The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is pleased to announce that on Sept 14, 2020 and Dec 10, 2020, the National Declassification Center (NDC), in coordination with the Nixon Presidential Library, re-released a total of 22 Nixon White House Tapes. These re-released tapes include formerly redacted audio withheld during the process of chronological review and recently re-reviewed and processed digitally. These audio recordings are from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum and are fully available online on the Library’s website.
The 22 tapes include 797 conversations and 114 hours, 1 minute, and 14 seconds of audio. Recordings are from the White House Telephone, Cabinet Room, Executive Office Building, Oval Office, and Camp David room recordings. These tapes span the dates April 7, 1971 to March 22, 1973. The NDC re-released seven tapes in September (032, 529, 549, 622, 623, 624, 639) and fifteen in December (044, 068, 233, 246, 267, 268, 272, 283, 285, 303, 498, 630, 631, 660, 690).
New topics from the 22 tapes include: India-Pakistan; the Soviet Union’s relationship with India and Pakistan; Spiro Agnew and his role as Vice President; assorted topics on the 1972 election including primaries, electoral strategies, the President’s campaign, Senate campaigns, and Democratic candidates; the United Nations and Taiwan; the public activities of the First Family; US-Canadian relations; Indira Gandhi; Vietnam troop withdrawals; US-German relations, and the President’s trip to China.
Select participants from both the September 2020 and December 2020 tapes include: President Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Rose Mary Woods, William Rogers, Pierre Trudeau, Armistead Selden Jr, George Shultz, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, John Connally, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Nawabzada Am Raza, Francis Sargent, William Waller, Joseph S. Farland, and Spiro Agnew.
These Tapes continue the National Archives and Records Administration’s comprehensive digital preservation and access project for the entirety of the Nixon Tapes. NDC staff, working from a complete digital preservation copy completed in 2018, worked with equity agencies to review classified content. NDC archival staff also re-reviewed other withheld content under the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act and the 2007 deed of gift with the Nixon Foundation. Throughout the re-review and digital processing, the NDC works in coordination with the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum–part of the Presidential Libraries system–and custodian of the records. For questions related to these and all Nixon Tapes, please contact the Nixon Library at 714-983-9210 or nixonreference@nara.gov.
Congratulations on this excellent work!