The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (Book & CD) [Hardcover]

John Prados (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

Never-before-heard recordings of secretly taped oval office conversations with eight US presidents.

The President doesn't know the position of the administration so you can't know it.—President Lyndon Johnson to Walt Rostow on Vietnam policy, March 4, 1964

Historian John Prados and The New Press have procured recordings made by eight Presidents of their oval office conversations. Never intended for public consumption, these recordings offer portraits of the nation's chief executives responding to and taking action on some of the most critical events of the late twentieth century.

Including phone conversations and confidential meetings, the set offers candid, unscripted exchanges with top aides, political figures, and heads of state. One exchange constitutes the famous "smoking gun" tapes of the Watergate era. Another sequence has Lyndon Johnson finding out from J. Edgar Hoover about the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi just as he also learns from Robert McNamara about the breaking crisis in Vietnam's Gulf of Tonkin.

The set includes eight digitally remastered CDs of presidential conversations and transcripts of the conversations with historical introductions by John Prados. An additional CD features the companion radio documentary "White House Tapes: The President Calling," produced by Stephen Smith of American RadioWorks® for an upcoming national broadcast on public radio. Boxed set: hardcover with 9 one-hour CDs.

Contents include:
Franklin D. Roosevelt
• the racial integration of the Armed Forces
Dwight D. Eisenhower
• the situation in the Far East
Harry Truman
• the Marshall Plan
John Kennedy
• the March on Washington
• the Diem coup in Vietnam in 1963
Lyndon B. Johnson
• the murders of civil rights workers in Mississippi in 1964
• the Gulf of Tonkin Incident
Richard Nixon
• "Smoking Gun" tapes
• The Vietnam War and the invasion of Laos in 1971
• Discussion of Jews in the media, with Billy Graham
Gerald R. Ford
• the first US/Russian joint space mission
• Middle East Peace Agreement in 1975
Ronald Reagan
• the Iran-Contra Affair in 1986

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starting with FDR, just about all U.S. presidents have tape-recorded at least some Oval Office conversations. Currently, more than 4,600 hours of White House tapes are known to exist, 4,000 hours' worth recorded by Nixon. Of the total, approximately half the tapes have been declassified, and it is from these that Prados (a fellow of the National Security Archive and author of Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby) presents a sampling. The conversations appear on audio CDs (plus one disk with the American Radioworks program "White House Tapes: The President Calling"), while transcripts and Prados's useful historical prefaces to each conversation appear in the accompanying book. Not all the conversations are of historical moment. On the upside, we have FDR discussing civil rights with A. Philip Randolph and in a confidential huddle with Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn on the eve of WWII. Also worthwhile is JFK meeting with civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and discussing the pros and cons of supporting a coup in South Vietnam with his National Security Council in October of 1963. Excerpts from Lyndon Johnson (touching on the Gulf of Tonkin and other major incidents) and Richard Nixon (including meetings with Billy Graham and H.R. Haldeman) are noteworthy as well. But Harry Truman's distracted phone calls concerning minor ambassadorial appointments seem superfluous, and Ronald Reagan's sections of the CDs and book feature only public remarks-nothing confidential, nothing from the inner sanctum of Reagan's Oval Office. In all, these selections leave one with the clear impression that not everything that happens in the Oval Office is worth eavesdropping on.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 9 Up--History buffs will relish the unusual opportunity afforded by these CDs to eavesdrop on secret behind-the-scenes recordings of presidential conversations with a wide array of aides, public figures, and heads of state. Highlighting eight American presidentsâ€"Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reaganâ€"the topics of the recordings provide a unique view of seminal political events that changed the course of American and world history, among them the murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, the Gulf of Tonkin crisis, the Watergate break-in, and the Iran-Contra affair. The quality of the recordings is surprisingly good, although somewhat variable, given the clandestine way in which they were made. The CDs are accompanied by a book providing written transcripts of the tapes as well as the radio documentary "White House Tapes: The President Calling." History teachers will welcome the chance to incorporate portions of the recordings into their curriculum to expose students to primary source documents.--Cindy Lombardo, Tuscarawas County Public Library, New Philadelphia, OH
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565848527
• ISBN-13: 978-1565848528
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.7 x 2.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #926,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars good content, bad audio, April 5, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (Book & CD) (Hardcover)

I absolutely loved this collection. The content is wonderful. I want more!

I would give it five stars if it weren't for the audio quality.

There are eight disks plus a disk called "the white house tapes: the president calling". This last disk was just wonderful with good audio quality. You can listen to this online at the american radioworks website. It will get you hooked.

However, the other disks were hit or miss because they can be really difficult to hear. Many disks "Truman, Roosevelt and Eisenhower", (and to a lesser extent Kennedy and Nixon) were completely unintelligible in the car. Think old-time PA system in a concrete room. Johnson was very good, although there were repetitive sounds from the tape recorder. Ford was good too. I guess listening on a home stereo or with headphones might be a different story.

Maybe the recording technology on many of the tapes just wasn't there. You figure with today's technology there would be some way to clean up the audio, especially when you're paying so much for the collection.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars a great, great thing..., February 18, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (Book & CD) (Hardcover)

okay... this is fantastic. Its great listening to all this stuff! I first heard it on NPR, and then went out to buy the CDs... I absolutely loved it! (it aired again recently, I think... for president's day) So why the 4 stars, instead of 5? Its pricey. But I promise, it's totally worth it too. You just have to bite the bullet on this one.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting historical record, cds could have been packaged better., September 3, 2009

By 

Michael D. Chlanda - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President (Book & CD) (Hardcover)

This collection of recordings, from FDR to Reagan, and although nothing "earth shaking" is revealed, is still an interesting collection. The one thing that detracts from the item is the packaging of the compact discs; which could have been better. A set of sleeves, to hold the discs better (in the cardboard sleeve) instead of "slots"; which allow(s) the discs to slide (especially when shipped by mail) and puts scratches on the discs [which may (or may not) result in "dropouts and defects"] in the discs [particularly with the early (Roosevelt) recordings, it's hard to tell]. Otherwise, a nice item for presidential historians and anyone curious about the Presidency of our nation.