Alexander Butterfield, a former top aide to President Richard Nixon whose disclosure of a secret taping system within the White House dramatically formed the Watergate scandal, in the end resulting in Nixon’s resignation, has died. He was 99.
His spouse, Kim, together with John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon throughout the Watergate scandal, confirmed his demise to The Associated Press.
Butterfield, working as a deputy assistant to Nixon, was answerable for overseeing the setting up of the taping system within the White House with the Secret Service in 1971, nicely earlier than the notorious break-in on the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington. Nixon needed the gadgets put in in order that he might correct the record, if needed, concerning discussions and disprove any leakers somewhat than relying solely on a notetaker. Several microphones have been positioned around the Oval Office and in other places the place Nixon performed enterprise.
For a time, as Watergate unfolded, Butterfield was one of many few folks in Washington who knew of the taping system’s existence. It got here to the eye of the Senate Watergate Committee after former White House aide Dean recounted an encounter he had with Nixon within the Oval Office that prompted lawmakers to suspect the president had taped conferences and supplied a brand new space of inquiry for future witnesses. Suspicions in regards to the taping system have been confirmed by Butterfield when he was requested instantly in regards to the existence of such a setup in July 1973, greater than a yr after the housebreaking.
The disclosure instantly set off a combat over the tapes, with each the committee and particular prosecutor Archibald Cox, who oversaw the Watergate investigation, to subpoena the White House recordings.
Cox didn’t let up on his subpoena when Nixon initially refused to launch the tapes, which led the former president to seek out somebody in his Justice Department who would hearth him, a quest referred to as the “Saturday Night Massacre” as a result of his Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned in protest upon studying of Nixon’s request somewhat than finishing up the directive.
The tapes have been finally turned over, together with the “smoking gun” tape, which proved Nixon’s involvement within the subsequent cover-up of the break-in, finally resulting in the president’s resignation. The National Archives launched the notorious tapes to the public in 2000.
Butterfield was never charged in the scandal.
“Frankly, I don’t like being known as the man who revealed the existence of the tapes,” Butterfield mentioned in an interview with The Washington Post in 2012. “It makes it appear that I ran full tilt to the Watergate committee and told them eagerly and breathlessly the very information that Nixon considered top secret. That was not the case. I was facing a true dilemma: I wanted very much to respect Nixon’s wishes and at the same time to be cooperative and forthright with the congressional investigators. The wording of their questions meant everything to me. And when Don Sanders, the deputy minority counsel . . . asked the $64,000 question, clearly and directly, I felt I had no choice but to respond in like manner.”
Butterfield joined the Air Force in 1948 and eventually rose to the rank of colonel, serving in Vietnam and receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He made his method to the White House with the assistance of Nixon chief of workers H.R. Haldeman, whom Butterfield befriended when he was a student on the University of California, Los Angeles.
Butterfield began off within the White House as a deputy assistant to the president. He initially didn’t just like the job and needed to stop. But issues received higher for Butterfield within the White House at the end of 1969 when his workplace was moved subsequent to Nixon’s and he was capable of preserve a detailed watch on the president. He finally went on to turn into one in all Nixon’s closest aides.
Nixon nominated Butterfield to be administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1972, a submit he was confirmed to by the Senate the following year. He was referred to as to testify earlier than the Senate in regards to the then-suspected White House taping system simply 4 months after he began on the FAA.
Though Butterfield was not a part of the Watergate scandal, by the top of the hearings and by the point Nixon resigned as president in 1974, his repute was tarnished. He discovered it more and more troublesome to work within the Ford administration and felt that his friends have been uncomfortable associating with him.
He resigned from the FAA in 1975 after he was pressured out by President Gerald Ford, who asked him to leave his position.
That similar yr, Butterfield was accused of being “the CIA’s man in the White House,” an accusation he mentioned was “absolutely false,” throughout an interview that yr on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
But he finally went on to work within the non-public sector for an air transport company as its chief working officer and relocated to La Jolla, California.
He married Charlotte Mary Maguire in 1949, who handed away in 2019 on the age of 92. Together, they had three children: Alexander (Vanessa) Butterfield Jr.; Susan Holcomb; and Lisa (John) Buchholz.
Butterfield was the topic of a 2016 e-book by Bob Woodward entitled, “The Last of the President’s Men,” which relied on 46 hours of interviews with Butterfield and 1000’s of paperwork he supplied.