Robert E. Herzstein | Nixon-papers lawyer, 83

Robert E. Herzstein, 83, a Washington lawyer who played a pivotal role in safeguarding public access to documents and tapes of the Nixon presidency, died Feb. 12 of complications from heart disease and bladder cancer at his home in Washington, said a daughter, Jessica Herzstein.

During a 60-year legal practice in Washington, Mr. Herzstein was an international law specialist and the chief counsel to the government of Mexico in negotiations leading to the North American Free Trade Agreement, which took effect in 1994.

Mr. Herzstein was probably best known as counsel to an amalgam of journalists, historians, and political scientists who sued to block an agreement that gave Richard Nixon control of 880 tapes and 42 million pages of documents from his presidency.

That agreement - made with the head of the General Services Administration - provided for the storage of the presidential material at a site near Nixon's California home, and it set forth conditions under which Nixon could have the tapes destroyed and documents withdrawn.

After Nixon's resignation in 1974 amid the Watergate scandal, the deal came under legal fire from the special Watergate prosecutors office, organizations led by Mr. Herzstein, and others.

Congress enacted a law directing the GSA to take custody of the presidential materials and have them screened by government archivists. The archivists were to return to Nixon materials that were "personal and private in nature" and to preserve "those having historical value."

When the act became law in 1974, Nixon filed a lawsuit challenging its constitutionality on the grounds that it was a violation of separation of powers and presidential privilege. In 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court said it was not. - Washington Post