The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis

It has long been known that Kennedy secretly recorded his meetings with the special executive committee (Ex Comm) that he assembled to deal with the [Cuban Missile] crisis...But little of the material had been released before late 1996. Around that time, Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow hired a team of court reporters to transcribe the hissing, crackling, utterly low-fi recordings. Next, they compared the transcriptions with the tapes themselves, listening over and over again to try to make sense of the most obscure passages...For those Ex Comm sessions that were not recorded, they have produced connecting text based on other documents--personal notes, minutes of meetings, memoirs. Finally, they have provided explanatory interpolations, a scene-setting introduction and an instructive conclusion. The effort was herculean...The Kennedy Tapes is a splendid achievement, as powerful and exciting a book as one is likely to read this year...The missile crisis tapes are elevating. They convey a sense of privilege, a conviction that we are privy to deliberations at the very highest level. This is how we want our leaders to behave. For all the thousands of pages on the missile crisis, these tapes possess an immediacy, a "What would you do?" quality, that no historical account can match...As with any good book about a great event, this one has a little of everything--suspense, humor, pathos, even darkest-before-the-dawn melodrama. But what one is most likely to take away from it is the image of a Lincolnesque Kennedy, lonely, melancholy, grimly persevering...The aptly titled "Kennedy Tapes" stands as a lasting testament to one man's judgment and character. (Barry Gewen New York Times Book Review )[T]he transcripts...capture the power and drama of the moment. They show just how raw things were in the White House. They let readers hear leaders thinking out loud about what to do to force the Soviets to withdraw the missiles. They raise ideas about nuclear weapons, political power and civilian control of the military that remain vital today...The tapes show men mulling over a global chess game in which the wrong move kills millions...The words are a record of decision-making in a nuclear crisis that has no equal. (Tim Weiner New York Times )[A] wonderful read. One can feel the real difference between the President and his men, especially the generals who were demanding invasion of Cuba. Only Kennedy understood Nikita Khrushchev and the reasons the Soviets would risk the horrendous consequences of a nuclear exchange. (Richard Reeves New York Times )The Kennedy Tapes will fascinate anyone interested in history and anyone interested in how the American government works when its citizens most depend on it. (Philip Seib Dallas Morning News )The most accurate, lucid transcript that is at present possible of the vital stuff--President Kennedy's conferences with his advisers in the fortnight of the Cuban missile crisis...Messrs May and Zelikow deploy intellectual mastery in their commentaries on the Kennedy Tapes. (The Economist )[The Kennedy Tapes] is 700 pages of terror and drama, edited by historians Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow. (Bruce W. Nelan Time )For those who want their history straight, who enjoy reading the words of government officials from the president on down as they attempt to deal with a serious international crisis--not filtered through print reporters, television anchormen or cloistered historians--this is a book to treasure..."What's new?" is the question regularly asked when an archival book such as this is published. The quick answer here is "nothing," if what you have in mind is some stunning new fact. The true answer, however, is that a great deal here is new if you want to understand the day-to-day evolution of a policy and the people involved in a crisis through all its ups and downs. (Walter Pincus Washington Post )These transcripts are at once the most important document of the crisis (and arguably, the entire Cold War period) and an unsurpassed look at White House and foreign policy decision-making. Even so, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of the book is to put a human face on that moment at which the superpowers stood closest to the brink of nuclear war...At one level, much is known of the crisis...but The Kennedy Tapes fills in the gaps and thus paints the picture so completely that no prior or subsequent book can hope to match it. To read it is to be in the White House in those fateful days of October, 1962...This immediacy is new, and it is endlessly fascinating...The Kennedy Tapes is a must-read, not only for the student of history or international affairs, but for citizens of any country who hold out the hope that the Earth will never face such a crisis again. (James Baker The Observer )The Kennedy Tapes is an unremitting white-knuckle ride through the 14 crucial days in which the world seemed to be hurtling towards nuclear wipeout...[It] gives an extraordinary insight into high-level decision-making at a time of unprecedented crisis. (Adam Newey The Independent )The importance of the discussions that took place in the White House during the Cuban missile crisis is hard to understate. One hasty over-reaction, one error of analysis, one misreading of Soviet intention...To revisit those discussions now, courtesy of transcripts of secret tape-recordings authorised by President Kennedy, is to go to the storm centre of modern history. The tapes are enthralling reading and make clear, to a doubting posterity, how genuinely statesmanlike Kennedy was. (Max Davidson Daily Telegraph )What we have here...is a gripping verbatim account of American decision-making during those October days when the world teetered on the brink of nuclear obliteration...This then is an utterly unique document: effectively unedited, fly-on-the-wall discussions as the Kennedy administration decided whether the