thank you to our featured

speaker mark silverstone for taking the time out of his busy schedule to be here with us tonight marks an associate professor and presidential studies at the miller center at uva and chair of the center's presidential recordings program and hails from westport, connecticut and a graduate of

staples high school there so there may be others from westport and staples graduates. so you're in good company tonight marks gonna provide us with overview of the recordings program established by the center in 1998 with highlights of secretly take meetings and phone conversations from various presidents. they'll tell us what he and his team are now working on as well. it is as his current project on president kennedy and vietnam as chair of the recordings program mark edits. hurt white house tapes of presidents john f kennedy lyndon b johnson and richard. i'm nixon. he's the general editor of the presidential recordings digital edition the primary online portal for transcripts of the tapes published by the university of virginia press. mark earned a ba degree in philosophy from trinity college a master's degree in international affairs from

columbia university and a phd in history from ohio university a historian of the cold war. he's author of the kennedy withdrawal camelot and the american commitment to vietnam published by harvard forthcoming in 2022 and constructing the monolith the united states great britain and international communism 1945 to 1950. also harvard 2009 which won the stuart l burnath book prize from the society for historians of american foreign relations. there's time mark will answer your questions at the close, which you can submit on the q&a tab at the bottom of your screen. so with that i'll pass this over to him welcome mark. thank you again for joining us tonight. thanks, ron, and thanks to your whole team for setting this up. i'm really pleased to be with you on the heels of this president's day. it's a great time to look back

on presidential history at the same time that we're trying to understand this this really difficult and significant moment of history that we're in right now and living through especially the events of the last couple days, but we'll take a look back and maybe that will help to put some of what we're currently living through in some kind of perspective. we're here on the 22nd of february the 290th birthday of george, washington. i remember when february 20 we had a february 22nd off for watching this birthday and february 12th off for lincoln's birthday now combined into into single president's day. we're also speaking about the presidency at a time when there's greater public interest in. presidential records given what the previous president had done with his own so that has been in

the news. we're also speaking about presidents on the heels of last nights in the nights before cnn program on lbj, which i thought was a fabulous for part. series on the johnson presidency the tumultuous time that that was from 63 really through january 69 and that forms an important part of the work that we do at the miller center and the recordings program and it was significant that in last night's and the night before's episodes. the tapes were really the star of the show. i think the video the images imagery was fantastic some i had never seen before but having a chance to listen to johnson speak with a variety of private individuals his own aids to get a sense of what was he in his own mind from his own mouth is really irreplaceable. and so that's material that i get a chance to work with every

at the miller center. and it's what i have a chance to share with you tonight. and so one of the interesting questions that comes up about this and it's one i had wondered when i started this work back in 2000. i've been at the miller center now for coming up on 22 years is how did these materials even come to light and moreover? how is it that we we got access to them because these are presidential records. they should be classified these you should never see the light of day or at least that was the thought at one time. and as with so much in modern american political life, the threads really go back to richard nixon in the summer of 1973 with congressional increase into the watergate scandal really heating up the former deputy chief of staff alexander butterfield testified before the senate watergate committee and revealed that president nixon did indeed have listening

devices set up in the white house. he had them in the oval office, but he also had them in the cabinet room in his office next door the executive office building the eisenhower executive office building. he also had them in the residential quarters at the white house as well as at camp david. so this is an extraordinary rich and voluminous trove of presidential materials that that the watergate investigators wanted to get their hands on nixon stonewalled. turning them over he at first. said that he would provide his own summaries of these and then transcripts of these and then and then hand them over that wasn't good enough for the senate committee. nor was it good enough for the independent council that was looking into these matters. there was haggling back and forth about their disposition. ultimately it came down to the

supreme court which decided by a vote of eight to nothing. suggesting that we're indicating that nixon's claim of executive privilege did not matter here because these materials were relevant to criminal cases that were then pending and so nixon gave had to give up these tapes and once the investigators got a chance to listen to them and particularly a tape from june of 1972 about a week or so after the break-in at the democratic national headquarters at the watergate hotel complex. it became clear that nixon had engaged in obstruction of justice and once the the relevant committees who were considering impeachment at the time the house judiciary committee was considering impeachment at the time once they got a hold of this and not only the democrats but the republicans heard this it was clear that the game was up and nixon realized that he would not

be able to survive a floor vote of the house and he would in fact be impeached the judiciary committee voted. primitively to send those articles to the floor and so nixon ends up residing the office of the presidency at the end of the first week of august 1974. but with those criminal cases still ongoing and nixon quite honestly still having jurisdiction over those materials because at the time it was believed that they were his personal property. congress decided to act and passed a law in december of 1974 the the presidential recordings and materials preservation act in which congress claimed jurisdiction over those materials didn't want to see them destroyed and wanted to preserve them for history. but also because again they were

