former white house staffers tell us the technical capability exists for the president to tape phone conversations. but that s different from a built in white house taping system. president kennedy used one as did president johnson. here trying to convince someone to be hayes campaign manager. any way you want to do it but i want you to do it. among nixon s legendary recording a 1972 oval office conversation on how to push back on the watergate investigation. what the hell did mitchell know about this thing. this one is often referred to as the smoking gun tape. that white house taping system was shut down in the summer of 197 at the height of the watergate scandal. the american people, press or the media didn t know anything about the taping systems. until alexander butterfield a white house aide in july of 1973 told the senate watergate committee told the staff that tlfrs a taping system.
was shut down in the summer of 1973. the american people, press or media didn t know anything about the taping systems until alexander butter field, a white house aid in july of 1973 told the senate watergate committee, told the staff that there was a taping system. at that point, richard nixon had the opportunity to destroy the tapes and decided not to. as for the one on one dinner between comey at the white house, there was no none systems to tape conversations. they say the president can bring in a recording device or have an aid take notes on the information but it s unlikely he would. could comey tape the conversations on his end? we have no information from the fbi. that will only be allowed if the president himself is under investigation which trump says he s not, and if the fbi chief got a warn to tape him.
systems until alexander butterfield, a white house aide in july of 1973 told the senate watergate committee. told the staff that there was a taping system. at that point, richard nixon had the opportunity to destroy the tapes and he decided not to. reporter: as for the one-on-one dinner between trump and comey at the white house, former staffers said they don t know of any built-in systems. they said the president could bring in a recording device or have an aide take notes on the conversation, but it s unlikely he could. could comey have taped the phone conversations on his end? former top bureau officials told us that would only be allowed if the president himself was under investigation, which trump says he s not and if the fbi chief got a warrant to tape him. i cannot imagine that happening. the fbi director does not tape conversations with the president or members of the hill or staff
perhaps. michael, i know lbj wanted in part for leverage to remind people what they had said or promised to him over the phone he always had the transcript if he needed it. if this current president is recording private conversations in the white house other than making himself a huge subpoena target, is there anything wrong with it? is there anything illegal? illegal is a question. in terms of shattering precedence and shattering things that presidents have been doing before ever since that day that you just showed with alexander butterfield in july of 1973, nixon had to immediately stop taping and pull out the system and later presidents have all said i will never do such a thing because it reminds people of nixon who behaved badly, but it violates people s civil liberties to record conversations with the president that are supposed to be private
subpoena target, is there anything wrong with it? is there anything illegal? well, illegal, that s a question. but in terms of shattering precedence, you know, shattering things that presidents have been doing before, ever since that day that you just showed with alexander butterfield in july of 1973, nixon had to immediately stop taping and pull out the system. and later presidents have all said, i would never do such a thing because, a, it reminds people of nixon who behaved badly but, b, because it violates people s civil liberties to record conversations with the president that are supposed to be private without their knowledge. and the other thing is that presidents have felt that if people even have a suspicion that when they go into the oval office or when they talk to a president on the telephone that they re being taped, they re not going to give a president unvarnished advice, and that s going to wind up hurting the