
Nixon Tape To Reveal Secrets at Last? 413
jonerik writes: "As part of its inevitable 30th-anniversary-of-Watergate coverage, ABC News has this article on the National Archives' search for someone who can recover part or all of the missing 18 ½ minutes of President Nixon's Oval Office tapes, whose existence had been unknown until the Watergate hearings. The famous tape - recorded on June 20th, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in - was last examined in 1974, but Nixon tape archivist Karl Weissenbach is hoping that nearly thirty years of technological progress can make the difference this time, saying 'We have decided that the time is right and appropriate to determine whether that conversation can be retrieved or recovered.' Stephen St. Croix, one of several forensic audio experts who is interested in taking on the job, says 'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'" There's another article in Wired on this quest as well.
well we go to extreme (Score:2)
Re:well we go to extreme (Score:4, Funny)
Re:well we go to extreme (Score:2)
At least in America, where environmental laws apply.
Re:well we go to extreme (Score:2)
Any company using that as its documents destruction policy will be sued out of existence faster than you can say, "Jack Flash".
Maybe for environmental reasons, sure.
But, AFAICT, many companies are eager to have a documents policy that specifically spells out how they erase old emails after 2 years, or whatever, etc. Stuff is expected, almost mandated, to be destroyed in an orderly and timely fashion.
It's funny.
I think there's more fear of legal liability after things like Monica Lewinsky's emails and Bill Gates emails to other MS executives, than there is thought to be gained by holding on to past information.
Personally, I've thought the more the better as far as archives are concerned - it's possible to search them for problems that previously came up and got resolved, etc. Probably my job function is so unimportant and requires so little duplicity that I don't appreciate the value of covering my tracks.
Re:well we go to extreme (Score:2)
Re:well we go to extreme (Score:2)
Subject goes here (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Subject goes here (Score:2)
Re:Subject goes here (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Subject goes here (Score:2)
Slightly o/t (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slightly o/t (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Slightly o/t (Score:2)
Re:Slightly o/t (Score:2)
It had an interesting take on the 18 1/2 mintues, as well as the identity of Deep Throat.
High-tech equipment (Score:2, Funny)
Wow, "bandpass filters"; that _is_ high-tech! Wonder when they'll be available to consumers.
Dibs! (Score:2)
Would they have to make clear what the sounds constituted, then, to prove they deserved royalties?
18.5 minutes.... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:18.5 minutes.... (Score:2, Funny)
30 years ago, Richard Nixon said... (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'm fairly interested in all this, especially seeing who it's going to hurt today. Remember that 30 years ago is not ancient history. Many people who are still high-ranking members of government now were members of government then.
In the recent hooplah surrounding the new book, Pat Buchannan was named as a possible 'Deep Throat', something I seriously doubt. Still, it raises questions. Suppose that someone we respect *cough* *cough* is in actuality a criminal?
Re:30 years ago, Richard Nixon said... (Score:2)
I guess that takes Pat Buchanan out of consideration...
Re:30 years ago, Richard Nixon said... (Score:3, Informative)
Anybody remember who finally fired Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor who was investigating Nixon?
Turns out, it was a 25-year-old named...Robert Bork, who was famously rejected for supreme court in 1987 and hired by Netscape in 1998 to lobby their case!
See a Dr. Dobbs Journal reprint [mediatransparency.org] from 1998 for geek-friendly history.
Re:30 years ago, Richard Nixon said... (Score:2)
Audio Archaeology (Score:5, Interesting)
Interesting guy. Here's a link [intdevices.com] to his company's webpage.
Re:Audio Archaeology (Score:2)
Anyone seen the film "Dick"? (Score:3, Funny)
And wouldn't it be a crack up if the missing minutes really were the confessions of a lovesick teenager?
Re:Anyone seen the film "Dick"? (Score:2)
Watergate still?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Probably because those things got investigated up and down seven ways from Sunday by a bunch of guys who really wanted to nail Clinton and they couldn't find enough to convince the country to toss him out, while Nixon had to run out of office fast enough to keep his pension?
And if the media thought they could rally enough support for anniversary specials on those things, trust me, we'd have 'em out the wazoo. Even Robert Ray doesn't care about those things anymore...
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Travelgate? Filegate? Vince Foster? WTF? Those are barrel-scraping attempts to dumb something down for general consumption. How about no TV coverage of genocide in Yugoslavia for almost two years after they knew it was going on? Hell, domestic current events haven't been covered substantively on TV for a good decade or so, and not in newspapers aside from the NYTimes and Washington Post.
