Lost Watergate Notes May Be Recovered

(AP)

At the request of former National Security Agency analyst Phil Mellinger, the Archives have proposed using forensic techniques to obtain the wiped out information.

The lost minutes are part of a 79-minute conversation between former president Richard Nixon and his chief of staff H.R. Haldeman three days after the break-in at the Watergate Hotel. During the conversation, Haldeman took notes with a ballpoint pen.

Mellinger, who has tracked Watergate for some time, says the notes make no mention of Watergate. They also don't discuss what was said during those eighteen minutes. The first page of Haldeman's notes consists of the first four minutes of the conversation. A reference at the top of the second page mentions a "PR program" designed to attack political exploiters of the break-in.

In the Mother Jones story, David Corn notes that there are two explanations for why the gap in Haldeman's notes seems to correspond with a gap in the tape. It's possible that Haldeman stopped taking notes until the end of the conversation. It also could be the case that his notes from that part of the conversation are missing.

Using what Corn dubs a "CSI" technique, the Archives could potentially examine the existing notes for imprints left by Haldeman's ballpoint pen. Called electrostatic detection analysis, the procedure captures "indentations and impressions on a piece of paper—such as the marks made on a page in a pad by a pen writing on the pages above it."

Mellinger proposed the technique in an analysis sent to the Archives, concluding that " we now may have an approach to resolving the infamous 18 and a half minute minute gap."

The Archives previously tried to recover the audio from the tapes, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

The archivist in charge of the Watergate documents, David Paynter, told Corn that he finds the news "very exciting."

"The reason we're going forward with this is that we've already tried with the tape itself," Paynter said. "Here's another avenue to shed light on an important episode in history."