Good evening. I want to welcome you to this conversation with Alexander Butterfield and Bob Woodward, which will be conducted by my friend and colleague Mark Updegrove, director of the LBJ Presidential Library. My name is Steve Ennis. I'm director of the Harry Ransom Center, which is pleased to be co-sponsoring this evening's program along with the LBJ Library. Bob Woodward, as many of you know, has a special tie to the University of Texas. In 2003, he and his Washington Post colleague, Carl Bernstein, placed their Watergate papers here at the university's Harry Ransom Center. It was a historically significant acquisition, which was fittingly celebrated here, where we gather again this evening. Much has transpired over the following decade. The identity of deep throat was made public. Many hours of White House recordings have been released by the National Archives. And the Ransom Center has continued to supplement its Watergate holdings most recently with the generous gift of the papers of legendary Washington Post editor, Ben Bradley, which we look forward to opening for research use early in 2017. In the intervening years, the Watergate papers themselves have also been heavily consulted by our students and by historians. While collectively, the country as a whole has continued to come to terms with that national crisis and its continuing impact on our political life today. The Watergate archive continues to give up new insights into the Nixon presidency. And for years to come, it will continue to ground those histories in an historically verifiable record. But tonight, we're not here to read documents, but to hear from an intimate participant in the day-to-day workings of the Nixon White House. Alexander Butterfield served as Bob Haldeman's deputy within Richard Nixon's inner circle. And it was he who changed history by first divulging the presence of a taping system in the White House Oval Office during testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. And I believe we have a brief clip of that testimony. Let's watch. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President? I was aware of listening devices. Yes, sir. When were those devices placed in the Oval Office? Approximately the summer of 1970. I cannot begin to recall the precise date. My guess, Mr. Thompson, is that the installation was made between, and this is a very rough guess, April or May of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall of 1970. Alexander Butterfield also, of course, is the primary source for Bob Woodward's highly readable account of this history, the last of the president's men. This promises to be a wide-ranging and engaging conversation, and I've been assured one without gaps, certainly not as long as 18 and a half minutes. Watergate, as we know, changed the relationship of the press and the presidency. Looking back on events from our present vantage point, we know that one of the historical ironies is the press quite arguably may have exercised its greatest power on the eve of a digital revolution, which has profoundly reshaped the news industry. Before our time, before the era of big data, before public debate over government surveillance, it was an era of magnetic tape. The public debates then were about the separation of powers and the public interest and the workings of our democratic institutions of power. Suffice it to say, our notions today of executive authority and the public interest were profoundly shaped by the final years of the Nixon presidency. The last of the president's men is the story of that pivotal time in American history, but I would add it is also a deeply human story about the nature of the presidency itself, the loneliness of power, and of course, the anxieties, fears, and motivations of our 37th president. Please join me in welcoming to the stage Alexander Butterfield, Bob Woodward, and Mark up to Grove. Not only welcome, but welcome back. Both of you have graced this stage before. Alex, you were here about seven years ago for an evening with Alex Butterfield. And Bob, you were here with your partner, Carl Bernstein, Robert Redford, and me about five years ago as we celebrated the 35th anniversary of the film All the President's Men. Alex, I want to start with you. We saw that clip of you revealing the White House taping system. Well, I saw it sideways, but I recall the incident. It was you. It was you. I saw it. You ought to tell them why you hesitated. I will say that. There's a pregnant pause there. Yeah, the pause is because Fred Thompson said, are you aware? And during the time of that testimony, I had already come to the Federal Aviation Administration. I had been there for months. So I thought to myself, we might as well be accurate here about everything we say in this testimony. And I didn't have a clue if they still had listening devices. So I just paused and said, I was aware, rather than I am aware. So talk about that moment in a very historic moment in a second. But how did you come to work for Richard Nixon? I do tend to. I can't be brief. But I will say this. I had just learned I was in Australia as the senior US military officer in that country with my office in the American Embassy in Canberra. I had just heard just before the Nixon election in 68 when Nixon squeaked by Hubert Humphrey to win the presidency, I had just received word from the Air Force headquarters that I was to be extended for two years. That was like the kiss of death to me. It seemed that way. I was going to be coming up on eligibility for Brigadier General. I was a career officer. I admit that I was fairly ambitious. And if I was going to stay in Australia, which is a wonderful place, and it was great for my family, it is not where you want to be when you're coming up for General Officer or Admiral and the Navy. So I was desperate. I didn't know what to do. The ambassador and I went up to New Guinea for some social calls, mostly for him. I only had one call to make. A rainstorm came along. I grabbed a paper and read it. And it was about the recent election, Nixon's election. And I'm reading this Melanesian talk talk, T-OK, T-OK, which is hard to interpret for someone like me, but I could discern. I saw the name. They're talking all about Nixon winning the election. A name that I knew very well, Bob Holdman. We were at UCLA together in 1946. And I thought, you know, a light went on.  I thought, here may be, if I can somehow, this is presumptuous as hell. Attach myself to this California mafia coming into Washington. I realized none of them would have Washington experience. I had quite a bit of Washington experience. I had worked a little bit, as many of my friends out there know, from McNamara during the Johnson days. And I spent roughly 20 hours a week in the Johnson White House. So I felt as though I was almost a staff member there. And I felt I had some things to offer. And you had a wonderful phrase, which you told me about, and that being in Australia was not the smoke, as you called it. Well, you wanted to be in the smoke, which meant to be in Vietnam or the White House. Yes. Bob really latched on to that term. He just said, you need to be where the smoke is, if you're going to be noticed. Bob's been in a lot of smoke himself for years. He knows all about smoke. So anyway, it worked. I wrote a letter to Bob and attached all kinds of little things, bells and whistles, and planned my trip to Washington so that I would arrive roughly when the letter did. Made a call to the Richard Nixon transition headquarters, which was up in the Pierre Hotel in New York. Talked to his aide and got an appointment with him for two days later. We'll talk about your experience in the White House for a moment, but while that clip is still fresh in our minds, clearly, as Steve said, that changed the course of history. It also changed the course of your life. Yeah.  Well, I was an enigma in Washington. I think I lost a lot of friends. I understood all of this. I understood this. I didn't want to testify.  I worked very, very closely with him. That's how I gathered some of these anecdotes, which I passed on to Bob. You would never know this if you weren't working with him pretty much constantly all day. And I didn't go home till 10 or 11 at night. I was there Saturday and Sunday. And even I saw some of these odd oddities, you might say, or instances of paranoia. Only one or two or three times in that three and a half period that I worked so closely with him. So I understood it. And military people are the hardest guys to understand something that redounds to the disfavor of the president. And my revealing the tapes began this inquiry. And I was sort of an enigma. There are a lot of people that dropped me like a hot rock. But I was busy at the FAA. I didn't let that bother me. I don't think. Well, it did bother me. But I hope it didn't affect my work.  And an interesting thing is they a lot of them meet every single year, including Cheney, Rumsfeld, this whole group, mostly those who worked on the domestic side. And many of them still feel that way. I don't think I would be welcome in that group. Right. Bob, many of us have followed the. Thank you for mentioning that. Just wanted to get the record straight. By the way, Bob, I think the Nixon people feel pretty much the same about you. You know, a little bit more than enigma to many of the Nixon people. So many of us thought that the epic story of Watergate more or less ended with the revelation of Deepthroat, one of your most important sources on the story, anonymous sources at the time. And then it came out that it was the deputy director of the CIA, Mark Felt. FBI. FBI, excuse me. And then we get The Last of the President's Men, which is really an epilogue to this story. Talk about how this book came to fruition. Well, it was a number of years ago, Alex, and I were here when you had read for the All the President's Men movie discussion. And we chatted. And I said, next time you're in Washington, call me. And we'd spend a day together. And maybe I'm going to start calling you the enigma. The enigma said there's more to the Nixon story. And so when I was in California, visited him at his apartment in La Jolla. And what really blew me away when going into your apartment there, you had all these boxes of documents, which you had taken out of the Nixon White House. Awaiting your arrival. Right. No, I mean, I did that for you. Yes, I appreciate it. Not only that, but he had lunch also ready. And I was more interested in the documents because a lot of them were new. And then you told stories. I mean, let me give an example. Because you made the important point. You think history's over. And with these documents and your personal story, the odyssey in the Nixon White House, are many added dimensions. I particularly was struck. You told me the story about Christmas Eve, 1969. You went over to the executive office building next to the White House with President Nixon. And he saw that some of the staff people had pictures of John F. Kennedy on the wall. And then he came back and said to you, he said, this is an infestation. This is disloyal. I want those pictures out. And so you launched an inquiry. And you told me about this. And I kind of thought, well, you know. And then in your documents are these memos that you wrote to the president saying, and with pride, describing how you got all the Kennedy pictures out of the staff offices. And the title of this memo was Sanitization of the staff offices. And you went through what you had done to make sure there were no Kennedy pictures in the staff offices. And they had all been replaced by Nixon pictures. And to see the documentation of this and your firsthand story is witness. And in the book, there is incident after incident of this kind of angry behavior on the part of Nixon. And what really struck me and hit me emotionally, but also as a reporter, you see this isolation of Nixon, this