by Bob Woodward
About Dean, Butterfield recalled, “I was sure he didn’t know about the tapes, and I was sure that in his mind, he was thinking of a little handheld set that you could put in a desk drawer.”
• • •
In All the President’s Men, the 1974 book that Carl Bernstein and I coauthored, we wrote the following about this period, “There was, however, one unchecked entry on both lists (of possible sources)—presidential aide Alexander P. Butterfield. Both Deep Throat [later revealed as FBI deputy director Mark Felt] and Hugh Sloan (the Nixon campaign treasurer) had mentioned him, and Sloan had said, almost in passing, that he was in charge of ‘internal security.’ ”
The phrase “internal security” was often a term for wiretapping. In January 1973 I drove to Butterfield’s house in Virginia with no appointment hoping he would be there and I could interview him. I recall that someone peeked out from behind the drapes or curtains, but no one came to the door. I did not go back later, though I should have. Butterfield was a prospect that was unexplored.
After Dean’s testimony, Senate Watergate staffers compiled a list of so-called satellite witnesses from the White House to be interviewed to see if they would refute or support any of Dean’s testimony about Nixon’s involvement.
Even before Dean’s testimony I had asked a committee staff member if Butterfield had been interviewed.
“No, we’re too busy.”
Some weeks later I asked another staffer if the committee knew why Butterfield’s duties in Haldeman’s office were defined as “internal security.”
As we wrote in All the President’s Men:
“The staff member said the committee didn’t know, and maybe it would be a good idea to interview Butterfield. He would ask Sam Dash, the committee’s chief counsel. Dash put the matter off. The staff member told Woodward he would push Dash again.”
• • •
It is unclear if the committee would have decided to interview Butterfield without this push. Butterfield thinks not—and claims that I fingered him. “They never would have called me in a million years,” he said. “I was an unknown.
“I know what was behind it. You were.”
On July 10 or 11, Butterfield received a call from Eugene Boyce of the Senate Watergate Committee requesting a “routine interview.”
“I wanted to help them if I could,” Butterfield recalled. “They said, ‘Can you come up for an interview?’ It’s just to learn some administrative stuff about the White House, how the paper flowed. And I said, I guess I could do that Friday.”
“Perfect,” said Boyce.
Several months before, on April 27, the U.S. attorney investigating Watergate and his key assistants had interviewed Butterfield. They wanted to know about White House procedures, paper flow, reporting channels and other administrative and organizational matters. Never once did they get close to asking about a tape recording system.
The only person outside the White House or the Secret Service Butterfield had told about the secret taping system was Charlotte, his wife of 24 years.
“Well, just like before,” he said to her the morning of his Senate interview Friday, July 13, “I know they won’t mention tapes. But if tapes are brought up, I think the best thing for me to do is wing it if I can, if the question is oblique or vague. If it’s a direct question, and I hope that doesn’t happen, but if it’s a direct question, I think I’m going to have to say, ‘Yes, there are tapes.’ I can’t get caught up in this thing.”
“That’s a good idea,” Charlotte said. He was glad she agreed. Her commonsense approach, he believed, balanced his more impulsive nature.
Watergate was exploding now and many of the big names—Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Mitchell—were being called to testify. “I’m ready,” he told her. He felt confident he could deal with the committee interview. He believed he was skilled at answering questions vaguely. He felt there was only one chance in a million that any interrogator would ask about listening devices in the White House. He would have bet money that nothing about audiotapes would come up.
When I interviewed Charlotte in 2014, Alex Butterfield was present. I asked her if she thought the secret of the taping system was going to get out.
“I knew he was going to tell them,” she said with confidence.
That created a bit of commotion.
“I’ll let that stand,” Butterfield said from across the room. “I’ll let that stand. That’s interesting.”
“You were confident he was going to tell?” I asked her.
“He told me he was,” she replied laughing.
“Do you think he wanted to tell?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Butterfield interrupted, saying to her, “That’s all right. Say that.”
“Why do you think he wanted to tell?” I asked again.
Now apparently released by her ex-husband to answer, she said, “I think he had that much dislike for the president at the time.”
“Mm-hmm” was all Butterfield said.
I had for a long time thought that one of Butterfield’s motives was payback to Nixon, though he downplayed it.
He then mentioned that soon before his testimony in 1973 he had told his closest friend, Bill Lilly, without giving any details, “You won’t believe this, but I do believe that I could bring down the president.”
“And I do think you wanted to,” Charlotte said, staring at him from across the room.
“I’m giving some credence to what you say,” Butterfield said to her.
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* * *
In July, a woman from the Senate Watergate secretarial pool pulled aside Scott Armstrong, a 27-year-old committee investigator for the Democratic majority.
“I’ve got something you might be interested in,” she said quietly laying out a multipage document. It was a summary of Nixon-Dean meetings that Fred Buzhardt, Nixon’s White House Watergate lawyer, had provided exclusively to the committee minority counsel Fred Thompson. Armstrong was astonished because the document included verbatim quotes. Under an uneasy truce between the majority and minority staff, everything was supposed to be shared. And he had not seen this important document as he was preparing to lead the Butterfield interview.