still relevant to ongoing cases four years later congress took an even more significant step when it passed the presidential records act which transformed these materials these records from the private property of the presidents individuals to the public property of the united states, so they now became ours and it it was left up to the presidential libraries where these materials were being stored from from previous presidents about what to do with them. which leads into a very interesting interesting question of how many presidents have have really done this during their time in office. when did it start and when did it end after butterfield had disclosed that there was a taping going on in the nixon white house. the questions went out to the head of the kennedy library dan

fan in the head of the johnson library harry middleton did those presidents tape? arthur schlesinger who was a kennedy acolyte had written on kennedy famously pulitzer prize winning book in 1965 when he heard that that nixon had taped and was then asked about canada. he said kennedy never would have done that. he was far too smart to do anything. that's stupid. and of course fence said yes indeed president kennedy did tape and harry middleton said the same thing about the johnson teams. so now we were off to the races these two other presidents taped. who else did? and that leaves us back to franklin roosevelt who began the regime of surreptitious presidential taping other presidents have have taped their materials and we can go and into the into the future and fast forward to bill clinton and barack obama who taped their conversations largely with

journalists so that they knew exactly what was said if they needed to to consult in the future. but the practice of taping their conversations in secret without anybody else in the room knowing that they were being taped whether those were cabinet officials presidential aids and again private individuals were coming into the white house that began with with franklin roosevelt. now roosevelt's only taped about eight hours of material the miller center in fact beginning in july is going to begin a project on the roosevelt takes and it should be very exciting. we'll be able to finish that up over the course of the academic year and then publish shortly thereafter, but it wasn't just roosevelt. harry truman taped he didn't like the whole prospect of taping. he's thought it was unethical unethical as did roosevelt as well roosevelt taped from august of 1940 until just after he was

elected in november of 1940 and then never taped again. he was uncomfortable with with doing so truman was very uncomfortable with doing so after finding out from fdr an fdr's aids really that that fdr had taped truman tried it a couple times, but but he didn't want anything more to do with it. and so really after april of 1945. he didn't touch it. so i'd eisenhower taped a little bit four or five hours or so really idiosyncratic. it's hard to get a a good sense of rhyme or reasons to why he taped when he did the best we can determine is that it seemed to be conversations that might have been sensitive that he wanted a record of but the golden age of taping really begins with jfk and kennedy begins taping in the summer of 1962 and that lasts right through into november of 1963

about 260 hours of material. that is both telephone tape and meeting tape the vast majority of those are meeting tapes. lyndon johnson carried on the tradition of taping johnson who had also taped while he was vice president began taping from the very moment that he became president and we have 800 hours of lbj material about 650 of them on the telephone and about a hundred and fifty of them being meeting tapes, but it's richard nixon who wins the award for the greatest taping scheme that we have seen of these presents 3400 hours of nixon materials tape from february of 1971 through july of 1973. and the reason that there are so many nixon tapes is because he

was using her voice activated system. so every time that he stepped into a room with a beeper on his on his belt buckle. a voice activated recorder would kick off and so whether nixon was speaking with aids whether he was watching tv and then left the room and the tv stayed on that would be captured as well which is why we have hours and hours of washington. i'll say the name washington redskins football games because that was the name of the team at the time. was it that the miller center comes to to take this on in 1998 philip? zelica who had moved from harvard to the university of virginia to be director of the miller center had been involved in a project to transcribe the kennedy cuban missile crisis tapes and philip brought that project with him from harvard to the university of virginia. and thought that why were while we're taping the the missile crisis tapes? that's great.

that's that's 13 days or so. let's see if we can tape the entire corpus of kennedy materials which stretched again to 260 hours, but then let's go further and try to transcribe all of the presidents who taped and so the presidential recordings program began in 98 at the miller center and we're going strong as ron mentioned we've been doing this for for 24 years now and at the end of the the conversation here, i'll give you a better sense of how you can access these materials yourself. but i want to play some tapes for you and give you a sense of what's on them. we're gonna jump from kennedy to johnson to nixon and we'll see how many i can get through before we turn to q&a because i know that there will be a lot of questions about this. so let's start with jfk and it's it's a tape that is important for me for my work. i've just completed a manuscript

on kennedy in vietnam and the focus was not necessarily on a comprehensive soup to nuts kennedy in vietnam. those kinds of narratives are out there and they're they're worthwhile and valuable. i was interested in a smaller segment of the kennedy vietnam story which relates to his planning to withdraw the united states from vietnam by 1965. lots has been lots have been written about this recently and because of some material that kennedy taped we have a way to try to get to the bottom of what kennedy was thinking about vietnam yet large but also what he was thinking about with respect to this planning that had been going on since the summer of 1962 to get the united states out by 1965 a time when he expected that he would still be present. so the conversation we're going to hear is from early october

