Watergate tapes
Encyclopedia
The Watergate tapes, a subset of the Nixon tapes, are a collection of recordings of conversations between Richard Nixon and his fellow conspirators plotting a break in to the Watergate Hotel. U.S. President
Richard Nixon
and various White House
staff started communicating on February 1971 and lasted all the way until July 18, 1973. In addition to the line-taps placed on the telephones, small lavalier microphone
s 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.
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 question
s, 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 an 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 former United States Solicitor General
, immediately asked District Court Judge John Sirica to subpoena
eight relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel
John Dean
.
John C. Stennis
, a Democrat, review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox
refused the compromise 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
and acting head of the Justice Department Robert Bork
discharged Cox.
Nixon appointed Leon Jaworski
special counsel on November 1, 1973.
White House lawyers said they first heard the now infamous 18½-minute gap on the evening of Nov. 14, 1973. Judge Sirica, who had issued the subpoenas for the tapes, was not told until Nov. 21, after the President's attorneys had decided that there was "no innocent explanation" they could offer.
The 18½-minute gap can be heard here http://nixontapeaudio.org/smokinggun/342-016a_gap.mp3.
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 5 minutes, she kept her foot on the device's pedal, causing a five-minute portion of the tape to be re-recorded. She insisted that 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.
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.
In a grand jury interview in 1975, Nixon noted that he initially believed that only four minutes of the tape was missing. When he later heard that 18 minutes was missing, he said that "I practically blew my stack".
appointed an Advisory Panel of persons nominated jointly by the White House and the Special Prosecution Force.
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 24 minute gap was due to erasure performed on the Exhibit 60 Uher. The Panel also determined that the erasure/buzz recording consisted of at least five separate segments, possibly as many as nine, and that at least five segments required hand operation, that is, they could not have been performed using the foot pedal.
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.
. Nixon, however, claimed that he never heard the conversation and did not know the topics of the missing tapes.
Nixon himself launched the first investigation into how the tapes were erased. He claimed that it was an intensive investigation but came up empty.
The National Archives
now owns the tape, and has tried several times to recover the missing minutes, most recently in 2003. 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.
Corporate security expert Phil Mellinger is undertaking a project to restore Haldeman's handwritten notes describing the missing 18½ minutes. This effort has also thus far failed to produce any new information.
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
" tape, from June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in. In that tape, Nixon agrees that administration officials should approach Richard Helms
, Director of the CIA, and Vernon A. Walters
, Deputy Director, and ask them to request L. Patrick Gray
, Acting Director of the FBI, to halt the Bureau's investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that it was a national security matter. In so agreeing, Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy whose goal was the obstruction of justice
, a federal and an impeachable offense.
Once the "smoking gun" tape was made public on August 5, Nixon's political support evaporated. All the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor. In the Senate, it was said that Nixon had at most half a dozen votes.
Facing impeachment in the House of Representatives and an almost certain conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of Thursday, August 8, to take effect noon the next day.
* items indicate testimony, or alleged acts
Chief of Staff Alexander Haig
had the recording system removed on July 18, 1973.
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.
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
.
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
. 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.
"It happens to be a collection of documents for presidents, by presidents, and for presidents' eyes only. I'm not just talking about JFK here guys. The eighteen-and-half missing minutes of the Watergate tapes, did the Apollo really land on the moon?..."
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and various White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
staff started communicating on February 1971 and lasted all the way until July 18, 1973. In addition to the line-taps placed on the telephones, small lavalier microphone
Lavalier microphone
A lavalier microphone or lavalier is a small electret or dynamic microphone used for television, theatre, and public speaking applications, in order to allow hands-free operation. They are most commonly provided with small clips for attaching to collars, ties, or other clothing...
s were installed at various locations around the rooms. The recordings were produced on as many as nine Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
TC-800B open-reel tape recorders. While the recorders were turned off shortly after the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
hearings, the system was not removed until 1974, after Nixon left office.
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
John Dean
John Wesley Dean III is an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up...
, 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 question
Leading question
In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question or suggestive interrogation is a question that suggests the answer or contains the information the examiner is looking for. For example, this question is leading:...
s, 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
Donald Sanders
Donald Gilbert Sanders , was a key figure in the Watergate investigation. As Deputy Minority Counsel of the Senate Committee, he discovered Nixon's White House tapes leading to the resignation of the President...
