Mystery of Watergate Tapes' Missing Minutes Soon Could Be Solved
One of the great political mysteries — what was said by President Nixon during a suspicious 18-minute gap on the Watergate tapes — could soon be solved thanks to a keen-eyed amateur sleuth and modern crime-fighting technology.
The missing section of a 79-minute conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, was erased. It had been recorded during a meeting on June 20, 1972, three days after operatives connected to the White House broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex
The U.S. National Archives, which holds the Watergate files, has tried to fill in the blanks. In 2001 it set up a panel to see if new technology could bring back what was said on the tape, but nobody could.
An amateur Watergate sleuth, however, has convinced the archives that there could well be another way to solve the puzzle: using notes taken by Haldeman at the meeting.
Read entire article at The Times (UK)
The missing section of a 79-minute conversation between Nixon and his Chief of Staff, H. R. “Bob” Haldeman, was erased. It had been recorded during a meeting on June 20, 1972, three days after operatives connected to the White House broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate complex
The U.S. National Archives, which holds the Watergate files, has tried to fill in the blanks. In 2001 it set up a panel to see if new technology could bring back what was said on the tape, but nobody could.
An amateur Watergate sleuth, however, has convinced the archives that there could well be another way to solve the puzzle: using notes taken by Haldeman at the meeting.
Haldeman was a meticulous note taker who wrote in longhand on yellow legal notepads.