Rose Mary Woods...ahem... responible for the erasing of Nixon's tapes dies

[ElsewheresDaughter]

http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/01/23/woods050123.html

demostrating here how she acrobaticlly held this pose for 18 minutes while she did it

[alexisfree]

1. condoleezza #1 from 1970's?

yes this sound like condo......

..."The erasure of the tape came amid a fight between the White House and Senate investigators. In a compromise move, the White House released written transcripts of the tapes, and it was Woods who did the transcriptions.

Woods claimed she never caused the 18 1/2 minute erasure. She said she made an error and erased maybe four or five minutes, but not the rest.

She posed for a photograph, in which she demonstrated how she managed to accidentally erase the tape by stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone. It became one of the most famous images of the Watergate era."....

[imenja]

4. as much as I dislike Rice

She is National Security Adviser and soon to be Secretary of State. She is not the president's personal secretary, essentially a clerical position.

[Benhurst]

10. Which makes Rice's behavior even more reprehensible. NT

[imenja]

11. certainly

though her equivalent is closer to Henry Kissinger. There is a fair bit of internalized sexism going around when it comes to Rice (and Laura Bush for that matter).

[mopaul]

5. like condi, she followed orders & lied like george bush

and they didn't imprison her cause she was a little old lady underling. she was GUILTY of treason in my book.

[DemonFighterLives]

6. They showed it again on Cspan

I guess it became known as the Rosemary Stretch. Poor Gal, Republicans will use anyone to pull the wool over the public's eyes. You would think the country has had enough by now. Another caller reminded of the Iraqi Weapons Declaration that was "missing" thousands of pages that may have helped us figure out the WMD thingy.

Amazing how everything turns up missing, like AWOL's records. :crazy:

[alexisfree]

7. exactly!!!

only they know, that we know, that they know......you know?

[DemonFighterLives]

15. I knew that!

:9

[annabanana]

2. she was willing to sacrifice

......to try and get that whole rotten crowd off the hook. You just can't get good help like that anymore

oh.........wait........(the entire cabinet, I forgot)

[imenja]

3. can't that information be recovered now?

Now that technology has advanced, couldn't they examine the tapes to learn what was originally there? They do that sort of thing on crime shows all the time. Is it possible in real life?

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Depends On Whether It Was Bulk Erased

If it's just the biasing and alignment head that was used to erase, i think you might be right.

But, if they used a bulk eraser on the lengths of tape in question, the magnetic structure of the oxide particles is set to null. If they did that, there is no way to ever retrieve prior recordings from a tape.
The Professor

[imenja]

16. wow, pretty impressive

I hope someone has looked at them or plans to do so in the future. The above poster noted he thought technicians had determined the tapes were too deteriorated to recover using current methods.

[gratuitous]

14. I read an article a couple of years ago

Technicians were examining the tape to see if anything could be recovered, but apparently the tape has deterioriated and the technology of today isn't good enough to get a reliable recovery. Maybe someday in the future.

As for the story that Woods accomplished the erasure, it's absolute nonsense. In his otherwise not-very-good movie "Nixon," Oliver Stone has a hypothetical scene in which the Trickster himself, sloshed on scotch and ruminating over the tapes accidentally erased that part of the tape, fumbling with the Play and Record buttons. I think this explanation (with or without the scotch) is far more likely.

[DancingBear]

8. Does anyone remember "If I Had A Friend Like Rosemary Woods"

This may have have been a regional song (New England) - I'm not sure.

One of the lines was:

"I'd give all my troubles to Rosemary Woods,
And she would erase them for me."

Anyone?????

[Crankie Avalon]

9. What she had to say about the guy who gave us the "Southern Strategy..."

"I think Mr. Nixon will go down in history as one of, if not the, greatest president we've ever had and I think a lot of people (agree.)"

Yikes. A normal person would have died of shame just for saying such a thing, right there. :puke:

[DinahMoeHum]

12. I remember this ditty from National Lampoon "News On The March"

"...you put your right foot in,
you put your right foot out,
you step down on the treadle and the tape gets all wiped out,
you do the Hanky-Panky and you turn yourself around,
that's what it's all about..."

:evilgrin: