other the next few weeks watch for our airings of portions from the 1975 church committee hearings investigating the intelligence activities of the cia, fbi, irs and nsa. look for all of our programming every weekend on c-span3. john dean, former white house counsel to president nixon and now barry goldwater chair of american institutions at arizona state university teaches a class on watergate and the discovery of the nixon white house taping system. in june, 1973, during testimony before the senate watergate committee, mr. dean implicated president nixon and administration officials, including himself, in the watergate cover-up. mr. dean later pleaded guilty of obstruction of justice for his role in watergate and served four months in prison. this class is about an hour and ten minutes.

discovering the taping system, was it lucky or inevitable is what we're looking at in this lecture. the nixon taping, the whole story of the nixon tapes has been only partially told. it has taken me years to gather and find out what happened. and since it is one of the most important factors in the watergate story, i think it is important to get that history straight. and we're going to try to do that in a summary fashion today. before i start, i would like to remind you that other presidents did tape, starting with franklin roosevelt, who used a -- when they first went to talking movies and they had a soundtrack, he had a system put in the oval office that recorded. i'm going to try a very, very quick sample -- oops, let me go back. a quick sample of roosevelt

taping. let me go back. [ inaudible ]. [ inaudible ]. [ inaudible ]. >> you get a sample there. let me give you -- that is amazing. when you think he is somebody today, when we have cell phones, talking about the break-through

in that presidency of a walkie-talkie that was so heavy they had to carry it on their back. anyway, nixon got the idea of taping from lyndon johnson, his immediate predecessor. during the recess -- or the transition between the two presidencies, nixon and johnson met and he said, i have several of the offices wired for recording. including several of the telephones. and said, i strongly recommend you do the same. nixon had exactly the opposite reaction. and had them all taken out. but this is the first time he had heard of presidents recording. so what were the reasons that he does install. back in the nixon white house,

there was -- as we have discussed in prior lectures, there is a pretty efficient management system except for those instances like watergate and a few others where the management system did not come into play. but the management system on a daily basis was there. when somebody had a meeting with the president, when they brought a guest in, they prepared a talking paper that went into the president, was approved by haldman and then went into the president and then after the meeting they prepared a summary of the meeting. i'll give you a for example. in this particular memo from bud croag, elvis presley shows up at the northwest gate. i happen to know of this because bud called me and said, elvis is at the gate and he wants to present the president with a gun. it's a silver gun with ivory handles. but he also wants to talk about

law enforcement. what should i do? i said, have the secret service handle it. which they did. that -- that talking memo -- or that memo that went into the president mentioned that -- why elvis was there and laid it out in some detail that elvis sent a letter. i kind of like this letter. if you read it, you'll see elvis stars, dear, mr. president, i would like to introduce myself. i am elvis presley. as if anybody in that era would have had any trouble knowing who this was. and i admire you and the office and respect the office. have great respect for your office. i talk to vice president agnew in palm springs a few weeks ago and expressed concern for the country. so this is why elvis is coming in. what he really wants to do is be deputized as a law enforcement officer to deal with the drug problem. there is the letter. bud takes him into the oval office, they agree he should come in. and elvis -- this is the greeting and elvis starts showing him pictures and it's -- much of the meeting was recorded. that is bud croag in the picture

there. this is one of the most requested pictures of the nixon administration. excuse me. and you'll notice here this belt, which is solid gold. he was also showing the president his gold cuff links. but croag was not the normal note-taker of meetings. and he prepared a fairly detailed account of what had happened after the meeting. this actually runs several pages. i've clipped just one paragraph here that notes that pressley indicated that he thought the beatles had been a real source for anti-american spirit. he said -- this sounds a little bit like competition. he said that the beatles came to the country, made their money and returned to england where they promoted an anti-american

