|
Extract from Philip Zelikow and Ernest May,
Preface to The Presidential Recordings: John F. Kennedy: The Great Crises,
volumes 1-3 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), pp.xvii-xxiv.
Before and after becoming president, Kennedy
had made use of a recording device called
a Dictaphone, mostly for dictating letters
or notes. In the summer of 1962 he asked
Secret Service Agent Robert Bouck to conceal
recording devices in the Cabinet Room, the
Oval Office, and a study/library in the
Mansion. Without explaining why, Bouck obtained
Tandberg reel-to-reel tape recorders, high-quality
machines for the period, from the U.S. Army
Signal Corps. He placed two of these machines
in the basement of the West Wing of the
White House in a room reserved for storing
private presidential files. He placed another
in the basement of the Executive Mansion.
The West Wing machines were connected by
wire to two microphones in the Cabinet Room
and two in the Oval Office. Those in the
Cabinet Room were on the outside wall, placed
in two spots covered by drapes where once
there had been wall fixtures. They were
activated by a switch at the President’s
place at the Cabinet table, easily mistaken
for a buzzer press. Of the microphones in
the Oval Office, one was in the kneehole
of the President’s desk, the other
concealed in a coffee table across the room.
Each could be turned on or off with a single
push on an inconspicuous button.
We do not know where the microphone in
the study of the Mansion was located. In
any case, Bouck, who had chief responsibility
for the system, said in 1976, in an oral
history interview, that President Kennedy
“did almost no recording in the Mansion.”
Of the machine in the basement of the Mansion,
he said: “Except for one or two short
recordings, I don’t think it was ever
used.” So far, except possibly for
one short recording included in these volumes,
no tape from the Mansion machine has turned
up.
President Kennedy also had a Dictaphone
hooked up to a telephone in the Oval Office
and possibly also to a telephone in his
bedroom. He could activate it, and so could
his private secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who
knew of the secret microphones, often made
sure that they were turned off if the President
had forgotten to do so, and took charge
of finished reels of tape when they were
brought to her by Bouck or Bouck’s
assistant, Agent Chester Miller.
Though Kennedy’s brother, Attorney
General Robert Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy’s
secretary, Angie Novello, certainly knew
of the tapes and dictabelts by some point
in 1963, it is not clear that they had this
knowledge earlier. Anecdotes suggest that
the President’s close aide and scheduler,
Kenneth O’Donnell, might have known
about the system and might have told another
aide, Dave Powers, but the anecdotes are
unsupported. Most White House insiders,
including counsel Theodore Sorensen, who
had been Kennedy’s closest aide in
the Senate, were astonished when they learned
later that their words had been secretly
captured on tape. After Kennedy’s
assassination, Evelyn Lincoln was quickly
displaced by President Johnson’s secretaries.
She arranged, however, for the Secret Service
agents to pull out all the microphones,
wires, and recorders and took the tapes
and dictabelts to her newly assigned offices
in the Executive Office Building, adjacent
to the White House. Though Robert Kennedy
had charge of these and all other records
from the Kennedy White House, Lincoln retained
physical custody.
During Kennedy’s presidency, it appears
that some conversations were transcribed.
Though Lincoln attempted to make some other
transcripts, she never had much time for
doing so. George Dalton, a former Navy Petty
Officer and general chore man for the Kennedy
family, took on the job. “Dalton transcripts”
have not been released. . . .
The most plausible explanation for Kennedy’s
making secret tape recordings is that he
wanted material to be used later in writing
a memoir. For various reasons it seems unlikely
that he wanted them for current business.
He had himself written histories and was
by most accounts prone to asking historians’
questions: How did this situation develop?
What had previous administrations done?
He knew how hard it was to answer such questions
from surviving documentary records. And
he faced the apparent likelihood that, even
if reelected in 1964, he would be an out-of-work
ex-president when not quite 51 years old.
Did Kennedy tape just to have material
putting himself in a favorable light? On
some occasions, he must have refrained from
pushing an “on” button because
he wanted no record of a meeting or conversation.
Especially on early tapes, there are pauses
at moments when the President was speaking
of tactics for dealing with legislative
leaders. Almost certainly, he made recordings
only when he thought the occasions important.
As a result, the tapes record relatively
little humdrum White House business such
as meetings with citizen delegations or
conferences with congressmen and others
about patronage.
Notes:
[1] See Timothy Naftali, “The Origins
of ‘Thirteen Days,’” Miller
Center Report 15, no. 2 (summer 1999):
23–24.
[2] Philip Bennett, “Mystery Surrounds
Role of JFK Tapes Transcriber,” Boston
Globe, 31 March 1993, p. 1; Seymour
M. Hersh, The Dark Side of Camelot
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1997), pp. 454–55.
Extract from
John Powers, "The History of Presidential
Audio Recordings and the Archival Issues Surrounding
Their Use" (1996). Used with permission.
John F. Kennedy was the first
president to extensively record his meetings
and telephone conversations. In all, he
recorded over 300 meetings held in the Oval
Office and Cabinet Room onto 127 reel-to-reel
analog tapes, totaling over 248 hours of
conversation. He also recorded 275 of his
telephone conversations onto 73 Dictabelts,
totaling twelve hours of conversation. [1]
The system was a well-guarded and closely-held
secret. Top Kennedy aides, such as Ted Sorensen
and Dave Powers were unaware of the system.
Only the President, his personal Secretary
Evelyn Lincoln, Robert Kennedy, and the
technicians who installed and maintained
the system knew of its existence. [2]
Beginning in the summer and fall of 1962,
Kennedy selectively recorded meetings and
telephone conversations discussing -many
sensitive domestic and foreign policy matters.
He recorded discussions with his aides and
state officials during the integration of
the University of Mississippi in 1962. He
recorded discussions concerning the railroad
strike and steel price and wage increases.
He recorded meetings and telephone conversations
with legislators discussing tax cut proposals
and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; other topics
included civil rights, Vietnam, and NATO.
