John Cole: Good afternoon, and welcome to the Library
of Congress [the Library].   I'm John Cole.
I'm the director of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress.
We are the reading and book promotion arm of the Library.
We are fortunate that we are part
of a national network of reading promoters.
There are now centers for the book in all 50 states that we work with,
and we are also associated with the author program
for the National Book Festival.
And this year the Book Festival will be held on Sept.
29, which is a little advance notice for you.
We enjoy presenting authors through this series, called "Books
and Beyond," presenting authors that have some kind
of a special connection with the Library of Congress,
either are people who are heavy users of the Library of Congress,
have used the collections, or have worked
with us in different programs.
And it's always a source of satisfaction for me to be able
to hold up a book, a real book that has been produced by a real author,
whom you're going to hear from in just a few minutes.
We always co-sponsor our programs as well,
and in this case our co-sponsor is the Serial
and Government Publications Division of the Library of Congress,
which you will hear a little bit about in a moment, because I'm going
to have our speaker introduced by Georgia Higley.
Georgia is the head of the Newspaper Section in the Serial
and Government Publications Division.
And I want to thank her for suggesting John as a speaker,
and I'm pleased that we're all here to enjoy his presentation.
There will be a book signing --
a question-and-answer period following, plus a book signing.
We are able to film this presentation to be seen later
on the Library's Web site, and also
on the Center for the Book's Web site.
We hope you will ask questions.
He has a lot of answers, but if you do answer a question --
if you do ask, if you ask a question, please,
that is your permission for us to use your image and your question
as part of the Web site presentation.
So, that is one way that we try to perpetuate not only the questions
and answers that our authors have, but also the presentations.
And if you go to the Web site now, the Center for the Book portion,
we have around, more than 65 talks that we have presented
since the year 2000 -- since the year 1998, actually,
that are available on the Web site.
I now would like to turn the meeting over to --
the session over to Georgia Higley to introduce our speaker.
Georgia? [applause] Georgia Higley: Thank you, John.
It's a pleasure to introduce John Dickerson.
It's always -- it's always great to have both a practicing journalist
and a user of newspapers to --
to talk and give his experience about how to create this book,
"On Her Trail: My Mother, Nancy Dickerson,
TV News' First Woman Star."   John Dickerson is currently
"Slate" magazine's chief political correspondent.
And prior to joining "Slate," he covered politics
for 12 years at "Time" magazine.
And four of those years he was the magazine's White
House correspondent.
So it's particularly apropos that he's covering his mother.
He's written extensively on more recent affairs,
such as President Bush's efforts to curb terrorism, his domestic policy
and political strategies.
John has interviewed George Bush a number of times since his election
in 2000, and in 2004 he co-wrote the
"Time" cover story naming George Bush "Time's" Person of the Year.
And in addition, the cover story --
the story he co-wrote on Karl Rove was included
in the best political stories of 2003.
Before his time at "Slate," he covered Capitol Hill.
He reported on the Gingrich Congress,
the House impeachment proceedings
and Senate trial of President Clinton.
And before covering Congress,
John wrote about economics and the budget process.
And, during the 1996 national election he covered the campaigns
of Bob Dole, Lamar Alexander and Steve Forbes.
He has also written for the "New York Times"
and the "Washington Post."
He appears regularly on NPR, and on MSNBC.
He's appeared on the "Today Show," "NBC Nightly News"
"Good Morning America," "ABC's This Week," and the "News Hour."
And he's a native Washingtonian.
He graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English.
He's here today to discuss his book, "On Her Trail:
My Mother, Nancy Dickerson."
The book is based on her personal papers, television
and radio broadcast recordings, as well as newspaper
and journal articles and reports, and of course John's memories.
When his mother died in 1997, more than 20 boxes
of her personal papers were delivered to his office, which,
he says, included everything from her journals as a little girl
to her journals before she had her stroke.
And, in researching John [laughs], I was looking at some of the reviews
of the book and I think Leslie Stahl probably provides one
of the best descriptions of the book, and I'd like to read a portion
of it here: "John Dickerson's biography
of Nancy Dickerson is a raw and compelling portrait of his mother,
who was, in a way, the Katie Couric of her time, the first woman
to break into the all-male fortress of TV news back
in the dark ages of the 1960s.
With 'On Her Trail,' John Dickerson has written more than a biography.
It is a history of the time, with rich news stories about John Kennedy
and Lyndon Johnson, a social dissection of elite Washington.
It is, and this may be the most captivating part of the book,
a personal confession of life
with a mother almost obsessively driven in her career.
Some may compare the book to 'Mommy Dearest,
but it is really 'Mommy Lost and Mommy Found.'
In the first part of the book,
mother and son somehow lose one another.
But in the last part, they find each other again on many levels.
"The book is a mix of solid reportorial digging
with a son's sometimes heartbreaking insight.
It is bold, shocking at times, and brilliant.
As a journalist himself, John has a unique perspective on his mother,
a pioneering news woman who was the first woman news correspondent
for CBS television, the first woman to report from an anchor booth
and the floor of a political convention, the first woman at NBC
to anchor her own newscast, and a wife and mother."
Please welcome John Dickerson.
[applause] John Dickerson: Thank you very much, Georgia.
And thank you, John.
I am absolutely delighted to be here for many, many different reasons.
When I grew up here, in Washington, I was an intern
on the Hill [Capitol Hill], I also interned for a lobbyist,
and so I did a lot of research here as a young man.
I also did research here for the book, and my research associate,
Liza [Elizabeth Higgins] Hull, who is here,
used to not only work here before I knew her
but spent hours here looking through newspapers and pictures
and journals, all of which was a tremendous contribution to the book.
So, we are knee deep in this place with this book.
And, also because I cover Congress and because last night I was
in the Capitol covering this non-Iraq vote, I looked over here
and thought, "Well, I'll be back again."
