Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05097/USCOURTS-caDC-97-05097-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
John W. Carlin
Appellant
William E. Griffin
Appellee
Stanley I. Kutler
Appellee
Public Citizen
Appellee
John H. Taylor
Appellee

Document Text:

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 23, 1998 Decided March 31, 1998

No. 97-5097

STANLEY I. KUTLER AND PUBLIC CITIZEN,

APPELLEES

v.

JOHN W. CARLIN, IN HIS OFFICIAL CAPACITY AS ARCHIVIST OF THE 

UNITED STATES,

APPELLANT

WILLIAM E. GRIFFIN AND JOHN H. TAYLOR,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia 

(No. 92cv00662)

Freddi Lipstein, Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 

argued the cause for appellant, with whom Frank W. Hunger,

Assistant Attorney General, Mary Lou Leary, U.S. Attorney 

at the time the briefs were filed, Stephen W. Preston, Deputy 

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Assistant Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, and 

Leonard Schaitman, Attorney, were on the briefs.

Scott L. Nelson argued the cause for appellees, with whom

Herbert J. Miller, Jr., and R. Stan Mortenson were on the 

brief. Alan B. Morrison and Brian Wolfman entered appearances.

Before: EDWARDS, Chief Judge, GINSBURG and SENTELLE, 

Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Chief Judge EDWARDS.

EDWARDS, Chief Judge: In 1977, in Nixon v. Administrator 

of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425, 429 (1977), the Supreme Court 

found that the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act of 1974, 44 U.S.C. § 2111 note (1994) ("Act"), 

"directs" the Administrator of General Services 1to take 

custody of the Presidential papers and tape recordings of 

former President Richard M. Nixon and then to promulgate 

regulations that provide for the return to Nixon of all materials that are "personal and private in nature." See 433 U.S. at 

429 (emphasis added). In short, the Court said that, pursuant to regulations "mandate[d]" by the Act, "the Government 

will not even retain long-term control over such private 

information ... [because] purely private papers and recordings will be returned to appellant [Nixon] under § 104(a)(7) of 

the Act." 433 U.S. at 458-59 (emphasis added).

Five years after the decision in Nixon v. Administrator,

this court repeated the accepted plain meaning of the Act:

The parties are in agreement that, once [personal] material is identified by means of archival processing, the 

archivists must return the material immediately to Mr. 

Nixon.

Nixon v. Freeman, 670 F.2d 346, 361 (D.C. Cir. 1982) (emphasis added).

__________

1

In 1984, the Act was amended to indicate that the Archivist of 

the United States succeeded the Administrator of General Services.

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Now, more than twenty years after the Court's decision in 

Nixon v. Administrator, the Nixon estate has been forced to 

return to court to challenge a Government regulation purporting to allow the Archivist of the United States ("Archivist") to retain full control and possession of the entire set of 

the Nixon tapes. In flat defiance of what the Court said in 

Nixon v. Administrator, the Government claims that the 

Archivist has authority under the Act to retain, possess and 

control all original tape recordings, without regard to whether 

any portions of the tapes contain purely personal and private 

material. The Nixon estate counters that, when the Act is 

read as a whole (with a principal focus on §§ 104(a)(7) and 

104(c)), along with all previous judicial interpretations of the 

Act, it is clear that the Nixon estate, alone, is entitled to full 

custody and control over tape recordings containing purely 

personal and private material. The Nixon estate undoubtedly 

has the better of this most recent disagreement between the 

parties.

We hold that, under the privacy protections of the Act as 

interpreted by the Supreme Court and this court, the Archivist must return to the estate all existing tapes and copies of 

conversations that do not shed light upon the Watergate 

affair and lack "general historical significance." § 104(a)(7). 

The Act strikes a delicate balance between privacy and 

disclosure under which President Nixon's estate is entitled to 

sole custody and control over recordings that are personal 

and private in nature. Any regulation to the contrary is 

unlawful under the Act. Accordingly, the Archivist must now 

do what the Supreme Court instructed over twenty years ago 

and what this court repeated sixteen years ago: "the archivists must return the material immediately to [the Nixon 

estate]." 670 F.2d at 361.

I. BACKGROUND

On September 8, 1974, the day President Gerald Ford 

pardoned him, Nixon signed an agreement with Arthur F. 

Sampson, Administrator of General Services ("Administrator"), to deposit his presidential materials in a federal facility 

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subject to a variety of provisions that gave substantial control 

over access and future preservation to Nixon. See Nixon v. 

Administrator, 433 U.S. at 431-32. Dissatisfied with this 

agreement, Congress quickly proposed and adopted the superseding Act, which President Ford signed into law on 

December 19, 1974. See id. at 432-33. As noted by the 

Court in Nixon v. Administrator, the Act directs the Archivist

to take custody of the Presidential papers and tape 

recordings of appellant, former President Richard M. 

Nixon, and promulgate regulations that (1) provide for 

the orderly processing and screening by Executive 

Branch archivists of such materials for the purpose of 

returning to appellant those that are personal and private in nature, and (2) determine the terms and conditions upon which public access may eventually be had to 

those materials that are retained.

433 U.S. at 429. The disputed tape recordings consist of 

some 950 reels of tape, most of which contain both historically 

significant and purely private material. Following passage of 

the Act, Nixon lodged a facial challenge to its constitutionality, which the Court rejected. See Nixon v. Administrator,

433 U.S. at 430. However, in upholding the Act, the Court 

recognized Nixon's privacy interest in many of the tape 

recordings, finding that § 104(a)(7) of the Act ensured Nixon's custody and control over purely private material. See id.

at 454, 458-59.

During 1975 and 1976, the Administrator submitted three 

sets of regulations implementing the Act to Congress. Under 

the original structure of the Act, regulations were to become 

effective on a certain date if Congress did not act upon them. 

See 44 U.S.C. § 2111 note § 104(b) (repealed 1984). This 

arrangement obtained until the Supreme Court held the 

legislative veto unconstitutional in INS v. Chadha, 426 U.S. 

919 (1983). Each of these three proposed sets of regulations 

contained provisions for making copies of the original tapes, 

and specified that the Administrator would retain tapes or 

documents that included both private and publicly disclosable 

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material. See, e.g., Proposed Regulation § 105-63.401-5(c), 

S. REP. NO. 94-368, at 36 (1975). Congress rejected portions 

of each set of regulations.2

In 1977, the Administrator submitted a fourth set of regulations, which were to take effect absent congressional disapproval on December 16, 1977. See 42 Fed. Reg. 63,626 (1977). 

Like the first three proposed sets of regulations, these regulations specified that the Archivist could retain permanently 

tapes that included both private and public material. See id.

at 63,628. Nixon filed an action in District Court to challenge 

the fourth set of regulations. See Nixon v. Solomon, Civil 

Action No. 77-1395 (D.D.C.). However, before trial, the 

parties settled most of the disputed issues, entering into an 

agreement known as the "Solomon Agreement" which delineated certain amendments to the regulations and incorporated documents to be included in a "Processing Manual" to 

guide processing of archival material. The parties agreed 

that the amended regulations would delete all provisions 

under which the Administrator purported to retain portions 

of tapes containing purely private materials.

Pursuant to the Solomon Agreement, the Administrator 

submitted a fifth set of regulations to take effect March 7, 

1980. See 45 Fed. Reg. 14,855, 14,856 (1980). The regulations provided that review and deletion of private material 

would be performed on copies of the original tapes. Unlike 

the earlier versions of the regulations, these regulations 

eliminated the provision permitting the Administrator to retain tapes containing private as well as public materials. See

45 Fed. Reg. at 14,858. The District Court subsequently 

decided the issues unresolved by the Solomon Agreement. In 

Nixon v. Freeman, 670 F.2d 346 (D.C. Cir. 1982), this court 

affirmed the District Court and upheld the regulations promulgated pursuant to the Solomon Agreement.

In 1984, Congress transferred the Administrator's functions to the Archivist of the United States in his capacity as 

head of the National Archives and Record Administration 

__________

2

See S. Res. 244, 94th Cong. (1975) (enacted); S. Res. 428, 94th 

Cong. (1976) (enacted); H.R. Res. 1505, 94th Cong. (1976) (enacted).

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("Archives") and purged the Act of the legislative veto provision it had formerly contained. At the same time, the 

Archivist modified his interpretation of the executive privilege 

provision of the regulations. We reversed this modification in 

Public Citizen v. Burke, 843 F.2d 1473 (D.C. Cir. 1988). In a 

subsequent case, we clarified the constitutional right to compensation that arose under the Act. See Nixon v. United 

States, 978 F.2d 1269 (D.C. Cir. 1992).

Some time in the 1980s, the Archives made an analog 

master copy of the complete original tapes. See Nixon v. 

Freeman, 670 F.2d at 353 (stating that Phase I processing 

which included "duplication of tapes" was complete); Letter 

from James J. Hastings, National Archives, to Herbert J. 

Miller 2 (Apr. 8, 1987), reprinted in Joint Appendix ("J.A.") 

198 (referring to Archivists's intention to return private material to Nixon from "master copy of the tapes"). In 1993, the 

Archives made a second analog copy and a digital copy. The 

copies were apparently made because the original copy had 

begun to deteriorate.

As of March 1992, the Archivist had only released to the 

public the approximately sixty hours of tapes used in evidence 

in Watergate-related prosecutions. On March 19, 1992, the 

public interest group Public Citizen and Professor Stanley I. 

Kutler filed suit against the Archivist in District Court demanding release of all tapes that the Archivist had determined were not restricted from release by law. In June 1993, 

the Archivist announced his intention to commence releasing 

brief portions of the tapes that related to the Watergate 

affair. Nixon objected, and on August 9, 1993, obtained a 

preliminary injunction from the District Court prohibiting 

further release until the Archivist returned private portions 

of the tapes to Nixon. See J.A. 385. The injunction was 

lifted when the parties entered mediation; however, the 

mediation did not resolve the crucial issues surrounding the 

return of the tapes.

In the spring of 1994, the Archivist gave Nixon approximately 820 hours of tapes of conversations it deemed personal 

and private. (The total tapes comprise approximately 4,000 

hours of recorded material.) The transferred tapes of the 

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conversations were physically removed from the first analog 

master copy. The Archives also undertook to delete all these 

passages from the digital master tape electronically. However, the Archivist retained control over the entirety of the 

original tapes and the second analog master copy. Two 

versions of the complete tapes, including the personal and 

private conversations, now exist in the Archivist's control. 

The Archivist subsequently promulgated regulations effective 

May 23, 1996, providing that "[n]o physical part of any 

original tape recordings ... shall be transferred to former 

President Nixon or his heirs." 59 Fed. Reg. 14,128, 14,132 

(1994) (amending 36 C.F.R. § 1275.48(a) (1995)).

On April 12, 1996, Nixon's estate, the Archivist, Public 

Citizen, and Professor Kutler entered a settlement agreement 

specifying a procedure for release of the public conversations 

on the tapes. See J.A. 269. The Archivist, however, did not 

agree to return to the Nixon estate either the original versions or the copies of the private conversations in the Archives' possession. The Archivist maintained that he had a 

statutory duty to retain the entirety of the tapes; the parties 

then turned to the District Court to resolve this issue. Public 

Citizen and Professor Kutler agreed with the estate's position 

that the Archivist must return all versions of portions of the 

tapes consisting of private material. The District Court 

granted the estate summary judgment, directing the Archivist to erase from the tapes it held, including the original 

tapes, all of the segments the contents of which had been 

turned over to Nixon. See Kutler v. Carlin, No. 92-0662 

(D.D.C. Mar. 31, 1997). The Archivist appealed to this court, 

and we review the District Court's grant of summary judgment de novo.

II. ANALYSIS

A. The Meaning of the Act

The meaning of the Act is as clear to us today as it was to 

the Supreme Court when it upheld the constitutionality of the 

Act some twenty years ago. By its terms, the Act requires 

the Archivist to gain and retain control over "all original tape 

recordings of conversations" recorded by a federal employee 

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and involving President Nixon or other federal employees at 

the White House and other presidential residences (at Camp 

David, Key Biscayne, and San Clemente) between the beginning of President Nixon's first term in office on January 20, 

1969, and his resignation on August 9, 1974. See § 101(a). 

The Act then requires the Archivist to promulgate regulations 

to provide public access to the tapes and other materials. 

The Act specifies that the regulations "shall take into account" seven different "factors." See § 104(a). The seventh 

factor is the one at issue in this case. Under it, the regulations must take into account

the need to give to Richard M. Nixon, or his heirs, for his 

sole custody and use, tape recordings and other materials 

which are not likely to be related to the need described 

in paragraph (1) and are not otherwise of general historical significance.

§ 104(a)(7).

