He interviewed former Deputy Atty. Gen. William Ruckelshaus, who resigned amid the Oct. 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre" rather than obey a White House order to fire the Watergate special prosecutor who had demanded Nixon's secretly recorded tapes.
He interviewed Nixon appointments secretary Dwight Chapin, who hired Donald Segretti, a Nixon campaign operative -- and now an Irvine attorney -- who engaged in sabotage of Democrats. He recorded the account of Nixon speechwriter Ray Price, who contributed to Nixon's 1974 resignation speech.
The exhibit will feature "snippets, but some people will say the snippets will be taken out of context," Naftali says, adding that to obviate the concern he will make the full interviews easily accessible.
Along with the first-person accounts, there will be selections from White House tapes, scanned archives, bits of news broadcasts and footage of the Watergate hearings.
The gallery will be "an interactive, self-curated experience," he says. "You'll be able to navigate through this story yourself. It'll be up to the visitor to decide, 'Did Nixon order this? Did he order the coverup? What were the abuses of power? What role did partisan politics play in Richard Nixon's downfall? What role did personality play?' I'm not going to answer those questions. It's not up to me."
The exhibit will raise questions, he says, instead of providing "some kind of closure that's artificial." He wants to avoid, as he puts it, "replacing one form of didacticism with another," as well as "the schoolmarm problem, the wagging finger."
It will also steer clear of historical analysis. "If you brought in historians, you'd have to have one on the left, one on the right," leading to "a crossfire situation where you confuse people."
The library will officially enter the federal system Wednesday with the title of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. After congress provides funding for a 15,000-square-foot addition, the National Archives plans to send the library copies of 4,000 hours of Nixon's presidential tapes, plus 42 million pages of presidential materials now being held in College Park, Md.
Foundation keeps a role
The Nixon Foundation will continue to rent out the Yorba Linda building's amphitheater and its reproduction of the White House East Room for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events, which will help fund exhibits and programs.