1963. it will feature defense secretary robert mcnamara chairman of the joint chiefs maxwell taylor. they have just come back from a fact-finding trip to vietnam and they deliver to kennedy this report, which says a variety of things about the way the the administration should be handling a really troublesome ally in good in gm the president of south vietnam, but more than that, they give kennedy a plan to extricate the united states from this conflict. look like it was in in some trouble at the time. so we're gonna hear kennedy ask about this thousand. that's a thousand troops to get out by by the end of 1963. we'll also hear from kennedy's national security advisor mcgeorge bundy maxwell taylor again, the chairman of the joint chiefs and george ball. who's the number two at the state department. we're going to hear three excerpts in this clip. the first two are from a morning meeting when kennedy and just a couple of other aids are meeting

with taylor and and mcnamara and then the last segment this third excerpt and you'll hear the difference in the quality of the tape itself that comes from an evening session of the national security council when they're debating what they should say to the public about this should they announce that they're gonna get the united states out by the the end of 65, 65, so it's a fascinating. four minutes or so of conversation listen to mcnamara the quality of his voice. this is a man who later embraced the notion that vietnam was mcnamara's war. so kennedy mcnamara taylor from october of 63 this thousand

reductions can really that's going to be an assumption that is going well. and if it don't go well one of the major premises two major terms, we had a first complete we can complete the military campgn in the first three scores. before the fourth chorus 65 the second is extends beyond that theory we believe we can train the continues to take over the essential functions and the drawable to our forces and this thousand conjunction with that higher the list of the units here at the least forces. i think it's wasteful and complications for their problems in ours the question to me is

whether we want to get publicly pinned to a date six may all right goes back to arabic too as it does. it's something we deflated version. i was just you. i always ask the question. when can we finish this job on the sense that you will reduce this insurgency to a little more than sporadic it. they would say 64 the ample cup. i realize tt i'm assailant. assuming no major factory new factory. that is the twig. i realize that okay.

here the only employers to put magazine is tire reporters in this one has whether or not wars and before them up asleep. territory 65 and i'm sure that i am need anything are us forces. of course, the schule would have laid out worked out because we can train you the job. there is some by the end of this year again is that there may be this signal maybe ambiguously red. we're not quite sure what's wrong reason for state.

you so far over the optimistic, and i don't i'm not sure. but by units so that the war doesn't go well. exercises were not an influence the course of action and he managed to take the congress of people, but weo have a plan for reducing the exposure of us combat personnel to the grill actions in south vietnam. so the people stopped the

obnoxious gradually develop a capability to stress himself. i think this will be a great value to us in immediately in a very strong views of fulbright and others that we're bogged on a national be there protection. so that withdrawal the thousand man withdrawal actually did go through in in early december of 1963. of course. jfk was not around when that happened. that was under lyndon johnson and and shameless plug that it is my book. i i cover johnson's approach to withdrawal policy and as we know that that never fully went through because by the end of 1964 johnson was conducting reprisal strikes on north vietnam and then into 1965 more sustained strikes. would rolling thunder bombing and then by the middle of 1965 100,000 troops were going in

that would rise to over half a million by 1968. but lbj is a fascinating character. not only with respect to vietnam, but with respect to power and bob caro's wonderful work. on lbj really is a study of power and i want to play a couple of clips from lbj that gives you a sense of how he wielded that power one of them comes from just 10 days or so after he became president. it's a conversation between johnson and jackie kennedy the late president's widow, and it's notable for a variety of reasons, but particularly for johnson, who knows that he is going to need to stay in the good graces of the kennedy family. he has picked up the mantle from the fallen present. he's trying to to pass kennedy's

legislative agenda tax cuts foreign aid, and then eventually civil rights and then he's gonna need to go into a 1964 presidential campaign not alienating the candy forces, which will be a real challenge given where we know bobby kennedy will be at that time. so here he is early process sweet talking jackie kennedy and she doing it back to him which gives you just as much a sense of how how much jackie was a political player in her own right? so here's lbj and jackie kennedy from early december 1963. mr. president, i just want you to know you allowed and by so

many and so much i'm one of them i tried i didn't dare bother you again, but i got kenny o'donnell over you to give you a message if you ever saw you to give to you about my letter that was waiting for me last night first thing you you get some things to learn one of them is that you don't bother me you really strength, but i wasn't gonna send you in one more letter. i was just send me anything. you just come over and put your arm around. that's all you do when you haven't got anything else do let's take a walk. let's walk around the backyard just let me tell you how much you mean to all of us and how we can carry on if you give us a little space. you know what i want to say to you about that. no, how rare a letter is an impressions and writing. do you know that i've got more and your handwriting that i do in jack now and for you to write

thing today, you know your tape announcement and everything. i want you just know this that i told my mother a long time ago when everybody else gave up about my election in 48. yeah, my mother and my wife and my sisters and you females are courage that we men don't have and so we have to rely on independent on yeah, and you got something to do and that's a president relying on you. this is the person you. so they're not many women, you know run around with good many presidents. so you just and you get the biggest job of your life and around with two presidents. that's it to say about me. okay. thank you for calling mr. president. everybody do come back. i will. so that's one version of the johnson treatment.

