>> hr haldeman was nixon's probably closest aide. the memo says a couple of things of interest one of them is keep an out working on south vietnam. and what he is referring to their is that johnson had been engaged with vietnam, hoping to enter into peace talks. at the same time, anna shanalt was a campaign aide, who was speaking to the south vietnamese president about these talks and people believe that she was encouraging him to wait until after the election. these notes were brought to public attention by historian jack farrell as part of a biography that he published in 2017 so, we are seeing that documents are still being declassified and discovered by historian, and 50 years later, we are still learning new things about the war. >> how are historians able to gain access to these things that are newly declassified? >> our national archive records, including our national public records are open to the public. you can come to our research room and request the documents. you can go through the files and make your own discoveries. >

but i did go into the white house and reported to haldeman and ehrlichman, and that's what he's reported to the president on. >> that's got to be the last word. >>> a report asks national security adviser if president trump is a security risk. you've got to see his response, next. ♪ you said you're not like me, ♪ never drop to your knees, ♪ look into the sky for a momentary high, ♪ ♪ you never even tried till it's time to say goodbye, bye ♪ ♪ everybody fights for a little bit of light, i believe. ♪ geico motorcycle, great rates for great rides. introducing zero account fees for brokerage accounts. and zero minimums to open an account. we have fidelity mutual funds with zero minimum investment. and now, only fidelity offers two zero expense ratio index funds directly to investors. because when you invest with fidelity, all those zeros really add up. ♪ so maybe i'll win, saved by zero ♪ >>> flasnational security advis john bolton meeting with his russian counterpart in geneva today insisting the u.s. won't tolerate election interference in the midterms. joining me to di

but i did go into the white house and reported to haldeman and ehrlichman, and that's what he's reported to the president on. >> that's got to be the last word. >>> a report asks national security adviser if president trump is a security risk. you've got to see his response, next. happy anniversary dinner, darlin'. can this much love be cleaned by a little bit of dawn ultra? oh yeah one bottle has the grease cleaning power of three bottles of this other liquid. a drop of dawn and grease is gone. >>> national security advisor, john bolton meeting with with his counterpart in geneva and insisting the u.s. won't tolerate any interference in the midterms. james clapper the former director of national intelligence. i've got to ask you, the chaos in this white house causing headaches for his staff overseas. i want to hear what bolton was asked. >> given the events of this week and admissions of pay offs and you've mentioned election meddling. were you ever concerned that your own president is a security risk? >> of course not. i mean that's a silly question. and i just spoke to him literally a

a conversation was nixon specifically direct haldeman to keep working on the vietnamese. believe it or not, that is pretty much what i needed to in's a glimpse into the character, how far he was willing to go. the historian has to answer a question which is still unanswered. if there are historians in the audience who want to write a great book, there's still a lot of things we don't know about the story. the most important is we don't the what the effect was on government in saigon. there were all sorts of conflicting domestic opinions about if they should join these talks. was the nixon message a tipping point? was it totally irrelevant to domestic political concerns? we don't know that and maybe in the next 20 or 30 years, we will more declassified information from the national security council and we can make that judgment. we don't know anything about nixon's appeal to the taiwanese .o open up a second front nixon wrote a personal letter to .ean kai-shek there's a great folder talking about how they did or did not dok to put pressure, and we not know how valid that s

was the campaign chairman for richard nixon and later the attorney general went to prison as did hr haldeman, john erlichman and then white house aides. what is different is those charges related directly to their work on the campaign whereas manafort's charges relate to what he did before the trump campaign. but still he is a very senior -- he was the top official in the trump campaign. his work for the ukraine related to the russia investigation because he was working for a pro-putin candidate making all that money working for yanukovych and the russia investigation is about whether the putin government worked with the trump campaign to defeat hillary clinton. >> and that is what is significant. they came upon the crimes through the investigation and what's being done here is 23409 about partisanship. tad devine worked for al gore and bernie sanders. it just shows the underbelly of what's done in political lobbying work and campaign work internationally but you have two players here, you have a campaign manager who has these ties and his deputy rick gates who worked on the trump campaign w

he was not somebody who was haldeman or erlichman or nixon himself or overseeing the wrong doing and calling out the dirty trick play book, john, and so it does get at the president's mentality that in his record there's few greater sins than being a rat and john dean was the nixon council and turned on nixon and exposed the wrong doing in the nixon white house in that famous watergate testimony on capitol hill. to trump, that's the story of what came out of watergate. that tells you everything about his view of loyalty and perhaps the fact that he doesn't have a terribly strong view of the nixon administration's wrongdoing. >> john dean is having a total renaissance. we've said the name john dean more in the past 24 hours than 24 years and he is everywhere because so many different people are comparing current figures to john dean. then there's the joseph mccarthy comparison which, frankly, josh, i've lost the thread on because so many different people are pointing in every which direction, making that comparison as well. strange times. >> there is but it's -- look, it's a valid poi

