JFK's Secret Oval Office Tape Recordings
JFK dictating his memoirs. The same system also tape recorded Oval Office, Cabinet Room and telephone conversation
Model AT2C Dictaphone Belt Recorder similar to the one used by the Dallas Police and White House
JFK dictating his memoirs. The same system also tape recorded Oval Office, Cabinet Room and telephone conversation
Model AT2C Dictaphone Belt Recorder similar to the one used by the Dallas Police and White House
From the JFK Library in Boston
Digital Identifier:
JFKPOF-140-014-p0001
JFKPOF-140-014-p0001
Folder Title:
Clifton, C.V.
Date(s) of Materials:
13 November 1963
Folder Description:
This folder is part of an addition to the John F.
Kennedy Presidential Papers, and consists of items that were recovered by the
National Archives and Records Administration on behalf of the Kennedy
Presidential Library from the estate of Robert L. White.
So even though Robert White at first denied to the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) that he had any dictabelt tapes - he reluctantly admitted he did, and from this account - it is apparent that after he died the JFK Library did acquire some of the materials he obtained from Mrs. Lincoln.
How many tapes did they obtain from White's estate? White told Christopher Fulton that some of the dictabelts broke while he was making cassette copies of them. How many were damaged by White and was the information on them obtained?
And what became of the six cassette tapes that White made from the original dictabelts and given/sold to Christopher Fulton?
From Mrs. Linconln's effects White also obtained hundreds, possibly thousands of documents, some of which are posted at the JFK Library web site.
A sample document recovered from White is a memo from General Clifton to the President concerning the promotions of prominent military officers, which JFK did not always do on seniority.
Clifton is a significant character in that he not only was the military advisor to the president but the longer, but still edited version of the Air Force One radio transmission tapes were found among his effects.
Items in this folder consist of a memorandum to the President from Military Aide to the President General C.V. Clifton.Collection: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President's Office Files.
Here's a video with Secret Service Agent Robert I. Bouck, who was responsible for installing the tape recording system at the request of President Kennedy. On learning of the death of the President Bouck immediately went to the White House and uninstalled the system, which Mrs. Lincoln was apparently given custody of.
I was unaware of this book, Listening In – by Professor Ted Widmer of Brown University, which I haven't read yet, but he apparently went through the tapes at the JFK Library, made transcripts of some and published them in his book. Here's an interview with him.
Max Holland also wrote a book The Kennedy Assassination Tapes (2004) - but Holland only concentrates on the LBJ Tapes he obtained from the LBJ Library in Texas, and does not include many if any of the JFK Oval Office Tapes from before the assassination.
Apparently there are three types of recordings - Oval Office conversations, Telephone conversations and dictated memos that President Kennedy made for his own use - as he expected to write an autobiography of his presidential years.
The records of the Kennedy administration, including
248 hours of meeting tapes and 12 hours of telephone dictabelts, were moved to
the National Archives in Washington and later transferred to the Federal
Records Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. Finally, in 1976, the tapes were
legally deeded to the Kennedy Library and the National Archives. Many of the
tapes, most significantly more than 20 hours of recordings from the ExComm (the
Executive Committee of the National Security Council) meetings during the 1962
Cuban missile crisis, were gradually declassified over the next two decades.
JFK Library Forum on Secret Tapes
Oval Office Recods Kept by Evelyn Licnoln
Sample recording of Nov. 1963
Description:
Sound recording of President John F. Kennedy
dictating a memoir entry in November 1963. He talks about the coup in Saigon,
South Vietnam, and the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, about
the Soviet Union's stand on autobahn access, about American oil contracts in
Latin-American countries, and about a statement by West German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer concerning the Berlin Wall. President Kennedy also speaks with
his son John F. Kennedy, Jr.
The recording ends abruptly.
The recording ends abruptly.
“Monday Nov. 4, 1963. Over the weekend the coup in
Siagon took place…..conversation that divided the government here and in
Saigon. Opposed to the coup were – In
favor of a coup were State – I feel we
must bear …”
Digital Identifier:
JFKPOF-TPH-51
Title:Telephone Recordings: Dictation Belt 51
Description: There is no sound recording or transcript for this
item. The Dictation Belt is completely blank.
