Secret Kennedy tapes offer 'the raw material of history'

President John F. Kennedy opened the newspaper one day in 1963 and learned to his horror that military aides had built a hospital bedroom for his pregnant wife at an air base on Cape Cod in case she went into labor. He thought the $5,000 spent on the furniture was wasteful and would be a public-relations disaster that would prompt Congress to cut his military budget. The angry president picked up the phone.

First, he took a press underling to task. He demanded that the furniture be sent back and that those responsible -- including "that silly fellow who had his picture taken next to the bed" -- be transferred to Alaska.

He then called Gen. Godfrey McHugh, his Air Force aide. "You just sank the Air Force budget!" the president thundered.

Before hanging up, he characterized the entire episode with an expletive.

The story came straight from Kennedy himself.

Though even some of his closest aides did not know at the time, Kennedy recorded more than 260 hours of Oval Office conversations and phone calls into his Dictaphone. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation has culled the highlights into a new book of annotated transcripts and two audio CDs. Some of the audio portions will be available online.

The book, "Listening In: The Secret White House Recordings of John F. Kennedy," with a foreword by his daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and an introduction by Ted Widmer, a presidential historian at Brown University, offers "the raw material of history," said Thomas Putnam, the director of the Kennedy Library.

In a meeting in November 1962, the president bluntly told James Webb, the NASA administrator, that putting a man on the moon was his top priority. Webb said it was more important to understand the environment of space, prompting Kennedy to say, "If we get second to the Moon, it's nice, but it's like being second anytime."

Webb pushed back, prompting Kennedy to say: "I'm not that interested in space," only in beating the Russians.

'Who are we sending?'

Kennedy's obsession with the Cold War extended to the athletic rivalry with the Russians over hockey. In March 1963, he called up an old friend who had played hockey in the Olympics to complain about the U.S. men's hockey team losing to Sweden, 17-2.

"Christ," the president complained. "Who are we sending over there? Girls?"

Kennedy's recording system was dismantled immediately after his assassination. The family kept the tapes until 1976 and then gave them to the National Archives. The Kennedy Library acquired them and began to make them available to historians in 1983. Their release was a laborious process because the sound quality was uneven and they had to be transcribed and declassified. The last 45 hours of tapes were released only this year.

Historians have turned to the tapes for insight into major events of the Kennedy presidency such as the Cuban missile crisis, the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. The value of this book, Putnam said, is that "it is the first time the material has been published in one collection with annotations and a serious historian providing context for each conversation."

The tapes reveal that Kennedy talked several times with his predecessors about pressing issues of the day, including with Dwight D. Eisenhower about the Cuban missile crisis. But one conversation with Harry S. Truman veered in a surprisingly personal direction as they wrapped up a call in July 1963.

"Well, you sound in good shape," Kennedy said.

"All right," Truman replied. "The only trouble with me is that, the main difficulty I have, is keeping the wife satisfied." Both men laughed.

From commander to father

Unlike the Nixon taping system, which was voice-activated, Kennedy's had to be started by pressing a button, so he was obviously aware that he was being recorded. On a grim day in 1963, Kennedy turned to his Dictaphone to record his thoughts about a coup in Vietnam. He rued into the machine that his administration was responsible for the coup, and he was going over the blunders that had led to it, when suddenly a child's voice chirped "hello."

John F. Kennedy Jr., not quite 3, had toddled into the Oval Office. The president made a seamless transition from burdened commander in chief to doting father and began a nursery word play with his son.

Kennedy: "Why do the leaves fall?"

John: "Because it's autumn."