not sure if you’ll see this late, lame response to your question, but it deserves an answer (of sorts).

I worked on the Discovery show All The President’s Men Revisited (the token conservative on the film, though not my official title) and AB was one of the people we interviewed. In talking about the tapes I remembered that he’d said something like “well, Nixon knew he didn’t have to turn the damn thing on,” but going through the transcripts I can’t find it, so maybe he said it as an aside when we weren’t rolling. Drat.

However, having waded through about 70% of the Nixon tapes in transcript form I’d be astonished if he didn’t know everything he said was being taped.

Still, in the interest of accuracy, better put an asterisk on it.

I do think it likely that Nixon knew about the voice activation, but he apparently denied it.

And it almost worked. Butterfield only spilled the beans when he was asked a direct question about a taping system during a routine FBI interview.

What this scandalous White House needs is a John Dean or Hugh Sloan to tell us what the President knew and when he knew it.

But I am experiencing far, far too much schadenfreude.

Of interest…

In the linked article — the writer strongly implies that the recording system started with RMN.

LBJ had tip top gear. It was not swapped out for y e a r s.

RMN did expand the system — after he discovered that this or that phone call (damning the other guy) was not on tape.

RMN really wanted to ‘pin them to the wall’ and show how right he was — better than Ike, even.

My post contains a link to an article that offers the relevant excerpt from that Frost/Nixon interview.

As far as the tape technology goes, as I said in an earlier comment, Nixon was hardly the first to tape but he was the first to use a voice-activated mechanism, but he himself said he was unaware that such a voice-activated mechanism had been installed.

He did expect to be able to control the tapes, but surely a man as wary as Nixon must have realized that their very existence put him in jeopardy.

When interviewed on this EXACT point RMN said that it was his intent to write his own WH history — with the tapes as source material. He intended to destroy them/ control them the rest of his life.

What I didn’t know for years was that the Nixon tape system started out as a hold over from LBJ. HE had a very slick system, too. LBJ’s stuff was never exposed until very, very, very, much later. It’s false to think that Nixon even dreamed it up. LBJ did.

At this time the LBJ tapes are mostly public. They are even more damning than RMN’s tapes.

BTW. LBJ had a foul mouth that would’ve fit in while filming Full Metal Jacket. RMN would curse only when his emotions ran high; with LBJ it was a torrent.

LBJ famously invented the toilet call: he would deliberately phone politicians while he was on the throne — making sure to flush before hanging up the phone. These calls usually involved browbeating some Senator into rolling over for LBJ.

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Before the tape recorder — a German invention (mostly) — there were stenos.

No different than Buraq, Adolf wanted to record the policy recommendations of his crew — so that he could throw them back in their faces when they went awry.

To this end he had six to eight stenos furiously taking down all the conversation in an around him. The overlapping coverage corrected errors. They’d rotate in and out like tag-teams. Normally never listed as being in attendance — they were rarely NOT in attendance.

They are the source for some of the amazing details from within Adolf’s lair.

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There is a consistent pattern: each executive in turn wanted accurate records solely to pin the blame on others — and to feel good about their own judgment. This tick crosses all political boundaries, apparently.

RMN ultimately admitted to Frost (IIRC) that he wished he’d never used the LBJ system.

And it occurs to me what a terrific story that could have been over the last five years, just sitting there waiting for some enterprising journalists to tackle. But, no, they’ve been in such lock-step with the Democrats that even that hasn’t tempted them.

Also of interest is Fred Thompson’s role in the revelation of the tapes’ existence.