Kennedy Tapes Revealed

They were the voices of some of Harvard’s most famous men, surrounding one of its brightest sons, discussing the biggest issues of the day. And though the conversations took place in the Oval Office, they might as well have stayed in Weld 32.

In 1983, the John F. Kennedy Library released secret tapes recorded during the most tense moments from the presidency of John F. Kennedy ’40, capturing the advice of many who he had brought with him from Cambridge to Washington.

Among those who helped the former Winthrop House resident while he cracked jokes about the failure of the Bay of Pigs, thought through economic policy, and worried about unrest in the South, were former Harvard Law School professor Archibald Cox Jr. ’34, then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ’48, former history professor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. ’38, and one-time Dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy.

The tapes released that June, which included seven-and-a-half hours of recordings and nearly 300 pages of transcript, were the first to be distributed to the general public. They contained discussions that Kennedy had in late 1962 with Cox about the integration at the University of Mississippi and with former economics professor David E. Bell, who was director of the Office of Management and Budget, about developing American economic policy.

According to quotes from the tape cited by The New York Times, Kennedy is heard speaking with his aides and staffers about the growing tension with Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett over allowing James H. Meredith, a black student, to attend the University of Mississippi.

At one point, Kennedy asked Cox, who served as Kennedy’s solicitor general, about the prospect of arresting Barnett as well as General Edwin A. Walker, a former military officer who is said to have urged an anti-integration crowd to resist federal actions violently.

Despite the severity of the situation at the Oxford, Miss. campus, Kennedy tried to lighten up his aides through jokes. “I haven’t had such an interesting time since the Bay of Pigs,” Kennedy said on the tape.

Yet Kennedy was worried by delays in the deployment of two battalions of Army military police to assist U.S. marshals, and is heard in one tape asking his aides, “I wonder if it takes this long to get everybody ready?”

His brother Robert is heard in the background, responding, “Damn Army. They can’t even tell if the M.P.’s have left.”

The JFK Library continued to release tapes from the Kennedy administration, consisting of nearly 260 hours of conversations between Kennedy and his aides, throughout the year.

Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s personal secretary, told The Times that the president had asked in July 1962 for “secret recording equipment” to be set up in the Cabinet Room and the Oval Office. “There was no sinister motive,” Lincoln told the newspaper.

According to Lincoln, Kennedy wanted to have recorded conversations to help him write his. But the existence of the tapes was not revealed until 1973, about ten years after the president’s assassination.

—Staff writer Prateek Kumar can be reached at kumar@fas.harvard.edu.