Nixon Tapes

The June 10 letter by Cal State Fullerton’s Arthur Hansen was written with all the chest-thumping certitude of his profession. It was also grossly misleading. As any scholar with even a passing understanding of the history of the materials of the Nixon White House knows, it was Congress, not President Nixon, who changed the rules of ownership of those materials--so egregiously that the courts finally ruled in 1992 that he was as entitled to compensation as a property owner whose land is seized for a freeway right of way.

If the President had, as the professor writes, a “lamentable penchant for confounding public with private property,” it was one he shared with every President from George Washington to Lyndon Johnson. Prof. Hansen knows this, of course. But a good cheap shot is hard to resist, is it not?

JOHN H. TAYLOR, Director

Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace

Yorba Linda