Butterfield served as a deputy assistant to Nixon from 1969 to 1973
Credit: Steve Northup/Getty
NEED TO KNOW
- Alexander Porter Butterfield, the former White House aide to former President Richard Nixon, died at the age of 99
- He was known for famously revealing the existence of the secret taping system in Nixon’s office in 1973
- “He had the heavy responsibility of revealing something he was sworn to secrecy on, which is the installation of the Nixon taping system,” John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon, said. “He stood up and told the truth”
Alexander Porter Butterfield, the former aide to President Richard Nixon who disclosed to the U.S. Senate the existence of Nixon’s White House taping system, resulting in the Watergate conspiracy’s cover being blown, died at the age of 99.
His death on Monday, March 9, at his home in La Jolla, Calif., was confirmed to The Associated Press by his wife, Kim, and John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
“He had the heavy responsibility of revealing something he was sworn to secrecy on, which is the installation of the Nixon taping system,” Dean told the outlet. “He stood up and told the truth.”
On July 16, 1973, Butterfield, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration and a former White House aide, appeared in front of the Senate Watergate Committee panel, where he was questioned by Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee GOP lawmaker and chief minority counsel to the Watergate committee.
Credit: Steve Northup/Getty
Butterfield said that, besides himself and the president, he believed that only White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, whom he met while at UCLA, and a few Secret Service agents knew about the recording system.
“Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield told the panel when testifying under oath during a preliminary interview.
The tapes would later expose Nixon’s role in the cover-up that followed the burglary in 1972 at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate building.
To avoid being impeached, Nixon resigned from his position as president on Aug. 9, 1974, a month after the Supreme Court ordered him to release tapes connected to the Watergate scandal to prosecutors.
“I didn’t like to be the cause of that, but I felt that I was, in a lot of ways,” Butterfield said, referring to Nixon’s resignation, in a 2008 interview for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
“I just thought, ‘When they hear those tapes …’ I mean, I knew what was on these tapes … they’re dynamite,” he added. “I guess I didn’t foresee that the president might be put out of office or impeached, but I thought it would be a perilous few years for him. I guess I couldn’t conceive of (Nixon) being forced out of office. It had never happened before.”
Butterfield served as a deputy assistant to Nixon from 1969 to 1973.
Credit: Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post via Getty
The Air Force veteran had left the White House to become administrator of the FAA when the Senate questioned him about the recording devices.
Butterfield later said he believed that Nixon’s successor, former President Gerald Ford, fired him as FAA administrator in 1975 as part of an agreement between the Nixon and Ford staff members.
After leaving the FAA, Butterfield worked as a business executive in California.
Butterfield was born on April 6, 1926, in Pensacola, Fla. In 1948, he joined the Air Force and served as an instructor at a base near Las Vegas during the Korean War and later served in Germany.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland in 1956 and a master’s degree from George Washington University in 1967. Before joining the Nixon administration, Butterfield worked as a military assistant to the special assistant of the defense secretary in 1965 and 1966 and later served as the senior military representative of the U.S. and representative for the commander-in-chief, Pacific Forces in Australia. He served in the Air Force for two decades and retired as a colonel.
In 1994, Butterfield earned a master’s degree from the University of California, San Diego.
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On the day of Nixon’s resignation, Butterfield found himself overjoyed, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s 2015 book, The Last of the President’s Men, per The New York Times.
“I could not believe that people were crying in that room,” Woodward quoted Butterfield as saying. “It was sad, yes. But justice had prevailed. Inside, I was cheering. That’s what I was doing. I was cheering.”
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