November 10, 2011 Opening

The Nixon Library’s third opening of 2011. announcement

On November 10, 2011, the Nixon Library opened formerly restricted materials from five Watergate-related transcripts of the Nixon White House tapes. These transcripts are being released in conjunction with the National Archives’ opening of the nearly three hundred page transcript of former President Richard Nixon’s grand jury testimony on June 23 and June 24, 1975. The five transcripts and the grand jury testimony can be found at www.archives.gov.

The Dictabelts

This Library is also releasing the second installment of Presidential dictabelts, which include President Nixon’s recollections of his early morning surprise visit to the Lincoln Memorial on May 9, 1970. All recorded the same day, May 13, 1970, these dictabelts provide a complex picture of the President’s feelings about the anti-war movement and civic action in the wake of the Kent State tragedy. In some he recounts his May 9 effort to reach out to student demonstrators, in others he orders the cutoff of Federal funds to universities where a majority of the faculty is against the Vietnam War, and asks that the White House quietly discourage corporate sponsorship of “the Urban coalition.”

Listen to the newly released dictabelts

Textual Records

In terms of textual holdings, the Library today released approximately 45,000 pages from the files of Kenneth Cole, who succeeded John Ehrlichman as the President’s chief domestic policy coordinator in 1973 and about 3,000 pages of formerly classified national security materials. Selections from the Cole materials concern administration policy on national health insurance, on the school lunch program, on revenue sharing and on policy toward Native Americans. Scans from the released national security materials include materials on the state of U.S. intelligence collection in July 1970, on intelligence gathering in Cambodia in 1970, on intelligence assessments of Chinese foreign policy in March 1969, and on Chile under Salvador Allende Gossens in September 1971 and on the progress of the war in Laos (Lam Son 719), as well as a 1973 memorandum of conversation with British representatives about Europe and the Cold War.

See a representative sample of these newly released documents

Oral Histories

As part of its ongoing video oral history project, the Library today released six oral histories, including those with Senator Alan Simpson, Laurence Silberman, Governor William Weld, and Watergate burglar Eugenio Rolando Martinez.

Nixon White House Tapes: Fourth Chronological Release Now Online

The Library also made available online the previously released Fourth Chronological Conversations from the Nixon White House Tapes, containing audio recorded July 1972-October 1972.

Listen online to these conversations