i am in ron ziegler's office. ollie atkins, who had photographed the nixon family for years, even before the white house, just roamed around the west wing pictures of whatever he saw. so this was me kind of on deathwatch, city enron's office. i saw this earlier, -- sitting in ron's office. i saw this earlier, and behind this curtain is nixon and sadat at the pyramids. it had just been taken five or six weeks before. in the last several weeks before president nixon resigned, he had gone to the middle east and have been hailed in cairo and alexandria, and then went to syria, the first president to visit syria. then he went to saudi arabia and the to israel. he squared circle of israel and egypt in one trip and ended up in jordan. he came back for a week and then went to russia. so that is that day. this was, i have no idea why i was sent in there, because there was nothing i could do. this was the oval office. i went in, i guess to supervise, two people who knew exactly what they were doing and had done it before. t

this is ron ziegler's office after the resignation speech. n, and iane sawyer, me. >> so, we will now see some from the interviews that frank conducted with president nixon. all then deal with the period to the resignation, and the very dark days of eearly august 1974. frank, talk about what we will see. sets are four different of clips. frank will give some context on them, then we will roll them. talk about the first set of clips that we will see. >> these clips are available on the nixon library website. in preparing them, i think of it as an old mice to ken burns. they are the clips, but they are preceded by title cards which explain what they are. i will be the human title card here to set them up. but if you go to the library website, even see them, and more will have a much succint explanation. we've divided them into four groups. on the first, you will hear, present brings ziglier, his secretary, and heig, the white house chief of staff, acting as a national security person, although henry kissinger was of course the secretary of state

get out to san clemente and jack miller and becker go out to talk and they're met at the door by ron ziegler. ziegler who just recently passed away, was ford's -- sorry, nixon's press secretary for the entirety of the nixon administration. very young man. passed away at a young age. he meets him at the door opens the door and before they say anything, says, this president will not say he's sorry for anything. there's only one way that ziegler knows this. somebody in the white house told him. i have my suspicions. but they're just as good as yours. we don't know who tipped that hand. but it's through -- but it threw becker and miller for a loop. by the time they were done negotiating, by the time they were done talking with ziegler, who represented nixon there, nixon did not sit down and physically negotiate the acceptance of the pardon. nixon had gotten everything that he wanted. he had gotten virtually complete control of the papers. and he was not being required to say anything even close to an act of contrition to the american people. when nixon finally does meet w in the senate had alrea

to be completely different than the nixon white house, nixon's press secretary was named ron sigler. -- ziegler. and one of the things that i said why was first appointed ford's press secretary was, i am a ron but not a sigler. -- ziegler. given the fact that ford had succeeded nixon and the way the nixon demonstration -- and the fact that i came out of the press and the fact that ford in his whole political had built a reputation for honesty and so forth. so we may have delayed putting out some stories, as i say i may have described them in the best possible terms without lying, but i never did lie and that was a real promise to myself to the press corps -- and to the press corps. >> you cannot lie in that job. it it is career ending. if you ever got caught knowingly misleading the press, the consequences of that would be the rupture in that relationship of fragile trust that exists anyhow and you would not be useful to the president. i got in trouble one time, helen thomas asked me that question and i said, no, i have never lied, but i certainly learned how to tell the truth slowly. [laughter