Nixon's Turning Point

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Forty years ago today, it became much more difficult for Richard Nixon's defenders to argue against the barrage of Watergate–related charges he faced.

In my opinion, it was the point of no return for Nixon.

Through most of 1973, the Watergate story progressively ensnared Nixon, but, in those days, the talk was not so much about which illegal acts he might have committed but rather how and whether his presidency would be affected. I don't recall anyone suggesting, even in jest, that Nixon might not serve his full term.

That changed on this day in 1973.

Until this day, it had been relatively easy for Nixon to maintain plausible deniability, even after the existence of his taping system was revealed in the Senate Watergate hearings. It had been largely his word against former White House counsel John Dean's.

Naturally, those who were investigating the case wanted to have access to the tapes. After all, they could verify who was telling the truth and who wasn't. But Nixon refused, insisting the tapes were protected under the principle of executive privilege and because subjects involving national security were discussed in the conversations — and his defenders supported him as long as they could.

One of Nixon's solutions to the standoff over the tapes was to offer transcripts of the conversations to investigators. He would explore that option in greater public detail in the spring of 1974, but the job of transcribing subpoenaed tapes for that purpose began in 1973 shortly after the recording system's existence had been revealed. Transcribing the tapes was a task to which White House secretaries were assigned, including Nixon's longtime personal secretary, Rose Mary Woods.

It was while transcribing one of the tapes in late September 1973 that Woods claimed to have accidentally erased a portion of it while answering a phone call. Her original estimate was that roughly five minutes of a June 20, 1972, conversation had been erased.

Woods later amended her statement, saying that she might have accidentally erased as much as six minutes of the tape, but she strongly denied being responsible for the rest of the erasure.

H.R. Haldeman's notes (consisting of two legal pads of paper) suggested that the conversation, which was between Nixon and Haldeman, was at least in part about Watergate.

Nixon's lawyers had been told of the erasure before they sat down on Nov. 14, 1973, to listen to the tape, and they expected to find an erasure. But it went on longer than five minutes — many minutes longer, not seconds. Eventually, it was determined that 18 minutes and 15 seconds of the conversation had been erased — and the gap appeared to be the result of not one but several erasures. This could be determined by changes in pitch.

The inescapable conclusion was that the gap was not accidental.

This had been suggested earlier in the month by "Deep Throat," Bob Woodward's secret source in the early days of the investigation. Deep Throat told Woodward there were "gaps" in some of the tapes, implying they were the result of deliberate erasures.

At the time, there was some doubt among Nixon's lawyers whether the conversation was even covered in the subpoena. But, by the time they reported their findings to Al Haig, the White House chief of staff, the lawyers had determined that the conversation was, in fact, included in the subpoena.

The lawyers discussed their options and finally decided that, if they didn't tell the judge what they knew and the special prosecutor found out about it some other way, they could be suspected of destroying evidence.

Thus it was that, on this day in 1973, Nixon's lawyers informed the judge in the Watergate trials, John Sirica, of their discovery, which, in turn, was made public.

Sirica appointed an advisory panel of experts (nominated by Nixon's lawyers and special Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski) to examine the tapes. An "index and analysis" of the existing tapes was given to him five days later. The clamor for the tapes grew louder, not softer.

Nixon's defense was starting to fall apart — irretrievably.

Rose Mary's Boo-Boo

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Rose Mary Woods re–enacts the "Rose Mary Stretch" for photographers.

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The official accounts of the Watergate break–in and its subsequent coverup all say that the Oval Office conversation in which the so–called "smoking gun" was found to be in Richard Nixon's hand occurred 40 years ago Saturday.

But it's possible — if not probable — that the gun had been smoldering for a few days.

Actually, all the evidence and testimony suggest that the Nixon White House's damage control machine was humming the day of the break–in, but Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, were in Florida. There were things that could not be done until they returned.

On this day 40 years ago, the men who were ultimately held accountable for the coverup conspiracy held a series of meetings that were dedicated to damage control. The first newspaper story that linked White House operative Howard Hunt to the Watergate burglars had been published that day, and the president's men were determined that culpability for the break–in would stop with Hunt.

In mid–morning that day, Nixon had a phone conversation with his campaign director and former attorney general, John Mitchell, then he met for an hour with Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, a top adviser. The burglary was only three days old at that time, but Ehrlichman already had met with just about all of the principals by that time.

Nixon and Haldeman, as I say, had been out of Washington at the time of the break–in. On Tuesday, June 20, 1972, they were back in the White House and allegedly being brought up to speed on what had happened in their absence — and there may have been no one else who knew as much about Watergate at that point as Ehrlichman did.

Consequently, it made sense to many observers that Nixon learned many of the details of the break–in from Ehrlichman on that occasion, but the evidence that might support that theory was incomplete.

There was a recording of that conversation, and investigators subpoenaed the tape when the existence of the White House taping system was revealed in the summer of 1973, but, in November, it was learned that a portion of the tape had been mysteriously erased before Nixon's lawyers first listened to it.

The White House's position was that Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who had been with Nixon for more than two decades and was decidedly loyal to her boss, had accidentally erased about five minutes of the tape.

According to her account, Woods had been transcribing the tape when the phone rang and she reached to answer it. Her feet controlled basic functions like stop, play and record with pedals that left her hands free for typing; she insisted that, somehow, while she was answering the phone and then carrying on a five–minute conversation, she stepped on the record pedal, erasing that section.

Her side of the story was met with quite a bit of skepticism. A rather short woman, there was no conceivable way that Woods could comfortably pull off the maneuver that she described (dubbed the "Rose Mary Stretch") — even if she was a contortionist.

But things were considerably worse than that.

The actual gap turned out to be more than three times as long as the one for which Woods claimed responsibility, and she denied that her erasure was anything like the 18½ minutes it turned out to be.

Because the pitch of the buzzing noise that was made by the erasure changed several times, the unavoidable conclusion was that several separate erasures had been attempted.

Privately (and, in some cases, not so privately), it was suggested that the tape had been deliberately erased. Alexander Haig, Nixon's chief of staff at the end of his presidency, openly suggested Nixon may have erased it himself, either accidentally or intentionally.

Nixon, he said, was never comfortable with mechanical devices, and he might well have erased a portion of the tape when he was trying to listen to it.

That provided a possible, unintentional explanation, but unless that can be proven, the alternate possibility — that someone, possibly Nixon himself, deliberately destroyed evidence — cannot be dismissed.

The tape of the June 20 conversation has always intrigued me. Of all the tapes of White House conversations, it is the only one that was destroyed — at least in part.

Ultimately, it was a tape of a conversation between Nixon and Haldeman on June 23, 1972, that came to be known as the "smoking gun." That was the tape that caused Nixon's base in Congress to crumble — and led him to conclude that resignation was his only option.

What must Nixon and Haldeman and Ehrlichman have said to each other 40 years ago that prompted whoever it was to repeatedly record over the tape until that portion of the conversation was entirely erased rather than risk having it revealed to the public?

Was it worse than anything else that was revealed in those tapes?

Could it have done any more damage to the relationship between the American people and their government?

Twenty years ago, in a TV program that commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Watergate break–in, I heard Woodward talking about the 18½–minute gap.

With all the evidence of a huge criminal conspiracy that went deep into the White House, Woodward said, Nixon would have needed something like an 18,500–minute gap to successfully conceal his involvement.

I believed that when I heard it. Twenty years later, I am even more convinced that is true.

A Continuing Mystery

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This was called the "Rose Mary Stretch."

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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.