Watergate and President Nixon's Resignation (1972-1974)-Revised

President Nixon Resigns
President Nixon resigns for his involvement in the Watergate scandals
Type of Activity	Political Resignations
Location
Location	Washington DC
Date of Activity	9 August 1974
Coordinates	38°53'51.2"N 77°02'20.9"W

It was shortly after the 1972 Presidential Election that things started to unravel for the Nixon White House.

The Watergate break-in was the beginning of the end of the Nixon Presidency and over the next two years the country listened to the relentless pursuit of proving the guilt that the White House was involved with the a cover-up of this and other illegal activities known as Watergate..

The Watergate Break-in

Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, several burglars were arrested inside the office of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), located in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C.

The Watergate Complex in Washington DC

 The original Watergate burglars (L-R: James McCord, Jr., Virgilio Gonzalez, Frank Sturgis, Eugenio Martinez & Bernard Baker)

The Democrat National Headquarters in the Watergate Complex

June 20, 1972, was the first recorded conversation between Nixon and Haldeman following the Watergate arrests. A portion of the tape was completely obscured by a distinct buzzing sound, which rendered the conversation inaudible. That section of the tape became known as “The 18½ Minute Gap.” Numerous efforts in the intervening 50 years to “clean-up” the tape, using state of the art methods, have failed to recover that part of the conversation. A comparison to Haldeman’s handwritten notes of the meeting similarly revealed nothing.

The next recorded Watergate-related conversation between Nixon and Haldeman occurred on June 23, 1972, when the president and his chief of staff spoke about the Watergate break-in and arrests. During this conversation, the President agreed to Dean’s recommendation to get the CIA to tell the FBI not to proceed with two interviews of people thought to be connected to the financing of the break-in.

The release of the June 23, 1972 , tape (which was termed the “Smoking Gun”), on August 5, 1974, appeared to undermine Nixon’s contention that he was not involved in the Watergate cover-up. The reaction to the tape caused Nixon’s remaining political support in Congress to collapse. Three days later, on August 8, 1974, he announced his resignation as president, effective at noon the next day.

The Watergate break-in occurred a month prior to the Republican Convention: Miami Beach, FL August 21 to 23, 1972 and I never paid much attention to the incident because the Key Biscayne Detachment was concentrating on setting up communications required for the Convention. We were also working with the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CREEP) at the Doral Hotel with communications which we found out that the burglars were also working for CREEP. When the Convention ended, we removed all of the temporary equipment at the hotels and villa’s where the staff stayed. We then got ready for a busy fall as the election campaign of 1972 began!

President Nixon’s second Inauguration January 20, 1973

The 1972 Presidential Election

On November 7, 1972, the Nixon/Agnew ticket was reelected in one of the largest landslides in American political history, taking more than 60 percent of the vote and crushing the Democratic nominee, Sen. George McGovern of South Dakota. The President and his family visited Key Biscayne the day after the election to relax and celebrate the overwhelming victory! The Family along with Mr.’s Rebozo and Abplanalp spent the weekend aboard the Coco Lobo III and visiting the Ocean Reef Club at Key Largo FL. The President returned to Washington to start his second term. The Nixon’s would return and spend Christmas at Key Biscayne just Prior to the Inauguration.

The second inauguration of Richard Nixon as the 37th President of the United States was held on January 20, 1973. The inauguration marked the commencement of the second term (which lasted approximately one and a half years) for Richard Nixon as President and the second term (which lasted approximately nine months) for Spiro Agnew as Vice President.

1973 for us in Key Biscayne could pretty much be as observers although the Watergate break-in and cover-up was daily news. We never knew what would happen at any given time. 

In Feb.1973 I was sent to Jacksonville FL. for a couple of days to install a radio base station for the Secret Service who was supporting Julie Nixon Eisenhower while she visited the city on official business. This visit was very low key, no staff, no press, just Secret Service support. All I had to do was to install a “Charlie” FM Base station and a remote console in the residence where she was staying.