theme. the president nodded in agreement and expressed some surprise. this is more -- as i say, this is a good post-meeting memo. this is -- became the exception to the rule. know greater offender than henry kissinger who fell way behind on his meetings and the record of it. haldeman noticed this and decided he had to do something about it. he decided that, we're not keeping a good record of this presidency. what nixon wanted, was two things. one, he wanted the historical record of what happened during his presidency. he had a real sense of history. secondly, he wanted to know if he had said something or given some indication to the guests like nodding at the beatles were doing something, he wanted a record of that. so somebody couldn't leave the

office and say that he had said something that he, in fact, had not said. he did not -- he did not fully agree with elvis. he just sort of nodded and showed some surprise. so elvis could not, with bud there, taking notes, go out and say the president hates the beatles because that would have been an untrue statement. so nixon wants to protect himself. that is the one of the reasons he has somebody in there taking notes, particularly with outsiders. to deal with this problem and the breakdown of this recording system, the paper recording system, haldeman and nixon discuss let's put the same sort of system in that lyndon johnson had or something similar and keep a audio record of it. haldeman calls an aide he can trust because this would become one of the most closely-guarded

secrets of this presidency. he called alex butterfield. who is the deputy assistant to the president who is the person who is dealing with the president more than anybody else, other than haldeman, and actually more face-time than haldeman because he is the person who takes documents in and out. and haldeman -- excuse me, butterfield in turn calls the secret service, the technical services division. they are the people who made sure that nobody outside of the white house was bugging the white house or none of the white house lines were being bugged. so they had the capability and the understanding. butterfield told me over the years when he went to al wong, the head of the technical services division, wong said, oh, here we go again. that he had been there -- how this had happened in prior presidencies. so he knew exactly what it was.

what was different, however, is that they put in a voice-activated system. isn't that annoying video? what it means to have have a voice-activated system is that any time nixon spoke, it triggered the recording. and the way it worked is nixon carried a small device on his belt or in his pocket that indicated his location, it sent out a beam. it was a locator so the secret service knew if he was in the barbershop or in the oval office or if he had gone up to the residence and taken it off. they keyed the taping system to this, to the locator, so that when he was in the room where the taping system was employed and installed, it would trigger the taping system. in other words, installing it in the oval office, unless nixon was there, and say the cleaning crew is in there at midnight, it won't activate the system unless nixon happened to be there with his locator. so that's -- and it is very clear that nixon and haldeman -- haldeman less, forget about the recording system.

there are other times they clearly remember the recording system. as some that have gone through as many as these as i have, you could hear it when he's trying to make a record. even outsiders as opposed to justin justin siders. and here is this one down by the president's feet and you could see where the president has his feet up on the desk. the fact that he was talking through the legs distorted the sounds and one of the reasons it is difficult to hear nixon. i tended to sit in this seat right here on five and my voice must have been right beside the microphone because it is clearly picked up. m-4, ehrlichman took that seat. haldeman m 2 and m 3 for kissinger. it is bizarre how people go back to the same places and repeated fashion. so those were the -- where the

mikes were located. and then there were two over here by the fireplace in the lamps that -- to my knowledge, i cannot hear anything from those. they tend to make the room sound rather hollow when they got picked up. but that's the key system. the next place they put them were in the eob office. the same thing, in the desk. the problem that i alluded today is nobody sat by the desk. there is a seating arrangement over here in the far corner and so these are some of the most difficult to understand. some of the best recordings are those on the telephone. most every telephone the president used, except when he summoned the residents that he occasionally would use but more often used by the family, they all were wired through the switchboard. and they are very good. this is the one recording device

in the residence in the lincoln sitting room, and this little princess phone up here is -- it wired because it goes through the -- the central switchboard system. he also had -- he had actually three tapes up in camp david. two different telephones. there was one that was by a sofa, another on his desk and then the room was recorded. so there were three up there. they were put in in stages, not all at one. the final place that was wired, and some of the most difficult sound, because it was -- the wiring just didn't work the way it was set up, it was the cabinet room. this was actually controlled outside of the cabinet room by alex butterfield, who had his telephone that had a button that would result in his turning on. and when alex left, it went over to steve bull. if alex knew he was going to be

in the cabinet meeting himself for some reason, as the staff secretary, he would have one of the secretaries turn it on. the system starts in february 16 of 1971. that date, for some reason, is not easily remembered by most people who write about this. but that is when it happened. the first conversation, other than the very general one here -- let me go back. it is actually somebody who just walked in the office before alex did. and they don't even really number it to speak of. and the first 450-1 is the first oval office test. yes? [ inaudible statement ]

