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The Watergate tapes, also known as the Nixon tapes, are a collection of recordings of conversations between U.S. President Richard Nixon and various White House staff in February 1971. In addition to the line-taps placed on the telephones, small lavalier microphones were installed at various locations around the rooms. The recordings were produced on as many as nine Sony TC-800B open-reel tape recorders. While the recorders were turned off shortly after the Watergate scandal hearings, the system was not removed until 1974, after Nixon left office.
[edit] Tapes' existence made public
The Senate Watergate committee had at least two reasons to suspect that such tapes might exist. For one, transcripts supplied to the committee by Nixon's lawyer Fred Buzhardt contained extensive and seemingly verbatim quoting of conversations between Nixon and then-White House counsel John Dean, and someone on the committee realized that such precise detail would probably not be possible without having an audio recording as its source. Also, the committee's curiosity had been piqued by Dean's Senate testimony that, in a meeting, Nixon "began asking me a number of leading questions, which made them think that the conversation was being taped and a record was being made to protect himself." The existence of the system was first confirmed by Senate Committee staff member Donald Sanders, on July 13, 1973 in a interview with White House aide Alexander Butterfield. Three days later, it was made public during the televised testimony of Butterfield, when he was asked about the possibility of a White House taping system by Senate Counsel Fred Thompson. On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations; it was possible to concretely verify what the president said, and when he said it. Only a few White House employees had ever been aware that this system existed. Special Counsel Archibald Cox, a Harvard Law School professor, immediately subpoenaed eight relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean. [edit] Nixon refuses to release the tapesNixon initially refused to release the tapes, claiming they were vital to national security. Then, on October 19, 1973, he offered to have U.S. Senator John C. Stennis review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Cox refused that same evening and on Saturday, October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered the Attorney General, Elliot Richardson to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned instead, as did Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork discharged Cox. [edit] 18½ minute gap tapeNixon appointed another special counsel, Leon Jaworski. The White House then agreed to comply with the subpoena and gave some of the subpoenaed conversations to Chief Judge Sirica. The White House informed the Court that two subpoenaed conversations had not been recorded, and that an 18½ minute gap existed on a third tape. [edit] Rose Mary Woods
On November 8, 1973, Nixon’s secretary, Rose Mary Woods, testified
Later that month, she testified she had made "a terrible mistake" during transcription. On October 1, 1973 while playing the tape on the Uher 5000, she answered a phone call. Reaching for the Uher 5000 stop button, she testified that she mistakenly hit the button next to it — the record button. For the duration of the phone call, about five minutes, she kept her foot on the device's pedal, causing a five-minute portion of the tape to be re-recorded. She insisted she was not responsible for the remaining 13 minutes of buzz. Woods was asked to replicate the position she took to cause that accident: seated at a desk, reaching far back over her left shoulder for a telephone as her foot applies constant pressure to the pedal controlling the transcription machine. Her extremely awkward posture during the demonstration -- dubbed the "Rose Mary Stretch" -- resulted in many political commentators questioning the validity of the explanation. [2] [edit] Advisory Panel on White House TapesOn November 21, 1973, Chief Judge John Sirica appointed an Advisory Panel of persons nominated jointly by the White House and the Special Prosecution Force [3]. The Advisory Panel on White House Tapes consisted of
The Advisory Panel was supplied with the Evidence Tape, the seven Sony 800B recorders from the Oval Office and Executive Office Building, and two Uher 5000 recorders. One Uher 5000 was marked "Secret Service." The other was accompanied by a foot pedal, respectively labeled Government Exhibit 60 and 60B. By January 10, 1974 the Panel determined that the buzz was of no consequence, and that the 18½ minute gap was due to erasure[5] performed on the Exhibit 60 Uher.[6] The Panel also determined that the erasure/buzz recording consisted of at least five separate segments, possibly as many as nine,[7] and that at least five segments required hand operation, that is, they could not have been performed using the foot pedal.[8] The Panel was subsequently asked by the court to consider alternative explanations that had emerged during the hearings. The final report dated May 31, 1974, found these other explanations did not contradict the original findings.