Face the Nation Transcripts August 10, 2014: Reed, Fukuda, Jeffrey

(CBS News) -- Below is a transcript from the August 10, 2014 edition of Face the Nation. Guests included Sen. Jack Reed, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Clarissa Ward, Charlie D'agata, Holly Williams, David Rohde and Michael Crowley.

BOB SCHIEFFER, HOST: I'm Bob Schieffer. And today on FACE THE NATION, a world in turmoil, and America returns to Iraq. As the ISIS terrorist forces step up their attacks, the president orders American warplanes back into the skies over Iraq and says the fight won't be won overnight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I don't think we're going to solve this problem in weeks. This is going to be a long-term project.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: We will get the latest from the region and talk to Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed, a key member of the Armed Services Committee.

Plus, the latest as well on the situation in Israel. And as the death toll nears 1,000, we will talk to a top official of the World Health Organization about the Ebola outbreak.

Plus, a bizarre incident at a New York speedway where a driver is struck and killed by race car driver Tony Stewart.

And finally, on the 40th anniversary weekend of Richard Nixon's resignation, Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein look back. And we will tell you what it was like in the Oval Office before Nixon made that famous resignation speech.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD NIXON, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Only the CBS News now is to be in this room during this, only the crew. No. No, there will be no picture.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: Sixty years of news, because this is FACE THE NATION.

And good morning again.

The news from overnight is as grim it has been for the last week. An Iraqi official told Reuters News Agency that the ISIS terrorist have killed 500 members of the Yazidi minority group and have kidnapped 300 women. Thousands of the Yazidis are still trapped on that mountaintop in Northern Iraq.

More food and supplies were dropped over the area last night by U.S. transport planes. U.S. airstrikes continued. The president is on Martha's Vineyard this morning, but, as he left Washington, he told reporters the airstrikes may go on for awhile. But, he said, the U.S. doesn't intend to order ground forces back into the area.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I have been very clear that we're not going to have U.S. combat troops in Iraq again. And we are going to maintain that, because we should have learned a lesson from our long and immensely costly incursion in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: More on the story now from Holly Williams, who is in Irbil this morning -- Holly.

HOLLY WILLIAMS, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bob.

There were four more U.S. airstrikes here last night targeting the armored vehicles and trucks used by ISIS militants, and some of those militants are just 30 miles away from where we are here in the city of Irbil.

Kurdish soldiers from this area are the only ones still fighting ISIS on the ground here in Northern Iraq after Iraqi government soldiers abandoned their posts and ran away in June. The American airstrikes will help those Kurdish fighters in their battle against the militants.

Now, ISIS captured a swathe of territory across Northern Iraq two months ago, extending the borders of what it claims is its own Islamic state. Then, last week, the militants struck again, seizing 15 more towns, a military base and Iraq's biggest damn.

SCHIEFFER: Holly, could the Kurdish forces on their own defeat ISIS if they decide to move on Irbil?

WILLIAMS: Well, Bob, the Kurdish fighters tell us that they're confident that they can defend Irbil, which is their capital. But they say if they are going to push ISIS out of Iraq, then they need the U.S. to give them weapons, because they say they're relying on outdated guns, whereas the militants have American tanks and artillery that they captured from Iraqi government soldiers when they ran away two months ago.

SCHIEFFER: Well, will these airstrikes be enough to actually defeat ISIS?

WILLIAMS: Well, the very limited strikes that we have seen so far won't be enough. But the hope is that they will give Kurdish fighters who everyone is relying on here just a little bit of breathing room.

SCHIEFFER: All right, Holly Williams. Well, be very careful, Holly. Thanks so much.

The other story that just won't go away, the situation in Israel, where the fighting is now in its 34th day.

We have two reports from there, first Charlie D'Agata in Tel Aviv -- Charlie.

CHARLIE D'AGATA, CBS NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bob. Once again, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that Israel will not negotiate while under fire. They say they have no intention of sending an Israeli delegation back to Cairo for any kind of peace talks.

But he went further today, saying at no stage did Israel declare that this military offensive was over. He said it was going to take time and patience. Now, we haven't turned to the kind of intensity of more than a week ago, but the Israeli Defense Forces say that Hamas has fired something like 110 rockets from Gaza into Israel, mostly short-range rockets and mortars that are hitting the border towns, none of the long-range missiles capable of hitting Tel Aviv.