>> no control over them. they are all voice-activated. you'll hear the question up there, it was the only way to turn them on -- where nixon had no control over them. nixon had no control over them. and as i say, at times he is very aware they are being recorded and other times he has clearly forgotten. any way, the first conversation, this was surely explained to nixon. he tells the operation of it, the purpose of it. the fact that the cabinet room is controlled by butterfield. the fact that it is being monitored and who knows -- haldeman, the president and secret service. under haldeman, also larry hig by and butterfield were the other two. higby because he carried messages back and forth. the recordings were being made on a sony recording system. this -- that is what the system looked like. at one point they had up to nine of the machines that were gathering information. they were gathered on very thin tape.

half a millimeter. and it played at the slowest speed possible, 15, 16 inch per second on a six-inch reel. this translated into about six hours per reel. one of the reasons the sound quality is so bad is because of the fact it was played so slowly. in addition, the fact it was voice activated created what they call tape -- tape whip, where the machine starts and it jerks at the start and that leaves kind of a blurry sound -- audio sound that sometimes starts at the beginning of a conversation. so technically, it is not very sophisticated. but it lasted for many, many years, until anybody really got serious listening to them. ironically, by april 9 of 1973, nixon is talking about taking the system out.

there is a taped conversation that i have in the text, the nixon defense. if you look at april 9, what he says in there, he says, you know, with regard to the recording, what is going on here in the room, i feel uneasy about that. not uneasy in terms of anybody else seeing it, because we'll control it. but uneasy because of the fact it is even been done. this is results in a 20-minute conversation which i seriously summarized here. but what he comes down on is, he said i would like to do -- is destroy them, in essence and take them all out and take what we've got and get rid of them. as the conversation goes on, haldeman argues with him. there might be valuable material in here, particularly in the area of foreign affairs but doesn't disagree with him.

what i found, that was known before i did the nixon defense. but i found another conversation where this comes up. and it is on april 18th. let's listen to this. i'd like for you to take all of these tapes if you wouldn't mind, in other words, i'd like to -- there's some material in there that's probably worth keeping. destroy them. would you do that? sure. >> haldeman never did do that. as best i could figure the reason he doesn't do anything is that he becomes so consumed by watergate, he doesn't have time to do it and he never reports back to nixon it hasn't been done so they will stay in place and continue playing until they're revealed by butterfield, as we've discussed earlier. and that happens on june 18th,

is when they -- the system is shut down. there are approximately 4,000 hours, many of them are classified, i think that the official number by the archives is 3700 hours. here is -- an eye-twisting sheet that i used at the time i was working on the book. it was released in october of 2010. but it just shows how -- it's interesting to see where the conversations were. this is the white house television. this is the cabinet room. this is camp david telephone. this is the second camp david telephone. this is called the hard-wire, which covered the room in camp david at laurel lodge. this is the eob office. this is the oval office.

you could see most of the conversations take place in the oval office and the eob and the telephone. the cabinet room, there are a number of tapes, but the quality is so bad, they're barely discernible. but that is just kind of -- the gray part are those that were not released yet by the time i had started on the project. it resulted in finding a thousand conversations, 600 of which had never been previously released. so how was this system uncovered? how did we learn about this system? i think that the -- it really starts right here -- >> i do not, in fact, know that such a tape exists but if it does exist and has not been tampered with and is a complete transcription of what took place in the president's office, this committee should have that tape because i believe it would corroborate many of the things this committee has asked me to testify to. mr. chairman, this concludes my