Finally, Kennedy recorded almost every meeting
and telephone call he participated in during
the Cuban missile crisis. [3]
In a 1982 interview with Newsweek, Kennedy's
personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, stated
that Kennedy decided to install a taping
system following the failure of the Bay
of Pigs invasion. Lincoln said that Kennedy
was furious that members of the military
and Defense Department who initially argued
for and supported the invasion in private,
publicly stated that they were opposed to
the plan after the invasion failed. [4]
On another occasion, Lincoln stated that
Kennedy had never listened to any of the
tapes or Dictabelts and had never asked
that a transcript be prepared. Instead,
she said they were to be used in preparing
and writing the President's memoirs after
he left office. [5]
The Cabinet Room and Oval Office
Recording System
President Kennedy recorded many of his
Oval Office and Cabinet Room meetings between
July 30, 1962, and November 8, 1963. The
system was designed and installed by Secret
Service agent Robert Bouck who was responsible
for protecting the White House from electronic
eavesdropping. A single recording system
was connected to both the Oval Office and
Cabinet Room. This system was located underneath
the Oval Office.
In the Cabinet Room, wires led up from
the basement to microphones hidden in the
light fixtures behind the President's chair.
The President could manually activate the
system by pressing a switch located on the
underside of the table by his place. [6]
In the Oval Office, the microphones were
located in the kneewell of the President's
desk. Wires were drilled through the floor
and led to the room below where the recording
machine was kept. The on/off switch was
also located in the kneewell of his desk.
[7]
The microphones, in the Oval Office and
the Cabinet Room were connected to one machine
located underneath the Oval Office. Bouck
installed this system in July 1962. Chester
Miller, another Secret Service agent, assisted
Bouck in checking the machine and changing
the reels of tape as necessary. At some
point, Bouck installed a second machine
that would automatically begin recording
when the tape on the first machine ran out.
Each tape had a recording time of up to
two hours. [8] The agents gave the completed
tapes to Evelyn Lincoln who placed them
in a locked cabinet in a small room behind
her desk in the West Wing for safekeeping.
[9]
The agents numbered each reel sequentially,
beginning with “1” and ending
with “118.” On tapes where the
meeting continued onto a second reel, the
agents added the suffix “a”
to indicate that it was a continuation.
However the numerical system was not precise:
several numbers were omitted. [10]
A second numerical system exists. This
numbering system begins on the 97th tape
and continues through to the end of the
series. Each tape in this numbering system
begins with the letter “A.”
Strangely, the first number is “A33,”
and this progression continues until the
series ends with “A57.” Archivists
believe that the Secret Service agents monitoring
the system assigned these numbers to the
tapes. Still other tapes had no numbers
on them at all. Four tapes were marked with
an "XX,” "XXX,” or
"XXXX,” and one tape was completely
unmarked. Archivists at the Kennedy Library
were able to locate their positions within
the series and assign them a number. [11]
Lastly, there are four numbered transcripts
in the series for which there are no tapes.
Sometimes, a tape may contain a recording
of only one meeting. On other occasions,
a tape may contain recordings of two or
more meetings. There are conversations and
meetings recorded in each area (Cabinet
Room and Oval Office) on one tape since
the microphones from each location went
to a single system. If the President forgot
to turn his switch off, the tape recorded
room noise and other unintended and miscellaneous
conversations. Often, the President did
not begin recording until the meeting was
well underway. On at least two occasions,
cleaning personnel accidentally activated
the system. On many occasions, a meeting
continued from one reel onto the next when
the second recording machine activated.
[12]
The quality of the sounds recorded on the
tapes varies greatly from tape to tape as
well as voice to voice. The placement of
the microphones affected the intelligibility
of the recorded voices. Voices too close
to the microphones are distorted; voices
too far away from the microphones are inaudible.
Some participants mumbled, while others
yelled. The microphones picked up many background
noises such as helicopter rotor noise, air
conditioning, clattering of cups, scribbling
of pens, and rustling of papers, to name
a few, that obscured the recordings of the
conversations. The microphones in the kneewell
of the President's desk in the Oval Office
also recorded loud and clear the President's
knees and legs knocking against the desk.
[13]
The Telephone Dictabelt Recording
System
The President recorded many of his telephone
conversations between September 10, 1962,
and October 29, 1963, using a Dictaphone
system. The Dictaphone machine recorded
conversations onto a Dictabelt Record (hereafter
referred to as a Dictabelt) which was shaped
like a belt. The Dictaphone machine would
etch grooves into the Dictabelt as the belt
spun in the machine, recording the conversation.
[14] In all, there are seventy-three Dictabelts,
totaling approximately twelve hours of conversations.
According to the “Presidential Recordings
Finding Aid” at the Kennedy Library,
these Dictabelts contain “at least
280 separate conversations or fragments
of conversations,” and one belt contains
a memorandum dictated by the President for
Evelyn Lincoln to transcribe. [15]
There are conflicting accounts of who installed
the telephone system. Evelyn Lincoln recalled
that the Dictaphone system was installed
by the telephone company and that the two
Secret Service agents responsible for operating
the Cabinet Room and Oval Office recording
system were unaware of its installation.
[16] However, Sergeant Joseph Wilson, an
electronics technician in the White House
Communications Agency (WHCA), stated that
he installed the Kennedy Dictabelt recording
system. He recalled that the system was
"an early model of the Dictabelt machine.”
[17] Both Lincoln and Wilson recall that
the Dictaphone machine was located in a
cabinet by Lincoln's desk. The machine was
connected by wires to the common telephone
line shared by her desk and the telephone
on the President's desk in the Oval Office.
[18]
The President would signal Lincoln to record
.a conversation by pressing a button on
his desk. A red light would light up on
her desk and she would then start the machine.
On occasion, the machine was left running
after the intended conversation was recorded
and unintended conversations were then recorded.
