In October 1973, with impeachment proceedings looming as a result of the Watergate scandal, President Richard Nixon proposed a compromise to the courts and to members of Congress, who were demanding access to the secret tapes of Nixon’s conversations with aides. The existence of his taping system had been publicly disclosed in July and was swiftly triggering a constitutional clash over executive privilege and its limits in the context of a pending criminal investigation.

Naively imagining that the proposal would mollify his enemies, Nixon said he would turn over the relevant recordings to Senator John C. Stennis, a conservative Democrat from Mississippi. The White House would then prepare summaries of the subpoenaed conversations for investigators, which Stennis could authenticate by listening to the tapes themselves. The “Stennis compromise” was ridiculed by Time magazine with a photo of the septuagenarian lawmaker cupping his ear, and the caption: “Technical Assistance Needed.”