The Watergate Scandal :: President Richard Nixon

The tapes The hearings held by the Senate Watergate Committee, in which Dean was the star witness and in which many other former key administration officials gave dramatic testimony, were broadcast through most of the summer, causing devastating political damage to Nixon. The Senate investigators also discovered a crucial fact on July 13: Alexander Butterfield, deputy assistant to the President, revealed during an interview with a committee staff member that a taping system in the White House automatically recorded everything in the Oval Office—tape recordings that could prove whether Nixon or Dean was telling the truth about key meetings. The tapes were soon subpoenaed by both Cox and the Senate. Nixon refused, citing the theory of executive privilege, and ordered Cox, via Attorney General Richardson, to drop his subpoena. Cox's refusal led to the "Saturday Night Massacre" on October 20, 1973, when Nixon compelled the resignations of Richardson and then his deputy in a search for someone in the Justice Department willing to fire Cox. This search ended with Robert Bork, and the new acting department head dismissed the special prosecutor. Allegations of wrongdoing caused Nixon to famously state "I am not a crook" in front of 400 Associated Press managing editors at Walt Disney World in Florida on November 17. While Nixon continued to refuse to turn over actual tapes, he did agree to release edited transcripts of a large number. These largely confirmed Dean's account, and caused further embarrassment when a crucial, 18Â ½ portion of one tape, which had never been out of White House custody, was found to have been erased. The White House blamed this on Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who said she had accidentally erased the tape by pushing the wrong foot pedal on her tape player while answering the phone. However, as photos splashed all over the press showed, for Woods to answer the phone and keep her foot on the pedal involved a stretch that would have challenged many a gymnast. She was then said to have held this position for the full 18Â ½ minutes. Later forensic analysis determined that the gap had been erased several—perhaps as many as nine—times over, refuting the "accidental erasure" explanation.. This issue of access to the tapes went all the way to the Supreme Court and on July 24, 1974 the Court unanimously ruled in United States v. Nixon that Nixon's claim of executive privilege over the tapes was void and they further ordered him to surrender them to special prosecutor Leon Jaworski.