Armstrong was a friend from Wheaton, Illinois, where we had both been raised. He had been hired by Sam Dash, the committee’s chief counsel, based on my recommendation. Dash had tried to recruit me to work for the committee and when I declined, he asked who I thought he should hire. The smartest person you can find, I said. Who is the smartest person you know? he asked. I mentioned Armstrong, a Yale graduate who had spent a year at Harvard Law School.
Dash and Armstrong had been working together closely during the early months of the committee investigation. They had been gathering evidence that Senator Howard Baker, the committee vice chairman, and his counsel, Thompson, had been trying to help Nixon. In executive sessions with the Democratic majority staff, which included Dash and Armstrong, John Dean had revealed that Senator Baker had “secret dealings with the White House” and had met privately with Nixon.
A tape of a February 22, 1973, meeting would later show that Baker told Nixon, “I’m your friend. I’m going to see that your interests are protected.”
After this both the majority Democrats and minority Republicans agreed to share all information. There would be no private meetings or discussions with the White House.
Then in early July, Baker brought legislative aide Jim Jordan to a closed door committee meeting. Dash, suspicious, ordered Armstrong to follow Jordan. Outside the Senate, Jordan got a cab. Armstrong caught another cab and followed Jordan to the Executive Office Building next to the White House. When Armstrong returned to Dash’s office, he called Buzhardt’s White House office. Is Jim Jordan there? Armstrong asked. Jordan came to the phone. The back-channel subterfuge was ongoing.
Armstrong told Dash about the White House version of the Nixon-Dean meetings that included some selected verbatim quotes
clearly designed to impeach Dean.
Dash was able to get a copy of the document, and he gave it to Armstrong who planned to spring it on Butterfield at the end of the committee staff interview. Armstrong thought he might have a possible “Perry Mason” moment.
On Friday afternoon, July 13, Butterfield was being driven to the Senate. It was a hot, muggy Washington summer day, temperatures in the 90s. Room G-334, in the New Senate Office Building, was grubby. The chairs were stained with spills from fast food, and the wastebaskets overflowed with cigarette butts and sandwich wrappings. The faded green carpet was filthy. No one, including janitors, had been allowed in the room for fear someone might plant an eavesdropping device.
The session was attended only by committee staff. No senator was present. It was not thought to be that important.
Armstrong spent nearly three hours asking Butterfield detailed questions about White House operations and the information systems Nixon used. At that point, he handed the Buzhardt document to Butterfield, who had never seen it before.
Where did it come from? Armstrong asked him.
“Somebody probably got the information from the chron-file and jotted it down,” Butterfield replied.
As he read from the White House document, Butterfield expressed surprise that it contained a direct quote from Nixon at a meeting dealing with the paying of blackmail money to Howard Hunt. The president was quoted: “How could it possibly be paid? What makes you think he would be satisfied with that?”
“Where did you get this?” Butterfield asked.
Armstrong said the document had come from Buzhardt. “Could it have come from someone’s notes of a meeting?”
“No,” Butterfield said, “it seems too detailed.”
“Was the president’s recollection of meetings good?
“Was he as precise as the summary?”
“Well, no, but he would sometimes dictate his thoughts after a meeting.”
“How often did he do so?”
“Very rarely.”
“Were his memos this detailed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where else might this have come from?” Armstrong pressed.
Butterfield stared at the document, and then slowly lifted it an inch off the table. “I don’t know,” he said.
“I’m minimally panicking,” Butterfield recalled. “I’m stalling for time.”
“Well, let me think about this awhile,” he told Armstrong. He pushed the document toward the center of the green felt table. He was clearly troubled.
Armstrong surmised that Butterfield was reluctant to reveal a White House filing system that the committee did not know about. In an account of the session written in 1989 for The Journal of American History, Armstrong wrote this about his next move: “I began drafting up sample subpoena language for these newly revealed systems.”
Armstrong had come within a hair of asking the direct question. His question, “Where else might this have come from?” was really close. A lawyer might bend the question to suggest Armstrong was asking if it might have come from someone other than Buzhardt. That was far-fetched, Butterfield knew. That’s why he asked for time to think. He was relieved when Armstrong dropped the subject and indicated he had no further questions.
Donald G. Sanders, a former FBI agent, was the deputy Republican counsel, sitting in to represent the minority. In his version for the 1989 history journal, called “Watergate Reminiscences,” he wrote, “One did not then lightly contemplate serious battle with the White House. There was a very different aura about the infallibility and inaccessibility of the White House. The balloon had yet to be punctured.”
As Armstrong’s questions went on, Sanders was more and more focused on the White House document. It was so specific, stated with such precision, that it had to come from verbatim recordings. He was mystified why Armstrong had not asked about possible tape recordings.
