haldeman had offered me 27 in our meeting, and i took it. i just went back -- half hour after our meeting he called me and said, i've been thinking about our meeting. i like talking to you. i think you're going to be terrific, let's raise it to 30. i thought that's right, right there. hit the nail. boy, times have changed, haven't they? but i -- those were extremely tough years working nixon, '73, '74, and yet all of us learned a great deal about ourselves and about the country and about leadership. i frankly don't remember having very many innovations. we did have another writer named noel koch who was extremely gifted. a whole slew of people. i left out some. but i do remember on the state of the union addresses tended to be extremely complicated affairs. because in those days you had each candidate, department, would send you in effect their part of the draft. they'd send you five pages. they'd want every program in the five pages. you'd have 20 of these things arriving, plus you'd have 15 ear drafts written by outside people, one thing o

by '73 both haldeman and ehrlichman, watergate was starting to close in. there was a lot of stuff starting to happen. there was no -- but the speech writing staff became sort of a cockpit where a lot of these differences got hammered out. one of the reasons speech writing was so much fun, especially when you're young is you're allowed to be at the table, when you've got people around the table that have paid many more dues than you have, but somebody has to put words on the paper, try to provide some music. but you are obviously -- >> well, pam bailey at one point said you had a story. but let me -- maybe it will come back. >> i think the world of pam bailey, but i don't remember the story. >> did you have more face time with the president when you became head of the speech writing shop? did you have face time with the president? >> i had face time with the president. it was -- it's very important to remember richard nixon was a -- was an insular figure, was introverted. didn't like to spend a lot of time with people. and so it wasn't as if you went and sp

>> haldeman's notes are the only recollection i have of what he told me. haldeman was a very good note taker because, of course, we've had other opportunities to look at his notes, and he was very -- he was making the notes for my presidential file. the notes indicated -- >> the offensive. >> of course. well, you've asked me what it was. my recollection was that the notes show check the eob to see whether or not it's bugged. obviously i was concerned about whether or not the other side was bugging us. >> do you have any idea what was in that 18 1/2-minute gap? >> i don't know that any of us do. and rosemary woods, she was a close friend of mine and she always maintained to me as she did to everyone else, it really puzzled her. >> you did the briefing with the group and you have a picture behind you, how did you all divide up that work when you prepared him for these interviews? >> my recollection is we did it by topic. i forget now exactly what it was. and because i think my recollecti recollection, yeah. the four shows but we did 29 hours of taping over -

b, haldeman, erlichman and other people kept telling us, he's innocent. i have written, i believe, that the coverup worked better inside the white house than it worked outside. especially when you're young you have a desire if you're working for a boss, especially when he's president, you want him to be innocent. if you invest your hopes and dreams in somebody you really want them to be above things and i had come to believe he was probably innocent. i was less cynical. i would have liked to have believed he was innocent. i didn't know anybody, i had never known anybody who had gone to jail. a lot of my friends didn't go to jail. i didn't come from that type of environment. i tended to be one of the ones who believed longer than i should have. i do remember one morning driving in on a summer day in my little blue volkswagen bug into the west parking lot there just outside the west wing. and as i came through the gates, i just noticed people were scurrying around in one direction or another. just an unusual bee hive of activity. i had no idea what was goin

haldeman and ehrlichman were nodding. as you back to lunch, as of what does this mean? he said i think you should go. >> they poisoned him against you. >> i have always thought so. you have heard more of the tapes and i have. >> but everything is on the -- not everything is on the tapes. what have we missed? what discussions has the president have about watergate with you that are not on the tapes? what i do not know the step that can david was on tapes. some of it was. one night he was talking about -- this is in december of 72. he was talking about kissinger giving his interview. we are talking just the two of us off the living room. he waves to me. we go into the hall. he said, "the next administration, kissinger is gone." then we resumed the conversations. . if i had any sense i would note the room is but. >> ec summit to paris 0-- you sent someone to paris to take a picture? >> ted kennedy. someone sent us a clipping from europe. nixon said "of what that picture." picture."that with what is going to be our next opponent. we tried to the normal ways to do it. we can

ben never said we're not never printing that story about haldeman or nixon or mitchell. he would say, "you don't have it yet." >> i think that process can happen in a different fashion in that kind of platform. there are two or three fairly big parts of the u.s. attorney story we're never right. sure they're true but we just didn't have it. there are many things that we waited days or weeks, things that had to do with carol lamb's dismissal down in southern california. >> but your first story on the u.s. attorneys, how long did it take for the reporting to be done on this? >> before you went live with it. >> right. >> you know, a couple days, two or three days. >> but it wasn't a tweet? >> there was no tweeting. even back then. i guess my point is that you can still have that very deliberative process in this different platform. and i think the point that i would make is that there are, again, can you have a broad arc of a story but even a sometimes, you know, a resignation happens. resignation is a pretty self-contained story. you want to let readers in on it. there are

. >> how did you escape the rath of bob haldeman? >> i never knew. i don't think haldeman had a clue i was over there for a long time. >> if he had seen your office. >> if he had seen my political pedigree, seen my office and what a geek i was, he probably would have said forget it, we or not bringing this guy in here. ray was an extraordinarily good writer and he was a wonderful mentor for me and he really -- we spent a lot of time together. evenings i recall most vividly, at that time barack obama actually does this regularly now. but that time richard nixon on saturday liked to have a pact of the most interesting letters from the week, 20 or 25 or 30 because he could get a sense of what the public mood was and the tenor of letters is actually interesting. and there are 50 people on the staff that ray ran we had this correspondence unit. all the letters came through. we had a woman who wrote special letters. they would send up a bundle of letters, like 200 or something, 300 they thought was the most interesting. it was my responsibility to sift the

there is a tape that shows in 1971 haldeman, nixon's chief of staff, told nixon that dwight chapin, who was nixon's pointmepoint me -- appointment secretary was running and had set up a sabotage operation to derail the democrats. there are tapes that show that nixon in august of '72 approved an okayed the payment of the watergate burglars for their silence. you know, carl has laid this out very well that watergate was -- not just the burglary, not just the coverup, but a whole mindset and a whole series of illegal activities. just for instance, they hired people well before watergate, a former fbi man, to climb the telephone pole behind joe craft's house and tap his telephone. now, just think, if something like that were going on, do you think barack obama has a team climbing telephone poles to tap people's telephone? let's hope not. and joe craft was a very prominent columnist at that time. so watergate is an interlacing series of activities that were illegal, as mark phelp told us, there were 50 people who were hired to do this and people dismissed that. the senate watergate committee

know who it was at the time, haldeman or ziegler or someone have gergen tell woodward x. so it was all through channels. as a result, bob woodward and i had periodic conversations in which he was looking for help on a story and i would try to plug him in with somebody there, sometimes ziegler and, you know, i knew he had other contacts but i was one. but he and i would have these conversations about what was really happening. and we both began to understand that he was playing with the pillars of the government. i mean, his stories were starting to really threaten those pillars. and it was so interesting because he had a -- what i was hearing inside was so different from what he was gathering in his reporting. the world that was being painted for me on the inside as a player inside was a much, much more innocent, they don't understand, they don't get it. they're just out to get us. this is the liberal press. they're trying to bring us down. it's kay graham is just, you know, on a vendetta against nixon. she's never liked him, etcetera, etcetera. and what i then was discov

they had haldeman, mitchell, john dean, they discovered the tapes, they laid out the whole money trail, they -- and the special prosecutor's office discovered all of this corrupt campaign money. >> a republican on the committee said what did the president know and when did he know it. >> i'll add from my book that the average home watched 30 hours of the hearings that went from may 17 to august 7 and they filled 237 hours of television. but really, other than 9/11 i can't think of an event that gripped the nation and that only did for a week and this went on for months. i think we have to wrap it up. i want you to know i have a few copies of this book. i was on a panel with them a few years ago and i came out and they were signing my book and bob looked up, for people buying it and bob looked up and said do you mind? i was like no. then i told my son, go buy a copy of my book so i can get them to sign it. thank you all. [ applause ] >> stay with us for

buchanan and then next in line sitting on the sofa is the chief of staff of the white house, bob haldeman. carefully taking notes as he always did. then comes bill gavin. he's followed by jim keogh. he was the first director of the white house staff. he passed away about five years ago. earlier executive editor of "time" magazine and head of the usia. ray price took jim keogh's place as director. finally to the right, closest to president nixon, you'll recognize william sapphire who died less than two years ago. whom we all this afternoon are thinking of with special affection. now having introduced them through their photos, let me welcome them in person and invite our white house speech writing panel to the stage. very quickly, ray price, the chief speech writer for much of nixon's tenure. joined the new york staff in 1967. he had served earlier at editorial page editor at the new york herald tribune and later as president of economic club of new york. his memoir is called "with nixon." highly recommended. pat buchanan, a journalist democrat before he became the first full-time advisor

inre's a tape that shows 1971, haldeman, nixon's chief of staff, told nixon that nixon's appointment secretary was running and it set up a sabotage operation to derail the democrats. there are tapes that show nixon in august of 72 approved and allocated the payment of the watergate burglars for their silence. carl has laid this out very well. watergate was not the burglary, not just a cover-up, but a whole mind-set and a whole series of illegal activities. for instance, there were people well before watergate, a former f.b.i. man climbed the telephone poll behind joe kraft's house and tap his telephone. just think, if something like that were going on, do you think barack obama has a team climbing telephone poles to tap people's telephone poles? let's hope not. joe kraft was a very prominent columnist at that time. watergate is an interlacing series of activities that were illegal. there were 50 people who were hired to do this and people dismissed that. the watergate committee found that more than 50 people doing all kinds of things specifically to it derailed muskie. >> there are t