Nixon White House tapes
[8] On August 19, 2013, the Nixon Library and the National Archives and Records Administration released the final 340 hours of the tapes that cover the period from April 9 through July 12, 1973.
[9] Just prior to assuming office in January 1969, Nixon learned that his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, had installed a system to record his meetings and telephone calls.
[3] According to his Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, Nixon ordered the system removed, but during the first two years of his presidency he came to the conclusion (after trying other means) that audio recordings were the only way to ensure a full and faithful account of conversations and decisions.
[3] At Nixon's request, Haldeman and his staff—including Deputy Assistant Alexander Butterfield—worked with the United States Secret Service to install a recording system.
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.
[15] On July 16, 1973, Butterfield told the committee in a televised hearing that Nixon had ordered a taping system installed in the White House to automatically record all conversations.
[18] According to Nixon's secretary Rose Mary Woods, on September 29, 1973, she was reviewing a tape of the June 20, 1972, recordings,[20] when she made "a terrible mistake" during transcription.
[21] The contents missing from the recording remain unknown, though the gap occurs during a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman three days after the Watergate break-in.
Seated at a desk, she reached far back over her left shoulder for a telephone as her foot applied pressure to the pedal controlling the transcription machine.
"[23] In his 2014 book The Nixon Defense, Nixon's White House Counsel John Dean suggests that the full collection of recordings now available "largely answer the questions regarding what was known by the White House about the reasons for the break-in and bugging at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, as well as what was erased during the infamous 18 minute and 30 second gap during the June 20, 1972, conversation and why.
[35] Corporate security expert Phil Mellinger undertook a project to restore Haldeman's handwritten notes describing the missing 18+1⁄2 minutes,[36] but that effort also failed to produce any new information.
[40] 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 indicted former Nixon administration officials.
On it, Nixon and Haldeman are heard formulating a plan to block investigations by having the CIA falsely claim to the FBI that national security was involved.
[42][43][44] This demonstrated both that Nixon had been told of the White House connection to the Watergate burglaries soon after they took place, and that he had approved plans to thwart the investigation.
In a statement accompanying the release of the tape, Nixon accepted blame for misleading the country about when he had been told of White House involvement, stating that he had a lapse of memory.
From the time that the federal government seized his records until his death, Nixon was locked in frequent legal battles over control of the tapes.
He initially lost several cases,[51] but the courts ruled in 1998 that some 820 hours and 42 million pages of documents were his personal private property that must be returned to his estate.
[citation needed] On July 11, 2007, the National Archives was granted official control of the previously privately operated Richard Nixon Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California.