[19] Other times, the telephone was left
off the hook and the machine inadvertently
recorded office conversations. [20]
Each Dictabelt could record between fifteen
and twenty minutes of conversation. The
belts were red and made of sturdy plastic.
When the machine was recording, a needle
made grooves in the plastic. After a belt
was fully recorded, Lincoln would note the
dates and participants on a piece of paper
and store it along with the belt in a locked
cabinet in a small room next to the oval
office. [21]
The numbering scheme employed by Lincoln
on the Dictabelt series is more perplexing
than the numbering system on the Cabinet
Room and Oval Office meetings series. In
the case of the Dictabelts, Lincoln numbered
seventy Dictabelts "1" through
"28", thereby assigning the same
number to more than one belt. [22] In an
interview with Kennedy Library archivist,
William Moss, Lincoln stated that she did
not recall why she used this numbering system.
The first number corresponds to the first
Dictabelt recorded and the last number corresponds
to last Dictabelt recorded. [23]
Aftermath of the Assassination
Robert Bouck personally dismantled and
removed the reel-to-reel tape recording
system from the Cabinet Room and Oval Office
on November 22, 1963, immediately after
learning of the President's death. However,
it seems the Dictaphone recording machine
remained operational during this period
and was still in place when President Johnson
moved into the West Wing. [24]
As stated earlier, the President Kennedy's
personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, was
responsible for custody of all of the recordings.
After the assassination, Lincoln moved from
her office in the West Wing to an office
in the old Executive Office Building, taking
the tapes and Dictabelts with her. [25]
President Kennedy's presidential materials
initially were deposited in the main National
Archives building in Washington, D.C. Later,
they were moved to the Federal Records Center
in Waltham, Massachusetts, pending receipt
of a deed of gift donating the materials
to the government. The deed of gift donating
the Kennedy materials included a section
that stated:
This gift ... shall not and is not intended
to apply to or embrace such items as John
[F.] Kennedy had not intended to be deposited…or
which are determined by the donors to be
of special or private interest to the personal,
family and business affairs... [26]
Although the tapes and Dictabelts were
stored in the Waltham Records Center and
later in the Kennedy Library, they were
excluded from the 1965 deed of gift and
the Kennedy family retained ownership. [27]
Between 1965 and 1973, many tapes and Dictabelts
were periodically removed by Kennedy family
aides. Transcription, which began immediately
after the assassination, continued during
this period. [26] It is possible that the
executors of the estate wanted to evaluate
these records and determine whether President
Kennedy intended to donate them to the government
or if he intended to keep them private.
[29]
On July 17, 1973, the day after Alexander
Butterfield’s stunning revelation,
Kennedy Library Director Dan Penn, announced
that President Kennedy also had a similar
recording system and that the Library had
received both Dictabelts and tapes. The
collection included 125 tapes and 68 Dictabelt
recordings. [30] On May 23, 1976, the Administrator
of the General Services Administration,
Jack Eckerd, accepted the deed of gift transferring
ownership of these recordings from the Kennedy
family to the- government. [31]
The Kennedy Library archival staff began
an extensive effort to preserve and process
the tapes and Dictabelts in late 1981. In
1982, the first increment of recordings
and transcripts were made available to the
public. These dealt strictly with domestic
policy issues, especially the integration
of the University of Mississippi.
More recently, the archival staff began
reviewing the tapes and Dictabelts dealing
with foreign policy matters. The National
Security Council, the Central Intelligence
Agency and the Departments of State and
Defense declassified or sanitized many recordings
of the "Ex Comm" meetings held
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. These recordings,
along with the other released tapes, provide
many valuable insights detailing the inner
workings of the Kennedy White House that
were heretofore unknown.
Notes:
[1] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
John F. Kennedy Library. As there is little
or no documentation surrounding President
Kennedy’s recording systems, I have
had to rely almost completely on this finding
aid for information.
[2] Ibid. See also: “JFK extensively
taped meetings, log reveal,” Austin
American Statesman, February 4, 1982, pages
A-1 and A-12.
[3] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library.
[4] “The Kennedy Tapes,” Newsweek,
July 4, 1982.
[5] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library. See also: New York
Times, December 17, 1995, Section 2,
page 1.
[6] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Letter, Allan Goodrich, Audio-visual
archivist, Kennedy Library, to John Powers,
May 8, 1995.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library. Archivists at the Kennedy
Library believe that there are four missing
tapes (they have transcripts for four meetings
for which there are not tapes). However,
they also believe that on occasion, for
unknown reasons, Lincoln “skipped”
a number when assigning a tape a number.
They believe this occurred on at least four
occasions.
[11] Ibid. In these cases, the archivists
were able to determine that they corresponded
with the “skipped” numbers.
All but four numbers have been accounted
for. It is possible that these four numbers
were simply skipped.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Recordings and Transcripts of Conversations:
JFK Assassination Related Conversations
finding aid, Johnson Library.
[15] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library. President Kennedy kept
a Dictaphone machine in the Oval Office
next to his desk. The Dictaphone machine
is plainly evident in many photographs taken
of Kennedy sitting in the Oval Office. He
used this machine, apparently, for dictation.
President Nixon also kept a Dictaphone machine
in both the Oval Office and his hideaway
EOB office. Nixon used these machines to
dictate personal letters for Rose Mary Woods,
his personal secretary, to transcribe. The
machines also functioned like a diary; he
sued them to record his personal observations
and thoughts.
[16] Ibid. See also: Robert Bouck Oral History,
p. 2. Bouck stated that he was not involved
in the installation of the telephone recording
system. He added that he believed that WHCA
was responsible for its installation.
[17] Telephone interview with Joseph Wilson
on April 15, 1996.
[18] Ibid. and Presidential Recordings finding
aid.
[19] Ibid. This would also explain why conversations
between the President and members of his
family were recorded as well as many conversations
between Lincoln and other individuals. This
also occurred in some of President Johnson’s
Dictabelt recordings.