No, the general media nowadays has no respectability. They cover nothing of substance. When's the last time I saw a mention in the paper about a bill going through my state's legislature? I'm lucky to see a mention of a federal bill outside of the budget, Medicare, or "terrorism". Meanwhile, there are giant cover stories on last year's dog mauling.
The media is covering Watergate for two reasons. One, of course, is they think it'll sell. This is a big thing that a lot of their audience lived through.
The other, more interesting, reason is that they're covering a time when they had respectability and impact. When investigative journalist meant something other than Geraldo Rivera. When journalistic careers were made by covering big events in a dangerous foreign country, or uncovering something big in political dealings at home. Now, foreign reporters get 5 minutes a day on CNN. Domestic reporters follow the police scanner to the site of the latest rich white babynapping or Chandra Levy's remains.
Nostalgia, then. Followups on a time when they had a function other than exposing sex scandals. Why would they follow up on something current, if no one cared about it in the first place? Yes, there are still respectable reporters doing significant work. But they're quite fringe, and mostly read by academics, politicians, "experts", and the tiny portion of the population that actually cares enough to read intelligent coverage on what's going on in the world. It's enough to support two newspapers and a handful of magazines.
Maybe because those were fabricated? (Score:2)
You might be interested to read David Brock's new book "Blinded by the right", where he goes through a lot of these stories and shows how the right-wing media worked to fabricate them, and how uncredible most of the "witnesses" really were.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Uhh.. if that's the case, then why don't i ever hear anyone in the media talking about the scandals of the Reagan years? Ever? Even though it's topical, and it would probably be fascinating to see a media review of "here is what the Eisenhower through Reagan administrations did covertly as foreign policy in the name of fighting Communism, and this is how it affects the current geopolitical climate, which is important becuase the U.S. is currently fighting an open-ended war against a number of nations whose current political situation is a direct result of U.S. actions"?
People keep going back to watergate because it's clear, it's dramatic and theatrical, and it's morally unambiguous. The whole thing is almost a greek epic on the Great Man Corrupted by Power. That's about it. It appeals to people's love of drama without challenging any of their held beliefs or making them understand complicated geopolitical context.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Well put. You're some anonymous coward!
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not to mention it is topical because a lot of the same creeps who committed what amounts to high treason during the Reagan Administration are back in office again (e.g. Poindexter, Reich, Negroponte, Abrams) except now they have an even better excuse than the "war on communism" to trash the Constitution and send the U.S. military all around the world. We've heard more about Monica Lewinsky than anyone could ever want and yet we've never had a real accounting of the crimes of the Reagan Administration. This video [empowermentproject.org] is enlightening for folks who want to be more educated on the topic....
That's not the reason (Score:4)
Watergate is a big deal for the same reason that some people think Bob Dylan can sing: it's a Baby Boomer thing. First the Baby Boomers discovered color, sex, civil rights, and opposition to the war. Then they discovered political scandal, and that was Watergate. By the time Reagan came around, they had discovered cocaine, tax-free municipal bonds, and all-white neighborhoods, so they didn't notice.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Actually, the media was raised on Watergate and they are a bit left-leaning on average. However, the lesson that every reporter learned from Watergate was "If I help bring down a President, I'll be rich and famous." Which party the President belongs to is a minor consideration next to that. Scandals are news that leads to books and speaking tours. Reporters will bite on them, even if the righty reporters bite first on the Dems and vice-versa.
The reason Watergate is a bigger deal than Clinton's idiocy was that most people can see that lying about cheating on your wife is less of a threat to democracy than breaking into the headquarters of the opposing political party and lying about it.
If you think that Clinton is worse, could you please explain why?
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:3, Insightful)
When was the last time you saw America do something for the pure, unadultered sake of helping someone fight for "freedom", "against communism"? Our government doesn't give a damn about communism -- we attack *ANY AND ALL* governments that don't bow down to our whims. It's as if our government is the Microsoft of governments.
"Congress had no authority to prevent the commander in chief from giving military arms to whomever he wishes."
Bullshit. We have laws, as well as policies, governing how we distribute and sell arms. The commander-in-chief is not God.
"That power is vested in the President in the constitution."
You'll have to quote a section and paragraph number for me. I don't recall reading this in our Constitution. If you can show it to me, I'll back down immediately. And then I'll work on an amendment.
