Timothy Naftali

One of the challenges for my team was to establish the credibility of this new institution.

Understandably, many Americans, not just those who are old enough to remember Watergate, were concerned about what might happen to the Nixon tapes and the Nixon papers if they were moved to Yorba Linda and perhaps technically under some kind of watchful eye of the Nixon family.

And so it was really essential that the first federal director established the credibility of this space, that it be nonpartisan, not anti-Nixon, but not pro-Nixon.

And so that was my job.

And among my responsibilities was to be the curator of the Watergate exhibit, the old Watergate exhibit.

What we inherited basically made the argument that Watergate was a coup that happened in order to overturn the results of the 1972 election.

And the Democrats pushed Nixon out and that Nixon was mistreated.

And given that we were moving to Yorba Linda, the documents, the materials that made clear that the president had been engaged in abuse of power, and he was never indicted, so we can't say he was criminally responsible, but let's say that there was heavy, heavy evidence that suggested the president participated in criminal actions.

In any case, how could you move those documents to Yorba Linda and then have

in the public space up ahead, because the archive was downstairs, material that contradicted the basic documents that we had.

So the Watergate exhibit had to be changed.

The Nixon Foundation said they couldn't do it, and they asked me to do it, and the National Archives asked me to do it, so I was the curator of a Watergate exhibit.

which was one way of establishing the credibility of the institution.

Another way was to make sure a lot of materials were declassified and tapes were made available to the public, which we did.

I was there for five years in total.

Well, I don't know much more than what you've just described, David, but I believe in the idea of a presidential library.

And I believe in the importance of nonpartisan public history.

One of the things I learned out in Yorba Linda was that presidential libraries are important local institutions.

We had a lot of students from local high schools and middle schools come to visit.

Obviously we have visitors from across or had visitors from across the country.