After dodging resistance from Richard Nixon loyalists and Watergate-era operatives, the Cold War historian who oversaw the dramatic metamorphosis of the former president’s library from roadside attraction to respected federal institution is stepping aside.
Timothy Naftali, 49, who presided over the transfer of the private library to federal hands in 2007, will leave Nov. 19 and said he plans to turn his focus to finishing a book he’s been researching on the 37th president’s great rival -- John F. Kennedy.
“I have much broader intellectual interests than Richard Nixon’s presidency, and I’m going back to them,” said Naftali, who will also join the New America Foundation, a think tank, as a senior research fellow.
Naftali’s most visible imprint on the Yorba Linda library has been the transformation of the Watergate exhibit. For years after its opening in 1990, the exhibit reflected Nixon’s own version of the events that drove him from power in 1974.
Critics who derided the library as an altar to Nixon pointed to its portrayal of Watergate as Exhibit 1.
There was a heavily edited version of the incriminating “smoking gun” tape and text that portrayed the scandal as a “coup” staged by Nixon’s enemies.
After the National Archives took control of the library in 2007, however, Naftali’s effort to reshape the exhibit began in earnest.
Last April, he unveiled a $500,000 new exhibit that featured a comprehensive chronicle of Watergate, placing it in the context of a broader pattern of dirty tricks and sabotage emanating from the Nixon White House.
The new exhibit included 131 taped interviews with key players and observers, including Dwight Chapin, Nixon’s appointments secretary, who said Nixon was present for the launch of a dirty-tricks squad.
The Nixon Foundation, comprising the former president’s loyalists, fought unsuccessfully to block portions of the exhibit, including a section called “Dirty Tricks and Political Espionage,” and their panel-by-panel critique of the new text resulted in a nine-month delay of the opening.
“I thought I would have completed what I set out to do at the library in three years. It took a little longer. I don’t regret that,” said Naftali, who has been at the library more than four years.
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DOCUMENTS: Nixon's Watergate grand jury test testimony
-- Christopher Goffard
Photo: A section of the new Watergate exhibit at the Nixon Presidential Library. Credit: Gina Ferazzi
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