Nixon who walls himself off intentionally time after time. And that picture, which you describe of him leaving the White House, the Oval Office at night, alone going over to his executive office building, sitting there, keeping his suit jacket on, putting his feet up, having his scotch, having his man's servant, Manola, make dinner for him alone. Of course. And you kind of say, gee, he can have dinner with anyone in the world probably. And who does he have dinner with himself and his yellow legal pad where he's just sitting there going. And it's sad. It's sad. And Pat was over at the residence by herself, unless the girls were having dinner that night or one of them at the White House. Well, talk about the Nixon marriage in a moment, Alex. But Bob, you write in the introduction of the book about your experience with Alex and the stories that he told as well as the documents he handed over to you, seen up close through his eyes and documents, Nixon is both bigger and smaller. I think we got a glimpse of why he might have been smaller a moment ago. How was he bigger in your view? Well, there were memos in there and their incidents. And then you put it together because we have the tapes. And you can hear Nixon talking about some of these things. And Nixon knew how to bring people close. There is Alex described this. And there are documents. And there actually is a tape recording of a cabinet dinner Nixon had before the 72 election at Camp David. And you listen to this Nixon. And he's actually funny. Not something you normally associate with Richard Nixon. He described his chief fundraiser, Maurice Stance. He said, oh, Maury, as the chief fundraiser has this responsibility. And he's accused of all kinds of illegal activities. And he's not guilty of most of them. And then he said, at the end, we've got helicopters. And the cabinet's there. And he said, we've got helicopters out there, four of them, to take you back to Washington. Get on the helicopters fast because those are the only four that have not been shot down in Vietnam. So you see this, he knew how to charm people, actually. Something he probably didn't do enough. Right. Incidentally, the jokes were written for him. And he didn't tell them very well. No, he couldn't. He didn't. He was very awkward. Very awkward. Alex, you had very intimate access to this president. Frequently, you were the first staff person to see him in the morning and the last one at night. Describe the Richard Nixon that you saw. Well, yes. After the 11th month of the first year in November, December, the president called me in and Bob. And he thought we should change, not change offices, but I should. Abhold them and make that clear. Abhold them and I was Bob's deputy from the start. But he thought that maybe Bob was getting sort of, what do I want to say, detoured during the day by all of the trivia, which is a part of the operation of the Oval Office throughout a day. And not able to sit back and think, as President Nixon wanted him to do, to follow up on big things and be an idea man.  So let Alex take your office and deal with the day to day, the minute to minute stuff. And Bob, there was only one place for Bob to go. And we had just given the big people called the Sherman Adams office down in the end as a gesture to the vice president Agnew. The first vice president had ever been given an office right in the West Wing of the White House. The last guy you want to give an office to, because he has a beautiful office up on the hill as president of the Senate. And he's got a one across the street in the EOB. So Bob just went over and said, Ted, to Spiro Agnew, we're going to have to take it back. The vice president, he only used it for a few ceremonial things and he was happy to do it. He was a good guy about that. So Bob took that grand office. And Bob was, after all, Bob Haldeman, the grand mogul. And so you had the office right next to the Oval Office with a special door that went from your office to the Oval Office to Nixon's office. Through a little passageway, and small room which President Clinton made famous. It's the private office of the Oval Office. It's not even a private office. There's a cot in there and a desk and a little hot plate and a toilet. What was private when President Clinton used it, I guess? It's always been there and it's always been private. And you do have to go through that for miles. I had the office, and Marvin Watson had it, I think, when you all were in the White House. And it's the office on the west side of the Oval Office. So from late December, I guess on, for the other three years, and a month or two into 73, I had that office. And that put me in very close touch with the president. Now I am the first one to see him every morning, every day. And then I never went home until he went over to the residence to bed. And he always did that around 1030 from the EOB. Sometimes he went directly home, but it was usually when something was happening, some family event was happening upstairs in the White House. But he loved that solitude. And we worked much differently in the Nixon White House. The senior people there, Bryce Harlow and Bill Timmons who were head of legislative affairs. Henry, not so much. Henry worked directly with the president. But the other senior people had to work, I'm sure they didn't like this, they had to work through Haldeman and or me. Because Nixon just didn't like, that's why it's so much trouble me. Can I suggest he tell the story about the state dinners? Because he wants, Nixon calls you in and says, I'm sick and tired of those SOBs who come to the state dinners, sticking their face in mine and bothering me. And I, and he had a solution. Tell him what the solution was and what you did. Do you mind? Is this okay? Are we, oh no, this is all good. Yeah, this was almost unbelievable. At a normal state dinner, for those of you that don't know and I imagine most of you do, there's a big cocktail party in the east room for 30 or 40 minutes. The social aids are running around, making sure people are enjoying themselves. The waiters are passing drinks on trays, ready made drinks of all kinds. And then the receiving line forms and you go through the receiving line, the president, Mrs. Nixon and the state guest. The head of government or the chief of state that is being hosted on that occasion. And then people fly right on down through the cross hall to the state dining room. And they have dinner. When they come out of the state dining room, they go into the three rooms, the green room, the big blue room in the center, and the red room. And you see why he was such a great source? He has almost a cinematic memory of things. You do, now get to the point. First I have to ask, what was the question? No, I'm sorry. So he got all excited one day. Oh, and he hated that 30 minute period after dinner and before the entertainment started back in the east room. That's where everyone ends up, back in the east room. But there's a 30 minute coffee and cordials period. And that's right. Congressman, everyone that wants to talk to the president and people are sometimes neglecting the state guest. And he got all excited one day. He said, I've thought of what we can do. And he just really excited. And I'm very unusual to see him animated.  He says, here's tonight's guest list. Incidentally, this is about 10 after 7 for an 8 o'clock state dinner. And he's very quick about changing. But I've got to go downstairs to the locker room where only Henry and I go to all of these state dinners. And Henry and I are down there shying our shoes and putting on our bib and tucker. And I hope that he would get to the point pretty fast because I had a lot to do before the state dinner. He said, here's what we're going to do. He said, I'm looking at this guest and I don't want to talk to any of these sons of bitches except Arnold Palmer. He saw Arnold's name there. And I remember. Claire Boothloose. Claire Boothloose. And I can't think of those. But these are Republican people that he knows, some from California or some big businessmen. He picked out five. And he said, I don't want to talk to another soul. Just those five. And I said, you mean tonight? We start tonight. I didn't say that, but I'm thinking that. And he said, yes. So I immediately called Lucy Winchester, the social secretary. And I said, send me five of your best social aides quickly. They came over and I just, they look fine. And they're all alert. These are first lieutenants and captains, men and women of all services, Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Air Corps, I think even Coast Guard. And I said, now look, tonight, Lieutenant, so and so, Arnold Palmer is your man.   And stay with them and bring them to the green room, where I will be with the president. At that time, I was introducing guests to the president at state dinners. He somehow didn't like the State Department guy. And I never should have been doing this, but that was my job. And I sold that to someone. And I forget who the other people were, but I assigned someone to each of them. And I kept my fingers crossed. Then I called Don Hughes, the Armed Forces aide, Major General Hughes, an Air Force guy I had known in the Air Force. And briefed him because he's usually standing there looking respondent in his Air Force general's uniform. But he didn't introduce people, but he stands there with the president. Like, he's part of the presidency.  Well, but with all that detail, the job, you had the elbow people out of the way. Well, I was coming to that. I was coming to that. Oh, OK. And you were like a group of linebackers keeping people away from Nixon. Well, listen, we had to do it. Also, my reputation was at stake with Nixon. This thing had to work. But as they came in, I said, I'll make eye contact and just hold it a little bit and talk to your guest. If you see, until I give you the nod, when I give you the nod, come over. Well, the timing wasn't perfect, but when I brought it and they introduced the person to me, then I took him to the president. And if someone was still there, Don Hughes, just. You were out. Yeah, just that way. There might be a mid-sentence. Here comes our early comer. He's on the list. And then some jokers would, hey, there's the president. I want to talk to him. They'd come up and all of a sudden, they'd get an elbow. Not a chance. So at the end, the next day, you did a critique with him of the state dinner. Every Sunday morning, I met with him. Every Sunday morning, and he was ecstatic. And he didn't know about the rough edges on this thing. But we got good at that. And he said, that's the way it's going to be. And then he said, talk to Pat. Maybe she likes to do the same thing. So tell what happened. I mentioned it to her. And she said, Alex, I can't believe that he really said that. She said, I love to talk to people. She was a dear person. I was crazy about Pat, a very grounded, nice, nice person. And the two didn't see eye to eye on many things, social. Let me hear it while we're talking about Pat Nixon. Bob writes that you were, in his words, the principal intermediary between Richard Nixon and Mrs. Nixon. And he quotes you as saying, I felt sorry for her being married to this guy. I could see what she was going through. So describe their marriage and what she was going through. I can't describe their marriage. But the thing that struck me, or what you saw. Yeah, she would be on the helicopter. In my position on the helicopter, or Haldeman's if he was going. One or the two of us went on every trip, even the short little jaunts. We sat right across from the president, or the president of Mrs. Nixon if she was along. And you could hear everything. The Secret Service and the physician, President's physician, and the aides are in the back of the helicopter, so they don't hear any personal talk of it. And one day, she said, I think that's in the book about Christmas. But this could have happened on any other stuff. She said, Dick, it's almost Christmas. Why don't you just take off? It would be so good for you that we could take the girls up to New York. And New York's fine on Christmas. And it would just do you good to get away. He's riding in the yellow pad, which he did constantly. And she's talking all this time. And I'm sitting there, and I can't not help but hear. And when she finished, she gets no answer. He's silent.  