Elms around the cuban missile crisis, october, 1962. All of us wanted to have a good book ready for the fall of 2012. And many every us in the Historical Community as well as certainly at the library knew that there were these tremendously rich tapes, only a small percentage of which had actually been heard, and that it would be a service to the Historical Community and to all americans to get the tapes out to the listening public. So the library made the tapes available, but they need add historian to write an introduction and annotate, and so thats where i came in. Im going to run a quick one here. This is from the 1952 senate race. Its not a tape of john f. Kennedy, but its a jingle. Lets listen to this. When we vote this november lets all remember lets vote for kennedy make him your selection in the Senate Election hell do more for you and me look at kennedys history youll see its no mystery hes your kind of man so do all that you can and vote for kennedy we added the pictures and photographs ourselves. But thats a part of the c. D. s that you get with the book. It is. How come thats in that . Well, its audio and its great. Its evocative of a time really before tv. Kennedy came out of politics before television was as important as it became, and then he rode the importance of tv very effectively. But thats from an earlier time, 1952. Tv existed, but not Many Americans had it. Music was really important to politics, both on radio and then even at events, where people would sing. And so like any politician, he need add theme song, and in 1952 he was running for senate for the first time and had a very wellorganized campaign and had to have a song. I guess the short answer to your question is i listen to a lot of audio. The tapes themselves coming out of the white house. But then there were a lost audiotapes of kennedy speaking into a dictaphone, dictating messages to his secretary, dictating chapters of profiles of courage, and even a very early radio interview from 1940, when he was a very young man, just out of hartford, just published his first book. So i loved the whole range of that audio, and we clue that early radio interview as well. So when did you start this project . Only about a year ago. It was a rapidly evolving historical task. I listened to a lot of these tapes at night and on weekend. I got very immersed in the world of listening. There were good days and bad days. When i started, a lot of it was inaudible to me. The quality of the meeting tapes is not always that good, especially in the cabinet room, a pretty big room where these primitive mics didnt pick up the sounds that well. Often the distance of the room, it might not sound very loud at all, someone close would sound very loud so. There were days i thought i cant get this done, its too hard. But over time i began to hater better. And then the telephone tapes were a big step forward. When i found those, i was very excited, because theyre high quality in every way. You talked about a dictabelt conversation he had with himself or with his secretary. Yes. This is from 1960, i assume well, i shouldnt assume anything, it was during the campaign . It was during a Long Dinner Party conversation talking about running for president. Probably a few days later he distilled his thoughts into a more organized, dictated memorandum for his secretary, and that must be the one youre about to play. Its on for 38 seconds. Well listen. First speech i ever gave was on england, ireland and germany , victory neutral and vanquished. It took me three weeks to right and it was given at the American Legion post. Period. The speech went reasonably rather well, period. Somebody came up the politician came up to me afterwards and said that i should go into politics, comma, that i might be in politician in a few years. Period. Hes giving us the punctuation association why is that . Hes telling her how to arrange the sentences, because he wanted his secretary to type it. It did appear in politics u. S. A. , the journalist james cannon edited that book. Its a fascinating moment because hes thinking auto buy graphically. Hes still a young man, hes running for president , but hes had a pretty rich life already. And his life included certainly his world war ii service, and hes talking there about coming out of the war. Interestingly talks about being out of sorts. Didnt really know what to do as a veteran coming back and then began getting interested in politics. But he had seen a lot of the world. He lived in england. At the time england was veering very rapidly towards a world war with germany. He had been at the u. N. Conference in san francisco. Seen a lot of the world and is beginning to put down his thoughts. I think the whole reason he installed the taping system was as a historians helper, that he was beginning to think about the memoirs he would someday right. It was only his second year of the presidency and he probably thought he had until 1969 before he really had to sit down and write his memoirs. But im sure as a journalist and a historian himself, he was trying to gather the tools necessary for that book. In the book, two c. D. s are attached for about 2 1 2 hours of conversations. Whats the total number of hours that there are for all the conversations you had to listen to . The available tapes constitute 248 hours of tapes of meetings, meaning in the oval office or the cabinet room, and about 17 hours of telephone conversation. And the two have often been separated from each other. But we unit them together in this collection. Who collected them . Well, the whole story of the system and where it how it was operated, and then what happened to the tapes afterwards is a little bit murky. We know something about it. It began in the summer of 1962, not at the beginning of his presidency, but well into it. He asked a secret service agent, robert bauk, whose job ironically was to protect him from electronic surveillance, to install listening devices for his private use. And we know