Taylor, the Nixon Foundation director, acknowledges that the Watergate exhibit was "in places too polemical" and said he supports Naftali's efforts to create a "more neutral" account. Still, he remains unapologetic about the original. "It is not true that you will find people at the Nixon Library abjectly in sackcloth and ashes because of the way it was before."
Taylor said Nixon skipped the Watergate gallery at the library's 1990 opening and isn't sure if he saw it on the two other occasions he visited. "And if he didn't, I wouldn't have blamed him," Taylor said.
After lobbying by Nixon's family and loyalists, Congress agreed in 2004 to let the Yorba Linda library join the official presidential library system, and the library promised "more strictly factual exhibits."
But the legacy of distrust lingered, prompting 16 scholars to send a letter to Congress protesting the release of Nixon's White House archives to the library. "I thought it was a terrible idea for a long time," said Greenberg, who was among those scholars.
Then, last year, the National Archives announced that Naftali would be the library's first federal director. That "changed things 180 degrees," Greenberg said, adding: "But I'm sure it won't be easy for Naftali either in his new job."
Revisiting a scandal
Naftali was no stranger to the library's reputation. Soon after his arrival, he stood in the Watergate gallery and pronounced it "unfortunate," adding: "This is a good explication of how Nixon viewed Watergate. The trouble is, it gives the impression it's history."
In its place, he promises "a 360 degree look at the issue," with a row of plasma screens featuring oral accounts of those who played a role in the drama. The account will begin, he says, a year before the break-in itself -- with Daniel Ellsberg's 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study of the Vietnam War. The Nixon administration responded by creating the so-called plumbers, who broke into the Beverly Hills office of Ellsberg's psychiatrist in search of his file.
Naftali interviewed the man who helped engineer the Beverly Hills break-in, former plumbers boss Egil "Bud" Krogh, who was indicted for perjury in connection with it. He interviewed Jeb Magruder, the White House aide who supervised the Watergate break-in, served seven months in prison, and who later said he heard Nixon himself authorize the burglary.