"Nixon. Some two bit espionage done by an underling, that very likely occured without his knowledge. What was he guilty of? covering up a stupid move by someone acting without his authority."
Oh, really? Maybe this is exactly what we'd like to know. Maybe this is why we're still interested in Watergate.
-Paul Komarek
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Furthermore, witness the kissing of George W. Bush's ass since he was elected. That, if anything, should tell you the media is right wing. Speaking of which, there's the entire FoxNews staff, oh, and Rush. Yep, pretty damn right wing.
Don't forget to name call me a lefty, even though you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2, Offtopic)
Of course, the media is also unfair to your shallow personal pet belief system because of a sinister conspiracy. There's always that.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Oh I think conspircing with organized crime Bosses to overthrow a government (Cuba) and Wiretapping and Spying on Dr. King tops anything the GOP has done in the last Century. Of course it's easy to get away with things like that when your name is Kennedy.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Although, even those examples aren't really all that impressive. Trying to overthrow Castro by any means was a long-standing hobby for the US government regardless of political affiliation, and wiretapping MLK was Hoover's bag. And almost everything from that era is so fraught with shadowy conspiracy and players from all sorts of angles, it's hard to pin anything on any one affiliation.
Not like Dick Nixon, a classic and tragic villain for the ages. Now that's a beautiful scandal. Iran-contra and Inslaw are almost as impressive, but so far in my lifetime, the Democrats have been totally slacking. It's really a shame.
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Reputable news organizations of all stripes don't seem to be interested in touching the Vince and RON Brown stories anymore because, outside of the rabid Clinton-hating crowd, they're almost universally accepted to be crackpot.
How these compare in your mind to relatively well-documented and understood cases like Watergate, Iran-Contra and Inslaw is beyond me, but I'm sure you've got a rationalization for it. Whatever.
an attempt at objectivity (Score:2)
AltaVista:
Republican Scandal [altavista.com] 49,798 hits
Democratic Scandal [altavista.com] 258,173 hits
Google:
Republican Scandal [google.com] 108,000 hits
Democratic Scandal [google.com] 162,000 hits
working link (Score:2)
The full op-ed piece can be found here [nytimes.com]
Re:Watergate still?? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Tapes can't be erased? (Score:5, Funny)
I have a blowtorch that says magnetic tape can be erased.
Re:Tapes can't be erased? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a blowtorch that says magnetic tape can be erased.
Maybe, maybe not. We'll have to wait another 30 years and see what the nanotech experts have to say about that.
-
Re:Tapes can't be erased? (Score:2, Informative)
But then you have charges of destroying evidence to contend with. The tapes were subpoenaed, making destroying them illegal.
Re:Tapes can't be erased? (Score:3, Funny)
EXCERPT (Score:4, Funny)
Nixon: It's a good thing these Japs make these things with erase buttons. Now, we've talked about this over and over.....
Deep Throat: I know, I know. Don't mention any of this to anyone.
Nixon: That's right. God knows that this is all the Catholics need to get another goddamn Kennedy in this seat. Well Ted can rot in hell.
Deep Throat: Don't worry. My friend Mary Joe is taking care of that.
Nixon: Good. Now, about that Laugh In appearance. Make sure the networks are taking care of erasing that, too.
Deep Throat: Yes. Yes. Goldie told me herself that they destroyed all master tapes.
Nixon: Damn hippies! What was I thinking. Pat's idea all the way. Oh, and don't forget about giving [Vice President] Gerald [Ford] that money back that I owe him. It may come in handy one day when I need a favor from him.
Deep Throat: Also taken care of.
Nixon: Well, again, thanks Gordon. Or is it "G". Or just Liddy.
Deep Throat: Don't worry. No one knows about this. Remember, that erase button!
Nixon: Oh yeah!
(unknown sound)
Nixon: There. I think. Damn Japs!
Re:EXCERPT (Score:2)
So many of the possible "Deep Throats" have died, its now down to four or five guys. Among the possiblilities that still live are: Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, chief of staff Alexander Haig, acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray or CIA chief Richard Helms.
You could go to salon.com [salon.com] and pay $8 for this same info, plus a bunch of background that is already public knowledge.
Here it is (Score:5, Funny)
...eighteen minutes of Muzak passes....
