Newly Released Tapes Shed Light on Nixon Era

The voice on the tape is eerie. It is the final stretch of the 1972 elections, and in the White House, Richard Nixon is poring over the news from the campaign trail with his aide, Chuck Colson, and weighing up his prospects for re-election.

"What did he say about Watergate?" Nixon's voice is heard asking. Then, when he hears that voters are far more concerned with Vietnam than the details of a break-in at the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate hotel, Nixon says with evident relief: "It's mainly a Republican problem, you know."

Yesterday's release of 78,000 documents and 200 hours of audio tape promises to shed new light on a presidency that remains one of the most divisive in American history, a generation after Nixon was forced to resign over Watergate.

The materials were released on the day that the national archives took formal control of the Nixon presidential library in California, which had previously been privately operated.

The tapes released yesterday date from November 3-19, 1972, and are steeped in Nixon's fight for re-election against his Democratic challenger, George McGovern. Aside from strategy sessions with aides such as Mr Colson - who was jailed for his role in the scandal - Nixon can be heard disparaging his fellow Republicans as "jackasses".

There is a dissection of how Mr McGovern's angry retort to a Republican heckler to kiss his ass would affect his prospects.

But there are more serious discussions too in the tapes and the documents, including Nixon's plans to woo trade union members, Roman Catholics and white ethnic-minority voters. The strategy gained Nixon 60% of the vote.