Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 13, 1995 TAG: 9501130100
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
One of the abiding mysteries in the scandal that brought down former President Nixon is how part of a crucial Watergate tape came to be erased before the White House relinquished it to federal prosecutors.
The erasure, popularly known as the 18 1/2-minute gap, was admitted by Rose Mary Woods, the former president's personal secretary and confidante, who insisted in 1973 court testimony that it was accidental. Woods said she had inadvertently depressed a foot pedal for several minutes while talking to a friend on the telephone - an explanation prosecutors regarded as preposterous but could never disprove.
Now a new document from Woods' personal files, released Thursday by the National Archives among 270,000 additional pages of Nixon materials, suggests the erasure was deliberate. But the document itself seems almost as mysterious as the gap.
Dated Jan. 10, 1974, but unsigned and carrying no letterhead, the typewritten document reports that Nixon White House lawyers Leonard Garment and J. Fred Buzhardt had talked two months earlier of ``their client Miss Woods intentionally, not accidentally, erasing 181/4 minutes of the June 20, 1972 tape'' of a conversation about the Watergate break-in between Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.
The 13-page memo, headed ``Memorandum to Research Staff,'' said Garment and Buzhardt had advised Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski and U.S. District Judge John Sirica, who subsequently conducted a hearing on the erasure, that ``there is no innocent explanation of the gap or erasure.'' The two lawyers implied that Woods might be guilty of obstruction of justice - because the tape was under subpoena - and they arranged for her to be represented by an outside attorney, the memo said.
Karl Weissenbach, a deputy archivist who has helped organize the Nixon files, said he does not know who wrote the memo. ``We're not entirely sure it is a White House document,'' he said, although it was found among Woods' files.
Garment, now a Washington lawyer, said he recalled telling Jaworski and Sirica - both of whom are dead - that he thought there was ``no clear-cut innocent explanation'' for the erasure, which Woods said occurred while she was transcribing the White House recording.
Garment said he and Buzhardt, who also has died, avoided questioning Woods directly because they did not think they could properly represent her interests while continuing to represent Nixon's. But after she retained Charles Rhyne as her private attorney, Garment said, he came to accept Woods' sworn testimony in court that the erasure was accidental or was the result of a mechanical malfunction. Neither Rhyne nor Woods could be reached for comment.
Richard Ben-Veniste, an associate Watergate prosecutor who questioned Woods in open court, said the new memo only strengthens his conviction that the erasure was deliberate. If that could have been proven, he said Woods or other White House aides would have been indicted for obstruction of justice.
by CNB