Also in February of 1973 The Senate voted (77-0) to create the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. The Committee is chaired by Senator Sam Ervin (Democrat, North Carolina). Ervin cultivated a folksy image as a country lawyer, but his supervision of this committee is crucial to the outcome. His deputy is Senator Howard Baker (Republican, Tennessee)and Fred Thompson (Republican, Alabama).

Shortly after 10:00 am on March 21, 1973, John Dean, Counsel to the President, entered the Oval Office. After a few minutes of talking, Dean got to his point: “Uh, the reason I thought we ought to talk this morning is because in, in our conversations, uh, uh, I have, I have the impression that you don’t know everything I know” about Watergate. “We have a cancer—within, close to the Presidency, that’s growing.”

The Senate Watergate Sub-committee Sam Ervin Chairman and his Deputy Howard Baker

Over the next 105 minutes Dean, who would later describe himself as the chief desk officer of the Watergate cover-up, first shared specifics of the cover-up with Nixon. Dean said that he had been given responsibility from Haldeman with developing “a perfectly legitimate campaign intelligence plan,” had recruited Gordon Liddy for the job, and Liddy did the Watergate break-in. Dean told Nixon that there were people perjuring themselves to avoid prosecution.

Dean then revealed to Nixon that one of the Watergate burglars, former CIA operative Howard Hunt, was demanding cash payments to cover his legal fees and personal expenses in exchange for keeping quiet about actions he claimed to have taken at the direction of two White House aides. Nixon and Dean then discussed the pros and cons of meeting Hunt’s demands, and explored a number of possible scenarios. 

Later in the conversation, Nixon identified the futility of trying to buy the silence of Hunt or any of the other burglars: “[In the end, we are going to be bled to death, and it’s all going to come out anyway, and then you get the worst of both worlds. We are going to lose, and people are going to…and we’re going to look like we covered up. So that we can’t do.” 

In Late March of 1973 James W. McCord who was the head of the Watergate burglars wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica in which he claims that the defendants had pleaded guilty under duress. He says they committed perjury and that others are involved in the Watergate break-in. He claims that the burglars lied at the urging of John Dean, Counsel to the President, and John Mitchell, the Attorney-General. These allegations of a cover-up and obstruction of justice by the highest law officers in the land blew Watergate wide open.

I had met John Dean and his wife in October of 1972 when they came to Key Biscayne on their honeymoon. I was at home, trying to enjoy a weekend that no visitors were scheduled to come to town when I received a phone call from our CO. I was sent to the Key Biscayne compound to pick up a stereo system and take it over to one of the Senior Staff villas at the Key Biscayne Hotel and install it for Mr. and Mrs. Dean. When I arrived I was greeted by Mr. Dean and escorted to the living room where I installed and tested the system. We would always provide stereo equipment as part of the set up on all trips when the villas were occupied. When I left that day I would never see the Dean’s again until they appeared on national TV during Watergate.

John Dean with his wife Moreen

John Dean is sworn in at the Watergate hearings

In early April 1973 John Dean, the White House Counsel, began to co-operate with the Watergate prosecutors, and President Nixon announces that senior White House staff will appear before the Senate Committee. He promises “major new developments” in the investigation, saying there will be real progress towards finding the truth. An official statement was released from the White House claiming President Nixon had no prior knowledge of the Watergate affair.

A month later President Nixon would appear on national television to announce the dismissal of John Dean, and also announced the resignations of Robert Haldeman and John Erlichman, describing them as two of his “closest advisers”. The Attorney-General, Richard Kleindienst, also resigns and is replaced by Elliot Richardson. The President would then appoint Gen. Alexander Haig as his Chief of Staff replacing Robert Haldeman.

The Senate Watergate Committee began public hearings on May 17, 1973, and began its nationally televised coverage the next day.  Our lives began to change as we watched the daily broadcasts.

The President made frequent visits to Key Biscayne and Bahamas until the day I was discharged from the military. No one could anticipate how bad things would get! John Dean would become the prosecutor’s chief witness. The Washington Post reported that John Dean has told Watergate investigators that he discussed the Watergate cover-up with President Nixon at least 35 times.

