John F. Kennedy - Presidential Recordings
In July of 1962, John F. Kennedy began secretly recording what would become roughly 260 hours of meeting and telephone conversations. The Kennedy collection of Presidential Recordings consists of Meeting recordings and Dictabelt recordings. The Meeting recordings are made primarily of conversations in the Oval Office and Cabinet Room. The Dictabelt recordings consist primarily of telephone conversations with occasional dictation included. The original Kennedy recordings are housed at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. To date, all of the Dictabelt recordings and over half of the Meeting recordings have been released. The Miller Center is in the process of making these recordings available online.
In 1998, the Miller Center began work on the secret White House recordings produced between 1940 and 1973 through the Presidential Recordings Project (now the Presidential Recordings Program or PRP). The PRP is dedicated to making presidential recordings accessible through accurate transcriptions, helpful annotations and downloadable audio files.
A finding aid is available to help navigate the Kennedy recordings and is available from our Presidential Recordings help page.
If you already know which recordings you would like to listen to, or if you would simply like to browse the collection please use the links below to navigate.
