This trio is astonishingly good. Acoustic guitars, bass, occasionally mandolin or banjo—playing bluegrass, swing, folk-rock, a novelty song or two. At times, the music reminds me of the twangy swing of Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks, but without the winking camp and retro getup. The band’s presumptive leader, Dieter, a skinny, hyperactive guitarist with long, scraggly black hair beneath a beat-up cowboy hat, is virtuosic, fluid, and inventive, like Doc Watson and Django Reinhardt rolled into one. His singing is a little whiny, but that’s the bluegrass thing, I guess. His pointy voice is countered by the buttery baritone of the rhythm guitarist, Bixby, whose stage banter is hilarious. The bass player, Glinda, has a pure Joan Baez–like soprano voice (with matching long, straight dark hair), and she plays guitar on a few songs, mostly her own. Her playing—that fingerpicking thing I wish I could do—is confident and complex. The band has a relaxed, goofy stage vibe, like they’re just horsing around, unconcerned or unaware that there’s an audience watching. I overhear someone say they’re local, and that the skinny guitar player works at Evergreen. I’m impressed. If this is the kind of music Olympia has going on, I’m in the right place. Weird band name, though: Quantum Repair. What’s that about?
Our luggage arrived as the Greyhound agent said it would, on the next bus, a little after six. Janie learned that there was a late shuttle to Evergreen at 8:30, but we were too exhausted and grungy to wait in town any longer and opted to share the cost of a cab.
I was the only one in my dorm room who showed up Sunday night. My roommates, Duane and Jim, arrived Monday morning but left again today, after finding out that classes don’t officially start until next week. There are orientation meetings, campus tours, and other activities—like this concert—for the rest of the week, but they both live in state—Duane near Seattle and Jim in Vancouver—and they apparently decided they had better things to do at home.
Our dorm apartment has two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a living room/kitchen combo with a mini couch, coffee table, refrigerator, and two-burner stove built into the kitchen counter. Jim and I share a room, where we each have an elevated single bed, set atop a desk and chest of drawers. Jim is in his mid-twenties. Originally from Utah, he’s been living with his aunt and uncle since returning from a stint in Vietnam a year ago, and he has a grizzled veteran vibe, with a long untrimmed beard and ratty ponytail. I’ve only seen him wear army fatigues—thick, forest-green pants with pockets on the sides—and black high-top boots, which may have come back with him from Vietnam. He mentioned Vietnam in passing as the three of us were finishing dinner last night at a pizza place in town, and I was too surprised to ask him about the experience. It makes him seem even older than he is, and makes me feel like a naive, clueless kid. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be sharing a room with a guy nearly a decade older than me, but he seems nice—quiet and a little spacey. At any rate, it’ll be nice to have roommates with cars. Duane said he would be happy to lend me his if I needed to go shopping—although he left before I was able to stock up on food for the coming weekend, when the cafeteria will be closed—and Jim promised to keep me supplied with beer, though I had already explained that I don’t drink.
Yesterday, after picking up my meal card and getting my picture taken for a student ID, I changed my coordinated studies program from Words, Sounds, and Images to American Music and met my adviser, Mr. Coleman, a youngish, hip-looking professor with a healthy Afro, who teaches jazz and music theory as well as Afro American studies. I have a meeting with him later in the week to talk about what I’ll be doing in American Music. He wasn’t particularly friendly, but he seemed like a no-bullshit kind of guy. I like him.
