Secret Nixon Recordings Reportedly to Be Released

More than 3,000 hours of secret tape recordings that shed light on President Richard Nixon’s policies and thoughts will be made public, the New York Times reported.

So far, only archivists have had access to the tapes, which were recorded from February 1971 to July 1973, the newspaper said Wednesday.

The first of the tapes will be made public as soon as legal details are resolved among the National Archives, the Justice Department, Nixon’s legal executors and Stanley Kutler, a historian at the University of Wisconsin who sued in 1992 to force their release, the newspaper said.

A settlement may be reached as early as next month, the newspaper said, citing court records and people close to the case.

None of the principals commented on the tapes’ release, the newspaper said.

So far, the public has had access to only 63 hours of tapes Nixon secretly recorded in his White House office, at the Old Executive Office Building next door and at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

Among them are reels that led to Nixon’s downfall, including his response to demands for hush money from suspects arrested in the Watergate break-in.

Their release also might solve mysteries surrounding subjects like Nixon’s decision to bomb Cambodia and to dismiss Sen. Bob Dole as chairman of the Republican National Committee, the newspaper said.

The new tapes to be released are “fascinating, the best record of the Nixon administration, and a godsend for historians, not only of Watergate, but domestic politics, the 1972 election, the whole area of foreign policy and diplomacy,” said Christopher Beam, a former archivist at the National Archives who spent five years transcribing some of the tapes.