that, because bauk later gave an oral history to the kennedys library, an thats on record, and anyone can consult it. And he described the installation of the mics, where they were in the two rooms, how the Machine Operator went down to the basement in an office, and they were kept in a closet by his secretary. They ran from that moment in july, 1962, until the end. And then immediately after the assassination they were disassembled and take place were given to Evelyn Lincoln, his secretary. And she held on to them for a while. And then probably Robert Kennedy had them, because when he wrote his history of the cuban missile crisis, 13 days, he almost certainly used them. There are moments where he gives dialogue from meetings, and he must have had access to the tapes to render the dialogue as faithfully as he did. After his assassination its likely that senator ted kennedy had them, and eventually they got into a Federal Warehouse outside boston and finally were reunited with all the paper records of the kent library and given by the family to the library in the 1970s. Its taken a long time for their contents to be revealed, and thats mainly because the work is extremely painstaking. Its hard to hear, its hard to write out transcripts. And i make a point of saying im guessing at some of these words. The official document is the tape recording, not the written version. Were just guessing. All of us sometimes two people are speaking at the same time and you just do your best. But also, it was necessary that our National Archives professionals listened to make sure classified information was not being unnecessarily released. So theres a classification process and then a declassification process, and it just takes a long time. But now all known tapes are in the j. F. K. Library and all of them have been released into the public records. So its a good story. How much of it will we never hear . We dont know. We dont know what didnt make it to the Kennedy Library. But everything that is in the Kennedy Library has been released with the very small exception of the excised sections of the tapes, which are excised for National Security reasons. Maybe someday well hear whats in those moments of silence within the take place. But all known tapes have now been released. Weve got a conversation between j. F. K. And former president eisenhower a little bit, about a minute of it, and its about the cuban missile crisis. How many different topic areas do you have in the book besides the cuban missile crisis . About eight. Theres history, politics, civil rights, cuba, vietnam, the world as it is, which is a summary of all of the worlds problems, and the burden and the glory sounds like a little bit less than eight. But the burden and the glory is about the difficulty of being president and what its like on a daily basis to occupy this terribly difficult job. On october 22, 1962, where are we in the cuban missile crisis when we hear this conversation . Were right smack in the middle of it. Thats the day he gave his speech to the nation informing americans about the crisis. He had had the luxury of almost a week of near total blackout of the news to deliberate with his top advisors. But on monday, october 22, he gave a speech to the nation. 100 million americans listened to that speech and it was one of the most listenedto speeches in the history of the presidency. Thats the day of this call to eisenhower. Heres j. F. K. Talking to mr. Eisenhower. General, what about if the soviet union, khrushchev, announces tomorrow, that if we attack cuba its going to be nuclear war . Whats your judgment as to the chances theyll fire these things off if we invade cuba . Oh, i dont believe that they will. You dont think they will . No. In other words, you would take that risk. As a matter of fact, though, what can you do . If this thing is such a serious thing, that were going to be uneasy and we know what is happening now, all right . Weve got to use something. Something may make these people shoot them off. I just dont believe this will. Yeah, right. In any event, i will say this. Id want to keep my own people very alert. Yeah. Well, well hang on tight. Thanks a lot. Anything about the relationship between the two of them surprise you . It oa fascinating moment its a fascinating moment. Its amazing that eisenhower tells him to have his people alert. Because everyone is completely on edge, so of course theyre alert. And kennedy laughs. Then he kind of jocularly says hang on tight, which is a nice moment that even on this terribly tense day theyre able to joke a little bit with each other. I think their relationship had come a long way. They were not close. Eisenhower was from a different generation, and they were both conscious, im sure, of their military rank. Eisenhower had been the treatment commander of European Forces and kennedy was a lieutenant in the pacific, and they just they always would hold on to their sense of their rank in world war ii. But in their early meetings after the election of 1960, i think they had each come away quite impressed by the other, that kennedy had been describing eisenhower as kind of slow and doddering and not alert to the new realities of the 1960s. He met an extremely forceful and intelligent president of the United States in dwight eisenhower. I think like wise eisenhower was dismissive of a wealthy politician, a much younger man, a senator whom he had not conned descented to meet as president condescended to meet as president. And he also came away as someone who was extremely well versed. So they began to like each other more. And especially during this crisis i think they had a sense of how lonely it is to occupy that office and how youre getting all kinds of advice, youre getting good advice, youre getting a lot of faulty advice, which kennedy was, including from his joint chiefs. Eisenhower knew all about faulty military advice, and he was able to speak with his Supreme Authority about the dangers as well as the advantages