So I'm really delighted to be here and thank you all for coming
out on this freezing cold day.
I'm going to start at the beginning, with the preface of the book,
because that sort of gives you the outline for the whole book
and this journey that Georgia so nicely described --
my relationship with my mother.
And then, I thought I would sort of do something slightly different
than I normally do, which is piece together some of the,
moments in Congress which I covered last night.
As I was leaving at 8:00 [p.m.] and there was no one around
but the security guards, I had, as I often do, a recollection of Mom
and her period in the Capitol,
walking around when you can hear your footsteps echoing
through the halls.
And so I'm going to piece together some of her experiences on the Hill
when she was there, both as a staffer
and as a -- then as a journalist.
So, let me start then at the beginning.
This is from the preface to the book.
"The first time I ever heard my mother sound nervous,
she'd been dead for two years.
I was at the LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson] Library in Austin, Texas,
listening to a recording of her telephone conversation
with President Lyndon Johnson in February of 1964.
He had been in office for three months.
I wouldn't be born for four more years.
The White House operator begins, 'Nancy Dickerson is on line two.'
"'Yes, honey,' says the president to Mom.
[Laughter] "'The next time I need a a bathing suit I'm going
to consult you,' she warbles.
"Why is she talking about swimming suits?
"'What's that?'
Johnson doesn't know what she's talking about either.
"She says it again.
'The next time you need a new swimming suit I'm going
to consult you.'   "She sounded so young.
I listened to Johnson for hours on C-Span,
which seemed to have a special channel just
for his phone conversations."
[laughter] "I bought cassettes of Johnson's greatest hits
for long drives, but I'd never heard her on the tapes.
Silence. The recording captures even the regular blip of the reel turning
on Johnson's tape machine.   He's not responding.
I cough as if I were on the line with him.
I want her to drop the swimsuit business and move on.
"Johnson resets the conversation and saves us all.
'How are you, honey?'
"'Fine, thank you,' she replies, jittery.
She starts to pitch.   'The reason I'm calling is this.
We want to do a story this week without interviewing
on television -- nothing like that --
but we want to follow Jack Valenti all
over with whatever he does and take pictures.'
And he said - ' just talked to him.'
He [Valenti] said, 'No, I'm not going to do it.
Every time I see your camera coming, I'm going to run the other way.'
And I said, 'Well, we'll run after you.'
"She's trying to make the piece sound fun;
with her faint Midwestern accent and precarious cheer,
it sounds like she's in a musical
and might break into song at any moment.
She's also talking very fast, producing entire sentences
that sound like single words.   Now I'm nervous.
"'No, we don't want any of that,' said Johnson slowly.
He's gruff, but not irritated.
'We don't want to take pictures of employees.
You'll have more jealousy here than I can deal with now.
I've got enough of it between the old ones and the new ones
and there's not anything he's doing that's important enough
for your camera.
And if it was, it oughtn't to be on camera.'" [laughter]
"She tries again, but Johnson shoots her down.
He's fighting, he's fighting to integrate his staff,
like his special assistant Valenti, with the holdovers
from the Kennedy administration.
He doesn't want her making his task harder.
Before the call ends, Mom is able to extract one approval.
He will let her film the first lady
and her daughters for the "Today Show."
"'That's fine,' he says, 'Very good, and you let me know
if there's ever anything I can do for you, okay?
Thank you, honey.'   "He hangs up.
The tape burps out.   The next call starts.
Johnson talks to the Secretary of Agriculture Orville Friedman
about a cabinet appointment.
I exhale. I'd been rooting for her so hard I'd forgotten to breathe.
"I went to the LBJ library searching for scraps of my mother.
She had been famous once.
She was the first woman news correspondent for CBS television.
The textbooks refer to her as the "First Woman of Television News."
A few other women had gotten there first,
but she was the first one people remember, the first star.
Young girls imitated her in the '60s and '70s,
interviewing their stuffed animals
with the vacuum hose as their microphone.
When big things happened, Mom was there, for CBS and later for NBC.
She was the first to speak with John Kennedy after he was inaugurated,
and she was at Andrews Air Force base
when his body returned from Dallas.
She stood on John Glenn's lawn in 1962 and reported
on his wife's reaction to his famous orbit.
She was on the [National] Mall in Washington with Martin Luther King.
Lyndon Johnson regularly called out to her by name
when he wanted to make news.
"All of this happened either before I was born or after my bedtime.
By the time I was old enough to know what the news was,
Mom's career with the networks was over.
She was still on television once a year or so, but she wasn't
like Walter Cronkite or John Chancellor.
They were a big deal.
We watched them every night on the news.
But people kept telling me what a big deal she was.
My fourth grade teacher asked me to get her autograph.
The mother of the shortstop of my Little --
the mother of the shortstop on my Little League baseball team asked
if she was my mother, and when I said yes she got
so excited I thought they might have to call the doctor.
'How neat for you to have her for a mom.'
Not exactly.
I cared more about riding my bike and playing touch football.
"She was fine, I supposed.
We lived in a big house and famous people came to call,
but I was never sure why that mattered or why she did.
By the time I was 13, I wasn't confused anymore.
I was angry.   I hated her.
I thought she was a phony and a liar.
Everyone still thought she was a big deal,
but I thought she distinguished herself at home
by being petty, rigid and clumsy.
"My parents divorced that year and I took my electric clock
and brown comforter and I escaped.   I moved in with my father.
Mom stayed at Merrywood, the mansion where she
and my father had raised five children, entertained presidents,
and smiled on cue for nearly 20 years of celebrity photographers.
I would never live with her under the same roof again.
"At the Johnson Library, I returned the matchbox-size tapes
of LBJ's phone calls to the desk.
Mom and I had become close before she died,
and I wanted to spend a little more time
with her memory, but I was late.   I had a plane to catch.
I still hadn't checked out of my hotel.