[9] Years later, former White House Chief of Staff Alexander Haig speculated that the erasures may conceivably have been caused by Nixon himself. According to Haig, the President was spectacularly inept at understanding and operating mechanical devices, and in the course of reviewing the tape in question, he may have caused the erasures by fumbling with the recorder's controls; whether inadvertently or intentionally, Haig could not say. [edit] RestorationThe National Archives now owns the tape, and has tried several times to recover the missing minutes, most recently in 2003. [1] None of the Archive's attempts have been successful. The tapes are now preserved in a climate-controlled vault in case a future technological development allows for restoration of the missing audio. [edit] The "Smoking Gun" tapeIn April 1974, the House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the tapes of 42 White House conversations. At the end of that month, Nixon released edited transcripts of the White House tapes. The transcripts revealed conversations concerning the punishing of political opponents and the halting of the Watergate investigation. The Judiciary Committee, however, rejected Nixon’s edited transcripts, saying that he did not comply with their subpoena. Sirica, acting on a request from Jaworski, issued a subpoena for the tapes of 64 presidential conversations to use as evidence in the criminal cases against the indicted officials. Nixon refused, and Jaworski appealed to the Supreme Court to force Nixon to turn over the tapes. On July 24, the Supreme Court voted 8-0 (Justice William Rehnquist recused himself) in United States v. Nixon that Nixon must turn over the tapes. In late July 1974, the White House released the subpoenaed tapes. One of those tapes was the so-called "smoking gun"[2] tape, from June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in. In that tape, Nixon agrees that administration officials should approach the Director of the CIA and ask him to request that the Director of the FBI halt the Bureau's investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that the Watergate break-in was a National Security matter. In so agreeing, Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy whose goal was the obstruction of justice — a felony, and an impeachable offense. Once the "smoking gun" tape was made public on August 5, Nixon's political support evaporated. Every single Republican on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that he would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor. In the Senate, it was said that Nixon had at most a half dozen votes. Facing impeachment in the House of Representatives and a probable conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of Thursday, August 8, to take effect at 12 noon the next day. [edit] Tape timeline
* items indicate testimony, or alleged acts [edit] Recently released tapesOn July 11, 2007, the National Archives and Records Administration were given official control of the previously privately operated Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. The newly renamed facility, the Richard Nixon Library and Museum opened with a simple ceremony and the release of 78,000 pages of previously restricted documents and 11½ hours of audio tape comprising 165 conversations.[10] [11] The conversations reveal President Nixon and his staff discussing the 1972 Presidential and congressional elections, and the President's decision to aggressively reorganize his administration by requesting the resignations of most of his staff and appointees. The tapes also contain conversations with Nixon and Henry Kissinger regarding negotiations to end the war in Vietnam.[10] Over the next several years, the Library will receive 42 million pages of Nixon's papers and nearly 4,000 hours of tapes, currently housed at the National Archives building in College Park, Maryland. According to the press, as part of this agreement, the new director, Timothy Naftali significantly changed the Library's previous revisionist interpretation of the Watergate scandal.[11] The exhibit previously maintained that the scandal was a coup plotted by Democrats, and that journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein had offered bribes to their sources. The museum also included a heavily edited version of the Smoking Gun Tape and insisted that the infamous missing 18½ minutes of audio tape of the subpoenaed June 20, 1972 conversation was due to a mechanical malfunction.[12] [13] [edit] References in popular cultureIn a live version of Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant, the singer jokingly claims that the missing 18½ minutes actually contains audio of Nixon listening to the original recording of the song after finding out at the 1977 presidential inauguration party that an open copy of the record was found by Chip Carter (son of then incoming President Jimmy Carter) while searching through the Nixon Record Library. Arlo noted, "How many things in this world are eighteen minutes and twenty seconds long?"[citation needed] A Saturday Night Live sketch parodying Nixon's interview with David Frost had Nixon (Dan Aykroyd) and his staff playing practical jokes with the recorder including holding back laughter during the "Smoking Gun" conversation and deliberately not speaking for 18 and a half minutes. The 1995 Oliver Stone movie Nixon depicts Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) personally erasing the tape out of fear of revealing information about CIA operations related to Cuba that are implicitly, although vaguely, connected to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Stone implies that Nixon erased the tapes out of fear for his personal safety, not to obstruct justice. In the 1999 movie Dick, Arlene Lorenzo (Michelle Williams) confesses her infatuation to Nixon (Dan Heydaya) on the White House taping system for 18 and a half minutes, including singing "I Honestly Love You" into the recorder (an anachronism, the song wasn't recorded until 1974). Later in the movie, Nixon is seen deleting that section because he's horrified at the possible implication that he was involved with an underage girl. In National Treasure: Book of Secrets, during a scene where Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) shows Abigail (Diane Kruger) and Ben (Nicolas Cage) a book that talks about the Book of Secrets he mentions the 18 and a half minutes missing in the Watergate tapes. In a 2008 episode of The Middleman (Season 1, Episode 9, The Obsolescent Cryogenic Meltdown), cryogenically frozen and revived Middleman Guy Goddard (Kevin Sorbo) must contribute a 'rare and priceless artifact' as a stake in an unusual card game. He offers a tape containing "the missing 18 and a half minutes". [edit] See also
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