This morning, I went on a tour of the largest building on campus, the Library, which includes the administration and admissions offices as well as most of the faculty offices and classrooms. Afterward, I lingered for a couple of hours in the library itself and was blown away by its collection of tapes and records. I was unable to bring a stereo or LPs with me from home, just a portable tape recorder, cheap headphones, and some cassettes, and I was worried that I would be stuck listening to whatever music my roommates were into, but the library’s music archive is remarkably extensive. I spent some time listening to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings, from the same era as the Armstrong and Earl Hines record of my dad’s that I nearly wore out last year, as well as a record by guitarist Charlie Christian with Benny Goodman recorded a year after the 1938 Goodman at Carnegie Hall album, another favorite from my dad’s stash of old jazz LPs. I also listened to a Miles Davis/John Coltrane record, Round About Midnight, which is unlike anything else in my dad’s collection of 1950s jazz records, mostly acquired when the platters were new. Last year, I bought Miles’s latest, On the Corner, after reading Ralph Gleason’s review in Rolling Stone. Since Gleason had raved about the Band’s Rock of Ages, one of my favorite albums, I assumed that On the Corner would be just as good, but it was a waste of money—the spiky funk grooves are static and tuneless, and the strident solos are irritating. Round About Midnight has a similar intensity, but the sound is more familiar; I like it, even if I have no idea what the musicians are doing.
I’ve discovered a lot of music in the last six months—bluegrass, jazz, funk—the sources of some of the music I got into in my early high school years, when I first started listening seriously to music: the Band, Randy Newman, Dan Hicks, Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, the Rolling Stones’s Sticky Fingers. I started poking around in the dusty corners of my dad’s record collection about a year ago, the same time that Will the Circle Be Unbroken introduced me to bluegrass. And a year at Long Beach Poly helped integrate my pop music consciousness: the sounds of post-Motown R&B, funk, and Philly soul more likely to be overheard on car radios or played at SEA School parties than at my previous, lily-white high school.
“Are you going on the tour of the Organic Farm?”
“I don’t know, are you? When is it?”
“We’re supposed to meet behind the Art Annex in an hour.”
Near me, an extremely attractive girl with long, flowing, molasses brown hair is talking to a scruffy, bearded guy of indeterminate age. He’s probably not much older than me, but the kind of unkempt, feral beard popular with a lot of students here has a way of aging them. Hardly anyone at my high school had a beard, but there are a lot of older students at Evergreen, and more hippies (I’m happy to see that my untamed, shoulder blade–length hair is a common coif). Wearing worn jeans and a faded blue work shirt, the two top buttons of which are undone, the girl appears enraptured by the music, but distracted and annoyed by the chatter of her companion, who seems to regard the band as agreeable background noise. Perhaps her mention of the Organic Farm tour was a way to silence him, implying subtly that they would have time to talk later. She brightens whenever Glinda is featured and sways in her seat to the folk-rock songs, tapping her fingers on her leg in time to the faster bluegrass and swing tunes. I can’t tell whether they’re a couple or not, but a tour of the Organic Farm suddenly sounds like a good idea, if she’s going.
When Quantum Repair finishes, the three musicians leave the stage and head toward a hallway at the rear of the Library lobby. The guitar player emerges a minute later to retrieve his mandolin and banjo from the stage. I consider going up to ask him if he gives lessons, assuming that what I overheard was true and that he does live in Olympia and/or work at Evergreen, but he’s soon surrounded by a group of fans and friends. I wait a few minutes, but the scrum encircling him follows him back into the hallway, and I decide to get something to drink from the cafeteria before the hike to the Organic Farm.
“Did you like the music?” the girl I was eavesdropping on earlier asks me as I join a dozen people waiting behind the Art Annex. She’s alone, but she looks around as if expecting someone.
“What?” I say, with my usual aplomb, unnerved by her soft-scented hair and slow, humid eyes.
“Quantum Repair. I saw you sitting near me during the concert. Did you like them?”
“Yeah, they were cool. That guitar player with the cowboy hat was great. I want to learn how to play like that.”
“You’re a musician, too?”
“I’m trying. How about you?”
“Yeah. I play a little piano, and I just got a ukulele, but mostly I’m a singer. I’d love to sing in a band with hip vocal harmonies like that. What program are you in?”
“American Music.”
“Me too. Oh, it looks like the tour is leaving. My friend was supposed to join me, but . . . Well, he can find the trail himself. I don’t want to miss it. I’m Jenny, by the way.”
“Lucas,” I say. She smiles and falls in step beside me.
