Elvis Presley bitterly denounced the Beatles for their anti-Americanism during a White House meeting with President Nixon in December, 1970.

The rock and roll star, who died of longterm drug abuse in 1977, also told the President that he could influence the hippie movement against the use of drugs and asked to be made a federal drug enforcement agent. Eventually he was given a specially-made Bureau of Narcotics badge.

A note of the encounter is one of 1.5 million documents from Mr Nixon's Presidential papers, finally made public by the National Archivist in Washington. The former President has fought tenaciously for the past 12 years to prevent their appearance, citing everything from executive privilege to personal privacy. Now he has been overruled by the combined judgments of Congress, the Supreme Court and, most recently, the US Government Archivist.

The present avalanche, however, is the merest taster of Mr Nixon's presidential years. For more than a decade 24 archivists have been sorting and cataloguing 20,000 boxes, estimated to contain 40 million documents. The vast bulk is yet to see the light of day.

Elvis Presley's approach to Mr Nixon came in an astoundingly ill-written letter. '"Dear Mr President," the singer wrote, " First I would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley and admire you and Have Great Respect for Your office..." The letter, expressing concern about "the Drug Culture, the Hippie Elements, Black Panthers, etc," led to a White House meeting on December 21, 1970.

[ Capitalisation reproduced in text – Elvis's own! ]

An official memorandum recorded that "Presley indicated that he thought the Beatles had been a real force for anti-American spirit. He said that the Beatles came to this country, made their money, and then returned to England, where they promoted an anti-American theme. "

"The President nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise. The President then indicated that those who use drugs are also in the vanguard of anti-American protests ". Presley spent most of the rest of the meeting telling Mr Nixon that he wanted to give his name to the administration's law-and-order campaign "to restore some respect to the flag".

This first tranche of the huge number of documents contains its time bombs - not least, the disclosure that President Reagan's current White House communications director, Mr Patrick Buchanan, warned Mr Nixon against visiting Mrs Coretta Scott King on the anniversary of her husband's murder.

Martin Luther King, Mr Buchanan told the President, was "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history." Presidential contact with his widow would "outrage many, many people who believe Dr King was a fraud and a demagogue." Two years ago Mr Reagan was obliged by public pressure to proclaim Dr King's birthday as an annual public holiday.