because in the investigation of the watergate scandal the tapes from the oval office recording system were made public. most of them were. in the recordings that were made public there was an 18 1/2-minute gap. the president's secretary, rosemary woods, claimed she accidentally erased those 18 1/2 minutes one day when she just happened to hit the foot pedal on the tape recorder while stretching out to reach for her phone. for 18 1/2 minutes. yeah, i don't buy that one either. so far nobody has been able to recover the sound from that gap, that 18 1/2-minute gap in those erased tapes. but back if november 2009 the national archives got a tip from an amateur historian that there were also some pages missing, some pages missing from the careful, detailed notes that the chief of staff, bob haldeman, had taken during that meeting with nixon. notes written in ballpoint pen on a pad of yellow lined paper. the pad overall was saved in the national archives. it's now known as government exhibit 61.