August 13, 2024 • 16 mins
George Noory and political adviser Ken Khachigian discuss working closely with two American presidents.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Ken Kachigian with us. His book is Behind Closed Doors. Ken.
Is that you on the cover left of on the
on the right side of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah, that's me with Ronald Reagan and President Nixon. We
were in a meeting in nineteen ninety when it was
when President Nixon was opening his library. You're blenda. He
asked me to accompany him to a meeting with President Reagan,
(00:34):
and it was two days before they opened the library,
and so he asked me to a company. And of
course it's a chapter twenty five in the book, and
so I call it the Lions Gathers, the name of
the chapter. And it was about a forty five minute meeting,
and I took I took very good notes, and it's
(00:57):
like a transcription of the meeting. And the two presidential
giants and political legends of the twentieth century, the last
quarter of the twentieth century met together. And first they
just chit chatted, but then they after about fifteen minutes,
they got to talking about world issues and by Gorbachev
(01:18):
and foreign policy and foreign affairs, and it was just
an amazing meeting of the two gentlemen. And you know,
there were rivals in nineteen sixty eight when Mixon thought
Reagan would run against them for president. But then they
became very close. And when we were writing the memoirs
(01:40):
in San Clemente, as I write in the book, in
the early chapters of the book, President Nixon said to me,
he said, you know, Ken, he said, we're going to
treat Reagan well, he said, because Reagan was loyal to me,
you know, loyal to me on Vietnam and Watergate. He
suck by me. And then they became very close. And
(02:01):
when I was traveling with Reagan in the eighty campaign,
Nixon used me to send secret memos to Reagan, which
I reprint in the in the appendencies of the book,
and for the very first time, fascinating memos to two
fascinating memos of advice to Reagan. Uh. And so Nixon
(02:24):
became an unofficial advisor to Reagan, and they became pretty
close pals as throughout the presidency. And Nixon would call
me with advice and I'd pass it along. And they
weren't palsy Wolsey, but but they they became comrades. In
in in retirement, and as they chitch had it that day,
(02:50):
it was just it was like if you were in
the forties and a meeting between the FBR and Truman.
You know, just these two great giants of American politics.
I can't imagine, you know. I came from a I
was raised on a farm Invasi, California, and I went
to public schools, and I could never imagine being the
(03:11):
pinnacle of American life like that.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
George one to ten with ten being the best. How
would you grade Richard Nixon?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Oh, it depends on what you're grading him on. If
you're grading him on a political acumen, and he was
a ten. On foreign policy he was a ten. And
sometimes in terms of judgment, maybe on judging people, sometimes
the seven or eight because he picked some of the
(03:43):
wrong people on it. You know, in terms of staff,
he failed in terms of some decisions he made, and
he admitted to that, I think, but he was really
a genius in terms of the global decisions he made,
you know, using outsetting China and Soviet Union at a
(04:06):
critical time in American foreign policy and making the big
decisions like that. He had a great foresight and by
just in the discussions we had on the making strategic
political decisions and the way we analyzed campaigns and everything
(04:27):
like that. I just find it so just fascinating, the
reach of history he had from the forties and fifties
and sixties and seventies. It was just the most fascinating
person I could ever imagine dealing with in that respect.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Would you give Ronald Reagan high marks?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Oh? Yes, I gave him high marks because he had
he had a great judgment on economics. And I'll tell
you why. Because he he understood economics from a very
common sense point of view. And that was because he, uh,
he suffered it as an individual. He came at it
(05:10):
from the time from he was because he was taxed
so much and he made a high he made a
pretty good income in the in the movie business, and
they taxed him at ninety percent. He would sit and
he would sit down and tell me how the tax
system was punishing and what where he came at it
(05:33):
was when uh, he learned through the time. He was
a spokesman for General Electric in the fifties and sixties,
and he traveled the country as a spokesman for the
General Electric Company, and he uh, you know, he wrote
all his own speeches. The crisscrossed the country talking about
(05:55):
the capital the capitalism and the fre enterprise system. And
he preached economics, and he's an economics major at Eureka College.
