Nixon Tape To Reveal Secrets at Last?

jonerik writes: "As part of its inevitable 30th-anniversary-of-Watergate coverage, ABC News has this article on the National Archives' search for someone who can recover part or all of the missing 18 ½ minutes of President Nixon's Oval Office tapes, whose existence had been unknown until the Watergate hearings. The famous tape - recorded on June 20th, 1972, three days after the Watergate break-in - was last examined in 1974, but Nixon tape archivist Karl Weissenbach is hoping that nearly thirty years of technological progress can make the difference this time, saying 'We have decided that the time is right and appropriate to determine whether that conversation can be retrieved or recovered.' Stephen St. Croix, one of several forensic audio experts who is interested in taking on the job, says 'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'" There's another article in Wired on this quest as well.

Comments

Subject goes here

[sheepab]

I read an article a few days ago about this somewhere, I dont remember where though. Anyway, appearently Nixon was going to erase ALL the tapes, but he realized there were so many of them it would take his lifetime to erase. So he chose to just erase a tiny bit of one tape. The tape was recorded over "between 7 and 11 times". The company that decodes that tape, while getting no compensation from the government, will be rich in publicity alone.

Never erase

[Indras]

'You never completely erase a tape. You think you do, but you really don't.'

This is true of pretty much any data-recording device, especially FAT hard drives or floppy disks. To mark a file as deleted, a file's FAT entry simply has the first character of the filename removed. To "undelete" it, it has to still be intact on the hard drive and then have the first character of the filename restored.

I'm interested in seeing how this concept works on video tape, I imagine the process is probably a lot more in-depth than this, so kudos to them if they pull it off.

Re:Never erase

[JabberWokky]

I'm interested in seeing how this concept works on video tape, I imagine the process is probably a lot more in-depth than this, so kudos to them if they pull it off.

Little too early - these were reel to reel audio tapes, iirc.

That said, digital data can be recovered even when written over a few times. Analog data is probably significantly more difficult, as you can't look for up or down "ghost echos"... you kinda have to try and clean up a faint signal scattered in a noisy medium. Some impressive algorithims cleaning up "random noise" have been popping up lately - don't ask me how they work, though. Some Deep Magic lies in that field.

And yes, getting overwritten data is tremendously expensive, requiring that you peel apart the media and run it through a physical magnetic scanning device. There are several private companies you can approach, with basic consultation (no recovery) starting at ten or twenty thousand dollars. They have pretty good track records, and I know a couple financial institutions that used their services. I'm sure there are some people in the NSA who are just as good (I'd imagine that the private companies and spooks are pretty much the same pool of people and experts).

--
Evan

30 years ago, Richard Nixon said...

[Bonker]

"Fr15+ P05+!!!1!"

Personally, I'm fairly interested in all this, especially seeing who it's going to hurt today. Remember that 30 years ago is not ancient history. Many people who are still high-ranking members of government now were members of government then.

In the recent hooplah surrounding the new book, Pat Buchannan was named as a possible 'Deep Throat', something I seriously doubt. Still, it raises questions. Suppose that someone we respect *cough* *cough* is in actuality a criminal?

Audio Archaeology

[Hatter]

Here is a previous story on this topic. St. Croix sounds like a pretty paranoid guy, tinfoil hat. A quote from the article I linked above:

St.Croix agreed to let me visit him, but because of security concerns, I was told to come to his house, not the office.... He gave me precise instructions for the cabby. I was told to get out at the end of a certain cul-de-sac. "Then wait for the cab to leave," he said. "I'm serious. And after you're sure the cab's gone, walk down the driveway to the left. Don't come to the front door. Just keep walking. You'll set off the lasers in my woods. I'll know you're coming and come out to meet you."

Interesting guy. Here's a link to his company's webpage.

Agency of Fear

[nesthigh]

Here is a great online book with the history of Nixon's rise, abuse, and fall, for those of you who aren't familiar with all the details.It's 35 chapters long and covers the whole "drug war" and the incidents leading to Watergate very well.

enjoy!