W. JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Watergate’s ‘Gift of the Gods:’ The Surprise Disclosure of Nixon’s Tapes, 50 Years On.

The conventional storyline of the Watergate scandal is that Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, through their dogged reporting for the Washington Post, uncovered evidence that forced Richard Nixon to resign the presidency in 1974.

A more accurate, less mythical interpretation is that the president’s fall was triggered not by newspaper reporters but by a mostly anonymous former White House aide who, 50 years ago, reluctantly told investigators that Nixon had secretly recorded most of his conversations at the White House. The disclosure by Alexander Butterfield in mid-July 1973 altered the complexion and dynamics of Watergate, shifting the scandal to a monthslong drama to pry the tapes from Nixon’s possession.

Butterfield’s surprise revelation about the White House tapes was, according to the late Stanley I. Kutler, Watergate’s preeminent historian, “the gift of the gods.”

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