Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Alexander Butterfield : Reluctant Witness (Special Edition, with dedications to Loverboy Dennis Condrey and Beautiful Bobby Eaton (the Midnight Express) and Chuck Norris)

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Alexander Butterfield : Reluctant Witness (Special Edition, with dedications to Loverboy Dennis Condrey and Beautiful Bobby Eaton (the Midnight Express) and Chuck Norris) · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_17: That's one of the most fine buoyances in the fifth group of fashion wrestling, June Coronet.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_17: Let's go right now and take a look at June Colorado and the provided for the June Corona.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_12: We are here to talk about a growing concern we all fear.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_12: If we look to history, our great country and freedom are under attack.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_12: We know you love your family and your freedom as much as Tina and I do.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_12: And it is because of that we can no longer sit quietly or stand on the sidelines and watch our country go the way of socialism or something much worse.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_12: As Edmund Burke said, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men and women do nothing.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_12: Our great president, Ronald Reagan, said, freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_12: We didn't pass it on to our children and the bloodstream.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_12: It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_10: President Reagan went on to say that you and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_10: We will preserve for our children this last best hope for man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_12: Please stand with us.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_12: Let's unite for God and country, and may God continue to bless the United States of America.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_07: Just what I didn't want to happen.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_07: He said, I've got to go.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_07: He said, I'm I got a flight out of Dulles at 550 United or something that everyone took when they were going to the West Coast nonstop to Los Angeles from Dallas.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_07: Anyway, he had a driver waiting because his his wife Joe had called him.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_07: He said, I gotta introduce you to the president right now.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_07: Come on, right now.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_07: He's all out of breath.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_07: And so I run and I'm I wanted to go in and comb my hair and lick my lips and something.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_07: He said, No, no, come on.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_07: So he drags me in there.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_07: And that that was a funny story.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_07: I had I'd been around the president, I'd seen him from various angles and distances, but now I'm in there out of breath with Haldeman.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_07: And uh I think he told the president, I'm gonna get this guy, Alex Butterfield, he's gonna sit in for me.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_07: I have to go to Los Angeles for four days.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_07: He was gone for four days.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_07: And uh so the president did get up from behind his desk, which is unusual for him, and he's standing there.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_07: And Haldeman says, This is Alex Butterfield, he's the guy I told you about.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_07: He's gonna be sitting in for me, he's my alter ego, just as I'm your alter ego, and that was the way Haldeman explained it to me.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_07: He's been working right here in my office, he knows the way I take notes and everything, and he'll be right here for you, Mr.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_07: So then it was my turn to say something, and I didn't have any trouble with that.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_07: Great honor for me to be here, Mr.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_07: President.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_07: Working for Bob.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_07: Whatever I said, something simple and to the point.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_07: But I I didn't have any trouble with it.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_07: Well then Bob had spoken, I had spoken.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_07: Now it's clearly the president's turn to say something.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_07: He hadn't uttered a word yet.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_07: But this I learned very quickly.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I learned it that day, that you can't if the president has a plan and he knows beforehand who he's gonna see and what the subject matter is, he'll handle it superbly.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, Nixon can do that.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon's good at that.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_07: If he knows essentially what he's gonna say, he can take speechwriters' notes and process them very quickly.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_07: He's got great retentive powers.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_07: I had always I noticed that early on with Nixon.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_07: He could take the speechwriter's comments and pull out just what he wants and put it away in a matter of minutes and give a very good talk, drawing from that.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_07: But if he's surprised, the way we had to have surprised him that day, that afternoon, he doesn't know how to handle it and he can't speak.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_07: He actually cannot utter a discernible word.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_07: So he does these gestures.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I have been known to imitate him and standing up and do this, but he sort of goes, I knew what he meant.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_07: Barb here he didn't even say that.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_07: He said all these guttural sounds, it was really something.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_07: People would not believe it.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_07: I sound like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not, and I'm not making fun either.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_07: I well, I sounds as though I am, in retrospect.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_07: Looking back all these years, thirty-nine years ago, this is so anyway.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_07: He says nothing.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_07: And and he's he's doing this with the rug, and he's still doing this with his hand, and I felt and he's perspiring, and I felt so sorry for this guy.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_07: Finally, Bob, who is really antsy to get that car and get heading out through traffic to Dulles, just grabs me and says Thank you, Mr.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_07: President.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_07: Alex will see you in the morning or something.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_07: And we went out.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_07: He never said one word, the president did.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_13: From Washington, MPACT continues its coverage of hearings by the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_13: Here again, correspondent Jim Lehrer.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_16: As we go back to the hearings, the committee is about to get some confirmation of John Dean's suspicion that his talks with the president were recorded.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_16: The surprise witness is Alexander Butterfield.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Some committee will come to order.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Mr.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_02: Butterfield, will you stand and raise your right hand?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: You swear the evidence that you shall give the select City Select Committee on Presidential Campaign activities shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: So if you go.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Mr.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Daish.
• 10:10
  unknown: Mr.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_04: Butterfield, I understand you previously were employed by the White House.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_04: Is that correct?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_04: That's correct.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_04: I would like to preface my remarks, if I may, Mr.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_07: Thompson.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_07: So if you go out ahead.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_07: That is to say, that the staff secretary, who is the day-to-day administrator at the White House, reported directly to me, and of course I reported to Mr.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_07: Haldman, as did everyone.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_07: In addition to administration, I was responsible for the management and ultimate supervision of the Office of Presidential Papers and the Office of Special Files.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_07: Both of those offices pertain to the collection of documents which will eventually go to the Nixon Library.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_07: Thirdly, I was in charge of security at the White House insofar as liaison with the Secret Service and the Executive Protective Service is concerned, and insofar as FBI background investigations for prospective presidential appointees is concerned.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_07: A fourth duty was that I was the secretary to the cabinet.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_07: I had that duty not from January 21st, 1969, but from November, I believe, November 4th, 1969, through until the day I departed March 14th of this year.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_07: I was additionally the liaison between the President and the Office of the President, and all of the various support units.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_07: By that I mean the Office of the Military Assistant to the President, the Office of White House Visitors, again the Secret Service, the Executive Protective Service, the Resident Staff, Mrs.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon staff.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_07: I served as sort of the conduit between all of those elements and the Office of the President.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_07: Finally, I was in charge of the smooth running of the president's official day, both in Washington, D.C.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_07: and at the Western White House in San Clemente.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_07: I had nothing to do with the smooth running of his day in Florida or at Camp David, but I was responsible for the smooth implementation of the official events on his calendar in Washington and at the Western White House.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_07: That pretty well sums it up, sir.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_04: So you were employed on January 21st, 1969, and continue to be employed until March 14 of this year.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: Is that correct?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: That's correct.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Mr.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_04: Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: I was aware of listening devices.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_04: When were those devices placed in the Oval Office?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_07: Approximately the summer of 1970.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_07: I cannot begin to recall the precise date.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_07: My guess, Mr.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_07: Thompson, is that the installation was made between, and this is a very rough guess, April or May of 1970, and perhaps the end of the summer or early fall 1970.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: Were you aware of any devices that were installed in the executive office building office of the president?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, sir, at that time.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: Were they installed at the same time?
