Nixon papers, tapes to be made public

Press, 1 March 1986, Page 10

Nixon papers, tapes to be made public

NZPA-AP Washington

The United States Government cleared the way yesterday for making public 40 million pages of Richard Nixon’s White House papers and 4000 hours of taped conversations, which have been impounded since he resigned as President on August 9, 1974. Jill Merrill, spokeswoman for the National Archives, said tapes and. documents already screened by archivists could be released unless new barriers were erected.

“We have two million pages ready to go,” she said.

And more would be systematically made public as archivists finish processing the files, weeding out materials whose release could affect national security and purely personal materials, such as recorded conversations between Mr Nixon and members of his family. When Mr Nixon re-

signed he instructed Government archivists to send his files to California, but a bill signed into law on December 19, 1974, made the records Government property and directed that they be available to public scrutiny at the earliest reasonable date, under regulations promulgated by the archives. Congress found there

was a legitimate public interest in gaining appropriate access to materials of the Nixon Presidency that are of general historical significance.

But five sets of proposed regulations were successfully challenged in court by Mr Nixon or members of his administration.

Under prodding by a lawsuit, the Office of Management and Budget gave its approval yesterday to a sixth set of regulations submitted by the archives in July last year.

A Justice Department memorandum attached to the 0.M.8.’s letter approving the regulations says Mr Nixon could still invoke Executive privilege to keep some of the documents from becoming public. Under court rulings Presidents can invoke the doctrine of Executive privilege to keep confidential some pre-decisional communications between themselves and their aides.