here's another one which is a little bit more pointed and it's visited upon sergeant shriver the late president's brother-in-law current director of the peace corps in february of 1964 johnson once shriver to wear two hats. he wants me to be not only head of the peace corps, but he wants him to run this new program on the war on poverty johnson in his state of the union from from early that january had declared an unconditional warm poverty and shriver would be a great person to run this because of the kennedy ties the continuity of his links to the administration. he's a great administrator and johnson is also thinking about who should be his running mate. come november some people were talking up shriver. this is a nice way to sideline shriver, of course some people to talk about bobby as well and johnson will have his ways to sideline bobby too, but here in

february of 1964 johnson is really going to put the screws to shriver. you're going to be my man to run this program and just one reference that you'll hear made when shriver says well, i think the person who should run this is bill that bill is bill moyers who was actually shriver's deputy at the time running the peace corps. so here's a real good example of the johnson treatment. charge of the morning mr. president. how are you? i'm on announce your appointment at press conference. what that but i think it's a it would be advisable if you don't mind if i could have with weekend. i wanted to sit down with a couple of people and see what we could get the way of some sort

of a plan because what happened to at least my stories that what happens is that you you're not somebody was here somebody else and they don't know what the hell they're doing or what the program's going to be specifically and who's going to carry then you're you're in a hell of okay. you know, what are you gonna do? well that, you know, just don't talk to them just go away and go to game david figured out. we need some say the prayers. we've got safe to him and i've got tell them what to talk to you about. yes today and you can just take off work out your peace corps. anyway you want to be head of the committee and have some acting operator if you want bell to help you. i'll let him do that. i'll do anything, but i want to announce this get it behind me. so i i keep quit getting all these other press. and i i think you're going to you've got to do it. you just can't let me down. so the quicker we get it behind us better and you can talk to them as special assistant to the president have a lot easier and you can talk to them just as

peace admintrator anything if they want to talk to you and tell them speak for me. yes, well, that's don't make me wait till next week because i won't satisfy this press with something. i told him i'm gonna have a press meeting but they're gonna have all these -- questions and i don't want to be indecisive about and if you can't run a hundred million program, you left hand a billion when the right hand you're not as smart as i think you are beside the money's got that's no problem at all. the people that i mean, well the people i want to keep all these people for the government that are in the peace corps and bring them into any other program so that they are that's good. i'm not going to serve you from the peace lord all i'm gonna say that you're gonna maintain your identification with the peace corps and how much the details you do whether you harm or sleep out. the room is going to be a matter for you to determine and i'm gonna make that clear.

but i am going to make it clear that you must have poverty. and the home and abroad you want to be and i don't care who you have run the peace tour if you can run it wonderful if you can't get oshkosh from chicago and i'll name it. i can't get anybody the only guy that could possibly do it. the president is bill. well, you can write your even write your ticket on anything you want to do there. i want to get rid of poverty though. yeah, and you can organize a poverty right move again, and you have to get on the message monday, but the sunday paper is gonna say, it's you mr. poverty. unless you've got real compelling reasons, which i haven't heard and i'm going to say that you're gonna maintain your identification with a peace corps and operate it to such an extent as you may think desire. there are lots of other great examples of the johnson treatment, and i'll direct you to some later but now richard nixon.

nixon started taping in february of 1971 and it's an opportune time for us thinking back on on those years because it allows us to catch some of the early developments in his planning for an opening to china. it allows us to hear how he's thinking about farms control with the soviet union. he starts taping less than two weeks after the incursion into laos, so it's a pretty important moment this conversation from that summer comes a day after nixon presided in rose garden sarah wedding of his daughter trisha, which you can see in column one of the times right here, but what was most important about the news that day in the new york times was what appeared in the middle columns about this pentagon papers study. this is what would come to be known as pentagon papers, which was the secret department of

defense study that looked back at us relations with vietnam from 1945 through 1967. and it takes al-haig to focus richard nixon's attention on this which he does in this phone call that sunday morning. here. hello. yes, sir. hi al how what about the cash receipt you got to figure yet? no server. i think it's going to be quite low. mm-hmm. you should be as should be last week or better. yeah, it should be less than funny. i would think yeah, so be very when do you get that? do you know we don't get it

officially till monday afternoon get a reading on it very well monday afternoon officially. well, let's wait till then. hi, okay, nothing else of interest in the world, very significant this god --, new york times expose the most highly classified document. allhat i see that i didn't read the story. but you mean that that was leaked out of the pentagon sir. the whole study that was done for mcnamara and then carried on after mcnamara left by clifford and the peace snakes over there. this is a devastating security breach of the grace magnitude of anything else. well, what what's being done about it then? i mean i didn't like did we know this was coming out? no, we did. not sure. yeah. they're just a few copies of this. what about the report? what about the the lared what's he going to do about it is sir.