[20] Ibid. This also happened frequently
on Johnson’s Dictabelt recordings.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid. Originally there were seventy
belts in the series. The Kennedy Library
staff located three other belts in other
parts of Kennedy’s files. Lincoln
only numbered the original seventy.
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid. See also: Telephone interview
with Joseph Wilson, April 15, 1996. Neither
Bouck nor Miller removed the system. In
addition, the first Dictabelt recordings
from the Johnson administration are on the
same color red belts that the Kennedy system
used. Soon afterwards the belt color would
change to blue.
[25] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library.
[26] Jacqueline Kennedy, Edward Kennedy
and Robert Kennedy, donors to Lawson Knott,
Acting Administrator of General Services,
February 25, 1965. John F. Kennedy deed
of gift, Office of Presidential Libraries,
National Archives and records Administration.
[27] Presidential Recordings finding aid,
Kennedy Library.
[28] Ibid. Robert Kennedy asked Evelyn Lincoln
to begin transcribing the tapes and Dictabelts
as soon as she moved into the Old Executive
Office building after the assassination.
Transcription continued after the materials
were moved to Massachusetts and after Robert
Kennedy’s death. It is not known how
many tapes and Dictabelts were removed and
not returned. At least one Dictabelt and
four tapes are missing from the collection.
[29] A committee, headed by former Kennedy
aide Burke Marshall, now reviews some sensitive
documents and tapes to ensure that their
donation is consistent with the terms of
the deed of gift.
[30] Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and
Recovery, 1973-1990. p. 196. The number
of tapes and Dictabelts noted by Fenn eventually
proved incorrect after a thorough inventory
was taken.
[31] John F. Kennedy deed of gift. Apparently,
only one Dictabelt was not included in this
deed. The Dictabelt contained a private
conversation between President Kennedy and
his wife that Evelyn Lincoln recorded accidentally.
JFK Library
Descriptions and Documents
PRESIDENTIAL RECORDINGS PRELIMINARY FINDING
AID
Summary and Contents
The Presidential Recordings are located
in the President's Office Files which is
part of the Presidential Papers of John
F. Kennedy. The recordings were donated
to the Library in the 1976 addendum to the
1965 deed of gift from President Kennedy's
estate. There are approximately 248 hours
of meetings and 12 hours of telephone conversations.
Background and technical information on
the recordings and a preliminary list of
the dates and subjects of the meetings and
telephone conversations is given in the
Register to the Presidential Recordings
of White House Meetings and Telephone Conversations.
Meetings and telephone conversations on
many domestic matters have been processed
and are currently available for research
use. Forty-two meetings and 53 telephone
conversations have been opened on the following
subjects: civil rights, 1963 tax cut, railroad
work rules dispute, winning Senate support
for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In addition,
sanitized transcripts of five National Security
Council meetings held in October 1962, during
the Cuban missile crisis are also available.
Early openings were in both transcript and
tape format, later releases in tape format
accompanied by a brief participant and content
log. The Library intends to open future
recordings in tape format. The status of
recordings is indicated on the indexes:
Current Status of Meetings and Telephone
Recordings. If you are interested in specific
tapes and would like to be notified when
they are processed, you may fill out an
“Openings Notification Form”
available from the Research Room.
Recordings concerning foreign policy and
national security matters are handled in
accordance with Executive Orders and applicable
regulations which prescribe procedures for
the safeguarding and declassification of
national security classified information.
In February 1993, Tapes 30-39 containing
National Security Council Executive Committee
Meetings held between October 18, 1962 and
October 26, 1962, were submitted to the
National Security Council for review in
accordance with Section 3.4 Executive Order
12356. At present we do not know how long
this review may take since this is the first
submission of these audio recordings.
CONTENTS
Presidential Recordings Register, June 1983
Special Supplement of April 15, 1985 Researcher
Update, March 1993
Current Status of Meetings Recordings Current
Status of Telephone Recordings 2/94
PRESIDENT'S OFFICE FILES
White House Meetings and Telephone Conversations
1962-1963 [1]
The presidential recordings of White House
meetings and telephone conversations are
a series of the President's office Files
of the Presidential Papers of John F. Kennedy.
They were deeded to the United States along
with other papers and historical materials
belonging to the estate of John F. Kennedy
in February 1965 by Jacqueline B. Kennedy,
Robert F. Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy.
The John F. Kennedy Library assumed formal
dominion and control over the presidential
recordings in May 1976 as the result of
an exchange of letters between the surviving
donors and the Administrator of General
Services attesting and acknowledging that
the recordings are a part of the 1965 gift
and that the terms and conditions of the
1965 deed apply to them.
The manuscripts portion of the President's
Office Files is covered by a separate register
and was opened to research in January 1974.
The President's Office Files are the files
that were kept by John F. Kennedy's personal
secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, for his ready
access and convenience adjacent to the Oval
office in the White House. Mrs. Lincoln
was also keeper of the audiotape and Dictabelt
recordings of meetings and telephone conversations,
hence the association of these recordings
with the President's office Files even though
they did not come to the Kennedy Library
as an integral part of those files. Existence
of the recordings was first announced by
the Director of the John F. Kennedy Library
in July 1973, and a number of articles in
the national press reported the announcement.
In December 1981, a preliminary list of
audiotapes and Dictabelts, identifying the
known contents to that date, was first made
available to researchers at the Kennedy
Library. The preliminary list was subsequently
published in national newspapers in February
1982.
Although the first items from the presidential
recordings were not opened to public research
by the Kennedy Library until June 1983,
there had been earlier publication, almost
unnoticed in the national press, of a few
of the telephone conversations between President
Kennedy and Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett.
