‘Last of the President’s Men’ sheds light on Nixon’s vulnerability, motivation

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Finally tonight: the latest addition to the NewsHour bookshelf.

It's a look back at one of the more turbulent political eras in our country's modern history.

I sat down last week with a key chronicler of the times and a principal player.

We thought we knew him. His political career, with its high, lows and reinventions, have been scrutinized in hundreds of books. Now a whole new Richard M. Nixon emerges from Bob Woodward's new book, "The Last of the President's Men."

And Bob joins me now, along with Alexander Butterfield, the man he calls the ultimate insider in the Nixon White House.

Welcome to both of you.

So, Bob Woodward, we really did think and you say you thought we knew everything there was to know about Richard Nixon, but after talking to the man sitting next to you, you learned differently.

BOB WOODWARD, Author, "The Last of the President's Men": For 46 hours and thousands of documents that Alex took out of the White House, and I went to his place in California and started looking at this.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD, President Nixon’s Deputy Assistant:

Every memo that I wrote in the month of January.

BOB WOODWARD:

Quite frankly, I was shocked, particularly about some of the memos about Vietnam and the lies and the contradictions.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

You kept this quiet for decades, four decades. Why finally talk?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

I was lured into talking by my friend here.

Now, we — Bob is the one who approached me. I knew he was interested in where I had been in the White House, but that was a relatively unknown part of the Nixon inner sanctum, which I actually was. And the more we talked, I guess the more he got interested. And I knew that a lot of it was history in a way. A lot of it is history.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

But you have insights into Richard Nixon that no one else has shared. You were the top aide to the man closest to Richard Nixon in the White House, Bob Haldeman.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Yes, I was Haldeman's deputy. Haldeman knew far more than I knew.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

But you bring a side — we already knew this was man of many layers, many complications, Bob. But what we see here is someone who was, for one thing, very socially awkward. I mean, the first meeting that Mr. Butterfield had with the president was extraordinary.

BOB WOODWARD:

And Nixon couldn't speak in that first meeting. And Haldeman told Alex, said, look, he hasn't met you yet. He doesn't like new people. You have to hide.

And in the first month or two in the White House, you were sneaking around and hiding behind walls and pillars.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

For almost a month, yes.

One of the first days, he said, it will take a while. I have to wait for just the right time, because he's a funny guy, and new people spook him, new faces. And I thought, now you tell me.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

And there's so much about his interactions with other people. There was a state dinner where he said, I only — there are only five people on this list of 180 I want to have any kind of conversation with.

Bob, you mentioned Vietnam. I mean, that was a moment, I think, that will resonate more than any other, probably.

BOB WOODWARD:

And there's this handwritten memo that was in Alex's 20 boxes from Nixon to Kissinger on a top-secret memo saying, we have had 10 years of air operations in Vietnam. What's the result? Zilch. Nothing. It's been a failure.

Now, just the night before, Nixon had told CBS News that it was very, very effective. And you go into this, and you connect it with the dots of the tapes and other documents, and you see what was driving Nixon with the bombing wasn't to win the war, but the bombing was popular, according to the polls, and so Nixon intensified more bombing because it won the election. And Kissinger actually tells Nixon, that's when you won the election.

And you read this, and it's shocking and chilling, when you see the deceit here for the purpose of winning reelection. It's the other side of Watergate.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Alex Butterfield, what — what — how did you deal with that? What were you telling yourself when these things were happening?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

I was an integral part of the staff. I didn't — I wasn't too shocked by the things I saw.

I wasn't naive, although it was a totally different environment than in the military. A lot of it was very petty. We had big meetings about the president's image and that sort of thing. But things I had to do, I just — I did.

BOB WOODWARD:

You said some of it was a cesspool, that there was this obsession with these deceptions.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Yes. You're sort of exploiting everybody. How will it play in Peoria? We sort of said that.

Or another thing I heard all the time, we can always say that it was national security. We can always say — and the intimation is that we're always covering up. There was a lot of that.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

You also say there were some good things about the Nixon presidency.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Oh, yes.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

The country didn't completely suffer as a result of his presidency.

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Oh, absolutely not. And, also, he wasn't a bad guy. I came to like him very, very much, partly because I understood these vulnerabilities, the fact that he was so awkward. Even there were times when I pitied him.

It seems odd to pity the president, but I truly pitied him because of this awkwardness.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Does that surprise you, Bob?

BOB WOODWARD:

No, but this is the kind of last piece of the Nixon puzzle.

And you wondered — all of the people who were in the White House had affiliations with Nixon. Alex didn't. He was an outsider. He became this ultimate insider. And then he left with all of these documents, at a time when documents were being destroyed, when there was that sense of the unraveling.

And I — some of the stories Alex told me, I just didn't quite believe, frankly, until I saw the documents. And there it was, things that you didn't think possible, even in the Nixon White House.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

You are best known for revealing the taping system inside the White House. Why did you do that?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

I certainly didn't want to do it. Just three or four people knew. And we kept that secret for over two years.

But, when I was called before the committee, I decided I would answer only the most direct question relative to the tapes. The most direct question. And, suddenly, that question came.

FRED THOMPSON, Minority Counsel:

Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

I was aware of listening devices, yes, sir.

FRED THOMPSON:

Are you aware of any devices that were installed in the Executive Office Building office of the president?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Yes, sir, at that time.

FRED THOMPSON:

Were they installed at the same time?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

They were installed at the same time.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Have we now answered all the questions about Richard Nixon and his presidency?

BOB WOODWARD:

I think one of the lessons here is, history is never over, and you never get the full story.

And particularly now in 2016, next year, when we're going to elect another president, and there are all these people running we don't know much about, and we need to know. And I think it's going to be our job in the media to really dig in and explain, so there's not a surprise.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

What questions should we be asking, based on your experience in the White House? What do we need to know about the people who want to be president?

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Well, obviously, we didn't know enough about Richard Nixon.

But, frankly, Judy, I'm not sure that the American electorate is going to do much more. I think Bob feels differently. But would we have elected Richard Nixon had we known about these — odd behavior? He did a great many good things, domestically, as well as in foreign affairs.

BOB WOODWARD:

But it wasn't just odd. It was illegal.

And it — particularly in Vietnam, the idea that the president is going to conduct a war and drop three million tons of bombs in Southeast Asia, and know and write secretly that it's achieving zilch and a failure, and, you know, I think people are going to say, hey, wait a minute. We can't have a president like that.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Well, it is an extraordinary book, an extraordinary story.

Bob Woodward, Alex Butterfield, we thank you very much, "The Last of the President's Men."

ALEXANDER BUTTERFIELD:

Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF:

Thank you very much.