I mean, that's what I'm thinking. I wanted to shake him and say, answer her. So that's just upsetting. So she had to endure that kind of treatment. And when I met him. And as you described it, she kept saying, we'll go to a musical. It's going to be fun. And the whole time, he does not look up. He does not acknowledge. He does nothing. And she goes through about three requests. And he doesn't say no. He just is totally focused on his yellow legal pad. And god knows what he's playing. She had to be embarrassed, because she knows that I hear this. And it was hurtful. It was hurtful. You also write about. But incidentally, he loved her dearly. I do know that. And then he broke down at her wedding. I mean, he needed her in the worst way. And she endured the hell of a lot. You write about a memo that he writes to her about the furnishings. Talk about that memo and how he addresses himself. Well, I think the first week we're in the lighthouse, Haldeman came up on that memo. And he said, Alex, I was married then. My wife was Charlotte and Charlotte McGuire. And Haldeman knew my wife very well from when we were all at UCLA together. He said, Alex, can you see yourself writing a memo like this to Charlotte? And he read the memo, too. He's got it right there, where Nixon writes to Pat. Pat, the president has been thinking about a bedside table. And he's wondering if he should have an oval-shaped table or a square. And he keeps talking about himself in the third person. It's hilarious to read, but it's a real memo. And the man was serious. And it's not just also, it's RN wants this, RN wants that, and so forth. Refers to himself as RN. And this is a memo from Nixon to his wife. It's remarkable. It's cliche and a bit of an understatement to say that Nixon was an introvert and an extrovert's business.  You've been covering this man for 40 years, writing for more than 40 years. In your view, what drove him? Well, it was, and of course Watergate and all of those crimes were, as Senator Sam Irvin, who headed the Senate Watergate Committee, said it was a lust for power and a sense. And this is the tragedy of Nixon beyond the crimes. And that is, he almost developed a sense of entitlement that he was entitled to be president. And he could do anything, including Watergate and the sabotage and the espionage and the break-ins and the wiretapping and so forth, that he was immune. And at the same time, I mean, if I may, the thing that really blew my mind, Alex, was in your files this memo, it's on a top secret memo, to that Kissinger has written Nixon. It's typed out. And then there's the handwriting of Nixon. Let me read what that says. Yes, yes. This is a note from Nixon to Kissinger. And it reads, and I quote, K, Kissinger, in other words. We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and Vietnam. The result equals zilch. There is something wrong with the strategy or the air force. And that this is a failure. And if you dig into this the night before, Nixon had done an interview with Dan Rather on CBS and Rather asked, there's an escalation of the bombing now, and Nixon said, it's very effective. And then the next day, in his own handwriting, he tells Kissinger that they've achieved nothing. Not only his time is President bombing, but Lyndon Johnson's time. We've had 10 years of failure and achieved zilch. And it takes some of Vietnam, and it turns it on its head. Because here he is. I mean, this is the Johnson Library. That two bomb, to the extent Nixon did, 2.9 million tons of bombs dropped in Southeast Asia, the first three years of his presidency. He wrote this note to Kissinger the beginning of 1972 when he's running for re-election. And I read that. And Alex and I went over that. And I mean, it is mind-boggling that the president would think this, but worse is in 72, he continued and escalated the bombing, ordering the dropping of another 1.1 million tons of bombs in Southeast Asia. Because the polls. Yes, exactly. Because the polls said the American people liked him better. His popularity went up when he was bombing. To the American public, it was like we're getting something done in Vietnam. But the American public didn't know that it wasn't working. The supplies continued to come down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and it was accomplishing zilch. So he doubled down because of the polls. That was the crime, wasn't it? Exactly. And you know that presidents make mistakes. Misjudgments. But this is one person looked at this and said, this is the definition of evil. That a leader would do this and continue this and make this assessment. And we now know that the bombing, he was right. It achieved zilch, except it killed lots of people. Lots of people, too. A lot of those big strata fortresses went down. Yeah, exactly. And so you know, there is this Nixon who wanted to retain power at all costs. And this is a component of it. That we will escalate and bomb our way to victory. And that, for me, is equivalent to the crimes of Watergate. Let me go back to him as commander, please, Alex. Well, I wanted to add to your question was what possessed him? What drove him? And Bob is right. The power, the sense of power, or warning power is there.  And all his life, he had been put down. He grew up poor. He couldn't play football, and yet he went out. He was out there getting knocked over practice. I don't think he ever got in a game. He was not one of the boys. He knew that what Whittier was, as compared with the bigger and better schools in the East, he was put down. He knew what other people said. He actually knew deep down inside probably how Ike really felt about him, which wasn't highly complementary. He was a capable guy, and Ike knew that, and gave him credit for being, perhaps, a good politician. But Ike was not in love with that guy, and Nixon picked up all of that stuff. And Steve Bull and I, to ourselves, would say that Nixon was, he presented an aura of, and he never lost it, I'll get those bastards. I'll get those bastards. And even on the day of his reelection to the presidency by an overwhelming vote, he wasn't happy at all. Everybody's celebrating around town that we're Republicans, and they're in the White House. And he called Haldeman and they in, and he said, now the gloves are coming off. He said, now we're going to get them. Who's he talking about? All those sons of bitches that put him down for years. And he was possessed with that. So that was a big part of it. He showed him. The only thing is, he never mellowed out. He got older, but he never, he was just as intense when he was the president of the United States. On a reelection, now he'd achieved the ultimate. But he's still mad. He's going to get them. And the slights never went away. And there's a scene where Don Kendall, who's a big supporter of Nixon, comes to the Oval Office and they're sitting up there by the fireplace and you come in. And Nixon is telling, he's head of PepsiCo at that time. Chairman of PepsiCo. And Nixon says, you know, I was congressman. I was senator. I was vice president. And then I went to work at this law firm in New York. And then he just kind of tensed up and said, those son of a bitches, those partners of mine, did any of them ever invite me to play golf at their fancy country clubs? Did any of them invite me to their clubs? And it just goes on and on.  His lip was quivering. That's one of the, you say it's not on the tapes, but I know it is. The reason I know it is, I was so taken with the visceral hatred that was demonstrated there that I called the secret. I knew the tapes were already running then. And I called the secret service and asked for that. I didn't tell you that. That's how I knew it. You didn't. Well, but, well, no. No, well, I told you the true story. History's never over. Well, I told you that's the next book. No, you just said, you checked and you said, the tapes were not in at that time, but they were. But I heard it again. And that's how I remembered it. And that's one of the few times in all those three and a half plus years that I was so close to him that he was a very well-contained, disciplined man, very disciplined, and he knew how to keep this in. But he erupted then when he was talking to Don. And he was just saying, not a goddamn time. And he hated them for it. Those people that had been, had it given to him. That's the way he used it. Those who could go to Harvard and Yale and Princeton and Brown and that sort of thing. Where does, Bob, you talked about a sense of entitlement that Nixon had. Where does that come from? Well, he'd struggled through everything and he attained the presidency. And the sadness of it is, he didn't realize when he was elected president, the goodwill that people, even Democrats felt. Gee, we want the president to succeed because if the president succeeds, people succeed. And he could not leverage that goodwill, which was out there. And he would hate. And if you spend time listening to the tapes, it just comes up again and again that Nixon is using the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge, score-settling rewards for people who give lots of campaign contributions. And it was the day. No, go ahead. No, it was the day Nixon finally resigned in August 1974. And you're watching this from the FAA where you were the administrator. You were no longer in the White House. And Nixon, it was televised live and he had no script. And his wife and two daughters, two son-in-laws were standing behind him. And he's sweating and he's talking about his mother. It was painful to watch. But it was a very real psychiatric hour all the way. You know, my father owned the poorest lemon ranch in California. No one will write a book about my mother because there'd been a book about Kennedy's mother, Rose Kennedy. And then at the end, and this is one of the most stunning moments, I think in certainly the Nixon presidency, waves his hand. Like this is why I called you here. And he had his cabinet and his staff and friends there.   And think of the wisdom in that because hate was the piston here. And at that moment, it was as if he understood what had happened. And Gerald Ford said later, if he had only given himself that advice earlier on as presidency, the course of history might have changed. You talk. But you know, what a great lesson for all human beings in politics are out.  You have to get over things. You have to move. I was talking to somebody the other day currently in the government in very high place. And some issue came up and he said, it's time to move on. And that Nixon could not move on. A good example of that is when he wanted to see, he asked Haldeman one day, do we have a list of these goddamn reporters who are going on this China trip? They're getting a good deal, you know? That's gonna be a historic visit. So we're sitting around talking about the China trip only a week before. And Haldeman said, yeah, I have the list. These are the media people who are going on the trip. And again, with Relish, he takes it. Oh, he loves this kind of thing, like so signing people to stay dinners and all. And he goes through here and he gets about the eighth or 10th name.  And he takes his pen, doesn't wait for an answer. And we're using onion skins then, the carbon, whatever they're called, skinny paper. And he rubs it out and tears the paper. Haldeman runs around to look to see before the name is demolished. And Haldeman said, oh, he's a bureau chief now at some place, but this guy had risen.  