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_04: They were installed at the same time.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_04: Could you tell us a little bit about how those devices worked, uh how they were activated, for example?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_07: I don't have the technical knowledge, but I will tell you what I know about how those devices were triggered.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_07: They were installed, of course, for historical purposes to record the president's business.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_07: They were installed in his two offices, the Oval Office and the EOB office.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_07: Within the West Wing of the White House, there are several, at least three, perhaps four, but three that I know of, boxes called presidential locator boxes.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_07: These are square boxes, approximately ten by ten inches, and on them are several locations, about seven locations, which would tell where the president might be at any time.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_07: Locations such as the residence, that's one of them.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_07: South grounds is another.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_07: Oval office is another.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_07: West Wing, meaning West Wing of the White House, is another, and out, I think, is the last one.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_07: When the president moves, uh East Wing is a is still another, and I think that covers all of the uh locations indicated on the box.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_07: When the president moves from his Oval Office, for instance, to his executive office, building office, and he departs the West Wing and crosses the street.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_07: It is my understanding that the Secret Service agents, members of the Presidential Protective Division, who cover him, and there are four to five to six of them who would move with him across the street, one of them calls a central location, which may be the police switchboard under the East Wing, or it may be a Secret Service Command Post.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_07: I don't really know.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_07: If it's a Secret Service Command Post, it's in the Executive Office building.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, and says that the President is leaving the West Wing going to the EOB office.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_07: They would they would know this.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_07: And the little light moves from Oval Office to EOB office.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_07: It doesn't actually move to EOB office until the president enters the EOB office.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_07: And as that light moves, there's a tiny audio signal so that if one is preoccupied, such as I might be, I realize that the locator box is indicating a change in the president's location.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_07: And uh that kind of information was important to me.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_07: Uh my office was located immediately adjacent to the president's Oval Office on the west side.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_07: My duties involved going in and out frequently and working directly with the president.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_07: Mr.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_07: Steve Bull, who at that time worked on the other side of the president, on the east side of the Oval Office, had one of these locator boxes.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_07: And Mr.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_07: Haldeman had a third.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_07: I believe there was a fourth in Mr.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_07: Chapin's office.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_07: In fact, I'm sure there was a fourth in Mr.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_07: Chapin's office.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_07: We were probably the four who would be most uh concerned, or at least most immediately concerned, with the president's whereabouts or the fact that he was changing locations.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_07: In that the Oval Office and the Executive Office Building Office were indicated on this locator box, the installation was installed in such a way that when the light was on Oval Office, the taping device was at least triggered.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_07: It was not operating, but it was triggered.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_07: It was spring-loaded, if you will.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_07: And then it was voice actuated.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_07: So when the light was on Oval Office, in the Oval Office and in the Oval Office only, the taping device was spring loaded to a voice actuating situation.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_07: When the president went to the EOB office and the light was on EOB office, there was the same arrangement.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_07: Those two offices, the arrangement was the same, and the taping picked up all conversation or all noise in those two offices when the light was at those positions.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_11: We started the show off with a dedication to um Little Boy Dennis Condry, who passed away this week, and his tag team partner, uh beautiful Bobby Eaton, who died last year, and we neglected to get him in.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_11: Um, you know, these passings are happening so fast right now that we've we're we're having to do these multiple shows, and uh so I apologize about that.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_11: But uh Little Boy uh Dennis Connery uh was one of the Midnight Express, uh was a wrestling time team that was really big here in the Carolinas, and we wanted to recognize his passing, along with Bobby Eden, who passed, like I said, last year.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_11: And Chuck Norris, who was a really active Republican.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_11: I met when he campaigned for Mike Huckabee, ironically, with Rick Flair, another one of the great wrestling stars of the Carolinas, um in back in 2008.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_11: And uh and Mr.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_11: Norris was an incredibly nice man, and you know, you've heard all the John Norse jokes that go back and back, and uh uh but it was real surprise because I told him that he was doing well in here uh you know just posting in in early March.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_11: So uh those are two big laws that also share the stage with this one, Alexander Butterfield.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_11: And as you know, we've done uh almost two hundred episodes on Richard Nixon in our broadcast.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_11: He is the central figure of the last half of the twentieth century.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_11: Only Ronald Reagan really rivals him at all uh for that title, and and it really when you look at Nixon's entire breadth of his career of fifty years really on center stage in America, 48 years anyway, it it is um it's hard to imagine anybody who was uh more important uh in the history of the country in this period than than Richard Nixon.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_11: So, like I said, the library of the age of Nixon.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_11: And Alexander Butterfield is the is the person that I'm the most conflicted about of anybody involved in War Gate.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_11: And one of the reasons is is very simply the opening statement you just heard.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_11: We we took a part of his Initial uh testimony that was done in front of the Senate committee uh that exposed the taping system.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_11: He's caught a lot of grief over that decision.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_11: And we're gonna let you hear him talk about the fact that he was conflicted about it.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_11: Um he says he wouldn't have done anything any different, but you gotta remember something.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_11: He was given almost no notice that he was gonna have to testify.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_11: They chased him around the Capitol.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_11: If you've watched uh the documentary or listened to our show, we used some segments of that.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_11: He was in the barber shop when they came in there basically told him they're gonna arrest him if he didn't show up uh to come and testify uh uh of there.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_11: And he had done a uh in private interview already with them when uh when he did talk about uh was asked a point-blank question about the taping system, and he and he said that yeah, there there had been one, and now they're gonna drag him out in front of Nigel TV with no warning, no hints, no lawyer, no, no nothing to defend himself or be prepared for it.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_11: And for for that rush, and I have had more sympathy with him than even a lot of the the Nixon people who I think were upset with him about about the his role in this.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_11: Um I think what I've seen through the years is a man who had regrets because you hear him kind of arguing with himself uh in some of these takes.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_11: Um on one hand, he will talk about President Nixon and say he thought he was guilty and so forth, and then turn around and talk about how much he liked him and defend him on uh a lot of what he did.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_11: So I I'm gonna let you listen to some of that.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_11: We're gonna also talk about a couple of points to do with him uh in this episode.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_11: Uh and he is, like I said, he's one of two people, but he's the one I've always been conflicted about.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_11: I've always said he was the one Nixon detractor with credibility.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_11: Um uh and the other person I was conflicted about has grown to be Alexander Haig, the chief of staff, who I admired tremendously um as a young man.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_11: But the more I've actually dealt with people who were there on the scene, the more you start to question uh Alexander Haig's role in a lot of things.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_11: Uh and I'm still learning that part of it, even as much as we've done.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_11: And and like I said, these are the two that I'm the most conflicted of.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_11: And we're gonna talk about one of the one of the other reasons why as this show progresses.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_11: But he uh Alexander uh Butterfield did an oral history, which we've got a little clip of um with the Nixon Library, and then he did several interviews much later in life with the San Diego newspaper.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_11: And uh they're fascinating.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_11: And we're gonna let you listen to uh the oral history first and then the several segments from the San Diego interview uh so you can get a feel for who Alexander Butterfield was and why I do think he is most the most confounding person involved in Wargate.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_07: So I knew how important the tape secret was to Richard Nixon.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_07: When I left the White House, nobody else knew, no new people knew, except I had Haldeman's permission while I was still there one day.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_07: I was going for a physical out at Andrews Air Force Base.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_07: I still did my physicals as a retired officer.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_07: Uh and there was going to be a cabinet meeting.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_07: And I said, I need to tell it's funny Haldman wouldn't do it, but you know, Haldeman that was a sort of a minor thing for Haldeman to be doing.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_07: So I said, May I may I tell Tony Stidley, my secretary, Mary Siddley, Tony Sidley, to uh I I you didn't have to press the button under the table in the cabinet room.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_07: There was another button you could push, and it was an odd button on my phone, which had many, many buttons.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_07: It was this one down in this corner or something, you know.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_07: So I took Tony in there and I said, Look, at 2 o'clock today, don't ask any questions.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_07: Maybe someday I'll tell you, but it's not all that big a deal.