Ira Sternberg: Welcome to Ira’s Everything Bagel, where I talk with intriguing people about everything—their passions, pursuits, and points of view. Two presidents who had a major impact on the 20th century both worked with the same trusted speechwriter, confidant, and strategist. Now, whether you liked these two presidents or not, whether you approved of their policies or not, they were both political legends and presidential giants. I’m talking about Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, and my guest worked with both men for many years, either on the campaign or in the White House. Ken Khachigian is author of Behind Closed Doors: In the Room with Reagan and Nixon, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all the usual places. For everything about Ken and the book, go to reaganandnixon.com—that’s reaganandnixon.com. Ken, welcome to the show.

Ken Khachigian: Thank you, good to be here.

Ira Sternberg: Why did you decide to write the book? You had all these notes, an insider’s view, but why write the book instead of keeping it private?

Ken Khachigian: Because I had information no one else had, and it had to be told. I had amazing stories, anecdotes, and history that nobody else could share. There were moments with both presidents—Reagan and Nixon—when they shared their lives, their political past, their thoughts on policies, and their records with me. I kept meticulous records, diaries, and even recorded some thoughts during campaigns. For example, in the 1980 campaign, I kept an audio diary. So, with Reagan and Nixon, I was sitting with two of the giants of the last quarter of the 20th century, and I felt that if I didn’t tell these stories, no one would ever know about them. It was like unearthing gold from granite. I knew it was a story that needed to be preserved.

Ira Sternberg: It’s interesting. There were so many people in both of their orbits, but you’re one of the few who was in both—at different times, sometimes simultaneously. And you had the discipline to write up notes after these meetings, even during the craziness of a campaign. In reading the book, you describe these grueling schedules—writing speeches, adapting stump speeches, going from one city to another—and yet, you still took the time to document these experiences. How?

Ken Khachigian: I knew I was witnessing history. In the 1980 campaign, for example, there were times I’d be dictating into a tape recorder at 2:00 or 2:30 in the morning. Someday, when the archives at the Reagan Library release these tapes, people will hear my tired, hoarse voice, living on three or four hours of sleep. I wanted to capture these moments because I knew no one else was keeping this level of record. Sure, others like Len Nofziger, Mike Deaver, James Baker, and Larry Speakes wrote books, but most used ghostwriters. This book is all firsthand; I wrote every word. There’s no other firsthand report of the 1980 and 1984 campaigns, or of Nixon’s post-Watergate years, or his preparation for the David Frost interviews. If I didn’t write it, it would be lost.

Ira Sternberg: Both presidents had distinctive personalities, and yet you bonded with each in a unique way. Nixon had a reputation for being distant, while Reagan was more outwardly genial. How did you build trust with both of them?

Ken Khachigian: That’s a good question, Ira. People saw Reagan’s public persona—smiling, genial, telling jokes—and assumed he was easy to connect with. But he actually kept his distance, even from his staff. Besides Nancy, there were very few people in his inner circle. When Reagan was unsure of the people around him, he’d default to telling jokes. Nixon, on the other hand, had this reputation for being aloof, but he was more accessible than people thought. If you talked to him about history, politics, or sports, he’d open up immediately, sharing stories about Churchill, or meetings with Golda Meir, or his love of baseball. So they were very different personalities, but both allowed me into their inner circle.

Ira Sternberg: What do you think it was about your personality that allowed both of them to trust you?

Ken Khachigian: I think it was because I was in the trenches with them, especially with Nixon during the last days of Watergate and later during his memoirs and preparation for the Frost interv