rather lengthy statement. i apologize with its leng but i sought to provide the committee with a broad overview of this matter. >> also during -- there were a number of people who raised the fact, i thought i had been taped in cross-examination. including sam dash in this clip right here. why i was focusing on april 15th, some of this is slightly repeated, just to make the point, is that nixon had said after we met on april 15th, that he a tape of me claiming i had immunity. he clearly misunderstood what i was saying when i said i would informally been immunized by the prosecutors to talk to them off the record about what was going on. it -- i was very open with my colleagues about all of these things. and he just misunderstands it and tells peterson in a phone call that he thinks that -- that

he says i'm claiming i have been immunized. i never made such a claim. it is just a fundamental misunderstanding. but the whole word and buzz gets out and peterson starts raising it with my lawyer, that dean said he thinks he was -- he has immunity, he doesn't have it. and charlie, my lawyer said he doesn't think he has immunity. he has exactly what he was given, which was informal immunity to discuss this on the off the record basis with the prosecutors. so here is the point coming up in cross-examination. >> i think you testified and you may have given us information on this, that you believe that that april 15th meeting with the president was taped and that you were being asked leading questions. have you ever asked the white house if you were taped or any official in the white house? >> i raised it with my lawyer and don't know what he -- whether he raised this with the prosecutors or not. but after i was told that i had been taped -- >> who told you, mr. dean? it. >> mr. -- my lawyer told me he

had received word from the prosecutors that i been taped and i thought there was only one occasion where that could have occurred where i was aware of that i had a direct conversation with the president because all of the circumstances seemed to indicate that and that was -- and that was on the april 15k meeting. i don't know whether i was or was not taped but suggested the government might want to list taupe that dap because if they listened to that tape they would have an idea of the dimensions that was involved. >> the people that got on this issue were sam dash and fred thompson. fred thompson representing the minority and really being there at the request of howard baker. in fact, the minority was somewhat more aggressive in one aspect than the majority. but yet, that is fred thompson who passed away recently, who,

if you didn't recognize him in his early incarnation as a -- a staffer in the senate and later a u.s. senator, would have sold you a reverse mortgage, for many years. scott armstrong, who did work for sam dash was probably the most aggressive -- not knowing exactly what he was looking for, but i'm convinced would have ultimately run into it one way or the other. the person who asked the direct question is don sanders who works for the minority, a lawyer. and they will ask alex butterfield. to give you a little background of how that all happened, there was a memo sent to fred thompson from buzz hart, buzz hart being the -- the one half of my replacement as white house counsel who handled nothing but watergate after i departed the white house. there was a document prepared that was pretty close to a

transcript in a summary of all of my conversations with nixon that was given to fred thompson by buzz hart and it was remarkably accurate. it goes offer for several pages. this is what makes -- this is what makes scott armstrong wonder where could this information have come from? so this will, i think, a combination of things, there is sort of a confluence in watergate constantly, resulting in the watergate committee uncovering the taping system. here is a recap of that in a summary form being recalled -- >> can i read an ordinance. i was a systems analyst and i made an organization chart of the white house and the question was, here is nixon and here is dean. we already knew from john's testimony that john didn't have notes. so there wasn't paper documentation. so we had to figure out who else would know.

so we made a satellite chart of all of the people that were in touch with nixon and all of the people in touch with dean. and in the middle of this, literally, if -- hear is dean up here and you look at this flow chart of where information flowed and there was the office of the counsel to the president and there was this guy who controlled everything in and out of the -- the president's office named alexander budderfield. >> once you get alex in there, what happens? >> it is friday the 13th and we met in -- in the air-conditioned basement of the -- the dirkson office building. alexander butterfield walks in and not accompanied by counsel which was very rare. and then at the end of it, i took out this bizarre to thompson memo and gave him the part that described the meetings between -- >> it was like a summary of a transcript but it was -- it was in the sense -- and everything had a twist that was tracked what dean's testimony had been

