Alexander Butterfield, White House aide who exposed Nixon’s taping system, dead at 99
by Bill Trott
WASHINGTON, March 9 (Reuters) – Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who exposed Richard Nixon’s secret audio recording system, which was the “sure weapon” in the Watergate scandal that brought down the president, has died at the age of 99.
The death of Butterfield, whose revelations about the listening devices and recording system set off a bitter legal battle over the president’s right to executive privilege, was confirmed to The Washington Post and New York Times by his wife, Kim.
Both newspapers reported that he died a month shy of his 100th birthday at his seaside home in San Diego’s La Jolla district, but no cause of death was given.
Butterfield once told journalist Alicia Shepard that he did not like to be credited with being credited as the man who revealed the existence of the tapes, because it sounded as if he had “eagerly and breathlessly” told the Watergate congressional committee about the tapes.
A native of Pensacola, Florida, who grew up in California, Butterfield attended UCLA before joining the U.S. Air Force in 1948 and serving as a fighter pilot during the Vietnam War, commanding a squadron of tactical reconnaissance aircraft. He later served as military assistant to a high-ranking Pentagon aide, earning White House recognition in the job.
Butterfield eventually left the Air Force and joined the White House staff as an aide to Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, an old friend from UCLA. Butterfield’s White House duties included keeping a historical record of the presidency, including overseeing the installation of the voice-activated recording system.
Butterfield had left the White House for the top job at the Federal Aviation Administration as the investigation into the June 17, 1972, break-in at the Democratic Party’s Watergate headquarters escalated.
He was one of the few people in the White House who knew about the taping system, and when he learned he would be questioned by the Senate Watergate Committee, formally known as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Butterfield decided neither to lie nor to volunteer information.
He was being questioned by a Republican lawyer for the committee during a special preliminary hearing when he asked whether the White House had a recording system. Butterfield reluctantly admitted that it existed.
KEY QUESTION
On July 16, 1973, three days after his first statement behind closed doors, Butterfield appeared before a Senate committee in a televised meeting, and Fred Thompson, then an advisor to Republicans on the committee and a future actor and senator, asked the same question.
After a long pause, Butterfield said, “I was aware of the listening devices, yes sir.”
This was stunning news for the country because it meant there was an actual record of what Nixon said, when he said it, and to whom he said it.
Butterfield said the “recording system secretly recorded conversations and meetings in the Oval Office, Nixon’s office in the Executive Office Building, and the Cabinet room, as well as four White House telephones.” He said the purpose of the records is historical.
In a 1975 interview with People magazine, Butterfield said that Nixon often forgot about his tape recorders and ignored advice to destroy the tapes because he never thought the Watergate affair would come to a point where he would have to turn over the tapes.
“I’m sure he hates me as much as everyone else,” Butterfield said of his former boss, who died in 1994.
He said he thought Nixon should have resigned sooner.
“I don’t feel bad about the president resigning,” he said. “Like hell.”
NIXON’S ROLE EXPLAINED
A recording made six days after the Watergate break-in spelled Nixon’s undoing; “smoking gun” showing that he knew about the cover-up. He is heard agreeing to a plan to halt the theft investigation for national security reasons.
The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately rejected the White House’s claims of executive privilege and ordered Nixon to turn over the subpoenaed tapes due to his diminished public and political support. Rather than face impeachment and a Senate trial, he resigned on August 9, 1974.
Butterfield was never charged because he was not involved in the break-in or cover-up, but his former friend Haldeman would be among several Nixon staffers who went to prison over the scandal.
Butterfield was the focus of the 2015 book “The President’s Last Men” by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward, who helped break the Watergate story and provided Woodward with thousands of documents he secretly removed from Nixon administration offices.
Documents and interviews with Butterfield depicted what the former White House aide described as a “dumpster” situation within the administration and characterized Nixon as awkward, isolated and resentful.
Butterfield said he was frequently the target of hostility from Nixon loyalists and told Time magazine that longtime Nixon secretary Rose Mary Woods, who said she accidentally deleted 18 1/2 minutes of the White House tapes, disparaged him as a “son of a bitch” who “destroyed the greatest leader this country has ever had.”
Butterfield worked as an advisor to Oliver Stone and had a brief role as a White House staffer in the 1995 film “Nixon.”
Butterfield’s first marriage, to Charlotte Maguire, ended in divorce in 1985. She was also the widow of children’s book author-illustrator Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss.
(Reporting by Bill Trott; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Diane Craft)
