New Nixon Papers : Mosaic of a Presidency: Bit by Bit

Historian Stanley Kutler was at a National Archives warehouse recently, searching through newly released papers from the presidency of Richard M. Nixon and finding “terrific” stuff that “explains why Nixon has been fighting so hard to keep this suppressed.”

Kutler, a University of Wisconsin professor who is writing a book called “The Age of Watergate,” was approached by news reporters, who were considerably less excited about what they were finding in the massive files.

“What have you got that’s hot?” they asked. Kutler, knowing that what was hot to him was not to them, had nothing to offer. “They’re always looking for the smoking gun, but there’s no such thing. That’s not the way things work.”

Scattered Details

What historians find so fascinating in the papers are details that may appear superfluous individually but, when taken together and examined more closely, provide new insight into the nature of Nixon’s presidency, including his highly participatory style of management and his penchant for operating as if always plunged in crisis.

And, despite controversial gaps in the information, the papers have led some scholars to revise their appraisals of Nixon’s record, particularly in domestic policy areas that have been long overshadowed by Watergate.

Debate Among Scholars

“Things work in an incremental sense. What these papers give us is an incremental sense. If you want to know how the campaign of 1972 was directed, you don’t go to one memo; you look at papers over three or four months and you see clear patterns emerging,” Kutler said. He has found, among other patterns, Nixon “perpetually campaigning” and “absolutely” on top of things.

Along with enthusiasm, the papers have generated much debate among scholars in recent months as 2.7 million documents went on public view after years of legal resistance by Nixon and 29 former aides.

Indiana University Prof. Joan Hoff-Wilson, an improbably ardent fan of Nixon, has been carrying on a bit of a feud with Kutler over how to interpret the legacy of the only U.S. President forced to resign.

Hoff-Wilson, an anti-Nixon radical at UC Berkeley in the 1960s who still has never voted for a major party’s presidential nominee, has done what she calls a “surprising turnaround” on Nixon that will be displayed in her coming book, “Nixon Without Watergate.”

She said that the Nixon papers elaborately document a series of domestic reforms, from proposed welfare legislation to civil rights initiatives, that are “making many liberals nostalgic, wishing they had some of Nixon’s legislation to kick around again. I think his domestic achievements will be longer lasting than his foreign policy successes.”

Scoffs at Portrayal

Kutler, whom Hoff-Wilson tweaks for “beating Watergate to death,” scoffs at her heroic portrayal of the six-year Nixon presidency, which ended abruptly Aug. 9, 1974.

“Anybody who goes around saying those papers show how Nixon was a great President--let me tell you something: What those papers tell us conclusively is that the central fact of his Administration was Watergate,” he said. Abuses of power “were going on long before the break-in” at Democratic headquarters ignited the scandal, he added. “To resort to Shakespeare, Watergate is a spot that will not out.”

Meanwhile, University of Maryland historian Hugh Graham, who is completing a book on the evolution of federal civil rights policy from 1960 to 1972, said he has found so much good material in the Nixon files that he has already added six chapters to the 12 he had planned.

“I thought I had the book mostly written, with the Kennedy and Johnson archives at its heart,” Graham said, “but last December the Nixon papers opened up, to the astonishment of everybody.

Chapters on Women

“They are extremely rich. I had planned no chapters on women--it was going to be exclusively about race. Now I’ve got two on women,” he said, including a description of Nixon’s backing of the proposed equal rights amendment.

“Then I have an enormous chapter on the ‘Philadelphia plan,’ ” a pioneer affirmative action program pushed through by Nixon despite virulent opposition from conservatives, Graham said. “I’m going wild.”

Dissenting from such euphoria, historian Stephen E. Ambrose said he has found the Nixon papers “terribly disappointing” largely because the former President has blocked the release of about 150,000 pages, claiming the need to protect personal privacy and privileged communications with aides.

Nixon’s objections, permitted by government regulations developed after long legal fights, could be overturned by Archives officials and the courts, but that may take years.

“I want to see memos that come up to the President--what he writes on them, what he sends down for action. That is what is generally not available,” said Ambrose, who has written biographies of Nixon and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. He is working on a second Nixon volume entitled “Nixon: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Politician.”

Despite the gaps, Hoff-Wilson thinks she has found a gold mine.

“The files show that Nixon often operated on the basis of what he considered crises,” she said. “Staff members like (domestic affairs adviser John D.) Ehrlichman played up an issue like welfare as a crisis that had to be played from an embattled mentality. We can document that for the first time: memos saying, ‘This has to be settled immediately.’

“It did get Nixon’s attention and he made good decisions, but one has the sense there was too much of an embattled mentality. It’s one thing to have a domestic reform policy and another to harass people on the enemies list by using the IRS, FBI and CIA against them. This style operated on everything: foreign policy, good domestic policy, bad domestic policy. In fact, the papers help prove that you had an Administration that was a paradox: the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very good; when she was bad, she was horrid.”