But they say that Hamas broke the cease-fire even before it ran out on Friday. In return, the Israeli military has launched something like 150 airstrikes at suspected Hamas targets inside Gaza. Israel says that they have no intention of even addressing the demands of Hamas until these rockets stop. And until that happens, they have no intention of stopping these airstrikes.

SCHIEFFER: Charlie D'Agata in Tel Aviv, Charlie, be safe. Thank you.

And CBS News foreign correspondent Clarissa Ward joins us now from Gaza City.

Clarissa, what is the latest down there?

CLARISSA WARD, CBS NEWS FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bob.

Well, since that cease-fire expired, we have heard steady stream of rockets being fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. And Israel of course has been returning fire with airstrikes, with artillery; 16 Palestinians have been killed so far.

Now, obviously, this bombardment is nothing like on the level that we have heard over the past few weeks, but still it has an affect. Daily life here has ground to a halt. People are staying in their homes. The streets are empty. And really there's no sense that that is going to change any time soon with those diplomatic talks in Cairo at a standstill and with Hamas vowing to ratchet up their attacks.

SCHIEFFER: Clarissa, what can Hamas possibly hope to achieve here?

WARD: Well, Bob, at this stage, politically Hamas cannot afford to walk away from this latest conflict without extracting some concessions from the Israeli side.

The people here have paid such an enormous price over the past few weeks. But what is interesting is that there is widespread support here for continuing the war even among people who don't necessarily like Hamas. And that's really because of one major issue, the blockade on Gaza which has been in place since 2007, most people here saying they will do whatever it takes, even continue this war, if it means that they can somehow get that blockade lifted.

SCHIEFFER: All right, Clarissa Ward. Thank you so much, Clarissa.

And we turn now to one of the top Democrats on the Armed Services Committee, Rhode Island Senator Jack Reed. He is in Providence this morning.

Let's talk first about what's going on in Iraq, Senator Reed. The Pentagon says that these airstrikes so far, they have had some effect, they have destroyed some things. But what are you being told about whether these strikes are being successful? What do you think has been accomplished so far?

SEN. JACK REED (D), RHODE ISLAND: Well, what has been accomplished is, we have been able to destroy some heavy artillery that ISIS has that is threatening Kurdish forces.

We have also been able to disrupt their lines of communication, some of the convoys. The basic strategy is targeted strikes on these weapons systems so that the Peshmerga, the Kurdish forces, can strengthen and resist and ultimately roll back ISIS.

And I think these targeted strikes are very effective. The Kurds are very aggressive. With this support, I think they will be able to stabilize the situation in the north.

SCHIEFFER: And we want to apologize to our viewers. There is a sound delay between the time my voice gets to Senator Reed and then gets back here to Washington.

But, Senator, let me ask you this. A senior administration official told The New York Times today that -- and this is a quote -- this is not an authorization of a broad-based counterterrorism campaign.

Why would the administration say that? Why did they mean that? What do they mean by that?

REED: Well, there's two dimensions -- there's two dimensions at work here.

First is protecting American interests in the region. We have personnel in Irbil, Kurdistan. We have to protect them. We have to protect our -- not only our personnel in the region. We also have to protect for any type of operations that might go outside of the region into the United States or any place across the globe.

That is why we will target some of these terrorists wherever they are in Yemen, in Iraq, et cetera.

But second dimension is political. And that is making sure that the Iraqi government reorganizes itself, so it can successfully use all the resources that it has -- and it has significant resources -- to stabilize the situation and then begin with Iraqi forces to push back on ISIS. What has happened, unfortunately, is Prime Minister Maliki has politicized the military and militarized the politics of Iraq over the last several years. That has to be reversed. And while the Iraqis are trying to put their house in order, literally, and resume the fight, we can provide some limited support to deter, particularly up in Kurdistan, ISIS.

But, ultimately, this has to be a political strategy that takes place in Baghdad, not in Washington.

SCHIEFFER: Yesterday -- I want to show you a clip of something the president said as he left for his vacation, when he was asked if he had any second thoughts about pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq. Here is part of what his response was.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: What I just find interesting is the degree to which this issue keeps on coming up, as if this was my decision.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: Those words were hardly out of the president's mouth when we started getting calls from Republicans who said, hey, wait a minute, back in 2011, President Obama was taking credit for pulling those troops out of Iraq and was saying that he was fulfilling his campaign promise.

Do you see any connection, Senator, between the pulling out of the American troops there and what has happened in Iraq since then?

REED: Well, first thing I think you have to recognize, that the invasion of Iraq back in 2003 was, I think, a strategic miscalculation.