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_07: Come in here, you see this button, don't forget which button it is.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_07: See, it's the first one up and the second one over.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_07: Push that button at 2 o'clock today and just walk out.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_07: I knew I was going to be back before the cabinet.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_07: So Tony, and then I I did tell her about the cabinet room.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_07: But she was one of these trusted secretaries who could work for the president, could go to Camp David and all that, like the others, one of those ten.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_07: And then I got Haldeman's specific permission to tell Steve Bull before I went over to the FAA, but it was pretty close to the time of my departure, which was March, March 14th.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't think anyone else knew, other than those we mentioned, the President and Haldeman and Higbee and myself, and Al Wong and three Secret Service technicians who worked for him, now Tony Siddley and but then and it was four months later, four months after I arrived at the FAA, that I ended up uh uh testifying on the tapes.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_07: The President just decided he wanted a tape recording system.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_07: And there was no sinister motive.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_07: I do know that a lot of people thought there was, like to catch people saying things.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_07: That would be the kind you could turn on and off or something like that.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_07: But they said they wanted a sophisticated system in, and the president didn't ever tell me.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_07: Haldeman's aide told me, he had a civilian aide named Larry Higby.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_07: It was Larry who came and said, Bob wants, the president wants the tape recording system set in, Bob wants you to set it up.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_07: I would be the person to do that anyway.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_07: I was the liaison with the Secret Service and the FBI, and uh the person on the staff that dealt with them.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_07: And the military to a degree.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_07: I was sort of a liaison between the president and the military aids office there.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_07: And they have a thing there in the White House called WACA, White House Communications Agency, which could easily have put this in.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_07: But I thought I'd better go to the Secret Service because military guys get transferred now and then, and he let me know that this was a deep, dark secret.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_07: No one is supposed to know this.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_07: Nobody on the staff.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_07: Now, already Haldeman knew, Larry Higby, his aide, knew, and now I knew, and the president knew.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_07: And that's they're the only people that ever knew, other than four Secret Service technicians who ended up putting this thing in, this installation in.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_07: There were microphones drilled into the president's desk from the bottom up and just barely on the surface.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_07: There were microphones in the base of most of the lamps above the mantelpiece in the Oval Office.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_07: They bugged the phones too, his personal phone in the Oval Office, the personal phone in the Lincoln sitting room over in the residence, in the mansion, what they called it.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_07: We called it the residence.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_07: And a little later, they weren't every place at first, but they had we had another installation several months later where we put them in the executive office building on almost all the business phones the president used.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_07: And also up at Camp David, and the phone in the Lincoln sitting room, as I may have mentioned.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_07: So, man, we're wired.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, and the one in the Oval Office was rigged so that it didn't pick up anything unless the president was in the office at the time.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_07: That's just the way they hooked it up.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_07: You could go in there, if the president's not in the Oval Office, you could go in there and shout uh profanities or something.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_07: Nothing would be recorded.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_11: Like I said, I'm very conflicted with Alexander Butterfield, and you'll you'll hear him talk here in a minute about you know his own conflicts about being the person that testified about it.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_11: But you'll he'll hear it.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_11: Um if you listen to interviews or these uh these uh things that he did on C SPAN that were like at colleges or the library, the the LBJ Library, or the or the or some of the interviews we're going to use here in a few minutes, um you'll hear that inner conflict in him and that he really liked President Nixon.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_11: He talks about liking President Nixon, and he clearly liked Pat Nixon and the and the two daughters, Julie and Trisha Um Nixon.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_11: So, you know, you hear that in him, and my own guess is he didn't want to tell a lie, and he didn't, and uh he can be commended for that, and that he just uh, you know, got got caught in the uh crossfire of the whole thing, and then got catered to by this left-wing group of people who really disliked President Nixon.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_11: Uh so here is a little more from that San Diego interview in which he's gonna talk about his inner conflict um and what the results of that were from uh his his uh his situation there by testifying.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_07: I want to know part of any dishonesty.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_07: And uh so if they asked, so I said to myself, if they ask an absolutely direct question on the tapes, but uh anything else I would tell them.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_07: I I didn't have any other secrets.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_07: The only secret I had, the main one, was that tapes thing, and that's because Nixon and Haldeman and I said, this shall never be revealed.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_07: And I didn't want to say anything.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_07: I I still like Nixon pretty well.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_07: I was conflicted.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_07: I knew there was wrongdoing going on.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_07: I knew that.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_07: I knew the kind of stuff that was on those tapes.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't pretty, and I knew the president was going to be in for if well I assumed they would begin to subpoena these tapes, and it was gonna be hell for the president.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_07: And I did it, and I didn't want to be the guy to hurt him that much.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_07: I liked him a lot.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_07: I had grown to like him.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_07: He had been very rude to me once, and I told Woodward that, and he was so impressed by my talking about how upset I was with the president, was not just rude to me, he mocked me at one when we first met.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_07: And I thought, who is this son of a bitch?
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_07: That's what I said.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_07: I know he's the president of the United States, but I didn't feel anybody had a right to be that that rude or mock me, especially someone he knows is there who will break his back for you.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon was clearly guilty, and as as I tell people now, none of us who work for him like to say that he was guilty of all these crimes or even think it.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_07: And yet he was.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_07: The evidence is overwhelming if you read the tapes.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_07: If you read the tapes, the evidence is overwhelming.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_07: He was he was caught up in something, and that's and that's a talk that I used to give called Nixon the President, Nixon the Man.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon the President, I say the good things that need to be said about him.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_07: Smart, really did a lot of things on the domestic side.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_07: People don't mention all the domestic.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_07: Good things, great things, gave the 18-year-old a vote.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_07: If you're 18, you can go off to war to fight for the country, but you don't get to vote.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_07: Well, you should.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_07: 18, that's enough.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_07: So he did that.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_07: He put out the America will never use poison gas, and you know, we'll just not do that.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_07: Just like we did that with with uh with with uh torture, too.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_07: We said, we will not torture.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_07: And I do, I personally think waterboarding is is a form of torture.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_07: It may be a mild form, but it's torture.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_07: And we don't torture people.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_07: You know, World War II they didn't have much of that.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_07: Treated prisoners pretty well, fed them, they got exercise.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_07: And uh anyway, Nixon did all kinds of wonderful things in the domestic side, and we know the good things he did, especially bringing China back into the uh community of nations and other other things, the way he played China and the Soviet off against one another.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_07: And he did bring troops back right away when he took over from uh Johnson in Vietnam, although he's been charged with timing it just right so it would look good right at the time of his re-election, 40 years later, and went to China in February, knowing that the fallout from that would spill out during the summer and he'd look really good by fall.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_07: So that's politics, though.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_07: That's that's sort of par for the course.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_07: So, but then after I left government, when I was let go by Ford, I was let go by Ford, not by Nixon.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_07: Of course, Nixon, his exit was pretty fast.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_07: He came up there August, and August 9th, he was gone.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_07: Just a little bit after I testified before the Judiciary Committee in July of 74.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_07: July, August was next month, he was gone.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_07: And Ford came in.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_07: So I was just known as the guy that did the tapes, and I don't think many people knew that I testified before the Judiciary Committee because it was behind closed doors, unless they heard my name mentioned when the principals were discussing me during those deliberations.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_07: But uh I think I had generally the the uh reputation of being someone anti-Nixon, which I suppose I was at the end, because of the people I knew going to jail.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_07: He just let them go.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_07: He could have it was as though he could have cared less.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_07: And and and then from then on, it wasn't the kind of career I think I'd have had.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_07: I was I was only 48 or 9 when I left government.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_07: I couldn't find a job any place for a long time.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_07: I was on 60 minutes for that.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_07: That wasn't very much fun.