This was called the "Rose Mary Stretch."
Sometimes it seems that many of the things that happened in America and the world when I was growing up have never had a full public accounting.
That really isn't true. It took awhile, but several things that happened when I was a child have been resolved. It took three decades to close the books on the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi, for example, but Byron De La Beckwith was ultimately held accountable for the crime.
And even most of the cases where some questions still remain have had an official resolution — Lee Harvey Oswald is still blamed for President Kennedy's assassination in 1963 and James Earl Ray remains the gunman of record in Martin Luther King's assassination in 1968, even though legitimate questions have been asked about the participation of both. Sirhan Sirhan fired his weapon in a room full of people so it would have been hard for him to resist the charge of being involved in Bobby Kennedy's assassination, but questions remain about whether a second gunman was in that pantry that night.
A few years ago, we learned that former FBI associate director Mark Felt was the legendary "Deep Throat" who blew the whistle on the Nixon White House. Felt died last December at the age of 95.
For the longest time, I thought I would never know the identity of "Deep Throat." Woodward and Bernstein, the Washington Post reporters who stayed with the Watergate story when no one else was connecting the dots and altered the course of history in their vital role as government watchdogs, had promised not to reveal his identity before his death. When it actually was revealed, it was done so by Felt's choice; Woodward and Bernstein confirmed the truth of his claim.
As a young person, I really admired Woodward and Bernstein. I must have been about 14 when I read "All the President' Men." I think I was probably 16 when I read their sequel, "The Final Days," and I even got Bernstein to autograph my copy when I heard him speak in person nearly 20 years later.
I've often thought that it was the work of Woodward and Bernstein that inspired me to study journalism in college and work in the field for many years.
Those two reporters managed to tie together nearly all of the loose ends. But one mystery that remains unresolved is the cause of the infamous 18½-minute gap in the White House tapes.
Only former White House counsel John Dean had challenged Richard Nixon's version of events before White House aide Alexander Butterfield was questioned by the Senate Watergate committee in the summer of 1973. But the senators had been intrigued when Dean testified — he suggested that he had been under the impression at times that, during meetings with Nixon, he had been asked numerous leading questions, as if a recording were being made and a record were being kept of his statements.
A few weeks later, Butterfield revealed the existence of Nixon's taping system. Later that year, one of Nixon's attorneys, while reviewing tapes that had been subpoenaed, discovered the lengthy erasure. Further scrutiny indicated that there had been between five and nine separate erasures, which suggests that whoever erased that portion of the tape did so repeatedly, reviewing what was still audible, then erasing some more until all the incriminating portions of that conversation seemed to have been deleted.
Butterfield said that the only people he knew of who were aware of the taping system were Nixon, chief of staff Bob Haldeman, Gen. Alexander Haig, Lawrence Higby (one of Haldeman's assistants), Stephen Bull (assistant to Nixon), Butterfield himself and Butterfield's secretary. He said that he did not think Dean or presidential assistant John Ehrlichman knew about it.
After the existence of the gap was revealed, Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's secretary, took the blame for up to five minutes of the erasure. In the picture above, she demonstrates for the press how she may have unknowingly placed her foot on the "record" pedal during her transcription of the tape when she was interrupted to answer a phone.
But to achieve this would have required the somewhat diminutive Woods to perform a rather gymnastic maneuver — and hold it for the duration of the phone conversation.
The tape in question was made three days after the Watergate break–in so it seems likely the conversation dealt with the Watergate matter.
In his movie "Nixon," director Oliver Stone portrayed Nixon alone in a room in the White House, fumbling clumsily with the tape recorder while reviewing the content of the tapes. As I recall, it was implied that Nixon was the one who really made all the erasures, which seems plausible to me.
Woods was fiercely loyal to Nixon; she had worked for him for more than 20 years. But she only took the blame for up to five minutes of the erasure.
And those who knew about the taping system before it was made public had nothing to gain from taking a bullet for the president.
The existence of the gap was not conclusive proof of Nixon's involvement, but it certainly cast a shadow over the president. Ultimately, the tapes that were left intact provided clear evidence of Nixon's participation in the coverup, and he became the first president to resign.
Bob Woodward once observed that, rather than an 18½–minute gap, Nixon would have needed an 18,500–minute gap to obliterate all taped evidence of his participation in the coverup.
Nearly everyone who played a role in the Watergate scandal is gone now. Next month, in fact, it will be 15 years since Nixon himself died.
So I'm inclined to believe that we will never know the truth about the 18½–minute gap. Was it Nixon, struggling with technology he couldn't comprehend? That seems like the most likely scenario. Although he was regarded as brilliant in some circles, Nixon was frequently out of step with what was considered modern technology in the 1970s — and seems ridiculously simple by today's standards.
It seemed obvious to me then — and seems even moreso today — that the most logical strategy for someone who was determined to destroy evidence was to listen to the tape carefully, pinpoint how much needed to be deleted, play it through again to time it and determine how much of an erasure would be needed and then make a single erasure. The likelihood of five to nine separate erasures conjures a mental image not unlike the one shown in Stone's movie of a man recklessly, almost randomly, erasing two or three minutes at a time, then playing it back to see if he could get away with what remained.
The tapes are in the possession of the National Archives. My understanding is that it has made several attempts to restore the missing portion but without success. The tapes are now being kept in a climate–controlled vault to preserve them in case a future breakthrough provides the means to recover what was erased.
As I say, it will probably still be a mystery when I die. And I doubt it is a mystery that will ever be resolved. I mean, even if the National Archives can restore the erased part, it can never tell us who was responsible for the erasures.
I'm inclined to believe that only Nixon could have cleared it up for us.
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