Hoff-Wilson said that the Nixon papers also demonstrate “how crucial Ehrlichman was to domestic policy, especially the civil rights stuff. From the Watergate hearings, we have the image of this fascistic, Germanic character who looks devious by his own body language, when in fact his contribution before Watergate was to manage and facilitate domestic reform activities. Everybody was filtering memos through him.”

Ehrlichman was convicted in the Watergate cover-up and Daniel Ellsberg break-in cases.

Kutler too found Nixon’s management style brilliantly illuminated by his papers.

Nixon’s two principal aides, Ehrlichman and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman--who also was convicted in the Watergate cover-up--”went in every day to talk to Nixon and kept extensive notes of what they were doing,” Kutler said. “Those notes you then see transcribed into memoranda from the President, all of which clearly indicated that Richard Nixon never subscribed to the Ronald Reagan theory of management. The man on top was on top--absolutely.”

But, in an apparent slap at Hoff-Wilson, Kutler cautioned against historians being “manipulated” by Ehrlichman’s files.

“Ehrlichman in his notes very carefully protects himself,” he said. “Fortunately, for historians, Haldeman’s notes are much more true to the mark. There’s little editorializing in them. Ehrlichman even doodled all over pages, which has a certain editorial connotation.”

Besides illustrating broad themes of the Nixon presidency, Kutler said, the papers also provide a number of juicy tidbits.

Funeral Plans

“I could tell you what Henry Kissinger would do if he got kidnaped: nothing in particular,” Kutler deadpanned. “And, in the last batch of papers, there was something about Nixon’s funeral. It was ‘funsies’--not a profound historical fact. Why shouldn’t the President of the United States prepare for his funeral? After all,” the historian exclaimed, laughing uproariously, “he spent every day in the White House preparing for his history!”

The Nixon historians contend that their portrayals of his presidency will never be complete until they get their hands on the piles of suppressed documents.

Ambrose, declaring that “in a very real sense, the (Watergate) cover-up continues,” said he has “a message I’d like to get to Nixon himself: There’s an awful lot his Administration did that he can be proud of, but we can’t tell the story until we see the record. I can’t present the positive side of the man without access to his papers. The negatives all came out in the Watergate hearings. If he were to follow the example of Eisenhower and open everything up, I think it would do wonders for the reputation of his Administration.”

Graham likewise voiced frustration at the “outrageous” gaps in the Nixon files. Notices inserted in the files identify which documents have been withheld from view by Nixon’s representatives and by Archives officials, who have removed about 90,000 pages for privacy and national security reasons.

The Maryland historian said he sometimes has been able to come up with copies of such materials from other sources and found that they were “important policy documents” whose suppression by Nixon was unwarranted.

“Nixon’s representatives have combed through the files in a way no one else has ever done,” Graham said. “It makes you squirrel around and find multiple roots. You can do it and beat yourself to death and capture most of it, but you never know what you don’t see. Nixon is sitting on that.”

R. Stan Mortenson, a Washington lawyer who has represented Nixon and former aides in the files controversy, insisted that Nixon is acting no differently from Eisenhower and former Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy and Harry S. Truman.

“They were very solicitous of the confidentiality of communications among their aides and themselves, and Nixon’s withdrawals (of papers) are in keeping with their practices,” Mortenson said. “Nixon has been very circumspect. . . . I can raise your hair on end with what the Archives thinks does not infringe privacy and should be released.”

There are still 39 million pages of Nixon papers to be processed by archivists--about half of which are expected to be of use to scholars--but they are considered less sensitive than the papers released to date.

Mortenson said that Nixon’s primary objections are focused on 4,000 hours of taped conversations in Nixon’s offices, including 80 hours reviewed by the Watergate special prosecutor. Only the 12 1/2 hours of tape used in Watergate trials are available to the public now, but archivists plan to open more in 1989.

“Nixon has fought for some 13 years to be given equal treatment” with Kennedy and Johnson, the attorney said. “Next to nothing of the Kennedy tapes has been released, and Johnson has got a 50-year ban on any access to his tapes.”

Different Law

Archives spokesman Jill Brett said that, in contrast with Nixon, nearly all of Kennedy’s tapes are subject to national security reviews, which are bogged down. She said that Johnson was able to seal his tapes for so long because his presidential materials were covered by a law different from the one governing Nixon.

As Kutler and Hoff-Wilson see it, there are larger culprits than Nixon in the matter of missing papers. Henry A. Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser and secretary of state, and Alexander M. Haig Jr., his chief of staff, donated 642,000 pages of their official papers to the Library of Congress under terms that effectively bar scholars from inspecting them for 25 years.

“If you want to see a gross manipulation of history by private monopolies on papers, Haig and Kissinger are much more guilty than Nixon at this point,” Hoff-Wilson said.