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_07: I go in 60 minutes.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_07: Why am I there?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_07: Because this guy can't get a job.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_07: I went to 88 search firms, 88 executive search firms I wrote to, and no one could find, no one wanted to hire me.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_11: Now, this brings me to an interesting subject when it comes to Butterfield, and that is there have been accusations out there for many years that he was a CIA plant uh in the Nixon White House.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_11: Now, I think that's an easy accusation to make because he was uh as Hallerman's assistant and the guy that was handling like sort of this minutiae stuff that the president had to deal with, he's the guy that's got to deal with the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, and other countless other agencies in the government.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_11: So to make the case that he was dealing with the CIA uh is easy because that sounds like part of his job description.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_11: But um there have been this accusation, it was originally made by Howard Hunt, that his contact inside the White House was Alexander Butterfield.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_11: Uh James Rosen, who I respect a great deal, wrote an article that also makes this sort of claim.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_11: Uh and I I don't know the answer to that.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_11: Uh I do know that in the Rosen article there is at least a lie that apparently was pretty easy to catch, that Butterfield told that he wrote a letter to Haldeman or that Haldeman contacted him out of the blue to come from Australia to work in the White House.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_11: He had been hinting around that he wanted to leave, uh true enough, but that Haldeman was the one who made this overture.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_11: The evidence seems to be that in fact Butterfield wrote a letter to Haldeman asking about coming back from Australia.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_11: Uh I, you know, again, that's in the article.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_11: I don't know much about that accusation, but it certainly is pretty damning that uh for whatever reason Mr.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_11: Butterfield claimed uh one scenario and there's evidence out there of another.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_11: Does that make him a CIA plant?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_11: I don't know.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_11: But that accusation was made early enough that the very C 60-minute article uh interview that he's talking about, uh, we were able to find, and we're gonna let you hear it uh from 1975, and he's gonna talk about this accusation that he was a CIA plant, the fact that he's having trouble finding a job, and it is very interesting to hear that interview in real time.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_11: Uh and and you can make a judgment for yourself.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_10: 60 Minutes Rewind.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_09: Colonel Alexander Butterfield was commander of the U.S.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_09: Air Force's Tactical Reconnaissance Force in Vietnam in the 1960s.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_09: Later, he served as military assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara during the Lyndon Johnson administration.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_09: He retired from the Air Force to take a job as a deputy assistant and secretary to the cabinet of President Richard Nixon.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_09: Shortly after Mr.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_09: Nixon's re-election, he was elevated by the president to head the Federal Aviation Administration.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_09: He served with distinction in each of those jobs, though his name was hardly a household word.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_09: And then in July of 1973, Alexander Butterfield stunned this country when he told the Watergate Committee that Richard Nixon had tape-recorded conversations in the Oval Office and elsewhere in the White House.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_09: It was that revelation that eventually led to Richard Nixon's fall from power.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_09: Last Friday, Alexander Butterfield was back in the news when a retired Air Force Colonel, Fletcher Prouty, asserted that Butterfield had been, in effect, the CIA's man in the White House.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_09: Prouty said he had been told that by Watergate conspirator Howard Hunt.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_09: Since Prouty's allegation, Butterfield has been unavailable to the press.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_09: Tonight, for the first time, Butterfield, with his wife at his side, replies to those Prouty charges.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_07: The fact of the matter is, I never was assigned, I never was attached, I never have been their designated contact man.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_07: That is absolutely false.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_09: All right, he says that you were the CIA's contact man in the White House, and that he was told that you were the CIA's contact man in the White House by Howard Hunt, a former CIA agent, also one of the White House plumbers.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_09: He quotes Hunt as saying, My contact there in the White House is Butterfield.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_09: Question: Did you know Howard Hunt?
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_07: I have never met Howard Hunt in my life, and I have never seen Howard Hunt in my lifetime.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_09: You mean up to and including now?
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_07: Up to and including today.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_07: And as a matter of fact, Mr.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_07: That's right, Mr.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_07: Hunt's presence on the White House staff was kept from me.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_07: He was purposely kept off the rolls, and I had the official role of all members of the White House staff in my capacity as head of administration in the White House.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_09: Kept from you, by whom?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_09: For what reason?
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_07: Well, by Mr.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_07: Haldeman, who had uh uh jurisdiction over that, and for what reason, I have no idea.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_07: But I've never seen Howard Hunt, I don't know him at all, and I did not know that he was on the White House staff, and I was really supposed to be aware of all members of the White House staff.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_09: I talked to Fletcher Prouty this morning.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_09: He told me that he had not one but two luncheons with him, and on both of those occasions, he told uh Hunt told Prouty that you were the guy in the White House.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_07: If I was their contact man, I was a hell of a poor one because I had no contact whatsoever with the CIA.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_07: He led reporters to at least discern a spy motive, or, you know, the word infiltration was used.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_14: Yes.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_07: And I resent that because that that is as much as to say that I was at the White House to do at least a few things other than the things Mr.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon knew about or expected of me.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_07: And I think that's irresponsible.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_07: I think it's false, it's defamatory.
• 42:12
  SPEAKER_07: And and yes, you are damn right.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_07: I'm, you know, I am upset by that.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_07: And it comes, a personal note here, it comes at a particularly bad time.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_07: It's right in the middle of a six-month period that I've set aside for myself to look for a position in the private sector.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_09: You're out of a job.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_09: You're out of a job at this moment?
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_07: Well, yes, I'm out of a job.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm working as a consultant, a part-time consultant, as an interim measure.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_07: But uh, you know, the damage is done when those things are first said.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_09: Is it your intention to sue Fletcher and Prouty for libel?
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_07: I think the grounds are there.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_07: Uh he's he's made a very serious allegation.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_07: He was careless in doing so, very careless with regard to his facts.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_09: Did you have CIA clearance in the White House?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_07: I had CIA clearance.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_07: I worked outside the president's office.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_07: I was in charge of administration, I read everything that went to the president's desk, so I had to have a clearance for handling CIA material, which is not a big deal.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_07: It honestly isn't.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_07: Thousands of people have CIA clearance.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_07: I have I've had one in many of the of the Air Force jobs I've had.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_09: You and Alexander Haig were both simultaneously on Robert McNamara's staff in the Pentagon at the time that President Johnson was president of the United States.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_07: For a short period, yes.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_07: I sort of overlapped with Al Haig.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_07: I was Mr.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_07: McNamara's White House liaison officer, replacing General Al Haig, Army.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_07: I was an Air Force officer.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_07: I see.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_09: I came into that immediate office to work with the White House and uh Were you ever assigned by, controlled by, employed by the CIA in any capacity during that time?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_07: No, very definitely not.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_07: No.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_09: Did you ever do anything, perform any chore, not on assignment from the CIA, but in Air Force support.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_09: You were an Air Force colonel, but in Air Force support of a CIA undertaking, Mr.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_09: Butterfield.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I was, you know, I was in the intelligence gathering business when I commanded a reconnaissance unit in Southeast Asia.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_07: I commanded on three different occasions all the low-level and medium-level reconnaissance activities, U.S.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_07: Air Force reconnaissance activities in Southeast Asia.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_07: Flying.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: Flying squadron.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_07: Now, to the extent that uh The CIA may have used some of the films and and used some of that data, then the CIA had something to do with that activity.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_07: But not not to my knowledge.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_07: I never did deal with the CIA in any way.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_09: You were in charge of installing the taping system for President Nixon at the White House, the one that eventually brought him down.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_07: Right.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_07: I I was I gave I was the intermediary who told the Secret Service to install it.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_09: And that was the end of my That taping uh system was installed by the Secret Service, and one of the men in charge was Secret Service agent Al Wong.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_07: He was the man in charge, yes.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_09: Did you know James McCord at any time?
