Untrustworthy Custodian?

Shortly after President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon a year ago, he agreed to give him practical control over 42 million documents and 888 reels of secretly recorded conversations from the Nixon presidency. Ford was widely criticized for what seemed extreme kindness toward the man who had elevated him. But last week Ford's Justice Department did its best to take back that gift. In a 100-page brief approved by Attorney General Edward Levi and White House Counsel Philip Buchen, the Administration defended the right of Congress to nullify that Nixon-Ford agreement on the tapes and papers.

The brief opposed Nixon's argument, now being heard by a three-judge federal district court in Washington, that the congressional act of last December giving custody of the materials to the Government infringed on many of the former President's constitutional rights, including his right to privacy. "The minimal invasion of Mr. Nixon's privacy, if any," the brief said, "is heavily outweighed by the need of the American people to be assured that these important historical documents will not be subject to any arbitrary destruction or distortion."

Was the Justice Department suggesting that Nixon might try to obscure his Watergate transgressions by tampering with the materials? Indeed it was. The brief cited several things, including the infamous 18 1/2-minute gap in one Watergate tape and the misleading tape transcripts that Nixon had issued while President, as indications of his "propensity to distort the historical record." Congress had acted quite "rationally," the brief declared, in perceiving that Nixon was "not a trustworthy custodian" of the tapes and documents.

It was the bluntest language yet by the Ford Administration about Richard Nixon.

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