Lis­ten:
MP3 Side 1 | Side 2
RealAu­dio

1. This broad­cast high­lights the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing Richard Nixon’s White House tapes. These tape record­ings were, ulti­mately, the vehi­cle for forc­ing his exit from the White House. That event was the cul­mi­na­tion of the Water­gate affair. There has been recent dis­cus­sion among elec­tron­ics experts con­cern­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of uti­liz­ing advanced, high-tech equip­ment to recover mate­r­ial from a famous 18 ½ minute era­sure on one of the tapes.
(The San Fran­cisco Exam­iner; 9/22/2000; p. A2.)

2. The sub­ject of whether or not the era­sure had been delib­er­ate was a sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment of con­tro­versy dur­ing the Water­gate affair. (Nixon’s sec­re­tary, Rose Mary Woods, claimed that she “acci­den­tally” erased the tape. Most experts rejected her ver­sion of events. Inter­est­ingly, the tape that was erased was a record­ing of a con­ver­sa­tion between White House aide H.R. Halde­man and Nixon. In an auto­bi­og­ra­phy about the Water­gate affair, Halde­man wrote that “the whole Bay of Pigs thing” was a code word within the Nixon White House for the JFK assas­si­na­tion. Nixon refused to release the Water­gate tapes for fear that release would lead to expo­sure of “the whole Bay of Pigs thing.” (For more on the sub­ject of Water­gate and the Kennedy Assas­si­na­tion, see also G-3, Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M-59.)

3. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of excerpts from other broad­casts. In an excerpt from G-3, the broad­cast high­lights a vet­eran covert intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor named Gor­don Novel. Among Novel’s many tal­ents is elec­tronic coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence. His name crops up in the con­text of both the JFK case and the Water­gate scan­dal. Novel was the source for an impor­tant piece of infor­ma­tion that fig­ured in the Jim Gar­ri­son inves­ti­ga­tion. That report con­cerned a raid on a muni­tions cache to obtain arms for anti-Castro activ­i­ties, the CIA’s Bay of Pigs inva­sion, in par­tic­u­lar.
(Coin­ci­dence or Con­spir­acy?; Bernard Fen­ster­wald and the Com­mit­tee to Inves­ti­gate Assas­si­na­tions; copy­right 1976 by Zebra Books, a divi­sion of Kens­ing­ton Pub­lish­ers.)

4. This oper­a­tion allegedly involved David Fer­rie and Guy Ban­nis­ter, two of the key fig­ures in Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. Novel was later con­sulted by White House aide Charles Col­son con­cern­ing the fea­si­bil­ity of elec­tron­i­cally eras­ing the tapes.
(Coin­ci­dence or Con­spir­acy?)

5. Novel’s tan­gen­tial involve­ment in the Water­gate inves­ti­ga­tion sur­faced in a mag­a­zine called Tech­nol­ogy Illus­trated. In 1983, the mag­a­zine ran an arti­cle about Novel’s pres­ence at a gath­er­ing of vet­eran covert intel­li­gence oper­a­tives, includ­ing con­victed Water­gate bur­glar G. Gor­don Liddy.
(Tech­nol­ogy Illus­trated; 4/83.)

6. In a let­ter to the edi­tor, Mr. Novel took issue to some of the com­ments about him in the April issue.
(Tech­nol­ogy Illus­trated; 7/83.)

7. In that let­ter, Novel made ref­er­ence to his ultra high tech­nol­ogy role in Water­gate. (Idem.)

8. In 1984, Mr. Emory was a guest on a late-night com­mer­cial talk show and Mr. Novel phoned in, tak­ing issue with Mr. Emory’s descrip­tion of his posi­tion in Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion.
(The Express Way show with Larry John­son on KOME-FM in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia; 10/29/1984.)

9. Most of the sec­ond side of this pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt­ing of M-3. In his con­ver­sa­tion with Mr. Emory, Novel denied any involve­ment in Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion and crit­i­cized Garrison’s inves­ti­ga­tion. (Idem.)

10. When the sub­ject of Water­gate came up, Mr. Emory asked Mr. Novel if he denied actu­ally hav­ing erased the Water­gate tapes. Novel replied “only because they didn’t pay me.” (Idem.)

11. When pressed fur­ther, Novel clar­i­fied his state­ment, say­ing he didn’t erase any por­tions of the Water­gate tapes. He did state that he was one of a panel of experts who ana­lyzed the 18 ½-minute gap and stated that it could have been made acci­den­tally. (Idem.) (See also: the pro­gram ref­er­ences noted in the descrip­tion for FTR–246.)