File Under Statue of Limitations

--The latest release of 550,000 pages of former President Richard M. Nixon’s White House papers finally brought to light a high-level plot to kidnap--of all people--Nathan Hale. In a September, 1972, memo, Nixon aide John D. Ehrlichman wrote that the Justice Department statue of Hale, the American Revolutionary hero who was hanged by the British for spying, would be more at home at the CIA. Ehrlichman wrote: “The Agency Operations Division point out that a clandestine removal is entirely feasible and is now temporarily planned for the dark of the moon during the month of March. Workmen will be disguised as paperboys, Department of Commerce secretaries headed home after working overtime, GSA trash removal men and tourists. The actual removal is planned via a 3-ton truck disguised as a wholesale bread delivery van.” To avoid having the Park Police fire on agency workmen, Ehrlichman suggested issuing the police blank rounds for the day. However, the Ehrlichman tongue-in-cheek memo notwithstanding, Nathan Hale still stands as a sentinel outside the Justice Department.

--In keeping with his obsession with privacy, Alexander I. Solzhenitsyn on Sunday celebrated his 70th birthday at his 50-acre Cavendish, Vt., estate with a private family party. His wife, Natalia, would not disclose any other details about how the exiled Soviet author spent the day. Solzhenitsyn, a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, is said to be working on a major work about the Russian Revolution. Recently, Soviet authorities reaffirmed their decision not to publish his books, despite the glasnost of Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Solzhenitsyn, whose epic novel, “Gulag Archipelago,” describes the Stalin-era labor camps, has vowed never to return to the Soviet Union until all of his works are published there.

--A funny thing happened to President-elect George Bush’s plans to hunt quail at a Texas ranch. When a Secret Service official phoned the hotels in Beeville, Tex., and asked for 60 rooms for Bush’s three-day outing at his friend’s Lazy F Ranch, he was told--in not so many words--that there was no room at the inns. “I just had to say I was sorry,” said Evelyn Bloys, manager of the Best Western Drummers Inn. Newsmen, anxious to cover the historic event, had reserved most of the 88 hotel rooms in the community. Floyd Lee of the Secret Service office in Corpus Christi said “we’ll just have to go to other cities” for rooms. Bush is expected to arrive in Texas Dec. 26.