He said, don't you remember that article he wrote back during the gubernatorials? This is when Nixon lost to Pat Brown in 62. He's harking back to 62 because of an article. So he didn't forget, the hatreds were still there. You talk in the house.  And there is incident after incident in the book. And what stunned me is, you know, some of this is on the tapes and you get a flavor of it. But it's where you were kind of the secret sharer. You are there witnessing this and it's going on and on and on. And so the day Nixon resigned when he gives that speech about hate. And people are in the audience crying. A lot of them are crying. Weeping. I was in, I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. And tell them what you were thinking. Bob quotes you in the book to remind you, Alex, as saying about that speech in the East Room of the White House on August 9th, 1974, before Nixon's departure from the presidency. I could not believe that people were crying in that room. It was sad, yes, but justice had prevailed. Inside, I was cheering. Yeah, I was cheering. I need to say one thing in my own sort of defense here. During that three and a half years when I was so close to Nixon, I'm getting closer every day. I mean, it was just, it was a good relationship. And I got to like him a lot because I felt sorry for him. That seems odd feeling sorry for a president. But the guy was so socially stunted that, you know, I really did feel sorry for him. I tried to help him do things. You needed to do that. And so, but I did see myself getting in trouble there. I saw the potential. So I asked to leave the White House and I left. I asked Haldman, hard to do because he was my sole benefactor in the White House. And I had to say, but I'd been there four years and I thought, and so I did leave and they assigned me to the FAA. I didn't pick that, but I was glad to go to the FAA. I felt comfortable there and was an aviator and had been one. And what was my train of thought? Oh, so when I testified on the tapes and he had a lot to do with that, nobody knew, no one outside the White House really understood that I was the sole deputy White House chief of staff. That half of the officers there reported to me and I was the deputy White House chief of staff. And, but nobody outside the White House knew that because I had adhered to Haldman's advice on the first day of the Nixon administration where he said, we want a silent staff. We don't want any stars. The president is the star and we're the silent advocates of the president. Well, I had always believed in that. I'd heard that before and that's the way you try to be in the military. It's the same way. And he said, apart from Henry Kissinger who's gonna be in the news a lot and the Ziggler who's the press secretary be giving two briefings today, the rest of us are gonna be the silent here. And I adhered to that. Until the end, and this is what you can't quite tell but I can that disclosing the tapes on one hand was kind of the obvious thing. It was necessary. You were called before an official body.  You almost, you know, you were determined to do it. And so there's ambivalence there but as an outside observer and having spent four and a half decades trying to understand the White House from Nixon to Obama, what happens to most people in the White House? Unfortunately, they get co-opted.  And for you to disclose the taping system you knew because Nixon had told you when he ordered it installed, he said, no one is to ever know about this. This is the biggest secret we have. And Nixon actually in his memoirs wrote, he believed that it would never be revealed. So what was interesting to me is when you made that decision and this slows the taping system, that was an act of courage. You knew hell was gonna be, was gonna come down on your head but I would argue and I think history shows that it was in the national interest that we know what happened in the White House and the extent of the corruption and the extent to which we, I always said if I wrote another book on Nixon the title would be the wrong man. He was the wrong man. Well, before you interrupted, I was en route to saying that so when I was called and I was only called because Bob, it was a point about being quiet deputy White House chief of staff. Nobody knew. What John Dean testified in June of 73 and told the world that Nixon was complicit in Watergate, he's the first person that had said that. So that was huge. So the members of the Watergate committee, Fred Thompson and the staff there, Sam Dash and their minions were trying to find someone who could, what do I wanna say, support John Deans. Or refuted, they were in a neutral way. Right, because the nation, I think the nation cited roughly, I've said to people maybe 60, 30 or maybe even more unbalanced than that, believing the president and not believing this young 32 year old upstart who was already mad at Nixon because he'd just been dismissed unceremoniously on April 30th, just two months before John Dean testified before the Watergate committee. So they're looking around. I've been Haldeman's deputy for four years. Now I'm over there, but no one's finding me. Bob is calling his friend on the committee. He put a guy on the committee, that was his avenue to learning what's happening over in the Watergate committee. And he called Scott Armstrong and said, this guy Butterfield, he's gotta have some to do with. And they went to Sam Dash, he did, and said, there's a guy named Butterfield over there and I think he works in Haldeman's office. And Sam said, oh, we don't have time, we don't have time. And anyway, I guess in a way that served me well not being known at all or not. They called you on a Friday afternoon. Well, because you insisted, you made two calls to Scott Armstrong. So he is really, if there's any hero worship to be done about the revelation of the tapes, I can swear to you, I never would have volunteered. Well, you know I didn't volunteer on there. I was almost, I had almost escaped because I was leaving the day after the testimony to go to the Soviet Union for almost three weeks. You are the guy. You should be sitting. You should be sitting. Yeah, but you, I didn't know and I and people on the committee were simply asking what in the term was the satellite witnesses who will either verify or refute what Dean said. And I said, one of our sources had said there's a guy named Butterfield who was in charge of internal security, which in a way you were. You had liaison with the Secret Service.  No one came to the door, but somebody was at the drapes peeking through. I don't know, there was you or Charlotte and one of the kids or something.  Well, maybe so. Bob, let me, let me go back to that date. August 9th, 1974 and the speech that you just made reference to Nixon's farewell speech to his staff after his resignation. You watched that too as an outsider. Alex watched it as an insider. We heard about his feelings, but you had ignited the spark with your partner, Carl Bernstein that led to the downfall of the most important person in the world. What was that like for you? What did you feel at that moment? Another day at the office, right? Yeah, another day at the office. And there was our editor, Ben Bradley, saying, what have you got for tomorrow? And that was the atmosphere in which it occurred. But my thought was quite honestly, and it has to do with now 2016 and it's relevant. And that is what we didn't know about Nixon. He became president. If you go back and look at this and look at the experiences you were having, if we'd known this, I would argue he was the wrong man. He should not have been in the presidency. He abused the office and he had to resign not because of the media, not because of Democrats, but because of the Republican Party. In the end, the Republican Party and the person of Barry Goldwater went to him and told him it's over. And that's the night before Nixon announced that he was going to resign. And what I'm haunted with quite frankly is what we don't know about presidents. If you talk to lots of people in the country and in Washington, they'll say, gee, yeah, we didn't know enough about Nixon, but we didn't know enough about, a lot of people feel this about Bill Clinton before he became president. That we didn't know enough about George W. Bush before he became president. We didn't know enough about Barack Obama before he became president. And I think right now in March 2016, the obligation on the shoulders of the media is to do an exhaustive, in-depth, biographical examination, excavation of it looks like it's gonna be Trump, looks like it's gonna be Hillary. 16 parts, 18 parts go into every part of their background. Talk to as many people as you can who have dealt with them. So when November comes over, would you put them on a gurney and, you know, put them on a serious, you know, in a democracy? Let me tell you. No, but you would do all the research and then go to them and say- The press. The press would go and ask Hillary or Trump. We have some questions. We wanna ask. I did this for George W. Bush. Four books I wrote on him. I interviewed him exhaustively for hours and hours and hours. What happened here? Cheney said this. Colin Powell took this position. The war plan for Iraq was the following. And presidents and candidates will answer if you wanna go about it in a neutral way. And I think we have that obligation. And I don't want, speaking for the Washington Post, where I'm still one of the associate editors, I don't want anyone to go to the polls in November this year and say, you know, we really didn't get the full story on these people. I think we, the lesson from Nixon to Obama is we have an obligation to find what Carl Bernstein and I always called, we never called it the full story because you never get it, but the best obtainable version of the truth. Would you start these campaigns another half year earlier? No, no, no, we have a lot of work to do. And it's gonna be done. And I tell you with the new owner of the Washington Post, Jeff Bezos has made it clear that we will have the resources to do our job and not get dazzled and sidetracked by polls. Yeah, we have to cover the polls. We have to cover what the candidates say, what the speeches are, what the policy positions are. But the best index, look, we know when Charlie Rose interviewed Putin a couple of months ago, the president of Russia, he asked, he's one of the great moments, he said to Putin, he said, you were a KGB officer. There's a saying, once you're in the KGB, you're always in the KGB. And Putin sat there and gave this answer. He said, not a stage of our life passes without trace. Most interesting way for Putin to say yes, not a stage of our life passes without a trace. And that's true, we know that. And that's a truth about these candidates and it's our job in the media to crack down everything. But if you look at Nixon, and I understand the importance of scrutinizing one's history and one's character. But if you look at Nixon, Nixon was on the national stage by the time he became president in 1969 and it was inaugurated. We had known a lot about Richard Nixon. He had been in Congress since 1947. He had been vice president in 1953 through 1961 under Eisenhower. He'd gone through vicious campaigns with Jerry Voorhees and Helen Gehagen Douglas. We had seen him with the pumpkin papers and the Hiss case. We knew about as much about Nixon, it seems to me. No, no, but we missed the story. And the story is character. We did not. I mean, in the first weeks, you're in the Nixon White House and Haldeman starts telling you things about Nixon. You know, he's weird. My God, he doesn't know you're here. In fact, if he says- Don't let him see your face, it'll spook him. Yes, that's right. I mean, can you make your deputy chief of staff? You've been, there's a picture there of you standing next to Nixon. The day the whole staff is being sworn in and you guys are kind of, he's kind of looking at you.  