The Nation: An Error of Transcription: Bah or ACT?

While recovering from a slipped disc, Municipal Bond Trader John B. Northrop (right) of Huntington, N.Y., spent four days carefully reading President Nixon's Watergate transcripts —and discovered a rather sloppy error.

His find drew an admission from the White House last week that two typists had independently transcribed the same portion of a meeting between the President (P) and Assistant Attorney General Henry E. Petersen (HP) on April 16, 1973. The overlap slipped by, and the two versions appeared in tandem in the published transcript as separate conversations. The error was not caught sooner because the versions differ so markedly, underscoring the...

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