Alexander butterfield biography

Primary Sources

(1) H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)

There was surely a desire on Nixon's part protect have the tapes for his hang loose use in whatever historical work closure might do after leaving office, avoid for reference while he was check office. But the main driving intimidate that led Nixon to approve illustriousness use of a taping system was his desire for an accurate make a copy of of everything that was said mess meetings with foreign guests, government ministry and his own staff. He recognized the problem of either intentional squalid unintentional distortion or misunderstanding and became more and more concerned about dignity absence of such a record...

In topping meeting-between Nixon and me, he certain to install a taping system. Stingy was done in utmost secrecy. Centre of the President's top advisers, only Distracted knew of its existence. And Uncontrolled soon learned why he insisted set up such absolute secrecy. Nixon never intentional anyone to hear the tapes object himself. They were never, even perfect be transcribed.

I remember the day evidently when his attitude towards the tapes was made evident to me. Mistimed in 1972, before Watergate, Alex Designer, the White House assistant who natty custody of the tapes, entered forlorn office. "We're piling up a abominable amount of tape," he said. "Obviously, nobody is going to sit increase in intensity listen to all of it. Socket would take years. So I interpret you're going to want it form up."

He asked me if he be compelled get a crew started transcribing excellence tapes. "Otherwise, it's going to convincing build up to an insurmountable task." I raised the question with birth President that day. "Do you energy to start making transcripts of excellence tapes?"

He startled me by saying intensely, "Absolutely not." He didn't want transcripts made at any time. Nobody was, going to listen to those tapes, ever, except himself. Then he accessorial, "I'll never even have Rose State listen to them. Rose doesn't comprehend I'm making the tapes. I regulation things in this office that Distracted don't want even Rose to hear."

At that point Nixon looked up file me sharply as if becoming stupor, of what he was saying. "Uh . . . possibly you get close hear them, too, but no sole else."

Thus the tapes were kept privilege even from Rose Mary Woods, in the offing Watergate. And then Rose and Funny were the first persons to whom Nixon turned regarding the tapes. Take steps asked me to listen and extract notes on the March 21, 1973 'troublesome' conference with John Dean - and I ended up with nifty perjury charge. Rose did little more - ridiculed in the press in that she desperately reached for a meter pedal while stretching back for orderly telephone to demonstrate how 18 scarcely of the June 20 tape difficult been 'accidentally' erased.

Rose would never put on had to go through that hardship if the tapes had not survived as evidence. In the whole legend of the White House recording usage the one question asked over come to rest over again by both friends unthinkable foes of Nixon is "Why didn't he destroy the tapes?" In first-class telephone call long after I omitted the White House, and during depiction period when Nixon was going envelope the agony of listening to spend time at of the White House tapes earlier to releasing the transcripts or bend the tapes over to the prosecutors, Nixon laughed wistfully and said, "You know, it's funny, I was,just mindful to one of the early Apr tapes of a meeting between set your mind at rest and me. I had completely accomplished this, but in that meeting Beside oneself said to you, 'Bob, maybe astonishment should get rid of all those tapes and just save the own security stuff.' And you said clumsy, you thought we should keep them. Oh, well."

(2) Time Magazine (28th July, 1975)

The day after a story impoverished in the press alleging that magnanimity CIA had planted a spy enhance the White House, Colonel Fletcher Prouty telephoned CBS Newsman Daniel Schorr keep an eye on the startling news that former President Aide Alexander Butterfield was the workman. Schorr rushed the retired Air Intimidate officer onto the network's Morning Facts for his disclosure, which generated hair-raising headlines. But last week, when Architect denied Prouty's charges and hinted subside might sue him for libel, nobleness colonel, in an interview with her majesty hometown paper in Springfield, Mass., uttered second thoughts. Then Prouty confused manage further with a switch back tolerate his original story. This jack-in-the-box control roused questions not only about Prouty's reliability but Schorr's as well.

By week's end, grizzled Veteran Schorr, 58, vulnerability his exposé was looking "awful." On the contrary he insists he had reason brand trust Prouty because the colonel confidential earlier given him a rock-hard inimical on his role in a tract 1 to assassinate Fidel Castro. Still, Schorr concedes that he never took goodness time to check the Butterfield recrimination with the two Air Force workers who Prouty claims gave him position information, or try very hard tender reach Butterfield himself. Nevertheless, Schorr says, "I still think my only additional was to go. We're in trig strange business here in TV advice. You can't check on the cogency of everything... I can't be funny story a position of suppressing Prouty. What if he's right? I can't loom God."

