How Hard Is the Job of Nixon Archivists? You Decide.

When the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) accepted the Nixon Library and Museum into its system of Presidential Libraries on July 11, 2007, its officials were all smiles. Library director Timothy Naftali explained that “tribal squabbles” were behind them. But while Richard Nixon was alive and his records still held by NARA’s Nixon Project in the Washington, DC area, his lawyers fought the Archives over which records were personal and which were official.

At the end of this essay, you’ll have a chance to vote on the status of a memorandum Nixon once wrote in the White House to his chief of staff. Is it personal or governmental? (Knowing HNN, I need not worry that you'll be reluctant to weigh in on the status of an historical document.)

In 1985, Nixon’s lawyers went to the Department of Justice (DOJ) to talk about his historical records. Meeting notes showed some discussion of how the Kennedy Presidential Library supposedly was releasing “most favorable” information. DOJ subsequently directed the National Archives to accept without discretion Nixon’s objections to the release of records. Courts quickly nullified DOJ’s directive.

While representing Stanley Kutler in a lawsuit, Public Citizen discovered in 1992 what later happened with Watergate tapes. “Rather than filing formal objections in accordance with the Archives' regulations, which would be a matter of public record, Nixon brought 70 items from the tapes subpoenaed by the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (and vetted by Judge Sirica for privacy and other reasons) to the attention of senior Archives' staff.”

Nixon’s lawyers seemed puzzled that we archivists expressed ethical concerns about making cuts from Nixon – without public notice -- to the Special Prosecutor tapes. Placed under oath, I explained to the lawyers, “As far as I know, no federal employee likes to lie.”

We never will know for sure how well the new Nixon Library at Yorba Linda fits into the National Archives. At some Libraries, processing and opening records seems to work smoothly. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, believed most Presidential records should be opened, and the sooner the better. But, as with all executive branch entities, outsiders have little means to assess knowledgeably the conditions at the Nixon or any other Presidential Library.

Former U.S. Archivist Robert Warner once told me that "The Archives faces enormous political pressure but never admits that it does." Whether they deal with stand-up guys or bullies, archivists face them alone.

To the reported dismay of NARA’s Inspector General (IG), Archives officials did not turn to him or call the FBI after an apparent theft in 2003. Instead, they tried themselves to retrieve records removed by Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger.

It was not the only recent loss of a file. As the Senate prepared to hold hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to be Chief Justice, White House lawyers in 2005 screened files at NARA’s Reagan Presidential Library. They were left alone with documents at the Library because, as Berger also had said, they needed privacy while making phone calls. Soon, thereafter, archivists discovered that a Roberts file about affirmative action was missing. The IG was unable to establish whether the affirmative action file had been removed from the Library or merely misfiled by NARA staff.

Some power players accept disclosures from their records. As I explained in an earlier essay posted here, when I met H. R. Haldeman in 1987, I respected his intelligence, introspection and courage in facing his past.

NARA’s interactions with Nixon were not as smooth. In 1987, he contested as private or privileged some White House documents that NARA planned to open. His attorneys sought the return of thousands of records from NARA to the former President. One lawyer told the press, “I can raise your hair on end with what the Archives thinks does not infringe privacy and should be released."

We briefly described all the Nixon-contested items on public forms, a process NARA never used again. It now is impossible to tell the extent to which representatives of Nixon’s estate (or former Presidents or their representatives at other Libraries) may have questioned or blocked what NARA planned to open.

After Nixon died in 1994, the Archives released many of the documents that Nixon blocked in 1987. (There was no legal reason not to do so while he still was alive.) Some covered Watergate, others Vietnam. Although NARA overruled many of Nixon’s objections, it returned some documents to Nixon’s representatives as “personal.”

With the opening of the Nixon Library in California, some “personal-returnable” records returned to him by NARA have been released under a deed of gift from the Nixon family. The decision reflects well on Nixon’s daughters. But it also provides a glimpse into the difficult choices the federal archivists had to make during the 1980s.

Think you could easily make the right decision on whether to keep a record in government custody or remove it from the Archives and give it back to a former President? Try for yourself. Read the December 4, 1970 memorandum from Nixon by clicking here.

Then pretend you are one of the archivists who once worked with me at the National Archives during the 1980s -- and vote below. To keep the focus nonpartisan, as it is supposed to be within NARA, let’s create a composite figure from Republican and Democratic past Presidents (Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Bill Clinton, and Richard Nixon). Focus on content only and read the document as if it were written by “Ronald Baines Clixon.”

How would you classify the December 4, 1970 memo? (If you wish, you first may look at a couple of paragraphs about NARA’s statutes and regulations in a brief description here.)

Here are your voting options.

1) document is purely personal or solely political and has no connection to a President's constitutional or statutory duties. It should be returned to him or his family. It then legally may be destroyed by them, filed away or deeded back to NARA, as personal property.

(2) document offers some personal observations and mentions politics and voters but relates to Presidential duties and is inherently governmental. It should be retained in NARA custody. You may consider restricting all or some portions for privacy, either the President’s or that of third parties, while the people still are alive;

(3) document is governmental, relates to Presidential duties, and should be released during the President's lifetime.

All such options were open to NARA in 1987, when its archivists decided what to open, what to restrict and what to mark for return to Nixon.

Vote by posting a comment below on the discussion boards.