I was spooking at you. He didn't know. Maybe he did know. Maybe he suspected this is the guy who's going to do me in. But then Haldeman says, oh, I've got to introduce you in a way. You know, when he's in the right mood at the right time, don't let him see. And you're running around hiding behind pillars because you're afraid Nixon might see you. I was going from pillar to pillar for weeks. Incidentally, one word about the Haldeman Diaries. I have some doubts about the Haldeman Diaries for little things like this. Haldeman says, I took Butterfield in to meet the president five days after the inaugural, which means about January 26th. I was hiding behind columns until February 18th. And this is a diary that you'd write daily. I don't think so. There are a lot of things in it. Yeah. Well, so another. So history is never over.  Bob, let's go back to 2016. Have we ever seen anything like the presidential race that's playing out right now? I mean, obviously it's interesting and there are things going on that are gathering lots of attention. Instead of wringing our hands, I mean, the editorial writers and the columnists of America are having a nervous breakdown about Trump because they're so worried and certainly is grounds to worry, but then you have to say, what's our job? And our job is to explain who these people are and as you can gather, I feel very strongly about that. And if we don't do it, I was talking to some people about Trump and New York real estate and the New York real estate world as people described it, it makes the understanding the CIA easy. There's somebody who knows something about the New York real estate world. It is complex and God knows how many deals he was in. Hillary Clinton, her whole life, what did she do? What did she do in the Senate? What did she really do as Secretary of State? What's this whole email thing and so forth? And so we've got a lot of work to do. It said that we get the government we deserve because we go to the polls and we register our choice. You talked about the job that the media has to do with the current crop of candidates. What should we as voters be doing? What is our responsibility to make the right choice when we go to the polls on election day? Well, I think that we should demand a lot of the candidates and that there should be not just debates and food fights, but that you should really have discussion of policies and there should be a demand. Hey, we want to know who these people are. Well, we have a pretty sleepy and uneducated electorate. That's one of our problems, which is a shame to say. But the job of educating, providing the facts is, yes, the candidates and the parties and so forth, but the media, we've got a big burden here, big burden. Any predictions, Bob, for what the future holds in the election cycle? Yeah, I have it written down here. Oh, I forgot to bring that piece of paper. No one has, I've called one of the elders in the Republican Party and asked that question, what's happening and what do you think? And he said, there are no elders in the Republican Party. And so I found another elder in the Republican Party, really an elder, everyone would know who he is and so forth, he's not to be quoted on the record. And I asked, I said, is it possible that there would be a deadlocked convention? And he got off one of the great lines. He said, in 2016, anything is possible. Let us end the beginning, the evening rather, where we began with the 37th president and just it's been over four decades since Nixon left office and two decades since he died. What will Nixon's legacy look like? How will he look in history four decades from now? Alex? It's a shame to have to say this but I do think the, people don't know, I mean some of the criminal acts that occurred during his administration are going to carry the day. And which is such a shame to say because the guy did well in so many ways, especially domestically where he's known as more of an expert in foreign affairs. He did so many great things on the domestic side that gets buried a lot and he had so many good ideas. If you read some of the papers that were written during the transition period prior, right after the 68th election, which put him in office until the inaugural in January 20th to 69, things that he wanted to implement to reorganize the executive branch of the government. Many things and a lot of those ideas give the 18-year-old the vote and on and on. I mean he had so much promise and that's the tragedy. That's one of the tragedies of Watergate is that he tripped himself up, he really did. But then you listen to the tapes. Tapes, right, well, that's- And you know, there are thousands of hours of tapes. And he put them in. I have them on cassettes in my car. I don't listen to the radio, I listen to Nixon tapes. And I've, well, it's a stunner. Again and again, the venom, the hate, the let's get the FBI on so-and-so, let's get the CIA on them, let's do this. Or let's fire bomb the Brookings Institute. Yeah, and at one point, I mean it is literally a year before Watergate, June 17th, 1971, there's a tape of Nixon and Kissinger and Haldeman. And there is a bombing study from the Johnson administration that supposedly the Brookings Institution, one of the think tanks in Washington, has that Nixon wants and he says, let's get this. And Haldeman and Kissinger kind of say, well, you know, we can't get it. And Nixon says, break in, blow the safe. Blow the safe.  I remember you saying that.  And I mean, it's just, and he won't let it go. Then he finds, and they're kind of resisting. I don't care what it takes, he said. Yeah, I don't care what it takes and do it on a thievery basis.  Who's gonna break in? Who's gonna do this? And they won't do it, or it doesn't happen. And he's on fire about it. Now, I think we've had presidents who've made mistakes, but I am hopeful that Barack Obama as president is not ordering the break in, the fire bombing of anything. And, you know, maybe, but... I mean, there should be a little more of that. And, no, I'm against break-ins and firebombing. But, you know, this is, and this is the great mystery of this great democracy. And that is we don't know enough about what goes on. I mean, you've spent years and years on this library and all the documents and the histories. What do, we know a lot about Johnson, but there's still mysteries, aren't there? There still are things that are unanswered. And I think that the secrecy, that the hidden nature of government is the thing we should worry about as much as anything in this country. And the judge who said it got it right, democracies die in darkness. Right, that was the last note. Yes, I know you're trying to close down here, but, and this is not a historic thing, but another thing about Nixon that I, because I went from not liking him at all for the first three days, then forgiving him immediately when I saw what he couldn't say to me, but what he meant, then I started liking him and had that romance for three and a half years. Then, after I testified on the tapes, that next year, I saw another Nixon and I changed my mind. And by the time I testified before the impeachment inquiry, the House Judiciary Committee, exactly a year after the tapes, July of 74, I was a different mind then, and it was primarily because he exploited the loyalties of all these people that loved him dearly. He began by letting Haldeman and Ehrlichman go on April 30th when he dismissed John Deane and Klein Deans, but he exploited those two top guys. And Haldeman seemed to take it like a soldier. Ehrlichman never forgot him, but Ehrlichman died shortly after that. But, and then all these young guys, you know, Bud Crow, those were terrific guys. They were all young, eager, thought the president hung the moon. He really couldn't have cared much because he was self-centered. I just saw a different Nixon. As much as I liked him before, I ended up. But you say all of these wonderful kids and so forth were exploited by Nixon, and that's true. But where were they when he was saying, let's fire bomb, let's break in, let's go sabotage the Muskie King? They were in their offices. They weren't privy to that. Yeah, but they were, and, you know, like Jeb McGregor, lots of them were involved in this and were aware of it. And what always struck me is where were the no votes from the staff? Where was somebody saying, where was the lawyer saying? I mean, for God's sakes, John Mitchell, his attorney general, had the Watergate meetings in his office at the Justice Department. And Gordon Liddy, you know, one of the strangest people to ever put on a pair of pants brought up these charts that were made by the CIA and at first we're gonna spend a million dollars on wiretapping and sabotaging people and then Mitchell's sitting there smoking his pipe and his objection was it was too expensive. And so Liddy brought back the $500,000 plan. And too expensive. Not no one ever saying, hey, wait a minute, isn't this all illegal? Isn't this corrupt? And then finally, apparently the $250,000 plan was approved and that was Watergate. But those young guys, those young guys, there is such a thing as the glitter to the presidency. And a lot of people, even I, that's why my plan to stay in the Air Force and go back to Vietnam, I even caught a little of a fever when I was talking to Haldeman in New York. There's a certain glitter to the presidency. All these young people excited. They've just won the campaign. They're going to Washington. What's better than that? And it could be intoxicating. And I said that and something I wrote. They were ensnared by the glitter and the deception of the Nixon presidency. Tonight is proof positive that the last word of history is never written. I would strongly recommend the last of the president's men which only enhanced my great respect for Alex Butterfield and Bob Woodward. Please give them a hand. Thank you all so much for coming tonight.


Ladies and gentlemen, this is Eric Sanders from the Center for Elections Science. I'm here at Left Forum, Executive Director Aaron Hamlin, who is about to engage in a feat of memory and magic. He's gonna spend the next 15 minutes memorizing a deck of cards and then supposedly he's going to share from memory the order of the deck. He is deep in memorization. Here we go. Starting from the top. It's from here. From the bottom. Okay. Do you want us to say anything or? You want his hand to me? The first one is a two of clubs. The next one is a nine of clubs. The next one is a four of spades. The next one is a two of clubs. You know what this is going on with. The next one is an eighth of a nine. The next one is a seven of spades. The next one is a ten of cards. Wait. Oh, you got it. Yeah, yeah, you yelled it. Jack of diamonds. And the next one is a queen of clubs. And then a king of spades. And then a pair of eight of cards. And then there is a three of diamonds. And then there is a three of cards. Six of cards. Seven of cards. And then there's an ace of cards. And then there's four of clubs. So eight of diamonds. There is a two of spades. Then there is a nine of diamonds. Then there's a king of cards. Five of cards. Eight of spades. Queen of diamonds. Nine of cards. Ace of spades. Ten of clubs. Five of clubs. Four of cards. Queen of cards. Eight of clubs. Jack of cards. Two of diamonds. Seven of diamonds. Seven of clubs. King of diamonds. Six of spades. Then there's an ace of clubs. Jack of clubs. Nine of spades. Jack of spades. King of clubs. Five of diamonds. Ten of diamonds. Eight of spades. Four of diamonds. Nine of spades. Seven of clubs. Queen of spades. Six of diamonds. Five of clubs. Ten of spades. Seven of clubs. He got it! How's your brain? Tired. He got it. Pretty good. Thank you. The outcome was never down, right? Not in your mind. Woo! Alright. Take a rest. Aaron, you deserved it. Thank you. Thanks.


Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Gohathakurtha. This is the third and the final segment of the interview I did with Shyam Benegal, India's greatest living filmmaker. The first part of this three-part series focused on his forthcoming film on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In the second part we discuss politics, the Muslim question, majoritarianism, communalism. In this, the third and the final segment of this interview, I try and get Shyam Benegal to reminisce. He talks about the individuals who are no more with us, at least three actors whose fame was because of him, the late Smita Patil, Om Puri, Amrish Puri. He talks about others who are no more with us, Leela Naidu, Girish Karnad, Tom Ulta, Van Raj Bhatia, Shatujit Rai, Mrilal Sen, Rithvi Ghatak, among others. Let's go back to your life as a filmmaker. You were born in a Konghani-speaking family, Chitrapur, Saraswat, Brahmin. Yet you made several films which dealt with cast, exploitation, the importance of cast, including Summer in 1999, very, very critical of the cast system. Yet you are, I mean, cast continues to remain an important factor in Indian India's life. And the intersection of cast and class is something you've dealt with very frequently in several of your films. Would you like to make a few comments and observations on where we are today? Because the cast system hasn't died out. It's still as important as ever in shaping large sections of Indian society. See, Indian cast and class tend to be more or less the same, except that, you see, the class system can change, the classes can change, but cast does not change. Now the real problem in India is not so much problem of class as much as it is problem of cast, you know, and that hasn't changed. And we have not been able to change that as we plan to, as we have been fighting to, because, you know, it's so, so, I mean, it has such strong roots, you know, the cast system of the country. So it has to be, and we've been fighting against it for a long time. And even people who are fighting against it themselves will even cast, you know, and they are very proud of their casts. Okay. You know, you made your first film, I was told at the age of 12, when you used a camera which belonged to your father, who was a photographer, Sridhar Benegalji. And much later, you did a master's degree in economics from Osmania University in Hyderabad, and you formed a film society over there. But cinema is part of your blood. You were a second cousin of Guru Dutt, whose maternal grandmother was the sister of your paternal grandmother. Then you worked in advertising. You were a copywriter in Lin Tass, and you made many, many documentary films and advertising films and short films. But a lot of people remember you for the first four films that you made. 1973, Ankur, The Seedling, talking about the economic and sexual exploitation in Telangana, introduced actors like Shabana Azmi, Anantnag, Sadhu Meher, all of them became famous. Then came Nishad, the end of the night, the end of the night, the night's end, a teacher's wife who's abducted and gang raped by four zamindars. And the official dump turns a deaf ear to them. And then came the unique 1976 Manthan, or the churning, which was actually produced by 500,000 farmers of Gujarat, all of whom contributed two rupees for the making of the film. And you talked about rural empowerment and the formation of cooperatives. Bhumika, of course, was loosely based on the life of the Marathi actress Hansa Wadkar. She led a very flamboyant and controversial life. But Smita Patil became famous because of her portrayal. And it's not just about an individual's search for self-fulfillment in a patriarchal society.  Film and television institute of Pune, the national school of drama, you taught at the Film and Television Institute of India, 1966 to 1973. You were chairman twice, 1980 to 83, 1989 to 92.  How do you look back on the films that you made in the 70s, 1973 to 77, Ankur, Nishant, Mantan and Bhomika? Well, I don't think about them anymore, you know, because it's done, it's finished as far as I'm concerned. It was a phase in my life. And there are other things that happened. If I choose to live in the past, I would be thinking about them all the time. But I don't choose to live in that past. You know, I mean, some things were successful, some things were not so successful. But then life goes on, you know. And so I don't think about what happened yesterday. I have to think about what's going on today and what to do tomorrow. I mean, I'm not going to think about what I'd already done. I don't want to get caught in the past, in that sense, you know. So it's one of those things. In fact, I often forget that there were certain subjects that I had touched upon, made films about and so on. But then I don't think about them. Let me remind you of three individuals. I dare say you made those three individuals. And they are no more with us. And all of them, at least two of them. You're talking about actors? Yes. I'm talking about Om Puri. I'm talking about Smita Patil. I'm talking about Amritsha Puri. Yeah, yeah. No, they were brilliant actors. In fact, all of them, all those three started their film careers with me. I'm aware of that. That's why I asked you. Today you're 88 and they are no more. They are passed away. They were much, much younger than you. Yeah, they were. You think about them. You have some recollections you'd like to make about Smita Patil. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's no question about it. She was because she was among the most spontaneous of all the actors that I've worked with. That was because she was not trained as an actress. You know, so her feelings would be very much more spontaneous than somebody who's trained to feel in a particular way because there would be a difference in the way they perform. Now, in the same yardstick, you see Shabana was a trained actress. You know, but Smita was a wonderful actress, but she couldn't repeat what she did, you know, because she was not an actress from the theater. You know, Shabana had training, so she could play the, you know, the parts in a way because of her training at the theater and training in film school. But Smita hadn't come. She came directly on the scene and in fact, she wasn't even planning to be an actress. You know, until I saw her and I asked her parents if I could, if she would say yes to me if I offered her a role in a film, you know, so this Nishant, which was her first film, but after that she got very involved in Selma and so on. So she passed away at a very young age? At a very young age. She was about 30, 31, between 30 and 31. You know, that that's very unfortunate actually. She, because it really had to do with the, it had something to do with her, not childbirth, but with complications following the childbirth. You know, her son of course is doing well now as an actor.  Yeah, she had. What are your recollections of Om Puri? Well, Om was a trained actor. He went to the National School of Drama. But having said that, you know, his background was of extreme poverty. He had to get a scholarship to get into the National School of Drama. And he was a, you know, he used to do all kinds of odd jobs in order to keep himself alive. You know, and he done, his life experience was quite extraordinary. You know, from absolutely kind of working class to middle class, you know, his life experience was an incredible one because he, he was brought up and he was, when he grew up, he grew up in extreme poverty. You know, so his, his education was also through scholarships and so on. So he was a, he, he, he was a, I think his experience, his early experience made him into a very fine actor because, you know, he had a tremendous sense of recall. Like Smita Patil, he had a troubled personal life. Well, you know, that of course, yes. You know, Smita didn't have so many problems in a personal life in that sense. Ohm had a lot of problems and it was very complicated. Including his addiction to alcohol. Yeah. That was, that was much later, of course, because in the early years, he was, when he was working with me, he never, there was no alcohol in the system at that time. It was much later. What about Amrishpuri, who often played negative? Amrish was an extremely dedicated actor, extremely dedicated. He had tremendous experience in the theatre. He also was, you know, he, he was a student, meaning he, he was a kind of chela of Satyadev Dubey and very dedicated and Dubey produced plays and Amrishpuri could do, I mean, and he was a, he was absolutely ideal actor because, you know, you could give him about a dialogue, I mean, dialogue sheets, one dialogue that, that's 10 pages. He had such a photographic memory, he would just look at it page after page after page after page and say, okay, I'm ready for the thing. That was the other thing that he had was, even on stage, he would say, do you want me, you don't want me to blink, right? You want me to just look without my eye-breaking. He could do that for half an hour, extraordinary. He too died at a young age. Yeah, well, yes, I guess. There are three others who were not made by you. They were already very, very well accomplished by the time you used them in your films, who are no more with us. I'd like you to recall your memories of three individuals, Gidish Karnad, Leela Naidu and Tom Ulta. Will you talk about Leela Naidu first? Well, Leela Naidu, you know, was a, she grew up abroad and she was very good at French. But when she, when she acted for the first time with these people, I mean, Jim Ivory and his partner, what's his name? Merchant.  Ivory merchant. Yeah, so they, they brought her to India and she acted for them. And it was after that that I put her in Trikal. And she was very good, very, very dedicated to her work. You know, she, she was absolutely wonderful as an actress. But unfortunately, she would, she had a, you know, she got into, because of Dom Beret's, you know, he, she, they, they fell in love with each other. But the fact was that Dom was an alcoholic and that had its effect on her. So she started to drink as well, you know, which was very, very unfortunate. Because according to me, you know, Dom was a very talented poet. But the fact was that Leela Naidu's career tended to get affected by that. Both were very talented people, of course. What are your recollections of Girish Karnad? Girish, you know, Girish was probably one of the very best playwrights we ever produced. And also an actor. You know, and he wrote and he chose to write in Canada. Although it was very easy for him to write in English as well. Because he had, you know, he was an Oxford person and so on. And then he wrote English beautifully. But he chose not to write in English, but to write in Canada. And he did brilliant job of that. Because he was certainly, if not the best, one of the best playwrights we produced. What about his acting talents? Well, you know, as an actor, he was, I'm not quite sure that his talent as an actor exceeded his talent as a playwright. How would you evaluate Tom Alter? He's also no more with us. Tom Alter? Yes. Well, Tom Alter was, you know, he was a, he was another very interesting person because, you know, Tom Alter was an American, but he had grown up in India. And he spoke Urdu with such excellent accent and the vocabulary in Urdu was fantastic. You know, Tom was, if you didn't see him, you wouldn't believe that he was an American. You know, because he spoke, his Leja and Urdu was unbelievable. Excellent. There was another person you worked with who's also no more with us. Who is this? Music composer, Van Raj Bhatia. Oh, Van Raj, of course. Van Raj was again, see, I had the good fortune to work with some very great talents. Van Raj Bhatia was one of those. You see, because Van Raj was a student, I mean, of a music professor, Nadia Boulanger, who happened to be the teacher of practically every great conductor and composer of Europe, you know, in the 20th century.  It's amazing.  