Formerly Classified Richard Nixon Tapes Available Online

WASHINGTON -- When the Watergate scandal grew into a full-bore crisis unraveling Richard Nixon's presidency, aides hatched a "game plan" to save him. The idea: Convince lawmakers that the Watergate prosecutor was a zealot holding a "pistol to the head" of the president. 

It didn't work. 

Memos and tape recordings released Tuesday by the Nixon Presidential Library shed light on fateful moments of Nixon's second term, among them a peace deal with North Vietnam, sea changes in domestic and foreign policy and management of the Cold War. 

Nixon worried that greater access to abortions would foster “permissiveness,” and said that “it breaks the family.” But he also saw a need for abortion in some cases, such as interracial pregnancies.

“There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white,” he told an aide, before adding: “Or a rape.”