. >> what about the spiro agnew thing? >> michael deaver made a sarcastic remark about spiro agnew. when you traveled on any of ronald reagan's sentimental notions, if you get very upset. he did not like his allusions destroyed. >> they had been governors together. >> i guess they were in the 70's. you talking about winning the pulitzer prize. >> is very kind of you to apply the fact that i won the pulitzer prize. in new york city, it is theicult to walk around corner without bumping into another pulitzer prize winner. i was amazed at the ward was. it was just a certificate that came in the mail. for $1000. check that was it. our building in new york city had always treated me with contempt. which is what writers have to get used to. suddenly he became very obsequious. if only for this, it is worth getting the pulitzer prize. >> what you think of the idea of prizes? >> they are a crapshoot. if you get one, it is a combination of luck and timing. essays, theook of first three were never published? what were they about? the bum stitch was the first case of writing. this is never been

i chronicle in the book beginning with spiro agnew. remember spiro agnew being in some trouble and i said to my editor at the new yorker, thought lamented and just the legendary william shawn saying what are you thinking of writing next? i don't know. i have a feeling we are going to change vice presidents and presidents within a year. this is labor day of 73. a way out there kind of wild thought at the time. we agreed i would write a journal, not a diary but watch the events and interpret and talk about them. we didn't know where it was going and as he said at the time we don't know how to change vice presidents. that would be the first quarter of business. we didn't know how to change vice presidents, we didn't know how to impeach a president, we didn't know how to get another president. it was all kind of made up as we went along. one of the most distressing things about now is the loose way we use the word impeachment which time they are may not get to this later because i have so much to talk about the affairs such a thing the way

you point out in your only the politico, not resignation of richard nixon but the resignation of spiro agnew, two attorney generals were found guilty. they all spent time in jail. the president's personal lawyer and fundraiser found guilty, the director of the cia found guilty, the director of the fbi caught destroying evidence and resigned. the list goes on. >> and a special prosecutor fired. another when taking over. an attorney general resigning over the firing. saturday night massacre of 1973. >> tell us about your book. what is your approach? >> it will be a one volume biography you can pick up if you don't know a lot about this man. it is going to be based on this wealth of information that has come out since stephen ambrose did the standard work, a three volume set in the 1990's. the final white house tape only came out last august. there will be revisions on that. as nixon's testimony before the grand jury that cannot be your before that. there is lots of new factor ---new stuff to factor into the story of richard nixon. that is what i will try to do. the biography is about a man. i

when he was73 an disgraced by spiro agnew. why those two things? >> in the first place, reagan had a genuinely fundamental feeling about totalitarianism and the holocaust that effected him. and the first motion picture unit in california, he had to process day after day after day all the raw color footage that was coming back from the opening of the camps. and these horrific images which i've seen myself -- i've seen the raw footage that reagan saw in 1945 and it made me sick for days -- that affected him permanently. when after the war he heard an anti-semitic remark at the party he ended up slugging the guy. it's not generally known that reagan remained so trauma advertised by his apprehension -- so traumatized by his apprehension of the holocaust his son michael told me he and ron and patty, the three young children, had when they turned 14 had to watch that same footage reagan sneaked out, they had to watch t at the age of puberty so the on set of adolescence to see what the nature of anti-semitism was. >> what about the michael deaver thing? >

by having spiro ago new as vice president go after -- spiro agnew as vice president go after the big three, cbs, abc, and nbc, for their liberal bias, it was very badly done. it wasn't that the news is done, that the news is too liberal. fair enough. but trying to go out and destroy the "new york times" or e pentagon papers, cbs, it backfired. anything that backfires on you means you're not so smart, there's subtleties. you don't always win by going right at people's throat and trying to rip them out. you have to have a velvet fist. nixon would just want to rip people's hinges out, and he created a lot of enemies that way. he made his own enemies list on reporters, and he had the i.r.s. look into people's lives that were his enemies, and they didn't forget. the media went at nixon, and they got him. host: jake in tampa, florida. before we take your call, i'm sure, if you're watching us right now, you probably saw the alert that the u.s. has dropped a couple of bombs on some isis positions in iraq. just want to make sure that everybody's aware of that. doug brinkley, from a historian'

spiro add new resigned -- agnew resigned. the raw kinds of other issues going on, watergate papers, etc.. that was then, this is now. it is a totally different world. john farrell will be joining us at noon on american history tv. a reminder, all of our coverage will re-air tonight. you are looking at the north portico entrance of the white house proved a very different scene 40 years ago as richard nixon said farewell to his staff from the east room of the white house. we will follow that with his departure with then first lady pat nixon as gerald ford and gerald ford said farewell and then reentered the white house to become the 38th president and first lady in 1974. now we take you to the east room of the white house, the morning of august 9, 1974. [applause] >> ♪ ladies and gentlemen, the president of the united states mr.merica and mrs. nixon, and mrs. david eisenhower, mr. and mrs. edwin cox. [applause] [cheers and applause] [applause] [applause continues] [applause continues] >> thank you. members of the cabinet, membe

president who had never been elected because he had been appoint ed appointed vice president after spiro agnewipple effect? >> i think we still feel it. it exchanged how americans saw the white house. it changed the sense of trust we had in government. completely and i think irrevocably. if we have a sense of not trusting washington anymore, you can really almost date it from watt err gait forward and this tremendous constitutional and political tragedy and controversy that struck the nation. >> nixon, of course isn't the only president who faced impeachment. there have been two presidents who have been impeached. >> that's correct. let's separate out impeachment from being guilty of something. it's like a criminal trial, an indictment. it doesn't mean you're charged and going to be tried. under the constitution the house impeaches by a simple majority. the senate then gets to try the president in this case although other federal officials can be impeached as well. >> benjamin franklin wanted to add the power of impeachment to the constitution. why did he think this is something that should be

by having spiro ago new as vice president go after -- spiro agnew as vice president go after the big three, cbs, abc, and nbc, for their liberal bias, it was very badly done. it wasn't that the news is done, that the news is too liberal. fair enough. but trying to go out and destroy the "new york times" or e pentagon papers, cbs, it backfired. anything that backfires on you means you're not so smart, there's subtleties. you don't always win by going right at people's throat and trying to rip them out. you have to have a velvet fist. nixon would just want to rip people's hinges out, and he created a lot of enemies that way. he made his own enemies list on reporters, and he had the i.r.s. look into people's lives that were his enemies, and they didn't forget. the media went at nixon, and they got him. host: jake in tampa, florida. before we take your call, i'm sure, if you're watching us right now, you probably saw the alert that the u.s. has dropped a couple of bombs on some isis positions in iraq. just want to make sure that everybody's aware of that. doug brinkley, from a historian'

by having spiro ago new as vice president go after -- spiro agnew as vice president go after the bigee, cbs, abc, and nbc, for their liberal bias, it was very badly done. it wasn't that the news is done, that the news is too liberal. fair enough. but trying to go out and destroy the "new york times" or e pentagon papers, cbs, it backfired. anything that backfires on you means you're not so smart, there's subtleties. you don't always win by going right at people's throat and trying to rip them out. you have to have a velvet fist. nixon would just want to rip people's hinges out, and he created a lot of enemies that way. he made his own enemies list on reporters, and he had the i.r.s. look into people's lives that were his enemies, and they didn't forget. the media went at nixon, and they got him. host: jake in tampa, florida. before we take your call, i'm sure, if you're watching us right now, you probably saw the alert that the u.s. has dropped a couple of bombs on some isis positions in iraq. just want to make sure that everybody's aware of that. doug brinkley, from a historian's po