Donald Sanders; Uncovered Nixon Tapes

Donald G. Sanders, a key Watergate lawyer who uncovered the White House tapes that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation, has died. He was 69.

Sanders died Sunday of cancer in Columbia, Mo., said his son, Michael Sanders of Dallas.

A former FBI agent, Sanders was deputy Republican counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee when he uncovered what became the “smoking gun” in the Watergate scandal during a closed-door preliminary interview. The witness in that July 16, 1973, interview was White House aide Alexander P. Butterfield.

Noticing an unusual specificity in Butterfield’s questions, Sanders followed a hunch and asked if there was a possibility that a taping system existed in the White House.

Butterfield said, “I wish you hadn’t asked that question, but yes, there is.”

When the televised public hearings reconvened a few days later, Sanders relinquished the limelight to other attorneys who asked Butterfield the telling question. The public answer became one of the most dramatic moments in the historic hearings, and ultimately led to Nixon’s downfall.

Sanders graduated from the University of Missouri Law School and served as a Marine Corps officer before working for a decade as an FBI agent. He later became chief counsel of the House Internal Security Committee, and was a commissioner of Boone County, Mo. He was also president of the Boone County Historical Society and president of the Locust Grove Midway United Methodist Church Administrative Council.

He is survived by his wife of 47 years, Dolores, three children and five grandchildren.