A.R. Rahman, of course, was, you know, A.R. Rahman, there's no question that he is probably the most successful composer we have, but he's essentially a film composer, music composer for films, particularly for songs. You know, Van Raj was not that kind of composer. He was mostly a composer of western music, but mind you, Rahman himself studied western music a lot. You know, Rahman comes from a family of musicians, you know. His father was a musician and what more he was a musician for films and also a composer. You know, you have been a part of India's cinema industry or cinema industry for a very, very long time over. You started at age 12, but your first feature film, Mankud was 1974. Now, you often described as a pioneer of so-called parallel cinema in India. Well, that's a term I hate. That's a term I hate. If somebody gave it, you know, and then so that's why I became a kind of, I said, how can, what is the meaning of parallel? You know, it doesn't make any sense to me, but the fact is because, you know, this isn't what, what would you call your films like I said in the context of when I was making those films. I would call it new cinema because we were making a bit different kind of film from what the industry was doing. You know, I got you. You made a documentary film on Satyajit Rai. He worked with him a lot. Some people even say you had some sort of a professional rivalry with him, which I think was. No professional rivalry. I saw him as my guru figure, you know. Okay. So, I mean, when you look at the greatest filmmakers in India, surely Satyajit Rai is one of them. And there are several others. I'd like you to name some of them. You know, I'd like you to talk about the great filmmakers who, according to you, are among the greatest filmmakers this country. India? Yes, Indian filmmakers. Well, without question, Satyajit Rai was my father best that we produced. Then, of course, there was Rithik also, Rithik Ghatak. He was a bit of a mad genius. And, you know, he, he left a lot of his work incomplete as well. But the fact was that he was very, very brilliant. There was no question about it. As I'm going to say, it was very prolific, of course. I mean, you know, he was always in a hurry to work in the sense that I don't know, he wanted to finish this film rather quickly. But then he was very economic. You know, if somebody took a certain amount of money to make a film, he would make the same kind of film at about half the budget. You know, so Miral was again a very, very talented person, but always in a hurry, as I said, you know, equally. You've lived three filmmakers from Bengal. What about filmmakers from other parts of the country, including your own state Maharashtra? Well, there are some others like, but you know, I would, why Bengal? Because you see, it's the way the market was in Bengal. Because, you know, you know, new people who made new kinds of films could count on a middle-class, urban middle-class audience, particularly educated middle-class audience. But rest of India is not quite like that. Take Kerala. You had Adur Gopalakrishnan. You had the late Aravindan. You have had greats from the world of Tamil cinema, Kannada cinema, Telugu cinema. But that's, you know, these are people from industries that are where you can create a parallel system. You know, Adur, for instance, came from Malayalam cinema. And Malayalam cinema was because, you know, the, if you look at the literacy level of Kerala, you find that it has always been between 95 and 100 percent. So, they grew up in an atmosphere where you had a great deal of literacy and even people living in villages had urban lifestyles, you know. So, there was a, there's a certain kind of, because Kerala is in many ways very different from the rest of India. You know, you are very highly interested. But you had very, very good films being made in the Tamil language in Kannada, in Telugu. Who do you not agree? Not in Telugu so much. I see. What about Marathi cinema? Marathi films? Govind Nehalani. Govind was not a Marathi film maker. He made one Marathi film. But the fact was Govind actually the Hindi film maker, correct. But he made that but basically Marathi was on its own in the 30s and up to middle 40s. You know, because the nurturing ground for them was Prabhat film studios. But when Prabhat collapsed, Marathi cinema as a result also to some large extent collapsed. You know, otherwise it had the status of an all India film. But it reverted back to it being a regional film, you know. Okay. How would you evaluate the current state of filmmaking in India? You have some films which are being made by people, you know, who you know very well. You worked with them. My daughter has worked with Anubhav Sinhaan Bheed. He's worked with Sudhir Bhishra in Afwar. There's Nandita Das. There are several other film makers in Mumbai who you wouldn't exactly describe them as mainstream Bollywood. Yet again, you know, they would disagree with mainstream Bollywood. These are formulaic constructions, you know, because there is a certain traditional way of making films. And in that traditional way, you have songs and dances and various other things. And you know, it's a kind of what some of the practitioners themselves say masala film, you know, something for everybody, you know, that kind of film. You know, so it defies even genre. You know, it defies even the definition of genre because it there are there is no genre. It's just everything in it. It's a kind of masala film. India is the biggest film producing country in the world. Yeah. I mean, we, we know, but you know, in India, I think we created films. We didn't be we broke away from genres. You know, although there was at one time, there were like start films and, you know, comedies and this and that and melodramas. There were different kinds of films. But I think all they all got put together into one biryani. Yeah, India remains the world's biggest or just in terms of shared numbers, the biggest film producing country in the world, we still making about 1000 films, but the entire economics and the viewing habits of people seem to be changing with OTT or over the top platforms with technology. And we see a lot of cinema being made in other parts of the country and not just out of Mumbai, which are also being recognized internationally. Would you like to comment a little bit about the changing trends? See, television has a slightly different background, you know, because television did not go through the process of cinema. And it came at a time when it could very easily see itself as part of the television revolution, the world over. So our television, whatever you make, if you make a kind of story in television, or you have these different platforms now, where you have series, you make different kinds of television series, and different kind of, you know, four part, six part, ten part series, you, it's no long, you don't need the old construction of the old constructs of them. Now it's a much more, much closer to life experience. And it's also television has as when you say television, you also mean the smaller screen.  You know, it's part of that now. Cinema was not like that. It was always away from you. You went to the cinema and you and got enveloped by cinema. Yeah, the dark cinema hall, the big screen, etc. So is this good or is this bad? I mean, what are the positives and the negatives of the new experiences of the audio visual medium? What are the pros and what are the cons? What are the changes that you see? I mean, you've been long enough in the business to evaluate it. Well, you know, now is the time for television to influence cinema in many ways. You know, it's the thing has got reversed. I see. Among the international filmmakers, who are the ones which have had the biggest influence on you as a filmmaker, as a filmmaker. There are different people, you know, the European filmmakers, but Neuralism has had, I think, the earliest influences were from Neuralism, from Italian Neuralism, you know, Vittorio De Sica, people like that. But otherwise, I don't think it's been, I mean, I can't count any influence as such. At 88, what are the biggest, I mean, this is my last question to you.  First, your achievements? I have, I have very few regrets. Well, I've lived most of my life in any case. So I have very few regrets. But I don't see, you know, I haven't had great achievements in that sense. But I've had what one might call, you know, I've had my share of awards and this and that and so on. You're being very humble? No, no, I'm not being humble because... 18 National Film Awards, Dada Sahib Falke Award, India's highest award for filmmakers in 2005, Padma Shree, Padma Bhushan. I don't see, I mean, it's to me now, it's all water in the bridge, under the bridge, you know, it's in the past. I'm tempted to go back again to a question where I was, I wasn't able to understand you. You seem non-committal about expressing your views on the current political dispensation in India in the last nine years.  No, I'm not reluctant to such. I don't think, but I think there has been a certain amount of stability.  But the fact is that I mean, that doesn't affect me as much as it would have elsewhere in the world. You know, because we can... I mean, my life hasn't been affected too much. But... And people around me have not been affected so much. But surely you can't ignore... The only thing that worries me is inflation. That's all? That worries me. What about unemployment? I mean, what about the fact that we are today the most populous country in the world? No, but when we talk about unemployment, there's a lot of informal employment. Is it not formal employment? Informal employment. You see, we have never had, when you talk about percentage of employment, employment of what kind? Are we talking about government jobs? Are we talking about the industry? Or are we talking about agriculture? What are we talking about? We are talking about decent jobs, as they are called. Decent jobs that you have made a film on child labour or a series for the International Labour Organization. The classification is a decent job. Many argue that today, India is the world's most populous country. We have more than 1.4 billion people. The difference between India and China is the demographic profile. The median age of India is 28, 29. The median age of China is 30, 38, 39. Half the population is below that age of 27, 29. 27, 28, 29. That age group. Many argue that unemployment is at its peak. Decent work. Decent work as defined by the International Labour Organization. That we haven't seen this kind of unemployment among the youth, among the so-called educated youth, as we are seeing today. But with inflation, would you not say this is one of the biggest problems that we are facing in India at present? No, but I think it would be wrong to compare China with India, because most of the resources of the country are in the hands of the government in places like China and the Exo with India. You have that kind of thing. But India is not like that, because everything is not under the control of the government. But wait, I could argue that the gap between the rich and the poor in India, and many economists and many social scientists have argued with facts and figures that we have become more unequal than the few. I know that the amount of wealth, national wealth, is in the hands of very few people. As far as India is concerned, we have not solved the problem of distribution. There's a lot of wealth accumulation in very few hands. Now, we have to do something about that so that it gets spread. Are we doing enough about it? I don't know. I mean, it's difficult for me to say, and I haven't thought about it also now. All right. I mean, I think you've been very kind in giving me as much as you have. It's been more than two hours that I've spent with you, and we've recorded everything. And thank you very much for your time and for answering all the questions I asked you. And even if I was not satisfied, I was even disappointed with some of your answers. You never ducked or chose not to answer any questions. I wish your health improves from middling to good, and you have a long life ahead of you. Thank you. Thank you. This is where we conclude the third and the final segment of an interview I did on the 1st of July, 2023 with India's greatest living filmmaker, Shyam Benegal. I thought I would get half an hour of his time. He gave me two hours. We edited parts of it. In the first part, he talks about his forthcoming film on Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. In the second part, we discuss politics, the Rashtriya Swamsevak Sangh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. And in this, the third and final segment, Shyam Benegal, is in a reminiscent mood. He talks about several people who are no more with us. Thank you very much for being with us on this program. Keep watching NewsClick. And do remember to subscribe to the channel.