well, i did now i i just start right at the top and fire some people i mean whoever whatever department it came out about fire the top guy is where i'm sure it came from defense and i'm sure it was stolen that at the time in the turnover of the administration. it's two years old. they've been holng it for our juicy time and i think they found it out to affect hatfield mcvern. that's my own estimate. but it's it's something that it's aix bag. it's a tough attack on knedy. it shows that the genesis of the war really occurred around 61. yeah, that's clifford. i see and it's brutal on president johnson. they're going to end up in a massive cup fight in the democratic party on this thing. there's some but also massive against the war against the war. but it's a pentagon study, huh? it was indeed and over the next

few days. nixon would would think about this more more? what did it mean that these materials were leaked and he started to get really scared because he was concerned that there was another study floating around washington that might get leaked and that study contained the history of the 1968 presidential election right down at the wire when nixon and his campaign kind of monkeyed around with the possibility of peace talks starting with the north and south vietnamese, and this is what came to be known as the chenault affair and nixon a fears that there is material related to this chenault affair and what's called the bombing halt file in a safe at brookings the story goes that johnson had announced a bombing halt on october 31st 1968 theoretically as far as nixon knew so he could

swing that election to hubert humphrey the democratic candidate up until then and nixon had a double digit lead, but humphrey had really narrowed things down the last week or so the campaign and if it became known that there was not only the possibility of peace talks, but that all the parties were going to go to them then wow. humphrey might have gotten a really big boost from this so the nixon campaign decides to move in tells the south vietnamese to stay away from it and humphrey gets no bump but johnson knew about it because he had fbi cia nsa material indicating that the nixon campaign was monkeying around and nixon thinks that all of that material is in a safe in this bombing halt file at the brookings institution. so on june 17th, nixon and kids bob haldeman chief of staff generalist policy advisor and henry kissinger his national security advisor. talk about this in the oval

office and it's this conversation and some others that's going to lead nixon to try to plug up this and other lease which will lead him to create the plumbers and the plumbers leads right into watergate. this is one of the conversations you can hear on the miller center website, and i'd like to play it for you. but i also want to give you an opportunity to ask some questions. so let's let's hold on to this for a while and let me just tell you. a couple other things before we breaking and then open it up. um, i think that these materials are are just golden for our purposes particularly in living in a democracy because they provide some sense of transparent transparency and accountability. it gives us a sense of how power is wielded in the people's name and it's important to be able to to look back at this to to see how decisions were made on key

matters because they the questions that being asked then can certainly help inform the kinds of questions that we should be asking in the present. so i think the wonderful for that purpose the tapes also humanize the president it gives us a much better sense of who these these guys and at some point we hope gals will be as president. um, and at least in johnson's case as we heard from the series the last couple nights it gives us a much better sense about what he really thought. i mean no longer. can we really argue that lyndon johnson was a warmonger on vietnam after hearing what he was really saying to his aides and private. so that's helpful. the tapes allow us to understand a little bit more about how policy is made in real time about how what a president reads in the paper that day can affect who he decides to speak with the arguments that he he makes you

can see the evolution of policy as it's happening and that's a real boon to us as historians and then furthermore they help to to either correct or shape the historical record because there are recordings of conversations for which there are no written memoranda at all. the kennedy tape that i played you in fact there's no what's called a memcon a memorandum of conversation doesn't exist for that first that first clip from the morning of october 2nd. so all we have really is the tape and because of that we can hear kennedy saying well, look if 65 doesn't work out for getting the troops out of vietnam. we'll simply get a new date. we'll push it back. and what does that mean for kennedy's willingness? to stick around in vietnam and maybe fight harder or at least not to pull the troops out if the war wasn't going well so for a variety of reasons, these

materials are extraordinary and and i feel really quite privileged to be able to work on. you can listen to them particularly the lbj tapes through lbj tapes.org. it's a project that we've entered into with the lyndon johnson library and foundation. you can scroll and browse through and get over a hundred clips like you've seen before here on vietnam civil rights the war on poverty on johnson kind of the man and a variety of other topics, and this is all free of charge and we're hoping to do something comparable for the other presidents in working with the other presidential libraries as well. our gold-plated material that we published through uva. press comes through this presidential recordings digital edition, and if some of you out there have the ability to vpn into a uva network you can