We follow the handful of people heading down a dirt road that leads into the woods, where it narrows to a single, winding footpath. The surrounding forest is lush and dark, but there’s no chance of losing your way in here; if you were to accidentally veer off the trail you would be stopped by the mesh of tangled bushes, ferns, moss-covered logs, shrubs, and evergreens that create a grim, silent barricade on either side of the trail, a rutted, muddy track covered in pine needles, fronds, and broken branches. As we enter the depths of the forest, the light of the sun dims, though it was abundant and bright on the campus quad, and although the trail is clear, I would hate to get stuck in here at night without a flashlight. In the pitch black of nighttime, it wouldn’t take much to imagine that you had somehow stumbled into the savage wilderness of Mirkwood and that giant, rapacious spiders might suddenly drop from the dank boughs overhead. But with a weak fountain of light filtering through the trees, like strengthless smoke, and a troop of lithe hikers before me, the shadowy chill feels cozy, almost comforting, and I am happy to follow my guide, my attractive new friend, blindly down the trail.
For some reason, I have always preferred dark, overcast skies and inclement weather to the blazing sun of Southern California’s vivid, hot summer days. Much of my free time during the last few summers was spent at a local beach, but that was not so much from an inherent love of sun and sand as a desire to be on my own, away from the mephitic cigarette smell that seemed to emanate from deep inside the walls of my family home. Visits to Seal Beach were mostly an excuse to become a temporary amphibian, bobbing in the water for hours, body surfing or paddling mindlessly in the gentle summer waves, instead of reclining on the sand or diving for volleyballs. I could hide my ectomorphic body from ridicule beneath the water, but I felt exposed and self-conscious lolling on the beach, eating lunch or reading, and I always slipped a T-shirt on as soon as I left the water.
While I welcomed the few clusters of rainy days that would appear suddenly in the winter or early spring, I’m not sure I would have the same reaction to real winter weather. The lingering memories I have of the first years of my life, when we lived in southern Ohio, include a few days of sledding down a long snow-covered hill: a confused recollection, equal parts joy at gliding over the snow, crisp and crunchy beneath my sled, enveloped in a child’s padded snowsuit, and fear of crashing into the massive oak tree at the bottom. In recent winters, I’ve been happy to stay behind as high school friends headed off for ski weekends in the mountains surrounding the LA basin, to Idyllwild or Big Bear or Lake Arrowhead. My family are not skiers, and we couldn’t afford the sport’s trappings, so I would have been the oddball non-skier in the bunch, left with little to do but read old Mad magazines or watch football on the TV in the lodge while my friends careened down the slopes.
The trail eventually opens out onto a broad garden with raised beds, rows of corn stalks (I think, although the ears are black rather than the gleaming yellow I remember from family vacations in Nebraska), strings of beans on wooden poles, and squash and pumpkins scattered about on the ground. A dirt road bordering the garden leads around to a greenhouse that looks half finished, or storm damaged, and eventually a farmhouse and barn. Next to a chicken coop, chickens peck languidly at the mud, their “buh-gawking” increasing as we pass. We are greeted in front of the barn by Ingrid, the Organic Farm’s director, an energetic, earnest woman in blue overalls, red-and-white bandana, and black, mud-spattered rubber boots. At the other end of the thick, looping rope in her hands is a full-grown dairy cow unfazed by our arrival. After a perfunctory welcome, Ingrid motions for us to follow her and the cow into the barn. We learn that the cow’s name is Rita, and that she has recently given birth to a calf, Frieda. After leading Rita to her stall, Ingrid directs us back into the open air and begins to show us around, telling us about all the vegetables they’ve grown that year and explaining that the farm is always in need of volunteer help, that there are plenty of people happy to help out with the planting and harvesting but that the farm also needs willing bodies for the heavier work, like repairing fences and finishing the calf shed and greenhouse, a student project that has languished since the students who initiated it graduated and “moved on to greener pastures.” (Ingrid seems unaware of her pun.)
