Tapes reveal JFK’s last days

Newly released tapes of President John F Kennedy’s private meetings reveal him comment on what would become the day of his funeral.

In the scheduling discussion with staff three days before his killing, JFK speaks of his plans after visiting Dallas, Texas.

“Monday?” he asks. “Well that’s a tough day.”

“It’s a hell of a day, Mr President,” a staff member replies.

Kennedy’s library is releasing 45 hours of privately recorded meetings and phone calls, providing a window into the final months of his life.

The tapes include discussions of conflict in Vietnam, Soviet relations and the race to space, plans for the 1964 Democratic Convention and re-election strategy. There also are moments with his children.

In one recording, made days before Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, he asks staffers to schedule a meeting in a week. He tells them he is booked for the weekend, with no time to meet with an Indonesian general at that time either.

“I’m going to be up at the Cape on Friday, but I’ll see him Tuesday,” JFK tells staffers.

The tapes, being released by the John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, are the last of more than 260 hours of recordings of meetings and conversations JFK privately made before his death.

Kennedy kept the recordings a secret from his top aides. He made the last tape two days before his assassination.

Kennedy library archivist Maura Porter said JFK may have been saving them for a memoir or possibly started them because he was bothered when the military later gave a different overview of a discussion with him about the Bay of Pigs.

The latest batch of recordings captured meetings from the last three months of Kennedy’s administration. In a conversation with political advisers about young voters, Kennedy asks: “What is it we have to sell them?

“We hope we have to sell them prosperity, but for the average guy the prosperity is nil,” he says. “He’s not unprosperous, but he’s not very prosperous... And the people who really are well off hate our guts.”

Kennedy talks about a disconnect between voters and the political machine.

“We’ve got so mechanical an operation here in Washington that it doesn’t have much identity where these people are concerned,” he says.

On another recording, Kennedy questions conflicting reports military and diplomatic advisers bring back from Vietnam, asking the two men: “You both went to the same country?”

He also talks about trying to create films for the 1964 Democratic Convention in colour instead of black and white.

“The colour is so damn good,” he says. “If you do it right.”

Porter said the public first heard about the existence of the Kennedy recordings during the Watergate hearings.

In 1983, JFK Library and Museum officials started reviewing tapes without classified materials and releasing recordings to the public. Porter said officials were able to go through all the recordings by 1993, working with government agencies when it came to national security issues and what they could make public.

In all, the JFK Library and Museum has put out about 40 recordings. Officials excised about five to 10 minutes of the recent recordings due to family discussions and about 30 minutes because of national security concerns.

Porter said the tapes also reveal times when the president became bored and moments when he used swear words and the sound of his children, Caroline and John Jr, playing outside the Oval Office.