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_07: Never.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_07: Never have met him or seen him to this day.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_09: James McCord, who was one of the men convicted in the Watergate episode.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_07: I don't know him.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_09: Al Wong, who is in charge of putting in the taping system in the White House.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_07: That's right.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_09: Is a close friend of James McCord.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_09: Did you know that?
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_07: I've read it since I didn't know it at the time.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_09: And McCord, at the time that the White House tapes were put in, was still a member of the CIA.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_09: It is our information that the chances are very good that McCord was consulted by Wong, who doesn't have that tech technical capability or technical understanding, about the equipment and about the installation of the taping capability in the Nixon White House.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_07: That's possible, but it but it uh Wong was the chief of the Technical Security Division of the Secret Service.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_07: I would think that he had the capability, but if he didn't, I A United States Senator has told me, Mr.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_09: Butterfield, that it's his belief that the CIA had, has copies of at least some of the White House tapes.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_09: And that indeed one of the reasons for President Nixon's failure not to destroy those tapes was that he knew that the CIA had copies, that there was somehow a feed from those White House tapes.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_07: I think that's I don't I don't believe that's the case.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_07: You know, anything could be the case, but I just, you know, there's so many, everyone's trying to make this thing appear so mysterious, and it wasn't at all.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_07: There was no facet of it that was mysterious, at least to my way of thinking.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_09: Are you sorry or happy that you blew the whistle on the tapes?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I don't like the term blow the whistle because uh that's you told the truth.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_07: That connotes uh one who sort of did something in a sneaky fashion.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_07: I did nothing in a sneaky fashion.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_07: I feel very good about my role.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_07: I've never had any, I've never had any regrets about my role.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_09: You were fired from your job as head of the Federal Aviation Administration by President Ford.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_09: When?
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_07: In uh March 31st of 1975.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_07: I was there two years and two weeks.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_09: Now we've heard varying stories as to why you were fired.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_09: There are those who will even say that there was a vendetta against you in the Ford administration because you were the guy who, forgive me, blew the whistle on the tapes.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: If President Ford wanted Alex out, that's his right, and I think Alex should have gone out.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: It it was the method, it was the treatment uh from the White House.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_09: From the White House, yes.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: I felt that it was not straightforward.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: It was not uh I I felt it was abusive.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know the language that was used.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know uh what language was used?
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_07: Well, we can't use it here.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_07: Why?
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_07: Well, now it that's that uh you know doesn't serve any purpose anyway.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_09: Language used by whom to whom.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just the treatment to Alex.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh Well, naturally she's I'm mad.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: We were called and and told that there was a meeting.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: The message was dump Butterfield.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_09: In the Nixon White House or the Ford White House?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_07: Well, in the Nixon White House before the impeachment was.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_07: But I it the it was i definitely intimated to me by my friends at the White House, uh, whom I have many, uh after Mr.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_07: Ford came in, that this, you know, it was the move was still there.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_07: The the the same people were shh and there are many, of course, that believe the whole thing was San Clemente directory.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_07: Which I do, I honestly do.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_07: In fact, of course it is.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_09: All right, that's come on, let's let's let's be direct about what you said.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_07: I am very direct.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_07: I don't uh hold back on that at all.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_09: All right.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_09: You believe that that for some reason Mr.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_09: Nixon out in San Clemente was saying to Jerry Ford, look, get rid of Butterfield.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I think Al Haig may have may have relayed the message, but uh What?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_07: I say Al Haig may have been the one to relay the message, but I think there were certain understandings there that uh uh including the pardon and including some other things, and I well, I'm I'm sure this.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_09: Mr.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_09: Butterfield, you you were satisfied in your own mind that President Nixon knew about the Watergate break-in ahead of time.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_07: I said before the judiciary that nothing happened at that White House, and I do mean nothing without the President's knowledge.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_07: And I think for something of that magnitude to have been scheduled as a break-in of the Democratic uh headquarters, of course the president had to know about it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_09: You mean the way the White House operated, it simply would not have happened unless Richard Nixon had known about it.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_07: It's fantastically out of character or uh deviating from the modus operandi I knew of for him not to have known about it before.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_07: Now that's, you know, that is speculative.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_07: I've got to say that.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not, you know, that's the way I feel about it.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_07: The story will continue after this.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_09: Bob Haldeman once said to me uh over at the Hay Adams Hotel that Richard Nixon was the weirdest man ever to sit in the White House.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_09: You knew him well.
• 49:59
  SPEAKER_07: Well, let me let me preface my what I my comment on that was something too.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_07: There was a there there was a greatness to Mr.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_07: Richard Nixon, beyond the shadow of a doubt.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_07: He did a uh a number of of things that that will show down in history.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_07: And I, too, like Bob Haldeman, uh admire him for some of those things.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_07: I think I respect him less than Bob.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_07: Uh Bob said I respect and admire him, but he was, and he was, he was, he is strange, but that's his his manner.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_07: He doesn't uh uh tolerate small talk or and but he's a he's a you know a very fine man in many ways.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_07: He was very nice to me and my family, very nice to my daughter when when she was in a very serious automobile accident.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_07: And not for any personal gain on his part.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_14: Right.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_07: And uh But I must say that uh yes, having said that, I must say it made me sick at heart, really, when I learned about the the corruption of principle that existed in and at the pinnacle of government.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_07: And there's a lot of it.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_07: I'm there is a surprising lack of real honest to God, personal integrity in the higher levels of government.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_07: And I say that while recognizing a good many senators and representatives who you know who serve admirably well and who who do have personal integrity and people in the administration too.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_07: But there's a surprising lack of it.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_07: And I don't know when the country's gonna wake up to it.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_09: What's your feeling about all of this, uh Mrs.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_09: Butterfield?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm uh I'm a very private person, Mike.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I have never spoken in public, never spoken to press people, and but this last few days, I just I am really sick and tired of rolling over and playing dead in the name of public service.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I have watched my husband, who I know and have known for 35 years, just dedicate his life to serving this country and these the people of this country with courage and honor and integrity.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I have watched this abuse of him over the last three years, and I am have finally had it.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that the in the end, it's not just personal, it's the American people are being shortchanged.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: He never thought of power, he never thought of money, he has never sought recognition.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: He wanted simply the satisfaction of serving his country.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I finally reached the breaking point.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to talk, because I I'd like to let the American people know that uh maybe no simply devoted public servant can last in political Washington.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_11: Mr.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_11: Butterfield went on to saddle up with Bob Woodward in a book called The Uh The Last of the President's Men.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_11: And it turns out that he, and he admits that he was not right to do this, he had taken a lot of the files from the Nixon White House and had them with him all these years.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_11: And uh and so he gives Bob Woodward access to all of them.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_11: And Woodward writes this book in which they went around and they uh toured the country doing these these little uh things at college campuses and at LBJ Library and that kind of thing, where they would the two of them was standard and talk, sit and talk to to somebody.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_11: Uh and I noticed, and I and I invite you to go listen to any of these lectures that you you get that same ambivalent feeling from uh Mr.
