New Nixon Tapes Released

The Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia has just released an amazing new set of presidential recordings from the Nixon years, including his initial reaction to the Pentagon Papers stories. The remarkably revealing conversations between Nixon and his top aides, discussing the newspaper’s scoop and their response to it, are available in both sound recording and transcript form. Slate editor Jack Schafer also points out the personal viciousness targeted at Katharine Graham by Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover (going so far as to call her an ‘old bag’) on the day that the Supreme Court rules.