out in a month or two revealed that he had in the course of his research uncovered some notes that hr haldeman, nixon's chief of staff , chief aid in the campaign, had scribbled in a phone call with nixon in october 1968. along the scribbled notes he essentially says he is transcribing is there anything we can do to monkeywrench this? is there anything richard nixon can do? what can we do to stop these talks? what can we do to make these talks so that johnson and nixon don't get a pr victory, they don't get credit for ending the war, and in the talks can resume when i am present, and then we can make something happen. so, a powerful example of how our understanding of the pad is always changing, how new evidence can also introduce new interpretations, and how perhaps some of the things we thought were true about what a president did and what he did it and change many decades after his death. so, november 5, 1968, election day, nixon wins. george wallace gets the south, and even though this looks like a very red map, it was not as close as one might think. yes, nixon gets an electoral majority,

after watergate, some of the people around nixon, people like haldeman, cox, hr these are people who worked for nixon, the once they knew that down,xon ship was going they realized their future was with the left so they fled to become media heroes, and he became media heroes by slandering nixon. so you got to be a little careful when you look at the testimony of people who actually turned on nixon and became professional nixon haters. subsequent career is on the authority testifying against nixon. these people were willing to say anything to promote their careers. the architect of the southern strategy was kevin phillips. and his book, the emerging republican majority, is widely credited with being the bible of nixon's southern strategy gridlock of leftist scholars say phyllis orchestrated the southern strategy. for the thread away in his book -- phillips right away in his book goes, that is don't. he goes, my book was an attempt to interpret what nixon did. i was not actually driving it. it is amazing how much shoddiness there is, even an intellectual present. nixon's strategy was t

haldeman, these are people who worked for nixon but once they knew that the nixon ship was going down, they realized that the future was with the left. so they fled to become media heroes and they became media heroes by slandering nixon. so you got to be a little careful look at the testimony of people who actually turned on nixon and became you miss a professional nixon haters. who had subsequent careers on the authorities testifying against nixon. these people are willing to say anything to promote their careers. the architect of the southern strategy was kevin phillips and his book, the emerging republican majority is widely credited with being the bible of nixon's southern strategy. lots of leftist scholars say phillips orchestrated the southern strategy. phillips wright awaited book goes that's dumb. i could network the southern strategy because my book was published after nixon was elected. so because my book was an attempt to interpret what nixon did. i wasn't actually driving it. there's a lot of shoddiness. it's amazing how much shoddiness is. phillips makes it clear. he goes

bob haldeman. i hated his goddamn guts. but i am convinced that he was the man who stopped those idiotic, presidential vocal orders, more than anyone else. >> we don't know. >> and i think he gets credit for that. he did what a good chief of staff should do. he disregarded his boss's orders when necessary. >> well, you may know about it than i do. i have not seen recorded anywhere who stopped -- not a lot was stopped, after all. some of the middle of the night calls, i think, they'd get together and say, what do we do now? it's the boss again. except for the brookings order, i don't know of any during that period that were stopped. there was this horrible plan that was drawn up early, called gemstone. and even j. edgar hoover, no great civil libertarian, thought that this was a bit much and that he would not implement it. but bit by bit, it was implemented. so there weren't a lot of governors or people who understood boundaries about the place. mr. fleug? >> as you know, i am like you, a watergate junkie. and there are a lo

haldeman, nixon's chief of staff, chief aide in the campaign, had scribbled during a phone call with nixon in october of 1968. while nixon is still a private citizen. not president, not president-elect. paris peace talks are going on. among those scribbled notes, he essentially says, he's transcribing saying, is there anything we can do to monkey wrench this? anything rmn can do, richard nixon can do? what can we do to make these stops so johnson and humphrey don't get a pr victory. and then the talks can resume when i'm president and then we can make something happen. so a powerful example of how our understanding of the past is always changing. how new evidence can also introduce new interpretations. and how perhaps some of the, some of the things we thought were true about what a president did and why he did it. can change many, many decades after his death. so november, november 5th, 1968, election day. nixon wins. george wallace gets the south. and even though this looks like a very red map, it was not as close as one might think. yes, nixon gets an electoral majority. but you d

new biography of richard nixon by my friend john farrell who found some notes at the nixon library of haldeman writing about the way they were trying to undercut the efforts of the peace talks about that, i think that was largely going on. can i make a point about the truth? you can argue about policy, but one thing it's hard to argue about during the vietnam war is that the united states could win. they wanted to make the argument they could win the war solely through battle attrition. if they killed enough that they would win the war. so in this very dattle formal that are here, people lied about it. >> this may be too simplistic, but why did president johnson simply not pull the plug? why didn't he say we're going to leave vietnam and let the vietnamese deal with this issue. >> that has a long history to it and i would say it has to do with politics and the united states and the democratic party and the way they dominated the whole notion of patriotism and the cold war through that whole period. >> well, just sort of to round this out, in terms of body counts, there are two things that can

new biography of richard nixon by my friend john farrell who found some notes at the nixon library of haldeman writing about the way they were trying to undercut the efforts of the peace talks right before that election through madam chenalut and others that were working with them at the time. i think it's pretty conclusive now that was going on. >> and to the caller's point? >> but can you make a larger point about the truth? you can argue about policy, but one thing it's hard to argue about during the vietnam war is that the united states could win. they wanted to make the argument they could win the war solely through battle attrition. if they killed enough north vietnames and vietcong, they would win the war. so in this very battle which was a devastating loss for the black lions battalion, westmoreland lied, the commander. >> this may be too simplistic, but why did president johnson simply not pull the plug? why didn't he say we're going to leave vietnam and let the vietnamese deal with this issue. >> that has a long history to it and i would say it has to do with politics and the united