Word: pedalled
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Woods testified in November that she had inadvertantly erased five minutes of tape by holding her foot on the recorder's "play" pedal during a phone conversation, which had interrupted a transcribing session...
Those unusual fact-finding proceedings produced the bizarre testimony of Rose Mary Woods, Nixon's longtime personal secretary. She said she had inadvertently kept her left foot on the pedal of a tape recorder while stretching awkwardly behind her to answer a telephone call, at the same time mistakenly pushing the "record" button on the machine ?and thereby erasing perhaps five minutes (but not 18) of the taped conversation. Asked in Perry Mason-style by Jill Wine Volner, an Assistant Special Prosecutor, to re-enact this, Miss Woods reached for the imaginary phone?and lifted her left foot. Sirica...
...Watergate break-in-was erased. White House aides have tried to pin the blame on Secretary Rose Mary Woods, who admits to the possibility of having accidentally erased "four to five minutes" of the tape by mistakenly pressing the "record" button, evidently while keeping her foot on the pedal that advanced the tape. Presidential Chief Counsel J. Fred Buzhardt buttressed the theory, testifying that he had re-created a loud hum on the erased tape by using Miss Woods' electric typewriter, high-intensity lamp and Uher 5000 tape recorder...
...court, White House Chief of Staff Alexander M. Haig said that he had "heard" that "several sources" in the Administration had discussed the theory that Miss Woods could have acciden tally pressed the fast rewind pedal, which would erase the 18-minute seg ment in a few seconds. But that oper ation would have left a high-pitched whine on the tape, not the hum that is present, and would have required Miss Woods to have played the segment -as she testified she did not -before rewind ing and erasing...
...could make such a mistake." Pearl Neier, a Manhattan legal secretary, echoed the view of many other experienced secretaries: "I can't conceive of how she could have erased that tape without doing it deliberately?I don't care if it was a button or a pedal that she had to push." Asked if he believed the Woods account, a former high official of the Republican National Committee scoffed: "Does anybody...