Nixon Library Makeover to Add Unvarnished Truth

In an effort to gain legitimacy as an official presidential library, the privately run Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace has agreed to present exhibits that are “more strictly factual” and turn over control of more of Nixon’s papers and tapes to the National Archives.

Library officials have also promised to reschedule a controversial April symposium on the former president and the Vietnam War that they said they canceled because of low attendance. Numerous researchers protested, charging that the library was putting Nixon’s image ahead of scholarship.

The moves, pledged in a letter to the Archives from John Taylor, the library’s head, are the latest in a series of steps to blunt criticism that the facility in Yorba Linda offered only a sugar-coated view of the Nixon years.

Library officials have long sought the full respect accorded a presidential library but have operated outside the National Archives system. Nixon’s is the only presidential library not part of the system.

Despite Taylor’s promises, 16 scholars sent a letter to Congress on March 10 asking members to suspend the transfer of more than 800 hours of tape and 50,000 documents from the National Archives in Maryland to the Nixon Library.

“I have no reason to doubt the integrity of [the National Archives], I’m just distrustful of the Nixon Library,” said Rutgers University professor David Greenberg, who was among those who signed the letter.

“There has been, throughout his career, a commitment by Nixon, then by the Nixon Library, to whitewash history, to give a highly distorted view of history, sometimes at the expense of the truth,” Greenberg said.

Determining to whom Nixon’s tapes and papers belong, where they should be stored and what should be made public has been debated for decades.

The library, like Nixon, is an anomaly. It holds only Nixon’s pre- and post-presidential papers.

In 1974, Congress feared that Nixon would destroy important documents after his resignation, and ordered that the 37th president’s White House records be seized for safekeeping.

That included 46 million pages of records, 30,000 gifts and 3,700 hours of recordings -- many covertly recorded via microphones hidden in Nixon’s Oval Office desk and fireplace, in the Cabinet meeting room, in Nixon’s office in the Old Executive Office Building and at Camp David.

Until his death in 1994, Nixon had fought in court to reclaim his presidential papers, saying the materials were improperly seized. In 2000, the federal government agreed in a settlement to pay $18 million to Nixon’s estate.

But in letters between Taylor and Allen Weinstein, archivist of the United States, both sides said they were committed to bringing the Nixon Library up to National Archives standards.

“We have ... a courteous but very solid agreement,” Weinstein said. “The terms are very carefully laid out. If those terms are honored, then we will be on the road to resolving what has been a very long-term issue in this country.”

Under the agreement made this week, the National Archives and Records Administration would assume control of the library in February 2006.

The presidential materials would be transferred to Yorba Linda and ultimately released to the public, including more than 800 hours of “personal-political” materials. These include material that deals with politics but is not related to Nixon’s role as president.

The library must redesign its exhibits to conform with National Archives standards in what Taylor described as “a more strictly factual account” of the events leading to Nixon’s resignation.

The library must also develop multi-perspective events, including a replacement for the canceled April 28-29 Vietnam Conference at Whittier College.

In addition, the Library would be operated by the National Archives -- not the private foundation, Weinstein said, trying to allay the concerns of historians that Nixon’s presidency may not be fully depicted.

“National Archives staff will have the decisive voice,” Weinstein said. “We will be, in the end, the responsible party.”

That could mean a different presentation of some of the controversial events of Nixon’s presidency.

When the Yorba Linda library opened in 1990, and again in 2002 on the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, it was criticized for its copy of the so-called smoking gun tape, which showed that Nixon tried to stop the federal investigation of Watergate. The tape was heavily edited and the exhibit included explanations for why so much of it had been erased.

At the time of the opening, Nixon biographer Stephen E. Ambrose wrote that a 25-minute film on Nixon’s life was “a piece of campaign puffery that will embarrass all but the most extreme Nixon supporters and infuriate his foes.”

He also criticized what he said was the library’s one-sided treatment of the Vietnam War, and for nowhere making “any attempt to grapple with the problem of why Nixon, more so than any other politician of this century, elicited so much hatred.”

Library officials on Friday declined to comment, saying the letters speak for themselves.

After the canceled Vietnam conference, Taylor said, “We have promoted the idea of all of President Nixon’s records being combined into one collection at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, because we believe that the full picture about the president and his times resides in those records.... Let the chips fall where they may.”