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_11: Butterfield where he gets to talking and Bob Lord just interrupt him constantly uh to keep him on track and to keep the anti-Nixon stuff up.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_11: But there's an accusation in this book that I I'm we're gonna address.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_11: But I thought we'd let you listen to the CBS Sunday morning edition that is mostly with Butterfield, but unfortunately uh Mr.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_11: Woodward will make an appearance too.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_11: Um, and uh and you can get a feel for this book, which is likely to be the last one that uh Woodward is gonna write on the subject of Richard Nixon.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_02: Subcommittee will come to honor.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_03: It was the biggest bombshell of the biggest political scandal in American history.
• 54:20
  unknown: Mr.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_04: Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_06: I was aware of listening devices.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_06: Yes, sir.
• 54:35
  SPEAKER_03: White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealing the existence of the White House taping system to the Senate Watergate Committee.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_08: When Butterfield gave that dramatic testimony in July 1973, it it was a pivot point in Watergate.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_03: Reporter Bob Woodward, who along with Carl Bernstein, famously exposed the machinations of the Nixon White House, had tried and failed to interview Butterfield.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_03: So he passed the name on to the Watergate committee.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_03: Do you think the tapes would have ever been revealed had it not been for Butterfield?
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_03: I think they probably would not have.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_03: Turns out Butterfield was sitting on a lot more secrets, 20 boxes full of them.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_07: This is the year 1971, and each of these is a month.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_03: Which two years ago, he turned over to Woodward.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_03: And did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that you would one day be collaborating with Bob Woodward of all people?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_03: No, not at all.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_03: So what did you think when you walk into his apartment and you see those 20 boxes?
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_03: I thought Wow.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_08: Let's start looking.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_03: The result is The Last of the President's Men, published by Simon and Schuster, a division of CBS.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_03: In addition to the documents, Woodward spent 40 hours interviewing Butterfield, who for three years occupied the office next to the president's.
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_07: First one to see him every day, last person to see him every night, attending to all of the immediate needs.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_03: When Butterfield left, he took his files with him.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_03: Some of those uh documents are a classified top secret.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_03: How did you just walk away with him from the White House?
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_07: It was easy.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_07: I just walked away with him.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_07: But I felt, to tell you the truth, that those papers were safer with me than with anyone.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_07: I'd been around classified documents.
• 56:37
  SPEAKER_07: That's no excuse, but I'm saying I wasn't going to show these to the wrong person and I was going to take good care of them.
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_03: One top secret document reveals Nixon's candid handwritten opinion of the bombing of Vietnam.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_03: An angry scrawl across a report from his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_03: We have had 10 years of total control of the air in Laos and Vietnam.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_03: The result?
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_03: Zilch.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_03: And just the day before, Nixon told Dan Rather of CBS News exactly the opposite.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_09: The results have been very, very effective.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_03: But surely Nixon was not the first and won't be the last president to privately say things he would never say in public.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, but the level of contradiction and the depth of the fraud.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_03: According to Woodward's research, Nixon had already ordered the military to drop nearly three million tons of bombs and would order another million dropped in the year after the Zilt's memo.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_08: It sends you to into your heart and soul about, you know, what are we doing?
• 57:48
  SPEAKER_08: How did this happen?
• 57:51
  SPEAKER_08: How could we have been led this way?
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_08: It takes the concept of military leadership via president, turns it on its head.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_03: Another document, this one in Butterfield's handwriting, details Nixon's reaction to the Miley massacre, in which 504 Vietnamese civilians were slaughtered by American GIs.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_03: Here's just one quote of what you wrote down.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: Get backgrounds of all involved, all must be exposed.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_03: Discredit witnesses.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, discredit that rings a bell.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_07: We went to great lengths to discredit people all the time.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: Butterfield wrote one memo about the possible left-wing affiliations of Ronald Riddenauer, the soldier who first blew the whistle on Me Lai, and another about Seymour Hirsch, the reporter who broke the story.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_03: According to the memo, Hirsch received a$1,000 grant from the Edgar B.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_03: Stern Family Fund, which is clearly left-wing and anti-administration.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_03: Another vulnerable spot, according to Butterfield's notes, is the possible involvement of a lib Jew.
• 59:01
  SPEAKER_03: So if the guy was a liberal Jew, that was material with which to exp to discredit somebody?
• 59:09
  SPEAKER_07: Yeah, you're you're asking me things that are very difficult to explain about a very complicated man.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_03: A president who on a Christmas Eve tour of the old executive office building next to the White House made a discovery that sparked a witch hunt.
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_08: Some of the staff people, bureaucrats, the civil servants, uh, had pictures of John F.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_08: Kennedy on their desks or on the wall.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_08: Nixon said we have to get rid of that infestation as if it was some sort of disease that somebody would have a picture of JFK in their office.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_03: What were you supposed to do about these pictures of other presidents on the walls?
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_03: Get them all taken down.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_03: Get them all taken down.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, he did.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_07: He made that expression order.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_03: In particular, White House Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman told Butterfield, the President would like you to find out who the woman is who has the two Kennedy pictures, adding, he asks about it once a week at least.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_03: Butterfield reported back that the CIA, Secret Service, and FBI, even the House Committee on Un-American Activities, all found the woman, a civil servant named Edna Rosenberg, was a completely loyal American.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_08: What's surprising as you go through all of this is the amount of energy that was devoted to uh these kind of maneuvers.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_08: This was a subversion of what the job of the presidency is.
• 1:00:49
  SPEAKER_03: All of it documented in Butterfield's files.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_08: That's to Haldeman.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_08: This is to the Treasury Secretary.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_08: This is to the Social Secretary for the White House.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: They really are sort of a a record of what the President is is thinking about on any given day.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: And some of them, at least 40 years after.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_03: Seem very, very strange.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_07: Yes, they do.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: Did they seem strange at the time?
• 1:01:19
  SPEAKER_03: In this strange environment, no.
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_03: Nothing, of course, was stranger than the break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate, that third-rate burglary which brought down the president.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_03: Butterfield was not in on it, but he knew about the taping system which could answer that famous question: what did the president know and when did he know it?
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_07: Listen, the last thing I wanted to do is be the person that gave away the secret, because Haldeman and I had told the president we would never tell.
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_03: But then a retired FBI agent named Donald Sanders, a member of the Watergate Committee staff, wound up an otherwise routine interview by asking exactly the right question.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_03: You remember the question?
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_03: How did it go?
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_07: Was there ever any other listening device in the Oval Office?
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_07: That was that was the and and I said, I think I said my exact I'm sorry you asked that question.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_03: And history flips right there.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_07: I knew what I was saying, getting into.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_07: I really knew what it meant.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_03: When you look back at it now, would you have done anything differently in the way you handled that explosive secret of the taping system?