These conversations, dealing with the 1962
integration crisis at the University of
Mississippi, first came to light in 1964
and were subsequently quoted in several
books dealing with the Kennedy, administration
and civil rights. The transcripts of these
conversations, found in the justice subseries
of the Departments and Agencies series of
the President's Office Files, were opened
to research at the Kennedy Library in 1974
along with the remainder of the President's
Office Files. However, at the time there
was little or no association of these items
with the larger body of material in the
presidential recordings.
The materials opened in 1983 by the Kennedy
Library are the remaining recordings of
telephone conversations and White House
meetings concerning the University of Mississippi
crisis and the recordings having to do with
the 1962-1963 tax cut proposals of the Kennedy
administration. Additional segments of the
recordings are opened as they can be processed
and reviewed to protect national security
and privacy. It is estimated at the time
of this writing that perhaps as much as
75 percent of the material requires national
security protection under existing Executive
Order, laws, and implementing regulations.
It is also estimated that probably less
than 1 percent of the material is going
to require protection on grounds of personal
privacy. The donors assigned copyright that
they might have in the recordings to the
United States, however, copyright of the
donors does not extend beyond statements
uttered by John F. Kennedy, his minor children,
and the donors themselves. Statements uttered
by officials of the United States government
in the course of their duties are considered
to be in the public domain. Users of this
material are cautioned, however, that not
all persons recorded were members of the
Kennedy family or government officials.
A number of the people recorded were, at
the time of recording, private citizens.
Therefore, those intending to quote from
this material beyond the accepted limits
of fair use are cautioned to determine the
copyright implications of any intended publication.
Processing of these materials will continue,
and additional segments will be opened to
public research as the material can be processed
and as the restrictions on national security
and privacy information expire. A list of
the meeting recordings and telephone conversations,
with known contents as of the date of this
writing (subject to future revision and
updating as processing continues) is attached
to this register.
William W. Moss
Chief Archivist June 1983
PRESIDENTIAL RECORDINGS
Legal Terms and Conditions
Applicable to the Recordings as Part of
the "Papers and Other Historical Materials"
of John F. Kennedy Deeded to the United
States Under the Presidential Libraries
Act of 1955
The presidential recordings are part of
the Presidential Papers of John F. Kennedy,
deeded to the United States by deed of gift,
February 1965, in accordance with Chapter
21, Title 44, United States Code, commonly
known as the Presidential Libraries Act
of 1955.
In 1963, all White House files, with three
exceptions, were considered to be the property
of John F. Kennedy. The three exceptions
were:
a. such files as members of the President's
staff might claim as their own personal
property;
b. files of the Bureau of the Budget and
other statutory offices in the Executive
office of the President; and
c. such other files as might be left behind
for the White House permanent administrative
staff and the National Archives to dispose
of in the future.
Prior to the Presidential Records Act of
1978 (effective beginning January 20, 1981),
each President was free to define the scope
and content of his personal property to
be removed from the White House when be
left office. This authority extended to
working files of the presidency and was
grounded in a tradition dating back to the
first President, George Washington. All
Presidents prior to Ronald Reagan were under
no constitutional or statutory obligation
to preserve the records of their presidencies,
much less to make them public or to donate
them to the United States. A growing sense
of the value of presidential records, beginning
in the late 19th century, led to a tradition
beginning with Theodore Roosevelt that the
papers should be saved and preserved for
posterity. This was given statutory encouragement
in the Presidential Libraries Act of 1955.
The latter does not require former Presidents
to donate their papers to the United States.
It merely enabled the U.S. Government to
undertake the responsibility of accepting
such gifts when offered, and under such
terms and conditions acceptable to the U.S.
Government as the donors might wish to impose.
It was in this context and under this statutory
condition that the executors of the estate
of John F. Kennedy in February 1965 donated
his “papers and other historical materials”
to the United States for deposit in a presidential
library to be built in Massachusetts. The
deed covering this donation is a public
record and is available for examination
at the Kennedy Library and at the Office
of Presidential Libraries at the National
Archives in Washington, D.C. Included in
the deed are the terms and conditions, including
restrictions, under which the U.S. Government
agreed to administer the materials. The
deed was signed jointly on February 25,
1965, by Jacqueline B. Kennedy, Robert F.
Kennedy, and Edward M. Kennedy. It was accepted
by Lawson B. Knott, Jr., Acting Administrator
of General Services.
While the deed encourages the prompt and
full opening of the papers and other historical
materials to public research, it also recognizes
the need to protect personal privacy and
national security. Among the provisions
of the deed are those that exempt certain
classes of papers and other materials from
the gift entirely, and others that restrict
certain material from public research. These
exemptions and restrictions include the
following:
a. Any material that John F. Kennedy never
intended to donate to the Kennedy Library
is specifically exempted from the gift,
and the donors reserve the right to decide
just what that material might be and to
require its return from the Kennedy Library.
b. Any material concerning the private
family business of the president and his
family, such as personal correspondence,
personal business matters, or medical records,
is not to be opened to the public without
the express written permission of the donors.
c. Any national security information (whether
marked classified or not, under current
regulations) may be opened to the public
after proper review and declassification
in accordance with current laws and Executive
Orders protecting national security classified
material.
d. Any material not covered by paragraph
c., above, that might jeopardize national
defense or foreign relations or that might
tend to injure, harass, or embarrass any
person, is to be restricted for so long
as the reason for that restriction remains
valid.
e. Any materials containing statements
made by or to John F. Kennedy in confidence
are to be restricted for so long as the
justification for the confidentiality remains
valid.
Under a strict and literal reading of the
deed provisions, a blanket restriction could
have been imposed on any or all of the presidential
recordings. Indeed, the entire body of material
could have been exempted from the gift under
the provisions paraphrased in paragraph
a., above. However, neither the donors,
nor the Archivist of the United States,
nor the Director of the Kennedy Library
has advocated the application of such a
blanket restriction or exemption. Therefore,
the recordings must be examined, one by
one, to determine if the restrictions in
paragraphs b. through e., above, apply in
whole or in part to each.
