Alexander Butterfield, the White House aide whose testimony helped trigger Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal, has died, his wife confirmed to the Associated Press. Butterfield was 99. He served as deputy assistant to Nixon from 1969 to 1973 and became a pivotal figure in the Watergate investigation when he revealed that the president had secretly installed a taping system in the Oval Office. The disclosure proved explosive: the recordings ultimately exposed Nixon’s role in the cover-up after the 1972 burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. “Everything was taped … as long as the president was in attendance,” Butterfield told Watergate investigators when testifying under oath during a preliminary interview. “He had the heavy responsibility of revealing something he was sworn to secrecy on, which is the installation of the Nixon taping system,” John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal, told the Associated Press on Monday. “He stood up and told the truth.” In later years, Butterfield reflected on the historic moment that helped unravel Nixon’s presidency. “I didn’t like to be the cause of that, but I felt that I was, in a lot of ways,” he said in a 2008 oral history for the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
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