, on July 13, 1973 in an interview with White House aide Alexander Butterfield
Alexander Butterfield
Alexander Porter Butterfield is a retired U.S. military officer, public servant, and businessman. He served as the deputy assistant to President Richard Nixon from 1969 until 1973. He was a key figure in the Watergate scandal, but was not personally involved in any wrongdoing, and was not...
. 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
Archibald Cox
Archibald Cox, Jr., was an American lawyer and law professor who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy. He became known as the first special prosecutor for the Watergate scandal. During his career, he was a pioneering expert on labor law and also an authority on...
, a former United States Solicitor General
United States Solicitor General
The United States Solicitor General is the person appointed to represent the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. The current Solicitor General, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 6, 2011 and sworn in on June...
, immediately asked District Court Judge John Sirica to subpoena
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
eight relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel
White House Counsel
The White House Counsel is a staff appointee of the President of the United States.-Role:The Counsel's role is to advise the President on all legal issues concerning the President and the White House...
John Dean
John Dean
John Wesley Dean III is an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up...
.
Nixon refuses to release the tapes
Nixon initially refused to release the tapes, claiming they were vital to national security. Then, on October 19, 1973, he offered to have U.S. SenatorUnited States Senate
The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...
John C. Stennis
John C. Stennis
John Cornelius Stennis was a U.S. Senator from the state of Mississippi. He was a Democrat who served in the Senate for over 41 years, becoming its most senior member by his retirement.- Early life :...
, a Democrat, review and summarize the tapes for the special prosecutor's office. Independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox
Archibald Cox
Archibald Cox, Jr., was an American lawyer and law professor who served as U.S. Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy. He became known as the first special prosecutor for the Watergate scandal. During his career, he was a pioneering expert on labor law and also an authority on...
refused the compromise and on Saturday, October 20, 1973, Nixon ordered the Attorney General
United States Attorney General
The United States Attorney General is the head of the United States Department of Justice concerned with legal affairs and is the chief law enforcement officer of the United States government. The attorney general is considered to be the chief lawyer of the U.S. government...
, Elliot Richardson
Elliot Richardson
Elliot Lee Richardson was an American lawyer and politician who was a member of the cabinet of Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. As U.S...
to dismiss Cox. Richardson refused and resigned instead, as did Deputy Attorney General
United States Deputy Attorney General
United States Deputy Attorney General is the second-highest-ranking official in the United States Department of Justice. In the United States federal government, the Deputy Attorney General oversees the day-to-day operation of the Department of Justice, and may act as Attorney General during the...
William Ruckelshaus
William Ruckelshaus
William Doyle Ruckelshaus is an American attorney and, several times, U.S. government official. He served as the first head of the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, was subsequently acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and then Deputy Attorney General of the United States...
. Finally, Solicitor General
United States Solicitor General
The United States Solicitor General is the person appointed to represent the federal government of the United States before the Supreme Court of the United States. The current Solicitor General, Donald B. Verrilli, Jr. was confirmed by the United States Senate on June 6, 2011 and sworn in on June...
and acting head of the Justice Department Robert Bork
Robert Bork
Robert Heron Bork is an American legal scholar who has advocated the judicial philosophy of originalism. Bork formerly served as Solicitor General, Acting Attorney General, and judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit...
discharged Cox.
Nixon appointed Leon Jaworski
Leon Jaworski
Leonidas "Leon" Jaworski was the second Special Prosecutor during the Watergate Scandal...
special counsel on November 1, 1973.
18½ minute gap tape
According to President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, on Sept. 29, 1973, she was reviewing tapes of the June 20, 1972 oval office recordings, tape 342, that had been recorded just 3 days after 5 men with ties to President Nixon's re-election campaign had been arrested while trying to bug the phones in the offices of the Democratic Party's National Committee at the Watergate hotel in Washington DC. Ms. Woods said Nixon came in and was "pushing the buttons back and forth." The recording was of a conversation between President Nixon and Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman. Haldeman's notes from the meeting show that the topic was the aforementioned arrests at the Watergate Hotel.White House lawyers said they first heard the now infamous 18½-minute gap on the evening of Nov. 14, 1973. Judge Sirica, who had issued the subpoenas for the tapes, was not told until Nov. 21, after the President's attorneys had decided that there was "no innocent explanation" they could offer.
The 18½-minute gap can be heard here http://nixontapeaudio.org/smokinggun/342-016a_gap.mp3.
Cause of Gap
Rose Mary Woods
Rose Mary Woods was Richard Nixon's secretary from his days in the Congress in 1951, through his Vice Presidency, Presidency, and until the end of his political career. Before H.R...