And at the time, I opposed it because I didn't think in the long run it would contribute to long-term security, and in fact it would have long-term and detrimental consequences. We're living with those consequences today.

And in 2008, it was President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Maliki who agreed that all American forces would leave Iraq in 2011. Now, some people have said, well, President Obama could have negotiated around that in the intervening years. But once President Bush and President Maliki had declared that our forces, all of them, would be out, it was very difficult, although the president, President Obama, tried to have a remaining force there training, equipping, along the lines of what we're proposing in Afghanistan.

But I think, once that decision was made in 2008, our troops were leaving in 2011. Has it contributed to the situation here? I think what's contributed significantly to the situation has not been our presence or lack of presence. It's been the politics of Maliki, his alienation of the Sunni community, his politicization of the military.

The collapse of Mosul was not a result of lack of equipment or lack of personnel. It was leadership collapse. And so in order to put the situation right, we have to begin at the fundamental core, which is leadership in Baghdad, Iraqi leadership, which will work together in a unified way to defend and protect their country and defeat ISIS.

SCHIEFFER: All right, Senator, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

I want to turn now to James Jeffrey. He is the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq. He's now a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Let me just pick up where Senator Reed left off there, Ambassador. Do you think the fact that we pulled those troops out had anything to do with what is the situation we're dealing with right now?

JAMES JEFFREY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO IRAQ: It had a certain effect.

That's why General Austin, supported by me, recommended that they stay on. We would have had a better equipped Iraqi army. We would have had better eyes on, on what the problem was, we would have been able to do certain counterterrorism operations. But most importantly, it's psychological.

We would have still had a stake in that country and we would have cared for what Maliki was doing and we would have had more leverage to change it. Again, Senator Reed is right. This is basically an Iraqi issue with Maliki's misuse of power.

But it would have been better if we could have had troops on.

SCHIEFFER: Let me get back to that in just a minute.

But I do want to ask you about this. There is a consulate up there in Irbil. And I am told at one time, there were several thousand Americans up there. Do you have any idea now how many Americans are up there?

JEFFREY: The consulate itself would have -- and I can't get into the numbers, for obvious reasons, but it would have a relatively small, in the scores of Americans doing specific work, diplomatic work.

But then you have the military presence. President Obama sent in, in June U.S. special forces personnel to do assessments and such. And they're operating with the Peshmerga up there. You also have hundreds and hundreds of people providing security, providing logistics. And you have a large business community of Americans there in the oil industry, at universities and other things.

SCHIEFFER: So, there may well be several thousand?

(CROSSTALK) JEFFREY: There may well be several thousand Americans or people that we're responsible for.

SCHIEFFER: Do you have any indication, or do you see anything that leads to you believe that Maliki is any closer than he ever was to putting together some sort of inclusive government here?

JEFFREY: Maliki will not be able to put together an inclusive government.

The pressure is on him to find -- to basically step down. The government has to -- the parliament has to elect a new government after the elections. And it looks -- does not look good for Maliki, but he's resisting. The Shia coalition, which has a majority in parliament, or close to it, have to decide on an alternative. This is going under way day and night right now.

SCHIEFFER: Are these Kurdish forces up there capable of turning back an attack if these ISIS people march on Irbil?

JEFFREY: Bob, if ISIS people march out of their Sunni Arab heartland that they have taken over into Shia, into Kurdish areas, they can be stopped by a combination of people on the ground who are willing to fight, such as the Peshmerga, and American airstrikes such as we have seen.

We have done this in Libya in 2011, Kosovo, Bosnia, all around the world. And it works, if we have other people's boots on the ground and our air supporting them.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Ambassador, thank you so much.

JEFFREY: Thank you.

SCHIEFFER: We turn now to the outbreak of the Ebola virus, which is centered in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But there are also now reported cases in Nigeria.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda is the assistant director general of health security for the World Health Organization. He joins us from Geneva.

Dr. Fukuda, let me ask you first, what are your latest statistics? Where does the death toll from this now stand? DR. KEIJI FUKUDA, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: Bob, where we're running right now is, as of today, there are 1,825 cases reported from the four countries.

Most of these countries are in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. There are 13 cases in Nigeria. And the current mortality rate is running about 55 to 60 percent.

SCHIEFFER: So, that would mean as of now the death toll is, what, above 900?

FUKUDA: Yes. It would mean that it's about 900, a little bit above.

SCHIEFFER: A little bit above.

Is this -- could we expect the death toll to go higher or do you think we're at a peak here, or where are we on this?

