Nixon Library to Receive $6 Million from
Settlement over Tapes and Papers
Closing 20 years of litigation, the U.S. Justice Department has agreed to pay Richard Nixon’s estate $18 million for the tapes and presidential papers it seized when he resigned in 1974. In a statement, the Nixon estate said the chief beneficiary of the settlement will be the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, which would receive some $6 million. Most of the remainder would go to lawyers’ fees and estate taxes, with the Nixon family receiving less than one-half of one percent of the settlement.
The payment is far less than what Nixon’s estate had sought—the Associated Press reported that at one point the estate asked for $35 million plus 25 years' interest, for a total of more than $200 million—but more than the $2.2 million the government had offered to pay.
The estate said Nixon filed the lawsuit in 1980 in part as a means of ensuring that his presidential library would be adequately funded if the federal government decided not to play the role it has in other presidents’ libraries.
Posted June 19, 2000.
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