Posted on 03/09/2026 6:10:53 PM PDT by Borges
Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide who inadvertently hastened Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal when he revealed that the president had bugged the Oval Office and Cabinet Room and routinely recorded his conversations, has died. He was 99.
His death was confirmed by his wife, Kim, and John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal and went on to, along with Butterfield, help expose the wrongdoing.
As a deputy assistant to the president, Butterfield oversaw the taping system connected to voice-activated listening devices that had been secretly placed in four locations, including Nixon’s office in the Executive Office Building and the presidential retreat at Camp David.
Butterfield later said that, besides himself and the president, he believed that only White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, a Haldeman assistant and a handful of Secret Service agents knew about the taping system.
“Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield told Watergate investigators when testifying under oath during a preliminary interview.
“He had the heavy responsibility of revealing something he was sworn to secrecy on, which is the installation of the Nixon taping system,” Dean said. “He stood up and told the truth.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Those were the days. Peak MSM. They’ve never gotten over it.
If you believe in coups as I do, then this boy was in on it.
Silent Coup is a very imperfect book.
It needs to be read with Secret Agenda:Watergate, Deep Throat, and the CIA by Jim Horgan as well as Go Quietly....or Else by Spiro Agnew.
Read those and their bibliographies will lead you to other important stuff.
Very close with John Dean, eh. The same John Dean who said that Nixon “might have survived if there’d been a Fox News” during the early 1970s?
this shaped the media as it exists today...they all dream of doing the same thing to Trump or any republican President. Cant believe he resigned over silly, “insider Washington” bullshit. The whole Watergate story was absurd.
Now we have the NSA recording everything.
And government emails have to be kept as official records.
Butt-ter-boy, say hello to the ayatollah.
They were all so full of themselves and what they did to Nixon was cruel. Cruel. He did not deserve that. The whole thing was to spy on the Democratic National Committee which is peanuts regarding the dems spying these days.
His mistake was thinking he could protect G Gordon Liddy et al.
I agree. Watergate was child’s play in comparison to the demonic democrats of the 21st century.
He could have just said, I did it, I’m sorry. That’s what Reagan did.
The only reason Nixon resigned is because he could count. He did not have the votes in the Republican Senate to survive removal from office after an impeachment in the House.
Phrased better = He did not have enough Republican votes in the Senate.
Watergate!
A childish prank compared to the actions of the Clintons, Obama or ObamaBiden, and many in congress.
Donald Segretti actually went to prison, his crimes??...he ordered multiple pizzas after he had cancelled democratic rallies.
not sure what they would have convicted him of. Its strictly a political act and many in the senate wanted him to fight on. He mainly resigned because of his family and his health. The so called smoking gun tape NEVER actually happened. It was just talked about and Nixon felt he was covered by “national security”. But he himself never paid off anybody, John Deans famous “i know where we can get a million dollars” story was just that, a STORY. It was in the context of a joke. The tapes had Nixon talking open and honestly, using racial slurs etc. The mistake his aides made was testifying to those dumb commitees. A perjury charge in front of a DC jury??...they were toast.
One of those moments in history I remember well. I was making a delivery for my work, and had the radio tuned to WBBM Chicago, who was live broadcasting the Watergate hearings. I can’t remember who was questioning Butterfield, but it was that moment that he revealed the existence of the tapes. I was a news junkie even before I understood political affiliations.
Yep compared to what the rats did it was a parking violation. What it was: some flunkies broke into an office and took some pictures, thats it.
If Nixon has 34 votes in the Senate he would have stayed. I appreciate your well reasoned reply.
It was a CIA operation to get rid of him. He also had made vague comments around knowing something more about the Kennedy assassination.
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