The "need described in paragraph (1)" is "the need to 

provide the public with the full truth, at the earliest reasonable date, of the abuses of governmental power popularly 

identified under the generic term 'Watergate.' " See

§ 104(a)(1). In short, § 104(a)(7) requires the Archivist to 

enact regulations that take into account the need to "give" 

Nixon or his estate "sole custody" of materials not likely to be 

related to the Watergate affair and not otherwise historically 

significant.

In order to reconcile the requirement of § 104(a)(7) with 

the requirement of § 101(a) that the Archivist retain control 

of the "original" tape recordings, § 104(c) of the Act creates a 

general exception to the other provisions of the Act for tapes 

"given" to President Nixon or his estate pursuant to 

§ 104(a)(7):

The provisions of this title shall not apply ... to any tape 

recordings or other materials given to Richard M. Nixon, 

or his heirs, pursuant to subsection (a)(7).

§ 104(c).

The text and structure of the Act indicate that Congress 

plainly intended § 104(a)(7) to require the return to President 

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Nixon of all versions of materials deemed by the Archivist 

"not likely to be related" to Watergate and "not otherwise of 

general historical significance." See § 104(a)(7). The Act 

specifies that the materials to be given to Nixon under 

§ 104(a)(7) be given to him "for his sole custody and use." 

Id. (emphasis added). If the Archivist were to maintain 

versions of the conversations contained in these materials, 

then Nixon's estate could not be said to exercise either sole 

custody over them or sole use of them. Rather, custody and 

use would be shared with the Archivist.

The words "sole custody and use" surely cannot have the 

trivial meaning that no one other than Nixon may exercise 

dominion over the particular copy of the materials given to 

him; this, after all, is typically true of all property in someone's possession. If Congress were to present someone with 

its Medal of Honor, it would hardly be necessary to indicate 

in the statute of conferral that the recipient should be "given" 

the medal for her "sole custody and use." It would be 

obvious that the word "give" conferred a normal property 

right in the medal. Thus, the words "sole custody and use" in 

§ 104(a)(7) must be intended to give Nixon exclusive control 

over the private material.

Furthermore, if § 104(a)(7) permitted the Archivist to retain a full copy of all the tapes, and intended merely to do 

Nixon the favor of allowing him access to private materials 

thereon, there would be no imaginable reason for the statute 

to require conveying only the private material to Nixon. It 

would suffice to give Nixon or his estate a complete copy of 

the materials, one which contained private as well as publicly 

available material. Because § 104(a)(7) requires an affirmative giving of the private materials to Nixon, not merely a 

negative withholding from the public, it is clear that the 

provision seeks to do more than simply express Nixon's need 

for privacy vis-à-vis the public.

It should also not escape our attention that § 104(c) of the 

Act, which creates an exception to the provisions of the Act 

for tapes given to Nixon under § 104(a)(7), can only have 

meaning if § 104(a)(7) contemplated the return to Nixon of at 

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least the original versions of the private conversations on the 

tapes obtained by the Archivist. The retention provision of 

the Act requires that the Archivist keep specifically the 

"original tape recordings" made at the executive residences. 

See § 101(a) (emphasis added). If § 104(a)(7) required only 

that Nixon be given copies of the original recordings, then the 

requirement that the Archivist give Nixon tapes (contained in 

§ 104(a)(7)) would not be inconsistent with the requirement 

that the Archivist retain the original tapes (contained in 

§ 101(a)). If the two provisions were consistent, there would 

be no need for § 104(c) to carve out an exception for materials given to Nixon under § 104(a)(7). The exception provision would be rendered mere surplusage. It follows that 

when enacted, the Act contemplated the transfer to Nixon of 

some portion of the original tapes, the only tapes mentioned 

by the Act.

In short, § 104(c) plainly exempts the private material 

returned to Nixon from "[t]he provisions of this title"

including the requirement in § 101(a) that the Archives "retain" the "original tape recordings." It is therefore specious 

for the Archivist to suggest, as he did before this court, that 

§ 101(a) of the Act actually requires him to retain the complete original version of the tapes. The Archivist proposes a 

statutory reading which inelegantly reconciles his obligation 

to return some portions of the tapes with the supposed 

requirement of retention of all the tapes by explaining that he 

must give Nixon's estate copies of the private conversations 

while retaining the originals. But this reading makes the 

exception provision of § 104(c) into an empty shell.

It might be suggested that § 104(c) excepts the tapes given 

to Nixon from the ban on destruction imposed by § 102(a). 

