THE CRISIS: The Secretary and the Tapes Tangle

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begin releasing detailed papers on such matters as his personal finances, tax deductions, and his intervention in settling antitrust cases against ITT, all that could be too late. Far more urgent for the President—if he can do it—is to explain why so many Watergate discussions have eluded a White House recording system that was once described as superefficient.

Rose Mary Woods' tortured explanation last week did not help. It is easy to sympathize with the plight of an able secretary who so dearly wants to aid her chief. But whether her bungled performance with the recorder was innocently accidental, or willful—or worse yet, did not take place at all—is still a question as tangled as the whole mess of the President's tapes.

^{* —Richard H. Bolt, chairman of Bolt Beranek & Newman Inc., sound experts; Franklin S. Cooper, president of Haskins Laboratories; James L. Flanagan, head of acoustics research at Bell Telephone Laboratories; John G. McKnight, audio and magnetic recording consultant; Thomas G. Stockham Jr., computer science professor at the University of Utah; and Mark R. Weiss, vice president for acoustics research of Federal Scientific Corp.}