FUKUDA: Bob, I think that we anticipate that there will continue to be cases. And if we continue to have cases, then we will continue to have people dying from this disease.

This is a severe infection. So, we expect both numbers to increase over the coming weeks.

SCHIEFFER: Would you call this at this point an epidemic?

FUKUDA: Well, it's certainly a large outbreak affecting that region. And, typically, when outbreaks get big enough, we call them epidemics.

But I think that the way we think about it is that this is something which has arisen can be stopped. And so among the people working on it, we frequently call it an outbreak right now.

SCHIEFFER: So you feel that it can be contained. But I want to just ask you. The World Health Organization, do you need more help from other countries? What needs to be done here?

FUKUDA: Sure.

Bob, this is definitely an outbreak that can be contained. We know that this is not a mysterious disease. It's a severe disease, but we know it's not mysterious.

And what I mean by that is that we know how this virus is transmitted. It requires one person touching another person and coming into contact with bodily fluids. And because of that -- and we know when people are most infectious -- this virus can be stopped.

But what's difficult in this situation is that we're dealing with countries with weak health systems, and we're dealing with areas in which practices like good infection prevention and control practices are not the norm in some of the hospitals and in families and communities. And so what we need here is really to scale up.

And so we know what to do, but WHO working with many different countries and many different partner organizations need help in making sure that we can do the things which are needed to stop transmission.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just ask you about a couple of things.

Should there be an international travel ban, for example? Some of these countries I know have been closed, but should we be more strict than even that?

FUKUDA: Bob, we recently convened a meeting of the emergency committee under the international health regulations, which gave advice to the director general.

And the director general concurred with the recommendations or the advice coming from that committee. And one of them is very clear. WHO does not support a general ban on travel or trade. We do believe that people who have infection or people who are contacts of people who have infection and are being monitored for the 21-day period should not travel. But, otherwise, we do not believe there should be a general ban on travel or trade.

SCHIEFFER: Dr. Fukuda, let me ask you this, because I think a lot of people are worried about it. Are you confident that this disease won't spread from Africa to Europe and then into North America?

FUKUDA: You know, Bob, I think there's two important points to make here.

One of them is that, in this modern period, this globalized world we live in, it's clear that any person can travel anywhere in the world with an infection. But it's also important to know in terms of this disease and this outbreak, this in many ways is a poster child for what it means to have health systems which are weak.

That means that the surveillance systems are not strong. There may not be enough health care workers and so on. So, I think that while it is possible for someone with an infection to travel to a number of countries, perhaps in Europe, perhaps to North America, like the United States, and it's possible that you may have some few cases associated with that, few infections, I think that in those countries which really have good health systems, good health professionals, good surveillance systems, it's very unlikely that you would have large outbreaks in the way that we're seeing them in these countries right now.

SCHIEFFER: Well, Doctor, we want to wish you the very best as you fight this thing. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

FUKUDA: Thank you, Mr. Schieffer.

SCHIEFFER: And, in a bizarre incident here at home, an investigation is under way this morning after NASCAR driver Tony Stewart hit and killed another driver, Kevin Ward Jr., during a race yesterday in New York.

A spokesman for Stewart's racing team calls the death a tragic accident. But there are questions.

We will be back in a moment with some personal thoughts about the anniversary of Watergate.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHIEFFER: Shakespeare's Mark Antony said the evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones.

Generation after generation of Washington press agents have tried to change that while their bosses were still alive. Mostly, they failed. The 40th anniversary weekend of the Richard Nixon's resignation is a good time to bring it up, because the Nixon administration invented modern political public relations, the photo- ops, the limited access, the attempts to control the news.

So much of it goes back to the Nixon operatives. Every president since has tried to refine the techniques, the staged photos, keeping a distance from reporters, speaking in gobbledygook as they try to manipulate the narrative.

As I have watched the current administration bar the press from some of Secretary of State Kerry's appearance at the recent Africa conference, were they worried he might be asked a question about the Ebola epidemic?

It reminded me that, most of the time, the press agents learn the wrong lessons from the Nixon folks. And Nixon himself provides the perfect example of why. Richard Nixon's opening to China and his arms control efforts with the Soviets live after him as remarkable achievements, as his attempt to undermine the Constitution lives on as a dastardly deed.

The lesson Washington never learns is that good public relations never trumps bad policy, nor can good policy ever be undermined by bad P.R. Most of these modern public relations operations are a waste of time. Better to concentrate on policy.

