The National Archives on Tuesday burned 70,000 pages of notes about the contents of Richard Nixon’s White House tapes. The archives said it had no choice since a court has ordered that the secrets contained in the notes never be made public.
In the years after Nixon resigned in 1974 to avoid impeachment, the government seized Nixon’s tapes. The former president–and later his estate–sued to get them back.
The Supreme Court in 1977 ruled that the portions of the 2,900 hours of tapes that contain personal and private conversations must be returned.
Over the years, archivists made notes of what each tape segment contained. It was those notes that were shredded this week, then put in 126 bags and burned in an incinerator, said Gerald George, an archives official.