"Yeah, I'm still here. What? Yes, the red light is flashing, but it was flashing the other day and nothing got recorded then. Oh? No shit? Yes, this time there's a tape in it, I can see it moving. Great. Thanks again, bud. G'bye"
Nice Coincidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember folks, this wasn't about a blow-job, or even selling missiles to Iranian hostage-takers to finance the overthrow of a Banana Republic--this was a sitting president using the instruments of executive goverment to commit crimes to try to win further elections for his party. Just in case any of you young-uns aren't cynics yet, or think "But those wise, honorable office-holders would never do that...".
Re:Nice Coincidence (Score:2)
Gerald Ford tried too (Score:2)
Too bad for the Dems (Score:3, Funny)
The deleted part (Score:2)
For all you non-USians out there (Score:2, Informative)
Right you are (Score:2)
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2001/05/18/kis
Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:5, Offtopic)
It's not just an American phenomenon. Up here in Canada two editors have been fired in last couple of years for writing editorials criticizing the Liberal government, because the two editors were working for a newspaper chain owned by Izzy Asper, a buddy of the PM. And as CNN goes international, you see them representing the conservative American viewpoint abroad, to the point of feeding a smear campaign against leaders like Pres. Chavez in Venezuela in their home country.
It's gotten so bad that the only people who openly criticize the powers that be have been largely marginalized (and then dismissed) as radical leftists -- Chomsky, Fisk, Moore, etc. These are brilliant guys with important questions, but the moment you mention their names the ad hominems commence as the argument degenerates into how big of a kook they are.
I guess the big question I have is, if a scandal like Watergate were to hit the ground, in the bustling forest of today's largely goose-stepping society, would it make a sound? I'm worried it wouldn't.
Re:Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:3, Insightful)
There were plenty of potential scandals today much bigger than watergate that have not been investigated.
Re:Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:2)
CNN represents the conservative american viewpoint...ha! thats a laugh
sorry
Re:Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:2)
The Europeans are FAR more liberal than the US as a whole. Or, put another way, the US is far more conservitive than most other states in the world.
The other side of the coin is this. Though many US reporters and other such media icons are liberal (by our definition) the owners of those media outlets they represent are just as conservitive as Dubbya.
Don't think that all that much gets by those owners.
Re:Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:2)
That easy, he's right here: http://www.drudgereport.com/ [drudgereport.com]
Re:Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:2)
Re: Where are today's Woodward and Bernstein? (Score:3, Informative)
the amount of credible investigative journalism has dwindled to the point of non-existence.
In all seriousness, what Woodward and Bernstein did was not good journalism. In the end, they got it right, but it could have just as easily gone the other way.
W&B got lucky. Their All The President's Men is as often fiction as fact. If you read through their articles as they were printed (as I have as part of a number of journalism classes), you will come to understand that history has been very kind to them. They made a number of critical mistakes in their reporting.
They are cultural icons, changed the political landscape and are the answer to more than one trivia question so we must give them their due but their due isn't that of great journalists.
InitZero
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Theory + practice (Score:5, Insightful)
Bull puckey. If you record over a tape enough times you will erase the original information. Otherwise, a length of tape could hole an infinite amount of information.
OTOH, just because you 'can' erase a tape, doesn't mean that it was done in this case.
In practice what he says is correct. (Score:3, Insightful)
If the data on the tape were that important, if you had the opportunity and if you knew that recording over the top would not work unless you did it a lot and with the right sort of sounds you'd simply destroy the tape, ie by converting it to a pile of ash and smoke, dissolving it in acid or otherwise rendering it chemically different from it's original state.
It may be possible to record over a tape to the degree that the original data becomes unrecoverable with any degree of certainty, but it remains impractical to do so.
What could it contain? (Score:2)
Other theories, anyone?
Agency of Fear (Score:3, Interesting)
enjoy!
This was already solved. (Score:2)
Show about tape recovery on Discovery Channel (Score:2)
There was a very informative interview with somebody from one of the companies competing for the project. They used some pretty sophisticated computer processing and filtering algorithms on other tapes and actually could recover intelligible conversations.
The companies competing for the project are going to have to prove they are capable of recovering an erased tape by using a demo tape that was erased with the same tape recorder used by Nixon.
The guy they interviewed was talking about building a specialized unit with a bunch of read heads that would be used to digitize audio from the erased tape (reading the tape in DLT fashion it seemed).
Recovery techniques? (Score:2)
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:2)
Hey, maybe if more "terrible secrets" get revealed, they can impeach him today. Weren't they going to try that with Clinton? heh.
