PHILIP W. BUCHEN FILES, 1974-77

When Gerald Ford succeeded to the Presidency on August 9, 1974, one of his first acts was to appoint his long-time friend and former law partner Philip Buchen as chief White House legal advisor and give the position Cabinet status. During his administration, Ford relied upon Buchen for advice on a wide range of issues, legislation, and actions. Like Counsellors to the President John Marsh and Robert Hartmann, Buchen handled a variety of assignments not always covered by his specific job description. The extensive files accumulated by Buchen during his service in the Ford White House reflect his legal work, his role as an advisor to the President, and the administration of the Counsel's Office.

The Role of the Counsel's Office
As Counsel to the President, Buchen supervised a staff of attorneys in handling legal matters of particular concern to the President and the White House staff. Buchen and his staff provided a focal point in the White House to raise legal issues, transmit questions to departmental lawyers, evaluate the responses, resolve differences of opinion, and frame answers in the appropriate format for consideration by the President, while the Attorney General, the Department of Justice, and legal counsels in the various departments and agencies provided legal research and advice on proposals or policy issues.

In addition, the Counsel's Office gave advice directly on legal questions involving the official actions of the President and his staff. For example, they represented the President or his staff in court cases filed as a result of White House decisions or actions and advised on real or potential conflicts of interest. As the President's lawyers, they were even asked to advise on many matters involving his personal affairs.

Specific functions of the office also included: White House liaison with regulatory agencies, security and conflict of interest clearances for all White House staff and presidential appointees in departments and agencies, and representing the White House on legal matters involving former President Nixon.

Scope and Content of the Buchen Files
Buchen advised the President on a wide range of matters and his files touch upon a number of topics not strictly legal in nature. The collection is strongest, however, on topics involving major legal questions such as amnesty, pardons, appointment of federal judges, court litigation, reform of the intelligence community, actual or potential conflicts of interest involving administration personnel or potential appointees, and compliance with federal laws and regulations by the President, his family, and his staff in personal matters and campaign activities.

The Buchen Files contain material on several presidential pardons proposed or granted, but the bulk concerns either the Nixon pardon or the amnesty program for Vietnam War draft evaders. Scattered documents, such as letters from White House staff member Leonard Garment and Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski, pre-date the Nixon pardon. Most of the material on the pardon, however, concerns attempts to defend Ford's decision in subsequent press conferences and the hearings of the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice (also known as the Hungate Subcommittee). Included is correspondence with Congressman William Hungate and other members of the subcommittee, transcripts, background information, and briefing materials.

Materials on the amnesty program for draft evaders concern the establishment of the Presidential Clemency Board, extension of the application deadline, operation of the program, and the Board's final report. Included are memoranda and reports from both Board Chairman Charles Goodell and Board members who disagreed with Goodell's handling of the program.

White House personnel matters and presidential appointments to positions, including the selection of federal judges, are documented. Materials on judicial appointments include Presidential Personnel Office memoranda, Justice Department recommendations, and letters received from the state or region in which the judge was to serve. Approximately 350 pages concerns the retirement of Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas and the subsequent appointment of John Paul Stevens.

Other personnel materials concern both allegations of conflict of interest or other wrong-doing by administration personnel and the standard background checks and financial interest reports completed by all potential presidential appointees.

The Buchen collection contains more than 3,000 pages of material on the handling of the papers of former President Richard Nixon. These range from memoranda concerning the legislation under which the government seized the collection and the resulting court battles to relatively routine documents concerning access by archivists and access requests from journalists, lawyers, and members of Congress.

Much of Buchen's material on the 1976 presidential campaign relates to efforts to comply with provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Acts of 1974 and 1976 and White House interactions with the Federal Election Commission over proposed rulings and regulations based on those laws. The Commission investigated such questions as the use of White House staff members for campaign activities and the proper allocations of presidential trip expenses.

Other campaign-related files concern forms used in screening potential vice presidential candidates, a campaign legal manual, and allegations concerning President Ford's congressional campaign finances and his alleged 1972 role in stopping an investigation of the Watergate break-in by the House Banking and Currency Committee, chaired by Congressman Wright Patman.

The Buchen Files should prove useful to anyone interested in the Ford Justice Department, because most files on legal questions include some input from the Attorney General or his aides. In addition, the collection concerns Buchen's contacts with other agencies over such matters as Civil Aeronautics Board and International Trade Commission decisions, the Bicentennial celebration, administration personnel matters, executive agreements with foreign leaders, and notifications required under the War Powers Resolution.

Although the Buchen Files contain a significant quantity of materials on personal matters involving the President and his family, the quantity on any one topic tends to be small. Topics range from First Family finances or the use of Camp David to approval of the band contract for Susan Ford's senior prom at the White House.

Buchen played an important role in the White House handling of the congressional investigations of alleged intelligence community abuses and reforms issued by the administration. Other intelligence matters documented in the collection include electronic surveillance law suits and legislation and the organization and operation of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Intelligence Oversight Board, the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and the National Security Agency. Buchen's files concerning these matters are currently unprocessed and remain closed to research.

Related Materials (January 1996)
A closely related collection is the Files of Edward Schmults, Deputy Counsel to the President, which also include material from Counsel's Office predecessors Philip Areeda and Roderick Hills. The files of several other staff members of the Counsel's Office are also available for research.

White House Central Files Subject File JL (Judicial-Legal Matters) contains related material on such topics as amnesty for draft evaders, the Nixon pardon and other pardons, crime, the two assassination attempts, judicial decisions, and legal opinions issued by government officials. Materials on the Nixon papers, White House personnel matters, transition matters, and presidential appointments to positions appear in Central Files FG (Federal Government Organizations).

Collections containing material on the 1976 presidential campaign are described in "The 1976 Presidential Election: A Guide to Manuscript Collections Available for Research" which is available upon request.

Open collections relating to the intelligence investigations/reforms include White House Central Files Subject File categories ND 6 (Intelligence) and FG 393 (Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States); the Richard Cheney Files; the James Connor Files; the Ron Nessen Files and Papers; and the files of various staff members in the Congressional Relations Office, especially the Vernon Loen/Charles Leppert collection. Although the bulk of the files of the Rockefeller Commission are not processed, the Library has opened folders relating to the investigation of possible CIA involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy or in the anti-Castro plots of the early 1960s.

In addition, the Library holds unprocessed collections of Mason Cargill/Timothy Hardy Files and James Wilderotter Files, and unprocessed series on intelligence matters from the files of John Marsh and Michael Raoul-Duval. These collections/series are not currently available for research.