Alexander Butterfield Reveals Nixon White House Secret Taping System in Bombshell Testimony

On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield—who had served as deputy assistant to President Nixon from 1969 to 1973—was questioned in a background interview by Senate Watergate Committee staff members prior to his public testimony. Butterfield was brought before the committee because he was H.R. Haldeman’s top deputy and the only person other than Haldeman who knew as much about the President’s day-to-day operations. When Republican lawyer Donald Sanders asked, “Was there any other kind of taping system in the president’s office?” Butterfield replied, “I was hoping you all wouldn’t ask that question,” and then confirmed: “There is tape in the Oval Office.” He testified that “Everything was taped… as long as the President was in attendance. There was not so much as a hint that something should not be taped.”

On July 16, 1973, Butterfield testified publicly to the existence of the secret voice-activated taping system, installed in the Oval Office in 1971 at Nixon’s direction with Butterfield in charge of the project, carried out with Secret Service agents. Butterfield’s confirmation came in response to a question from Fred Thompson, the committee’s minority counsel. Butterfield reluctantly admitted details of the tape system and acknowledged that he knew “it was probably the one thing that the President would not want revealed.” All present immediately recognized the significance of this disclosure, and as political adviser James M. Cannon later observed, “Watergate was transformed.” The revelation meant that Nixon’s own recordings could definitively prove or disprove John Dean’s testimony about presidential involvement in the cover-up.

From the moment Butterfield confirmed the taping system’s existence, the legal and political hunt for the tapes dominated the scandal. The recordings that Nixon himself had ordered created would ultimately prove his undoing. The Supreme Court would later order Nixon to surrender specified tape recordings, including the “Smoking Gun” tape that showed the President ordering obstruction of justice just six days after the break-in. Two days after that tape’s public release, Nixon announced his resignation to avoid impeachment. The Butterfield revelation demonstrated how Nixon’s own paranoia and desire to document his presidency for history—combined with his apparent assumption that executive power placed him above accountability—created the very evidence that would destroy his presidency and establish critical precedents about presidential accountability, though the ultimate lesson about holding presidents criminally accountable would be undermined by Gerald Ford’s subsequent pardon.