Especially in I want to talk about that again, promote
the book shamelessly, the chapter thirteen through of fourteen and
(06:17):
fifteen where he just talks straight economics, where he explains
his own sense of economic theory. And I give him
high marks because he brings economics down to just the
bottom basic level of trying to help people understand how
the tax system is punishing the people, regulatory the system
(06:38):
in America punishes people, and how if you just free
up people to let them be themselves and release them,
to release the energy of the human system, to release
their human potential to their highest quality, and not punish
(06:59):
them through high taxation and regulation, they can rise above themselves.
And to that extent, it's just common sense notions that
he brought to the government. I thought was just brilliant.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Did you know Henry Kissinger Ken?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
No, I never. That's the one person I never met
in government and never knew him, so I can't say
that I ever knew him.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
He died last year, one hundred years old. What a
statesman he was.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Huh, No, he was. I knew that. I knew the
people around him. I knew his staff. He had some
brilliant people around him, Winston Lord and Peter Rodman. I
knew them. Peter Rodman, who took all the notes. He
was the note taker during all the Vietnam negotiations. Of
(07:47):
hard working Henry. He beat his staff like he beat
him like mules, I'll tell you that. But when Lord
and Peter Rodman were great people on his staff, and
Brent scope Off and those fellows, I knew them all
really well, Bud McFarlane, but I never knew Henry.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Were you with Ronald Reagan when the Soviet Union started
falling apart?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I did partially at a very important time in nineteen
eighty five. I was brought in on assignment to help
him with a speech before the General Assembly, the UN
General Assembly, when he made the first slight shift in
policy towards the Soviet Union. And I helped edit a speech,
(08:38):
and I thought it was he wanted to be the
old hardline Ronald Reagan, you know, beating the brains out
of the communists like he used to be in the
old days, and so I helped write this the real
hardline speech to deliver to the UN General Assembly, and
(09:00):
they delivered it to him and we met in the
Oval office and I thought I was going to get
a nice ada boy from him, and instead I got
my real spanking, and I thought, my gosh, what happened here?
And what happened was that he all of a sudden
wanted to take a turn in policy. And he told me, Ken,
(09:23):
if we're going to have a different attitude towards the
Soviet Union and make a little change in policy, we're
going to have to soften our tone. And that was
the first change I ever saw. And only years later
did I find out. Bud McFarlane told me what happened
is that Margaret Thatcher had gotten to him, and Margaret
(09:45):
Thatcher told him, she said, you know, Ron, if you're
going to make any changes here, you've got to change
your tone. And that General Assembly speech in nineteen eighty five,
in the fall of eighty five, he first sentenced signals
to Gorbachev and and that changed when he met with
Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
What is your favorite part of the book behind closed Doors.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Oh my, that's that's that's a tough question. Probably it's
the favorite parts, I guess, or the two campaigns, because
I write in detail several chapters, the six chapters about
the nineteen eighty campaign, because I kept a recorded diary
(10:36):
into a cassette tape recorder. It's the only inside story
about the eighty campaign that I kept in a recorded diary.
And then again in the eighty four campaign, I was
one of only two people from the campaign who traveled
with them on Air Force one, and I helped with
(10:59):
those famous Morning Morning in America ads that we did,
and I helped script some of those. And then there
was a very important speech I think that's been described
as the greatest speech Reagan ever gave in Germany at
(11:19):
the bergen Belsie concentration camp. I think is probably it's
chapter twenty in the book is one that I worked
on where Reagan was that probably in his lowest spirits.
It was his first personal crisis of the presidency. And
that's probably one of my favorite chapters and one of
(11:41):
my favorite speeches I've worked on. But it's hard to
pinpoint one certain thing, but those are some of the highlights.
I would say that are favorite to me.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Was that the speech where he told Gorvaschoff to tear
down the wall.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
No, No, that wasn't No, that was still yet another speech.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
He had some good ones.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh he did. He really had some terrific speeches in
his presidency. I did work on his two convention speeches
at the GOP convention in eighty four, and then I
did his farewell convention speech in nineteen eighty eight. But
I have to tell you this, on those speeches, I
call myself a collaborator, not a speech writer. He loved
(12:29):
writing his own speeches when he had the time, and
I would give him a draft, and you know, when
the Democrats beat him up so bad, he would get
a little cranky, and so he would start editing his
speeches and then he would add to them and toughen
(12:50):
them up.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
People thought, you know, he was because Reagan was genial
and had a nice smile on his face all the time.