and it was prepared before dean's testimony. but it always had the twist that dean was the one responsible for whatever the evil act was at the end, if it was something that they were afraid would come out. so this document, i handed it to alex and i said, can you explain, given the systems you just described, how this would be reconstructed? what is it from? and we went through the president's -- the different things that and -- and my recollection is that alex took it and looked at it and he had been very straightforward. but he continued and said -- well, this is -- and i said could this have come from the president's recollections? no. no detailed for that. could this have come from someone else being present at the meetings. no. john was the note taker and john didn't have notes. and so where did this come from? and alex took it and very -- deliberately took it and set it down in front of himself, and said, well, let me think about

that for a minute. and the questioning went off in a different -- i finished up. the questioning on sanders, very skilled fbi agent -- >> all right. >> there is one other aspect, i went back later and looked at the -- the stenographer's notes and this is what she has down. memory is what it is. but she was just taking notes. sanders asked a number of different questions about different things and it was -- and he asked the question that jumped around a little and then he asked the question, when dean testified, he said that at one point in one of the meetings nixon went over to the corner of his eob office and lowered his voice when he was talking about the clemency questions or -- or i had the impression it might have been some money conversations. but at any rate, sanders said, dean thought that the president lowered his voice and wondered -- and dean speculated that the president -- that the

conversations might have been recorded. did dean -- did dean know what he was talking about? i forgot the exact language, but it was close to that. and alex's answer was -- no. dean wouldn't have known. there were very few of us that knew. but that is where this came from. and picked up the thing -- as a continuation. that -- the way it affected me was i thought he was answering my question, rather than sanders' question. until i looked at the -- the transcript later. as soon as we heard that, this little tingle went up your spine and said, recordings of all -- because then we ask him the nature of the system. >> the only thing i remember differently from what scott just said, i remember getting that piece of paper early on in the -- shortly after 2:00 in that four-hour session with the staff.

and scott was the lead investigator. and i remember it as only one sheet of paper. and when i -- they said where might this have come from? i looked at this thing and it -- it was, in fact, it looked exactly like a -- a transcript, a verbatim transcript. it had a p. for president and d. for dean and it made sense. it was -- i mean, i didn't -- i didn't follow the discussion, but i thought to myself, god, it is out. this had to come from the tapes. and the very thing i'm worrying so much about. and so i just -- i hemmed and hawed and said, just, this looks very detailed. the president had great retentive powers, but this is

too detailed for that. but anyway, i said, finally, i started to panic and i threw it back down and it slid out to the center of this little conference table and i said, let me think about that for a while. and to my great relief, they went on to other items. until sanders was -- until scott turned it over to sanders, representing fred thompson. he was the minority deputy counsel. as i had said to my wife at breakfast that morning, i guess if they ask me a direct question, i will just have to answer. and i know it would be the end of my career. >> the question then became how do we get to this material quickly. he told us who else knew about it and how it was organized and run and we had to get to it, from my point of view, before it was destroyed. we had to do something to nail it down. >> anyway, that is about 40 minutes boiled down to eight.

what happens next is that after he has sam's full attention, they say, i can't deal with it tonight but we'll deal with it in the morning. this is friday afternoon and friday evening, the 13th, friday the 13th. and sam said the next morning, he has all of the staff in, we have to get ahold of john dean because he's our key witness. what if everything he's told us and we built this whole case on is wrong. and this is all a set-up. and that is why butterfield is up here and actually finally revealed this astounding piece of information. so sam dash, rather than -- he would normally call my lawyer, called me directly. he was able to get in touch with me because he knew i was in the witness protection program and so through the marshals he tracked me down to marathon, florida, where i was staying in a friend's house on a rather

deserted beach with lowering my profile as much as possible after 80 million americans watching a week of the testimony. so sam says, you have to return. the marshals will get you back up to your house. and i need to meet with you on sunday at the latest, on something i can't tell you about. i thought, that was mysterious. but he said, well, if it is that important, sam, i had known for many years long before were the and i trusted -- long before watergate and i said we would work it out. the next sunday i meet with him at my house in old town and the marshalls have no trouble arranging travel as they were able to do with the people in the witness protection program and accompanied me out there and got me. and when sam came out he would

