought but after that they really have autonomy. and so you don't have the power to -- that people envision you as having of making or breaking people or influencing events directly. you have more -- it sounds like goody to shoes that you have more responsibility than power. brian: you wrote on page 360. you say news columns had to be fair and detached after recognizing there is really no such thing as objectivity. katharine: detached is a word that's better because objectivity in the way people

interpret you can have. you exercise -- an editor exercising a judgment when you think just what is relevant, you have to make selections what goes into the paper and what doesn't so that's what i mean by there's no such thing as objectivity because the human being does that. and you do it the best you can to be fair and detached and accurate. but you are making a human judgment. there is a person making it. that's all i mean. brian: i wanted to -- do you remember who the first person you personally had to fire? and what the experience was like? katharine: i do but i don't want to talk about it. brian: you talk about a lot of people. i mean -- katharine: i talk about it in the book but he was a dear friend and it was very painful. brian: phil? katharine: no. al friendly. brian: is al friendly's grandson working for bill

clinton? katharine: yes, andrew. brian: he's with him all the time. katharine: yes. brian: is it peter -- is it deroe? katharine: yes. brian: helplessly inadequate leader and he had little choice but to leave for the dynamic cbs. he touched a raw sensitivity when he assaulted me for not being a professional manager and i must confess i wept on and off for at least two days. katharine: horrifying but true. brian: why did you admit all this and what was the circumstance? katharine: i really don't know. maybe i shouldn't have. but i tend to be upfront and honest so i guess i just told it the way it happened. brian: he was -- when was peter deroe there with you and what job did he have? katharine: he was -- i fore goat his actual title. -- i forget his actual title. first, he was number two business person at "newsweek."

then actually after that incredible scene he came back from cbs and ran the business side of "newsweek." brian: and he actually told you to your face that he thought you were doing a lousy job? katharine: yep. brian: then you go on about 20 pages later. anxieties during this difficult period peter told me he found another job. he left you and told you he didn't like what you did and you brought him back? katharine: yes. brian: why? katharine: i can't answer that. i don't know. brian: later, he was -- katharine: it seemed like the thing to do at the time. it wasn't a good idea. brian: then he went back to cbs and came to you again and had a chat. he was quite willing to start what was wrong with me and the company. by this time i had grown tougher and said once was enough. it seemed to irritate him to not repeat the monologue on my failings. what toughened you up? katharine: experience.

brian: to what purpose did you put that to once you toughened up? katharine: well, i think i could make decisions better and more firmly. and stick by them and not quite ask so much advice. brian: you say when you -- katharine: although i think you always ask some advice. brian: you say when you first got to "the post" in charge that you were petrified about speaking. katharine: couldn't open my mouth. i had to practice in front of the children the first year i was working at the paper. i was asked to go down and say merry christmas at the company lunch and i literally -- my children are hilarious. they keep telling this story. i practiced making the speech saying merry christmas in front of the children because i never said anything in public to even my children lined up in a row. brian: what moment do you

remember where you had to make the most important speech? katharine: well, i made a lot of speeches defending us during watergate. that's when i started speaking the most. and i was trying to explain that we were reporting a story and that we weren't after the administration and that we weren't -- it wasn't our intention to do them in. that we were following the footsteps of the story. and so i started speaking quite a lot that year, 1972 -- well, probably later 1973 and 1974. brian: in the short time remaining, let me ask you about presidents because there are pictures in here with you with every president since lyndon johnson. john kennedy. what did you think of john kennedy? tharine: i found him irreistably charming, afractive

and it was exciting having someone you knew as president. having your generation in the white house. having these young people there, i thought they were marvelous. brian: how is he today in retrospect? katharine: i think in the three years he had before he died, i don't think he had the chance to really get an awful lot done of what he was frying to do. i think that -- trying to do. i think president johnson exceeded him and getting legislation passed that he wanted to get done. brian: lyndon johnson undressed in front of you one night? katharine: that was a funny story because i was at his 34th wedding anniversary and just as we were -- he was in a pretty bad mood anyway. it was during the vietnam war. and afterwards we went upstairs and he just went to bed and

