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John dean, former white House Counsel to president nixon and now Barry Goldwater chair of american institutions at Arizona State university teaches a class on watergate and the discovery of the Nixon White House taping system. In june, 1973, during testimony before the Senate Watergate committee, mr. Dean implicated president nixon and administration officials, including himself, in the watergate coverup. Mr. Dean later pleaded guilty of obstruction of justice for his role in watergate and served four months in prison. This class is about an hour and ten minutes. Discovering the taping system, was it lucky or inefitiable, is what were looking at this in next lecture. The nixon taping, the whole story of the nixon tapes has been only partially told. It has taken me years to gather and find out what happened. And since it is one of the most important factors in the watergate story, i think it is important to get that history straight. And were going to try to do that in a summary fashion today. Before i start, would you like to remind you that other president s did tape, starting with franklin roosevelt, who used a when they first went to talking movies and they had a soundtrack, he had had a system put in the oval office that recorded. Im going to try a very, very quick sample oops, let me go back. A quick sample of roosevelt taping. Let me go back. [ inaudible ]. [ inaudible ]. You get a sample there. Let me give you that is amazing. When you think he is somebody today, when we have cell phones, talking about the breakthrough in that presidency of a walkietalkie that was so heavy they had to carry it on their back. Any way, nixon got the idea of taping from Lyndon Johnson, his immediate predecessor. During the recess or the transition between the two presidencies, nixon and johnson met and he said, i have several of the offices wired for recording. Including several of the telephones. And said, i strongly recommend you do the same. Nixon had exactly the opposite reaction. And had them all taken out. But this is the first time he had heard of president s recording. So what were the reasons that he does install. Back in the Nixon White House, there was as we have discussed in prior lectures, there is a pretty efficient Management System except for those instances like watergate and a few others where the Management System did not come into play. But the Management System on a daily basis was there. When somebody had a meeting with the president , when they brought a guest in, they prepared a talking paper that went into the president , was approved by haldman and then went into the president and then after the meeting they prepared a summary of the meeting. Ill give you a for example. In this particular memo from bud croag, Elvis Presley shows up at the northwest gate. I happen to know of this because bud called me and said, elvis is at the gate and he wants to present the president with a gun. Its a silver gun with ivory handles. But he also wants to talk about Law Enforcement. What should i do . I said, have the secret Service Handle it. Which they did. That that talking memo or that memo that went into the president mentioned that why elvis was there and laid it out in some detail that elvis sent a letter. I kind of like this letter. If you read it, youll see elvis stars, dear, mr. President , i would like to introduce myself. I am Elvis Presley. As if anybody in that era would have had any trouble knowing who this was. And i admire you and the office and respect the office. Have Great Respect for your office. I talk to Vice President agnew in palm springs a few weeks ago and expressed concern for the country. So this is why elvis is coming in. What he really wants to do is be deputized as a Law Enforcement officer to deal with the drug problem. There is the letter. Bud takes him in to the oval office, they agree he should come in. And elvis this is the greeting and elvis starts showing him pictures and its much of the meeting was recorded. That is bud croag in the picture there. This is one of the most requested pictures of the nixon administration. Excuse me. And youll notice here this belt, which is solid gold. He was also showing the president his gold cuff links. But croag was not the normal notetaker of meetings. And he prepared a fairly detailed account of what had happened after the meeting. This actually runs several pages. Ive clipped just one paragraph here that notes that pressley indicated that he thought the beatles had been a real source for antiamerican spirit. He said this sounds a little bit like competition. He said that the beatles came to the country, made their money and returned to england where they promoted an antiamerican theme. The president nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise. This is more as i say, this is a good postmeeting memo. This is became the exception to the rule. Know greater offender than Henry Kissinger who fell way behind on his meetings and the record of it. Haldeman noticed this and decided he had to do something about it. He decided that, were not keeping a good record of this presidency. What nixon wanted, was two things. One, he wanted the historical record of what happened during his presidency. He had a real sense of history. Secondly, he wanted to know if he had said something or given some indication to the guests like nodding at the beatles were doing something, he wanted a record of that. So somebody couldnt leave the office and say that he had said something that he, in fact, had not said. He did not he did not fully agree with elvis. He just sort of nodded and showed some surprise. So elvis could not, with bud there, taking notes, go out and say the president