be accompanied by jim hamilton who was one of his key lawyers. so in assembling this program, i got a hold of jim hamilton to ask him if he had ever really discussed this issue. he said, as a matter of fact, i had a video i did in the howard baker room of the university of tennessee and i'll be happy to send you up a transcript of it or a video of it. so here is a little clip from what happened from jim hamilton's recollection of these events. >> when sam dash called me early saturday morning, july 14th, he said, let's go tell john dean what we just learned. and a little later sam picked me up and we drove to dean's townhouse in alexander, virginia. john and his -- and his glamorous wife, the always well-put together met us at the front door. and john had a quiz cal look on his face because he didn't yet know what the purpose of the visit was.

so we went upstairs to their living room. and john and beau sat on a couch and after some preliminary conversation sam sat down to the left. and i stood before john by the mantel piece where i could look directly at john because i wanted to see john's reaction when sam told him what we may have knew about the taping system. when sam finally did, john broke into a wide smile. for he knew that the tapes essentially were going to confirm his damning testimony about president nixon. as john recounts it in his book "blind ambition", he then said to sam, sam, do you know what this means if you get those conversations? it would mean my ass is not hanging out there all alone.

it means that you can verify my testimony. and i'll tell you this, you'll find out that i've undertestified rather than over-testified just to be careful. on monday morning, the next monday morning, july 16th, irwin baker and dash and thompson met and they decided to put butterfield on the stand that afternoon. i was dispatched to summon butterfield to the hearings. when i told butterfield that his presence was required that afternoon, he was not happy. indeed, he refused to appear. he said that he was preparing for a trip to russia the next day on faa business and was just too busy to attend the hearings. i relayed butterfield's response to senator irwin. he grew agitated. his famous eyebrows cav orted,

his jaw turned and finally he said to me, jim, you tell mr. butterfield that if he's not here this afternoon, i will send the senate sergeant at arms out to fetch him and bring him to the hearing. which, having located him in a barber chair, i did faithfully. this message changed his mind, and later that afternoon butterfield now quite contrite and neatly quaffed arrived at the senate -- at the senate to give his electrifying testimony. the subpoena that i served on butterfield still hangs in my office. >> the interesting and i think very clever decision that the

democrats made was rather than -- for sam dash to ask this question to butterfield, because it had been uncovered by don sanders who worked for the minority and the republicans, they would have the republicans ask butterfield the question, since don sanders had discovered this. in other words, to have fred thompson raise the questions. this gave it a little different feel with the republicans uncovering this incredible bit of information. in the clip that follows, i believe you can see howard baker on the far side of the screen. he looks like he's ill after having found this information out. >> january 21st, 1969 and continue to be employed until march 14 of this year, is that correct.

>> that's correct. >> mr. butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the oval office of the president? >> i was aware of listening devices. yes, sir. >> when there those devices placed in the oval office? >> approximately the summer of 1970. i cannot begin to recall the precise date. my guess, mr. thompson, is that the installation was made between -- and this is a very rough guess, between april or may of 1970 and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall of 1970. >> are you aware of any devices installed in the executive office building office of the president? >> yes, sir. at that time. >> were they installed at the same time? >> they were installed at the same time.

>> actually, the dates are a little bit wrong. if you recall, i showed you february 16th of '71 is when the system was put in the oval office. and the next was the cabinet room and later after that the eob office. on jim hamilton's recollection of his meeting with me, he's nailed it. he's right on. except in showing the kind of tricks that memory can play. he vividly remembers my wife being there. she was not there. she remained in marathon, florida. but that is the sort of thing a memory can do. it was just -- myself and then i actually returned to marathon as soon as the -- the meeting with sam dash ended. and needless to say, the fact the taping system had been uncovered was quickly conveyed to the white house.

fred thompson called fred buzz hart to let him know and found him not overly concerned. i think buzz hart had figured it out by then, that there was such a system because he made the memo sent to thompson that so closely had the notes of my conversations.