Direction of Nixon Library Debated

At the entrance to the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, a sign announcing that the building is available for “special events, including weddings” lets visitors know this presidential library is like no other.

The Yorba Linda institution is the only one of America’s 11 presidential libraries that does not take taxpayer money. It’s also the only one that isn’t home to its president’s White House papers.

When the sandstone library opened in 1990, its curators boasted the library was as much about tourism as scholarship--and the last 12 years have essentially proved them right.

The battle now brewing between Nixon’s two daughters over control of an $18-million bequest to the Nixon Foundation could help determine whether it remains largely a museum and tourist attraction or becomes the more serious academic clearinghouse on the Nixon presidency that scholars have longed for.

The bequest was made four years ago by a longtime Nixon friend, the late Charles “Bebe” Rebozo. Julie Nixon Eisenhower wants the funds to be controlled by the foundation’s board of directors, saying it’s the most professional way to manage the money. Tricia Nixon Cox wants a three-person committee made up of the sisters and Nixon friend Robert Abplanalp to oversee the foundation’s gift, as she says Rebozo’s will instructs.

The library is in the midst of a $10-million expansion, though its main goal is not about boosting Nixon scholarship. The centerpiece of the project is a replica of the White House East Room--home of Tricia Cox’s wedding reception--part of a banquet facility that would host bar mitzvahs, weddings and special events.

Many historians hope the Rebozo bequest will help the library to reach for more ambitious academic goals and finally pave the way for Nixon’s White House papers to be transferred from the National Archives outside Washington to Yorba Linda.

“Right now, it’s a hollow library,” said Richard Reeves, author of the recent bestseller “President Nixon: A Man Alone.” “They’ve got to decide whether it’s going to be a presidential library or a roadside museum.”

Officials haven’t determined how they would spend the Rebozo money once the court battle between the sisters is resolved. The library foundation took the issue to court in California and Florida, hoping to break what they described as a hopeless stalemate that threatened to deprive the library of the bequest.

Library officials--including the sisters--hope the money can help create what has always been their long-term goal: creating the premier research facility not just for the Nixon presidency but for the post-World War II and Vietnam eras as well.

“We hope it can become the preeminent center for the study of the Cold War,” library director John Taylor said.

Taylor said the Nixon library already houses a “gem of a collection” of Nixon’s personal and political papers from his years before his ascent to the presidency, and also the two decades after he left office.

Still, without Nixon’s voluminous collection of White House papers and material--which included everything from the infamous Oval Office tapes exposed in the Watergate scandal to the details of his historic visit to China--the Nixon library can never live up to the collections in other presidential libraries, he said.

The library’s difficulties in getting the presidential papers are rooted in the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon from office.

Shortly after Nixon’s resignation in 1974, Congress decreed that the General Services Administration, the parent agency of the National Archives, should seize all his White House recordings and papers to guarantee that Nixon would not destroy them.

The Nixon collection is now held in the National Archives annex in College Park, Md.

Until he died in 1994, Nixon fought bitterly to reclaim his presidential papers, and in 2000 the federal government agreed to pay $18million to Nixon’s estate to settle claims that those materials were improperly seized.

During settlement discussions, attorneys for the Nixon estate and officials from the National Archives tried to hammer out an accord that would have created a taxpayer-funded home for the papers in Yorba Linda. Those talks broke down, however, and have yet to be revived.

Moving the collection to Yorba Linda remains a priority for the library, Taylor said. However, both he and officials at the National Archives doubt that will happen soon.

“There are no discussions currently between the National Archives and the Nixon Library, and we don’t anticipate any,” said Susan Cooper, spokeswoman for the federal agency.

Moving the collection would be expensive, because a new library would have to be built and a staff of federal archivists would have to be hired to maintain the papers. Traditionally, construction of the library buildings is privately funded.

The other presidential museums are meccas for academics and authors who depend on the collections to examine the inner workings of the White House and examine events that helped to shape the nation.

While other presidential libraries have museums honoring their namesakes, those institutions also house federally controlled collections in their archives that provide unvarnished evidence of a president’s time in office.

“Our library is a library and museum. Really, the Nixon library is just a museum,” said Betty Sue Flowers, director of Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas. “It makes a difference when a museum is housed alongside records of history, and scholars are [roaming] around. It sort of keeps you honest.”

Without the Nixon presidential papers, some historians and scholars say, the collection at the Yorba Linda library is of little use to them. And even library supporters say the absence of presidential papers is glaring. Nixon biographer Irv Gellman, whose book “The Contender” chronicled Nixon’s early years in politics, said the Yorba Linda library is a gold mine for documents about Nixon’s pre-White House years. Still, Gellman believes the library’s never-ending effort to raise money taints what should be a prestigious institution of scholarship.

“I was in there one time, where they had a travel show in the main lobby of the library,” Gellman said. “It all pays to run the place, but do you need to have a travel show? How does a travel show help the legacy of the 37th president of the United States?”

Private Events Help Library Raise Money

With its terrazzo-tiled floors, sculpted rose gardens and breezy, California-style architecture, the Nixon library hosts hundreds of private events every year at rates that range from $500 for nonprofit organizations to more than $3,000 for corporations, Taylor said.

The library hosts dozens of weddings a year, and an almost equal number of high school proms. In all, those private events bring in almost half a million dollars a year.

The Nixon Foundation’s endowment is close to $13 million, which in most years provides a steady investment income.

Each year, the foundation’s bylaws allow it to use 5% of the endowment for operating expenses, which means the library must continually scramble to raise money.

Library officials make no apologies for the types of exhibits at the museum or the use of fund-raisers, saying they help draw people who otherwise would never visit a presidential library. The facility also hosts scores of policy lectures with big-name politicians including former presidential candidate Steve Forbes and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.).

The Nixon Foundation also runs the Nixon Center in Washington, a premier foreign policy think tank known worldwide, Taylor said.

The rift created by the Rebozo bequest has revealed years of infighting at the library, exposing deeply seated quarrels on the foundation’s 24-member board of directors, which includes Nixon’s daughters as well as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and former Gov. Pete Wilson.

Kenneth L. Khachigian, board member and former Nixon aide, said board members are often kept in the dark about spending and other policy decisions, which he said are left to a “secretive” executive committee guided by Taylor.

The full board meets just once a year to decide budget and administrative matters, with many out-of-town members attending via telephone conference call.

Even then, some notable members are no-shows, mostly because they are scattered across the globe dealing with pressing diplomatic matters, said Robert F. Ellsworth, a board member who served as Nixon’s ambassador to NATO.

Taylor maintains that the board’s oversight is very intense, and that every dollar spent and investment made is reviewed by members of the board’s executive committee, as well as its separate investment and budget, and audit and finance committees.

The foundation’s treasurer comes to Yorba Linda every Friday to sign the foundation’s checks, Taylor said.

“It’s exactly how a nonprofit foundation should function,” Taylor said.

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Times staff writers John J. Goldman in New York and Stuart Pfeifer and Scott Martelle in Orange County contributed to this report.