Posted November 17, 2003.

First Steps Taken toward Nixon Presidential Library

Congressional negotiators have opened the door to establishing a federally operated Richard Nixon presidential library. After Nixon left office following the Watergate scandal, his papers and tapes have been kept by the National Archives under a 1974 law enacted to prevent him from destroying the materials. The Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, is privately operated.

A provision inserted in an appropriations bill that was approved by a House-Senate conference committee November 12 sets up a process for representatives of Nixon’s estate and the Nixon library to begin talks with National Archives officials about opening a facility under the federal presidential libraries system, the Associated Press reported November 13. It rescinds the 1974 measure requiring that Nixon’s files remain in the Washington, D.C., area for safekeeping.

John Taylor, director of the private Nixon library, said in the November 13 Washington Post that the proposal is “a first step in abolishing the anomaly” of Nixon being the only president between Herbert Hoover and Bill Clinton without a government-operated library. 

Posted November 17, 2003.