Petition to Suspend the Transfer of the Nixon Papers to the Nixon Library

At noon on March 10 the following petition, posted on the website of the National Security Archive, was faxed to members of Congress. The petition was presented in response to the Nixon Library's abrupt decision to cancel a long-scheduled April conference on Nixon and Vietnam. As reported on HNN last week, this was the first conference at the Library that was to have featured a broad spectrum of Nixon critics. The Library told the participants it cancelled the conference because only seven people had signed up for tickets.

The National Security Archive website features a page where readers can add their names to the petition.

TO: Members of the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives
Committees on Appropriations, Government Affairs, and Government Reform

We are writing to request that Congress suspend the proposed transfer of the Nixon Presidential Materials from their present location at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, to the Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California.

The Nixon Library, working in an unprecedented partnership with Whittier College, had invited the undersigned to participate in a scholarly conference scheduled for April 28 and 29, 2005 on the subject of "Richard Nixon as Commander-in-Chief: The History of Nixon and Vietnam." Last week, the Nixon Library abruptly cancelled the conference, claiming insufficient advance ticket sales. The excuse rings hollow, coming as it does eight weeks before the event, and in the wake of months of attempts by the Library to turn the conference from a scholarly discussion into a celebrity show.

The unprofessional behavior of the Nixon Library leadership calls into question that institution's fitness to join the Presidential Library system. The Nixon Library evidently feels free to toss aside, at its own convenience, its commitments to Whittier College and to the conference participants. A similarly cavalier attitude toward the commitments that the Library has made to the National Archives and to the Congress, in order to gain public funding for the transfer, would seriously jeopardize public access to and long-term preservation of invaluable historical records.

The Nixon Library is asking the taxpayers to provide $3 million to underwrite the transfer, and millions more to build a new wing to hold the materials. This amount is in addition to the $18 million already paid by the taxpayers to the Nixon estate in compensation for the Congressional action in 1974 that saved the Nixon tapes and papers from the destruction contemplated in President Nixon's original agreement with the General Services Administration. No other presidential library has received federal funding to build its facility, which is prohibited by the Presidential Libraries Act.

President Bush did not include the $3 million downpayment on the transfer in his proposed budget, and we applaud that fiscally responsible decision. Since the Nixon tapes and presidential files already are in the professional hands of the National Archives at College Park, there would be no apparent gain for openness from moving the materials to California. In fact, the transfer would inevitably create periods of time when the materials are in transit and therefore inaccessible. More importantly, the transfer will absorb thousands of hours of archivists' time - as well as millions of scarce dollars - that would be better spent reviewing and opening the files not yet accessioned. The proposed $3 million transfer payment is greater than the annual budget of the entire Nixon Presidential Materials Project today (about $2 million).

The primary argument in favor of the transfer is that it might lead to a unitary collection combining the materials already destined for Yorba Linda from President Nixon's career before and after the White House, together with the presidential materials now at College Park. This would re-unite the sections of the tapes (over 800 hours from a total of over 3200 hours) and the presidential papers (more than 50,000 documents) that have been designated for removal and return to the Nixon estate because of their personal or political content. The latter are especially important for scholars to understand the interaction of policy with politics. However, neither the 2003 amendments that authorized the transfer, nor any other communications on the public record, feature a legally binding commitment by the Nixon estate or the Nixon Library & Birthplace for such a unified collection in the control of the National Archives and governed by public access laws.

We recommend first, that Congress should suspend any action to appropriate funds in support of the Nixon Library transfer. Second, Congress should hold oversight hearings on the National Archives' arrangements with the Nixon Library. Third, Congress should enact a statutory requirement for an independent review board at each of the existing and future Presidential Libraries, on the model of the State Department's Historical Advisory Committee, which works to ensure the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the Foreign Relations of the United States series.

Sincerely,

Larry Berman, Professor, University of California, Davis, and Director of the University of California Washington Center
Thomas Blanton, Director, National Security Archive, George Washington University
Carolyn Eisenberg, Professor of History, Hofstra University
David Farber, Professor of History, Temple University
David Greenberg, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Media Studies, Rutgers University, "History Lesson" Columnist for Slate
Jussi Hanhimaki, Professor of International History and Politics, Graduate Institute of International Studies (Geneva)
George C. Herring, Professor of History, University of Kentucky
Ken Hughes, Miller Center of Public Affairs, University of Virginia
Jeffrey P. Kimball, Professor of History, Miami University, Ohio
Stanley Kutler, Professor Emeritus of History and Law, University of Wisconsin
Fredrik Logevall, Professor of History, Cornell University
Laura McEnaney, Associate Professor of History, Whittier College
John Prados, Senior Fellow, National Security Archive, George Washington University
Thomas A. Schwartz, Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
Robert D. Schulzinger, Professor of History and Director, International Affairs Program, University of Colorado; Editor-in-Chief, Diplomatic History
Melvin Small, Distinguished Professor of History, Wayne State University