Last of the Secret Tapes Revealed: Hear JFK Just Days Before His Assassination
- Posted on January 24, 2012 at 12:24pm by
Jonathon M. Seidl
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BOSTON (AP) — President John F. Kennedy’s library is releasing 45 hours of privately recorded meetings and phone calls, providing a window into the final months of his life.
The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.
On one recording, made days before Kennedy’s assassination, he asks staffers to schedule a meeting in a week. He tells them he’s booked for the weekend, with no time to meet with an Indonesian general then, either.
“I’m going to be up at the Cape on Friday, but I’ll see him Tuesday,” JFK tells staffers.
The tapes, being released Tuesday by the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, are the last of more than 260 hours of recordings of meetings and conversations JFK privately made before his assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.
In the scheduling discussion three days before his killing, JFK also eerily comments on what would become the day of his funeral.
“Monday?” he asks. “Well that’s a tough day.”
“It’s a hell of a day, Mr. President,” a staffer replies.
Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides. He made the last one two days before his death.
Kennedy library archivist Maura Porter said Monday that JFK may have been saving them for a memoir or possibly started them because he was bothered when the military later gave a different overview of a discussion with him about the Bay of Pigs.
The latest batch of recordings captured meetings from the last three months of Kennedy’s administration. In a conversation with political advisers about young voters, Kennedy asks, “What is it we have to sell them?”
“We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil,” he says. “He’s not unprosperous, but he’s not very prosperous. … And the people who really are well off hate our guts.”
Kennedy talks about a disconnect between the political machine and voters.
“We‘ve got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn’t have much identity where these people are concerned,” he says.
On another recording, Kennedy questions conflicting reports military and diplomatic advisers bring back from Vietnam, asking the two men: “You both went to the same country?”
He also talks about trying to create films for the 1964 Democratic Convention in color instead of black and white.
“The color is so damn good,” he says. “If you do it right.”
Porter said the public first heard about the existence of the Kennedy recordings during the Watergate hearings.
In 1983, JFK Library and Museum officials started reviewing tapes without classified materials and releasing recordings to the public. Porter said officials were able to go through all the recordings by 1993, working with government agencies when it came to national security issues and what they could make public.
In all, she said, the JFK Library and Museum has put out about 40 recordings. She said officials excised about 5 to 10 minutes of this last group of recordings due to family discussions and about 30 minutes because of national security concerns.
Porter has supervised the declassification of these White House tapes since 2001, and she said people will have a much better sense of the kind of leader JFK was after hearing them. While some go along with meeting minutes that also are public, she said, listening to JFK’s voice makes his personality come alive.
She said he comes across as an intelligent man who had a knack for public relations and was very interested in his public image. But she said the tapes also reveal times when the president became bored or annoyed and moments when he used swear words.
The sound of the president’s children, Caroline and John Jr., playing outside the Oval Office is part of a recording on which he introduces them to Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.
“Hello, hello,” Gromyko says as the children come in, telling their father, “They are very popular in our country.”
JFK tells the children, mentioning a dog Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the family: “His chief is the one who sent you Pushinka. You know that? You have the puppies.”
JFK Library spokeswoman Rachel Flor said the daughter of the late president has heard many of the recordings, but she wasn’t sure if she had heard this batch.
“He’d go from being a president to being a father,” Porter said of the recordings. “… And that was really cute.”
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calijohn
Posted on January 25, 2012 at 3:58ameisenhower put the first advisers into viet nam.
Report Post »jvrat
Posted on January 25, 2012 at 1:58amnothing but wasted crap nothing here
Report Post »poverty.sucks
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 10:43pmReviving John Fitzgerald “Jack” Kennedy as propaganda for Willard Mitt Romney. What other liberal Romney supporters will be on display from the Blaze?
Report Post »DD313
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 7:04pmVisited the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas a number of years back. For someone who lived through 11-22-63 it snapped me back to that day like a time machine. From the window next to the one Oswald shot through you can look down to the street where a white X is painted on the sidewalk to mark the spot President Kennedy was hit. All lingering doubts about the Warren Commission version of events were dispelled in an instant for me. It was a perfect sniper position. As traffic passes, the vehicles just get smaller. Without a need to lead his target, Oswald only had to pull the trigger and work the bolt on his military surplus rifle. It was an extremely sobering, emotional experience which I would recommend to anyone interested in this tragic piece of history. Oh, and very tastefully done.
Report Post »disenlightened
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 10:22pmI had the very same experience. Then I went down to the marker in the road and looked back at the window. Clear as a bell.