I hurried back to the Driscoll in downtown Austin.
Mom was 32, my age, when she first stayed there in 1960
to cover Johnson's run for the White House.
I grabbed my battered bags and raced
to the airfield used by the private planes.
In the parking lot I made a mental note
of where I'd left the rental car.   I'd be back in a few days.
"'Jesus, Dickerson, we've been waiting for you,
said someone as I ran out onto the tarmac.
I dropped my suitcase at the snout of a Secret Service bomb dog,
and ran toward the 727 that read 'Bush-Cheney 2000.'The flight
attendants smiled and handed me a cup of warm-enough coffee.
They'd seen this mad dash before.
My more punctual colleagues in the press were already poking
at their laptops and reading the day's schedule.
I took my usual seat and straightened out the ruffle
of press badges that I wore around my neck.
The plane started down the runway.
I touched the worn leather box in my briefcase
that held Mom's rosary, my preflight ritual.
"Where were we off to?   I looked at my schedule.
Michigan. Election Day, Election Day was just two months off.
I walked out on Mom, but almost 20 years later I was following
in her footsteps."   So, that's the preface.
This book goes up and it goes down.
And most of it, though, is my journey through those 20 boxes,
those letters and journals and newspaper clippings,
and the story of Mom's life, and her exciting
and fascinating career here in Washington.
She grew up in Wauwatosa, Wis., came to Washington because she wanted
to be where the action was.   And so she got a job as a clerk
at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
And I'm now going to string together a few scenes from both her time
on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then a scene
where she first breaks into television news,
and then we'll come back to Congress.
I think that's the way I'm going to do it, anyway.
Mom got addicted to the Senate drama.
Each day she could watch all the personal striving, pettiness, glory,
generosity and pride of the human condition.
senators are great theater, especially when they get indignant
about their prerogatives.
They gave outraged floor speeches and cornered each other
to exact promises and trade favors.
She loved the sounds of the Capitol, the halls echoing with the click
of heels on marble, the tourists asking for directions,
and the typewriters clattering in every office as she walked by.
Not long after she started at the committee,
Mom met the flirtatious Lyndon Johnson.
He walked across the room, sat in a comfortable stuffed chair,
and put his feet up on her desk.   He asked if he could use her phone.
"I raised an eyebrow at him," Mom said in her oral history
in the Johnson Library, "making it clear that even
for the distinguished majority leader of the Senate,
that wasn't the proper place to put one's feet."
For Mom, the Senate was like an Advent calendar;
there was the public show,
but if you knew the right trick you could open a little window
and see behind the scenes.
When Sen. Frank Church downed pitcher after pitcher
of water during a hearing, she turned to a colleague and said,
"He's putting out the fire from last night,"
knowingly referring to his hangover.
When Sen. McCarthy's face twitched repeatedly during a hearing,
she joked about it later to a colleague.
"Nancy," her friend responded,
"that's not a tick; he's winking at you."
The Wisconsin senator wasn't the only one.
"Chasing women kind of comes with the territory
in the male chauvinist Senate," wrote columnist Hugh Sidey
at the time, "like the springy black leather couches."
Mom's sources -- well let's -- she's not a journalist yet,
so let's not give her a promotion until she actually gets it.
[laughter] So that's what it was like when she was here as a staffer.
Well, she didn't like being a staffer.
She wanted to be where the action was and the only way she could do
that as a woman was become a member of the press.
So how was she going to do that?
Well, she joined CBS because she knew everyone on the Hill
and they needed somebody who knew everyone on the Hill as well.
So they hired her, but then
for six years they wouldn't let her go on radio.
They wouldn't even let her in front of a microphone.
She figured the only way she could get herself on air was
to get a scoop big enough that they would have to put her on air.
So, she went for the biggest game she could find,
House Speaker Sam Rayburn.
And this is the story of how she got Speaker Rayburn on television.
She had actually done one little group of radio reports from Europe,
and so she had been on the radio, but had not been on television.
"Mom's experience in Europe had confirmed her belief
that if she could get a scoop, they would have to put her on the air.
So, she picked the hardest target, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn.
The formidable Texas lawmaker hated television.
He banned cameras from the House,
except during a few specified hours each year.
He complained to his friend Lyndon Johnson
that the damned things were ruining the business of politics, plus,
the bright lights reflected off his bald pate and made him look
like he had a star burning on his noggin.
[laughter] "And so, to most requests he would say something like,
'No one has a finer command of the language than the person
who keeps his mouth shut, and move along.'
But the 78-year-old was sweet on 'Miss Nancy' as he called her,
so he agreed to give her a rare and exclusive interview.
If she scored such a coup,
her dubious producers had said they would put her on the air.
'But Nancy,' one said, 'if you're interviewing the Speaker
of the House, please don't giggle.'
She did giggle a little, but not because she was flirting
and chirpy; she was nervous.   Rayburn was a giant.
The longest-serving speaker, he had led the Democrats for 20
of his 48 years in the body.
Most female television stars start today
on a local station interviewing the town gardener
about her prized pumpkin.
[laughter] "Everyone needs a little time
to get accustomed to the lights.
No one's first televised interview is with one
of the most powerful men in the country.
"In my first television performance, I forgot to breathe.
[laughter] "I was 25, but I looked ten.
Fortunately, I was on Court TV,
which was a fledgling operation then,
so probably about 14 people saw me.
[laughter] "I was talking about the prosecution
in the BCCI Banking case.
While I knew intellectually that breathing is crucial
to speaking, I couldn't do it.
My answers to the questions petered out the minute I started,
as if I hadn't inhaled since college.
[laughter] "I knew what I was talking about,
I just had drywall dust in my lungs.
Fred Graham, the host, who had worked with Mom at CBS, said --
Fred Graham was the host, he had worked with Mom at CBS.
'I'm sorry, John, we're running out of time,' he said,
after I had barely answered the second question.
