201 hours of Nixon’s secret tapes to be released

Monday, Nov. 18, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Today, the government was releasing 201 hours of tape for public hearing, opening a rich vein of information for historians and Watergate addicts.

Even though researchers have fought long to hear the tapes, fulfillment of their wish may prove to be a thorny task. The National Archives, which has custody of the tapes, has not made transcripts, but is making a 27,000-page tape log and a 200-page conversation list available.

The archives warned that "conversations may be difficult to hear and understand."

Christopher M. Beam, a historian at Bates College in Maine and a former archivist who has listened to the tapes, said "they document what was going on in the cockpit of the American political system. There is no other collection of records quite like them."

Nixon had the taping system installed in February 1971 in the Oval Office, the Cabinet Room and his hideaway office in the Old Executive Office Building. It was voice-activated and synchronized with a Secret Service system that kept track of the president's room-to-room movement in the White House and his Camp David, Md., retreat.

The microphones picked up every sound, often obscuring conversation. The sound of a coffee cup being placed into a saucer became jarring. A lawn mower on the White House lawn or an ambulance going full-siren down Pennsylvania Avenue could be a nerve-jangling distraction.

The system was dismantled after former aide Alexander Butterfield revealed its existence in testimony before the Senate Watergate Committee in July 1973.

Nixon's estate gave up a 21-year fight last April to preserve the tapes' secrecy, agreeing to release all but the most private of the 3,700 hours. There are 820 hours in that category and they were being returned to Nixon's daughters. The former president died in April 1994.

To date, only 63 hours have been accessible to public hearing; about half of those were played for the jury at the cover-up trial that sent three of Nixon's top aides -- H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman and former Attorney General John N. Mitchell -- to prison.

Not until the next century will any of the recordings be heard outside of the archives' facility in College Park, Md. No recording devices are allowed in the research room and no tapes can be taken from the building.

Today's release was the first of five planned. Included in the 201 hours were 1,900 segments from 931 conversations, ranging from snippets to hours-long discussions.

The taping system was part of his desire that his administration be "the best chronicled in history," Nixon wrote in his memoirs. "I wanted a record of every major meeting I held."

Nixon did not destroy them when their existence became known, saying in his memoirs that he never believed he would have to surrender them. After a legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

One of the tapes, made on June 23, 1972 -- six days after the Watergate break-in -- proved to be the smoking gun that showed Nixon was in on the cover-up at the White House from the start. He resigned in August 1974 in the face of certain impeachment.