Back in a minute.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHIEFFER: We will have a lot more on the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation coming up with none other than "Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHIEFFER: Welcome back to Face the Nation.

And we turn from the news of today to a time unlike anything America had ever experienced: what came to be known as the Watergate scandal.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RICHARD NIXON, 37TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to ever instinct in my body.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHIEFFER: By now 40 years and one day later millions of us have seen that historic Oval Office speech in which Richard Nixon became the only president to resign from office. But with us now, one of the very few people who saw the president make that speech in person, George Christian. He is part of our Face the Nation family. He is usually behind that camera. He was in the Oval Office that night as a camera technician.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SCHIEFFER: George, you must have sensed this was going to be a day like no other.

GEORGE CHRISTIAN, CAMERAMAN: The presidents have always come in with handlers and other people, you know, to secure his position and to make sure he's OK for his presentation.

This I remember President Nixon coming in alone, very quiet, very still time.

SCHIEFFER: Surprisingly the president was joking around before the speech.

NIXON: Let me see -- did you get these lights properly? My eyes have always -- you will find that they get passed 60 that's enough.

My friend Ollie always wants to take a lot of pictures. I'm afraid he'll catch me picking my nose.

SCHIEFFER: And then an unexpected request.

CHRISTIAN: He asked everyone to leave the room who did not need to be there. And when he repeated the second time I thought he must have been talking to me.

SCHIEFFER: But he wasn't talking to George. He actually wanted only the CBS crew assigned to cover the speech of all the networks in the room.

NIXON: Only the CBS crew now is to be in this room during this, only the crew. All Secret Service, are there any Secret Service in the room? Out.

SCHIEFFER: The speech went as planned.

NIXON: I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow.

SCHIEFFER: Nixon quickly left the Oval Office but Christian could not believe what happened next.

CHRISTIANS: The had orders from the White House that the president didn't want to see anybody, that he was going to be roaming the grounds and he did not want to see any technicians for sure and that we were going to stay overnight and we had to sleep right outside the Oval Office on the veranda.

SCHIEFFER: On the other side of the White House in Lafayette Park people had cheered, surprising a young CBS reporter.

For some reason I had just expected much more somber mood here but it is just not been that way and I would be dishonest if I said it was.

The next morning George Christian recorded the dramatic series of events as the Nixons said goodbye to the staff and close friends.

NIXON: You will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.

SCHIEFFER: And then a scene that Americans had seen many times -- the famous wave, only this time he was flying off into history. The Nixon presidency was over.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHIEFFER: Much of the credit for connecting the dots that took Watergate break in all the way to the White House goes to two young Washington Post reporters, of course we're talking about none other than Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein whose books The Final Days and All the Presidents Men are being reissued by Simon and Schuster, part of the CBS Corporation.

The two were played quite famously by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman in the film adaptation of the classic All the President's Men.

And disclosure here, Redford and Dustin Hoffman were not available so we have Bernstein and Woodward, two of my oldest friends here in Washington.

Gentlemen, thank you so much.

You know, I got to say -- and I think a lot people in Washington felt this way, I think one reason it took awhile for people to figure out that this was really serious, it seemed so stupid. The president was ahead breaking in to the Watergate. I mean whoever broke in to a campaign headquarters that's where they keep the yard signs and stuff. There are no secrets there, but yet they did.

When did the two of you understand that this was really something of significance?

CARL BERNSTEIN, REPORTER: Surprisingly early. We had learned there was a see yet fund of about $800,000 that paid for the bugging at Watergate and other illegal undercover activities against Nixon's political enemies. And we wrote that John Mitchell, Nixon's law partner and attorney general controlled those funds.

And on that occasion, Woodward and I were meeting in a vending machine room off the newsroom to say what we were going to say to the editors and I felt a chill literally go down my back. And I said to Woodward, this president is going to be impeached.

And Woodward stead to me, oh, my, god, you're right. And we can never use that word "impeach" at the Washington Post unless somebody thinks that we have an agenda.

BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: And we never did.

BERNSTEIN: But it was about ten weeks in.

SCHIEFFER: You know, I thought it was interesting and, we've talked about this before, because it always comes up, people say well when you come right down to it the cover up was worse than the crime. You never bought in to that. And in the afterward of the new reissue of your books you talk about that, Bob.

