Long-sealed Watergate documents set for release

Washington, June 3 (ANI): The U.S. Department of Justice has said that some documents related to a court case against seven men involved in the 1972 Watergate burglary should be released.

Responding to a request from Texas history professor Luke Nichter, who is seeking access to Watergate burglary documents, the Department of Justice termed it as a legitimate one, Fox News reports.

Nichter believes the documents could help answer questions about the burglary that led President Richard Nixon to resign in 1973-74.

Nichter of Texas A and M University-Central Texas in Killeen wrote to the chief judge of the federal court in Washington asking if hundreds of pages of documents could be unsealed. epartment of Justice Attorney Elizabeth Shapiro 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.

"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," Shapiro wrote.

However, Shapiro said that three categories of the documents such as certain documents containing personal information, grand jury information and documents about the content of illegally obtained wiretaps should remain a secret.

Nichter, in particular, wants access to records of at least two court hearings held behind closed doors and interviews and testimony given by a former FBI agent, Alfred Baldwin III, who was hired to listen and transcribe telephonic conversations the burglars wiretapped at the Democratic National Committee during the burglary on May 28, 1972. (ANI)