When his turn came, Sanders’s heart was pounding and his breath short. During the hours of listening, he had found Butterfield quite cagey, outwardly responsive but providing narrow, carefully constructed answers. After a few preliminaries, Sanders reminded Butterfield of John Dean’s testimony when the president had taken Dean to a corner of the room to whisper. It suggested that their conversation was being taped and that the president was trying to avoid being recorded.
Is it possible Dean knew what he was talking about? Sanders asked.
“John Dean didn’t know about it,” Butterfield answered. He picked up the Buzhardt memo. “But this is where this must have come from.”
Sanders noted that Butterfield had earlier mentioned that Nixon had a machine with “Dictabelts” on which he made dictations for his personal diary. “Was there ever any other kind of taping system in the president’s office?” Sanders asked.
Instantly, Butterfield recognized that it was as clear and direct a question as he might get. He paused. “There were always options,” he later told me. He could not see a safety play. He had made his own ground rules. The question had been asked. He chose to plow forward, whether by clear intent, momentum, or a mix of both.
“I was hoping you all wouldn’t ask that question,” Butterfield recalled saying. “I’ve been wondering how I’d respond if you did. I’m concerned about the effect my answer will have on national security, on our relations with foreign governments. But I suppose I have to assume that this interview is as formal and official as one would be before the full committee?”
“Yes, that’s right,” Sanders answered.
“Yes,” Butterfield said. “There was a taping system at the White House.” The look on Butterfield’s face was both consternation and relief. “The White House system was fairly elaborate.”
Armstrong and Sanders were stunned as Butterfield went on for about 45 minutes answering their questions about the vast network of taping, how it operated and who knew of its existence.
Butterfield said that for all he knew Haldeman or Larry Higby had revealed the secret system. That was not honest. He knew better. Whatever the circumstances, he was certain, as well as he knew his own name, he later said, that neither would break the unspoken oath of silence to protect the president and his secret taping system at all costs. They would go to their deaths before revealing it.
“Look,” Butterfield said, “this information about the tapes is dynamite.” He urged them to keep it confidential.
Abruptly they all left, and he was alone. At home he told Charlotte what had occurred. She gave a kind of physical shudder. I have a strange foreboding, she said.
The White House strategy of attempting to discredit John Dean by supplying selected quotes of his meetings with the president had backfired spectacularly, leading Armstrong to focus on the Buzhardt memo and Sanders to ask the direct question.
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* * *
“I was pretty aware that that moment could change my life,” Butterfield recalled. “I thought I could be drummed out of the Nixon administration immediately. I might have been shot. A lot of people loved Nixon. I’m getting him into trouble. I’m thinking how much time do I have to pack a bag and leave town.” And he added half facetiously, “Maybe time to get a face-lift.”
But the answer to why Butterfield revealed the taping system has layers.
He later recalled for the history journal article for the issue of March 1989, “I answered truthfully because I am a truthful person. I used to play that down to some considerable extent, but I see no reason to invent other reasons for having been open and honest and direct once the sixty-four-dollar question was put to me.” He added, “I’m as sure as I know I’m sitting here that if he hadn’t asked, I would never have volunteered.”
He told me in 2015, “I’m not trying to be like a Boy Scout and tell you I did it because it was the right thing to do.”
When we discussed this all those years later, he said he actually thought Nixon had been good for the country in many ways. At a few other times he said the Nixon Whit
e House had been no less than a “cesspool.” He added, “This isn’t a contradiction. A person can easily be good for the country while operating a cesspool.”
Such is the state of our politics, I thought.
It is still not that simple. David Thelen, the editor of The Journal of American History who interviewed Butterfield in 1988, sent the transcript of his interview about the tape disclosure to him. Butterfield wanted to include more and added: “I was, at times, impatient for the truth . . . and in some strange, deep-down, almost subconscious way was relieved by having the direct question asked of me by Mr. Sanders.”
I asked Butterfield if he subconsciously thought Nixon had it coming?
“Did I feel that the truth should come out?” he said, rephrasing the question. “Yes I did.”
“Did you have the sense you’d lit the fuse that would be the end of the Nixon presidency?”
“Mm-hmm,” he responded. “Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I had the sense before I did it that I have here the fuse and the match. . . . Dynamite tends to explode when somebody sets the timer on it.” At the same time, he insisted, “There wasn’t a burning desire. It wasn’t a mission.”
Everyone, of course, does things, even important things, that are not a mission. Butterfield was initially intrigued as I tried to unearth his precise motive or motives.
He was emphatic that he didn’t feel he had an obligation to protect Nixon. But as we delved further, he said, “I don’t feel I had a motive. I’m not sure I like the term ‘motive.’ I was just the guy who happened to know all this stuff and I had a bad start with Nixon.”
He came to like parts of Nixon’s personality—his drive, focus and energy. Other parts, not so much. But it is clear that the “bad start” had never left him. Nixon’s rebuffs—his rudeness, as Butterfield repeatedly calls it—set the conditions for him so he could step away and not feel the intense loyalty of other presidential intimates who had attached themselves, their careers and future to Nixon.