He looked like he wanted to give me CPR.
Running out of time?
It was Court TV; they had nothing but time.
[laughter] "They were just trying to hustle me off the set
and bring on a less mumbly guest.
The bum's rush must have brought me back to life
because I answered the last question
about political influence with gusto.
'There is no political influence, in my estimation,
in the prosecution of this case.'   'In my estimation?'
Who talks like that when they're 25?
[laughter] "Someone gasping for air, that's who.
Someone should have slapped me.
"I don't remember what, if anything, Mom said about the performance,
but she had probably been sympathetic.
Her first time was balky, too.
Rayburn roared into his office, nearly tripping
over the thick TV cables.
'What have you done to my damn my office?'
he yelled at her.
She hadn't exactly told Rayburn that it was going
to be a filmed interview.
He thought he was sitting down for a little chat with a pen and paper.
'Get all of this out of here!'
"'It won't take very long, Mr. Speaker,' she pleaded.
He relented.
On tape, Rayburn looks like a character out of a Dickens novel
who refuses to give the orphan soup or a seat by the fire.
His voice is gravelly and still tattooed with the Texas twang.
He can't sit still and swivels in his leather chair.
Mom sits at the edge of the desk, as close as she can get to stay
in the shot, but stay clear of his swinging.
She's dressed conservatively in a black suit.
'You're going to be terrific,' she said, putting her hands on his.
'I'm going to make you a star,' he grumbles into his shirt.
'Well, if I'm not going to marry you, I might as well go
on your program.'" [laughter] "The real interview starts.
It's perfectly fine.
They talk about the coming legislative year, his 78th birthday,
and the 1960 political campaign.
Rayburn seems so much more rich and textured than the men
in office today, but maybe everybody looks that way in black and white.
"When he gives his last answer, she thanks him,
and then turns and looks at the camera.
nNow, back to Douglas Edwards in New York.'
She'd heard other people say those words,
but after practicing them herself
so many times she could barely get them out.
She just couldn't believe it was happening.
The tape records a few more tries before she gets that closing right.
In New York, producer Don Hewitt, who would later produce "60 Minutes,
called after the program.   'We want you on every night.'
The "Good Housekeeping" profile
of Mom recorded CBS vice president John Day's reaction.
'It dawned on him, just as she'd planned it to,
that Nancy was the answer to what to do next to spark
up their coverage.'" So, that's how she got the job.
And, after she got the job, she used all those contacts she developed
over the years on the Hill to keep getting scoops.
One of those contacts, as I mentioned before,
was Lyndon Johnson, who was in 1960 running
as Jack Kennedy's running mate.
And this is -- as I said, I was over at the Capitol last night,
and Mom got a lot more on the inside than I did,
and she spent some fair amount of time in the senators' hideouts,
which are very special places
that the senators rarely invite members of the press.
In 1960, the Senate was stuck in session during the summer.
Richard Nixon was out campaigning,
and John Kennedy was angry about that fact.
He had to be here Washington in the Senate.
So Johnson tried to find a way to make Kennedy feel
like he was delivering for the ticket and making some use
of this time that he was in Washington.
So this is a scene from Johnson inviting Kennedy for lunch
with some of the older senators.   "After the nominating convention" --
and Mom was at this lunch, the only reporter.
"After the nominating convention, Johnson figured out a way
to show he could deliver politically.
The senators were in Washington for a special summer session
of Congress, and it was driving Kennedy mad.
His opponent, Vice President Nixon, was already much better known
and was crossing the country, shaking hands
and attacking the young, liberal Massachusetts senator,
while Kennedy was stuck in the Capitol answering roll-call votes.
To show that the time wasn't being wasted, Johnson arranged a lunch
for him with old Democratic bulls.
Kennedy had not been an inside player
with the establishment leaders in the Senate, and Johnson,
the majority leader, was offering instant admission
to their inner circle.
If Kennedy could make the sale at lunch, thought Johnson,
he might woo important people
in the Southern states the candidate needed so badly.
"Kennedy wasn't thrilled about the lunch because he
and his strategists saw the country differently than Johnson.
Kennedy had been successful playing the outside game in the Senate
and making a national name for himself.
He and the campaign advisors didn't believe it was necessary
to court people who might be powerful in Washington
but who lacked real power in their states.
After all, the Washington Democrats had backed Johnson
for the nomination, and it hadn't worked.
"Johnson invited Mom to the lunch to lower the tension.
She was the only member of the press there,
but she hadn't necessarily been invited
for her professional talents.
She was a warming influence, meant to put everyone at ease.
She knew Jack, and perhaps Johnson knew that his new partner liked
to be in the company of attractive women as well,
the way a thoughtful host might serve an honored guest his
favorite wine.
The lunch was held in the hideaway of Sen. Alan J. Ellender
of Louisiana, where Mom had once handed out her mother's cookies.
When she walked in, the room was warm and fragrant
with the gumbo bubbling on the low stove.
Georgia Sen. Richard Russell, Harry Byrd of Virginia, and John Stennis
of Mississippi sat in deep Victorian sofas
as if they had been there since Appomattox.
[laughter] "As they waited for the nominee,
the old men of the club grumbled.   They were astonished that 'the Boy,
as they called him, had won the nomination.
They were pretty sure he was going to lose to Nixon.
They were on alert for signs of haughtiness from Kennedy.
Since he had won the nomination without them,
they imagined he already assumed
that when he won the presidency he would be their leader,
and have more to say about the nation's affairs than they would.
Kennedy arrived late, looking like he'd,
looking like he's barged into the wrong room.
When the door closed behind him, he didn't settle down.
He held onto the sheaf of papers under his arm
as if he were leaving shortly, or, worse yet,
like he might review them while the others talked.
[laughter] "He shook hands with each of them, all of them older,
and addressed them formally with 'Hello, Senator,' to which each
of them replied, 'Hello, Jack.'