, testified
The buttons said on and off, forward and backward. I caught on to that fairly fast. I don't think I'm so stupid as to erase what's on a tape.
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 5 minutes, she kept her foot on the device's pedal, causing a five-minute portion of the tape to be re-recorded. She insisted that 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.
Years later, former White House Chief of Staff
White House Chief of Staff
The White House Chief of Staff is the highest ranking member of the Executive Office of the President of the United States and a senior aide to the President.The current White House Chief of Staff is Bill Daley.-History:...
Alexander Haig
Alexander Haig
Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. was a United States Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...
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.
In a grand jury interview in 1975, Nixon noted that he initially believed that only four minutes of the tape was missing. When he later heard that 18 minutes was missing, he said that "I practically blew my stack".
Advisory Panel on White House Tapes
On November 21, 1973, Chief Judge John SiricaJohn Sirica
John Joseph Sirica was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the Watergate scandal...
appointed an Advisory Panel of persons nominated jointly by the White House and the Special Prosecution Force.
The Advisory Panel on White House Tapes consisted of
- Richard H. BoltRichard BoltRichard Henry Bolt Ph.D., better known as Richard Bolt or Dick Bolt, was a physics professor at MIT with an interest in acoustics...
, chairman of Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc.BBN TechnologiesBBN Technologies is a high-technology company which provides research and development services. BBN is based next to Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA...
and founder of the M.I.T. Acoustics Laboratory, acoustics expert - Franklin S. CooperFranklin S. CooperFranklin Seaney Cooper was an American physicist and inventor who was a pioneer in speech research.-Biography:...
, president and research director of Haskins LaboratoriesHaskins LaboratoriesHaskins Laboratories is an independent, international, multidisciplinary community of researchers conducting basic research on spoken and written language. Founded in 1935 and located in New Haven, Connecticut since 1970, Haskins Laboratories is a private, non-profit research institute with a...
, speech perception and synthesis expert - James L. Flanagan, head of the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Telephone LaboratoriesBell LabsBell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
- John G. McKnightJohn G. McKnightJohn G. McKnight is a co-founder of Magnetic Reference Laboratory in San Jose , California, where he was Engineering Vice-president from 1972 to 1975, and has been the president since 1975. He also develops new products and directs engineering at MRL.-Biography:McKnight was born in Seattle,...
, vice president of Engineering for the Magnetic Reference LaboratoryMagnetic Reference LaboratoryMagnetic Reference Laboratory is an American company founded in 1972 that makes and sells Calibration Tapes for analog audio magnetic tape reproducers in the Open Reel format.- Origins :...
, audio and magnetic recording consultant - Thomas G. Stockham Jr.Thomas StockhamThomas Greenway Stockham was an American scientist who developed the first practical digital audio recording system, and pioneered techniques for digital audio recording and processing as well....
, professor of electrical engineering at the University of UtahUniversity of UtahThe University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
, signal processing expert - Mark R. Weiss, vice president for acoustics research of Federal Scientific Corp, audio signal analysis/classification/processing expert
The Advisory Panel was supplied with the Evidence Tape, the seven Sony
Sony
, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
800B recorders from the Oval Office
Oval Office
The Oval Office, located in the West Wing of the White House, is the official office of the President of the United States.The room features three large south-facing windows behind the president's desk, and a fireplace at the north end...
and Executive Office Building, and two Uher
Uher
Uher is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Chełm, within Chełm County, Lublin Voivodeship, in eastern Poland.-References:...
5000 recorders. One Uher 5000 was marked "Secret Service
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service is a United States federal law enforcement agency that is part of the United States Department of Homeland Security. The sworn members are divided among the Special Agents and the Uniformed Division. Until March 1, 2003, the Service was part of the United States...
." 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 24 minute gap was due to erasure performed on the Exhibit 60 Uher. The Panel also determined that the erasure/buzz recording consisted of at least five separate segments, possibly as many as nine, and that at least five segments required hand operation, that is, they could not have been performed using the foot pedal.
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.
Contents and Investigations
The contents missing from the recording remain unknown to this day. It is widely believed that the tapes recorded a conversation between Nixon and H. R. HaldemanH. R. Haldeman
Harry Robbins "Bob" Haldeman was an American political aide and businessman, best known for his service as White House Chief of Staff to President Richard Nixon and for his role in events leading to the Watergate burglaries and the Watergate scandal – for which he was found guilty of conspiracy...