In June of 1973 while testifying before the Senate Watergate Committee, John Dean claims that Nixon was involved in the cover-up of the Watergate burglary within days in June 1972. In a seven-hour opening statement, he details a program of political espionage activities conducted by the White House in recent years. The most damaging testimony however: came from a most unsuspected source and would expose WHCA to very close scrutiny!

The most damaging testimony however: came from a most unsuspected source and would expose WHCA to very close scrutiny! On July 16, 1973, the nation was stunned to learn that President Richard Nixon had been covertly recording his conversations in The White House. The revelation came to light when Alexander Butterfield, a Nixon aide, disclosed the existence of an extensive taping system that recorded "everything."

Alexander P. Butterfield, a former presidential appointments secretary, informed the Senate Committee of the White House taping system. He said that since 1971 President Nixon had recorded all conversations and telephone calls in his office and other locations where these recording systems were set up by the White House Communications Agency and serviced by the Secret Service. This revelation was televised live and had a profound impact on the nation. Despite being a decorated Vietnam veteran and loyal to Nixon,  Butterfield's credibility was unquestionable.

However, the same could not be said for his boss. Nixon's presidency was ultimately doomed by the tapes, as they provided prosecutors with substantial evidence in the unfolding Watergate scandal. Moreover, they exposed the president's coarse language, which embarrassed many Americans. The event became a political disaster and a cautionary tale, leading to a practice that presumably no president has taped official meetings since then.

The timing was unfortunate for Nixon, as the country was already uneasy due to concerns about the "deep state," triggered in part by The Pentagon Papers and Nixon's personal vendettas against his adversaries, coupled with the widespread unease about electronic surveillance. It was common knowledge to us that recording devices were being used in the White House as well as other locations, but this was nothing new, LBJ had all of them removed from the White House in 1968, so the new Nixon administration would not know that LBJ recorded many of his conversations. As a routine set up for all visits to Key Biscayne, we would place a recorder coupler and IBM dictating machine on telephones used by senior staff that always stayed in villas at the Key Biscayne Hotel. These machines were connected to start up as soon as the phone was in use and since one party knew about the call being recorded no BEEP tone was present.

From 1969 to 1973, Alexander Butterfield served as deputy assistant to Richard Nixon. In July 1973, during the Watergate scandal investigation, he made the revelation that there was  the  existence of a secret White House taping system. Butterfield also revealed that President Nixon was covertly recording all conversations in the oval office with his staff and others. The recordings were secret and very few people knew about them.

The discovery of President Nixon's  secret taping system was primarily triggered by suspicions raised during the testimony of former White House counsel John Dean. Based on these suspicions, Senate Watergate Committee staff began asking witnesses if they knew of any taping devices. Because Alexander Butterfield had been a top deputy to H.R. Haldeman and a liaison to the Secret Service, he was brought in for a private interview on July 13, 1973. During that private interview ,deputy minority counsel Donald Sanders asked Butterfield if there was any truth to Dean’s hypothesis. 

Butterfield, who had previously decided he would tell the truth if asked directly, famously replied, "I was wondering if someone would ask that. There is a tape recorder in the Oval Office". This private admission led to Butterfield's  televised public testimony three days later, on July 16, 1973, which officially brought the taping system to national attention. Did other presidents use secret taping systems? Revelation of the taping system * Speculation on its existence. John Dean testified in June 1973 that Nixon was deeply involved in the  attempted coverup.

Alexander Butterfield, while trying to impugn Mr. Dean's testimony against the president, testified that the Buzhardt document contained what looked like verbatim quotations.. In a private interview on July 13, 1973, Butterfield was asked by investigator Donald Sanders whether John Dean was correct in suspecting conversations were being recorded. Butterfield replied candidly that a taping system did exist in the Oval Office. Three days later, on July 16, he confirmed this under oath before the Senate Watergate Committee in a nationally televised hearing, stunning the nation.