of military advice. So he was a very useful ally to president kennedy. Were you alive during the cuban missile crisis . I was in utero, to be presiles. I was nearly born. When did you first begin to get interested in history and this story . In the late 1960s. I grew up in new england and every Public Library in its childrens section had a book called meet john f. Kennedy. The cult that john f. Kennedy was alive and well throughout my childhood and i became interested as a student of my region, which i always cared about my where i grew up, but also, the story was just so compelling. I was fascinated as a kid and stayed interested throughout. I now remember the 40th anniversary of the cuban missile crisis quite well. I know were 10 years past that. I think its a great story for americans to relearn and i hope younger americans. I mean, one thing this book tries to do is to get past what has been for a long time our sense of the great tragedy of john f. Kennedy, which is, of course, the fact that he was cut down before the end of his presidency was supposed to happen, and i think this book restores a sense of how much was accomplished and how rich his presidency was and how he, like any other president , had good days and bad days and had a lot to feel proud of in the fall of 1963. So when your mother was carrying you, what did she do for a living . She was a housewife, i believe. She eventually became a scholar of china. And where did she teach . She still teaches at Wellesley College outside boston. And how about dad . Dad was a grad student in chinese history at harvard and became a professor of chinese history, and then an administrator at brown university, where i work now. Is it possible for anybody to be more harvard than you are . [laughter] well, i dont actually work at harvard. I know. Where did you go to undergrad . Harvard. Where did you get your masters degree . Harvard. Where did you get your ph. D. . Harvard. True. Well, it was a great place to learn about history, and i studied a lot of it. I studied Early American History and 19th century and 20th. I did not study president kennedy at harvard, but he was in the air there, too. It was everywhere. I did go to the Kennedy Library as a tourist and just enjoyed it. But harvard was also a very tolerant place. It did not rush people along. It allowed people to learn history slowly, which is a good way to learn history. And you can move a bit from century to century. And i did that. So i like studying the entire history of the presidency, as you do yourself, brian. And youre a great friend to all of us out there, because you are interested in the obscure president s as well as the famous one. Writing about National FootballConference Im in very unfamiliar territory with a bestselling book. I worked on Martin Van Buren, as you know, and we never got close to the bestseller list. On october 22, were going to lin to about a minute and a half of a conversation the next day with roswell kilpatrick. How does he fit in . He was assistant secretary of defense and very friendly with president kennedy. And i included that phone call. Its just a short phone call, but its fascinating because they are contemplating and really envisioning the first boarding of a soviet vessel that will put this quarantine to the test. And they dont know what the result will be. Will the soviets fire back . And kennedy, as he did throughout the crisis, is saying whenever possible, use the minimum amount of force. And he just wants to understand it. They were smart to, because their military brass were spoiling for a fight throughout the crisis. And secretary mcnamara also had a lot of problems on his hands talking with the admirals and the generals. They were trained to fight. That was their job, and they wanted to. And the secretary mcnamara and the president were also doing their job, saying hold on. What are the steps . And theyre trying to understand the 20 steps that are involved in the boarding of a soviet vessel. And they were correct to, because any errant shot might have led to the firing of a Nuclear Weapon back from the soviet vessel towards the United States. And we now know much more than we did at the time, and many of the submarines were carrying Nuclear Weapons, thetor peeds. There were a large number of tactical Nuclear Weapons already available to units of soviet Army Personnel in cuba already. So they were heavily armed already. The Political Leadership was correct to exercise great caution. Here is the assistant secretary of defense, roswell kilpatrick, talking to president kennedy. As i understood theres some report that russian ships were not going to stop. Were going to have to sink them in order to stop them. Or were going to have to fire on them. I was wondering on the instructions of how thats to be done, where theyre to be shot at to cause the minimum amount of damage. And if theyre boarded, its very possible the russians will fire at them if they board and well have to fire back and have quite a slaughter. I think wed want to have control over the cameras, which we dont want these in the press, which might be embarrassing. Oh, yeah, on the boats. Secondly, i dont know enough about the ships, where they are to fire, whether there are three or four steps, such as ask them to stop, if they dont stop, asking them to have their crew come above decks, and three, so that we have this record made. Yes. Weve got instructions which start with those steps. Shot across the bow, a shot across the rutter, order the crews to come on deck. And the minimum amount of force at each stage. Right. We havent thought of everything. Ok, fine. How did those frisk expedition goss this morning . Oh, instant. They were back a couple of hours ago. Well see the pictures later. I see. Youre getting the ones for me of the florida bases . Thats right. Did you have a chance to look at West Palm Beach . The air force is doing that. Were look gget at all the possibilities down there. Why did he want to know about