access these. unfortunately for others there's a pay wall and we are currently in conversation and we've been in conversation with the press and with other units at the university for a while to try to make these open access because i think it's one of my goals is to make sure that students across the country have access to all of these tapes what better way to help teach american history at least modern american political history then hearing the words of lyndon johnson or john f kennedy or richard nixon. and then finally you can read more about the history of the recording themselves and each of the president's approaches to recording through the material that we publish on miller center.org and through the informational pages that we have for the presidential recordings program. you can get that background on the tapes. you can also get some more of these digital exhibits like the ones i've played today and then if you're really ambitious and you want to listen and just kind

of poke around you can download every single audio file that exists because we've uploaded them to our website and this is all available free of charge. so with that, let me stop and and take your questions. thank you again mark. that was fascinating talk. it's amazing listening to the secret recordings. i never heard any of those before and i mean literally thousands of hours. so i appreciate your distilling them down for a few clips to give us an idea of what exactly is in the treasure trove of materials. it looks like we have a few questions if anyone again wants to ask mark anything just jot it in the q&a tab down at the bottom of your computer, and we've got a few minutes left. mark is graciously agreed to

answer some questions. so one had actually come in earlier in the day and it was who's the earliest president that we have recordings of their voice grant mckinley. i think i've heard teddy rose about thank you and that's bunny shepherd yeah, it's actually benjamin harris. i consulted with one of our archivists at the miller center and he was able to provide a link to a harrison clip. it doesn't say a whole lot. it's a little scratchy, but that answers the question at least as to who was number one. okay. thank you. another question that had come in during your presentation. just what triggered the taping prior to nixon or did the president have to click on something to start the taping? from an anonymous question it was a combination of things.

so for kennedy and let's stick with kennedy johnson nixon for now for kennedy. he had a switch in the knee well of his desk that he could flick if he was there. he also had a dictaphone that he would use so it was quite consciously pressing the buttons and kennedy would record memoirs in fact of of his reflections on a day. there was also a switch at kennedy's place in the cabinet room that he could flick and it would turn on those microphones which themselves were placed behind the the curtains behind him. so it was a manually operated system for kennedy. for johnson, he would largely signal to his secretaries oftentimes the door was open between johnson and an outer office and he would kind of turn his fingers around swirl his fingers like that and that meant to take it to tape it or he

would yell at the secretaries and you know tape this one there were times when johnson when we would get some off oval office conversations that were taped via johnson speakerphone. which were fascinating so largely for lbj2 they were manually operated of the sorts of a sort nixon was entirely voice activated and that was largely because the people who set it up recognized and nixon recognized himself too that he really wasn't terribly adept to technology and they were going to lose a lot if they didn't have that kind of a system in place so they decided to go with this voice activated system and it starts two years into his presence. ultimately. it's because nixon wants a couple a few things. he wants as the other presidents want to to record for posterity what happens so they could write their memoirs more effectively. they wanted to know what was said in their presence so they

could hold somebody's feet to the fire if need be and for nixon having the tape system made sense because previously he'd had a note taker in on a bunch of conversations and recognized that the presence of this other party really reduced the level of candor in those conversations. so they got the person out of the room and they put in the the taping system. so that's a little bit more insight into into. why it is that we have what we have. okay. thank you a couple more questions have come in one from michael whitesner hard to understand why a president we want to tape themselves seems like it would just get them into trouble. did they think they were immune? hi, michael, first of all i see here from you. i well nobody thought that they would become public there was little expectation that they

would again all of these materials any material that a president is generating 1962 through 1971, which is the years of of kind of the golden age of taping everybody expects to take that material with them and do what it is. they want roosevelt had established the practice of creating presidential libraries you're building presidential libraries and then he placed his materials there for people to see and it was his at his discretion of what he wanted people to see and and so the other the subsequent presidents operated according to that same logic and nobody thought that that these would become public and nixon fought tooth and nail to make sure that they didn't become public. there was a lot of wrangling from 74 through 78 by the time that that congress. past the presidential records act but then it went beyond that as well. the nixon estate got very

involved and mixing himself got very involved over precisely what could be disclosed and it was decided that the materials that were of a purely personal nature would not be disclosed but other other information or other other materials pursuant to the president's discharge of his powers of office. those would all be made public. and nixon fought really hard, but but ultimately we now have these 3400 hours which doesn't mean that that there aren't materials that have been. withheld there are there are about i think it's about 700 hours of nixon material that is still withheld either because of reasons of national security or be because they are of a personal nature and they're withheld in accordance with the deed of gift and that's the same thing with kennedy and johnson too. it's not as though everything that they recorded is out there for the world to see there are

