Kennedy Library Releases New JFK Recordings

For Immediate Release: June 12, 2001
Further information: Tom McNaught (617) 514-1662

Boston, MA: The John F. Kennedy Library today announced that it has made available for research two additional tapes of presidential recordings of meetings and conversations that took place in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room at the White House on November 16 and November 19, 1962.

The conversations between President John F. Kennedy and his advisors took place shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The recordings of the meetings on Cuba include discussion on methods of inspection, compliance with inspection, the removal of the Soviet IL-28 bombers, the lifting of the quarantine, and the debate on US non-invasion assurances.

Two of the three meetings concerning Cuba involve only members of the staff and were not attended by President Kennedy. The first meeting, however, is a discussion of Cuba involving President Kennedy and members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Other issues of presidential discussion which appear on the tapes include the budget for the space program, and short exchanges on Trinidad, press leaks at the Department of Defense and the 1962 Sino-Indian border clashes.

Today’s opening includes tapes #60 and #61 and represents approximately 188 minutes of recordings. Researchers are advised that most of the second tape is simply empty office noises.

Approximately 140 hours of meeting tapes remain to be reviewed for declassification prior to release. Processing of the presidential recordings will continue to be conducted in the chronological order of the tapes. Additional tapes will be opened in the future.

The first items from the presidential recordings were opened to public research in June of 1983. Over the past seventeen years, the Library staff has reviewed and opened all of the telephone conversations and a large portion of the meeting tapes. The latter are predominantly meetings with President Kennedy in either the Oval Office or the Cabinet Room. While the recordings were deliberate in the sense that it required manual operation to start and stop the recording, it was not, based on the material recorded, used with daily regularity nor was there a set pattern for its operation.

The tapes represent raw historical material. The sound quality of the recordings varies widely. Although most of the recorded conversation is understandable, the tapes include passages of extremely poor sound quality with considerable background noise and periods where the identity of the speakers is unclear.

Today’s release of White House meetings is in tape form without transcripts. The tapes are available for research use in the Library’s Research Room. The hours of operation are Monday – Friday from 8:30 am - 4:30 pm and appointments may be made by calling (617) 514-1629. The recordings and finding guide are available for purchase at the John F. Kennedy Library, Columbia Point, Boston, MA 02125, or by calling the Audiovisual Department (617) 929-4529.

To document the life and career of President Kennedy and to provide insight into people, events, and issues of mid-20th century American history, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum collects, preserves and makes available for research the documents, audiovisual material and memorabilia of President Kennedy, his family, and his contemporaries. The Library's Archives includes 36 million pages of documents from the collections of 340 individuals, organizations, or government agencies; oral history interviews with 1,300 people; and over 30,000 books. The Audiovisual Archives administers collections of over 200,000 still photographs, 7,550,000 feet of motion picture film, 1,200 hours of video recordings, over 7,000 hours of audio recordings and 500 original editorial cartoons.

The John F. Kennedy Library and Museum is a presidential library administered by the National Archives and Records Administration and supported, in part, by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, a non-profit organization. The Kennedy Library and the Kennedy Library Foundation seek to promote, through educational and community programs, a greater appreciation and understanding of American politics, history, and culture, the process of governing and the importance of public service.

News Editors Please Note: The Kennedy Library and Museum has issued this press release as a matter of public record. It makes no editorial judgment as to whether the content of these recordings is newsworthy or of interest to the public. As a matter of public record, the Library will continue to issue a press release each time portions of the remaining 140 hours of meeting tapes are declassified and made public.