His title was Deputy Assistant to the President - he was Chief of Staff Haldeman's chief assistant.
Next to Haldeman, Butterfield was the most powerful aide in the White House. He met with Nixon and Haldeman every day at 2 P.M. to plan the following day's activities. He "completely controlled" what paperwork Nixon saw, and logged memos. He accompanied Haldeman on all domestic trips, co-supervised traveling White House staff with Haldeman, and ran the White House when Haldeman and Nixon went on foreign trips. Every meeting the president attended required "talking points" for Nixon written by an appropriate staff person as well as an after-meeting summary by that person, and Butterfield oversaw the process by which both documents were completed and filed. Butterfield also oversaw all FBI investigations requested by the White House, which included routine background checks of potential employees as well as politically motivated investigations. Other than Haldeman, no one had a more intimate knowledge of Nixon's working style, the daily operations of the White House, what Nixon may have read, or who Nixon may have met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Butterfield
Because of his position he was one of a very small number of people who knew about the taping system - the others were only Nixon, Haldeman, another Haldeman assistant and the three or four Secret Service technicians who installed it. John Dean had testified that he suspected that White House conversations were being taped, so after that, other witnesses were asked if they knew about it. Butterfield finally spilled the beans.
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