some that are still classified and historians from time to time will file freedom of information act requests to declassify it. okay. thank you. another question from michael frazier to what extent did the president's play to the tape? another great question. it's hard to know. we suspect that they probably were not. because especially if you think about kennedy in the middle of the cuban missile crisis who knows how it's going to come out and it's hard to really make the call as to what to tape and what not to tape knowing what's going to make you look good in the end. if in fact this does become public. there is some evidence that kennedy was was going to use these materials in real time. at least that's that's what we had. thought bobby had certainly listened to them by 1963 and we

think that kent jfk was going to use them in the course of his campaign or at least draw on them for his campaign in 1964. but again, it's hard to know what's going to make you look good and then also. certainly for nixon since it's voice activated in the spur of the moment. it's it's kind of tough to buy for kate and to go back and tell yourself that you're listening with kennedy and johnson. yes, they're manually operated so they're aware of themselves taping, but i think more significant the more significant conclusion about that is is that particularly for kennedy since they're are far fewer hours in lbj. when kennedy tape he was probably taping something that he thought was really important. because there were comparatively fewer hours so when he starts taping a lot on vietnam in 1963 particularly at the end of the summer in 1963, that's what he's

really devoting a lot of energy to it not devoting a lot of energy to it before that which again is another kind of aha moment a way we can triangulate to think about what was on his plate how much attention he was giving to it and how sound or unsound his policy was as a result. great. thank you. another question bob barnett what presidential conversations are recorded presently formal meetings diplomatic calls? and what discretion does the president have in this regard? great question, so we don't think that any president is recording in the same fashion that these guys did again surreptitious secret recording without anybody else knowing um, you will always have as was as is the case with the reagan takes which were also going to start transcribing this coming summer, but conversations with heads foreheads of state are are

listened in on by by other presidential aids. they're taking notes. they are making records of them potentially recordings. i think we had some of that from from the impeachment that trump the first trump impeachment hearings. and so so there's a record of what's being said just so you can capture that. we know that obama as i mentioned before taped material taped conversations with journalists again, just to make sure there's a record but we don't think that there's any of the secret nature going on. there was some suspicion at the outset of the trump administration. if you recall that exchange he had with jim comey. i think they were having dinner in the east wing of the white house and they were next to a wall next to a curtain. was there a microphone back there? we knew trump had taped as a private citizen might he be

doing the same thing as a president. we don't know but you know so far nothing like that has has come to light and i think we might have found out if it had in terms of discretion the presidential records act. gives the president some discretion as to what gets retained. and what does which is why over the past few years? there have been efforts on the part of congress to strengthen the presidential records act and make it and take it out of the president's hands that discretion as to what they can preserve as a presidential record and what they did previously the sense was look not everything that comes into a president's orbit is really relevant for historical purposes the thousands and thousands of letters that come in every day. yeah. maybe you save a few but you ditch a whole bunch of them. and so there were conversations that are supposed to take place between the president and the national and the archivist of

the united states guidelines are set for for how to manage this but the presidential records act as many people have pointed out in the last few weeks as we've learned more about what happened during the previous administration. it really rests on an honor system. and as we've seen an honor system isn't good enough. so the the efforts of congress to strengthen this and to set down some real hard and fast requirements is ongoing. thank you. well, we're almost eight o'clock. i've got five more questions as much time marcus you want to hang on for we appreciate you're being with us. so let me know if at some point you want to wrap up, but at least the next question we add was do you know if the tapes were recorded somewhere in the white house or off-site outside of the white house and who

actually hit the record button and put in fresh tapes. this is from owen, alaska. hey, oh and another great question the secret service maintain these tapes originally and then the white house communication agency did and they're the ones to store to administer the taping system. so for for a while, it was really only a handful of people who knew about it particularly with fdrs system and then with kennedy system, i think at the accident only four people new about it and they were the ones to run it and and the the wires went down to the basement of the white house from the from the oval office now the tapes themselves, where were the presence when they were made again, they differed from kennedy was really a the oval office cabinet room largely.

for johnson, it was the oval office the cabinet room a little lounge that he had off of the oval office itself residential quarters. and then at the lbj ranch, in fact, we're listening to a whole bunch of tapes right now about to publish on the the election 1964 and johnson's at the ranch a whole lot. and so there's a ton of tapes from there and then johnson is also taping off site. in fact during the whole walter jenkins scandal in october 1964 lbj's most trusted aid jenkins gets caught up in what was called a morals scandal at the time and and resigns johnson is is talking to his aids back in washington. from a hotel in new york. i think the waldorf and through a system that the white house communications agency had set up so they they take place in a variety of locals and again nixon. it's the house residential

quarters working quarters residential quarters and at at camp david okay. thank you. another question from eric glover who among those on the xcom during the cuban missile crisis new that the deliberations were being recorded. it's a great question. we don't think that anybody. we know that by august of 63. bobby had known about the tapes. but here, this is october 1962 we're talking about so so we don't think that any of those people knew about them kennedy. did evelyn lincoln did secretary and then the secret service agents did so you know, maybe bobby had found out earlier in 63 when body was speaking with lbj after johnson became president. he was well aware that he was

probably being taped and and to your question, that's a really good example of somebody maybe watching what they what they said to the president because they know that it's being caught. but but for kennedy mill was incredibly small circle that widened. um, i don't know exactly when it widened them and there are others my former boss tim. naftali who is writing on kennedy is is hopefully getting getting to the bottom of this or at least helping us learn more about how wide that circle really was. thank you. got three questions left if you got another couple of minutes got a minute. yeah one from pam molester even with the presidential records act. doesn't it seem that we are now missing out on much important information about presidential deliberations and discussions.