I’m happy to be outdoors in the sun, but I have no interest in farming, so I tune out Ingrid’s spiel and enjoy the sweet, fetid smell of the farm and refreshing, crisp breeze. Jenny has said nothing to me since we arrived at the farm, but she remains close by, as if tethered by an invisible thread, listening to Ingrid with apparent interest. Ingrid eventually leads us into the farmhouse, and as we cluster in the spacious kitchen, I hear the faint sounds of a stringed instrument coming from the rear of the house. While Ingrid explains that volunteers at the farm get a share of the vegetables at harvest time, and occasionally fresh milk from Rita, all the while learning the latest organic farming methods, I drift to the other side of the kitchen and peer around a corner, looking for the source of the music. A handsome, ponytailed guy about my age is perched on the bed of a small, untidy bedroom playing a bluegrass tune on a roundback mandolin. His drab brown work shirt, ash-gray pants, and heavy wool socks are all stained by toil, and his unruly ponytail is in danger of becoming dreadlocked. He glances up as I peer into the room, smiles, and then stops playing, setting his mandolin down on the bed’s colorful, ragged quilt walking past me into the kitchen, where Ingrid introduces him: Tracy, the farm’s newest resident. He murmurs a greeting and leans against a countertop, quietly listening to Ingrid answer a few questions from members of the tour group. Jenny is across the room from both of us, and Tracy notices her immediately, watching her intently, as if she’s the most beguiling thing he’s ever seen. She notices him, too, and responds with a couple of flirtatious smiles as Ingrid’s talk winds down.
I catch up to Jenny as we enter the woods on the trail back to campus and ask her what she thought of the farm.
“It’s cool. My cousin lives on a little farm on Cooper Point Road, and I spend a lot of time there. They have a large vegetable patch and they’re thinking of trying to raise some chickens, but it’s hard to get people to commit to the work. They’re all musicians too and nobody has regular schedules. So, it’s tough to convince people who’ve stayed up all night jamming and getting high to get up and do farm chores at the break of day. Sounds like this farm has a similar commitment problem. How about you, are you into farming?”
I chuckle to myself. “No, hardly. I just thought a walk through the woods would be nice, and I’m curious to see the whole campus. This is all so different for me.”
“Really? How?”
“I grew up in suburban Southern California. We never had much of a garden or anything. There were a couple of fruit trees in the backyard, apricot and peach, but that just meant I had to scrape all the fruit off the ground every Saturday summer morning. My grandma and mother would can some of the peaches and make apricot jam once a year, but that’s as close to farming as I’ve gotten.”
“That’s funny. You’re in LA and your grandmother is canning peaches and making jam.”
“She grew up on a farm in Nebraska, so that’s just what they did, I guess. It saves money. We never had to buy jam, that’s for sure. I got kind of sick of apricots, but the peaches were good. My mother would make peach cobbler sometimes, or we’d have canned peaches with ice cream. I liked that.”
As the path narrows, Jenny moves in front of me and starts talking to the woman ahead of us. I stumble over a couple of tree roots, my eyes on Jenny’s backside instead of the ground, and soon I’m a few dozen feet behind the group. The forest is murkier now and I slow down to make sure I don’t stumble again. I don’t want to do anything stupid like twist my ankle.
When we get back to campus, Jenny’s hirsute friend is waiting for her outside the Art Annex. The sight of her makes him smile, and she walks off in his direction without a backward glance.
Ted
There’s the exit, 45th Street. So tired, another long drive. Raining, of course, plop, plop, drip, drip.
And the Sandpiper, I met Liz there. I mean the Rainbow, now it’s the Rainbow. Why the name change? An alias? Covering your tracks? Escaping an unwanted life? Or just new owners. Sandpiper? Rainbow? Sandbow? Rainpiper? Sandy Rainbow Piper? I could use that. No, sounds too silly. I ain’t no friggin’ hippie. Who’s playing tonight? Lance Romance? What a faggoty name.
Wait, is that? No, can’t be. But the hair—long, dark, soaking wet. I can’t tell if it’s naturally straight or not. Her face, hidden. I don’t know. What would she be doing here? I’ll turn left on Roosevelt, go around. Here we go, 47th, then left on 8th. Come on, come on, what’s this prick doing? Keep moving, you little weasel, or she’ll be gone. I swear, people cannot drive in this town. Yeah, that’s it, that’s it, put your foot on the gas, move forward, that’s it. Stupid prick.