As Mom described the scene in her notes,
it was as if Kennedy was uncomfortable being chaperoned
by Johnson.
He didn't want admission to the club LBJ was trying to grant him.
The men talked a lot about the food.
Ellender, who was known as 'Chef Supreme,
took considerable pride in his cooking.
Everyone took several helpings of the okra, oyster,
and shrimp-tail gumbo, a version of which is still served in the Senate.
Kennedy just picked at his plate.
'Not good enough for the Northerner,' thought Ellender.
[laughter] "The conversation never got rolling.
Kennedy was vague about campaign strategy
and he kept calling them all senator.
They kept calling him Jack.
To top it off, Kennedy left before everyone else,
which gave them all a preview of the role he had in store
for them during the campaign, which was to say no role at all.
The lunch had been, by any measure, a failure, but Johnson kept trying.
Even after his guest of honor had left, he said, 'See,
I told you he really was a nice boy.'
The next scene is the night after John F. Kennedy's assassination.
Johnson -- Mom had been at CBS where she'd covered Johnson,
and then she switched over to NBC.
When Kennedy was assassinated, she went out to Andrews Air Force Base,
one of the most extraordinary things that happened throughout this book,
but I never saw any of this real time, of course,
since I wasn't alive, and since there weren't VCRs,
we didn't have tapes of any of this.
My poor children have, you know, lots of the tapes they're forced
to watch of my performances, [laughter]
but with Mom there was nothing.
So in these libraries and archives, I found and saw
for the first time footage, including footage of her
and Bob Abernathy, at Andrews narrating the return
of Kennedy's plane.   They didn't know what was happening.
They didn't know the body was going to be on the plane.
And it's extraordinary to watch the camera focused on the plane
as the casket descends, and they're learning that what's happening is
that the body of the president is returning.
It's a whirlwind three days, which then turns into a discussion
of what a Johnson presidency would be like.
Mom on NBC is on a show with Martin Agronsky, and Agronsky
and Mom have a small little debate
over whether Rayburn really wanted Johnson
to run on the Kennedy ticket.   Agronsky asserted that he didn't.
Mom asserted in a polite way that he did.
The minute she came off the air, there was a call
from the new president who complimented her
on correcting Agronsky, correcting the record, and doing it in a way
that wasn't offensive and didn't embarrass Agronsky on TV.
He then at the end of the conversation invited her
and my father to dinner at his house, the night --
his first full night as president.
"When Mom and Dad arrived at the Elms, the name of Johnson's house,
the night after the assassination, the president was not
yet back from the White House.
The Secret Service frisked them down to their underwear,
as if trying to make up for their own failures in Dallas.
Ladybird was upstairs.
She had attended the prayer service that day,
and visited with Jackie Kennedy.
They were greeted by Lucy Johnson, barefoot in a green Chinese robe.
Mom and Dad traded small talk with her.
"Lucy was focused on the irritating restrictions that would come
with being a presidential daughter.
'How would you like to have Secret Service men
with you every minute of the day?'   she asked.
Even now, she couldn't talk to a boy late at night
without the phone light going on in her parents' bedroom.
Her father, seeing it, would either monitor the call or interrupt
to tell her that she ought to be asleep.
[laughter] "She concluded that living
in the White House would only be worthwhile
if she could have her own private line.
"When Johnson arrived, Ladybird came downstairs on cue
with a drink and popcorn.
After kissing her hello, the president returned to the subject
of Mom's exchange with her colleague Martin Agronsky.
In his early days in the House, Johnson explained,
he was trying to get funds for a public works project, but an older,
stronger congressman had opposed it.
Johnson maneuvered the program into committee
and then onto the House floor.   He won the debate on the floor,
but in doing so publicly put down his older opponent.
Afterward, Rayburn took him aside and said, 'Lyndon,
you feel pretty smart because you got what you wanted.
But you also got yourself an enemy.
A really clever fellow would have won without ridiculing a man
on the way and earning himself an enemy for life.'
"Everyone nodded.   Johnson paced.
He walked over to the television and started talking back
to NBC's Huntley and Brinkley.
He was determined that the country should be calm,
and whatever the broadcasting duo,
whenever the broadcasting duo said something he thought was
inflammatory, Johnson would bark, 'Keep on talking like that
and you'll bring on a revolution, just as sure as I'm standing here.'
His speechwriter, Horace Busby, and Judge Homer Thornberry arrived.
The president explained that he'd ordered the Secret Service
to protect House Speaker John McCormack, because he was worried
about a government-wide takeover attempt.
"That afternoon the Soviets had made a show of good faith by turning
over a complete dossier
on Lee Harvey Oswald's activities during his years in Moscow.
Johnson was relieved but not settled.
'Maybe they're out to get us all,' he said.
He was going to keep the armed services on alert.
He was sure that assassination --
he wasn't sure the assassination was the work of just one man.
He worried about conspiracy theories.
He talked about how Lincoln's assassination still had
unanswered questions.
'Damn sure that kind of mystery doesn't happen here,' he said.
'I'm going to make sure there isn't one damn question
or one damn mystery that isn't solved about this thing.
You can be sure of that.   Not one damn unanswered question.'
"He interrupted himself, walking over to the phone
and pushing one of its buttons.   He picked up the receiver.
'Is this the White House?'   Johnson said.
'Oh, sorry.'   Then he punched another.
'The White House?   Sorry.' He looked over at his wife.
'Bird, come over here and get me the damn White House!'
[laughter] "'That's going to have to be changed.
The whole damn world could go up in smoke
and I wouldn't be able to get Dean Rusk.
Take me ten damn minutes to reach the secretary of state.'
The White House secretaries
who logged Johnson's activities every day
as president recorded the moment with almost comical blandness.
'President Johnson said that one of the first things he would
like to do is revise the White House operator system.
It was too slow for him.'
