Release of Nixon Tapes

In view of the indispensable role the Nixon family and estate took in bringing about a schedule for the release of Nixon White House tapes, the vituperative tone of your editorial on the subject was in poor taste indeed (April 16). You also misinformed your readers about the central issue in President Nixon’s long-standing dispute with the National Archives.

You fail to inform your readers that several other presidents taped conversations secretly too. Now that the Nixon family has paved the way for a massive and unprecedented release of such recordings, did it occur to you to ask about the status of the unreleased secret tapes housed at other presidential libraries?

You also assert that “the tapes are likely to reveal much that is ugly and demeaning.” Is The Times engaged in reporting here or wishful thinking?

You misconstrue the privacy issue that President Nixon and his heirs were asserting. The Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that tape segments containing conversations of a strictly family or personal nature should be returned to the former president. For all these years, the National Archives refused. Had archivists promptly fulfilled their court-ordered obligation, releases of tapes could have begun long ago. The privacy rights of President Nixon and his family are so clear-cut that even Public Citizen--the Washington advocacy group co-founded by Ralph Nader that served as counsel for the plaintiff in the lawsuit that has just been settled--has offered to file a brief supporting the Nixon estate’s position against the National Archives.

As President Nixon’s co-executor and longtime aide, I know from many conversations with him that his principal motive for litigating this matter was the Archive’s unfathomable intransigence on the private conversations. Rather than continue to battle over this point, which they could have done indefinitely, Tricia Nixon Cox and Julie Nixon Eisenhower set aside their family’s privacy rights so this release could go forward.

JOHN H. TAYLOR, Director

Nixon Library and Birthplace

Yorba Linda