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RECORDINGS OF
TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS
WHITE HOUSE SERIES
October 11, 1996
INTRODUCTION
On
January 29, 1973, Mildred Stegall, a longtime member of President
Johnson's staff, transferred control of a collection of recordings
and transcripts to the Director of the LBJ Library, Harry Middleton.
At that time, she indicated that President Johnson had wanted this
material to be closed for research until fifty years after his death.
This collection currently consists of two types of recordings: 1)
recordings of telephone conversations, primarily made on Dictaphone
Dictabelt Records, from November 22, 1963, through January 1969, and
corresponding transcripts; and 2) recordings of international meetings
and of meetings held in the Cabinet Room from late November 1967 through
1968, made on reel-to-reel audio tape, and corresponding transcripts.
In response to
the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act
of 1992, the staff of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library prepared a
special series of recordings and transcripts of telephone conversations.
This series, entitled "JFK Assassination-Related Conversations," consists
of the recordings and transcripts of all recorded telephone conversations
from November 22, 1963, through December 31, 1963, as well as conversations
containing information related to the assassination of President Kennedy
from the following later periods in the Johnson administration:
January and
February 1964, while the transition between administrations continued;
September
1964, the month of the release of the Warren Commission report;
December 1966,
when the controversy over the serialization in Look magazine and
the publication of William Manchester's book, Death of a President,
occurred;
and January
1967 to the end of the Johnson administration, the period of the
Garrison investigation and subsequent trial of Clay Shaw.
This series was
opened in increments from September 30, 1993, through April 15, 1994.
The only previous release from this collection was made in response
to a subpoena in conjunction with the "CBS v. Westmoreland" lawsuit
in 1984, when small portions of selected transcripts were released
to the court.
With the fifty-year
restriction effectively broken by the congressional mandate of the
JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the decision was made by
the Director to continue to open these materials. The White House
Series continues chronologically where the JFK Series left off, beginning
in January 1964. The Library staff will open chronological increments
of the collection periodically; information regarding the release
of new material will be posted on the Library's Web site prior to
the date of release.
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