Report Post »LOJ
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 5:04pmWhat memories this brings back of those times. The World stood in fear during the Missiles of October trials and blockade. We thought we were toast back then too!
Report Post »Tri-ox
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 4:54pm“Jackie – bring me another bottle of gin!”
Report Post »disenlightened
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 4:23pmLook, Bobby, Lyndon’s got me hooked up with a couple red heads for after dinner in Dallas tonight. Lady Bird’s gonna take Jackie to a museum to get her out of the way. I have to get a few prescriptions filled before the motorcade starts. Give my best to Marilyn. Talk at you later.
Report Post »pennswoods
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 5:37pmVery good. What you posted as humor has more truth to it than you may realize.
Report Post »Lee_in_PA
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:46pmI wish I might have heard what JFK had said more clearly. The first president I felt some connection with. Died on my birthday.
Report Post »alwayshappy
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:39pmJFK is dead and buried. Let him rest in peace. Revealing tapes does little.
Report Post »HuskerDave
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:17pmI’ve always found it interesting. JFK installed secret recording devices in the oval office, and it’s “a historical window.” Nixon continued to use those devices, and he’s a “paranoid monster.”
Report Post »FaithfulFriend
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:06pmNo doubt that Barry, Harry and Nancy would have hated him for his policy ideas if he were in the office today.
Report Post »jacques.daspy
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:59pmI would be interested to learn of his justification for the first and second invasion of Cuba which lead to the Cuban Missile Crisis? His reelection took priority over the fate of the planed.
Report Post »FantaGirl
Posted on January 25, 2012 at 8:22pmThe Monroe Doctrine clearly states that the U.S. will take action against any further European attempts to colonize or interfere the Americas. Russia is a part of Europe, and Cuba is a part of the Americas (Russia was relocating nuclear warheads to Cuba).
However, this should not be taken as a ‘law’ that was made to govern other countries, merely it is a declaration that, should any European country attempt to colonize or interfere with the Americas, it will be seen as an act of aggression, and that The United States will take action. Despite the doctrine having been made more than a century before, it is still an American doctrine. Even if the President of the United States may disagree with a doctrine or law, he is still sworn to enforce it. This doctrine still exists today.
Thank you for reading and God bless.
Report Post »PITMASTER
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:54pmGiven the state of our politics today, Kennedy would be a border line Conservative Republican.
Report Post »The_Jerk
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 2:13pmThat goes to show how far left the Republican party has traveled.
Report Post »HuskerDave
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:21pmPerhaps, but much like our last several Democrat President’s, he was woefully naiive in matters of national security. Despite the hero worship of JFK, most of the international problems he fixed were things he had caused. Don’t forget, Viet Nam was JFK’s war. Nixon gets the bad rap, but he’s the one who ended it.
There was a name for people in JFK‘s time who have the opinions of today’s “progressives.“ We called them ”communists.” We hated them and saw them as enemies of our country, and justly so.
Report Post »HuskerDave
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:23pmThat’s because, in JFK’s day, people who have the ideals of today’s “progressives” were accurately called “communists.” We hated them and saw them as the enemy of our way of life – and we were right.
Report Post »ProbIemSoIver
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:34pmI believe 100% that he was assasinated for signing Executive Order 11110, granting authority BACK to the U.S.Treasury to print an AMERICAN currency based on silver.
This would have Destroyed the Federal Reserve PRIVATE BANK’s FIAT NOTE based on Nothing.
Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln and others warned of the Central bank.
1865: In a statement to Congress President Abraham Lincoln states, “I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the financial institutions in the rear. Of the two the one in my rear is my greatest foe.” Later that year on April 14 President Lincoln is assassinated, less than two months before the end of the American Civil War.
1833: President Andrew Jackson starts removing the government’s deposits from the Rothschild controlled, Second Bank of the United States and instead deposits them into banks directed by democratic bankers. This causes the Rothschilds to panic and so they do what they do best, contract the money supply causing a depression. President Jackson knows what they are up to and later states, “you are a den of thieves vipers, and I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out.”
1835: an assassin tries to shoot President Jackson, but miraculously both of the assassin’s pistols misfired. President Jackson would later claim that he knew the Rothschilds were responsible for the attempted assassination.
Report Post »Hickory
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:48pmThe strongest memories I have of JFK was our involvement in Viet Nam. He kept it to advisors only but, when LBJ took over, he escalated it to a real horror. He threw many of us into the meat grinder just to line his pockets and those of his Democrat buddies in the senate and house. He killed our buddies for cash. It is nothing more than that. Nothing will ever change my opinion of that @#$%*&((. I know………….. I was there and some of my friends are still there.
