Blackmun Papers: Blackmun and Nixon
Web Extra: Blackmun on Meeting with President Nixon on his Nomination to the Court
Justice Harry Blackmun, right, and Chief Justice Warren Burger, left, meet with President Nixon in 1970. © Bettmann/CORBIS hide caption
View EnlargementWeb Extra: Blackmun on Tensions with Chief Justice Burger Over the Nixon Tapes
In his newly released oral history, the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun describes the strange scene at the White House when President Nixon invited him to discuss his nomination to the court. Nixon quizzed Blackmun about his net worth and his wife's social skills. Four years later, Blackmun and the other justices had Nixon's fate in their hands when they weighed the Watergate tapes case. NPR's Nina Totenberg reports. (Voices of NBC's Tom Brokaw and John Chancellor courtesy of the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive.)