ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 13, 1996 TAG: 9604150055
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Richard Nixon's estate gave up a 21-year fight to keep his White House tapes secret Friday, agreeing to the release of all but the most private of 3,700 hours of recordings.
The tapes promise new insights into the former president's struggle to stave off impeachment for the crimes of Watergate.
From Aug. 9, 1974, the day he resigned, until he died April 22, 1994, Nixon battled in the courts so diligently that only 63 hours were made available for public hearing. About half of those were played for the jury at the cover-up trial that sent three of Nixon's top lieutenants to prison.
The taping system worked silently. Secretly and automatically, every sound made - the rattle of coffee cups, lawn mowers outside - was picked up by hidden microphones in three White House offices used by the president.
Nixon's daughters, Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox, supported the decision to give up their father's fight.
The tapes will not become fodder for radio or television, at least not until the 21st century.
But by this November, visitors to the National Archives will be able to put on earphones and listen to Nixon and his aides plot what officials say were ``abuses of governmental power.'' Except for archivists, no one has ever heard the tapes.
The first release will cover 201 hours.
Bickering to the end, the four parties in a federal lawsuit delayed a news conference for half an hour Friday as they argued the wording of a news release announcing the agreement.
``I think we won a great victory today,'' said Stanley I. Kutler, a University of Wisconsin historian who sued the National Archives and executors of the Nixon estate.
``Richard Nixon could have lived another 100 years, and Richard Nixon would have fought to his dying breath the release of any of this material,'' Kutler said.
John H. Taylor, director of the Nixon Library and Birthplace and co-executor of the estate, said the Nixon daughters took the lead in the decision.
``Not only because they believe in disclosure,'' Taylor said, ``but also [because] historians will be apt to conclude that the achievements far outweigh the tragedy.''
Among 2,700 hours of nonprivate, non-Watergate conversations will be discussions of momentous events of the Nixon years. Historians will have a feast: peace talks with North Vietnam, detente with the Soviet Union, resumption of relations with China.
Taylor, Nixon's post-resignation assistant for years, said Nixon's fight was to protect not the secrets of Watergate but to the privacy of his conversations. ``He realized he had already lost that (Watergate) battle after all,'' Taylor said.
The agreement is filled with legal details that could further delay the release. Nixon's attorneys retain the right to object to the release of some material, but they pledged to let a panel of archivists instead of the courts mediate disputes over recordings covering abuse of power.
The second release, expected no later than April 1998, is of tapes made of Nixon in the White House cabinet room. The 278 hours will undergo possible deletions for national security and other exceptions laid down in a 1974 law. The remaining 2,338 hours will then be made public in five segments over the next several years.
LENGTH: Medium: 68 linesby CNB