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Tapes Don’t Lie, People Do (Part 4)
The notable TV talk show host, author and psychiatrist, Dr. Phil (McGraw), writes about the ten defining moments and seven critical choices in every person’s life, which ultimately determine who we are and what we become.
For Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States, perhaps at the top of his list of defining moments would be the botched June 17th break-in of the Democrat Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.
At the top of the list of his critical choices is likely to be his decision not to destroy the audiotapes once Alexander Butterfield had revealed the existence of a massive White House recording apparatus (part 1) before the Senate Watergate committee in July 1973.
President Nixon, who instructed his Chief of Staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, to install the most elaborate recording system ever implemented in the White House, Executive Office Building and Camp David (part 2), had to know that incriminating conversations about the Watergate break-in had taken place and been recorded on audiotape, and if ever revealed, they would expose his involvement in the scandal.
Up until July 13, 1973, before Alexander Butterfield disclosed the existence of the White House taping system, no one but a select group of Nixon’s aides ever knew of it (part 2), and since no one knew about the audiotapes, obviously no subpoena for them could have been issued. So Nixon, arguably, could have destroyed all the tapes with impunity, with a simple order to a designated “fall guy” to get rid of all of them the moment their existence was made public.
Had Nixon chosen to do this, he would most assuredly have saved his presidency, and our country’s history would have been quite different over the past three decades... and beyond.
It would appear that at the time, Nixon did have a predisposition to destroy at least parts of what he thought might be incriminating conversations on the tapes. The mechanically challenged president was the most likely suspect to have caused an 18 1/2-minute gap on Tape 342 (part 3) by pressing the record and stop buttons, perhaps as many as nine times, in an effort to erase part of a conversation between himself and H.R. Haldeman.
Though Rose Mary Woods, the “fall gal,” took the blame, this proved to be no accidental erasure (part 3).
Nixon was accused of many things throughout his often controversial career, but no one had ever labeled him stupid. Perhaps his enemies had called him cunning, shrewd or maybe even devious, but stupid: absolutely not.
So why didn't Nixon take the 3,700 hours of recorded tapes, and all eight Sony TC-800B reel-to-reel audiotape recorders, pile them up on the White House lawn and ritualistically burn the proverbial rope that would ultimately be used to hang his presidency?
Let's investigate:
In a televised interview with British journalist David Frost in 1977, Nixon admitted that he had listened to some of the tapes a month before Butterfield spilled the beans before the Watergate committee. Nixon conceded that he did not believe the existence of the tapes would ever become public. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that on early Monday morning, July 16, 1973, his Chief of Staff—at that time, Alexander Haig—called and said that Alex Butterfield had revealed the existence of the White House taping system to the Ervin committee staff on Friday, July 13th, and that it would become public knowledge later that day (see part 1).
“I was shocked by this news. As impossible as it must seem now, I had believed that the existence of the White House taping system would never be revealed. I thought that at least executive privilege would have been raised by any staff member before verifying its existence,” wrote Nixon. “The impact of the revelation of our taping system was stunning. The headline in the New York Daily News was ‘Nixon Bugged Own Offices’,” he lamented.
When Butterfield made public the existence of the audiotapes, as political earthquakes go, this was a 7.8 on the Richter scale, because now there was conclusive evidence on audiotape as to exactly “what did the president know and when did he know it.”
To Nixon’s credit, he really believed he had done nothing wrong, especially when compared to previous administrations. After all, he did get the idea of taping his conversations from his predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson (part 2).
Destroying the tapes, Nixon wrote, would have made it look like “I had something to hide.” Furthermore, he was, after all, the President of the United States, and the single most powerful person on the planet. He would never be compelled to release highly sensitive classified presidential materials, and could always cite national security concerns. Or so he thought.
From a legal perspective, much of the blame (or praise) for not destroying the tapes has to go to Leonard Garment, Nixon’s lawyer at the time.
