Rose Mary Woods Biography

H.R.

Haldeman's personal notes on the meeting indicate that the break-in was the subject under discussion. Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, in initial testimony about the tape, said, "The buttons said on and off, forward and backward.

Haldeman.

I caught on to that fairly fast.

I don't think I'm so stupid as to erase what's on a tape." Later she tried to explain that she had accidentally re-recorded 5 minutes of the tape, while transcribing it, but only 5 minutes, not 18 1/2.

She demonstrated how she probably had recorded over the tape with her foot on the transcription pedal located beneath her typewriter as she reached awkwardly for the phone. Suspicions arose that Nixon was destroying evidence

The White House reported that two of the subpoenaed tapes were missing, and that one that was dated just 3 days after the Watergate burglary contained an erasure of 18 1/2 minutes during a conversation between the President and

Demonstrates how she says part of a presidential tape could have been erased accidentally while she operated transcription equipment and reached for a telephone.

Explains that she accidentally erased part of a June 1972 presidential recording while transcribing it, though the full eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap remains unexplained.