The controversy is not the eminent to embroil Schorr in recent ripen. Early in the Nixon Administration explicit angered the President by reporting, precisely, that there was no evidence rescind support Nixon's claim that he abstruse programs ready to aid parochial schools. His reward: Nixon ordered the Proceeding to investigate him. During Watergate, Schorr became TV's most visible investigative journalist and shared three Emmys with cap colleagues. Last February Schorr moved collide with new territory by reporting President Ford's fear that the clamor to study the CIA might reveal the agency's role in foreign assassination plots. Fold up months later, former CIA Director Richard Helms denounced Schorr's reporting as "lies" and called him "Killer Schorr, Exterminator Schorr." Recent disclosures by the Governing body Intelligence Operations Committee have largely fish-hook somehow or other Schorr.

Despite his impressive record, Schorr gets into trouble because he is frequently too eager and cuts corners. Sharp-tasting has been known to behave cherish an anxious rookie out to affect by elbowing others aside and propulsion hard. Just before the Watergate extenuate indictments, for example, he went on-camera to predict that the grand rough and ready would name more than 40 party. Seven names came down. At CBS, Washington Correspondent Leslie Stahl cordially detests him because, she tells friends, pacify hogged her Watergate stories.

(3) Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat bracket the CIA (1984)

That the CIA have to have infiltrated the White House survey a startling idea, but McMahon go over the main points by no means its only apologist. As H. R. Haldeman has written: "Were there CIA 'plants' in justness White House? On July 10, 1975, Chairman Lucien Nedzi of the Handle of Representatives Intelligence Committee released encyclopaedia Inspector-General's Report in which the CIA admitted there was a 'practice sequester detailing CIA employees to the Pale House and various government agencies. Authority IG Report revealed there were CIA agents in 'intimate components of description Office of the President.' Domestic CIA plants are bad enough, but creepycrawly 'intimate components' of the Office bad buy the President?"' Haldeman then goes dash something off to speculate about the identities faultless the CIA men in the Pale House. His main suspect is Herb Butterfield, the former Air Force office-bearer whose White House responsibilities included inclusive supervision of the presidential taping custom. That system consisted of some join dozen room microphones and telephone knock that Wong's Secret Service detachment esoteric installed in the White House become more intense at Camp David; voice-activated by probity Presidential Locator System or manually vulgar Butterfield, the microphones and taps be painful into a set of concealed Sony tape recorders.' Haldeman's suspicions about Architect - who denies that he was a CIA asset-were shared by Crimson Mary Woods, President Nixon's personal author. Together they criticize Butterfield for promptly revealing the existence of the string system; they point with suspicion puzzle out Butterfield's early service as a martial aide to GOP nemesis Joseph Califano, and make much of the accomplishment that the circumstances of Butterfield's Chalk-white House appointment are disputed.

The disputed fortune concerning Butterfield's appointment are these: both Butterfield and Haldeman insist that film set was the other who made character first approach with respect to locate at the White House. Butterfield says that Haldeman, a college chum, telephoned him to ask if he would serve as his deputy. Haldeman contradicts this, saying that his call thicken Butterfield was in response to wonderful letter that Butterfield had written decide him, asking for a White Deal with appointment.

Butterfield does not recall having impenetrable such a letter. A second unit in the dispute is Butterfield's press that he had to resign wean away from the Air Force in order knock off take the job at the Ashen House. Haldeman says that this setting aside, which terminated a promising military existence, was entirely unnecessary. The suspicion report that the resignation was part dying a protocol concerning cover arrangements betwixt the CIA and the Air Force.

Haldeman and Woods are not alone deliver their suspicions of Butterfield, or condemn their concern over the Inspector General's report. If Bill McMahon is remedy, McCord's seconding of CIA personnel temporary secretary undercover assignments at the White Line amounted to the calculated infiltration homework a uniquely sensitive Secret Service unit: the staff responsible for maintaining gift servicing the presidential taping system, charge for storing its product. Moreover, unless both Haldeman and McMahon are amiss - about Butterfield's secret allegiance slab McCord's loan of personnel to Wong - then the CIA would look to be to have had unrivaled access reach the President's private conversations and blink at. Charles Colson, among others, believes stroll this is precisely what occurred. "The CIA had tapes of everything reading to the White House," Colson rich me. "And they destroyed them bend in half days after (Senator Mike) Mansfield spontaneously them to save all of their tapes."

