As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
Donald Sanders
the existence of a secret taping system in Nixon’s White House. He once told his daughter that instincts about what seemed like rehearsed and similar answers from witness to witness led him to ask Nixon’s appointments secretary, Alexander Butterfield, who answered yes.
Home that weekend from a summer camp counselor’s job, Deborah, now 61, recalls feeling that something very significant had happened in her father’s life.
Later, he told her that the investigation had been on the verge of folding because no links to Nixon had been found. Butterfield’s disclosure changed all that by exposing Nixon’s role in the cover-up.
of his boss, the late Republican Sen. Howard Baker, to find the truth, wherever it led.
d
The most famous of these interviews occurred on Friday, July 13, 1973. Alexander Butterfield (Federal Aviation Administration head and a former White House aide) was being privately questioned by Senate committee staff members, when Sanders asked if it were possible that a recording system had been used in the White House. Butterfield answered: "I wish you hadn't asked that question, but, yes, there is."[6] Sanders went to relay the news to Fred Thompson, who was the Minority Counsel. Sanders first had to call him out of a local restaurant. "Because he was with some reporters, I got him away from them, and got him out on the street corner and told him the story", Sanders said
d
d
In 1971, President Richard Nixon asked Baker to fill one of the two empty seats on the U.S. Supreme Court.d
When Baker took too long to decide whether he wanted the appointment, Nixon changed his mind and nominated William Rehnquist instead.
Baker was frequently mentioned by insiders as a possible nominee for Vice President of the United States on a ticket headed by incumbent President Gerald Ford in 1976 and according to many sources, he was a frontrunner for this post.
d
Baker is famous for having asked aloud, "What did the President know and when did he know it?" The question is sometimes attributed to being given to him by his counsel and former campaign manager, future U.S. Senator Fred Thompson
d
Leonard Garment, his former colleague in the Nixon White House, recalled Buzhardt as "one of the most profoundly moral men I have known.
d
Buzhardt's involvement in Watergate began in May 1973. Alexander Haig had replaced H. R. Haldeman as White House Chief of Staff and sought Buzhardt's assistance. Haig told Buzhardt that his role at the White House would be temporary, and Buzhardt retained his title at the Defense Department. His first task as Special Counsel for Watergate was to investigate former White House Counsel John Dean. President Nixon had fired Dean the previous week; Dean was cooperating with investigators and was believed to possess classified documents. Buzhardt, through his contacts in the intelligence community, determined that the documents were related to the Huston Plan, an illegal proposed expansion of domestic surveillance.
d
d
Judah Best, Agnew's attorney, recalled later that Buzhardt threatened to "personally... strap on his old '.45' and 'take care' of the situation" if anyone leaked the negotiations to the press. The negotiations did not leak, and Agnew resigned on October 10, 1973
d
It was Buzhardt who, indirectly, disclosed the existence of the White House taping system to the public. Nixon and Haig, who were aware of the system, had given to Buzhardt, who was not aware of it, detailed accounts of Nixon's meetings with Dean, including verbatim quotes. Buzhardt, in turn, communicated them to Fred Thompson, then minority counsel to the United States Senate Watergate Committee. (He would later be a senator and presidential candidate.) Recounted by Scott Armstrong, the majority staff discovered the transcript and questioned former White House aide Alexander Butterfield about its provenance.
agtG
