ABSTRACT
On December 19, 1974, the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act (88 Stat. 1695; 44 U.S.C. 2107 note) became law. The Act gave the Administrator of General Services, who as chief of the General Services Administration is, ex officio, head of the National Archives, authority to take “complete possession and control of all papers, documents, memorandums, transcripts, and other objects and materials which constitute the Presidential historical materials of Richard M. Nixon, covering the period beginning January 20, 1969, and ending August 9, 1974.” 1 These materials, amounting to about one million, five-hundred thousand of the most confidential documents that were in the White House when the former president resigned, included the infamous tape recordings and conversations among Nixon and all the president's men. The Administrator was directed by the statute to write regulations governing the procedure for public access, and one purpose of such regulations was explicitly set forth in Section 104(a)(1) of the Act: “the need to provide the public with the full truth … of the abuses of government power popularly identified under the generic term ‘Watergate’.” 2