("None of the tape recordings or other materials referred to 

in Section 101 shall be destroyed, except as hereafter may be 

provided by law.") But any such suggestion would be specious in light of the Archivist's reading. On his reading, the 

Archivist would retain a version of all material given to 

Nixon; consequently, even if Nixon destroyed copies of tapes 

given to him, he would not be destroying either originals or 

sole copies, but only his own personal copies of the materials, 

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which are not referred to in § 101 and are therefore not 

protected by § 102(a).

The only imaginable reason to understand § 104(a)(7) as 

anything other than an affirmative requirement to return all 

versions of private materials to Nixon would arise if there 

existed some mutual exclusivity or contradiction between 

effectuating their return and carrying out the other requirements of the Act that are unaffected by § 104(c). But no 

such difficulty arises, because the elements of the Act are 

fully coherent. The Archivist suggests that, if he had to cut 

and splice the original version of the tape in order to turn 

over the private portions to Nixon, adjacent historically relevant portions of the increasingly fragile original tape might 

be irreparably damaged. This, the Archivist argues, would 

violate the Act's twin mandates that all historically relevant 

materials be retained, see §§ 101(a), 104(a)(7), and that none 

of the tapes covered by the Act be "destroyed," see § 102(a).

This suggestion of inconsistency is unfounded. Under 44 

U.S.C. § 2116(a) (1994), the Archivist can satisfy a requirement to retain an original document or tape by means of a 

copy of the original tape or document. There currently exist 

three complete copies of the tapes covered by the Act: two 

analog and one digital. The Archivist's expert conceded that 

editing these analog or digital copies of the tapes to remove 

the private material would do no harm to the adjacent 

historically relevant material on the copies. See Expert 

Declaration of James Wheeler, J.A. 276. As a result, even if 

the original tapes were somehow injured in the process of 

editing out the private material, and even if damage resulted 

to adjacent historically relevant, protected material, the copies of this adjacent material would still exist. These copies 

would suffice to fulfill the mandate of § 101(a) that such 

material be retained by the Archivist.

The existing copies of historically relevant adjacent material would also save the Archivist from a violation of the 

requirement of § 102(a) that no such material be destroyed. 

In light of the sufficiency of copies under 44 U.S.C. § 2216(a), 

the requirement of § 102(a) that material not be destroyed 

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clearly does not confer sacred status on the physical substrate 

of the original tapes. What must not be destroyed under 

§ 102(a) is the content of any of the protected material, not 

the physical substrate on which that content is recorded.

This commonsense reading of § 102(a) is borne out by the 

fact that the original tapes are already deteriorating as a 

result of the breakdown of the chemicals of which they are 

composed. See Expert Declaration of James Wheeler, J.A. 

275-76 ("some of the original tapes are in an advanced stage 

of degradation and may already be difficult to play"). Because of this inevitable process of deterioration, the "tapes" 

which the Archivist must preserve for the purposes of the Act 

will soon become (if they have not already become) the copies 

of the tapes. It cannot seriously be maintained that Congress intended § 102(a) to require the preservation of the 

deteriorated original tapes in perpetuity, like shards of the 

Tablets of the Law preserved in the Ark. At oral argument, 

counsel for the Archivist ventured to suggest that future 

technological developments might make the actual original 

tapes indispensable for some sort of archeological project of 

sound enhancement. But this belated and wholly unsupported claim was not made before the District Court, and is 

therefore waived. See Singleton v. Wulff, 428 U.S. 106, 120 

(1976).

B. The Supreme Court's Interpretation of the Act

We are neither the only nor the highest court to have 

interpreted § 104(a)(7) of the Act to require that the Archivist transfer control over private materials to President Nixon's estate. The Supreme Court expressly and repeatedly 

understood § 104(a)(7) to require such a transfer in Nixon v. 

Administrator of Gen. Servs., 433 U.S. 425 (1977). In introducing the Act, the Court first explained that it required the 

Administrator of General Services (now the Archivist)

to take custody of the Presidential papers and tape 

recordings ... and promulgate regulations that (1) provide for the orderly processing and screening ... of such 

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materials for the purpose of returning to [Nixon] those 

that are personal and private and nature....

Id. at 429. This description makes it clear that specifically 

"those" of the papers and recordings that are "personal and 

private" must be returned. The Court's formulation certainly 

anticipated the return of the private portions of the same 

original tapes which the Archivist was charged with obtaining.

