Watergate Becomes Sore Point at Nixon Library

[groovedaddy]

YORBA LINDA, Calif. — The sign at the entrance to the largest exhibition room devoted to a single subject at the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum reads “Watergate.” But on Friday, the exhibit was nearly empty, dominated by a 30-foot blank slate of a wall that is testimony to a new battle set off by this still-polarizing former president: how to mark the scandal that forced him from office 36 years ago.

Officials at the National Archives have curated a searing recollection of the Watergate scandal, based on videotaped interviews with 150 associates of Richard M. Nixon, an interactive exhibition that was supposed to have opened on July 1. But the Nixon Foundation — a group of Nixon loyalists who controlled this museum until the National Archives took it over three years ago — described it as unfair and distorted, and requested that the archives not approve the exhibition until its objections are addressed.

The foundation went so far as to invoke Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, noting that those presidents surreptitiously taped White House conversations before Nixon stepped on the scene.

Bob Bostock, a former Nixon aide who designed the original Watergate exhibit and has been enlisted by the foundation to challenge the installation, filed a 132-page letter of objection to the archives last week, claiming that the exhibit lacked the context needed to help young visitors learning about Watergate to understand exactly what Nixon did.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/us/politics/07nixon.html?th&emc=th

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Good.

The museum should represent a true depiction of the presidency, not a white-washed Watergate profile.

[RaleighNCDUer]

2. They pretend it is about the recordings,

not about WHAT was being recorded.

Did Johnson or Kennedy strategize how to circumvent the law to cover up crimes on their recordings?

[groovedaddy]

3. Just one more example of how republicans prefer ignoring reality. n.t