Tapes Don’t Lie, People Do (Epilogue)

Throughout the second half of the 20th century, audio recording tape was predominantly a medium used in the context of home entertainment: for recording music to play back in our homes or cars, or on personal stereo players like Walkmans and boomboxes.

Albeit in steep decline today due to the advent of digital media like CDRs and DVDs, and tapeless devices such as iPods and MP3 players, since its introduction in the US in 1947 (click here ), audiotape has also often been used as a form of “electronic paper” to document “the spoken word,” for both convenience and accuracy.

For Richard M. Nixon, however, using audiotape for “accuracy” proved to be quite an inconvenience. The audiotapes he used in the White House ultimately revealed serious legal and ethical lapses that destroyed his presidency and have played a crucial role in shaping American history over the past 30 years.

Without the existence of the audiotapes, the evidence against Nixon would probably not have been as compelling as it was, and it is unlikely Nixon would have had to resign the presidency as a result (see part 1 ).

Had Nixon not resigned the presidency on August 9, 1974, and served out his full term to January 20, 1977, our history as a country, over the past 30 years, would have been markedly different.

For example: Without the specter of impeachment hanging over him, would Nixon have picked the “likeable” House Minority Leader, Gerald R. Ford, to replace Spiro Agnew, who resigned as Nixon’s Vice President in October 1973 (see part 5 ). Or in 1976, would the “unknown” Jimmy Carter have won the Democratic nomination, and eventually the presidency? Carter’s main attributes were his morals and character—which few people, even to this date, dispute—and in the wake of the Watergate scandal, an essential attribute for a presidential candidate.

Without an incumbent President Ford, perhaps Ronald Reagan might have won the Republican nomination in 1976 rather than in 1980? If so, would Reagan have picked George H. W. Bush as his running mate in 1976? Unlikely, since the first President Bush was selected as VP in 1980 because he had been a rival for the nomination at that time and selected to promote Republican Party unity.
If George H. W. Bush had never been Reagan’s VP, would he have been elected President in 1988? Would Bill Clinton have been elected President in 1992? Would George W. Bush be president today if his father had never been president?

It is interesting to consider all the possibilities created by Nixon’s resignation and just how US history would, perhaps, have been different had Nixon not been forced to resign; a resignation brought on by the fact that the audiotapes did not lie... Nixon lied.

But to be fair to Mr. Nixon, he was not the only President to have recorded White House conversations—or lie!

Recordings in the White House can be traced back to the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

During the summer of 1940, when running for an unprecedented third term, President Franklin D. Roosevelt installed a recording device to ensure the accuracy of his presidential meetings. Roosevelt was worried about being misquoted by the press, and had the Secret Service install a RCA Continuous-film Recording Machine (tape was not available in the US), which recorded approximately eight hours of meetings and conversations.

When Harry S. Truman became president upon the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, he inherited the RCA Continuous-film Recorder. All together the Truman administration made approximately ten hours of recordings between 1945 and 1947. Very little information was gleaned from the recordings, and of the ten hours of recordings, only a few hours are discernable conversations.

Researchers recently discovered tapes that had been secretly recorded of meetings during the first term of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. These tapes covered eight conversations, with approximately four and a half hours of recorded discussions.

In 1962, President John F. Kennedy also had the Secret Service install an audio recording system in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, as well as installing a separate system for dictation of his speeches and letters. Kennedy used hidden switches to activate the recording system and secretly recorded some meetings in progress. He could also direct his secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, to activate the recorders when necessary. The John F. Kennedy Library has approximately 275 hours of recordings made during his presidency. In 1998, after the death of Evelyn Lincoln, the Library received additional hours of telephone recordings that had been in her possession at the time of her death.

President Lyndon B. Johnson was the most aggressive up to that time with respect to secretly taping White House conversations. In all, the Johnson collection consists of approximately 642 hours of recordings. Interestingly, Johnson had wanted his material to be closed to research until 50 years after his death. However, in response to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the staff of the LBJ Library released select recordings and transcripts of telephone conversations. They consisted of the recordings and transcripts of all recorded telephone conversations from November 22, 1963 (the day of the Kennedy assassination), through December 31, 1963, as well as conversations containing information related to the assassination of President Kennedy from selected later periods in the Johnson administration.

With the 50-year restriction effectively broken by the congressional mandate of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the decision was made to continue releasing additional recordings made during the Johnson administration.

But of course Nixon recorded, in two short years, more than double all of his predecessors combined (see part 2 ). As noted, Nixon was certainly not the first to record White House conversations, but he was certainly the last!

All White House recording ended less than 48 hours after Alexander Butterfield had testified about the existence of the Nixon tapes before the Watergate committee on July 18, 1973 (see part 1 ).
None of the five presidents who succeeded Nixon—Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton or George W. Bush—have ever, to my knowledge, secretly recorded White House conversations. And for good reason!

Ironically, for President William Jefferson Clinton, secret audio recordings made by Linda Tripp during her telephone conversations with Monica Lewinsky revealed a sexual relationship with the 42nd president. Clinton also lied—not about a third-rate burglary, but about a third-rate “relationship” with Monica Lewinsky.

The lie, however, was told under oath during a deposition in a sexual harassment lawsuit brought by Paula Corbin Jones.

Linda Tripp took the surreptitiously recorded audiotapes to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr. The tapes served as the igniter for a perjury charge that would lead to President Clinton’s impeachment in the House, but eventual acquittal in the Senate.

By a vote of 55 against impeachment and 45 for impeachment (67 were needed), Clinton was acquitted and finished out his term. Had the Tripp audiotapes also been the catalyst for Clinton to resign and Vice President Albert Gore then become President in 1998, once again, how would our nation’s history as a country have been different over the past seven years?

It is interesting—to me, anyway—that a rather innocent innocuous medium like audiotape could play such a subliminal yet pivotal role in shaping the history of this country over the past 30 years. Because, as this series suggests, the tapes did not lie, politicians did, but in the end, hopefully, it was the truth that ultimately prevailed.

The End