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_07: No, I've thought of that a lot.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_03: I bet.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_07: I regret absolutely nothing.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_07: I didn't do everything right, but I satisfied myself that I didn't tell a lie.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_03: It was, of course, the tapes that revealed the president had obstructed justice by ordering the cover-up of the Watergate break-in.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_03: Nixon was forced to resign, and Butterfield faded into retirement in California.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_07: This is that meeting that presidents have just before they go up to the Capitol to be sworn in as the new president.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_03: But now he's back to teach us all one of the basic lessons of journalism.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_03: There is always more to the story.
• 1:03:31
  SPEAKER_11: And I want to let you listen to a little bit from uh QA with Mr.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_11: Woodward and Mr.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_11: Butterfield, and then I want to come back and address more to the story.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_11: They talked about this memo in the piece you just heard.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_11: And it has to do with President Nason uh talking about the bombing uh doing uh Zilch uh four over the ten years uh in dealing with the Vietnamese and how he talked by uh to Dan Rather the day before.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_11: Oh, you know, how he calculated everything on getting re-elected.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_11: Uh you know, they ignore the big picture to talk about uh just just focusing in on the war and the politics of it.
• 1:04:09
  SPEAKER_11: And uh and and I want you to hear this exchange, and then we're gonna go into it.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_08: You didn't want me to finish about this Hilch memo, but I'm going to talk about because it it it really is important.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_08: Um I was in the uh Navy during the Vietnam War, and there is an unspoken, unsigned contract between everyone in the military and the commander-in-chief.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_08: And that is you do your job.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_08: I was on a ship off the coast of Vietnam, and the commander-in-chief is gonna do his job.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_08: And in this memo, you find Nixon saying that they dropped all the this tonnage of bombs, killed hundreds of thousands of people, and uh in his assessment, achieved Zilt, and it was a failure.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_08: And uh, if you connect all the dots with the tapes and other documents, you discovered that Nixon was fighting this war in 72 and dropping all of these bombs because it was popular, and he's there with Kissinger, and he says, Oh, look at the latest poll.
• 1:05:21
  SPEAKER_08: Everyone loves the bombs that we're dropping, two to one, two and a half to one.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_08: And at the moment, which is uh May 8, 1972, when Nixon orders the mining of Haiphong and the most intensive bombing of the North, Kissinger literally says to the president that it was on May 8th that you won election.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_08: Not the war, but election.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_08: And if there is a corruption that is almost unforgivable, I'm sorry, is unforgivable, it is for the commander-in-chief to conduct a war with his political interest in mind.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_08: Now there's always there's always an element of that, of course.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_08: But in this case, in his own language, and we now look at the Vietnam War bombing studies, and Nixon was right.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_08: He realized it wasn't working, and he continued.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_08: Continued it in the year 70, 1972, dropping 1.1 million additional tons of bombs.
• 1:06:35
  SPEAKER_08: And uh for me, it's the other side of Watergate.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_08: Watergate was we're gonna spy and sabotage and break the law to ensure that the Democrats nominate the weakest candidate so Nixon can be re-elected.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_08: And the other side is we're gonna continue the war in this very aggressive way because it's popular and it will help Richard Nixon win re-election.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_07: And but let me say that he knew he was gonna win re-election.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_07: We knew we were gonna win re-elections.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_08: But not to break a record.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_08: Yes, but but that is not until the near the end of 72.
• 1:07:15
  SPEAKER_08: In the beginning of 72, as the record and the uh tapes show, uh Nixon was deeply worried that the Democrats were gonna nominate Senator Muskie, who was opposed to the war, who would have been the strongest candidate.
• 1:07:30
  SPEAKER_08: And so they declared this war of sabotage and spying largely on Muskie and other Democrats.
• 1:07:39
  SPEAKER_08: And so they weren't sure they were gonna win.
• 1:07:41
  SPEAKER_08: At the end, yes, the polls and the fact that McGovern was, but uh, you know, and and this adds to, and this is why I thank you, if I may, for having the guts to tell the story of what happened, what you observed, to share the documents, because it takes us to that question who is Richard Nixon?
• 1:08:07
  SPEAKER_08: And we know a lot more because of that.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I I think deeply about we're gonna elect a new president next year who's gonna have lots of troubles, and we better uh a lot of trouble to deal with, and we better know who that person is, and we better not be surprised.
• 1:08:29
  SPEAKER_08: And this book and your story is about Nixon, but it's larger.
• 1:08:35
  SPEAKER_08: I think it's a it's a warning about in a certain way about we better, and this is the job of the press, find out about who these people are in depth so we are not surprised again.
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_11: Bob Wilbert has an extraordinary knack for making me extremely angry.
• 1:08:54
  SPEAKER_11: And you know, he he gets on there and and talks about uh that that that Nixon was just out to to uh win the election and uh and that and that he knew the bombing was was wrong, but he did it because it would made him popular.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_11: Well, I understand the bigger picture in 1972, and I think the average American does know that, but let me give you a little history lesson.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_11: He's negotiating détente with the Soviet Union.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_11: He's trying to get us into China, which he's just announced he's gonna go in February to China and meet with uh Chow and Lei and Mao Sei Tung and pit the communist world at each other.
• 1:09:36
  SPEAKER_11: Immediately upon doing that, the Vietnamese find themselves in a mess because their great benefactors are now trying to cater to the United States and they want to get this war over with.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_11: The United States wants to get this war over with.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_11: What Nixon is doing by bombing Vietnam, and it's and it's a multiple front war, is what I tell people.
• 1:09:59
  SPEAKER_11: You know, you have the actual physical war on the ground, it was a struggle.
• 1:10:07
  SPEAKER_11: Um, in which the South Vietnamese government was not very strong.
• 1:10:11
  SPEAKER_11: Uh but and then you've got the political front where I can say where Nixon is trying to get re-elected.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_11: And yeah, he is.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_11: I mean, that's that's that's part of politics.
• 1:10:20
  SPEAKER_11: But he's also got to play it tough.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_11: So the Chinese sees playing it tough, and the Soviet sees playing it tough.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_11: And he's not going to get up on television and tell Dan rather the day uh, you know, during a national interview in which all three of these governments can be watching him on television because, I mean, you know, it's on TV.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_11: Uh, hey, our plans aren't working.
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_11: Because that's not how this kind of diplomacy works in a wartime.
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_11: And the fact that gets on uh you know TV and sells books smearing President Nixon uh and not looking at this giant picture and not even talking about the giant picture, the big picture, in these interviews is just sickening.
• 1:11:01
  SPEAKER_11: And it's typical Bob Woodward, and all I got to tell you is go look at Joe Rogan's podcast with Bill Murray, the comedian, and let him talk about the book Wired, and it tells you everything you need to know about Bob Woodward.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_11: And if you look at these, these uh these events where Mr.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_11: Woodward and Mr.
• 1:11:19
  SPEAKER_11: Butterfield were together, and and Alexander Butterfield starts to talk and say good things about President Nixon, Woodward will interrupt him.
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_11: And he does it constantly throughout.
• 1:11:28
  SPEAKER_11: And these moderators don't say a word, which tells you something about the national uh media and the and the uh and a lot of these liberal more liberal historians.
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_11: Um, you know, I I I'm I'm I'm glad to give you my opinion.
• 1:11:40
  SPEAKER_11: But I think they took advantage of of uh Mr.
• 1:11:42
  SPEAKER_11: Uh Butterfield because he you know he just died this month at the age of 99.
• 1:11:48
  SPEAKER_11: So you're not even going back ten years.
• 1:11:50
  SPEAKER_11: He's 89 and all these interviews are older.
