Alexander Butterfield, assistant to former US President Nixon, has died at the age of 99.

Alexander Butterfield, an aide to former US President Richard Nixon, who revealed the wiretapping system in the White House, died at the age of 100. This was reported on March 9 by The New York Times (NYT), citing the wife of Kim Butterfield, the assistant to the former head of the White House.

"Butterfield, who revealed to the US Senate and a shocked country the existence of Richard Nixon's White House conversation recording system, exposing the Watergate conspiracy and deciding the fate of the only American president to resign, died on Monday at his home in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. He was 99 years old," the publication says.

Butterfield became widely known in 1973, when, during a conversation with members of the US Congress, he announced the existence of a conversation recording system in the White House. According to him, Nixon arranged the recording of all the conversations that took place in the Oval Office and other rooms of the presidential residence.

This statement became one of the key episodes in the development of the "Watergate scandal." The political crisis flared up after illegal wiretapping was revealed in the summer of 1972 at the headquarters of the Democratic Party, located in the Watergate hotel complex in Washington.

The investigation revealed that the operation was linked to Republican Party activists. The scandal became one of the most high-profile political crises in U.S. history and eventually led to Nixon's resignation.

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