Good day, fellow investors. In our search for higher returns with lower risks, we look all around the world and one place where nobody wants to go now and where there might be blood on the streets is Argentina. So in this video, we'll start with a macroeconomic investment overview of the country. What does Ray Dalio says about investing in such hyperinflationary depression crisis situations? What could be the likely outcomes? And then we're going to discuss the stock that most of my Argentinian analyst, brokers, economists, friends are very excited about and that is Pampa Energia. So let's start with the discussion. Let's start with the macroeconomics and then see about an investment idea. Mind disclaimer here. This is extremely risky. I expect huge volatility on the upside, on the downside. There are political uncertainties. So if you can't stomach that volatility, forget about this video. However, if you want to play a speculation with small part of your portfolio, then stick to this. Let's go. So taking it from Dalio's book, Big Dead Cycles, within an average inflationary crisis, I think that Argentina is somewhere in the depression part now. So we have the boom, bust cycles. This is probably second, third round of boom, busts for Argentina. But as the currency depreciates, every market forces simply make it again an attractive territory for investments, for developments. Their products are placed on a global market, exports increase, imports decrease. And sooner or later, you might have in the most likely scenario an average statistical scenario. You have normalization. And then if you look at this chart with equity prices, those equity prices increase what in this case on average four times over five, six years. So weaker growth causes investors to pull their money out anyway. The assets that had been seen as fabulous treasure a short time ago now look like trash. They quickly go from overbought to oversold and prices plummet. Exactly what has happened with Pampa. So prices were extremely high just a year and a half ago. And now they have plummeted. Other companies that I analyzed crash so simply plummeted prices. And you have to see whether these kinds of companies fit your portfolio or your investment style. As investors, if we can buy when it is the darkest, we can expect the above 4x returns over the next 84 or 48, 46 months, even shorter, as we are already in the depression. So the sooner, the better, right? But there is always the possibility that it goes to zero. We can have Venezuela situation. And then you can simply forget about your money, perhaps somewhere down the road, five to 10 years, you get something back. But I would that consider it a zero. So there is potential for permanent capital loss in this situation. Something to keep in mind. So inflation is very high. 30% interest rates in Argentina are 60%. But when the country usually hits bottom is when the balance of trade, balance of payments changes and the balance turns into positive from negative. And this is already slowly happening in Argentina. Perhaps it will happen sooner or later. But it's going on. So we are closer to the end of the depression. The more time passes, they should be easier. They got a 50 billion dollar loan for the IMF that should surely help. However, there are plenty of risks. Not stable political country, very, very socialist potential to come in the next elections that are close in October. A big part of the population is not satisfied with what's going on. Anything can happen. And we know that in history, Argentina hasn't been as considered as reliable when it comes to these things. However, from an investing perspective, there weren't many nationalizations. So there were intrusions in the normal market forces, but not nationalization. So this is a risk you have to keep in mind. And what might happen is always unclear. So you're really investing in something unclear. If there is value, I like to buy just with a little bit of my portfolio. The key are the political elections. We have Kirchner from the left, where if you look at stocks back then, they were terrible. When she was the president, then Macri came and things improved. And now people are again scared that Kirchner comes or that the economics don't improve. And then we see trouble. So we'll see what happens. Expect high volatility. My situation, my view is that, okay, I have a 10% chance of loss, 100% loss, buy-buy money. Perhaps I get something after 10, 20 years. 40% chance Kirchner wins, 50% down, short-term, long-term neutral, hopefully.  I think this is a little bit conservative. But if I can find a business that offers 25% return, I might invest. So also on a portfolio perspective, if I find five such businesses over five years, I think, okay, in five different countries with same problems, I think three will do very well, one will break even, and one will go to zero. Three times, let's say three, it's nine plus one that breaks even is 10. If I invest five over four or five years, I double my money, which is a good investment return. Let me discuss Pampa energy. So just a quick overview of the company. What are they doing? Why? It is a potential triple with some risks. What's their debt, power generation, oil and gas exploration and production, subsidiaries or parts of companies that they own, associates and transportadora del gas de sud, how they call it. So Pampa energy is a holding company that owns power generation, oil and transmission. If we look at the market cap of Adenor, Transnair and TGS, that are TGS, that are all listed companies, Adenor and TGS on the New York Stock Exchange, 51% of Adenor is on a 731 million market cap is 365 million, 26% of Transnair is 100 million on a 400 million market cap, 25.5% of TGS is 500 million. So the holding company has 234 million in cash. So Pampa's energy generation, oil and petrochemical businesses are valued at just 500 million. EBITDA for debt parts were 700 million in 2018. So we were practically buying a business at a price to EBITDA below one. Let's look at other issues. There is Pampa's debt. It's a little bit expensive, 7%, 8% in yields, which is okay for Argentina in US dollars. However, if you look it from a normalized economic perspective, 1.3 net debt to EBITDA isn't much. Total gross debt is 2 billion. They have a lot of cash, 700 million. So it looks okay if it would be in a normal country, but this is always Argentina. It owns on electricity production 11% of production there and this is very important. So it all already has 4,000 megawatts of installed capacity and they have just invested 900 million to add 900 megawatts. So the value, the replacement value of what it has already installed is about 4 billion and you're getting that for what 700, 500 million. So you have discount to replacement value of 80%, something like that. The EBITDA is 400 million in power generation, so 400 million. I'm not even going into ratios because they look absurd. I think they could get 25% return in this moment that you would expect from Argentina when the situation normalizes as it was the case when Argentina issued 100 year bonds in 2017. The company should be valued at 8 EBITDA, which is 3.2 billion just for the generation part. So that's already a double. Then we have oil and gas. They are the leading exploration and production in Argentina. Reserves are 140 million barrels, equivalent barrels and most Argentinians I know are very excited about the vaca muerta, which has a quarter of the resources like in the US of shale gas, but production just 1%. So Argentinians are very excited that they will be able to produce a lot of gas and oil from these fields. They will invest 200 million plus another 20 million per year. A lot of investments will go there and they sold 25% of their reserves for 400 million. So on what they sold I would say this value of what's remaining is 1.6 billion. So that is still a lot or 1.2 billion if we take what they have sold. EBITDA was 200 million on 1 million in debt for the segment. So 1 million in debt is significant, leads to 100 million in costs, yearly costs and I don't know, I'm not sure about oil and gas. I keep it as a bonus. I would detach a value of zero because oil and gas, shale gas hasn't been really profitable in the US, so it might not be really profitable in Argentina. If it is profitable, if they can sell it, then I would be happy to see value here, but from now zero from a business perspective and 500 million from hopefully a sale perspective. If they put a lot of capital into this and it doesn't end up well, then they are in trouble. Adenor, market share in Argentina 20% for distribution, EBITDA 200 million on low debt, 100 million on free cash flows, so value about 200 million or 100 million for Pampa, 150. So depending on how you value it, they are going to invest again a lot, which is another risk for Pampa, but as risk it might also mean an opportunity if they invest a lot now, when there is blood on the street and then things normalize. Transnair also another company again with high investments. TGS is something a lot of people are excited, they have to develop, probably might be able to develop a gas pipeline to vacan Huerta, that's again going to cost a lot, so I'm looking this from a capital perspective, but it offers huge potential. There are other projects with the company and the company is a nice dividend yielder, so it pays 5%, but it did pay 15% a few years ago, so that was the time to buy, but okay. Now it looks good time to buy in compared to a normalization period, but what was there in 2012 is something you can again expect. Some of parts valuation, TGS 300 million, Adenor 150, Transnair 100 million, Pampa Energia 800 million, total value 1.3 billion for hopefully 25% return. The market is valuing this at 1.8 billion, so if I add 500 million for the oil assets that could be gotten I think, there is 200 million in cash, so I come out. Return expected business return is 25% from Pampa, when things normalizes this goes to 8% for such a growth business, which means this is a triple and the stock price goes back to 75%. It's a good company, I wanted to analyze the sector, I'm not going to invest in it because I don't like the high levels of debt and the high levels of capex investments that I am not that certain will work out that well, plus there is the country risk. However, if all those things work out well, this is not a triple, this is a 10-beggar over the next 10 years, macro environment, political environment, development of oil and shell resources and pipeline and growth. If all that works out, you have a 10-beggar here, now. And actually 10-beggars are created from when nobody sees them and then those explode. The risk is a little bit too big for me from a business perspective, so I prefer more certainty. Thank you for watching, looking forward to your comments. If you want to check everything that I do, please check my website and I'll see you in the next video.