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More Nixon Tapes to be Offered for Public
Review By Terron Hampton
Special to Maryland Newsline
Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2001
National Archives II in College Park will soon be releasing more of the previously confidential
recordings
from Richard Nixon's White House--adding to a collection of tapes and
documents from an administration tied to a break-in at the Democratic
National Committee headquarters in Washington.
That June 1972 break-in at the Watergate office
complex ultimately led to Nixon's resignation as
president in August 1974.
John Powers, the National Archives' expert on the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, said there are 40 million pages of documents and 3,700 hours
of tapes from the Nixon administration, making it the third most-documented
presidency behind Bill Clinton's and Ronald Reagan's. So far, 1,284 hours,
or about one-third of the tapes, have been declassified by the National
Archives, with 495 more hours to be made available by February, Powers said during a recent
talk at the University of Maryland.
Powers played 10 of the Nixon recordings, including the infamous "smoking gun" conversation,
in which the president conspired to have the CIA tell the FBI to halt its Watergate
investigation. "It would be very detrimental to have this
thing go any further," Nixon told his chief of staff, H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, during a
conversation recorded June 23, 1972.
Powers also played a July 1, 1971, conversation between Nixon, Haldeman
and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, about a plot to break into
the Brookings Institution.
"You, the listener, are a fly on the wall as history is being made," Powers
said of the voice-automated taping system that Nixon and some of his predecessors
dating to Herbert Hoover used.
Senior biochemistry major Larry Edelman said listening to the tapes Powers
played "kind of changes [my] opinion of the president"--and not for the better. Edelman said he
was shocked by the vulgar language used by Nixon.
The sound on many of the tapes is muffled, which could make them
potentially difficult for some listeners to understand.
But, Powers said, "It is our hope that there is a lot of new technology that
will become available" that will help the National Archives further enhance the sound quality
of the recordings.
Powers said many documents that were previously available only to government officials now are available to the public, including 384,000
declassified National Security Council files – including those dealing with
the secret bombing of Cambodia in the 1960s – and 7 million pages of general Nixon administration files.
Until the early 1990s, only about 60 hours of audio on the Nixon administration were available to the public. In 1994, Nixon gained a court order
prohibiting the release of any more of the tapes. But an agreement was reached in 1996 that allowed for the release of
most of the rest of the recordings.
At the end of 1996, 201 more hours of the recordings were released, followed by 158 more hours over the next two years. Then in 1999 and 2000, 865 more hours
were released, to bring the public collection to its current total.
Less than 5 percent of the recordings will be withheld from the public because of a potential threat to national security,
Powers said.
The National
Archives is hoping to have all releasable recordings available by 2003,
he said.
Those who wish to listen to the tapes at National Archives II must fill out a
researcher's card in the Consulting Office. Audio and visual aides are available to help researchers.
Special report graphics and links by Reginald Hart
Copyright ©
2002 University of Maryland College of
Journalism
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