that would be relevant to history or do presidents now always do memcoms that reflect what occurred in conversations and meetings. it's a great question and it's a great observation because we are missing out. the white house is an oral culture so much happens in the hallways in the oval office again. assuming that that no tapes are being made now. and it's really tough to capture the texture of these conversations and policymaking without recreating these conversations certainly in real time, but even even you know immediately after the conversations take place at one point that might have been written down in a diary. but as we learned through the 1990s and the clinton scandals in saga you write something down in the diary that can be produced through subpoena and it can be used against you and so

people started to refrain from putting their recollections down on paper. and we know that particularly because they've told us that. one of the other flagship. research programs at the miller center miller center is the presidential oral history program, which has conducted the official oral histories of presence from gerald ford all the way up through george w. bush and is also doing a barack obama oral history program. we know that that these folks were skittish about about putting their recollections their memories down on paper because they might be reproduced. and to pam's question, so so that's that's one challenge. the other challenge is what do you do with all the email? that has just exploded over the years and and how do we how do we index that archive that make that available preserve it?

i mean there were thousands of emails that were lost, you know forget about whatever you want to say about hillary clinton during the the bush 43 years themselves, and there was an effort to to recapture some of those but but large amounts of them are still lost. so that's another challenge and the national archives dare. i say as hard as they are working to make this material available to generations and scholars. that's the american public. there's just more and more these mountains continue to build and it's going to be it's going to be a real chore to to. process them and make them accessible in a way that allows them to be intelligible. all right last couple for you. you mentioned the national archives had a question from ed slade. what role does the national archives play in preserving the tapes?

i hate ed. well, the archives is the general custodian of of these records and so all of the presidential libraries which was where people would originally go to get the tapes are part of the national archive system the nixon library became part of the national archives and i think it was 2007 the prior to that the nixon library stood out side of the narrow national archives and records administration system. and so there was a little bit of a wrinkle there. but yeah nara is the the broad holding agency for all of these and you and you know before the miller center did what it did and and uploaded all these materials so that you can download these materials you could write to the archives and ask for these tapes and for you know, small processing fee. they could send them to you or you could go there.

often and and listen to them. but yeah people went to largely to the presidential libraries to do that and prior to 2007 if you wanted the nixon tapes, you would go to i believe it was archives to in, college park, maryland. all right and last question to wrap up at similar inquiries from both cleave packer and a rob basically. is there anything that you learned from the tapes that was recorded either intentionally or by accident that you would want to share as an interesting story or a surprise of sorts. well, there are always surprises and they're all interesting and i don't know why but as soon as you you talked about a particular story or something, maybe curious. i don't know. i thought of this one kennedy

clip in which he's asking for those little blue pills. now we know that kennedy had his own doctor feel good. which shot him up with all kinds of things who shot him up with kinds of things. to keep him going, you know in addition to all the the drugs that he was taking for his many many maladies when we heard that kennedy was asking i think it was he was asking evelyn lincoln for oh, no was dr. george berkeley his physician for one of those little blue pills. that was something that we turned into one of these scrollers as soon as we could because that was a that was a fun one and then you know, the most famous tape of all i guess. in addition to the smoking gun team, which is the tape that gives us all the rest of the tapes because the smoking gun tape is is what got nixon in into the hottested water in watergate. the most famous tape is johnson's hagar pants or hagar slacks tape in which johnson first week of second week of

august 1964 in the middle of all kinds of crazy stuff signing. the gulf of tonkin resolution and there are church bombings and he's got to pick a vice presidential running mate. he's about to go to atlantic city for the convention. he calls up the head of the hagar slacks company. can you make me a pair of pants and it is a graphic conversation about johnson's own personal needs of where he needs these pants to be taken out. and why? now great story. yeah. well, it's a ten after eight. thank you very much. mark for staying beyond the time that was scheduled. i know we all appreciate it. and again, thank you very much. not only to those people that register tonight for what was a a great evening of information, but mark for your time as well

and joining us and enlightening us as to presidential recordings program and what you're doing and as you said earlier, you've got a book coming out. so by all means everyone should look for that and i wish you good luck on that and everything else great. thanks pleasure to be with you.