Nixon's contention that the documents were his personal property was backed by an appeals court, but critics accused his heirs of profiting from public papers that implicated the president in obstruction of justice and other crimes.
Indeed, as Thomas Jefferson noted in 1787, citizens need to have "full information of their affairs [through] the channel of the public papers, and to connive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people".
"I think it falls well short of what's needed," said Gene Russianoff, a lawyer with the New York Public Interest Research Group, "which is the return of these public papers to the city".
Aides to Mr. Giuliani have said that the private transfer of the public papers, through a nonprofit center controlled by Mr. Giuliani, was intended to produce swifter processing and give the public speedier access to the material than the years it typically takes to catalog mayoral documents.
The very style of his public papers altered, till the very man who had written in an official despatch about "Uncle Sam's web feet," drew up his final inaugural in a style which extorted from critics so hostile as the Saturday Reviewers, a burst of involuntary admiration.
First I wrote some articles in the Research Councils' own newsletters, but after a while I felt that I had an item good enough for one of the public papers.
Jones defied Wilkinson by speaking to the teachers and, according to Penny Miller, editor of Jones' public papers, never again entered Wilkinson's office.
The public papers of the president, the twice-a-year collection of the chief executive's official speeches, addresses to Congress and other communications, are still bound by hand, the endpapers marbled and cover boards wrapped in gold-stamped leather.
The public papers of New York's first governor, George Clinton, are there (his personal documents are in the state library), as are Al Smith's and the records of Franklin Roosevelt's Albany years, passed along by his presidential librarians.
We are at this moment in doubt whether during the first shock we shall not say she is gone to Ireland to her aunts, a thing that had been in contemplation ... What I have most of all in horror is the public papers; & I thank you for your caution as it might act on this.
Figure 3 Results of public tape-on-paper sampling.
