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A book and CD set, the first collection that permits Americans to listen directly to their presidents as they speak not in the studied phrases of speeches but in the real heat of the moment, based on transcripts of the conversationsThe White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President is a fascinating portrait of eight recent American presidents—including Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan—as they respond to some of the most critical events of the late twentieth century. Edited by historian John Prados, the book contains transcripts of the heat-of-the-moment Oval Office phone conversations and confidential meetings (often with participants who did not know they were being recorded) that changed the course of history. A comprehensive introductory essay on the history of presidential recordings and detailed introductions to the transcripts themselves put these key moments in American history in context.Never intended for public consumption, one exchange captured here 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. Take together, the selected conversations with top aides, political figures, and heads of state (including Walter White, Sam Rayburn, William Colby, Martin Luther King Jr., Billy Graham, H.R. Haldeman, Henry Kissinger, Yitzhak Rabin, and Anwar el-Sadat), reveal the true inner workings of the American presidency and offer us an unparalleled opportunity to be a fly on the wall at the meetings we were never supposed to hear.This book is published in conjunction with "White House Tapes: The President Calling," a new radio documentary produced by Stephen Smith and Kate Ellis of American Radio Works®. A compact disc of the program accompanies this book in a set that also includes eight compact discs on the secret Oval Office recordings featured here.
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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
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