world was to live or die...What comes through these captivating tapes is Kennedy's moderation and self-control and his growing awareness that he was playing to a world audience that might indeed have a sneaking sympathy with the Russians (John Torode Highbury and Islington Express )This book is largely made up of verbatim transcripts, most never before transcribed, of 19 meetings held [in the Oval office] over the course of the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. This is not the fictionalized dialogue of a Joe Klein, or even the reconstructed dialogue of a Bob Woodward--this is the real thing. The result is gripping history, as Kennedy and his advisors--the so-called Executive Committee, or "ExComm" of the National Security Council--react to the news that the Soviet Union, despite repeated public assurances to the contrary, had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The editing and annotations are understated; the concluding analysis is compelling. (Richard J. Tofel The Wall Street Journal )Ernest May and Philip Zelikow have masterfully assembled, edited, and placed in context readable transcriptions of Kennedy's secret taping (unbeknownst to us all) of "ExComm's" marathon deliberations...No previous work has conveyed more clearly the sometimes chilling, sometimes heated, sometimes foggy atmosphere in that room during the Cold War's most dangerous fortnight...Read the book. (Theodore C. Sorensen Washington Monthly )Provide[s] the opportunity for us to think afresh about men we thought we knew, the more so since they were speaking "off the record"--only the Kennedy brothers knew they were being recorded...The Kennedy Tapes reveal a remarkable coolness in John Kennedy, a willingness and a capacity to listen, question, absorb, weigh, and finally adjudicate in extraordinary circumstances. (Tony Judt New York Review of Books )The Kennedy Tapes record a riveting exchange between the president and the chief of staff of the air force, General Curtis E. LeMay...The Cuban Missile Crisis may be the most fully documented and minutely inspected episode in international history. Of all the evidence in the public domain, these recordings are the crown jewels. (Alex Sanchev Times Higher Education Supplement )This is truly an extraordinary volume, a marvelous transcript of the decision-making process of a superpower in a supercrisis...A debt is...owed to Ernest May, perhaps the dean of diplomatic historians today, and to his younger colleague, Philip Zelikow. These tapes were pried out of the reclusive security bureaucracy, but in a form that was hard to hear. With the aid of court reporters and some alert ears, remarkable texts emerged, published in an elegant format. But May and Zelikow have done much more than this. They provide a useful introduction, setting the stage, and a superb conclusion, summarizing their view of the historical material that has been produced since 1962 and their judgment of the qualities of the participants of these discussions. Those estimates are of course subjective matters, but considering the intelligence, experience, and fairness of the editors, their views must carry great weight. (Joseph Losos St. Louis Post-Dispatch )Twenty-five years ago, a Nixon bureaucrat named Alexander Butterfield disclosed that his boss had installed an elaborate taping system in the White House. The revelation of the Nixon tapes led to disclosures that President Richard Nixon's two immediate predecessors, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, had also taped Oval office and Cabinet Room conversations...Not only the secrecy of the taping system, but also the manner in which Kennedy chose to manage it, produced a set of recordings that are arguably the most intriguing of any Presidential tapes. His tapes, controlled by a switch through the kneehole in his desk, were to be the basis for political memoirs after he left office. JFK would have made an astute historian. Kennedy left a nearly complete record of the meetings of the National Security Council's Executive Committee (Excomm) in the second half of October 1962. It is these records, lasting approximately 22 hours, that May and Zelikow have transcribed and annotated. The result has garnered much praise, but Kennedy must be seen as the third editor as he decided which meetings to tape. (Timothy Naftali Survival )May and Zelikow deserve great credit for transcribing these tapes. The sound quality of the recordings is abysmal, and a team of court reporters was brought in to prepare the first draft...The result is an extraordinary document. Historians will pore over it with great interest, and the general reader will find here a riveting account of the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. (David Holloway Nature )The most valuable thing of its kind since the publication of the Pentagon Papers. (Hugh Brogan New Statesman and Society )A work of nonfiction as gripping as any fictional account of international crisis, and more compelling by virtue of being true. (Cyrus Taylor Cleveland Plain Dealer )It is the tapes themselves that are primary evidence, not the May/Zelikow text, the product of labours far more elaborate than any mere transcription. But few historians will want to reinterpret the original tapes for themselves, and all readers will benefit from the masterly introduction to the overall context (the final Berlin crisis, the Bay of Pigs debacle, Kennedy's political vulnerabilities...), and the shorter stage-setting prefacesto each recorded session. (Edward N. Luttwak Times Literary Supplement )The Kennedy Tapes offers an unprecedented glimpse into high-level decision-making, with transcripts of the tense marathon crisis meetings Kennedy had secretly recorded...