That everybody thought he's a softy. But you know, he
was a competitor and he could get really tough when
he wanted to. So when those speeches came at convention time,
he got feisty.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
How would you be advising former President Donald Trump these days?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, for one thing, I think he needs the shortness speeches,
which would help, and to stay on message and not meander.
I think he's doesn't help himself when he gets off message.
I think he's got I think he's got a very
(13:39):
good message. I think he speaks to There's a There
was a calumnist and political observer back in the sixties
named Joe Kraft who who came up the term the
forgotten man. And I think Trump uh tapped into that
(13:59):
when he first ran for president. He tapped into the
forgotten man. And I think Trump often speaks to the
forgotten man. I say that generically, I don't mean man,
meaning male. But I think if Trump would just keep
on that message and instead of meandering into these areas
(14:24):
where where he criticizes the Georgia governor or talks about
the size of his crowds and things like that, that
doesn't help him. And you know, I want him to win.
So my advice to him is the eighty seventy eighty
(14:47):
minute speeches don't help. And I have a theory about speeches, George,
and that is nobody ever left the church complaining about
a short sermon.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So that's so true.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So I think a shorter speeches did to stay on
message and go to the point are very important.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Did Richard Dixon get credit for the Apollo eleven moon landing.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Well, probably not sufficiently, but that was a very important
time in his presidency. You know, when he greeted him
on the hornet US. You probably remember that greeted him
on the USS hornet and that was a wonderful, great
event during his presidency. And that was just an enormous
(15:41):
occasion when they returned Neil Armstrong and and the others,
and what a fantastic event that was during his presidency.
There's a lot of other things, you know, he didn't
get credit for back in those days. And one of
the other things the release of the POWs, the Vietnam POWs,
(16:04):
which was just a constant He lost sleep over that
constantly all the time. It was just a nightmare for
him that they were over there and that he you know,
he couldn't he couldn't get them out, You couldn't end
the Warren couldn't get those POW's release. And when they
(16:26):
came home, all of them, some of them have been
out there for seven eight years and being tortured all
that time. It was just a horrible time for him.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Ken Kachigian with us. His book is Behind Closed Doors. Ken.
Is that you on the cover left of on the
on the right side of Ronald Reagan.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
Yeah, that's me with Ronald Reagan and President Nixon. We
were in a meeting in nineteen ninety when it was
when President Nixon was opening his library. You're blenda. He
asked me to accompany him to a meeting with President Reagan,
(00:34):
and it was two days before they opened the library,
and so he asked me to a company. And of
course it's a chapter twenty five in the book, and
so I call it the Lions Gathers, the name of
the chapter. And it was about a forty five minute meeting,
and I took I took very good notes, and it's
(00:57):
like a transcription of the meeting. And the two presidential
giants and political legends of the twentieth century, the last
quarter of the twentieth century met together. And first they
just chit chatted, but then they after about fifteen minutes,
they got to talking about world issues and by Gorbachev
(01:18):
and foreign policy and foreign affairs, and it was just
an amazing meeting of the two gentlemen. And you know,
there were rivals in nineteen sixty eight when Mixon thought
Reagan would run against them for president. But then they
became very close. And when we were writing the memoirs
(01:40):
in San Clemente, as I write in the book, in
the early chapters of the book, President Nixon said to me,
he said, you know, Ken, he said, we're going to
treat Reagan well, he said, because Reagan was loyal to me,
you know, loyal to me on Vietnam and Watergate. He
suck by me. And then they became very close. And
(02:01):
when I was traveling with Reagan in the eighty campaign,
Nixon used me to send secret memos to Reagan, which
I reprint in the in the appendencies of the book,
and for the very first time, fascinating memos to two
fascinating memos of advice to Reagan. Uh. And so Nixon
(02:24):
became an unofficial advisor to Reagan, and they became pretty
close pals as throughout the presidency. And Nixon would call
me with advice and I'd pass it along. And they
weren't palsy Wolsey, but but they they became comrades. In
in in retirement, and as they chitch had it that day,
(02:50):
it was just it was like if you were in
the forties and a meeting between the FBR and Truman.
You know, just these two great giants of American politics.
