Nixon White House Tapes

The Nixon White House tapes are audio-recordings of the communications of U.S. President Richard Nixon and various Nixon administration officials and White House staff, ordered by the President for personal records. The taping system was installed in selected rooms in the White House in February 1971 and was voice activated. The records come from line-taps placed on the telephones and small lavalier microphones in various locations around the rooms. The recordings were produced on hundreds of Sony TC-800B open-reel tape recorders. The recorders were turned off on July 18, 1973, shortly after they became public knowledge as a result of the Watergate hearings.

Nixon was not the first president to record his White House conversations; the tradition began with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and continued under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson. What differentiated the Nixon system from the others, however, is the fact that the Nixon system was automatically activated by voice as opposed to being manually activated by a switch. The Watergate tapes are interspersed among the Nixon White House tapes. The nine tapes gained fame during the Watergate scandal of 1973 and 1974 when the system was made public during the televised testimony of White House aide Alexander Butterfield; the tapes became the focus of considerable interest. Only a few White House employees had ever been aware that this system existed. Special Counsel Archibald Cox, a former United States Solicitor General under President John F. Kennedy, asked District Court Judge John Sirica to subpoena eight relevant tapes to confirm the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean.