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Retrieving Lost Minutes From Nixon Tapes

Aired June 17, 2002 - 10:07   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Now it is 30 years since the Watergate break-in brought down the Nixon presidency. June 17, 1972, a break in at the Democratic Party headquarters at the Democrat's Watergate building. Two years later, Richard Nixon resigns in disgrace. And reporters who broke the story are still holding their silence about the identity of their anonymous source known as "Deep Throat." Lots of speculation this morning, particularly about just who Deep Throat is.

Former Nixon council John Dean released an e-book today that has promised to unmask Deep Throat. But you know what, he didn't do it. Dean says that he's not quite sure who tipped off reporters Bob Woodward and Harold Bernstein, but the book includes the name of five people that he thinks may have been the sources.

Now in the preface to the book, Dean writes, "While I knew this would be an interesting undertaking, I had no idea it would become as thrilling as it has. The narrative speaks for itself. But assured that I remain at work trying to bring a final resolution to my inquiry. But I've found that Deep Throat sleuthing has become increasingly tricky and unpredictable as the field narrows. So rather than allow a self-imposed deadline to limit my research, I will simply continue by pursuit and work to conclude it as quickly as possible."

And there the debate goes on.

Now, turning to another mystery of the infamous Nixon era, the in infamous Nixon tapes. Three days after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon talked about it with his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, but the White House said an 18 and a half minute portion of that tape had been accidentally erased.

Well, now the national archives is trying to restore that conversation.

Paul Ginsberg is among the audio experts trying to retrieve the lost minutes. You can read more about his quest to restore the conversation in this month's "Wired" magazine, but Ginsberg joins us right now from New York to give us a bit of an advance on that story there.

Good morning. How are you?

PAUL GINSBERG, PROFESSIONAL AUDIO LAB: Good morning. HARRIS: All right. Tell us -- I'm assuming that there has to be a lot more new technology today available to help uncover what exactly was in that 18 and a half minute gap there. Is the new technology proving more helpful?

GINSBERG: Well, hopefully it will. We are going to use narrow gap heads, we're going to use load-distortion amplifiers. We're going to use a lot of state of the art digital signal processing in order to try to restore any little sliver of recording that is left and that has not been erased on that tape, if we get the chance.

HARRIS: Is it possible, if it had been totally erased it's possible to recover anything at all?

GINSBERG: Well, we are going to do everything in our power using every possible technology, using lasers, using anything from the optical field that we can use, as well as a number of different recorders that are not meant usually to do this type of work, which have been modified especially to perform this task.

HARRIS: Now as I understand it you brought a prop with you.

GINSBERG: Yes. This is a Sony 800 tape recorder, identical to that used in the White House at the time. In fact, this is the type of recorder that was used to record the tape.

HARRIS: Watch your microphone. We can't hear you because of the machine.

GINSBERG: Sorry.

My kids asked where did the CDs go? But this is what recordings were like back 30 years ago.

HARRIS: That's the same thing that is recording my voice right now. That seems like it is so old and so low tech. I would think that someone would have tried, you know, at least within the last 10 years or so, some other later generations of technology to try, this sort of project before. Any idea about whether that kind of work has been done?

GINSBERG: Well, there have been a number of studies using the copies that have been available, but this is the first time that the National Archives is doing a serious study, and in fact a feasibility study, to see what we can do, and I am pretty much an in audio archaeologist in effect trying to dig out of the mud whatever we can. That's what we are going to do.

HARRIS: All right, Mr. archaeologist, When do you this, what happens to the tape itself? In the process of doing all of this, are you destroying the tape?

GINSBERG: No, no, that's the number consideration, preservation of this tape as if it was any other piece of evidence from any of my trials that I have worked on in the last 28 years. That's number one. We need to be able to retrieve the information and have the tape in the same condition as we found it.

HARRIS: OK. How steep is that challenge for you?

GINSBERG: Well, I'm hopeful. We are going to give it our best shot.

HARRIS: how would you rate this as a challenge that you have had to deal with in your career? Is this like the toughest one you have had to deal with?

GINSBERG: Well, when I clarified the Waco tapes, there were people -- lots of confusion, gunfire, tanks offensive and everybody wore a gas mask to muffle their voices, and we were able to retrieve their conversations. This will be pretty big challenge as well.

HARRIS: Interesting. We actually heard some of those cake Waco tapes here, too. Boy, good luck. You have some work on your hands, Paul Ginsberg, and we hope to listen to the results.

Stay tuned.

HARRIS: We sure will.

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