Nearly 50 years after the Kennedy assassination the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum released secret tapes on Tuesday, reports Reuters. These accumulated recordings, totaling 45 hours, are of meetings and telephone conversations from the last three months of his presidency. Kennedy secretly taped conversations in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room even his aides didn’t know about. Main topics of discussion were on Vietnam and his 1964 re-election campaign. You can hear a foreign prime minister talking to the president’s children who stopped by to see their dad at work. The last recording date is on November 20, 1963. President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy leave for Texas the following day.
According to the Boston Globe, 30 more hours of taped meetings have yet to be released due to national security issues. His re-election campaign was very much on the president’s mind. Kennedy tells political advisers in one November meeting how can Democrats appeal to the “average guy” voters for next year’s election? He later states “the average guy is not unprosperous, but he’s not very prosperous either.” “The ones who are prosperous hate our guts.” The president likes the idea the political convention may be televised in color, a new technology at the time. He thinks it will have a big impact, though it could be expensive.
In September 1963 Kennedy met with a general and State Department adviser on their fact finding mission to Vietnam. The general was optimistic on how things are in Vietnam, while the adviser was trepidations due to widespread military and social hostility over there. Kennedy asked them, “You both went to the same country?” Another recording features Kennedy conversing with Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam, in November. He schedules an appointment with Ambassador Lodge the day after he gets back. Lodge went to Vietnam on a trade mission where Kennedy asks for a briefing book to take with him to Texas. This conversation was recorded on November 20, 1963.
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko visited the President in October. During their meeting in the Oval Office the president’s son and daughter come by. The president’s voice softens when he asks his children if they want to say hello to the Minister? Gromyko says in a booming voice “Hello, hello.” “They are very popular in our country.” These recordings are available at the presidential library and online for research.