Between 1940 and 1973, six American presidents from both political parties secretly recorded just under 5,000 hours of their meetings and telephone conversations. Through a combination of historical research and annotated transcripts the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program aims to make these remarkable historical sources more accessible to scholars, teachers, students, and the public.
"Evelyn Lincoln told me at luncheon that all LBJ's phone talks are taken down on tape. They are immediately transcribed by the girls in her old office and then given to the President the first thing in the morning, so he can see what he said. What a treasure trove for the historian! and what a threat to the rational and uninhibited conduct of government!" Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Diary entry for March 25, 1964
Guian McKee's New Book: The Problem of Jobs
19-Nov-08 — dgc9t
PRP scholar Guian McKee's new book, The Problem of Jobs: Liberalism, Race, and Deindustrialization in Philadelphia (University of Chicago Press) is now out.
Contesting claims that postwar American liberalism retreated from fights against unemployment and economic inequality, The Problem of Jobs reveals that such efforts did not collapse after the New Deal but instead began to flourish at the local, rather than the national, level.
Research Note: Revealing the Existence of LBJ's White House Taping System
The notion that the President might be secretly recording his telephone calls and meetings did not become the topic of widespread public attention until Alexander Butterfield first revealed the existence of Richard Nixon's recording system during the course of the Watergate investigations. When the Nixon White House claimed that previous administrations had also taped, Harry Middleton, the director of the LBJ Library, confirmed that Johnson had done so even as several former LBJ aides and the Secret Service professed ignorance. But there were at least some public mentions of LBJ's recording system almost a decade before the Watergate investigations.
Washington Post article looking behind the scenes on election night
02-Nov-08 — dgc9t
In an article titled "When There's Nothing Left to Do but Wait" in its Outlook section, today's Washington Post features material from the Miller Center's Oral History and Presidential Recordings Programs in an article peering behind the scenes on presidential election nights.
Boston Globe Article on Nixon, McCain, and the Lessons of the Vietnam War
22-Oct-08 — dgc9t
The Boston Globe's Michael Kranish has an article in today's paper on John McCain's lessons from the Vietnam War. The article draws on Nixon tape transcripts produced by the Miller Center's Presidential Recordings Program.
New Nixon Transcripts, June 1971
22-Sep-08 — dgc9tThe Presidential Recordings Program has released another batch of Nixon transcripts from June 1971. Click on the "read more" link to see selected extracts. The full conversation are available in the "Latest Transcripts" section at right.
