Royalties Without Honor : Court decision to pay Nixon for his papers should be appealed
On July 24, 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that then-President Richard M. Nixon was required to turn over tapes he had secretly made of White House conversations about the Watergate burglary. Three days later, the House Judiciary Committee voted the first of three articles of impeachment, holding that Nixon had concealed facts about that burglary. “This concealment,” the committee said, “required perjury, destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice--all of which are crimes.”
Several Nixon aides went to jail for those crimes. Nixon himself resigned rather than face impeachment and was hastily pardoned by his successor, Gerald R. Ford.
Afterward, Nixon issued a statement that read, in part:
“No words can describe the depths of my regret and pain at the anguish my mistakes over Watergate have caused the nation and the presidency--a nation I so deeply love and an institution I so greatly respect. I know many fair-minded people believe that my motivations and action in the Watergate affair were intentionally self-serving and illegal. I now understand how my own mistakes and misjudgments have contributed to that belief and seemed to support it.”
That high-toned letter notwithstanding, it now appears, Nixon wanted cash for the papers and tapes that President Ford’s counsel, with good reason, had ordered seized for possible use by the special prosecutor. Nixon’s true feelings came to light when, in short order, he sued for compensation.
Tuesday, after almost 20 years of litigation, Nixon won in court, but the decision--that he must be paid for his papers--should be appealed. His papers, which have been housed in the National Archives, are worth many millions, but in obscenely large measure, it is crime that has made them so.
The papers of all presidents leaving office after 1978 are officially public property. Nixon, who left office in 1974, had been “grandfathered in” under the old law, but his case is clearly unique. No doubt he will have the good grace not to wish to cash in on his legal victory.