In the case of national security classified
information, neither the donors nor the
Kennedy Library staff or representatives
of either have the authority to release
such material to the public. Under current
regulations (Executive Order 12356 of April
2, 1982, and implementing instructions and
regulations), advice and opinion on the
continued need for classification protection
must be sought from appropriate agencies
of the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government,
and such advice is to be authoritative in
guiding decisions made to continue classification
protection or to open the material to the
public.
With respect to the remaining criteria,
each item is examined carefully by the staff
of the Kennedy Library, and portions found
to be appropriate for restriction are recommended
to the director for such restriction. The
director, in turn, submits these recommendations
with his own review and opinions as necessary
to a committee of reviewers appointed by
the donors. This committee consists of Burke
Marshall as chairman, Theodore C. Sorensen,
and Samuel H. Beer. The committee reviews
the recommendations and approves or disapproves
of the restrictions proposed.
Note that to date, including the first
materials released from the presidential
recordings, the committee has never sought
to impose restrictions on materials recommended
for opening by the Library staff. They have,
on rare occasions, overruled the staff recommendations
to restrict and have authorized opening
of material.
If material is restricted under criterion
a. or criterion b., above, the donors have
reserved the right to impose a peremptory
"Donor Restriction." This restriction
may be appealed only to the donors through
their special representative, Burke Marshall.
Note that this restriction has been employed
rarely, and then only in the interests of
personal privacy.
Other material restricted under the provisions
of paragraphs d. and e., above, is known
as "Archivist Restricted" material.
These restrictions are based on staff judgments
alone and they may be appealed to the Director
of the Kennedy Library for review. If the
director sustains the restriction, it may
be further appealed to the National Archives
Review Committee for a further review.
All of the presidential recordings containing
topics pertaining to national defense, intelligence,
nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, foreign
policy, and other similar matters will be
submitted routinely for classification review
and advice from appropriate Executive Branch
agencies before a decision is made on whether
to open them to public research or to keep
them closed.
Custody and Actions Concerning The Presidential
Recordings of White House Meetings and Telephone
Conversations From 1975 To 1983
Immediately upon receiving the materials
into custody in August 1975, the Kennedy
Library made a list of the tapes, Dictabelts,
and transcripts. No attempt at that time
was made to match tapes to transcripts or
Dictabelts to transcripts. A simple inventory
of items received was all that was done.
The second step was to prepare audiotape
copies of the recordings to ensure preservation
of the original sound images. An archival
master tape was prepared from each audiotape
and Dictabelt, and from the archival master
further reference or processing copies were
produced. In the course of this project,
tapes were timed and the beginnings and
endings of meeting or conversation events
were noted on work sheets, and the recordings
were superficially examined for evidence
of breaks, erasures, or other technical
anomalies. None were noted. There was no
listening for content identification in
this project. In the course of making copies,
great care was taken to ensure that the
recording heads were removed from all playback
equipment to prevent any inadvertent erasure
of sound image on the originals or archival
masters. All copies are complete and exact
copies of the originals, except that reference
copies at a faster recording speed (3 3/4
ips) tend to be longer and take up more
reels than the originals.
Between 1975 and 1981 little- was done
in the way of content identification. A
few transcripts of some selected items were
prepared for the purpose of familiarizing
staff members with the material and to assess
the relative value of the content summaries
and transcripts that had been delivered.
It became apparent that the transcript materials
that came with the tapes and Dictabelts
would be inadequate for any serious effort
to identify contents thoroughly, and that
additional work would have to be done by
the Kennedy Library staff. Some modest effort
was made to understand the numbering system
found on the tapes and transcripts, but
this was not done in any great detail. Although
the existence of the materials had been
made known as early as July 1973, researcher
interest in the tapes was modest and there
was little impetus to proceed with transcription
or further processing. This was fortunate,
for the Kennedy Library was seriously preoccupied
in the period from 1975 to 1980 with building
and establishing a new building and exhibits,
a task which occupied most of the staff
for five years.
In December 1981, in response to the first
direct and explicit request for a list of
the recordings, the interim rough list (essentially
little more than an inventory of the numbered
transcripts) was made available to researchers
at the Kennedy Library. Subsequent publication
of these interim lists called greater attention
to the materials, and the Kennedy Library
staff began a first phase project to transcribe
some of the recordings.
Materials Selected for First Phase Project
Audiotape and Dictabelt recordings relating
to the 1962 integration crisis at the University
of Mississippi and to the 1962-1963 tax
cut proposals were chosen for the first
phase project. The following criteria entered
into this decision:
a. Both topics are represented in the presidential
recordings by large numbers of items (phone
conversations and meetings) around coherent
topics;
b. Both topics are ones likely to be free
of any national security information restrictions;
c. Both topics are ones likely to be free
of any privacy restrictions;
d. Both topics are of proven interest to
many researchers at the Kennedy Library;
e. Both topics contain information that
can add significantly to the understanding
of American politics and government by scholars
and by the general public;
f. At least some of the material had been
published earlier;
g. The quantity of material is a manageable
one, permitting the Kennedy Library to process
it without inordinate delay; and
h. Other topics considered were deficient
in one or more of these criteria.
This group of materials constitutes only
about 5 percent of the whole. The tax cut
proposal materials include recordings of
3 telephone conversations and 13 meetings.
The University of Mississippi materials
include 17 telephone conversations and 3
White House meetings. Verbatim transcripts,
requiring from 30 hours per hour of recording
to 155 hours per hour of recording to produce,
were prepared for the first phase group
of materials to be released to public research.
Transcripts versus Content Logs
For several reasons, verbatim transcripts
may have to be abandoned after the first
phase project. They are extremely expensive
to prepare, and ambiguous interpretations
of what may be heard are far too common
to guarantee 100 percent accuracy. Therefore,
future material released is likely to appear
in the form of an audio recording supported
by a comprehensive and detailed content
log rather than a verbatim transcription.