Next, in the course of explaining why the Act was not 

overbroad in seeking to achieve its objectives of public disclosure relating to the Watergate affair, the Court observed:

It is true that among the voluminous materials to be 

screened by archivists are some materials that bear no 

relationship to any of these objectives (and whose prompt 

return to [Nixon] is therefore mandated by § 104(a)(7)). 

But these materials are commingled with other materials 

whose preservation the Act requires....

Id. at 454. The parenthetical expression leaves no doubt that 

§ 104(a)(7) operates to mandate return of private materials 

to Nixon. What is more, the Court in this passage expressed 

its concern that government archivists (not the public) would 

see private materials; the Court then indicated that one 

element justifying the constitutionality of the Act despite this 

exposure was the fact that under § 104(a)(7), private materials were not to remain under government control, but were to 

be "returned" to Nixon. Thus, the passage certainly understands § 104(a)(7) to require the return to Nixon of private 

material such that the material would not remain in government hands.

The Court made this understanding of § 104(a)(7) still 

more explicit in arguing that the Act's protection of privacy 

was even greater than that afforded by the New York State 

law protecting private medical information in state computers 

upheld in Whalen v. Roe, 429 U.S. 589 (1977). The Court 

reasoned:

Not only does the Act challenged here mandate regulations similarly aimed at preventing dissemination of private materials but, unlike Whalen, the Government will 

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not even maintain long-term control over such private 

information; rather, purely private papers and recordings will be returned to [Nixon] under § 104(a)(7) of the 

Act.

433 U.S. at 458-59 (emphasis added). The Court's unmistakable substantive understanding that the Government would 

not maintain control over the private materials once they 

were returned to Nixon establishes definitively that the Archivist must return all versions of the private material to 

Nixon. The form of the Court's reasoning here further 

supports this conclusion. The Court deliberately contrasted 

the New York statute with the Act, explaining that the Act 

was more protective of privacy. Both the New York law and 

the Act protected private materials from the public, but the 

former allowed the private material to remain permanently in 

the hands of the State, while the latter denied the government such long-term control over private material by requiring its return to Nixon. This a fortiori analysis makes sense 

only if the Act is interpreted to require that no copies of the 

materials remain in government control.

C. This Court's Previous Interpretation of the Act and the 

Regulations Thereunder

The text and structure of the Act, and the Supreme Court's 

interpretation of it, suffice to establish that the Act requires 

the return of all versions of private materials to the Nixon 

estate. Nonetheless, it is worth observing that this court has 

interpreted the Act and the regulations promulgated pursuant to § 104 to the same effect. Pursuant to the Solomon 

Agreement reached with Nixon, the Administrator adopted 

regulations to facilitate screening of the tapes for identification of private material and its return to Nixon. These 

regulations specified that "[i]n processing the materials, the 

archivists will give priority to segregating private or personal 

materials and transferring them to their proprietary or commemorative owner...." 41 C.F.R. § 105-63.401(a) (1980); 

later 36 C.F.R. § 1275.42(a) (1995) (now amended, see 36 

C.F.R. § 1275.42(a)(1) (1997)). The regulations also stated 

that the Administrator "will transfer sole custody and use of 

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those materials determined to be private or personal ... to 

former President Nixon or his heirs...." 41 C.F.R. § 105-

63.401-3(a) (1980); later 36 C.F.R. § 1275.48(a) (1995) (now 

amended, see 36 C.F.R. § 1275.48(a) (1997) (emphasis added)).

In Nixon v. Freeman, 670 F.2d 346 (D.C. Cir. 1982), we 

upheld the constitutionality of regulations adopted pursuant 

to the Solomon Agreement. There, we took note that

The parties [Nixon and the Administrator] are in agreement that, once diary material is identified by means of 

archival processing, the archivists must return the material immediately to Mr. Nixon. The regulations require 

no less, stating that the archivists, in processing the 

materials, are to give priority to segregating and returning the materials to their owner. 41 C.F.R. § 105-

63.401(a) (1980).

670 F.2d at 361. We also observed that "the regulations 

charge the archivists to give priority to separating and returning to Mr. Nixon 'private and personal materials.' " Id.

at 355. Although we noted that the Archivist had duplicated 

the tapes, see id. at 353, nothing in our opinion in Nixon v. 

Freeman indicated or assumed that the Archivist would retain portions of tapes that included private material. The 

regulations interpreted by the court did not mention such a 

possibility. Thus, the references in our opinion to immediate 

return suggest that we interpreted the Act and the regulations promulgated thereunder to require return of all existing 

versions of private material to Nixon.