Butterfield at the Watergate Hearings

Butterfield had overseen the system’s installation in coordination with the Secret Service and the White House Communications Agency. Hidden microphones were placed in the Oval Office, Cabinet Room, Lincoln Sitting Room, and other presidential locations, including residences at Camp David, where the system used voice-activated reel-to-reel recorders, designed to automatically capture conversations for what Nixon described as a precise historical record, and in San Clemente, and Key Biscayne voice activated Dictation equipment recorded all incoming and outgoing calls that the President made. While I was assigned to the San Clemente and Key Biscayne Detachments part of my responsibilities was to install, maintain and remove all of the recording equipment used offsite on each trip.

The disclosure fundamentally changed the investigation. What had been a dispute of conflicting accounts became a legal battle over the tapes themselves. Special prosecutor Archibald Cox subpoenaed the recordings, setting off a constitutional crisis that ultimately reached the Supreme Court.

The tapes proved decisive. Among them was the June 23, 1972 “smoking gun,” which showed Nixon’s early involvement in the cover-up. Facing a certain impeachment, Nixon resigned the presidency in August 1974.

The path to Butterfield’s revelation began with mounting suspicions.  John Dean had testified that Nixon’s detailed recollections suggested recordings. A document provided by White House counsel J. Fred Buzhardt, intended to discredit Dean, appeared to contain near-verbatim quotes from private meetings. Investigators—including Scott Armstrong—recognized this as evidence of a recording system and began asking direct questions of witnesses. Butterfield, when asked directly, chose to tell the truth.

Butterfield's revelation had immediate consequences, prompting the White House to dismantle the taping system, but the damage was done, and the tapes were already retrievable. Nixon's attempts to withhold access to the tapes on the grounds of executive privilege and "national security" were futile.

Though never accused of wrongdoing, Butterfield’s reputation suffered, as he was viewed by some as a whistleblower who revealed a closely held secret. He later served as head of the Federal Aviation Administration from 1973 to 1975.

Alexander Butterfield died on March 9, 2026, at age 99. His testimony remains one of the pivotal moments in American political history—an unexpected disclosure that exposed the most powerful evidence in the Watergate scandal and altered the course of a presidency.

Though theories about Nixon's motivation for recording the conversations abound, historians are grateful for the valuable archive of historical conversations that the tapes provided. The tapes offer unparalleled insights into Nixon's administration, covering topics such as Vietnam, the rapprochement with China, and the emotional fluctuations of the enigmatic leader.

The Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) and John Dean, in my view, were responsible for creating the circumstances that led to the Watergate burglary and only drew President Nixon into the matter after the situation began to unravel. Nixon had no prior knowledge of the break-in, but he made the serious mistake of authorizing the cover-up, approving payments, and attempting to contain the political damage once the burglary became public. That decision ultimately proved fatal to his presidency. Even so, I believe his lifetime of patriotic public service and his accomplishments as President far outweigh the legacy of Watergate.

The full truth may never be known because too few people are willing to examine the facts objectively. One fact that is often ignored is that at the time of the Watergate break-in, virtually every major poll showed Nixon headed for an overwhelming reelection victory. Some polls had him leading by as much as 50 percentage points. His victory was widely considered inevitable.

That raises a question that is seldom asked: Why would a campaign that was already cruising toward a landslide need to break into Democratic National Committee headquarters to gather political intelligence? According to the prevailing narrative, the burglars were seeking information about Democratic strategy and plans. But what useful information could they have obtained from a party that was already losing badly and appeared destined for defeat?

I was there with WHCA during that period, and from my perspective, John Dean was at the center of the entire affair. I believe his primary objective was to remove records that may have implicated his future wife, Maureen "Mo" Dean. Beyond that, I have never seen evidence that there was any information inside Democratic headquarters that would have provided meaningful value to the Nixon administration.

Nixon's greatest mistake came after the burglary was discovered. Rather than immediately dismissing everyone connected to the operation—from H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman to John Dean and others—he allowed the matter to continue and became involved in the effort to conceal it. Had he acted decisively and removed those responsible at the outset, both his presidency and his historical legacy might have been very different.