WOODWARD: Yes. And what -- the fact is that Watergate started before Watergate. That back in 1970, two years before the Watergate burglary, Nixon launch a series of secret undercover activities tapping the telephones of 17 reporters, White House aides, the secret Houston plan as it came to be known, just very directly saying we're going to break the law, we're going to use illegal means to go after the anti-war movement and the people who were his opponents.

And so what happened here is -- and Carl and I have spent a lot of time looking at tape transcripts, and listening to these tapes and so forth, and you see the real Nixon come out which is kind of the dog that never barks on the tapes. Nixon never says, what's good for the country, what do we need. It was always about Nixon and it was using the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge in a horrendous way.

Those tapes are staggering to listen to and new ones coming out this season and you hear Nixon saying things like, oh, yeah, I said, use any means necessary including illegal means, I can never admit to that. And of course he did on secret tape.

SCHIEFFER: You know, one part of these new tapes that we're now hearing, we heard in the old tapes Nixon making statements that were just blatantly racist there's no question about that. But he in these new tapes it removes all doubt. I mean, he said things that I can't imagine anyone of any education.

Most people who are prejudice as we know, it's based on ignorance. Nixon was an educated man. His mother was this quiet Quaker. And yet he literally seemed to hate Jews more than most of all amongst the other minorities.

BERNSTEIN: When we were the writing the final days we started to encounter this, and it's in the final days in person after person would tell us about how he railed against Jews and about blacks and finally Arthur Burns, the patrician economic adviser to the president said to me while we were reporting on the final days, Nixon had epithets for whole sections of mankind. There was an anger.

It's possible to have real empathy for Richard Nixon. You see what we did at the beginning of the broadcast, and this man all his life wanted to be president of the United States. But with the empathy you have to also recognize the criminal -- criminality from the beginning of the presidency to the end of the presidency and this vengeance and this hatred which he talks about in his final address.

WOODWARD: I mean, in that -- you know, where he was sweating, his wife, two daughters, two son-in-laws and there's, and there's a moment right at the end where he kind of waves his hand as if he's going to say, I called you here for a reason and that reason is I have an understanding, I know what this was all about.

And then in one of the most fabulous lines of the American presidency he says, always remembers, others may hate you but those who hate you don't win unless you hate them and then you destroy yourself. This was the piston of the Nixon administration: hate.

And, you where did it--

SCHIEFFER: Where did it come from? You know, a friend of mine said to me the other day, you know he ran against John Kennedy in 1960. If he had won that race would it have been the same kind of Nixon presidency? I don't know if I know the answer to that question but I do wonder, did some of this paranoia come out of that experience?

BERNSTEIN: Well, it's -- it's if history. But I find something really interesting as follows, to his case, that on the tapes, time and time, we hear Nixon going after his enemies, saying they hate me since his case -- Alger Hiss, the accused spy in the 1950s, who Nixon pursued. And there was a great movement that proclaimed Hiss' innocence.

Uh, and Nixon was, you know, regarded, because of what he did in Hiss as a smeared, as a terrible person.

Well, it turns out, Nixon was right about Hiss. We know this from the so-called Venona papers of the Soviets. Hiss was a spy.

And this festering thing with Nixon, you hear it over and over on the tapes.

But look, it's going to take an awful lot of psychobiography to finally solve the riddle of -- of Richard Nixon, because this goes back to the basic character, his life. And we see it manifested as a whole, and as Bob says, the piston of his presidency.

WOODWARD: Yes, and then, also, if you look, he was -- he was vice president for Eisenhower for eight years. And there's some marvelous reporting that's been done on this, which shows that Nixon was snubbed by Nix -- by Eisenhower, that Eisenhower never brought him in. And -- and Nixon felt that America was filled with a series of clubs that he could never get into.

And it -- and it just burned him. And, again, it's on the tapes. He'll -- he'll say things like, oh, you know, all those -- he joined -- after he left the vice presidency and lost the governor's race in '62, he went to practice law on Wall Street.

And he says on the tapes with this kind of seething bitterness, you know, any of those lawyers ever ask me to their country clubs and ask me to go out and play golf with them?

Not a one.

And it -- and it turned. And it -- and it was a rage. And so when he won the presidency and then had to run again in '72, he felt he was entitled. He -- and it's -- if there's...

SCHIEFFER: Let me...

WOODWARD: Go.

SCHIEFFER: Yes. What do you think would have happened if he told H.R. Haldeman before we knew there was a taping system, he told him, I wanted to get rid of those tapes and -- and Haldeman said, sure, and then he went back to him and said, I want to do this and again Haldeman said, sure?

I guess the question I have, what would have happened if they had burned the tapes or done something with them?

