Video: 'The Nixon Tapes'

(Friday, July 13, 1973 2:00-6:30 p.m. EDT; during the Watergate Scandal) — Alexander Butterfield, the former chief assistant to White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, under questioning by Senate Watergate Committee staff members behind closed doors, revealed today that almost all of President Richard Nixon’s conversations in the Oval Office of the White House had been tape recorded, the first indication to investigators of the Watergate scandal of a previously unknown source of evidence.

While former White House Counsel John Dean had voiced an opinion that he suspected that conversations were taped, no witness had confirmed the belief until Butterfield was interviewed today by Donald Sanders, one of the committee’s attorneys.

When Sanders asked whether there was any validity to Dean’s suspicions, Butterfield told him “I was wondering if someone would ask that. There is tape in the Oval Office.”

Butterfield’s dramatic public testimony came on the following Monday, July 16, 1973 (watch a clip from that day here).

Nixon’s refusal of a congressional subpoena to release the tapes was the basis for an article of impeachment against Nixon, and led to his subsequent resignation on Aug. 9, 1974.