During late summer dark clouds were forming around the Vice President about illegal activities performed while he was the Governor of Maryland. Vice-President Spiro T. Agnew resigned after pleading no contest to a charge of income tax evasion. He was sentenced to three years of unsupervised probation and a $10,000 fine.

President Nixon struggled to protect the tapes during the summer and fall of 1973. His lawyers argued that the president’s executive privilege allowed him to keep the tapes to himself, but Judge Sirica, the Senate committee and an independent special prosecutor named Archibald Cox were all determined to obtain them. When Cox refused to stop demanding the tapes, Nixon ordered that he be fired, leading several Justice Department officials to resign in protest, (These events, which took place on October 20, 1973, and are known as the Saturday Night Massacre.)

On October, 12 1973 President Nixon nominated Gerald Ford, Republican Minority leader in the House of Representatives, as the new vice-president.

Eventually, Nixon agreed to surrender some—but not all—of the tapes. The controversy surrounding the ownership of Nixon's tapes led to the enactment of the Presidential Records Act Of 1978, asserting that the official records of a presidency belong to the public, not the president. However, the act has faced challenges and raised questions about enforcement and the classification of records.

The subsequent release of the edited version of the tapes, called "The Bluebook," further revealed Nixon's private language and views, including his disdain for various groups and his inner insecurities. This revelation profoundly affected Nixon's popularity, leading to his resignation in August 1974.

Half a century later, Watergate's impact endures, as evidenced by the addition of "-gate" to political scandals, and when presidents claim executive privilege, the memory of the tapes resurfaces. With hindsight, we now draw broader lessons from the tapes that weren't evident in the intense atmosphere of 1973.

Thanks to scores of books and the extensive recorded material, we have gained greater insights into Watergate and Nixon, with approximately 3,700 hours of recorded conversations spanning from February 1971 to July 1973.

Throughout all of the Congressional Hearings the President frequently visited Key Biscayne and made several trips to the Bahamas and Grand Cay. Nothing had changed in our preparation for his visits except they were generally only over a weekend and then they would return to Washington.

I was nearing the end of my career with WHCA and would leave on December 20, 1973 so my knowledge of the sequence of the events that occurred in 1974, are only obtained from the various news and media outlets.

Early in 1974, the cover-up began to fall apart. On March 1, 1974 a grand jury appointed by a new special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski indicted seven of President Nixon’s former aides on various charges related to the Watergate affair. The jury, unsure if they could indict a sitting president, called Nixon an “unindicted co-conspirator.

In July, 1974, the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the tapes. While the president dragged his feet, the House of Representatives voted to impeach him for obstruction of justice, abuse of power, criminal cover-up, and several violations of the Constitution.

The Nixon’s say goodbye to the White House Staff

In the face of certain impeachment by the Senate, the President resigned on August 8, 1974. His resignation letter was submitted to the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, at 11.35am and Gerald Ford is sworn in as President shortly afterwards.

President Nixon’s Letter of Resignation

As the President flies out of Washington DC on August 9 1974 and while in route to his San Clemente estate, Richard Milhous Nixon resigns as the 37th President of the United States, the first President ever to do so.

On this day in history, it was also  a big day for Don Cammel, (Don was a friend of mine in Key Biscayne and joined WHCA in 1967), as well as a historic day for our country. Don was promoted from the enlisted ranks in the Army, to Warrant Officer. His promotion  ceremony was scheduled about 3 ½ months in advance and would take place at Noon on Aug 9. 1974. Little did he know that would coincide with the resignation of President Nixon.

Watergate was considered at the time the biggest event of political corruption we had ever experienced, and it divided the country. President Ford was very aware of the division and issued a full pardon to help heal the country. That event most likely killed any chances of him winning the next election. August 9, 1974 was a sad day for the country.

I was discharged from the Army in Dec.1973 and started working on my new career in the post AT&T breakup of the telecommunications industry. As for my family, when Richard Nixon resigned, we were living in Ohio adjusting to civilian life, and life after nine great years in WHCA!