The whole process took six years, a large chunk of my life, much longer than I expected.

He was a speaker of the House that, I think, would have gone down in history as one of 30, 40, 50 semi-anonymous speakers, had it not been for Ronald...

The New Deal, of course, began to move America away from laissez-faire in the 1930s towards a more collectivistic state, towards European-style social...

Yes.

Chris is very easy to talk to, of course. He's very garrulous. But compared to his roll now as a talk show host, the one era of his life that Chris...

Why did Jim Wright let you have--look at his diaries, and had anybody ever done that before?

When was Tip O'Neill in Congress?

How long was he speaker?

Any--he's longest in history to serve...

We've got, as you can imagine, a lot of videotape on this man, and we're going to run some of it so that people who've never seen him or forgot what...

What do you see there?

Did--did Ronald Reagan ever offer him that ambassadorship?

You have a story early in the book, in the first 200 pages, about--I guess it would be back 1950-what? A story on Channel 5...

...in Boston. It's got so much in it. It goes on for about six pages. First of all, has that story ever been told before?

First of all, when you wrote the book, where were you working?

Did you know Tip O'Neill?

Did you have any interviews about this book with him?

When did he die?

Go back to the story. I'm looking at the name Benny Choate. Is that right? Is that the way you pronounce it?

And Choate got the license, and there was a--a Federal Communications Commissions rule which said that if you had a predominant media outlet in a city,...

At that time, it was sort of a--a sleepy Democratic, Irish paper, not known for taking bold stands, not courageously liberal. You know, it was very...

1954.

This is his first term.

He gets into the act because the--the Taylors sent down a young guy named Bob Healy, who had been a reporter, gone away to war, flew something like...

He's a reporter, and he was acting sort of as a-a private detective as well. Anything that he found, he would put in the paper. So he was actually reporting....

He went to Tip because Tip was the only person that he knew in Washington, and Tip had a patronage appointment on the committee that was investigating--or...

I talked extensively to Healy and also to McLaughlin. And one of the things about doing a biography is, especially when you take as long as I did, is...

I think there'd be a huge hue and cry about it. As I s--as I said, Bob's investigation was--eventually, everything he found out was put into the paper,...

Well, the--being the dominant newspaper, plus being able to sell the advertising for this new medium, would have meant that they would have had a--a...

So the next thing that happened was that--that Schwartz and McLaughlin and the other staff members began to plug away, and they got sidetracked momentarily...

One of the things you note in the book is that, `Not all congressmen shared Rayburn's enthusiasm for a regulatory probe.' He was the speaker then, Rayburn.

`The Commerce Committee chairman, Oren Harris of Arkansas, had managed to acquire his own 25-percent interest in a television station for the sweetheart...

And who did he end up firing in this whole business?

And you quote Ben Bradlee in here. You talked to him. He said, `"This little angelic-faced Healy, he looked like a choir boy," said Bradlee. "Nobody...

In addition to this, you quote Tip O'Neill in here s-talking about getting a good, favorable story or profile out of the Boston Globe if he did this...

And at the end of this chapter, you say, `More valuable still was O'Neill's status as a sacred cow within the Globe newsroom. Quote, "He did write for...

Still do.

You also--this is just an aside because we talk a lot about the Gridiron Club dinner, and in--in your--your piece here, in your book, you--you talk...

They went through them and discovered that there had been lots of person-to-person phone calls--or several, many--between Choate and the FCC; that he...

Yeah.

Yup.

Yes. So it was--I mean--I mean, it's not as dramatic as one of the other cases where there actually were--were checks that were found being paid to...

I would hope so. I--I would think that--maybe not. I think that what--what--what happens now is rather than the Gridiron tickets, there might be a fund-raiser...

Yeah, I think that's a fair--fair assessment of the-of what happened, yeah.

No. I think that the--the feeling was that it was-it was a story that was 50 years old. And, of course, it was sort of a raffer story that's--you know,...

Then later in this letter, he says, `It's not because you were against the war. It is what you have been beyond Vietnam as speaker and as a person,'...

And that was the kind of letter I found in Tip's papers from David in Boston College, and it was just filed away with all the other papers. And what--what...

And I just thought it was a--a nice, more personal--I mean, I--I quote from the editorials and from the American Almanac of Politics when Tip left,...

(Excerpt from 3/7/84, from unidentified program)

Really?

But in your book, you keep showing, back and forth, back and forth, that people, in spite of this 6:00 rule, were unhappy with him. You quote somebody...

Terry O'Donnell worked for Gerry Ford.

`The speaker was the most partisan SOB in town'--he doesn't say `SOB' either. He--he goes on to say, `I simply cannot abide by this guy who purports...

But that being said, I think that Tip wielded his personality as a political tool, and some of the interviews I had--some of the most interesting interviews...

By the way, you quoted a lot in here, from LBJ talking about Tip O'Neill. Did you get that from the audiotapes?

We have a 17-second audiotape I want to run of LBJ talking to Carl Albert on the phone. This was back in 1964. Where would Tip O'Neill have been then?

Let's listen. It's just 17 seconds long.

You write about it.

What did Tip O'Neill do...

...on the Rules Committee when they wanted to shut down the Boston Navy Yard?

So O'Neill is determined that he's not going to be taken for granted again, and he knows that his clout--he's on the Rules Committee. And in a series...

Who--who did you talk to the most for the book?

And their names?

And what would they--what did they fill in the blanks for you? I mean, what--how good was it when you talked to the kids?

What are those four kids doing today?

Let's run some more videotape. Here's Tip O'Neill back in the '80s.

What are you hearing there?

Did he make much money in his life?

Yeah.

Did--when hi--when his career was over and--and he died in 1994, what was he worth, do you know?

Let me stumble through a--a scenario here. Wh--Tip O'Neill was known in your book as a great humanitarian and interested in little people. What is it...

I mean--you now, you hear--it's the old dichotomy here.

If you're a conservative and you don't believe in making it easier for e--people to get--you know, transfer payments, why is it you're so--you're--you're...

So the common purpose I think that--that he represent--that Roosevelt represented in--with the New Deal was essential, I think, that, you know, obviously...

No. There was a campaign biography called "Tip" that was written when he was first elected to the speaker--a campaign-style biography when he was first...

And the end of Tip's life--after Tip had died, his pare--his family gave his papers to Boston College and Boston College set up a--an office in a very...

What little techniques would you advise them to use in order to be a good congress person?

Bring them here in town?

It's amazing. The congressmen these days are--they're talking to their constituents, too, but they're saying, you know, `Can you send me $1,000. Can...

In some ways, they were typical O'Neill. He contracted colon cancer and was--when told that he would have the colostomy, was--was terror stricken and--and...

I think he just wanted--he--he--first of all, Tip was great at--at seeing where things were going. And he knew it was a time that had come. But I also...

Yeah.

I didn't put it that bluntly.

I think because it allowed--Newt saw the opportunity to use C-SPAN to appeal to a--a wider audience and to appeal in the more dramatic terms that television...

(Excerpt from 11/2/92 interview)

That was '92.

He never made it to BOOKNOTES, though. Peggy Noonan you quote several times.

Why?

Here's a quote: "He was a good working-class Irishman, but he operated from complete moral arrogance." Do you know what she meant by that?

She says that he ascribed unthinkingly to the old leftist view that he cared for the little guy and we did not, and because of that, suffered from a...

In a minute I want to show some videotape from his farewell when Sil Conte got up and gave a speech and we can see some of the players that you talk...

How did he get back in?

And what did The New York Times do in the interim?

There was a quote I--I wrote down actually from a freshman meeting--this jumps way back just--these are just Tip O'Neill stories about when he was meeting...

So again, I get back to has anything changed?

Who's Sil Conte?

And Tip O'Neill again left the--the House in what year?

Here is Sil Conte on the floor of the House in a farewell speech.

Well, Massachusetts is--even though it went for Reagan twice, is a very liberal state. And so Silvio's Republicanism was--was very, very liberal brand...

Yeah. James Michael Curley was the great rascal king of Boston, as Jack Beatty calls him in his book, who dominated Massachusetts politics for the first...

What was this experience like?

Writing the book?

At that farewell address that Sil Conte gave there, also Tip O'Neill got up and gave some remarks. And we'll be able to see some of the characters you...

You see Jack Farrell, you see Jim Wright.

Yeah. And Bob Michael and then we'll see next to him was Eddie Boland, his good friend.

I believe that's his daughters in the back row.

Yes.

Uh-huh.

Oh, Eddie's still lives.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So is Bob Michael.

Eddie's still up there in Massachusetts.

I talked to him for about an hour and a half once. A typical Massachusetts politician, liked to--kept his personal secrets close to himself. Told me...

He's got to be in his--in his 80s, if not in his 90s.

Millie. Tip's wife.

Still alive. That would have been in--invaluable. I was able to recreate some of her comments from earlier interviews, videotapes and--and audio tapes...

I don't know. I never got a--a satisfactory answer. There were--there are fragments of Tip's diaries that the family wouldn't share with me for what--for...

I think my biggest surprise was the fact that in later years in private and as he did a little bit with you on C-SPAN, that he credited his great empathy...

Yeah, the Reagan relationship was--I think it's been exaggerated both directions, that they either hated each other totally or that they--they really...

I would guess that was 1969, 1972, something like that. Sh...

Thank you, Brian.