[laughter] "Finally, the president got
through to the national security advisor, McGeorge Bundy.
He reminded him to get those wires out fast to every country recognized
by the United States to assure them of the continuity of our government.
Then, without irony after the phone debacle, he told Bundy,
'I don't want any of them thinking we don't know what we're doing.'
[laughter] "Next in the Secretary's log is 'Told Nancy
about Rufus's bravery.'
Johnson's first letter as president had been to the Kennedy children.
His second had been to the head of the Secret Service,
commending agent Rufus Youngblood.
Immediately after the first shots in Dallas, Youngblood threw Johnson
and his wife on the floor of the car and covered them.
'There we were, hunkered down in the car,' said Johnson,
'and he had his body on us.
And Bird was hunkered down there with us, too.
We were hunkered.   Rufus moved so fast.
It was one the greatest things I've ever seen, Nancy;
I didn't know Rufus had that many reflexes.'
"At one point, Judge Thornberry called his daughter to reassure her,
just as millions of parents had called their children that night.
LBJ took the phone from Thornberry and started talking.
'Is he your boyfriend?'   he asked. 'What's his name?
Buddy? Well, put Buddy on, I want to talk to him.
Buddy? This is Lyndon Johnson, your new president.
Just fine, thank you.   Thank you.
Need all the help we can get.
Well, Buddy, take good care of the little girl who's with you.'
Johnson was trying to comfort the country one person at a time."
Alright. The last reading will --
we're going to skip the rest of the Johnson administration and Nixon.
And I'll just give you one last scene before we have questions.
In 1996, while I was covering the presidential race,
Mom had a heart attack and a stroke.
And it was quite a debilitating stroke that left her unable to talk
for long periods of time.
And she suffered under that condition for about a year
and a half before she passed away.   And I spent a lot of time with her.
She and I had become good friends
when I became a reporter in the early '90s.
And so the book, after discussing her career, talks about this period
where we became ever-increasing friends
and enjoyed covering the news together,
even though she wasn't actually covering the news.
She certainly was a great help in my learning about it.
And this is a scene from when she was sick,
towards the end of the book.
"When she had recovered a little, her past became our therapy.
It was embarrassing how little I knew.
When I discovered a cabinet full of photo albums,
I spread them out on the Oriental rug.
It was like I had just discovered a friend's family trove.
The faces are familiar, but you know nothing
about the experiences they're having.
It's one thing to know your mother as famous in theory.
It's another thing to see pages and pages of glossy photographs of her
with the key historical figures of the last 30 years.
I showed Mom some of the pictures, but got little reaction.
So I showed her some pictures of the "Time" photographers --
that the "Time" photographers had taken of me
at work on the campaign trail.
"'That's Dick,' she would say, pointing to my --
to a picture of me interviewing Lamar Alexander.
'No, that's me.'   She'd called me by my father's name,
or maybe she really thought it was my father.
After a while, she learned the tricks toddlers do, to say yes
or repeat the right words as if she understood what was being said.
And for a few rounds of questions, I let the trick work, pretending along
with her that she knew what we talking about.
But then I had to test her.   I point to a picture of Nixon.
'Who's that?'   "'Michael.'
My brother.
Sorry, Mike, I'm sure she didn't mean it.
[laughter] "A few months into her therapy I mostly gave
up on the identification drills,
happy enough that she was talking and interacting.
Sometimes she would check her watch and look around, confused.
'What time is it?'   I would tell her.
'I've got to get to work.'   And then she would drift away.
"Then, one day a surprise.   We looked at a picture of her
with Jack Kennedy near the Ohio clock in the Senate.
He was a senator at the time, leering --
I think it's fair to say -- at the young Mrs. [Nancy] Hanschman,
a clerk for the Foreign Relations Committee.
I joked, mostly to myself, 'He's giving you the big eye.'
'He gave every girl the big eye,' she said, as clear as can be, and,
I'm certain, with a knowing smile.
I didn't know whether I was more shocked
that she'd uttered a clear sentence,
or that it had been Kennedy's indiscretions
that had brought her back.
"My brother, Michael, came through town on business during one
of my weeklong stays, and the three of us had lunch
at her house in New York.
We sat in on her occupational therapy
and teased her like we did as kids."
I should note before continuing along, that we -- when we were kids,
we were in television commercials with Mom.
And, in those commercials, we used to make lots of fun of her
because she occasionally got her lines wrong.
One of them was for a product called Pro Power,
which is mercifully off the market.
It was a combination of orange juice and milk.
[laughter] And, she -- she got her lines rather confused in talking
about Pro Power, and that will be referred to in here.
My brother -- so this is at lunch with my brother Michael.
"We sat in on her occupational therapy
and teased her like we did as kids.
She couldn't use her right hand very well, so the therapist made her pick
up grapes, one by one, and tried to teach her to play checkers.
This was hard to watch.
When I was a kid, Mom and I would sometimes play checkers
on a big fuzzy rug in the library
with pieces the size of butter plates.
Perhaps it was because Michael and I were there, but the therapist said
that she had done as well she ever had.
She couldn't handle the grapes, but she moved a few checker pieces
at the right time and in the right direction, though she had
to do it with her left hand.
Her right was just a soft useless claw.
We decided that our teasing had helped, so we gave her more of it.
There was a certain comfort in being able to tease her again,
because if she weren't sick that's what we would have been doing.
It made us feel a little normal.
So we taunted the hell out of her to get her to do things.
"During the lunch that day we behaved like teenagers.
We all had a little plate of grapes to keep her therapy going,
and Michael, and Michael and I threw them at each other.
They bounced off the antiques and imperiled the Daumier miniatures
and the Poirot hanging on the wall.
We knew the idea of them rolling someplace they might never be found
would get a rise out of her.
And then, we went through the old litany: her tennis game,
her performance in those commercials,
the time her chair collapsed beneath her at Thanksgiving.
