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Journalism of Courage
Richard Nixon’s daughters have joined former president Gerald R. Ford in a new push to bring his White House papers, including the infamous Watergate tapes that led to his political downfall, to his presidential library in Yorba Linda, California.
Getting the documents would give the library — which is sometimes mocked for its pro-Nixon tilt — more credibility in academia. It is the only privately run presidential library in the country and the only one that does not possess the presidential papers of its namesake. The other 10 libraries receive Federal funding and have Federal archivists who maintain the papers.
Plans to move the archives to the Nixon compound have been discussed sporadically for decades. But earlier efforts were derailed by a bitter court fight over the custody of the presidential papers, which Congress seized in 1974 to keep the disgraced ex-president from destroying them.
With the controversy long settled, Nixon’s daughters would like to see their father’s White House records moved from a government facility in Maryland to a proposed new presidential library in Yorba Linda, on the site of what is now a privately-run Richard Nixon Library and birthplace. The nine acre site in Orange County is the home to a museum and a collection of Nixon’s pre-and post-presidential papers.
Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Nixon’s youngest daughter, in an interview on CNN’s ‘‘Larry King Live,’’ said Ford has pledged his support to correct what he considers Nixon’s unfair treatment. (LATWP)
