Planned Press Curbs at Nixon Dedication Eased : Library: Bush Adminstration officials had criticized limitations on reporters at the event. A compromise is struck under pressure.

On the eve of its dedication, the Nixon Library once again became a center of controversy as Bush Administration officials Wednesday criticized limitations on press coverage imposed by the former President.

But under pressure from the White House and news organizations, library officials announced a compromise under which reporters will be able to take part in a tour of the library today that previously was open only to photographers.

Rules ordered by Ronald Walker, an aide to Richard M. Nixon--at Nixon’s request, according to Administration aides--would have allowed only photographers to be present during major portions of the dedication today of the museum and library complex in this Orange County city.

The rules would have been a sharp break from the usual coverage of White House events.

After the criticism, library officials agreed to allow media representatives to accompany Presidents Bush, Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald R. Ford on two of their four stops during a tour of the library. The media people will be permitted in the lobby of the library and around the reflecting pool outside the facility, but quarters will be too cramped for the entourage to join the Presidents in the World Leaders Room and at Nixon’s birthplace next door, a library spokesman said.

“It was a space consideration and we’ve worked out an acceptable compromise, to the best of my knowledge,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be named. “We’re dealing with a numbers situation. We’re not dealing with a cover-up.”

However, White House aides said they had originally been given a different explanation.

“They just don’t want anyone asking questions,” one White House aide said, adding that the decision--communicated to the White House over the weekend and to reporters who traveled to California with the Bush party Wednesday afternoon--came as a surprise to Administration officials.

The Nixon library project has been repeatedly embroiled in controversy. Most recently, Hugh Hewitt, the library’s executive director, told The Times that the library would bar researchers who were seen as anti-Nixon, specifically citing the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, who as a reporter helped break the Watergate story that led to Nixon’s resignation. Hewitt later backed down, saying he had spoken without consulting Nixon.

White House aides, however, said Walker, a longtime Nixon aide who is handling logistics for the library dedication, had specifically said the restriction on reporters was at the former President’s request. Nixon has a long history of feuding with the press throughout his nearly five decades in public life.

Even Nixon’s quest for historical redemption of his presidency, a powerful subtext underlying many of this week’s activities, has stirred some disagreement among the former President’s admirers gathered in Southern California for the dedication. On Tuesday, former President Reagan said history would treat his predecessor well, adding that “much of the criticism was based on nothing at all.”

But on Wednesday, former Nixon Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while agreeing that Nixon will be vindicated by history, took issue with the rest of Reagan’s comments.

“I think there were definite, huge errors,” Kissinger said. “I have always believed that he was punished much too severely . . . but I think there were huge mistakes.”

Nixon himself has been mostly invisible in the events leading up to today’s dedication. He briefly appeared with members of his family Wednesday as they arrived to tour his birthplace, but he declined to answer questions shouted from an area reserved for spectators.

As part of the ceremonies for the opening of the library, Nixon plans to lead President Bush and Ford and Reagan on a tour of the library and his boyhood home.

The tour will mark only the second time in history that so many U.S. Presidents have gathered. The last time was before the funeral of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat nine years ago.

Ordinarily, any such appearance by Bush would be covered by a pool of reporters who cover the White House--representatives of the two U.S. wire services, a newspaper reporter and a magazine reporter, one television network crew with a correspondent, a radio reporter and several photographers. Membership in the pool rotates daily among the news organizations that regularly cover the White House.

That pool format is used even during White House photo opportunities. Bush has made a rule of usually not answering questions during photo sessions, but reporters are allowed to ask them. Often, photo sessions provide the only opportunity for reporters to question the President on the events of the day.