hates the beatles because that would have been an untrue statement. So nixon wants to protect himself. That is the one of the reasons he has somebody in there taking notes, particularly with outsiders. To deal with this problem and the breakdown of this recording system, the paper recording system, haldeman and nixon discuss lets put the same sort of system in that Lyndon Johnson had or something similar and keep a audio record of it. Haldeman calls an aide he can trust because this would become one of the most closelyguarded secrets of this presidency. He called alex butterfield. Who is the Deputy Assistant to the president who is the person who is dealing with the president more than anybody else, other than haldeman, and actually more facetime than haldeman because he is the person who takes documents in and out. And haldeman excuse me, butterfield in turn calls the secret service, the Technical Services division. They are the people who made sure that nobody outside of the white house was bugging the white house or none of the white house lines were being bugged. So they had the capability and the understanding. Butterfield told me over the years when he went to al wong, the head of the Technical Services division, wong said, oh, here we go again. That he had been there how this had happened in prior presidencies. So he knew exactly what it was. What was different, however, is that they put in a voiceactivated system. Isnt that annoying video . What it means to have have a voiceactivated system is that any time nixon spoke, it triggered the recording. And the way it worked is nixon carried a small device on his belt or in his pocket that indicated his location, it sent out a beam. It was a locator so the secret service knew if he was in the barbershop or in the oval office or if he had gone up to the residence and taken it off. They keyed the taping system to this, to the locator, so that when he was in the room where the taping system was employed and installed, it would trigger the taping system. In other words, installing it in the oval office and unless nixon was there, and say the cleaning crew is in there at midnight, it wont activate the system unless nixon happened to be there with his locator. So thats and it is very clear that nixon and Haldeman Haldeman less, forget about the recording system. There are other times they clearly remember the recording system. As some that have gone through as many as these as i have, you could hear it when hes trying to make a record. Even outsiders as opposed to justin cidjustin siders. And here is this one down by the president s feet and you could see where the president has his feet up on the desk. The fact that he was talking through the legs distorted the sounds and one of the reasons it is difficult to hear nixon. I tended to sit in this seat right here on five and my voice must have been right beside the microphone because it is clearly picked up. M4, ehrlichman took that seat. Haldeman m 2 and m 3 for kissinger. It is bizarre how people go back to the same places and repeated fashion. So those were the where the mics were located. And then there were two over here by the fireplace in the lamps that to my knowledge, i cannot hear anything from those. They tend to make the room sound rather hollow when they got picked up. But thats the key system. The next place they put them were in the eob office. The same thing, in the desk. The problem that i alluded today is nobody sat by the desk. There is a seating arrangement over here in the far corner and so these are some of the most difficult to understand. Some of the best recordings are those on the telephone. Most every telephone the president used, except when he summoned the residents that he occasionally would use but more often used by the family, they all were wired through the switchboard. And they are very good. This is the one recording device in the residence in the lincoln sitting room, and this Little Princess phone up here is it wired because it goes through the the central switchboard system. He also had he had actually three tapes up in camp david. Two different telephones. There was one that was by a sofa, another on his desk and then the room was recorded. So there were three up there. They were put in in stages, not all at one. The final place that was wired, and some of the most difficult sound, because it was the wiring just didnt work the way it was set up, it was the cabinet room. This was actually controlled outside of the cabinet room by alex butterfield, who had his telephone that had a button that would result in his turning on. And when alex left, it went over to steve bull. If alex knew he was going to be in the Cabinet Meeting himself for some reason, as the staff secretary, he would have one of the secretaries turn it on. The system started in february 16 of 1971. That date, for some reason, is not easily remembered by most people who write about this. But that is when it happened. The first conversation, other than the very general one here let me go back. It is actually somebody who just walked in the office before alex did. And they dont even really number it to speak of. And the first 4501 is the First Oval Office test. Yes . So besides the button for turning on the one in the cabinet room, did nixon not have a way to turn them on and off. No control over them. They are all voiceactivated. Youll hear the question up there, it was the only way to turn them on where nixon had no control over them. Nixon had no control over them. And as i say, at times he is very aware they are being recorded and other times he has clearly forgotten. Any way, the first conversation, this was surely explained to nixon. He tells the operation of it, the purpose of it. The fact