EVENING. People.

National Archives Release More Secret Nixon Tapes

October 05, 1999

Never suspecting that his secret taping system would eventually lead to his resignation, President Nixon was cheerful and inquisitive the first morning the recording system was up and running in the Oval Office, a newly released tape shows.

"How does it work in here?" Nixon asks his aide, Alexander Butterfield about 8 a.m. on Feb. 16, 1971.

It didn't work very well, judging from the poor quality of the recording, which was among 445 hours of tape recordings released Tuesday by the National Archives. Buzzing and humming noises from the recording machine drown out many words, but snippets of the conversation--the first of 3,700 hours that Nixon would secretly record--can be deciphered.

"The purpose of this is to have the whole thing in the file for a potential leak," Nixon says.

"Yes, sir," replies Butterfield, who then goes on to school Nixon on the technical aspects of the voice-activated system and answer his queries about who was aware of its existence.

"There are only five people that know about it outside of (Nixon Chief of Staff Bob) Haldeman and you and me," says Butterfield, who two years later would disclose to the Senate Watergate Committee the existence of the taping system. The tapes provided the evidence that ended Nixon's presidency and landed a few of his associates in prison.

Since Nixon resigned in 1974, only 420 hours have been released of the estimated 3,700 hours of his presidential recordings. Most of those that have been made public deal with the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate riverfront office building and the subsequent White House coverup.

Tuesday's release, covering events between February and August 1971, is the first in a series of chronological tape openings planned at the archives' complex in College Park, Md.