August 10, 1974: Nixon Lawyer Orders Tapes Boxed up for Secret Transfer from White House to California, Later Belays Order

White House lawyer Fred Buzhardt, a Nixon loyalist who is retiring into private practice, orders Staff Secretary Jerry Jones to box up all the Watergate tapes and place the boxes on an Air Force truck outside the White House, joining boxes and crates of White House documents being shipped to Nixon’s home in San Clemente, California (see August 8, 1974). Ever since the now-infamous 18-and-one-half minute gap had been discovered on one of the tapes, Jones has been the only person authorized to enter the guarded vault in the EOB where the tapes are stored. Jones complies, believing that Buzhardt has authorization from President Ford’s personal lawyer, Philip Buchen. But two hours into the packing process, Buzhardt stops Jones from continuing. “I think what happened is Buchen changed his mind,” Jones later recalls, “and then Fred had a problem. I think we probably could have shipped them after Buchen told him not to. But Fred felt that being the case, we simply couldn’t do it.… It was a trust thing. We were all in the position that if we did the wrong thing, or if I relied on Fred and he did the wrong thing, or he relied on me and I did the wrong thing, or we both relied on [chief of staff Alexander] Haig and he did the wrong thing, we could go to jail.” By August 12, Jones recalls, “nobody knew what in the hell to do with these things.” [Werth, 2006, pp. 72-73]