D. The Plain Meaning of the Act

In sum, the meaning of the Act poses no real difficulty. As 

the Supreme Court and this court always have understood it, 

the Act requires that all copies of all materials deemed by the 

Archivist to fulfill the definition adopted by the Archivist to 

satisfy § 104(a)(7) be returned to President Nixon or his 

heirs. This requirement of the Act still confers authority on 

the Archivist to promulgate regulations specifying the standard by which § 104(a)(7) will be fulfilled; it also confers on 

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lar materials fulfill the definition. By these mechanisms, the 

Act balances the potential conflict between the broad disclosure necessary to restore public confidence in the wake of the 

Watergate affair, and the legitimate privacy concerns of 

President Nixon and those close to him.

At the same time, § 104 of the Act requires the Archivist to 

regulate and make decisions in a manner consistent with the 

statutory guidelines. It has been said that

statutory lists of decisionmaking factors rarely constitute 

"a set of self-executing principles.... On the contrary, 

those principles may overlap and may conflict, and where 

this occurs, resolution is the task of the agency that is 

expert in the field."

American Airlines, Inc. v. C.A.B., 495 F.2d 1010, 1018 (D.C. 

Cir. 1974) (quoting Schaffer Transp. Co. v. United States, 355 

U.S. 83, 92 (1957)). But here, as we have shown, the statutory factors in question do not conflict, because § 104(c) resolves the potential contradiction between § 101(a) and 

§ 104(a)(7).

The deference that might be appropriate in reviewing 

regulations enacted pursuant to conflicting statutory instructions is not appropriate in analyzing regulations enacted 

pursuant to consistent guidelines. Here, the statutory guidelines always consistently required that all versions of private 

material be returned to President Nixon or his estate. Requiring this complete return, as opposed to preserving versions of all portions of the tapes for eternity, was a policy 

determination proper to Congress which Congress clearly 

intended. This being the case, we are constrained to enforce 

the will of Congress. See Chevron U.S.A. Inc. v. National 

Resources Defense Council, 467 U.S. 837, 843 n.9 (1984) ("The 

judiciary is the final authority on issues of statutory construction and must reject administrative constructions which are 

contrary to clear congressional intent.").

E. Appellant's Chevron "Step Two" Argument

The Archivist seeks to argue that, under the second step of 

Chevron, the statutory language before the court today is 

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sufficiently ambiguous to merit deference to the interpretation of the Archivist, the regulatory agent to whom administration of the statute is entrusted. See Bell Atlantic Tel. Co. 

v. FCC, 131 F.3d 1044, 1048-49 (D.C. Cir. 1997). But even if 

the meaning of the statute were somehow unclear, the Archivist would still be barred from interpreting the statute to 

require retention of the private, historically insignificant portions of the tapes. This is so because, on the record at hand, 

such an interpretation could not possibly meet the test of 

reasonableness required by Chevron. Or as then-Judge Ruth 

Bader Ginsburg noted in Fedway Associates v. U.S. Treasury, 976 F.2d 1416, 1424 (D.C. Cir. 1992), "we would have 

ranked [the agency's] definition ... in this case 'unreasonable' under the second part of the Chevron analysis even had 

this court not come earlier to a confident conclusion regarding 

Congress' intent under the first part of the Chevron analysis."

We need not focus unnecessarily on the question of whether the Archivist's interpretation falls afoul of congressional 

intent under Chevron step one or is simply unreasonable 

under Chevron step two. In either case we are satisfied that 

it is not a permissible interpretation of the Act. However, 

quite apart from the specific nature of the Archivist's purported reading, we are convinced that two major impediments 

exist to the Archivist advancing and claiming deference for 

any interpretation other than the straightforward one we 

today endorse. These impediments are (1) the Archivist's 

prior commitment, in a binding agreement, to returning 

private material to Nixon, and (2) the Supreme Court's clear 

interpretation of the Act.