I can't imagine, you know. I came from a I
was raised on a farm Invasi, California, and I went
to public schools, and I could never imagine being the
(03:11):
pinnacle of American life like that.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
George one to ten with ten being the best. How
would you grade Richard Nixon?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Oh, it depends on what you're grading him on. If
you're grading him on a political acumen, and he was
a ten. On foreign policy he was a ten. And
sometimes in terms of judgment, maybe on judging people, sometimes
the seven or eight because he picked some of the
(03:43):
wrong people on it. You know, in terms of staff,
he failed in terms of some decisions he made, and
he admitted to that, I think, but he was really
a genius in terms of the global decisions he made,
you know, using outsetting China and Soviet Union at a
(04:06):
critical time in American foreign policy and making the big
decisions like that. He had a great foresight and by
just in the discussions we had on the making strategic
political decisions and the way we analyzed campaigns and everything
(04:27):
like that. I just find it so just fascinating, the
reach of history he had from the forties and fifties
and sixties and seventies. It was just the most fascinating
person I could ever imagine dealing with in that respect.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Would you give Ronald Reagan high marks?
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Oh? Yes, I gave him high marks because he had
he had a great judgment on economics. And I'll tell
you why. Because he he understood economics from a very
common sense point of view. And that was because he, uh,
he suffered it as an individual. He came at it
(05:10):
from the time from he was because he was taxed
so much and he made a high he made a
pretty good income in the in the movie business, and
they taxed him at ninety percent. He would sit and
he would sit down and tell me how the tax
system was punishing and what where he came at it
(05:33):
was when uh, he learned through the time. He was
a spokesman for General Electric in the fifties and sixties,
and he traveled the country as a spokesman for the
General Electric Company, and he uh, you know, he wrote
all his own speeches. The crisscrossed the country talking about
(05:55):
the capital the capitalism and the fre enterprise system. And
he preached economics, and he's an economics major at Eureka College.
Especially in I want to talk about that again, promote
the book shamelessly, the chapter thirteen through of fourteen and
(06:17):
fifteen where he just talks straight economics, where he explains
his own sense of economic theory. And I give him
high marks because he brings economics down to just the
bottom basic level of trying to help people understand how
the tax system is punishing the people, regulatory the system
(06:38):
in America punishes people, and how if you just free
up people to let them be themselves and release them,
to release the energy of the human system, to release
their human potential to their highest quality, and not punish
(06:59):
them through high taxation and regulation, they can rise above themselves.
And to that extent, it's just common sense notions that
he brought to the government. I thought was just brilliant.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Did you know Henry Kissinger Ken?
Speaker 3 (07:15):
No, I never. That's the one person I never met
in government and never knew him, so I can't say
that I ever knew him.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
He died last year, one hundred years old. What a
statesman he was.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
Huh, No, he was. I knew that. I knew the
people around him. I knew his staff. He had some
brilliant people around him, Winston Lord and Peter Rodman. I
knew them. Peter Rodman, who took all the notes. He
was the note taker during all the Vietnam negotiations. Of
(07:47):
hard working Henry. He beat his staff like he beat
him like mules, I'll tell you that. But when Lord
and Peter Rodman were great people on his staff, and
Brent scope Off and those fellows, I knew them all
really well, Bud McFarlane, but I never knew Henry.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Were you with Ronald Reagan when the Soviet Union started
falling apart?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
I did partially at a very important time in nineteen
eighty five. I was brought in on assignment to help
him with a speech before the General Assembly, the UN
General Assembly, when he made the first slight shift in
policy towards the Soviet Union. And I helped edit a speech,
(08:38):
and I thought it was he wanted to be the
old hardline Ronald Reagan, you know, beating the brains out
of the communists like he used to be in the
old days, and so I helped write this the real
hardline speech to deliver to the UN General Assembly, and
(09:00):
they delivered it to him and we met in the
Oval office and I thought I was going to get
a nice ada boy from him, and instead I got
my real spanking, and I thought, my gosh, what happened here?