"'Oh, you kids,' she said, smiling slowly.
As we kept at it, her right hand moved towards the grapes.
'It has as much vitamin J as orange juice,'I said,
repeating her commercial gaffe.
She pinched a grape with her mangled fingers.
'And as much bread as watermelon,' said my brother.
We tried not to look at her, but we knew she was concentrating hard.
She moved her arm quickly and threw the grape at me.
It was the greatest thing I ever saw Mom do."
So, that's the last reading.
Thank you all very much for listening.
I look forward to your questions.   I hope you have them.
[applause] Thank you.
Yes. Female Speaker: Your accounts are very detailed
and I [inaudible] found [inaudible].
John Dickerson: I found -- yes, I'm sorry.
I'm very bad at that.   I always forget to do that.
The question was, my accounts are detailed,
and so what kind of notes did I find?
I reconstructed them in a number of different ways.
Fortunately, after the dinner with Johnson, Mom came home and typed
up her notes on the back of an old Western Union sheet of paper.
And, so there were some notes.
In fact, in that chapter it goes on about some of the other things
that were -- that Johnson said,
like that at this terrible moment he wished Sam Rayburn were still alive.
And -- I did that.
Then, of course the wonderful thing about the Johnson assistants is
that they kept notes of his daily activities.
So I had some of that.
Homer Thornberry had written about that dinner that night.
So, I kind of tried to piece all of the little pieces together.
The same is true with the Senate.
Mom fortunately wrote lots and lots of letters home to her parents,
and her parents kept all of those letters, and so there are scenes
in the book of finding these different caches of letters
that describe -- and they have this wonderful mix of both discussion --
there's a -- discussion of what is going on.
For example, a party at the Kennedy's house in the '50s,
with all of the players there and she's describing each of them,
because of course at that time the Kennedys weren't so well known.
And at the end she has a laundry list of other items
about presents she needs to get for the Hafenreffers,
and so they have this mix of kind of personal and public.
So, there -- she kept a lot, and fortunately there's a lot
in the public record as well.
Yes? Female Speaker: How did your mother influence the way you go
about reporting and conducting interviews?
John Dickerson: The question is how Mom influenced me,
the way I go about reporting.   In a couple of ways.
One, she was incredibly diligent and incredibly hardworking,
before interviews and before really anything.
It was wonderful talking to her old colleagues, who would talk
about being in various places and Mom kind of being off
in a corner studying and working.
There's a great scene in one of these old pieces of footage
where she's interviewing a military official and he says, "Nancy,
I don't think that's a fair question."
And she gives this great comeback, which is, "I wouldn't have asked it
if I didn't think it was fair," which, to me, is incredibly simple.
And he then has to answer it.
And it was just incredibly simple and effective,
and so I've looked forward to using that line.
[laughter] And I had -- a wonderful thing that happened
after I'd written the book, unfortunately.
But I found she did an interview
with three other network news anchors of President Nixon,
that I go into some detail about because this was
after she had been let go by NBC and so it was this wonderful --
life was very, very tough for her at that time, both personally
and professionally, and there was this wonderful moment where she got
to be one of the four people interviewing Nixon.
And it was just a real shot in the arm,
and she worked very, very hard on that.
And one of the questions she asked Nixon --
which she never actually asked him,
but in her preparation she asked him --
what mistakes -- if he made any mistakes.
And in April of 2004, I asked -- before I'd ever read Mom's notes
on this -- but I asked President Bush a similar question
that caused some news.
And I'm sort of glad it happened that way, because it was just neat
to see that sort of we were sort of on some sort
of parallel track in some strange way.
Female Speaker: Did your siblings live with your father as well,
and did they, any of them, go into journalism as well?
John Dickerson: The question was whether my siblings moved
in with my father as well, and if any of them are in journalism.
My siblings are all a fair amount older than me.
My brother's the closest; he's five years older.
And my sisters, who are really -- who are half-sisters --
though that's a distinction I only make sort of in the book
but we never make in our lives -- are a good deal older.
So they had all moved out of the house when my parents split.
But I -- I am the only one nutty enough to go into journalism.
Yes, in the back.
Male Speaker: In the LBJ Library, where you got some
of the material, how much [inaudible]?
John Dickerson: Well, a great deal.
There are pictures in here that are from the LC.
There was a lot of -- Liza [Elizabeth Higgins] Hull spent a lot
of time here going through Martin Agronsky's papers.
There's a great line in here from Murrow's papers,
because Murrow was at CBS when Mom started.
And there's some wonderful -- Mom was assigned to Murrow
and he was little taken aback at that.
But, once they developed a relationship he was really a
wonderful mentor, and throughout her career she would cite all
of the things he told her.
And there is a great letter here from him
to her describing how she should handle herself
with the CBS negotiations over her contract.
And it's very -- it's very funny.
He says something -- essentially he says, you know,
they can take anything from you they want and then sell you
down the river, but having said that,
it is the standard CBS contract.
[laughter] So -- and Liza would write these --
even when we didn't find a specific little nugget,
there was this great context of what people --
Alsop's letters, because there's a lot of social history, Washington,
too; Severride's letters, gosh we had --
and, so even if Mom wasn't mentioned or she was mentioned in a sort
of offhanded way, the book is a lot about the time and the people
around her, and the city, and so it contributed a lot to that as well.
Yes? Female Speaker: Thank you.
I have to say that as a kid I loved watching your mom on TV.
I don't think anyone has said that,
but I really loved watching your mom on TV.
But my question is, why did you -- why did you write this biography?
And during the biography, you were also writing your autobiography
at a certain time in your life, being a relatively young man.
What were the reasons?
John Dickerson: The question is, what were the --
why did I write this and what were the reasons for it?
After she died, these 20 boxes showed
up sometime later, really in late '97.
I really started going through them in '98.
