don graham told me the same thing. they knew right then the jig was up but it took a couple days to 36 hours or so. what happened next is the reason i'm telling you the story. a massive fraud had been perpetrated on the washington post and on the public. what do you do? what do you do? if you are ben bradlee? he was part -- pushing the institution of the post. was only the second at a newspaper -- he couldn't -- gave him free rein saying everybody at the paper will cooperate. there won't be one sordid facts about this falsehood, this hoax that we won't get first and when people asked about that at the time and when i asked about it he said he learned the lesson of watergate. it is not always the crime that gets you. it is what you do after. what he did by opening up the paper with don graham's participation leaders and remarkably talented man wrote a piece for the sunday paper after they found out and it is one of the most stunning pieces of four day journalism you'll ever come across and i relied on heavily. but that

i did my best, but one of the things that i think don graham, add small, liz hilton and all the people around k. grants to states and legacy and they gave me full of dense correspondence. and i mean, it was revolutionary to my understanding of the relationship among the most exciting things you could ever read. i'm not moment at the pentagon papers as an indicative moments. then had a lot of courage. i try to find some way for some of their relationship in the book and they go back and forth and i saw that i talk about all that. ultimately nobody knew him as their compact and it works and that is what is important about it. but in 1995, a book party when his number came out, it will make you see how much you had to leave for in the 475 page book. but at the end of the party, he realized he had given to the boat, his boss, the one who paid him in meeting the wealthy man, everything. he wrote her a note and at the end of the note he wrote this. catherine coming up in the most important force in my life. you've been a joyous partner who makes my heart beat every time i see you. there's no

a very special thanks tonight to washington post chairman don graham and the publisher our hosts. a big thank you to the owner of this historic building that turned over the top floor to us tonight despite their renovations. this evening is a rare gathering of key players in the quarter great scandals. along those on stage, there's a lot of people in audience who loomed large in watergate. i see a couple of them there, alexander butterfield, the man who revealed that there was a taping system in the oval office came all the way from california for tonight. [ applause ] and earl silver. former u.s. attorney for the district of columbia who prosecuted quite a few of the president's men. for the first time there's a discussion of watergate with those deeply involved in it in the watergate. it was on the sixth floor downstairs in this building that 40 years ago this week there was a botched break-in, burglars, working for president nixon who started it all and forever gave the suffix to every political scandal. those six floor offices are actually open tonight 40 years ago they housed

don graham was here. >> the buffett group. >> at those meetings we would talk about various subjects and philanthropy was important so i think it was maybe in 1993 or something like that we had a meeting. i think it was in ireland at that time. actually brought along the gospel of wealth for everybody to read. we discussed it then. our thinking sort of evolved together in a way. >> have you ever regretted not getting involved in giving away money earlier in your life? >> my wife, she thought -- she liked the idea. we both agreed on giving away all the money. once we had everything we wanted, we've had everything we wanted. you know, the surplus wealth i have, has no utility to me. it has to the rest of the world if used properly. we agreed early. she would have liked the idea of giving away more of it earlier, and i felt that i was going to be a better compounding machine than most places, and that there would abwhole lot more to give away later on. i told her i'll pile it up and you unpile it. >> all right. now, your father was a conservative republican congressman. you were probabl

on the future and "the washington post" is actually had a close relationship with facebook and don grahamas you may know is on the board of facebook and is a friend of mark zuckerberg's. we have been -- pretty much a social media has grown. today we have seen people in our newsroom who are focused on getting our content out to where the audience is in number when he can't do anymore than deliver news in template form from the mountaintop to the audience and what you have to do is figure out where the audiences are that are interested in the kind of content you are producing and put that content in front of them. their compositions that take place over many other platforms then obviously "the washington post" web site and rather than assuming people are going to come to us and look for information which is i think still the attitude of people, paleolithic people who read newspapers and go to web sites thinking they know what "the washington post" has to say, think what happens more and more is people go where their friends are. they engage with their friends and in that community they lear

in the wake of the scandal, he and don graham, the only publisher at the typer that time. days, interviewed everybody, complete access. basically, no fact in that report had been successfully challenged. it is the definitive account. that actually saved the post and truly saved -- and what he will say to you is that he could learn a lesson of watergate and yes, the mistake was a mistake and he will always admit it was a mistake, but in the wake of it, it's the cover up. he threw his arms open and i think it saved him. i go into that episode a great deal in the book because it tells you as much about ben. >> you said you were fascinated about him. why you wanted to write the book and because you could. what about your sense of who he was? figure in history, a man changed or surprised you or did you learn in the course of writing this book? >> what anybody who has met ben or been around ben, when he walks into a room, he has a real charis charisma, a real personal power. it continues to affect me. i think what was surprising to me, he flew open his whole archive, his whoep l