left us. his bedroom oddly was right next door to the upstores living room, the yellow room, and there were some double doors between. suddenly he came out -- we were saying good night to mrs. johnson. the doors flung out and he said, come here. i looked over my shoulder hoping somebody was there but he was saying it to me. then he said, come here. abe, who i believe was on the supreme court. bedroom t into his and "the post" was lying on the bed and a man, the chief commissioner in the district -- there were still three -- but he was kind of like the appointed mayor. he was our -- from the johnson point of view, he was our creation. and he had appointed a police commissioner without consulting the president which he had told him to do. and he was very displeased

because he wanted to prove something about being anti-crime by appointing a superpolice commissioner. so he was really mad he had gone ahead and done this. d he started yelling at me about our goddamn mayor and it was our idea and hadn't asked him. he wanted to do it. and he started to undress. this is 1964, please. and i was new to the job. i had only gone to work. he is slinging his clothes off while he's calling me out. and i thought, wait a minute. what is going to happen here? can this be me? am i standing here in the president's bedroom and what is going to happen? he suddenly said, turn around. and so i turned around. he went right on. and finally he said, all right. good night. we both left. i mean, it was quite a beginning. brian: richard nixon. katharine: i never knew him

really. personally. i met him and i talked to him and i even interviewed him and he came to lunch at the paper, an editorial lunch. so i saw him a little bit but i didn't really know him personally. and i think that he had many good traits. i think he was a really jekyll hyde character because he had all these things that we keep seeing come out on the tapes and this low level side to him. he was really brilliant in many ways, and he had many good people working for him. i really view him with apple biff lens. -- ambivilence. brian: conled reagan. katharine: i don't think you don't get to be friends with a president if you don't know him before because their power is so great. they see people as strangers. so i thought he was -- he was a leader. we knew what he stood for.

i think he is a very dignified man. i wasn't particularly -- i didn't agree with him or all that he did but nancy was a good friend and still is. brian: bill clinton. -- brian: bill clinton? katharine: there are promises and failures. i am very hopeful things will go well and i certainly hope they do. brian: you say you do not see much of him or haven't. katharine: they are another generation, very polite. i have seen them a little bit and we have a mutual friend. reason that io should see them. book. you were writing a katharine: i am not a professional writing. -- writer.

yet i wanted to write. jumpyght i would get too and tell him what to do too much. it was hard to do it. brian: where did you write it? katharine: at home at my desk by hand. brian: by hand? then what did you do? katharine: i give it to my researcher who put it on a computer and in order and helped me shape it and make chapters of it, helped me get it together. he was fairly essential. then we sent it off to the editor who left half of it on the cutting room floor. brian: i wanted to ask you, 625 pages -- did they use all the wrote? katharine: it may have been 1200. brian: is there a second book? katharine: nope, that is it. brian: are you looking forward to your tour across the country? katharine: sort of. brian: what do you think of the talking points? katharine: it is hard for me,

much have her -- much harder than having written. brian: why? katharine: i do not know. talking about it in public i find very hard. i'm not very good at it, either, as you can now see. brian: katharine graham is our guest. the book is called "personal history." thank you very much. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] encore q&a onnd the book "thank you for your service," which looks at the lives of soldiers returning from the iraq war. it was released as a motion picture in late october. during our interview, he discussed his experiences covering the war and the soldiers who fought it. 5:15 p.m. eastern on c-span. in primepan this week time, tonight at 8:00 eastern,

celebrity activist, including ashton kutcher, on modern slavery, ryan philip b on military caregivers, and jennifer garner on early childhood education. >> they sit babies in front of the television, i have seen it over and over. and the child quietly goes to sleep area >> friday at 8:00 p.m. eastern, tech sector trends in government regulation. starshipof it as the enterprise goal. if you ever watched star trek, there is a computer that is ambient and exists in the starship and it understands your idioms. you can have a conversation with it and it understands everything. honest to god, they have all watched star trek. that is what they are gunning for. >> all this week on prime time on c-span. katharine: the head of south korea's