Garment was sure a subpoena would eventually be issued and counseled, “destroying the tapes would constitute obstruction of justice.” Garment based his advice on specific New York case law and the American Bar Association Model Code of Professional Responsibility, which states that a lawyer should not “conceal or knowingly fail to disclose that which he (she) is required by law to reveal.”
Many legal scholars feel that Garment was right in his counsel to Nixon. Although many of us may joke that “lawyer’s ethics” is an oxymoron, Garment’s counsel to Nixon not to destroy the tapes appears to have been the morally correct decision.
But legal experts, like the famous attorney Edward Bennett Williams, concluded that Nixon had “no obligation” to keep the tapes and could have utilized a foreign policy rationale—preventing heads of government from being compromised, for example—for destroying them. At the time of Butterfield’s revelation, “there was no trial pending, no one has been indicted, there had not even been a single subpoena directed at the White House.” So there would not have been any ethical or legal impediments for Mr. Nixon to destroy the tapes, suggested Mr. Williams.
This was also the viewpoint shared by Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski , whom Nixon would appoint after what was called the Saturday Night Massacre (more on this next time).
Jaworski believed that Nixon could have destroyed the tapes early in the “game” and gotten away with it, if he had declared the tapes contained sensitive information that could prove embarrassing to world leaders and compromise our national security. Nixon could have claimed he had made the difficult choice between letting the tapes fall into the hands of others, no matter how good their intentions, or disposing of them for the peace and security of the nation. “There would have been some verbal abuse for a while,” said Jaworski, “but the decision would eventually have been accepted. It would have been very, very difficult for the Special Prosecutor’s Office to proceed without the tapes,” he concluded.
Alexander Haig, Nixon’s Chief of Staff after Haldeman, offered Nixon a more practical reason for not destroying the tapes.
”The tapes,” said Haig, “were the only true safeguard he had, since he did not know what he would be accused of. Destroying the evidence would have given the special prosecutor [the impression] that the missing tapes were even more damaging than in reality.”
Haig might have been right, for one only has to look at the controversy caused by the 18 1/2-minute gap for proof of this assumption (see part 3).
In his book, The Ends of Power, Nixon’s first Chief of Staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, also advised the president not to destroy the tapes.
Haldeman writes about a telephone conversation with Nixon after he was forced to “resign” or, as some say, “sacrificed,” along with John D. Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s domestic affairs adviser.
According to Haldeman, “Nixon laughed wistfully and said, “You know, [Bob], it’s funny, I was just listening to one of the early April [1973] tapes of a meeting between you and me. I had completely forgotten this, but in that meeting I said to you, Bob, maybe we should get rid of all those tapes and just save the national security stuff. And you said no, you thought we should keep them. Oh, well.”
“Oy vey” might have been more apropos!
Years later, Nixon appeared to regret his “maybe” equivocation and the advice of his advisors not to destroy the tapes.
In an interview with the writer and historian Frank Gannon, Nixon said: “They [the tapes] should have been burned, because at that particular point, once they were exposed, then they could not be used for historical purposes. There were several reasons they weren’t burned. First, when the taping system was disclosed [July 16, 1973], it was the wrong time. I was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I just couldn’t make a tough decision like that. Second, I had bad advice, bad advice from well-intentioned lawyers [Garment] who had the—sort of the cockeyed notion that I would be destroying evidence. But these tapes at that point hadn’t been subpoenaed by anybody and the best evidence were the individuals themselves who were there. I think there was a third reason, however. I think that I felt that the tapes were probably an insurance against people who had participated in meetings and who, in the light of the Watergate thing, might go out and lie about what had been said. I had listened to the tapes involving John Dean on June fourth (1973), and I felt that they were an insurance against that kind of, shall we say, misrepresentation.”
Later Nixon actually wrote on a yellow legal pad: “Should have destroyed the tapes after April 30, 1973.”
A critical choice for Mr. Nixon that ultimately destroyed his presidency.