. Nixon, however, claimed that he never heard the conversation and did not know the topics of the missing tapes.
Nixon himself launched the first investigation into how the tapes were erased. He claimed that it was an intensive investigation but came up empty.
The National Archives
National Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
now owns the tape, and has tried several times to recover the missing minutes, most recently in 2003. 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.
Corporate security expert Phil Mellinger is undertaking a project to restore Haldeman's handwritten notes describing the missing 18½ minutes. This effort has also thus far failed to produce any new information.
The "Smoking Gun" tape
In April 1974, the House Judiciary CommitteeUnited States House Committee on the Judiciary
The U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement...
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
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of 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
Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States are the members of the Supreme Court of the United States other than the Chief Justice of the United States...
William Rehnquist
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
recused himself) in United States v. Nixon
United States v. Nixon
United States v. Nixon, , was a landmark United States Supreme Court decision. It was a unanimous 8-0 ruling involving President Richard Nixon and was important to the late stages of the Watergate scandal. It is considered a crucial precedent limiting the power of any U.S. president.Chief Justice...
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
Smoking gun
The term "smoking gun" was originally, and is still primarily, a reference to an object or fact that serves as conclusive evidence of a crime or similar act. In addition to this, its meaning has evolved in uses completely unrelated to criminal activity: for example, scientific evidence that is...
" tape, from June 23, 1972, six days after the Watergate break-in. In that tape, Nixon agrees that administration officials should approach Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, Director of the CIA, and Vernon A. Walters
Vernon A. Walters
Vernon A. Walters was a United States Army officer and a diplomat. Most notably, he served from 1972 to 1976 as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, from 1985 to 1989 as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations and from 1989 to 1991 as Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany...
, Deputy Director, and ask them to request L. Patrick Gray
L. Patrick Gray
Louis Patrick Gray III was acting Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from May 2, 1972 to April 27, 1973. During this time, the FBI was in charge of the initial investigation into the burglaries that sparked the Watergate scandal, which eventually led to the resignation of President...
, Acting Director of the FBI, to halt the Bureau's investigation into the Watergate break-in on the grounds that it was a national security matter. In so agreeing, Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy whose goal was the obstruction of justice
Obstruction of justice
The crime of obstruction of justice, in United States jurisdictions, refers to the crime of interfering with the work of police, investigators, regulatory agencies, prosecutors, or other officials...
, a federal and an impeachable offense.
Once the "smoking gun" tape was made public on August 5, Nixon's political support evaporated. All the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee who had voted against impeachment in committee announced that they would now vote for impeachment once the matter reached the House floor. In the Senate, it was said that Nixon had at most half a dozen votes.
Facing impeachment in the House of Representatives and an almost certain conviction in the Senate, Nixon announced his resignation on the evening of Thursday, August 8, to take effect noon the next day.
Tape timeline
- June 20, 1972: 18 1/2 minutes is missing from recordings made on this date
- June 23, 1972: Date of the "Smoking Gun" tape, where Nixon orders the CIA to obstruct the FBI's investigation
- July 13, 1973: Butterfield reveals existence of taping system in the White House
- July 23, 1973: Cox requests the tape of June 21, 1972 conversations between Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman
- July 23, 1973: Nixon refuses to turn over presidential tapings
- October 1, 1973: * Woods transcribes the tape and informs President Nixon of the erasing error
- October 20, 1973: Nixon orders Cox to be fired; Saturday Night MassacreSaturday night massacreThe "Saturday Night Massacre" was the term given by political commentators to U.S. President Richard Nixon's executive dismissal of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus on October 20,...
ensues. - Mid-October 1973: * Buzhardt learns of a problem with the tape
- October 30, 1973: White House releases some of the subopened conversations, including the 18½-minute gap
- November 8, 1973: Woods testifies she didn't erase the tape
- November 14, 1973: * Buzhardt claims he discovered the tape problem
- November 21, 1973: Buzhardt informs the court that 24 seconds of conversation between Nixon and Haldeman is obscured
- November 21, 1973: Woods testifies she did erase 5 minutes of tape
- November 21, 1973: Sirica appoints Advisory Panel on White House Tapes
- January 10, 1974: Advisory Panel determines erasure deliberate
- April 1974: More subpoenas for tapes issued
- April 30, 1974: White House releases edited transcripts of subpoenaed tapes
- July 1974: White House releases the conversations, including the "smoking-gun" tape
- August 5, 1974: "Smoking-gun" tape becomes public; Nixon's political support evaporates entirely
- August 8, 1974: Nixon announces his resignation from office in a nationally televised speech
- August 9, 1974: Nixon leaves office
Chief of Staff Alexander Haig
Alexander Haig
Alexander Meigs Haig, Jr. was a United States Army general who served as the United States Secretary of State under President Ronald Reagan and White House Chief of Staff under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...
had the recording system removed on July 18, 1973.
Recently released tapes
On July 11, 2007, the National Archives and Records AdministrationNational Archives and Records Administration
The National Archives and Records Administration is an independent agency of the United States government charged with preserving and documenting government and historical records and with increasing public access to those documents, which comprise the National Archives...
were given official control of the previously privately operated Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California
Yorba Linda, California
Yorba Linda is a suburban city in northeastern Orange County, California, approximately northeast of Downtown Santa Ana, and southeast of Downtown Los Angeles....
. 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.
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
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
regarding negotiations to end the war in Vietnam
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
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
Timothy Naftali
Timothy Naftali is the director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, a post he assumed in 2007 when control of the library was transferred from the Richard Nixon Foundation to the National Archives and Records Administration...
, significantly changed the Library's previous revisionist interpretation of the Watergate scandal
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
. The exhibit previously maintained that the scandal was a coup plotted by Democrats
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
, and that journalists Bob Woodward
Bob Woodward
Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....
and Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein
Carl Bernstein is an American investigative journalist who, at The Washington Post, teamed up with Bob Woodward; the two did the majority of the most important news reporting on the Watergate scandal. These scandals led to numerous government investigations, the indictment of a vast number of...
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.
In popular culture
- In an updated version of his song "Alice's RestaurantAlice's Restaurant"Alice's Restaurant Massacree" is a musical monologue by singer-songwriter Arlo Guthrie released on his 1967 album Alice's Restaurant. The song is one of Guthrie's most prominent works, based on a true incident in his life that began on Thanksgiving Day 1965, and which inspired a 1969 movie of the...
", performed shortly after Nixon's death in 1994, musician Arlo GuthrieArlo GuthrieArlo Davy Guthrie is an American folk singer. Like his father, Woody Guthrie, Arlo often sings songs of protest against social injustice...
recalls learning that Chip Carter had found a copy of the original LP in the Nixon library, and later wondering whether it was a coincidence that both the original "Alice's Restaurant" track and the infamous gap in the Nixon tapes was "exactly 18 minutes and 20 seconds long."
- Joe Strummer references the Watergate Tapes in the lyrics of the song "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A."I'm So Bored with the USA"I'm So Bored with the U.S.A." is a song by British punk rock band The Clash, featured on their eponymous 1977 debut album, which was released in the United States in July 1979 as their second album after Give Em Enough Rope...
by the Clash
- In the 2007 film National Treasure: Book of Secrets, a conspiracy theorist Riley Poole when mentioning about the President's Book of Secrets states:
"It happens to be a collection of documents for presidents, by presidents, and for presidents' eyes only. I'm not just talking about JFK here guys. The eighteen-and-half missing minutes of the Watergate tapes, did the Apollo really land on the moon?..."
- In the film DickDick (film)Dick is a 1999 American comedy film directed by Andrew Fleming from a script he wrote with Sheryl Longin. It is a parody retelling the events of the Watergate scandal which ended the presidency of Richard Nixon and features several cast members from Saturday Night Live.Kirsten Dunst and Michelle...
, Arlene records a love message to Nixon and sings a song for 18½ minutes, which Nixon later erases for fear of people thinking he was having an affair with a minor.
- In the episode Day of the MoonDay of the Moon"Day of the Moon" is the second episode of the sixth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by show runner Steven Moffat, and directed by Toby Haynes, the episode was first broadcast on 30 April 2011 on BBC One in the United Kingdom and on BBC America in the...
, from television show Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, the DoctorEleventh DoctorThe Eleventh Doctor is the eleventh incarnation of the protagonist of the BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. Matt Smith plays this incarnation, replacing David Tennant's Tenth Doctor in the 2010 episode "The End of Time, Part Two"...
tells Nixon he must record all conversations in his office in case he is under the influence of the Silence, aliens that could use post-hypnotic suggestion to make him do what they wanted. At the end of the episode the Doctor informs Nixon, who now believes the human race to be safe, that there are still other aliens out there wanting to destroy Earth, indicating this is the reason the tapes began and continued, in fear of aliens influencing him.