And what happened was that he all of a sudden
wanted to take a turn in policy. And he told me, Ken,
(09:23):
if we're going to have a different attitude towards the
Soviet Union and make a little change in policy, we're
going to have to soften our tone. And that was
the first change I ever saw. And only years later
did I find out. Bud McFarlane told me what happened
is that Margaret Thatcher had gotten to him, and Margaret
(09:45):
Thatcher told him, she said, you know, Ron, if you're
going to make any changes here, you've got to change
your tone. And that General Assembly speech in nineteen eighty five,
in the fall of eighty five, he first sentenced signals
to Gorbachev and and that changed when he met with
Gorbachev at the Geneva Summit in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
What is your favorite part of the book behind closed Doors.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
Oh my, that's that's that's a tough question. Probably it's
the favorite parts, I guess, or the two campaigns, because
I write in detail several chapters, the six chapters about
the nineteen eighty campaign, because I kept a recorded diary
(10:36):
into a cassette tape recorder. It's the only inside story
about the eighty campaign that I kept in a recorded diary.
And then again in the eighty four campaign, I was
one of only two people from the campaign who traveled
with them on Air Force one, and I helped with
(10:59):
those famous Morning Morning in America ads that we did,
and I helped script some of those. And then there
was a very important speech I think that's been described
as the greatest speech Reagan ever gave in Germany at
(11:19):
the bergen Belsie concentration camp. I think is probably it's
chapter twenty in the book is one that I worked
on where Reagan was that probably in his lowest spirits.
It was his first personal crisis of the presidency. And
that's probably one of my favorite chapters and one of
(11:41):
my favorite speeches I've worked on. But it's hard to
pinpoint one certain thing, but those are some of the highlights.
I would say that are favorite to me.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Was that the speech where he told Gorvaschoff to tear
down the wall.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
No, No, that wasn't No, that was still yet another speech.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
He had some good ones.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Oh he did. He really had some terrific speeches in
his presidency. I did work on his two convention speeches
at the GOP convention in eighty four, and then I
did his farewell convention speech in nineteen eighty eight. But
I have to tell you this, on those speeches, I
call myself a collaborator, not a speech writer. He loved
(12:29):
writing his own speeches when he had the time, and
I would give him a draft, and you know, when
the Democrats beat him up so bad, he would get
a little cranky, and so he would start editing his
speeches and then he would add to them and toughen
(12:50):
them up.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
A little bit.
Speaker 3 (12:53):
People thought, you know, he was because Reagan was genial
and had a nice smile on his face all the time.
That everybody thought he's a softy. But you know, he
was a competitor and he could get really tough when
he wanted to. So when those speeches came at convention time,
he got feisty.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
How would you be advising former President Donald Trump these days?
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Well, for one thing, I think he needs the shortness speeches,
which would help, and to stay on message and not meander.
I think he's doesn't help himself when he gets off message.
I think he's got I think he's got a very
(13:39):
good message. I think he speaks to There's a There
was a calumnist and political observer back in the sixties
named Joe Kraft who who came up the term the
forgotten man. And I think Trump uh tapped into that
(13:59):
when he first ran for president. He tapped into the
forgotten man. And I think Trump often speaks to the
forgotten man. I say that generically, I don't mean man,
meaning male. But I think if Trump would just keep
on that message and instead of meandering into these areas
(14:24):
where where he criticizes the Georgia governor or talks about
the size of his crowds and things like that, that
doesn't help him. And you know, I want him to win.
So my advice to him is the eighty seventy eighty
(14:47):
minute speeches don't help. And I have a theory about speeches, George,
and that is nobody ever left the church complaining about
a short sermon.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
So that's so true.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
So I think a shorter speeches did to stay on
message and go to the point are very important.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
Did Richard Dixon get credit for the Apollo eleven moon landing.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Well, probably not sufficiently, but that was a very important
time in his presidency. You know, when he greeted him
on the hornet US. You probably remember that greeted him
on the USS hornet and that was a wonderful, great
event during his presidency. And that was just an enormous
(15:41):
occasion when they returned Neil Armstrong and and the others,
and what a fantastic event that was during his presidency.
There's a lot of other things, you know, he didn't
get credit for back in those days. And one of
the other things the release of the POWs, the Vietnam POWs,
(16:04):
which was just a constant He lost sleep over that
constantly all the time. It was just a nightmare for
him that they were over there and that he you know,
he couldn't he couldn't get them out, You couldn't end
the Warren couldn't get those POW's release. And when they
(16:26):
came home, all of them, some of them have been
out there for seven eight years and being tortured all
that time. It was just a horrible time for him.
Speaker 1 (16:38):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
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