She’s still there. Waiting for someone? Or lost? Drenched, but she doesn’t seem concerned, just waiting, watching.
It’s not her. I’ll drive by slowly, see if she notices me. Is she smoking? No, just cupping something in her hands, blowing on something, or warming her fingers . . . warm, her breath warm, skin, blood . . . breathing, bloody. I’ll go around again.
Fuck, didn’t see that asshole. Yeah, yeah, honk your fucking horn, pull your tiny little chain. I know, I see you now, you little cunt.
Jesus, I need to get the heater in this car fixed. What the fuck is that smell, like a dead rat or . . . or something left over from . . . is it coming from the passenger seat? Maybe I should just take it out. I don’t need it. Make room for . . .
There was a time, when I was but half the years that I am now,
I found myself on an errant road leading to the home of my mother
from deep inside a tangled forest I could never hope to know.
I felt as if I had entered some other dimension, and moving farther
along the rough, simple road, I began to sense its hidden purpose,
of which I now have no doubt, though it remains haunted and severe.
It frightens me now to think of it, how my tentative steps
became leaden, how I struggled to move, fearful that the hand of death
or something immeasurably worse was lurking in the darkness.
Though the feeling passed, there have been times, on another path,
when the same inchoate terror would rise within and begin to overwhelm,
but then suddenly leave me free, unburdened, as if a sudden draught of health
were coursing through my veins, administering a soothing balm,
only to vanish abruptly, leaving me wracked with pain, again. But I never knew
which path or what events would summon this willful, two-faced daemon.
Sometimes after these visitations, I felt as if I had awakened to a true
understanding of my insistent carnal desires. Then I would slowly lift my gaze
to the magnificent crest, the shining heights cloaked in the matutinal dew,
mantled by that bright, shining orb that illumines life’s mysterious days
for all the suffering multitude, even those who will never feel
the burdens of the unfound way, nor quake in fear at the thundering voice,
the sorrowful night, or the darkening lake, from which so often I would reel
exhausted, straining to bear the effort it would take to escape
the dangerous waters, knowing that eventually they would consume me,
and from which I know none will ever escape, that all, shade
or man, so suffering, could scarce be released or in triumph flee,
unshackled, the abyssal, burgeoning canker.
There’s a spot, just a few houses up the block. My sports coat will get ruined, but who cares? Hide the wrench in the sleeve, nylons in my back pocket. Her jacket open. Isn’t she cold? The top buttons of her blouse undone, no bra, she’s cold, nipples hard buttons of flesh. Now don’t blow it, act casual, nonchalant. Don’t get a fucking hard-on, these pants too tight. Shit, shit, let it slack, think of Liz.
“Hey there, honey, aren’t you cold? Do you need a hand? A ride? You’re going to freeze out here.”
“No, I’m OK, thanks. I’m just . . .”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Where the hell did he come from? I should have checked the door to the bar. Damn. Figured the band would be done by now.
“I’m nobody. Just trying to help the young lady. She looked cold. She’s with you? Fine, fine. Were you waiting for him, honey? Are you sure you’re OK?”
“What the hell did I tell you? Get away from her or I’ll beat the crap out of you.”
“It’s OK, Donny. Donny, don’t freak out. He didn’t do anything. He’s harmless. What took you so long? I told you I wanted to go.”
Fuck, that was close. Big guy, probably just bluffing, though. Would he really have hit me? I could have taken him. I’m not drunk, not like him, not yet.
Maybe a trip to Dante’s. Just a few blocks up, it’ll still be open. Or cruise the sorority houses? It’s too late to go by Liz’s place, it would freak her out. And I’m too tired to deal with her shit. But it’s been three weeks since Diane, I need someone, something, some . . . thing.
I must rest my weary body awhile, wait for my hide
to become accustomed to movement again,
here at the base of this lonely, sloping hillside
that has witnessed so much, that has seen
me wishing, praying, struggling to shed my leopard’s spots
for the smooth and supple coat of a gentle cervine.
But who is that lurking in the mottled shadows?