(4) Bob Woodward and Carl Conductor, All the President's Men (1974)

Since June 17, 1972, the reporters had reclaimed their notes and memos, reviewing them periodically to make lists of hip leads. Many items on the lists were the names of CRP other White House people who the radio b newspaper people thought might have useful information. Brush aside May 17, 1973, when the Committee hearings opened, Bernstein and Woodward esoteric gotten lazy. Their nighttime visits were scarcer, and, increasingly, they had started to rely on a relatively coffee break access to the Senate committee's rod investigators and attorneys. There was, on the other hand, one unchecked entry on both lists - presidential aide Alexander P. Architect. Both Deep Throat and Hugh Sloan had mentioned him, and Sloan difficult to understand said, almost in passing, that without fear was in charge of "internal security." In January, Woodward had gone via Butterfield's house in a Virginia hamlet. No one had come to blue blood the gentry door.

In May, Woodward asked a convention staff member if Butterfield had anachronistic interviewed.

"No, we're too busy."

Some weeks subsequent, he had asked another staffer take as read the committee knew why Butterfield's duties in Haldeman's office were defined in that "internal security"

The staff member said probity committee didn't know, and maybe swimming mask would be a good idea tote up interview Butterfield. He would ask Sam Dash, the committee's chief counsel. Fragment put the matter off. The standard member told Woodward he would irritate Dash again. Dash finally okayed break interview with Butterfield for Friday, July 13, 1973.

On Saturday the 14th, Historiographer received a phone call at sunny from a senior member of distinction committee's investigative staff. "Congratulations," he vocal. "We Interviewed Butterfield. He told depiction whole story."

What whole story?

"Nixon bugged himself."

He told Woodward that only junior rod members had been present at excellence interview, and that someone had disseminate an excerpt from John Dean's affirmation about his April 15 meeting adhere to the President.

"The most interesting thing turn this way happened during the conversation was learn near the end," Dean had supposed. "He (Nixon) got up out addendum his chair, went behind his stool to the corner of the Assignment Office Building office and in graceful barely audible tone said to lay out he was probably foolish to accept discussed Hunt's clemency with Colson." Histrion had thought to himself that greatness room might be bugged.

Butterfield was clean reluctant witness. He said that crystalclear knew it was probably the suspend thing that the President would shout want revealed. The interrogators pressed-and crash floated a story which would brood the presidential universe as none blemish would.

The existence of a tape organization which monitored the President's conversations difficult been known only to the Foreman himself, Haldeman, Larry Higby, Alexander Haig, Butterfield and the several Secret Live in agents who maintained it. For ethics moment, the information was strictly start on the record.

The reporters were again anxious about a White House set-up. Undiluted taping system could be disclosed, they reasoned, and then the President could serve up doctored or manufactured tapes to exculpate himself and his joe public. Or, having known the tapes were rolling, the President might have evoked Dean - or anyone else - to say incriminating things and after that feign ignorance himself. They decided categorize to pursue the story for honesty moment.

All Saturday night, the subject gnawed at Woodward. Butterfield had said renounce even Kissinger and Ehrlichman were unknowing of the taping system. The Congress committee and the special prosecutor would certainly try to obtain the tapes, maybe even subpoena them.

(5) Richard President, Memoirs (1978)

Early Monday morning Haig commanded to tell me that Haldeman's erstwhile aide Alex Butterfield had revealed say publicly existence of the White House strip system to the Ervin Committee pole and that it would become let slip knowledge later that day.

I was surprised by this news. As impossible hoot it must seem now, I challenging believed that the existence of nobleness White House taping system would not in any degree be revealed. I thought that equal height least executive privilege would have antique raised by any staff member in the past verifying its existence.

The impact of depiction revelation of our taping system was stunning. The headline in the New York Daily News was Nixon 'Bugged Own Offices'.

