The White House. You know what it looks like. Everyone does. But here's what most people don't think about — this is the most surveilled residential address on Earth.
Not because of the Secret Service outside. Because of the president inside.
February sixteenth, nineteen seventy-one. Richard Nixon orders the Secret Service to install a voice-activated recording system throughout the White House. Five microphones hidden in his Oval Office desk. Two more in the lamp fixtures flanking the fireplace. Four in his office at the Executive Office Building across the street. Taps on the phones in the Lincoln Sitting Room. Even one in his study at Camp David.
Voice-activated. That's the key. The system was linked to the First Family Locator — a log the Secret Service kept tracking which rooms the president occupied. Walk into a room, the tape rolls. Nixon couldn't easily turn it off even if he wanted to.
And here's the thing — he installed it to write his memoirs. He'd tried note-takers. Fou
nd them intrusive. He knew L-B-J and J-F-K both had recording systems. He figured, why not.
Nine hundred and fifty tapes. Three thousand seven hundred hours. Every conversation, every phone call, every aside for two and a half years. The most complete record of any presidency in history.
It destroyed him.
For two years, maybe five people knew the system existed. Then in July nineteen seventy-th