Is he (or she?) urging me on? Or standing guard, diligently
hoping to prevent my ascent because it knows, yes, I’m sure it knows.
The sun will soon rise, the morning will begin quietly,
in mist and silence, the stars passing on their duties
in fellowship with the sun, illuminating the day’s divine beauty,
the gentle season of hope, hope that the beastliness,
stirring inside the lion’s mouth, the maw that voices my pain,
will not take shape, its skin scarred, formless
and desiccated, born before but not within me. The pale moon
shudders at the thought, as if thought can birth
movement, leaving me quivering like the small rustling
of a wounded sparrow, a fire building inside, a flame’s breath,
whirling through my veins, round and round, searching for relief,
redemption, exit, pain searing into light, the blessed aftermath.
The sun, speechless in its intensity, surrounds me, no longer a life
but a wight, wretched and mute, left to hunger in desperation, calling
to the ancients to ease the pounding in my temple and still the gnashing of my teeth.
Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities
July 16, 1973
“Mr. Chairman, at a staff interview with Mr. Butterfield on Friday, some very significant information was elicited and . . .”
My god, this motherfucker next to me reeks. We must be staying at the same motel. He probably slept late like me and missed out on the hot water. It’s so damn hot, though. Even a cold shower is better than nothing, and that’s a better wakeup than this shit coffee.
“During what period of time were you employed at the White House, Mr. Butterfield?”
“I was at the White House as a deputy assistant to the President from the first day of the Nixon Administration . . .”
Who the hell is this guy? Butterfield? Am I supposed to have heard of him? Deputy assistant? How the hell many of those do they have? Haldeman sure needed a lot of people around to wipe his butt.
. . .
“My duties were many and varied.”
What did I tell ya? Well, at least I’ll get a little break from the old steno pad. Nothin’ happening here. Move along, everybody, party’s over.
“I was in charge of administration . . . the staff secretary, who is the day-to-day administrator at the White House, reported directly to me. And, of course, I reported directly to Mr. Haldeman, as did everyone.”
I’ll bet they did. Jesus, when are we gonna get through this crap. It’s too fucking hot in here and I’m gonna lose it if I don’t get outta here soon. It’s been almost two fucking months now. Who the hell can stand this shit town? The humidity would kill me if I had to live here full-time. And this little motherfucker in the green shirt better take a shower tomorrow, or I’m just going to head home and take that job at the community college like Donna said I should. Teaching journalism to a bunch of hippie airheads can’t be any worse than this.
. . .
“Thirdly, I was in charge of security at the White House insofar as liaison with the Secret Service and the Executive Protection Service is concerned . . .”
Who the fuck talks like this? I guess if you work for Nixon, you’d need to have a stick pretty far up your butt. Christ, I need a break. I’d go get a Coke if it wasn’t so damned crowded in here. But it’d make a scene if I got up and tried to squeeze through the mob. Don’t want to end up on camera again. I’ll never hear the end of it from the boss about that last time. Who knew the cameras were rolling for that moron Caulfield? And Donna said she could see stains on my shirt. Good thing Mom wasn’t watching that day.
. . .
“Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?”
“I was aware of listening devices, yes sir.”
Wait, what?
“When were those devices placed in the Oval Office?”
“Approximately the summer of 1970.”
“Are you aware of any devices that were installed in the Executive Office Building Office of the President?”
“Yes sir, at that time.”
“Were they installed at the same time?”
“They were installed at the same time.”
Holy fuckin’ shit. You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.
. . .
“They were installed, of course, for historical purposes, to record the President’s business . . .”
Oh, yeah, I bet they were.
. . .
“Within the West Wing of the White House, there are several . . . boxes called Presidential locator boxes. . . . and on them are several locations . . . which would tell where the President might be at any time . . . When the President moves from his Oval Office, for instance, to his Executive Office Building Office . . . it is my understanding that the Secret Service agents . . . who cover him—it is my understanding there are four, five, six, of them”
So, the Secret Service is in on this? I don’t know, but I hear it’s pretty tough to squeeze those guys.
. . .