[This book] expands our understanding of a time when millions of panic-stricken people stocked home fallout shelters and prepared for the worst. (Josh Getlin Los Angeles Times )[The Kennedy Tapes] reminds us how close Kennedy came to air strikes and an invasion, and how close the world came to nuclear war. They also show a president firmly in control of the deliberations...Without question, May and Zelikow have provided historians with a vital resource and the general public with a fascinating aural portrait of [a presidency]. May and Zelikow also offer substantial background information and analysis. (Zachary Karabell Boston Globe )Thirty-five years after the near cataclysmic event, one which even in distant retrospect raises an unwelcome frisson, we now have in The Kennedy Tapes the raw, white-knuckle, "expletives undeleted" record of American decision-making at the highest level during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis: As records of "frank deliberation in a time of crisis", the distinguished editors justifiably class them as unparalleled...Though the intensity of the crisis and its mounting dangers are evident throughout the tapes, the devil is in the intricate detail which, but for the consummate editing and referencing on the part of Professors May and Zelikow, might well elude the reader...In addition to Kennedy's own lucidity and equanimity what is astonishing...is that the American side had in 1962 more or less "guessed right" about Soviet motives and behaviour...Unique and indispensable, The Kennedy Tapes has now provided vital first-hand evidence of how precisely that came about and how exactly President Kennedy acquited himself in the process. More than "just a book", this is a major event. (John Erickson The Spectator )Our public life could improve if every high school student were required to study this book--not a few pages, but the whole complex tapestry--the way some are required to parse an entire Shakespeare play. Aspirants to public office should do likewise. For it offers a valuable yardstick by which our potential leaders might be judged. (Deborah Shapley Washington Times )A gripping addition to one of the most studied events in world history. (The Guardian )These transcripts provide a fascinating hour-by-hour, day-by-day account of how President Kennedy and his closest advisers reacted to the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba and gradually worked out the American response. There is remarkable candor and openness to the recorded discussion, since all the participants except the president were unaware of the taping. What the reader gains above all else is a sense of the way the crisis unfolded, from the initial surprise and anger at the reckless Soviet move through the stumbling efforts to define the issues and choices down to the final delineation of the policy to be pursued. The often rambling comments, the occasional moments of genuine insight, and the sometimes brutal confrontations, especially between Kennedy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, give the reader a sense of witnessing history as it was made. (Robert A. Divine Political Science Quarterly )Readers will find themselves engrossed in a real-life drama in which the future of the world hangs in the balance...The many and various human reactions exhibited by ExCom members are also obvious. The personalities of the major participants--each molded by different experiences and training--become evident during discussions, as well as the shifts in their views about how to accommodate different courses of action as the crisis changes. May and Zelikow have laborer long and have overcome many obstacles to give us a book that should be valued by anyone having an interest in history or crisis management. It is also a splendid book for those who simply want to gain an appreciation of how close the world came to what many before the crisis had believed was only a remote possibility--strategic nuclear war. (Jack Gottschalk Naval War College Review )This is first-hand "history"--fly on the wall (or bug under the table)--you-are-there kind of history...The authors have taken the most written-about event in Kennedy's short-lived presidency--the October Crisis of 1962--and provided the minute-by-minute tension that these thirteen days held for the handful of men who were deciding in essence the future of the world...The politics and crisis management make[s] riveting reading...The Kennedy Tapes include[s] a lucid analysis of the October Crisis through an introduction and conclusion that brings the readers into the drama of confrontation and leaves the reader there without interruptions. (James H. Morrison Oral History Forum )The glimpse we get into the making of US policy in a crisis--in this case the Cuban missile crisis--is unique and, in light of the historical and legal problems of the taping of White House conversations by presidents, may well remain so. Which is a pity, for despite the apparently poor quality of the tapes and various unresolved questions relating to them, the picture of US officials dealing with the most serious crisis of the Cold War is memorable...A remarkable and truly historical record, well analyzed and put in context by May and Zelikow. (Kirkus Reviews )The Kennedy Tapes paints a dramatic portrait of the event that may have been the most perilous fortnight in the history of the world. There's a sense of authenticity here that narrative histories can't begin to match. (American Bookseller )The editors have laboriously transcribed and edited the conversations, producing an incredible resource for determining not only how the Cuban Missile Crisis was debated but also how JFK and his most trusted advisors handled themselves during those desperate hours. Harvard scholars May and Zelikow have written an excellent introduction and conclusion...The present work fills in much of what has been unknown from our side. This volume will provide scholars with data to analyze for years to come. Highly recommended for all libraries. (Edward Goedeken Library Journal )A unique, behind-the-scenes look at presidential decision-making during one of the seminal moments of international crisis in the modern era. (James L. Swanson CityTalk )