By Sydney Kashiwagi

(CNN) — Alexander Butterfield, a former top aide to President Richard Nixon whose disclosure of a secret taping system in the White House dramatically shaped the Watergate scandal, ultimately leading to Nixon’s resignation, has died. He was 99.

His wife, Kim, along with John Dean, who served as White House counsel to Nixon during the Watergate scandal, confirmed his death to The Associated Press.

Butterfield, working as a deputy assistant to Nixon, was responsible for overseeing the setting up of the taping system in the White House with the Secret Service in 1971, well before the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Headquarters in Washington. Nixon wanted the devices installed so that he could correct the record, if needed, regarding discussions and disprove any leakers rather than relying solely on a notetaker. Several microphones were placed around the Oval Office and in other places where Nixon conducted business.

For a time, as Watergate unfolded, Butterfield was one of the few people in Washington who knew of the taping system’s existence. It came to the attention of the Senate Watergate Committee after former White House aide Dean recounted an encounter he had with Nixon in the Oval Office that prompted lawmakers to suspect the president had taped meetings and provided a new area of inquiry for future witnesses. Suspicions about the taping system were confirmed by Butterfield when he was asked directly about the existence of such a setup in July 1973, more than a year after the burglary.

The disclosure immediately set off a fight over the tapes, with both the committee and special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who oversaw the Watergate investigation, to subpoena the White House recordings.

Cox did not let up on his subpoena when Nixon initially refused to release the tapes, which led the former president to find someone in his Justice Department who would fire him, a quest known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” because his Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus both resigned in protest upon learning of Nixon’s request rather than carrying out the directive.

The tapes were eventually turned over, including the “smoking gun” tape, which proved Nixon’s involvement in the subsequent cover-up of the break-in, eventually leading to the president’s resignation. The National Archives released the infamous tapes to the public in 2000.

Butterfield was never charged in the scandal.

“Frankly, I don’t like being known as the man who revealed the existence of the tapes,” Butterfield said in an interview with The Washington Post in 2012. “It makes it appear that I ran full tilt to the Watergate committee and told them eagerly and breathlessly the very information that Nixon considered top secret. That was not the case. I was facing a true dilemma: I wanted very much to respect Nixon’s wishes and at the same time to be cooperative and forthright with the congressional investigators. The wording of their questions meant everything to me. And when Don Sanders, the deputy minority counsel .?.?. asked the $64,000 question, clearly and directly, I felt I had no choice but to respond in like manner.”

Briefly served as head of FAA

Butterfield joined the Air Force in 1948 and eventually rose to the rank of colonel, serving in Vietnam and receiving the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He made his way to the White House with the help of Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, whom Butterfield befriended when he was a student at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Butterfield started off in the White House as a deputy assistant to the president. He initially did not like the job and wanted to quit. But things got better for Butterfield in the White House at the end of 1969 when his office was moved next to Nixon’s and he was able to keep a close watch on the president. He eventually went on to become one of Nixon’s closest aides.

Nixon nominated Butterfield to be administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1972, a post he was confirmed to by the Senate the following year. He was called to testify before the Senate about the then-suspected White House taping system just four months after he started at the FAA.

Though Butterfield was not part of the Watergate scandal, by the end of the hearings and by the time Nixon resigned as president in 1974, his reputation was tarnished. He found it increasingly difficult to work in the Ford administration and felt that his peers were uncomfortable associating with him.

He resigned from the FAA in 1975 after he was forced out by President Gerald Ford, who asked him to leave his position.

That same year, Butterfield was accused of being “the CIA’s man in the White House,” an accusation he said was “absolutely false,” during an interview that year on CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

But he eventually went on to work in the private sector for an air transport company as its chief operating officer and relocated to La Jolla, California.

He married Charlotte Mary Maguire in 1949, who passed away in 2019 at the age of 92. Together, they had three children: Alexander (Vanessa) Butterfield Jr.; Susan Holcomb; and Lisa (John) Buchholz.

Butterfield was the subject of a 2016 book by Bob Woodward entitled, “The Last of the President’s Men,” which relied on 46 hours of interviews with Butterfield and thousands of documents he provided.

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