An old college friend of Bob Haldeman’s, Butterfield had supervised the paper flow in and out of the Oval Office. Despite his closeness to both Haldeman and Nixon, the retired air force colonel had avoided being tarred with Watergate. His strength lay in his administrative skills, not political skulduggery. He had left the White House in good standing in March, following his appointment to head the Federal Aviation Administration. His sense of duty told him that he had to protect the secrets of his commander in chief, but his sense of honor and respect for the rule of law obliged him to tell the truth if questioned by Senate investigators.
It took the staff of the Watergate select committee several months to even bother with him. When they invited him for an interview on the afternoon of Friday, July 13, they had no expectation of learning anything substantive. It was a routine background session, designed to add to their understanding of how the White House operated. No senators were present, just a few bored staff members. Room G-334 in the new Senate office building stank of stale cigarette butts, unfinished fast-food meals, and a filthy, grease-stained carpet that had not been cleaned in weeks. Janitors were prohibited from carrying out their usual duties for fear they might plant an eavesdropping device. The swelteringly hot Washington air seeped through the walls of the poorly air-conditioned committee room, contributing to the general listlessness.
A twenty-seven-year-old Harvard Law School dropout by the name of Scott Armstrong conducted the questioning of Butterfield on behalf of the Democratic majority. He fished for information about the relationship between Nixon and Dean, but the witness had little useful to contribute. Disappointed, Armstrong began questioning Butterfield about Nixon’s office routine and the records of his meetings. He invited Butterfield to inspect a document, provided to Republican staffers by the White House as part of their defense strategy, describing Nixon’s meetings with Dean.
The document included a direct quotation from the March 21 meeting, describing Nixon’s reaction to Howard Hunt’s demands for blackmail. “How could it possibly be paid?” the president had purportedly asked Dean. “What makes you think he would be satisfied with that?”
“Where did you get this?” asked Butterfield.
Armstrong explained that a Nixon attorney had shared the information with the committee. He asked if the quotation could have been drawn from someone’s notes.
“No, it seems too detailed,” said Butterfield. Privately, he had decided he would not volunteer information but would answer truthfully if asked a direct question about the existence of a taping system.
How often did the president dictate memoranda about meetings in the Oval Office? Armstrong wanted to know.
“Very rarely,” said Butterfield.
“Were his memos this detailed?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Where else could this have come from?”
Butterfield made a show of studying the document some more. He saw no reason to speculate. His interrogator was getting close to his imaginary red line but had not quite reached it.
“I don’t know. Let me think about this for a while.” He pushed the document back across the table.
As Armstrong moved on to other topics, Butterfield breathed a sigh of relief. After three hours of questions from the Democratic side, it was time for the Republican minority to have a shot. The lead Republican staffer in the room was Donald Sanders, a former FBI agent trained in tying up loose ends. Sanders recalled that Dean had talked about an incident in which Nixon pulled him into a corner of his EOB hideaway to whisper a confidence in his ear. This had led Dean to suspect that the office might be bugged, and the president was trying to avoid being recorded.
His heart pounding as he posed the all-important question, Sanders asked Butterfield whether Dean might be right. Was there any “voice recording system” in the president’s office other than the Dictabelt machine he used to dictate his personal diary?
“I hoped you fellows wouldn’t ask me that,” Butterfield replied. “I’m concerned about the effect my answer will have on national security and international affairs. But I suppose I have to assume that this is a formal, official interview in the same vein as if I was being questioned by the committee under oath.”
“That’s right,” said Sanders.
“Well, yes,” said Butterfield. “There is a recording system at the White House.”
Three days later, on the afternoon of Monday, July 16, the Senate select committee summoned a reluctant Butterfield to testify in public. Hesitantly but methodically, he described how recording devices had been installed in the Oval Office, the president’s private study in the Executive Office Building, the Cabinet Room, various White House telephones, and the presidential retreat at Camp David. With the exception of the Cabinet Room, the devices were all voice activated, switching on automatically. There was likely a comprehensive electronic record of the president’s disputed conversations with John Dean and others.
“Wonders of Watergate do not cease,” The Washington Post reported the following day. The “ultimate witness” had emerged from the shadows—“not John Dean or John Mitchell, not Haldeman or Ehrlichman, not even President Nixon himself. In the search for truth, they have all been upstaged, appropriately enough, by an electronic gizmo—a tape recorder that faithfully eavesdropped on all presidential conversations.”