SCOPE AND CONTENT NOTE
Audiotapes (Meeting Recordings)
There are 127 audiotapes. The initial inventory
counted 125 reels of tape, but subsequent
examination of the tapes on the reels showed
that two reels actually held two separate
tape segments each. Further examination
showed that two tapes were recordings of
empty office sounds, with no conversations
or meetings anywhere on the tapes, and that
another tape was completely blank with no
recording whatsoever. Thus, there are 127
tapes, 124 of which contain meetings or
conversations. The 124 tapes with meetings
and conversations have a combined running
time of about 248 hours.
The substance recorded on the tapes is
predominantly meetings with the president
in either the Oval Office or in the Cabinet
Room. None of the recordings appear to be
located elsewhere. Some tapes have only
one meeting, others have several, and in
still other cases a meeting is continued
from one tape to another. Sometimes the
recording does not begin until the meeting
is already under way, and sometimes it ends
before the end of the meeting. At other
times the recording was left on and recording
continued long after the end of a meeting.
On some occasions the recording was apparently
turned on accidentally by custodial personnel
cleaning the oval office or Cabinet Room.
Because of the fragmentary nature of some
of the truncated meetings and conversations,
and because of the tendency of some meetings
and conversations to merge into one another
as they do in the normal course of a business
day, it is not possible to give a precise
count of the number of separate meetings
and conversations. However, a rough count
indicates the number to be well over 300.
Some meetings and conversations are only
a few minutes in length, but many last for
periods from one-half hour to two hours.
While the recording was deliberate in the
sense that it required manual operation
to start and stop the recording, there does
not seem to be a systematic pattern to its
use. It was not, based on the material recorded,
used with daily regularity, although it
was used often. Nor was it used on some
occasions when one might have expected it,
such as the October 18, 1962 meeting with
Andrei Gromyko.
The earliest established date for material
recorded is 30 July 1962, and the latest
is 8 November 1963. About 60 percent of
the material recorded covers topics in international
and foreign policy, including international
economics. Another 15 percent deals with
national defense. Further small amounts
of material on intelligence, space, and
atomic energy bring to at least 75 percent
the proportion subject to national security
protection. The remaining 25 percent of
the substance is civil rights, the domestic
economy, labor disputes, and other similar
matters. There is some, but very little
in the way of partisan politics apart from
the context of the substantive matters of
administration policy and legislation.
Dictabelts (Telephone Conversations)
There are 73 Dictabelts. The initial inventory
produced a count of only 27, but that was
based on a numbering system that included
several belts for each numeral. Furthermore,
three additional belts were found among
the President's Office Files and other papers,
and were added to the collection because
of the similarity in medium and content.
The total is, therefore, 73 Dictabelts,
including the three additions. The Dictabelts
record approximately 12 hours of conversations,
chiefly telephone conversations, most of
them less than 5 minutes in length. One
belt carries only brief memoranda dictated
by the president for Evelyn Lincoln to type
up, and these may have been dictated on
a machine known to have been kept adjacent
to the president's desk in the Oval Office.
On at least two occasions it would appear
that the phone was left off the hook or
perhaps improperly cradled, for the conversations
seem to be in the office rather than on
the phone.
The substance of the material is predominantly
telephone conversations between the president
and other people, probably from either the
president's phone in the Oval Office or
from Evelyn Lincoln's phone in her office
nearby. Mrs. Lincoln is also heard often
as a party to a conversation, and occasionally
others are heard without either Mrs. Lincoln
or the president being a party to the conversation.
The earliest date for material on the Dictabelts
is 10 September 1962, and the latest date
is 29 October 1963. There are at least 280
separate conversations or fragments of conversations
recorded. Only a small portion of the material,
perhaps less than 10 percent, deals with
foreign affairs or national defense and
is subject to national security protection.
Still less, perhaps less than 1 percent,
are private family conversations subject
to privacy protection. The largest group
of items around one coherent subject are
the recordings associated with the 1962
integration crisis at the University of
Mississippi. While legislation and congressional
liaison loom large as a joint category in
this material, the subjects within that
category are many and varied. Domestic politics,
civil rights, legislation, and the economy
account for most of the conversations, plus
those in defense and foreign affairs already
mentioned.
The Dictabelt recording was manually operated
and therefore deliberate like the audiotape
system, however, it shows the same lack
of systematic regularity and a certain amount
of whimsical or accidental recording. Frequent
although inconsistent use is indicated by
the material.
TECHNICAL NOTES
Audiotape Characteristics.
Both sound quality and tape characteristics
vary widely. Tape thickness is either 1-mil
or 1 1/2-mil, with the former predominant.
Recording speeds vary between 3 3/4 inches
per second and 17/8 inches per second, with
the latter appearing almost exclusively
from tape #62 onwards in the list. Most
of the tapes are four-channel tapes, with
channels #2 and #4 used nearly exclusively
for recording. There are some single channel
(full track) tapes. In very few cases does
recording appear on two tracks simultaneously
in the same location. In some cases the
recording shifts from one track to the other.
Sound quality varies with distance of the
speaker from the hidden microphones. Those
too close tend to produce an overload, with
attendant sound distortion, while those
too far away are very difficult to make
out clearly. Voice quality also affects
the quality of the audio image. When voices
drop in pitch and volume they tend to become
unintelligible. At many points speakers
talking at the same time override each other,
or there is a general babble of voices making
comprehension impossible. Background interference,
whether air conditioning machinery, the
sounds of nearby pneumatic drills or helicopters,
the rapping of hard items such as smoking
pipes against glass ash trays, the rustling
of paper, or the banginq of legs against
tables all frequently swamp intelligible
conversation.
Some tapes show considerable neglect and
wear such as creased ends and curled edges
due to poor winding and storage. At least
four of the tape segments (see items 5A,
11A, 15A, and 72A in the list) were found
wound onto only two reels, something not
found elsewhere in the materials. Some of
this wear can no doubt be attributed to
the use of original tapes between 1964 and
1975 for transcribing the rough transcripts
delivered with the tapes. Otherwise, preliminary
examination of the tapes during the aforementioned
duplication process indicates that they
are whole and in fair condition, without
breaks, splices, or evidence of erasures.