Report Post »SpankDaMonkey
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:20pm.
Report Post »Blah Blah Blah “I need another Pill” Blah Blah Blah “Where’s Marilyn?” Blah Blah Blah Blah……
garyM
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:18pmToo late to release any JFK stuff now, if there was anyone to prosecute, they are dead by now! They killed Ozwald to silence anything that might have been said and the one they selected to kill Ozwald named Jack Ruby had already been told by a doctor that he had a month or so to live because of cancer. Nice coverup!
Report Post »GMAN455
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:12pmJohn F. Kennedy
vs
The Federal Reserve
John-F-Kennedy.net Message Board
Post | Read
On June 4, 1963, a virtually unknown Presidential decree, Executive Order 11110, was signed with the authority to basically strip the Bank of its power to loan money to the United States Federal Government at interest. With the stroke of a pen, President Kennedy declared that the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank would soon be out of business. The Christian Law Fellowship has exhaustively researched this matter through the Federal Register and Library of Congress. We can now safely conclude that this Executive Order has never been repealed, amended, or superceded by any subsequent Executive Order. In simple terms, it is still valid.
When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the author of Profiles in Courage -signed this Order, it returned to the federal government, specifically the Treasury Department, the Constitutional power to create and issue currency -money – without going through the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank. President Kennedy’s Executive Order 11110 [the full text is displayed further below] gave the Treasury Department the explicit authority: “to issue silver certificates against any silver bullion, silver, or standard silver dollars in the Treasury.” This means that for every ounce of silver in the U.S. Treasury’s vault, the government could introduce new money into circulation based on the silver bullion physically held there. As a result, more than
Report Post »iblvingd
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:19pmThe history of the Money Changers http://www.iamthewitness.com/books/Andrew.Carrington.Hitchcock/The.History.of.the.Money.Changers.htm
Report Post »bikerr
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:01pmThe tapes have been sanitized for our listening enjoyment.
Report Post »ChiefGeorge
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:20pmSanitized by historians/government as well as JFK himself. He knew he was being recorded so he was careful to what he would have really said in lets say a more private area of the White House or outside on the veranda with Bobby. Its like editing your email before sending it!
Report Post »Harry Assenback
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 12:56pmNot that I agree with Kennedy‘s politics but isn’t it amazing how far left the democrats have gone since Kennedy? Obama, Pelosi, Reid and many others would have been considered treasonous by Kennedy.
Ask not what your Country can do for you but what you can do for your Country. Kennedy
Ask what your Country can do for you and not what you can do for your Country. Obama
Report Post »The_Jerk
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:08pmMcGovern, 1972, is when the neocons left the Democrat party to join the Republican party. They were/are Trotskyites. This is how true conservatism was lost in the Republican party.
Report Post »CLEttinger
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:31pmNot sure if this is true, but I heard John Kenedy was a republican but had to run for the senate seat as a democrat because the republicans had their nominee.
Report Post »The_Jerk
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 12:36pmI recall that Nixon was called paranoid by the lame stream media for making similar recordings.
Report Post »calebgs83
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 12:34pmJacqueline Kennedy believed that LBJ had her husband assassinated…and I think she may be right.
Report Post »rowanrobert
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 1:08pmHe was killed by the bankers because He moved to give America its own debt free money and be out from under the banks.
Report Post »iblvingd
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 3:06pmThe Rothchilds rule the world!
Report Post »disenlightened
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 5:05pmNo, JFK was probably killed by a Muslim, just like his little brother.
Report Post »pennswoods
Posted on January 24, 2012 at 5:30pmLee Harvey Oswald killed JFK. It’s that simple. He may have been a patsy for the Mafia or the Cubans but he shot JFK from the Texas School Book Depository Building on December 22, 1963. The Zapruder film show JFK’s forehead blowing up. When a bullet enters a body it goes in leaving a hole slightly larger than the diameter of the bullet and comes out the other side as an explosion. Ask any hunter. Gov Connelly and his wife were sitting on a jump seat 6 inches below and in front of the President and Mrs Kennedy. That explains why the bullet went from JFK‘s throat and hit Conelly’s wrist. No mystery. Both Sam Giancana and Fidel Castro hated JFK and Bobby for different reasons .
Report Post »bigdaddyt46
Posted on January 25, 2012 at 7:02ami have always believed this myself.
Report Post »