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US government to pay for “Watergate” evidences |
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June 14, 2000
WASHINGTON (AP) - After 20 years of hotly contested litigation, the government has agreed to pay Richard Nixon's estate dlrs 18 million for his presidential papers and reel after reel - 3,700 hours worth - of secretly recorded tape it seized when he resigned in 1974. "This is a fair resolution for the American taxpayer," David Ogden, acting assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's civil division, said after the settlement was signed Monday.
The amount was far more than the government's offer, but far less than what the estate had sought. Government lawyers argued against paying anything, but said if compensation must be made, it should be no more than dlrs 2.2 million. The Nixon camp estimated the fair market value of the materials at up to dlrs 35 million. Tacking on 25 years of interest brought the asking price to more than dlrs 200 million. "I think that it's pretty clear the government won," said John Dean, the Nixon White House counsel who testified in 1973 about the Watergate scandal - burglaries, wiretapping, violations of campaign finance laws and attempts to use government agencies to harm political opponents that forced his one-time boss out of office. "It sounds to me like they got about what the government thought was a fair shake for the deal." In a settlement, neither side wins, said Scott Nelson, one attorney for the Nixon estate. "My understanding is that this particular number was close to the top of what the government considered fair, and close to the bottom of what we considered fair, but we both considered it fair," he said. The case began in 1980. After Nixon resigned, Congress passed a law confiscating his materials. Six years later, Nixon sued for compensation. The estate took up the lawsuit after Nixon died April 22, 1994. Initially, a court ruled that Nixon was entitled to nothing. But in 1992 a federal appeals court ruled that he was entitled to be paid the fair value of the seized materials. A second trial, heard by U.S. District Judge John Garrett Penn, was conducted to set a figure.
For five months, the judge heard conflicting evidence from historians, archivists and appraisers about the value of the papers and tapes - some so scatchy that barely a word was audible.
To underscore the material's historical value, an attorney for the estate replayed a video of Nixon making his resignation speech. The teary-eyed president's words to the nation on Aug. 8, 1974, broke the silence in the courtroom: "I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is complete is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. ... Therefore I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow."
Drafts and the final version Nixon read from would have sold for dlrs 200,000 to dlrs 300,000, according to appraisers hired by the estate. They valued Nixon's tape recordings at dlrs 12 million and priced papers on which the president scribbled his personal goals at dlrs 20,000. Even tapes containing Nixon's embarrassing ethnic slurs would have been valuable, they said. For the government, Justice Department attorney Neil Koslowe argued that since many of the most important papers involve Watergate and the cover-up, compensation for records about presidential criminality would "convert a national legacy into a national embarrassment."
Monday's settlement came as the federal judge was still deciding how much, if anything, the government should pay. "A litigator always will wonder what would have happened had we continued to litigate," Nelson said. "But I think it's in the best interest of the clients and the government to come to a resolution, rather than for both sides to take their chances" with a judicial decision.
In a statement, the Nixon estate estimated that the Nixon family "will probably receive less than one-half of 1 percent of the settlement" - about dlrs 90,000. The law firm that represented the estate, Miller, Cassidy, Larroca and Lewin, will get about dlrs 7.4 million and dlrs 2.75 million will go for federal and New Jersey estate taxes, including interest. The chief beneficiary of the settlement will be the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, an educational foundation based in Yorba Linda, California, which the estate estimated would receive about dlrs 6 million. Directors of the foundation, which operates a privately funded archive and museum, the Yorba Linda burial site of Nixon and his wife, Pat, and the Nixon Center, a foreign policy think tank in Washington, will decide how the funds will be used. "We expressed a sense of satisfaction and pleasure that President Nixon's wish, which was that resources from this matter would enable the Nixon Foundation to continue to expand it's nonprofit educational mission, has been fulfilled," said John Taylor, who spoke on behalf of the estate. "I believe it is an amply fair and equitable compromise."
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