Physical Description:1 dictation belt (0 minutes)
Extent: 24 Dictabelts containing
approximately four hours of conversations, or at least 50 separate
conversations or fragments of conversations.
|
||||
Arrangement: Arranged by Dictabelt number.
|
||||
The following Telephone Recordings, which were
originally part of the Presidential Recordings Collection, were segregated
out prior to the donation of the collection to the Kennedy Library. On March
9, 1998, these recordings were received by the Library and subsequently added
to the collection. Dates are derived from documentary evidence within the
collections of the Kennedy Library and cover notes received with the
dictabelts. All of these Telephone Recordings are processed and available for
research use. There are no transcripts for any of these recordings.
|
||||
Extent: 127 tapes, 124 of which contain
meetings or conversa¬tions. The 124 tapes with meetings and conversations
have a combined running time of approximately 248 hours.
|
||||
Arrangement: Arranged by original tape
number.
|
||||
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 e 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. All the recordings were taken from
audiotapes. Each tape contained at least one and sometimes several meetings
and fragments of meetings or conversations.
Each tape is identified by its
number, by the date found on the reel box or corresponding rough transcript,
and by the principal topics of conversation or meeting. Tape numbers
interpolated by the Kennedy Library for previously unnumbered tapes inserted
into the list in chronological sequence appear in parentheses. Dating, for
the most part, is verifiable by matching the event recorded to the daily
appointments calendar of the president, and dates for these events are given
with a much greater degree of confidence than in the case of the telephone
conversation items.
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.
|
||||
Top of Form
Digital Identifier:
JFKPOF-139a-009-p0001
JFKPOF-139a-009-p0001
Folder Title:
Roll 28: Palm Beach, Florida logs and traffic,
November 1963: 16-18
Date(s) of Materials:
November 1963: 16-18
Folder Description:
This file contains materials collected by the office
of President John F. Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, concerning the
incoming and outgoing messages that passed through the White House
communications center. Topics include the activities of the Inter-American
Press Association and President Kennedy’s meeting with Brazilian President João
Goulart.
Collection:
Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President's Office Files.
Papers of John F. Kennedy. Presidential Papers. President's Office Files.
The last tape that I can find is dated November 8, 1963
This sample tape is from November 4, 1963 and concerns the Coup in South Vietnam.
Sample recording of Nov. 1963
Description:
Sound recording of President John F. Kennedy
dictating a memoir entry in November 1963. He talks about the coup in Saigon,
South Vietnam, and the assassinations of Ngo Dinh Diem and Ngo Dinh Nhu, about
the Soviet Union's stand on autobahn access, about American oil contracts in
Latin-American countries, and about a statement by West German Chancellor
Konrad Adenauer concerning the Berlin Wall. President Kennedy also speaks with
his son John F. Kennedy, Jr.
The recording ends abruptly.
The recording ends abruptly.
Then there is this recording that contains nothing - was it erased?
Digital Identifier:
JFKPOF-TPH-51
Title:
Telephone Recordings: Dictation Belt 51
Description:
There is no sound recording or transcript for this
item. The Dictation Belt is completely blank.
Physical Description:
1 dictation belt (0 minutes)
Extent: 24 Dictabelts containing
approximately four hours of conversations, or at least 50 separate
conversations or fragments of conversations.
|
||||
Arrangement: Arranged by Dictabelt number.
|
||||
The following Telephone Recordings, which were
originally part of the Presidential Recordings Collection, were segregated
out prior to the donation of the collection to the Kennedy Library. On March
9, 1998, these recordings were received by the Library and subsequently added
to the collection. Dates are derived from documentary evidence within the
collections of the Kennedy Library and cover notes received with the
dictabelts. All of these Telephone Recordings are processed and available for
research use. There are no transcripts for any of these recordings.
|
||||
Extent: 127 tapes, 124 of which contain
meetings or conversa¬tions. The 124 tapes with meetings and conversations
have a combined running time of approximately 248 hours.
|
||||
Arrangement: Arranged by original tape
number.
|
||||
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 e 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. All the recordings were taken from
audiotapes. Each tape contained at least one and sometimes several meetings
and fragments of meetings or conversations. Each tape is identified by its
number, by the date found on the reel box or corresponding rough transcript,
and by the principal topics of conversation or meeting. Tape numbers
interpolated by the Kennedy Library for previously unnumbered tapes inserted
into the list in chronological sequence appear in parentheses. Dating, for
the most part, is verifiable by matching the event recorded to the daily
appointments calendar of the president, and dates for these events are given
with a much greater degree of confidence than in the case of the telephone
conversation items. 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.
|
||||
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