Just saw this on Twitter:
18½-minute gap in Watergate tape remains a mystery http://wapo.st/kXHbBc
And clicked on it to find that, instead of some exhaustive Woodstein-type report, the paper that (according to legend, anyway) owned the Watergate story was basically offering an AP story that… didn’t say anything.
Not that there was anything to say. I mean, we know what happened, right? Rose Mary Woods stretched way, WAY over, and it just happened. It was like a miracle or something. What? You don’t believe in miracles…?
Anyway, don’t you hate it when Tweets seem to promise something interesting, and then you get there, and there’s not much more than the Tweet itself? I do.
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A link to a YouTube video by the National Archives that explains what they did and the results:
http://bit.ly/kE8A2K
Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJDX7AFujYs&feature=youtu.be
Huh? Why was Rose Mary stretching way, WAY over… to answer the phone? This whole article just flew over my head. Considering Watergate happened when I was 7-8 years old (and barely knew who the president was) I probably don’t have a clue as to what you’re talking about.
Holding that pose for 18.5 minutes must have been hard on old Rose Mary.
Interesting blue dress she’s wearing over the mustard colored outfit. Such high fashion! But it’s ridden up so far! Is someone trying to send a message about this loyal secretary?
@Karen–it’s a color-blocked dress–very popular in the 60s, and a very slimming style–maybe not in mustard and aqua, but…
@Steven–they had these ridiculously large desks, and a typing table on the side, because you needed a different height to type than a normal desk–no separate keyboard for a keyboard tray. She could have probably moved the phone to the other side of the desk, but you want it on your left side so you can hold the phone in your left hand–crooking it in your neck is very bad–and write to take messages with your right hand–assuming she’s right handed. She wanted the typing table to screen off the side of her work area so she wouldn’t have to be so careful how she sat, as Karen noted.
In modern offices, you’d see these big curved “command module” kind of set-ups–very space age–but not in the traditional White House.
@ Kathryn, I’ll take your word for it. I was in high school and college during the 60’s and I saw (and had) some color-blocked outfits, but that is the wierdest I’ve ever seen!
@Kathryn – yeah but what happened? I’m old enough to remember typing tables. Brad wrote, “Rose Mary Woods stretched way, WAY over, and it just happened.”… what just happened is what I want to know.
@Kathryn – yeah but what happened? I’m old enough to remember typing tables. Brad wrote, “Rose Mary Woods stretched way, WAY over, and it just happened.”… what “just happened” is what I want to know.
Steven, if you don’t want to follow the link above, here’s what it says about what she did:
“Fiercely loyal to Nixon, Woods claimed responsibility in a 1974 grand jury testimony for inadvertently erasing up to 5 minutes of the 181⁄2 minute gap in a June 20, 1972 audio tape. Her demonstration of how this might have occurred — which depended upon her stretching to simultaneously press controls several feet apart (what the press dubbed the “Rose Mary Stretch”[3]) — was met with skepticism from those who believed the erasures, from whatever source, to be deliberate. The contents of the gap remain a mystery.”
I believe what she claimed was that as she reached way over for the phone with her hand, her foot stretched way out in the opposite direction in counterbalance, hitting the foot pedal that controlled the Oval Office recording system. That picture is of her demonstrating the move for the press.