that the cabinet room is controlled by butterfield. The fact that it is being monitored and who knows haldeman, the president and secret service. Under haldeman, also larry hig by and butterfield were the other two. Higby because he carried messages back and forth. The recordings were being made on a sony recording system. This that is what the system looked like. At one point they had unto nine of the machines that were gathering information. They were gathered on very thin tape. Half a millimeter. And it played at the slowest speed possible, 15, 16 inch per second on a sixinch reel. This translated into about six hours per reel. One of the reasons the sound quality is so bad is because of the fact it was played so slowly. In addition, the fact it was voice activated created what they call tape tape whip, where the machine starts and it jerks at the start and that leaves kind of a blurry sound audio sound that sometimes starts at the beginning of a conversation. So technically, it is not very sophisticated. But it lasted for many, many years, until anybody really got serious wi serious listening to them. Ironically, by april 9 of 1973, nixon is talking about taking the system out. There is a taped conversation that i have in the text, the nixon defense. If you look at april 9, what he says in there, he says, you know, with regard to the recording, what is going on here in the room, i feel uneasy about that. Not uneasy in terms of anybody else seeing it, because well control it. But uneasy because of the fact it is even been done. This is results in a 20minute conversation which i seriously summarized here. But what he comes down on is, he said i would like to do is destroy them, in essence and take them all out and take what weve got and get rid of them. As the conversation goes on, haldeman argues with him. There might be valuable material in here, particularly in the area of Foreign Affairs but doesnt disagree with him. What i found, that was known before i did the nixon defense. But i found another conversation where this comes up. And it is on april 18th. Lets listen to this. [ inaudible ]. Haldeman never did do that. As best i could figure the reason he doesnt do anything is that he becomes so consumed by watergate, he doesnt have time to do it and he never reports back to nixon it hasnt been done so they will stay in place and continue playing until theyre revealed by butterfield, as weve discussed earlier. And that happens on june 18th, is when they the system is shut down. There are approximately 4,000 hours, many of them are classified, i think that the official number by the archives is 3700 hours. Here is an eyetwisting sheet that i used at the time i was working on the book. It was released in october of 2010. But it just shows how its interesting to see where the conversations were. This is the white house television. This is the cabinet room. This is camp david telephone. This is the second camp david telephone. This is called the hardwire, which covered the room in camp david at laurel lodge. This is the eob office. This is the oval office. You could see most of the conversations take place in the oval office and the eob and the telephone. The cabinet room, there are a number of tapes, but the quality is so bad, theyre barely discernible. But that is just kind of the gray part are those that were not released yet by the time i had started on the project. It resulted in finding a thousand conversations, 600 of which had never been previously released. So how was this system uncovered . How did we learn about this system . I think that the it really starts right here i do not, in fact, know that such a tape exists but if it does exist and has not been tampered with and is a complete transcription of what took place in the president s office, this committee should have that tape because i believe it would corroborate many of the things this committee has asked me to testify to. Mr. Chairman, this concludes my rather lengthy statement. I apologize with its leng but i sought to provide the committee with a broad overview of this matter. Also during there were a number of people who raised the fact, i thought i had been taped in crossexamination. Including sam dash in this clip right here. Why i was focusing on april 15th, some of this is slightly repeated, just to make the point, is that nixon had said after we met on april 15th, that he a tape of me claiming i had immunity. He clearly misunderstood what i was saying when i said i would informally been immunized by the prosecutors to talk to them off the record about what was going on. It i was very open with my colleagues about all of these things. And he just misunderstands it and tells peterson in a phone call that he thinks that that he says im claiming i have been immuni immunized. I never made such a claim. It is just a fundamental misunderstanding. But the whole word and buzz gets out and peterson starts raising it with my lawyer, that dean said he thinks he was he has immunity, he doesnt have it. And charlie, my lawyer said he doesnt think he has immunity. He has exactly what he was given, which was informal immunity to discuss this on the off the record basis with the prosecutors. So here is the point coming up in crossexamination. I think you testified and you may have given us information on this, that you believe that that april 15th meeting with the president was taped and that you were being asked leading questions. Have you ever asked the white house if you were taped or any official in the white house . I raised it with my lawyer and dont know what he whether he raised this with the prosecutors or not. But after i was told that i had been taped who told you, mr. Dean . It. Mr. My lawyer told me he had received wo