And the question that I found interesting, why didn't Haldeman carry out this order?

We know he did a lot -- some things that were a lot worse than that.

BERNSTEIN: We don't know why he didn't. One thing is that there was a belief by Nixon and Haldeman that the tapes, selectively used, would help their defense, particularly against John Dean...

WOODWARD: Um-hmm.

BERNSTEIN: -- and that they could selectively use the tapes before the special prosecutor and investigators, uh, to prove, supposedly, their innocence.

But what is on those the tapes and why the, you know, the question of -- of burning them, had they burned them, what we know now is that very likely Nixon might have been able to stay in office because...

SCHIEFFER: You really think so?

BERNSTEIN: -- well, it's if history and if history never works...

SCHIEFFER: Yes.

BERNSTEIN: But what we do know is that they kept coming back to the smoking gun. They needed a smoking gun. They needed to show a violation specific of the law. And that was done by the the tapes.

At the same time, there was this whole huge criminality that was ignored while looking for the smoking gun. So maybe he would have...

WOODWARD: But it always got down to...

BERNSTEIN: -- survived.

WOODWARD: -- to the politics. And the politics of Washington, uh, that summer, uh, 40 years ago, was that the Republican Party turned on Nixon, best measured by Barry Goldwater, the kind of... BERNSTEIN: The discussions (INAUDIBLE)...

WOODWARD: -- conscience of the party...

BERNSTEIN: -- (INAUDIBLE).

WOODWARD: And he and a group of Republicans...

BERNSTEIN: (INAUDIBLE).

WOODWARD: -- went to see Nixon in the White House, uh, the day before he said he was going to resign. And Nixon kind of joked with him and said, well, Barry, how many votes, if I'm impeached and there's a trial in the Senate?

Well, I have about 20 votes. And Goldwater said you'll have four and not mine.

And that realization and -- and if you look at it from some perspective, courage on the part of the Republican Party to say, as Goldwater said to us one night in his apartment here in Washington, it's simple -- too many crimes, too many lies.

SCHIEFFER: Bob, do you think this could happen again?

Could another president get himself involved in something like this?

WOODWARD: Whew.

SCHIEFFER: And I guess part of the question I asked, what advice would you give to people who find themselves behind those iron gates where the public can be kept out, where only the people you see are the ones you want to see?

Uh, what can -- what can they do...

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: -- to immunize themselves

WOODWARD: (INAUDIBLE) and, you know, and we're...

SCHIEFFER: -- from something like that?

WOODWARD: -- we're not good at -- at advice...

BERNSTEIN: (INAUDIBLE) presidents.

WOODWARD: Yes.

But, um, what -- it was seven years ago I went over to do what turned out to be the last interview with Bob McNamara, who was secretary of Defense for Kennedy and Johnson, Mr. Vietnam, and who apologized for Vietnam. And it was three hours. And he had an apartment in the Watergate and I kept pressing McNamara, you know, squeeze out what's the final lesson of the mistake of Vietnam?

And he said, there's one lesson, and that is the advisers to the president need to sit around with the president and argue with him and say, wait a minute, let's look at all the options. Uh, you have to create a conflict situation.

And he said what happens in the presidency is no one wants to argue with the president, particularly in front of other advisers. So the president gets isolated and lives in a bubble.

And I think you can argue that happens to every president, including this one.

SCHIEFFER: Well, I want to thank both of you.

It's a subject that we could talk about all afternoon.

Well, I want to thank you.

And we'll be right back with a little news analysis on some of the news of the day.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHIEFFER: Well, from 40 years and one day ago, we're back now to today's news.

And we're going to talk to David Rohde of Reuters plus "Time" magazine's chief foreign affairs correspondent, Michael Crowley, two men who have a lot of experience on the, uh, foreign news and -- and covering wars.

So, what do you make of this?

What was it that caused President Obama, who said we're not going back to Iraq and took great pride in saying we're not going back, now is saying, well, it really wasn't his decision to leave Iraq and he says but we have to send these war planes back into the skies?

What -- what do you make of this?

DAVID ROHDE, REUTERS: I think he would have been under tremendous domestic political pressure to act.

You know, it's an unprecedented amount of territory that's been gained by this new group, which essentially is a new version of al Qaeda. And I think he -- he did it very reluctantly.

