BARRY N. ROTH FILES, 1973-1977

When Barry Roth joined Gerald Ford’s vice presidential staff in January 1974, he was only twenty-four years old and had yet to complete his law degree. In spite of his youth, he had already worked as a legal assistant to the General Counsel of the General Services Administration (GSA.) William Casselman. When Casselman became General Counsel to Vice President Ford, he brought Roth along as his assistant. Casselman and Roth continued on the vice presidential staff until August 9, 1974 when Ford succeeded to the White House. They then became part of the staff of the Office of the Counsel to the President, headed by Philip Buchen.

The Roth Files document the work of both Casselman and Roth. Roth inherited many of Casselman’s files when he took over many of Casselman’s duties in the fall of 1975. The collection also includes some folders that apparently were part of the Philip Buchen Files, but got turned over to Roth or Casselman. A few folders in the General Subject File and the Chronological File contain materials from the Ford vice presidency, but the bulk of the collection dates from the Ford administration.

Their years with the General Services Administration had given Casselman and Roth significant experience with legal matters involving the National Archives and Records Service, then a part of GSA. Therefore Buchen assigned them to handle most matters concerning papers, archives, and access to information. The collection documents extensively the immense amount of work involved in overseeing the collection of and access to the papers of former President Richard Nixon, monitoring all of the lawsuits involving the Nixon papers, communicating with the Nixon attorneys, and responding to requests and subpoenas for Nixon documents and tapes from the Watergate Special Prosecution Force and congressional committees. In addition to files of Roth and Casselman on these matters, the collection includes a file created by Staff Assistant Gertrude Fry of the Staff Secretary’s Office concerning the administration of the White House Special Files Unit and her role with the Nixon Papers and tapes.

In addition to the Nixon Papers, the collection contains material on such matters as President Ford’s own papers, Freedom of Information policy and specific requests, declassification policy (including the work of the Interagency Classification Review Committee), the handling of gifts received by the President, right to privacy, administration of the Indochina refugee resettlement program, presidential protection and other matters involving the U.S. Secret Service, and standards of conduct (ethics) for the White House staff.

In June 1975, Roth received a promotion from Staff Assistant to Assistant Counsel to the President and began taking on more responsibility. This process was accelerated by the departure of Casselman from the White House staff in September 1975. Roth inherited many of Casselman’s duties.

Although the amount of work involving the Nixon Papers was beginning to decline by this time, the start of the 1976 presidential campaign brought many new legal questions for Roth to handle. In conjunction with Robert Visser, Legal Counsel to the President Ford Committee (PFC), Roth monitored decisions and regulations of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that might affect the President, his staff, and his campaign. For instance, when President Ford appointed Rogers Morton to the position of Counsellor to the President for Political Affairs, Democrats filed complaints with the FEC over the use of public funds to pay his salary. The collection contains significant materials on this and other matters considered by the FEC

Another matter considered by the FEC involved the allocation of expenses for presidential trips that included political or campaign-related events. Working out the exact allocation of expenses so that the appropriate ones were paid by the White House, Republican Party, or the PFC involved much work by Roth and others on the White House staff. In addition to Roth’s own files on this matter, the collection includes a file that he took over from the Staff Secretary’s Office detailing the development of cost allocation procedures and the actual payment of specific expenses by the Republican Party and the PFC

The last series in the collection contains all of the appointment slips for White House visitors to the Ford Vice Presidential offices and the offices of the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (Rockefeller Commission).

Related Materials (August 2005)
Closely-related materials are the Legal Counsel’s files in the Ford Vice Presidential Papers (detailing the work of Casselman and Roth in that period), a small collection of William Casselman’s White House Files, and the unprocessed Legal Counsel’s files for the Ford Transition Office in the Gerald R. Ford Post-Presidential Papers. The collection now known as the Kenneth Lazarus Files once served as a sort of “Central Files” for the Counsel to the President’s Office and contains Casselman and Roth documents from that time period. The files of Counsel to the President Philip Buchen contain materials on many of the same topics as appear in the Roth Files.