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:2)
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:2)
Nixon resigned after he was told that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him. So he was a lot closer to the edge of the cliff than Clinton, who was impeached on a party-line vote and acquitted by the Senate. The votes in the Senate weren't even close to the 2/3 supermajority needed to convict him.
Okay, I guess I have to explain this (Score:2, Informative)
A good analogy if someone be accused of a crime. Impeachment would be analagous to incitement and removal from office would be analoagous to being found guilty.
Nixon and Clinton were both impeached.
I don't mean to be an ass, but it is not okay for adults or even teenagers to not know this. I get mad about techies who don't know this just as I get mad when normals brag about being bad at math. Of course it is also not okay to spell as badly as I do.
Grytpype's comment should be modded down to 1; it is incorrect.
Re:Okay, I guess I have to explain this (Score:2)
"when normals brag about being bad at math"
normals?
It also says something of somebody when they define there self in such an elitest way.
Informative, but wrong (Score:2)
he was not impeached (Score:2)
One could hardly say that justice was done, or that the whole truth was revealed.
Re:Yearg! The man was impeached, leave him alone! (Score:2)
made some comment that incriminated him WRT getting JFK whacked for fixing the '60 election or maybe
admitting he was one of those reptilian space aliens
or some other whacky shit?
Re:Never erase (Score:4, Interesting)
Little too early - these were reel to reel audio tapes, iirc.
That said, digital data can be recovered even when written over a few times. Analog data is probably significantly more difficult, as you can't look for up or down "ghost echos"... you kinda have to try and clean up a faint signal scattered in a noisy medium. Some impressive algorithims cleaning up "random noise" have been popping up lately - don't ask me how they work, though. Some Deep Magic lies in that field.
And yes, getting overwritten data is tremendously expensive, requiring that you peel apart the media and run it through a physical magnetic scanning device. There are several private companies you can approach, with basic consultation (no recovery) starting at ten or twenty thousand dollars. They have pretty good track records, and I know a couple financial institutions that used their services. I'm sure there are some people in the NSA who are just as good (I'd imagine that the private companies and spooks are pretty much the same pool of people and experts).
--
Evan
Re:Never erase (Score:2, Funny)
I think the analogy to FAT does not go very far. At least for the usual use of harddisks it's this way: if you overwirte it (with /dev/random, f.i.), it's gone. I remember when a friend found out about undelete and wanted to show me how great it works and that he can save more data on his hardisk that way.. luckily he just chose autoxec.bat for his demonstration (we were about 13 then).
I think marking a file as deleted is just like removing the label from a tape. The interesting part is, to recover the data, after it has been overwritten.
Re:Never erase (Score:2, Informative)
True its an ENORMOUS amount of work. but it can be done.. Just ask any NSA agent.. ( but dont tell them i sent you
Fossil magnetism (Score:2)
Bruce
Re:Fossil magnetism (Score:4, Informative)
Hysteresis. Ferromagnetic materials carry a "memory" of their magnetic history. AFAIK that's the basic principle behind our ability to track the motion of the magnetic pole over millions of years.
Superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) are seriously cool...they can measure magnetic fields down to about 10^-10 gauss. They'll detect fields created by things like a fetal heartbeat or a car starting down the block.
Re:Never erase (Score:2)
a low-level format will prevent data recovery using the heads that are attached to the platters by default, but one can put much more sensitive (and expensive) heads over the platters and read erased data with ease. Hell, with even more expensive equipment you can not only recover the data that was erased, but the last few pieces of data that were stored there.
Re:Slashdot sensationalist crap (Score:2)
I think the slashdot headline was fine.
Re:Slashdot sensationalist crap (Score:2)
It's True! Re:Alice's Restaurant is the answer! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's True! Re:Alice's Restaurant is the answer! (Score:2, Funny)
Why did he erase the tape anyway? Worried that the RIAA would find out he'd taped Alice's Restaurant and have him imprisoned for copyright violations?
Re:Technical Literacy (Score:2)
Imagine -- the guy needed instructions to use his custom built, custom installed voice-activated tape recorder. And, since he the times that he had to make damn sure he was using it right were probably times he didn't want some 23 year old geek getting in his way, he made damn sure the geeks marked the custom-installed buttons for the thing at the same time they gave him verbel instructions.
Yeah, Nixon was a moron. You're clearly so much smarter, because you can use linux.
Re:Technical Literacy (Score:2)
I know what it is, therefor it's intuitive.
sheesh.
Re: (Score:2)