Um, and I think that he's not sure how this is going to play out. And -- and we can talk about this more. it's not a clear strategy. This president or this presidency, and maybe it's isolation, as the last guests talked about, isn't really, I think, selling his approach to Iraq and explaining his past decision- making and his current decision-making that clearly to Americans.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, I mean the people I'm talking to say probably he had no choice, no matter how we got from there to here, he probably really had no choice at this point, because you do have -- and we don't know how many, but maybe several hundred, maybe thousands of Americans up there in Erbil, that you cannot leave there, even if you put aside the other part of it, and that's a -- obviously, a humanitarian disaster.

But what do you see happening now?

I think we're there for a while.

MICHAEL CROWLEY, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Well, we are there for a while.

So why now?

I do think it was a convergence of factors. To some degree, going into Kurdistan, the way ISIS threatened to do, and take Erbil, was a kind of a red line. Um, we -- we think the Kurds are sort of the best actors in the region and another big success for ISIS, capturing another big city, in a place like Kurdistan, was too much for us to bear. There was also this humanitarian crisis. You know, the president, very interestingly, framed his speech as a matter of preventing an act of genocide.

I think to a degree, not to be glib about it, but it allowed him to sell intervention to a certain extent, to the American public. All of a sudden, I think, understandably busy with their own lives, are vague on the Kurds, might even be a little bit vague on who ISIS is, but this idea of people trapped on a mountain dying, children dying of dehydration and starvation, I think, gave people an opportunity to understand why we would be crossing that threshold of action.

Where does it go from now?

The president warned yesterday this could be months. There's a political process that we're going to try -- we're going to try to get some help into the Iraqi political system, which is very dysfunctional, try to get the Iraqi Security Forces to take the lead.

We're also starting to explore the idea of -- of restarting this Sunni Awakening, where the Sunni tribes in the north, who are not as radical as ISIS, maybe rise up and take the fight against them, the way they did during the Iraq War, which was a crucial turning point, and finally support those Kurdish Peshmerga. Peshmerga means "those who face death." They are tough fighters if they have enough supplies we can (INAUDIBLE)...

SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, that brings up an interesting point. I mean you get -- and we did throughout the Iraq War, that the Kurds were really good, that they were good fighters and all that. But a man who was a senior commander in that region said, yes, but they're pretty much like light infantry. They have no heavy weapons. And he said, frankly, they could not turn back these ISIS forces if they decided to mount a campaign of -- to take Erbil. They're going to need a lot of help, it seems to me.

ROHDE: And the disaster here is that the Islamic State has American armor and weaponry, millions of dollars worth of it, that was given up when the Iraqi Army collapsed.

SCHIEFFER: Can they operate it?

Do they have the expertise?

ROHDE: They appear to. I mean what -- what's so astonishing about the Islamic State is that they're able to maneuver, use this weaponry. They can move 1,000 guys very quickly and that they defeated the Peshmerga so quickly I think surprised many people.

But the bigger debate here is, you know, what about the Peshmerga, they're the good guys. Americans don't believe there are any good guys in the region anymore. There's even a debate here, we, as a country, is there a threat?

Is the Islamic State a threat to us or can we ignore it?

And, you know, we're journalists. Politicians sort of claim there's an easy answer where, we'll just bomb them to smithereens. I don't think that's true.

And then we'll -- Obama has tried to kind of work with local forces, but that hasn't gone well, either.

SCHIEFFER: And he keeps saying, you know, we -- we have to wait until the government in -- in Baghdad becomes more inclusive and is able to put together a coalition there.

Can we wait that long?

I mean these people pose...

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right.

SCHIEFFER: -- a threat, it seems to me, not just to that region, but to the United States.

CROWLEY: Well, I think you've seen the answer. The answer is no. I think we were hoping we could wait. I think we were hoping this process could play out, it was a slow motion process. For a while, it looked as though ISIS had kind of the -- a front had formed, ISIS had stopped, it had grabbed Mosul and territory in the west and it was looking like they were going to sit put for a while and consolidate their territory.

They declared this somewhat ridiculous Islamic caliphate, uh, and the hope was they were on pause for a while in terms of their offensive. But what we saw last week was this sudden advance, this threat to the Kurdish population centers. And I think that, for the president, plus this impending act of genocide on the mountain, forced him to say we can't ignore this anymore.

Bob, remember, again, Americans who are wondering what this is all about have to keep in mind, thousands of foreign fighters within the ISIS ranks who could come back to Europe, even America, and stage terror attacks.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, not good news, but we appreciate your insight.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCHIEFFER: Well, that's it for us today.

Thanks for watching FACE THE NATION.

See you next week.

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