(To be continued)
For Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States, perhaps at the top of his list of defining moments would be the botched June 17th break-in of the Democrat Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.
At the top of the list of his critical choices is likely to be his decision not to destroy the audiotapes once Alexander Butterfield had revealed the existence of a massive White House recording apparatus (part 1) before the Senate Watergate committee in July 1973.
President Nixon, who instructed his Chief of Staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, to install the most elaborate recording system ever implemented in the White House, Executive Office Building and Camp David (part 2), had to know that incriminating conversations about the Watergate break-in had taken place and been recorded on audiotape, and if ever revealed, they would expose his involvement in the scandal.
Up until July 13, 1973, before Alexander Butterfield disclosed the existence of the White House taping system, no one but a select group of Nixon’s aides ever knew of it (part 2), and since no one knew about the audiotapes, obviously no subpoena for them could have been issued. So Nixon, arguably, could have destroyed all the tapes with impunity, with a simple order to a designated “fall guy” to get rid of all of them the moment their existence was made public.
Had Nixon chosen to do this, he would most assuredly have saved his presidency, and our country’s history would have been quite different over the past three decades... and beyond.
It would appear that at the time, Nixon did have a predisposition to destroy at least parts of what he thought might be incriminating conversations on the tapes. The mechanically challenged president was the most likely suspect to have caused an 18 1/2-minute gap on Tape 342 (part 3) by pressing the record and stop buttons, perhaps as many as nine times, in an effort to erase part of a conversation between himself and H.R. Haldeman.
Though Rose Mary Woods, the “fall gal,” took the blame, this proved to be no accidental erasure (part 3).
Nixon was accused of many things throughout his often controversial career, but no one had ever labeled him stupid. Perhaps his enemies had called him cunning, shrewd or maybe even devious, but stupid: absolutely not.
So why didn't Nixon take the 3,700 hours of recorded tapes, and all eight Sony TC-800B reel-to-reel audiotape recorders, pile them up on the White House lawn and ritualistically burn the proverbial rope that would ultimately be used to hang his presidency?
Let's investigate:
In a televised interview with British journalist David Frost in 1977, Nixon admitted that he had listened to some of the tapes a month before Butterfield spilled the beans before the Watergate committee. Nixon conceded that he did not believe the existence of the tapes would ever become public. In his memoirs, Nixon wrote that on early Monday morning, July 16, 1973, his Chief of Staff—at that time, Alexander Haig—called and said that Alex Butterfield had revealed the existence of the White House taping system to the Ervin committee staff on Friday, July 13th, and that it would become public knowledge later that day (see part 1).
“I was shocked by this news. As impossible as it must seem now, I had believed that the existence of the White House taping system would never be revealed. I thought that at least executive privilege would have been raised by any staff member before verifying its existence,” wrote Nixon. “The impact of the revelation of our taping system was stunning. The headline in the New York Daily News was ‘Nixon Bugged Own Offices’,” he lamented.
When Butterfield made public the existence of the audiotapes, as political earthquakes go, this was a 7.8 on the Richter scale, because now there was conclusive evidence on audiotape as to exactly “what did the president know and when did he know it.”
To Nixon’s credit, he really believed he had done nothing wrong, especially when compared to previous administrations. After all, he did get the idea of taping his conversations from his predecessor, President Lyndon B. Johnson (part 2).
Destroying the tapes, Nixon wrote, would have made it look like “I had something to hide.” Furthermore, he was, after all, the President of the United States, and the single most powerful person on the planet. He would never be compelled to release highly sensitive classified presidential materials, and could always cite national security concerns. Or so he thought.
From a legal perspective, much of the blame (or praise) for not destroying the tapes has to go to Leonard Garment, Nixon’s lawyer at the time.
Garment was sure a subpoena would eventually be issued and counseled, “destroying the tapes would constitute obstruction of justice.” Garment based his advice on specific New York case law and the American Bar Association Model Code of Professional Responsibility, which states that a lawyer should not “conceal or knowingly fail to disclose that which he (she) is required by law to reveal.”
