The U.S. Department of Justice says at least some materials sealed as part of the court case against seven men involved in the 1972 Watergate burglary should be released.
The agency responded Friday to a request by a Texas history professor who is seeking access to materials he believes could help answer lingering questions about the burglary that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Luke Nichter of Texas A&M University-Central Texas in Killeen, Texas, wrote the chief judge of the federal court in Washington to ask that potentially hundreds of pages of documents be unsealed.
The judge said in a letter made public earlier this year that the professor had ‘raised a very legitimate question’ about whether the material should remain sealed, and he ordered the Department of Justice to respond with any objections.
Justice attorney Elizabeth Shapiro wrote in a court document filed Friday that the office would not oppose the release of at least some documents.
‘Forty years after the break-in at the Democratic National Committee that began the chapter of U.S. history known as Watergate, no good reason exists to keep sealed many of the judicial records created during the trial of the Watergate burglars,’ she wrote.
But Shapiro said three categories of documents should remain secret: certain documents containing personal information, grand jury information and documents about the content of illegally obtained wiretaps.