And, if you like telling stories as we both -- Mom and I both did,
and if you're a journalist, and you get --
your passion is to have a thing that nobody else has and then turn
around and show other people.   And this was extraordinary.
I mean, the letters, and her life, which again I had never seen.
The book begins with a rather rough 40 pages or so of what my growing
up was like, and my view as a 13-year-old,
as uninformed and raw as that can be.
And the person I discovered in these letters
and the history I discovered -- well, there are two things.
One, the person I discovered was different than the one I had known
in life, and I found incredibly compelling and impressive
and amazing, as a mother or as a person.
But then, separately, if I were just Joe Smith, it was a great story
of Washington social history and media history and these anecdotes
about the presidents that I had never read before.
So it felt like it was a story that sort of had to be told.
And the more I started writing it, the more I felt that was the case.
So, that's what got me going.
Yes? Male Speaker: Did your mother have any interaction with Paley,
or any opinions on Paley?
John Dickerson: She did have interactions with him,
but I don't -- I don't remember any clear --
I don't remember any clear impressions, I'm just looking here
to see if Paley even shows up in the book.
He doesn't.
Gen. Sarnoff was the one that she had the most interaction with,
and there's a great scene of how she essentially talks herself
into Sarnoff's office; he was the head of NBC.
She had no appointment with Gen. Sarnoff, but she went to his office
and said that a good friend of his had suggested she go.
The good friend had never suggested she go.
She'd never met "the good friend."
Sarnoff wasn't there that day, but it was just --
it was some sign of her moxie that she just marched
into the boss's office in New York.
But -- so -- my father, who is still alive -- I wish I could ask him,
because he would probably have the great answer to that question.
And I'm sure there is one, I just don't know it.
Male Speaker: Was your mother aware of the influential role she played
as an influential woman, as a woman journalist
and television personality?   Did she mentor other women?
Did she feel herself as a role model?
What were her views on that?
John Dickerson: It's a great question.
The question was whether Mom viewed herself as a role model
or saw herself in the history of women in television.
She did, in both good ways and ways that weren't perhaps
that helpful to the sisterhood.
There are great stories and there are some in the book of people
who -- young women who came to Washington who just called her up.
A former colleague of mine at "Time" magazine, Ann Blackman,
called her up and Mom said, "Okay, let's go to lunch," and this was
at the height of Mom's stardom.
So she was willing to go have lunch with a young woman
who wanted to be a reporter.   Cokie Roberts tells a similar story.
And she loved that role, and she certainly saw herself in that role.
She had -- and there are some great quotes when she's trying to get --
to break in at CBS, where she's talking to reporters
and bashing her bosses by saying, "This is absurd
that women aren't allowed on TV."
And it's very -- she's quite a rabble-rouser in a sense.
But on the other hand,
she had incredibly strict standards for other women.
And, during the '70s when there was a lot of promotion of women
because there were a lot of lawsuits in order to get FCC licenses,
there were legal proceedings, and she felt pretty strongly that a lot
of women were given advancement in the job and didn't deserve it.
And that caused tension with those women.
She also, I think because she had to do it without a playbook
and without any peers, had a kind of a view of both family life
and the mix and balance of work and family that was sort of,
"You should never talk about it.
And I did these things when I was having kids and I never talked
about it, so no one ever should."
I think women who came afterwards felt like that wasn't helpful,
because it kept up this notion
that you could do two incredibly difficult things perfectly.
And I think Mom came to sort of that view at the end as well,
although in a -- there was a big debate with Meredith Vieira
when she left CBS "60 Minutes" and a fight with Don Hewitt.
And Mom was interviewed for that and essentially reiterated this position
which was, you know, "Tough."
I think that was something that, again,
women who came afterwards felt was a little tough on them.
Female Speaker: When you look
at the notes your mother left [inaudible] Congress,
and you're going through [inaudible],
do you see it as being the same, different -- has anything changed?
John Dickerson: It's a good question.
The question is whether Congress has changed,
when I look at Mom's notes and my notes.
A couple of different levels.
One, on a public level that has nothing to do
with our personal lives, they were much more friendly.
The two sides dealt and worked with each other.
They don't do that so much.
When I was covering this last night, the Republican
and Democratic leader couldn't agree on the rules
to even begin the debate on what is the most important topic of the day.
So, the posturing is all still the same, and it was the same back then.
There was a kind of corruption back then that's different
than what some people would argue is the corruption of today,
in terms of campaign finance and that kind of thing.
Reporters had a relationship that was much closer to their sources,
which was both good and bad.   You know, it's not completely gone.
I spent -- when I covered the Hill full time, you know, I had a chance
to spend some time in those Senate hideaways too, and you can --
after having covered the Bush White House,
I didn't know how good I had it,
because the Bush White House is very closed off.
And on the Hill you get a much more --
you can really get a sense of the people you're covering,
and that's still kind of true today.
Nothing close to what she got to see, but it's still true today.
John Dickerson: Any more questions?   All right.
Thank you all very much for listening and for your questions.
[applause] John Cole: Well, I want to publicly thank John Dickerson
for sharing his story, his mother's story, with us,
and I'd like to thank the audience for their excellent questions.
I think that together this has been a terrific experience and insight
about Washington, D.C., and about broadcast journalism
that we wouldn't have had otherwise.
We're going to have a book signing now, and I'm going to ask
that John come back here and sit,
and if you have not purchased a book,
I think there are still a few left, and we can kind of form a line
down this way for the book signing.
Also, I'd like you when you go out --
and I know some of you need to leave right away --
take a look at the schedule for the next talks that we have coming,
the two coming up this month.
Feb. 21, historian Doug Wilson will be talking about his new book
about Lincoln, "Lincoln's Sword and the Power of Words."
And we have just arranged for Sara Paretsky,
mystery writer, to come on Feb.
27, so those will be both presentations plus some others
that are here.
But, one last time, please join me in thanking John Dickerson.