This item is a tape recorder that was operated by President Richard Nixon’s White House secretary Rosemary Wood as part of the Nixon White House taping system. Wood used this recorder to create the tape of June 20, 1970, containing the infamous “18 1/2 minute gap.”
Claiming executive privilege, President Richard Nixon offered Watergate investigators transcriptions of his taped conversations about the 1972 burglary of the Democratic Party headquarters instead of the actual tapes. Rose Mary Woods, secretary to the President, used this machine to transcribe one of the tapes. When she was finished, 18 minutes of a conversation between the President and Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, probably related to the break-in, were found to be missing.