Many legal scholars feel that Garment was right in his counsel to Nixon. Although many of us may joke that “lawyer’s ethics” is an oxymoron, Garment’s counsel to Nixon not to destroy the tapes appears to have been the morally correct decision.
But legal experts, like the famous attorney Edward Bennett Williams, concluded that Nixon had “no obligation” to keep the tapes and could have utilized a foreign policy rationale—preventing heads of government from being compromised, for example—for destroying them. At the time of Butterfield’s revelation, “there was no trial pending, no one has been indicted, there had not even been a single subpoena directed at the White House.” So there would not have been any ethical or legal impediments for Mr. Nixon to destroy the tapes, suggested Mr. Williams.
This was also the viewpoint shared by Special Watergate Prosecutor Leon Jaworski , whom Nixon would appoint after what was called the Saturday Night Massacre (more on this next time).
Jaworski believed that Nixon could have destroyed the tapes early in the “game” and gotten away with it, if he had declared the tapes contained sensitive information that could prove embarrassing to world leaders and compromise our national security. Nixon could have claimed he had made the difficult choice between letting the tapes fall into the hands of others, no matter how good their intentions, or disposing of them for the peace and security of the nation. “There would have been some verbal abuse for a while,” said Jaworski, “but the decision would eventually have been accepted. It would have been very, very difficult for the Special Prosecutor’s Office to proceed without the tapes,” he concluded.
Alexander Haig, Nixon’s Chief of Staff after Haldeman, offered Nixon a more practical reason for not destroying the tapes.
”The tapes,” said Haig, “were the only true safeguard he had, since he did not know what he would be accused of. Destroying the evidence would have given the special prosecutor [the impression] that the missing tapes were even more damaging than in reality.”
Haig might have been right, for one only has to look at the controversy caused by the 18 1/2-minute gap for proof of this assumption (see part 3).
In his book, The Ends of Power, Nixon’s first Chief of Staff, H.R. (Bob) Haldeman, also advised the president not to destroy the tapes.
Haldeman writes about a telephone conversation with Nixon after he was forced to “resign” or, as some say, “sacrificed,” along with John D. Ehrlichman, President Nixon’s domestic affairs adviser.
According to Haldeman, “Nixon laughed wistfully and said, “You know, [Bob], it’s funny, I was just listening to one of the early April [1973] tapes of a meeting between you and me. I had completely forgotten this, but in that meeting I said to you, Bob, maybe we should get rid of all those tapes and just save the national security stuff. And you said no, you thought we should keep them. Oh, well.”
“Oy vey” might have been more apropos!
Years later, Nixon appeared to regret his “maybe” equivocation and the advice of his advisors not to destroy the tapes.
In an interview with the writer and historian Frank Gannon, Nixon said: “They [the tapes] should have been burned, because at that particular point, once they were exposed, then they could not be used for historical purposes. There were several reasons they weren’t burned. First, when the taping system was disclosed [July 16, 1973], it was the wrong time. I was in the hospital with pneumonia, and I just couldn’t make a tough decision like that. Second, I had bad advice, bad advice from well-intentioned lawyers [Garment] who had the—sort of the cockeyed notion that I would be destroying evidence. But these tapes at that point hadn’t been subpoenaed by anybody and the best evidence were the individuals themselves who were there. I think there was a third reason, however. I think that I felt that the tapes were probably an insurance against people who had participated in meetings and who, in the light of the Watergate thing, might go out and lie about what had been said. I had listened to the tapes involving John Dean on June fourth (1973), and I felt that they were an insurance against that kind of, shall we say, misrepresentation.”
Later Nixon actually wrote on a yellow legal pad: “Should have destroyed the tapes after April 30, 1973.”
A critical choice for Mr. Nixon that ultimately destroyed his presidency.
(To be continued)
