More of Nixon Tapes to Be Sold to Public

More than 1,000 additional hours of Richard Nixon’s historic White House tape-recordings will be offered for sale to the public, his heirs and the National Archives announced Tuesday.

Although the so-called Watergate tapes--containing evidence of criminality--were chiefly responsible for Nixon’s resignation in August 1974, the new recordings will include much more than the scandal, officials said.

The tapes, to be offered on cassettes, will contain lengthy Cabinet Room meetings and presidential office and telephone conversations dealing with the Vietnam War, civil rights, economic problems and a host of other domestic and foreign issues.

Tuesday’s agreement moves up by nearly two years the date by which Nixon’s heirs had previously agreed to make available for sale or reproduction virtually all 2,000 hours of his taped conversations and meetings.

John H. Taylor, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace Foundation in Yorba Linda, said the family believes Nixon’s presidency will be better understood once scholars and the public learn how the pressures of the Vietnam War had affected him, and when people focus on more than just the Watergate scandal.

Easy availability of the new tapes will be a boon for researchers and historians as well as the general public, Taylor added. No longer will people have to travel to a National Archives facility in suburban Maryland to conduct firsthand research into Nixon’s presidency, he said.

“History won’t fully appreciate the immense accomplishments and equally immense pressures of President Nixon’s wartime White House, nor will it understand the way the Vietnam War and the passions it aroused colored virtually every aspect of the president’s work, until historians have a chance to study these recordings in detail,” Taylor said.

Nixon’s heirs, he said, decided to “encourage that process” by expediting public distribution of the once-secret tape-recordings. Until now, only a limited number of tapes have been available for purchase--and those for only the last 15 months.

In 1996, two years after Nixon’s death, his heirs--two daughters and their husbands--decided to loosen the former president’s once-tight grip on the recordings by making more of them accessible to the public. Under a timetable agreed upon with the Archives, which has continued to safeguard the tapes, the family dropped legal challenges that had allowed only 63 hours to be listened to and none to be reproduced or sold.

Early last year, the Archives began selling 12 1/2 hours of tapes that had been heard by federal court jurors during the Watergate criminal trials in 1974. Later, an additional 251 hours, which covered a category labeled “abuses of government,” were offered for sale.

The newest batch of tapes mainly will involve conversations between Nixon and his top aides from 1971 and 1972--before the 1972-73 Watergate scandal, officials said.

Archives spokeswoman Susan Cooper said references to private individuals and national security matters have been deleted but that most expletives are left intact, giving listeners an accurate flavor of Nixon’s private conversations.

Those interested in purchasing copies may obtain an order form and get more details by accessing the Archives’ Web site at https://https://www.nara.gov/nixon/tapes or by phoning (301) 713-6950, Cooper said.

Although pricing was still being discussed Tuesday, each 30-minute cassette was expected to be sold for about $18, with a reduction for larger purchases, she said. An outside vendor is handling distribution, with no profits accruing to the Archives or to Nixon’s foundation, Cooper added.

Nixon began his secret taping system in February 1971 and removed it in July 1973, when its existence was disclosed by former White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield in public testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee.

Nixon resisted a subpoena issued by Watergate prosecutors for specific tape-recorded conversations but eventually relinquished those tapes when the Supreme Court voted without dissent to uphold the subpoena.

After Nixon’s resignation, Congress approved the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act to take custody of all of his papers and tapes, out of concern he might destroy them. Last June, climaxing a court battle of more than two decades over control of the tapes, the government agreed to pay $18 million to the Nixon estate to settle claims over seizure of the materials.