“It says the President is leaving the West Wing and going to the E.O.B. Office. And the little light moves from the Oval Office to the E.O.B. Office.”
Huh, that’s more hi-tech than I’d give them credit for. They’ve got to have figured out a way to erase anything they didn’t want on there, though. We’re never going to hear this stuff, at least nothing they don’t want us to hear. And who’d want to. Jesus, ya think this is boring.
. . .
“ . . . the installation was installed in such a way that when the light was on ‘Oval Office’ the taping device was at least triggered. . . . it was spring-loaded, if you will, it was voice-actuated. So, when the light was on ‘Oval Office’ . . . and in the Oval Office only, the taping device was spring-loaded to a voice-actuating situation.”
“Was there a taping device in the Cabinet Room?”
“Yes, sir, there was.”
“Was it activated in the same way?”
“No, sir. In the Cabinet Room a manual installation was made.”
“There were buttons on the desk in the Cabinet Room that activated that device?”
“There were two buttons. To my knowledge, the President never did pay any attention to the buttons at the Cabinet table. It was activated, the button on my telephone, by me.”
Holy shit. Hope this guy’s got a good private-sector job lined up. He’ll never work for any Republican ever again. That’s assuming there’s any way to hear any of these tapes.
“So far as the Oval Office and the E.O.B. Office is concerned, would it be your testimony that the device would pick up any and all conversations no matter where the conversations took place in the room?
“Yes sir.”
. . .
“Are you aware of the installation of any devices on any of the telephones, first of all, in the Oval Office?”
“Yes sir.”
“What about the Executive Office Building Office of the President?
“Yes sir.”
. . .
“What about the Lincoln Room?”
“Yes sir, the telephone in the Lincoln sitting room in the residence.”
Wait, Nixon was recording telephone calls, too? Well, I guess that’s no surprise. The surprise is that this fool is admitting it.
. . .
“Would you state who installed these devices?”
“The Secret Service. The Technical Security Division of the Secret Service.”
Holy shit. So, Nixon doesn’t actually have these tapes. The Secret Service has them. Well, they’ll be loyal as hell to him, but still.
. . .
“On whose authority were they installed?”
“On the President’s authority by way of Mr. Haldeman . . . ”
No surprise there. Bob had to have his hand in every little shit pie.
. . .
“Who else knew about the presence of these recording devices?”
“The President, Mr. Haldeman, Mr. Higby, and I, plus the Secret Service people.”
And you’re the lucky one who’s blowing the roof of this mausoleum. Well, Mr. Butterfield, I applaud your honesty, and fear for your safety.
. . .
“Where were the tapes of these conversations kept, maintained?”
“I cannot say where. I am quite sure in the Executive Office Building in some closets or cupboards or files which are maintained by the Technical Security division of the United States Secret Service.”
You can bet your ass the SS knows where they are, and if Tricky Dick hasn’t sent someone over there yet, there’s someone on the way now.
. . .
“Mr. Butterfield, as far as you know from your own personal knowledge, from 1970 then until the present time all of the President’s conversations in the offices mentioned and on the telephones mentioned were recorded, as far as you know.”
“That is correct.”
Oh my god, oh my god. Break, break! We need a break, dammit! There goes Bruce to the phones, but he’s got Al to cover for him. I can’t miss anything. Who knows what’s coming next?
. . .
“To your knowledge, did the President ever ask while he was in the Oval Office to have the system not operate?”
“No sir. As a matter of fact, the President seemed totally, really oblivious, or certainly uninhibited by this fact.”
Oh, he ain’t oblivious now.
. . .
“And so that if either Mr. Dean, Mr. Haldeman, Mr. Ehrlichman, or Mr. Colson had particular meetings in the Oval Office with the President on particular dates that have been testified before this committee, there would be a tape recording with the President of that full conversation, would there not?”
“Yes sir.”
“Just one last question. If one were therefore to reconstruct the conversations at any particular date, what would be the best way to reconstruct those conversations, Mr. Butterfield, in the President’s Oval Office?”
“Well, in the obvious manner—to obtain the tape and play it.”
Bingo!