White House Tapes . Presidential Recordings Program

This collection consists of two types of recordings: (1) recordings of telephone conversations, primarily made on Dictaphone Dictabelt Records, recordings that span the period from November 22, 1963, through January 1969, along with corresponding transcripts; and (2) recordings of international meetings and of 80 meetings held in the Cabinet Room from late November 1967 through 1968, made on reel-to-reel audio tape, and corresponding transcripts. In all, the Johnson collection consists of approximately 642 hours of recordings.

In response to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, the staff of the LBJ Library prepared a special series of recordings and transcripts of telephone conversations. This series, entitled "JFK Assassination-Related Conversations," consists of the recordings and transcripts of all recorded telephone conversations from November 22, 1963, through December 31, 1963, as well as conversations containing information related to the assassination of President Kennedy from selected later periods in the Johnson administration. This series was opened incrementally from September 30, 1993, through April 15, 1994.

As of December 2008, the archivists at the Johnson Library have completed processing the telephone recordings. For further information, see the information on the LBJ Library site.

Transcripts

Transcripts of some LBJ telephone tapes are available here.

Download Sound Files

Users should consult the LBJ Library Search Engine.

You can browse manually through the folders or search for a filename. You can also narrow down the file listings with some basic search functionality based on filename. If you know the Citation Number (from LBJL Search Engine) you can do a search for that number. If you wanted to narrow a listing to all conversations on tape K6311, then type "k6311" in the search box. Please note that there are no spaces in the filenames used here--underscore is used instead. The Search Box works recursively on all folders below it.

Which Audio Format?

The sound files can be downloaded in two formats: FLAC and MP3. Each has benefits for different uses.

MP3: good sound reproduction, smaller files, universally compatible. Very good for telephone or Dictabelt recordings and for general listening. If in doubt, try the MP3 versions first.

FLAC: excellent sound reproduction, larger files, growing compatibility. Recommended for meeting recordings and transcribing where the highest sound quality is required. In terms of sound quality, FLAC files are identical to WAV or AIFF files.

More detailed information is available here.