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David, I'd Iike you to meet Jim Reston and Bob Zelnick,
our two prospective corner men;
Delighted to meet you;
Come on in; Make yourselves at home;
Bob's been Washington correspondent
for Public Radio for the past 10 years;
Moving to ABC in the new year;
The general feeling, David,
is that I have been wasting my matinee idol Iooks on radio;
Jim here teaches at the University of North Carolina
and is writing a book about the criminal dishonesty, corruption,
paranoia and abuses of power of Richard Nixon;
Second on the subject;
Fourth;
WelI, delighted to have you both aboard;
ActualIy, before I sign on, I would Iike to hear
what you were hoping to achieve with this interview;
What I want to achieve?
Yeah;
Jim, welI, I've secured 1 2 taping days;
That's close to 30 hours
with the most compelIing and controversial politician
of our times;
Isn't that enough?
WelI, not for me;
Look, I'd be giving up a year of my Iife; I'm Ieaving my family
to work on a subject matter that means more
than you can probably imagine,
and the idea of doing alI that
without achieving what I want to, personalIy,
would be unthinkable to me;
(INTERRUPTING) FROST: No, alI right;
WelI, what is it that you want to achieve?
I'd Iike to give Richard Nixon the trial he never had;
Of course, we'II be asking difficult questions;
Difficult questions;
The man Iost 21,000 Americans
and a milIion Indo-Chinese during his administration;
He only escaped jail because of Ford's pardon;
Yes, but equalIy, going after him in some knee-jerk way,
you know, assuming he's a terrible guy,
wouldn't that only create more sympathy for him than anything else?
(SIGHS) You know;;;
Right now, I submit it's impossible
to feel anything close to sympathy for Richard Nixon;
He devalued the presidency,
and he Ieft the country that elected him in trauma;
The American people need a conviction, pure and simple;
The integrity of our political system,
of democracy as an idea, entirely depends on it;
And if in years to come, people Iook back
and say it was in this interview
that Richard Nixon exonerated himself,
that would be the worst crime of alI;
Did you know that Mike WalIace is doing a piece on this?
And that in the bars around Capitol HilI and Georgetown
this entire project is a joke?
ZELNICK: Come on; Jim, come on;
Thanks for that, Jim;
Could you give us a couple of minutes?