This conclusion will, of course, continue
to be tested further and will be subject
to verification as more sophisticated equipment
is applied in the future, but nothing heard
to date on the tapes indicates any substantial
damage or erasures.
Dictabelt Characteristics
The Dictabelts are standard, patent, plastic,
"sleeve" belts, red in color,
on which the recording Dictaphone produced
grooves like a phonograph record. Each belt
has a capacity of about 15-20 minutes of
recording, not all of which was used in
every case.
As received, the belts had been mashed
flat and held together with paper clips,
to which were attached slips identifying
them by number. Some belts had sustained
cracks due to storage conditions and being
mashed flat, and upon playback several produced
disconcerting echoes that distorted sound,
as well as repeats and skips in sound.
It proved difficult to obtain exactly the
correct playback speed to reproduce voice
sounds normally, and nearly all the copies
have a slightly higher pitch and speed than
one would normally associate with each of
the speakers. In some cases there are background
noises that override speakers' voices. However,
in most cases, due to the alternating pattern
of only two speakers at a time, the telephone
recordings are more consistently intelligible
than the meeting recordings.
Rough Transcript Attempts
Prior to August 1975, someone at the behest
of Robert Kennedy attempted to transcribe
the audiotape and Dictabelt recordings.
The results are uneven, and often poor to
the point of being unusable or misleading.
At best they are rough content summaries.
They are not considered adequate either
as finding aids or as transcripts of contents.
It is important to note that early lists
of contents, including those nationally
published in February 1982, relied chiefly
on these inadequate transcripts for content
information and tape or Dictabelt number
identifications. Errors in those lists and
later revisions will be corrected as new
information comes to light.
The transcripts prepared of the telephone
conversations were much better than those
prepared for the meeting recordings, but
even these were riddled with errors and
omissions. Satisfactory as a rough, first-draft
transcript, each requires careful auditing,
proofreading, and correcting before it can
stand as an adequate transcript.
Numbering and Inventory
As indicated earlier in this text, the
numbering systems found on the materials
as received made inventory control very
difficult. Those who read this description
need to become familiar with and to follow
the attached lists giving the numbering
systems in the far left-hand columns.
a. Audiotapes
As received, two primary numbering systems
were discovered applied to the tapes. A
numerical series from #1 to #118, with frequent
use of the letter "A" as a suffix
(26, 26A, 27, 27A, etc.) and with several
numbers omitted, appeared to be the principal
system used. These numbers appeared on the
boxes in which the reels of tape were stored.
It is believed that these numbers were assigned
by Evelyn Lincoln as she received the tapes.
The second numerical series has an "A"
prefix and runs from #A33 to #A57 with one
omission. The two series overlap, with #A33
equating to #97, #A34 to #98, etc. While
the "A##" series numbers are occasionally
found on the boxes (particularly for the
last three reels), they are more often found
on small slips inside the boxes, giving
the impression that they may have been assigned
by the Secret Service personnel who changed
the reels.
To complicate matters further, one tape
was received without any number at all;
two were received marked identically with
"XX;" one was received marked
with "XXX;" and one was received
with "XXXX" The unnumbered tape
and those marked "XXX" and "XXXX"
were identified by content dating as belonging
in the numerical series at #64, #67, and
at #69, thus filling in three of the "gaps"
in the numbering system as listed. The two
"XX" tapes proved to have two
separate and distinct tape segments on each
reel. From content dating of each segment,
these four "tapes" were placed
by the Kennedy Library into the sequence
at places where there had been no numbers
in the initial inventory at #5A, #11A, #15A,
and #72A. This still leaves several numbers
in the sequence for which there are no materials.
Numbers 19, 84, 91, and 105 may plausibly
be explained as casualties of a careless
numbering system application. There are
no corresponding rough transcripts for any
of these numbers, and there are no tapes.
The conclusion that there never was any
tape #105 can be supported by the fact that
the meeting at the end of tape #104 continues
at the beginning of tape #106, and that
the "A##" series runs smoothly
from "A40' (equates to #104) to "A41"
(equates to #106) without interruption.
There are four numbered rough transcripts
(#92, #93, #94, and #95) for which no recordings
have yet been located among the existing
tapes. The Kennedy Library is currently
in the process of examining all the recording
tracks on all the tapes and logging the
content details in an effort to determine
the location of the recordings these rough
transcripts represent.
b. Dictabelts
Numbering of the Dictabelts is slightly
less complicated. As found, they were numbered
#1 through #28. However, many of the numbers
were found to cover more than one (up to
ten) belts. So, letter designations (excepting
"I" to avoid confusion with "1")
have been added to the numbers to designate
each separate belt.
Dictabelt #1 and its corresponding rough
transcript were both removed from the collection
before it was turned over to the Kennedy
Library. The removal was on grounds of privacy.
Nothing is known of its contents. Item 2B
in the list of Dictabelts has a rough transcript
but no corresponding belt, and it is not
known what happened to the belt that would
have corresponded to the transcript delivered.
Three belts were added to the original
number of 70 belts by the Kennedy Library.
These three were discovered among other
files of the Presidential Papers, and they
were added solely because of the medium
of recording. Two are telephone conversations
and one is dictated memoranda.
Each belt contains one or more conversations.
Each conversation is designated by an additional
number. Thus, "4A.3" denotes the
third conversation on Dictabelt 4A. [2]
In some cases, a further letter may be added
to indicate preceding or following conversation
fragments (often fragments of operator "chatter").
Notes:
[1] At the time of first publication of
this register, none of the material reported
herein was open to public research, therefore,
researchers should inquire of the Kennedy
Library staff which, if any, of the materials
they are interested in have been opened
to research.
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