The JFK Tapes: Round Three

In my nearly quarter-century as Historian at the John F. Kennedy Library, I did extensive work with sound recordings, particularly the then-classified White House tapes made during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. I was the first nonmember of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (ExComm) and the first professional historian to evaluate these recordings, and I soon learned how difficult it was to work with these noisy, low-fidelity, reel-to-reel tapes. Nonetheless, it was the historian’s ultimate fantasy: the chance to be on the inside during the most perilous chapter in Cold War history and to learn—within the technical limits of the recordings—what really happened.

In that context, readers should be aware at the outset that this reviewer has publicly questioned the accuracy of the work by the editors of the 1997 Harvard Press JFK Cuban Missile Crisis transcripts and the 2001 Miller Center/Norton transcripts of President Kennedy’s overall White House recordings. Tensions began after I reviewed the 1997 transcripts (listening to one full meeting and spot-checking the others) and found they were riddled with major errors that distorted the historical record and seriously undercut the entire rationale for even publishing transcripts. None of the academic reviewers had listened to any of the tapes to confirm that the transcripts were reliable. They took for granted, based on the academic status of the editors and the claims by the publisher, that these “full and authenticated transcripts” were “the most accurate . . . that is at present possible.”¹

The editors responded by insisting that my corrections, which they described as “amendments,” were not “very important” and that “none of them change what a reader of the transcripts takes away concerning the essence or even the minute details” of these historic meetings. They also assured scholars that any mistakes would be corrected in the “authoritative” 2001 transcripts. I subsequently reviewed those transcripts as well and found they were substantially improved compared to the 1997 version, but still well short of what they could and should have been. Not until three years had passed did the Miller Center acknowledge, completely or substantially, the accuracy of fifty-two of the seventy-six corrections in my reviews of the second round of transcripts.²

Why is accuracy so essential? Readers should decide whether this 1997 example—which the editors also failed to correct in the 2001 edition—is not “very important” and does not change “the essence or even the minute details” of the spoken words. On Saturday evening, October 27, 1962, JFK’s ExComm advisers recommended turning up the military heat on the Soviet Union. The transcript cites Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara urging the president “to keep some kind of pressure on tonight and tomorrow night that indicates we’re firm. Now if we call off these air strikes tonight, I think that settles that.” There were no airstrikes scheduled that night, which the historian/editors must have known, and how would calling them off demonstrate military firmness? This transcription makes no sense.

McNamara actually said: “Now if we call up these air squadrons tonight, I think that settles that.” Seconds later, he again advised “calling up the 24 air reserve squadrons,” which the editors correctly transcribed in 1997 and 2001, making their failure—twice—to catch the initial slip-up inexplicable.³

Errors of this kind are profoundly important. No historian would question the value of deciphering words transcribed as “[unclear]” or recovering remarks that the editors missed entirely. However, as illustrated by the above example, readers must also understand that a slip-up on even one word can misrepresent or even reverse the speaker’s intent and warp the historian’s effort to understand and interpret the event itself. Inaccurate transcriptions may even become part of the historical record because few scholars will invest the time needed to listen to these acoustically challenging recordings.

Readers must also recognize that presidential...