• 1:11:53
  SPEAKER_11: That's a super senior, and uh he's very sharp, he seems to me, but it does seem to me that Bob Woodward is controlling the information flow and keeping him from saying some of what he would have wanted to say.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_11: Um that's my opinion, and I invite you to go look and and watch it.
• 1:12:11
  SPEAKER_11: But either way, Richard Nixon didn't do anything wrong.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_11: He took over a war that he didn't start and he won it.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_11: And the fact that it was lost a couple years later by a Congress that cut the money off and wouldn't defend South Vietnam is a shame on them, not Richard Nixon.
• 1:12:28
  SPEAKER_11: And the fact that he had to think strategically throughout 1972 when it came to bombing uh and military strategy that maybe wasn't working on the ground, but was working in Pijing and in Moscow, uh seeks to his strategic uh superiority as a thinker and as a political figure and as a leader of the free world.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_11: Um, and Bob Woodward you know, monumental littleness, and it just shows over and over and over again.
• 1:12:57
  SPEAKER_11: But this show is about Alexander Butterfield, and uh and like I said, I have such mixed emotions about him, but he does do things sometimes that impress you.
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_11: Uh, and I want to end this show with two other of the great rumors about President Nixon uh that he squashes pretty quickly in this uh segment.
• 1:13:20
  SPEAKER_11: Now he talks about him being petty and you know having these these hatreds and so forth, but there's an accusation that's floated around for years that's not true that President Nixon was an alcoholic and then he drank all throughout his term, and about the staff's uh beginning to look more like the the person in the cussing and all that.
• 1:13:39
  SPEAKER_11: But he'll talk about the actual curse words that are on these tapes because, and I've said this to a lot of people, a lot of the tapes that you hear that are so bad are not President Nixon talking about policy and decisions that are made in government.
• 1:13:56
  SPEAKER_11: They are BS sessions where his foot's up on the desk and he's talking.
• 1:13:59
  SPEAKER_11: I mean, they come across like that.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_11: And yeah, you know, they say things that you just say, God, please, President Nixon, cut the tape off.
• 1:14:06
  SPEAKER_11: But um they're not policy, they're not government, they're BS sessions.
• 1:14:12
  SPEAKER_11: And uh and this is really, I think, one of the most interesting two questions that came at the end of a segment where he was by himself talking, uh, and uh they're very interesting.
• 1:14:21
  SPEAKER_11: And I thought I would end uh with that and just say, you know, our condolences go out to Alexander Butterfield's family, 99 years old, Watergate, and his time in the Nixon administration is just a small segment of what was an extraordinary life uh uh uh that he had throughout his entire military career and after.
• 1:14:40
  SPEAKER_11: And um we'll let you in with that.
• 1:14:45
  SPEAKER_15: Mr.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_15: Butterfield, do you know how much Nixon drank, especially in the first term?
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_15: And uh did it uh impair his judgment in particular regarding Watergate?
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_07: I don't I don't think so.
• 1:14:57
  SPEAKER_07: That would be my my short answer.
• 1:14:59
  SPEAKER_07: The first four years while I was there, I said I saw him first every morning.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_07: I did.
• 1:15:03
  SPEAKER_07: He was never hung over.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_07: I was also the last to see him every night.
• 1:15:08
  SPEAKER_07: I never went home until he was at least in the residence.
• 1:15:12
  SPEAKER_07: You know, he didn't I should tell you this, after work, he'd leave the office around seven on a normal night.
• 1:15:17
  SPEAKER_07: Ten o seven, ten after seven.
• 1:15:19
  SPEAKER_07: And he wouldn't go to the residence, he'd go over to the E.O.B.
• 1:15:24
  SPEAKER_07: That's where he'd have his dinner with his man all by himself, with his man servant Manola, who'd fix him dinner, and he'd have a drink, a scotch or something.
• 1:15:33
  SPEAKER_07: He didn't drink Burberry's scotch and a glass of wine with dinner, and Manola would fix it.
• 1:15:38
  SPEAKER_07: Then he'd go home around 10:30.
• 1:15:40
  SPEAKER_07: He might bowl a line.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_07: There's a single-lane bowling alley in the basement of the E.O.B.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_07: Or he might just one day he walked around all the offices in the E.O.B.
• 1:15:49
  SPEAKER_07: and he saw a lot of pictures that he wasn't expecting of Kennedy because these are just employees that work over there, they're civil servants.
• 1:15:58
  SPEAKER_07: And he called me in the next day.
• 1:16:00
  SPEAKER_07: I was just I have a tickle in my throat, and he said, What?
• 1:16:06
  SPEAKER_07: Oh, he was furious.
• 1:16:07
  SPEAKER_07: So I got the chief clerk.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_07: The chief clerk is the guy who's been there 42 years, a guy named Bill Hopkins, a little old guy, he finally retired.
• 1:16:15
  SPEAKER_07: Such a nice man, he knew everything about every president.
• 1:16:19
  SPEAKER_07: And they went through and they did a sort of a survey, and he asked the people not to, but then he came to me and said, You can't tell these people not to have a Kennedy as their favorite president or something, let them have it.
• 1:16:31
  SPEAKER_05: But Nixon's point was it just seemed inappropriate during his presidency to have all these Kennedy pictures.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_05: I've observed that many times uh staff members of political figures pick up the mannerisms and the operating style and the values and even the diet, the language of them.
• 1:16:52
  SPEAKER_05: Did that happen to you?
• 1:16:55
  SPEAKER_07: Haven't you heard me swearing here?
• 1:16:59
  SPEAKER_07: I actually like Nixon's uh kind of swearing.
• 1:17:03
  SPEAKER_07: Nixon was uh not real in many ways.
• 1:17:06
  SPEAKER_07: And sometimes after work he'd have Haldeman in there and one or two others, not Henry on an occasion like that.
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_07: Haldeman, maybe Ehrlichman, and we'd just sit in there and he'd have his feet up on the desk.
• 1:17:19
  SPEAKER_07: And his kind of swearing was the more traditional kind.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_07: He did use the F-word, but beyond that, but he only used it as an adjective, I guess.
• 1:17:29
  SPEAKER_07: And now it's you know it's a verb and now.
• 1:17:34
  SPEAKER_07: But uh he would say, What are we gonna do about these sons of bitches over at the such and such?
• 1:17:41
  SPEAKER_07: That kind of of swearing, and I liked that because it made him a little more real to me.
• 1:17:47
  SPEAKER_07: It wasn't that I had come from this horrible Air Force where everybody swears and I I wasn't at home until someone said the F-word.
• 1:17:57
  SPEAKER_07: But there was an awful lot of uh bad language on those tapes, and Haldeman swore a lot, less than Ehrlichman.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_07: Haldeman and Ehrlich were uh devout Christian scientists, both of them, neither of them drank anything, a little you know, fruit juice other than that.
• 1:18:18
  SPEAKER_07: They were very close.
• 1:18:19
  SPEAKER_07: They've been close at UCLA.
• 1:18:21
  SPEAKER_07: I knew them both at UCLA, but not well.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_07: And uh Ehrlichwin was was very, very bright guy.
• 1:18:27
  SPEAKER_07: He had set scholastic record at Santa Monica High School, and they had all of his honors encased in glass there until one day in Washington.
• 1:18:37
  SPEAKER_07: It was a and you could go from being at the at the at the pinnacle of your career.
• 1:18:42
  SPEAKER_07: And the next day, that name was the worst name you could put on your on your resume.
• 1:18:48
  SPEAKER_07: It was amazing how quickly that happened.