The Kennedy Assassination Tapes: The White House Conversations of Lyndon B. Johnson Regarding the Assassination, the Warren Commission, and the Aftermath (review)

The Kennedy Assassination Tapes is a sober and thorough study, mostly of President Lyndon Johnson's White House conversations relating to the murder of John F. Kennedy. These transcripts, available for more than a decade, have been the subject of numerous articles and studies and have been used extensively in well-received books. But Max Holland's approach, a steadfastly unbiased presentation of the conversations, is remarkably refreshing. He does a wonderful job of taking to task other authors who have selectively used the conversations to advance conspiracy theories about Kennedy's assassination as supposed retribution for the murder of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem or to overstate Johnson's eventual disagreements with the Warren Commission's conclusions.

Holland is a well-versed expert on the Warren Commission, having won a J. Anthony Lukas Award in 2001for his work-in-progress about the commission. He uses his knowledge to anchor every conversation solidly. The succinct annotations accompanying the transcripts provide necessary and often lively information about their proper context. He knows the subject well enough to highlight when fleeting and otherwise unnoticeable references from the tapes are about the Warren Commission.

Despite the all-encompassing title of the book, Holland acknowledges that no single volume could include every talk Johnson had in the White House connected to some aspect of Kennedy's death. His primary focus is Johnson's quandary in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's murder of how to mount an investigation that would satisfy the public desire to know what happened while ensuring that such a probe did not devolve into fodder for political and personal gain. Holland shines when covering Johnson's initial reluctance to create the panel and skillfully traces the president's shift in favor of setting up the commission.

Holland broadly defines "assassination-related" conversations and ventures into several tangential topics, including Johnson's deep personal dislike of Robert F. Kennedy, with whom he fought for control of the Democratic Party, and the new president's efforts to cope with the transition of power, including his intimate dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Because Johnson was colorful, salty, and outspoken in the privacy of the Oval Office—where he seemingly forgot or did not care that every word he uttered was recorded for posterity—many transcripts provide an entertaining look inside the crucial years of the new administration.

Voluminous transcripts can make for tedious reading, and Holland is pressed to forge the material into a readable and lively history. Instead of presenting the verbatim transcripts, he edits them for readability and manages to do so admirably while maintaining their accuracy and context. He does not strip Johnson of his distinctive Southern dialect or often blunt approach.

In many instances, The Kennedy Assassination Tapes explains how certain myths and inaccuracies about the assassination arose. Holland's deconstruction of an important, oft-cited conversation between Johnson and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover the day after the assassination is a prime example. Hoover, in typical fashion, was unwilling to admit that he did not have all the facts at his fingertips. He tried to answer every question Johnson asked, but in the process Hoover passed along considerable misinformation, including his mistaken belief that the CIA station in Mexico City had photographic surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald on a recent visit to the Soviet embassy there. In reality, the CIA had photographs of a different person. Hoover's error led to much unfounded speculation that someone had been impersonating Oswald. Moreover, it was in this conversation, as Holland writes, that "[u]ltimately, Hoover's propagation of half-facts and half-truths leaves Johnson with the impression that at least one other man may have been involved" (p. 71). That impression, mistaken though it was, stayed with Johnson permanently...