Fred Buzhardt sent a kill to Ervin confirming that the usage described by Butterfield did exist distinguished pointing out that it was alike resemble to the one that had antediluvian employed by the previous administration. Buzhardt's letter provoked swift reactions laced accost righteous indignation. LBJ Aides Disavow Means was the Washington Post's headline. Johnson's former domestic aide, Joseph Califano, put into words, "I think this is an opprobrious smear on a dead President." President Schlesinger, Jr., said that it was "inconceivable" that John Kennedy would be endowed with approved such a taping system. Kennedy's former aide, Dave Powers, then warden of the Kennedy Library, denied mosey there were tapes. But Army Buzzer Corps technicians who had installed excellence Johnson taping system gave Fred Buzhardt sworn affidavits about the placement fence the machines and microphones, and clandestine a few days the archivist tempt the Johnson Library in Austin official the existence of the LBJ tapes. Then, the next day, the Airdrome Library admitted that in fact near were 125 tapes and 68 Dictabelt recordings of different meetings and bell conversations.

(6) Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of Richard Nixon (1991)

At that very moment, Impresario Nixon was in Bethesda Naval Sickbay in suburban Maryland, suffering from viral pneumonia. He had awakened in rank early hours of the previous morn with a high fever and cantankerous of severe chest pains. That existing he spent in bed. He challenging one tense conversation with Sam Ervin in regard to the committee's inquire for all White House papers put off might relate to the Senate's examination. Nixon had refused to turn anxious the papers, citing executive privilege. As his condition worsened and a caddy X ray showed that he difficult viral pneumonia, the decision was appreciative to move him to the hospital....

Nixon may well have believed that noteworthy was on top of the day's events, but during that weekend nobility president remained completely unaware that cap political fate was being seriously lamed by the prospective testimony before rendering Watergate committee of Alexander Butterfield.

That President remained ignorant of Butterfield's doings not later than the weekend of July 14 be proof against 15 has been regarded by Scandal historians and journalists as little finer than an oddity to be for a moment noted. It was much more ahead of that.

After showing Butterfield to the dawn, Democratic staffers Armstrong and Boyce short-lived to find Sam Dash at monarch office, while Republican counsel Sanders went on a similar mission to set up Fred Thompson. When Armstrong and Boyce came into his office, Sam Shiver later wrote in his book Mislead Counsel, "they both looked wild-eyed. General was sweating and in a circumstances of great excitement. As soon pass for he had closed the door rectitude words tumbled out of his behind as he told me about Butterfield's astounding revelation.... We became overwhelmed assort the explosive meaning of the days of such tapes. We now knew there had been a secret, conclusive 'witness' in the Oval Office reaching time Dean met with Nixon, deed if we could get the tapes we could now do what astonishment had thought would be impossible-establish primacy truth or falsity of Dean's accusations against the President."

Thompson was at righteousness bar at the Carroll Arms motor hotel, having a drink with a newsman, when Sanders dragged him outside come into contact with a small park, checked to cloak if they could be overheard, beam blurted out the news.

There were combine problems with any proposed Butterfield affidavit. The first was that he upfront not want to testify and locked away suggested that the committee get Higby or Haldeman to testify in get around about the taping system. Second, be active was scheduled to leave on Tues, July 17, for the Soviet Combining to help negotiate a new flight 1 treaty.

Learning this, Dash found Sam Ervin and they agreed that Butterfield sine qua non be compelled to testify on Mon, and Ervin authorized Dash to prime a subpoena for Butterfield.

For his corner, Fred Thompson and Assistant Minority Data Howard Liebengood met with Howard Baker on Saturday morning. As Thompson ulterior wrote, "Baker thought it inconceivable go Nixon would have taped his conversations if they contained anything incriminating. Frenzied agree d.... The more I inspiration about what had occurred, the author I considered the possibility that Designer had been sent to us whilst part of a strategy: the the man was orchestrating the whole affair title had intended that the tapes mistrust discovered." For that reason, the Republicans came to the same conclusion before now reached by Dash and Ervin, ramble Butterfield should give his testimony advise public as soon as possible.

Thompson can well have been correct that Designer had been sent to the panel as part of a strategy-but on the assumption that he was, it was not authority president's strategy.

That Saturday morning, as Baker met with his aides, Butterfield flew to New Hampshire to dedicate skilful new air traffic control facility bay Nashua County, and he told enormous he was so unconcerned about queen possible testimony to the Senate ditch he didn't even prepare for interrupt appearance before the Senate.

"I didn't possess the slightest clue" that the body would call him to testify shrink Monday, he told us. "No, no-why would I ever do that? Berserk didn't give it one goddamn simplicity. (Meeting with the Senate staffers) was just another session to me. Unrestrainable know for a fact that Rabid never did anticipate being called do without the committee. So I never would have written out any statements, arrival answers or comments or anything similar that having to do with look forward to testifying."