First, as noted above, the regulations promulgated by the 

Archivist for processing the private materials and identifying 

private portions for return to Nixon were enacted pursuant to 

the Solomon Agreement that the Administrator entered with 

Nixon. See Solomon Agreement, J.A. 537-93. Those regulations required segregation of "private or personal materials," 

41 C.F.R. § 105-63.401(a), the "sole custody and use" of 

which would be transferred to Nixon, 41 C.F.R. § 105-

63.401-3(a), and were so interpreted by this court. See 

Nixon v. Freeman, 670 F.2d at 361. The Solomon AgreeUSCA Case #97-5097 Document #341446 Filed: 03/31/1998 Page 17 of 20
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ment also incorporated as an attachment "documents to be 

included" in a Processing Manual which, according to the 

Agreement, "explain[ed] the manner in which certain of the 

regulations will be interpreted or applied." J.A. 537. Those 

pieces of the Processing Manual constitute part of the Solomon Agreement for the purposes of interpreting the regulations. See WMATA v. Mergentime Corp., 626 F.2d 959, 962 

n.3 (D.C. Cir. 1980) ("Reference in a contract to extraneous 

writings renders them part of the agreement for the indicated 

purposes."). The sections of the Processing Manual included 

in the Agreement explicitly and repeatedly contemplate the 

"return" of private documents or tapes to Nixon. See, e.g.,

J.A. 568, 572, 575.

More strikingly, the documents to be included in the Processing Manual specify that when a processing archivist 

determines that recorded material is private or personal,

the processing archivist shall immediately prepare for 

the return of the document or tape and all duplicate 

copies that are reasonably located. Should another copy 

or copies of such document or tape subsequently surface, 

it shall be returned at once without further archival 

review.

J.A. 576. This description indicates in no uncertain terms 

that the Archivist will return to Nixon all versions of private 

material.

By the Agreement and the regulations, the Government 

positively adopted an interpretation of the Act requiring 

return of all versions of personal material to Nixon. The 

Nixon estate had every good reason to assume that the 

Solomon Agreement, which settled several disputed issues in 

pending litigation, resulted in an enforceable arrangement as 

against claims to the contrary by the Archivist. Indeed, the 

Archivist does not claim that the agreement was ultra vires

and we have no doubt as to its meaning. Therefore, it would 

be a bizarre result, especially at this late date, to allow the 

Archivist to abrogate the parties' agreement by regulatory 

fiat. Cf. Beo v. District of Columbia, 44 F.3d 1026, 1029 & 

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n.1 (D.C. Cir. 1995) (noting that individuals may gain constitutional liberty interest in state of affairs specified first by 

consent decree and subsequently extended through promulgation of regulations).

As a general matter, an agency may have the authority to 

revise its regulations; however, it is highly doubtful that an 

agency is entitled to claim deference for a particular statutory 

interpretation where it has committed itself to a lawful, 

contradictory interpretation by unmodified agreement with a 

private party. Cf. Transohio Sav. Bank v. Director, Office of 

Thrift Supervision, 967 F.2d 598, 614 (D.C. Cir. 1992) (expressing "concern" about applying Chevron deference to 

agency interpretation of statute that will affect agreements 

agency has entered).

A further difficulty with the Archivist's claim to Chevron

deference lies in the fact that, as demonstrated above, the 

Supreme Court adopted an interpretation that, unlike that 

proffered by the Archivist, required return of all versions of 

the tapes to Nixon. See Nixon v. Administrator, 433 U.S. at 

429, 454, 458-59. As a result, the Archivist is hard pressed to 

defend an alternative interpretationtwenty years after the 

Supreme Court has spoken, with no legislative amendments 

to construe, and no purported "changed circumstances" justifying a new statutory construction. See McClatchy Newspapers, Inc. v. NLRB, 131 F.2d 1026, 1030 (D.C. Cir. 1997) 

(suggesting that agency not entitled under Chevron to "alter" 

Supreme Court's authoritative interpretations even if otherwise permissible). See also Maislin Indus., U.S., Inc. v. 

Primary Steel, Inc., 497 U.S. 116, 131 (1990) ("Once we have 

determined a statute's clear meaning, we adhere to that 

determination under the doctrine of stare decisis, and we 

judge an agency's later interpretation of the statute against 

our prior determination of the statute's meaning."). Even 

assuming, arguendo, that the Act somehow admits of ambiguity, the perceived ambiguity has been cured by judicial interpretation. On this record, the Archivist is poorly placed to 

demand Chevron deference.

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III. CONCLUSION

For the foregoing reasons, we find that the regulations 

promulgated by the Archivist prohibiting the return to President Nixon's estate of any part of the original tapes or master 

copies are not in accordance with § 104(a)(7) of the Act. 

Accordingly, the decision of the District Court is

Affirmed.

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