EVENING. People.  National Archives Release More Secret Nixon
Tapes  October 05, 1999  Never suspecting that his secret taping
system would eventually lead to his resignation, President Nixon
was cheerful and inquisitive the first morning the recording
system was up and running in the Oval Office, a newly released
tape shows.  "How does it work in here?" Nixon asks his aide,
Alexander Butterfield about 8 a.m. on Feb. 16, 1971.  It didn't
work very well, judging from the poor quality of the recording,
which was among 445 hours of tape recordings released Tuesday by
the National Archives. Buzzing and humming noises from the
recording machine drown out many words, but snippets of the
conversation--the first of 3,700 hours that Nixon would secretly
record--can be deciphered.  "The purpose of this is to have the
whole thing in the file for a potential leak," Nixon says.
"Yes, sir," replies Butterfield, who then goes on to school
Nixon on the technical aspects of the voice-activated system and
answer his queries a