Confronting the Kennedy Tapes: The May‐Zelikow Transcripts and the Stern Assessments

Recently, scholars and publishers have begun to take advantage of the recording technology that presidents have relied on since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR). While transforming these recordings into data requires a massive commitment of time and money, the rewards for this effort are substantial. With scholars in both political science and history beginning to introduce these materials into their research scholarship, evaluations of the transcripts and the processes that produce them have become the subject of scholarly interest (see Sullivan et al. 1999). Harvard University Press has published one such effort. Drawn from the Kennedy Presidential Archives, editors Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow's book, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis, presents an interesting picture of that historic event. Because the event itself is historic and because important decision-theoretic work often relies on studies of the Cuban missile crisis, the criticisms of Sheldon Stern, a former archivist at the Kennedy Library, here and elsewhere present an important assessment and challenge worth considering. Mr. Stern's criticisms seem to fall into two broad categories--problems with transcriptions and the meaning they afford conversations, and potential problems with the audio processing that the tapes received before transcribing. Both of these are serious concerns, especially in light of the fact that the Miller Center intends to produce transcriptions on all presidential tape recordings. This brief article outlines what seem like the biggest problems as pointed out by Mr. Stern. The comments I make as an editor and as a researcher familiar with this area are tempered by the fact that we will have to hear from the May-Zelikow team. But the numbers of examples Mr. Stern presents and their varied nature certainly suggest something we should find disquieting. Transcription Errors According to Mr. Stern, the transcriptions contain a number of errors, a sample of which he published in an Atlantic Monthly article. In their response to the Atlantic, May and Zelikow (2000) claim that "none of these amendments is very important" (p. 13). Mr. Stern invites us to examine the list published in this part of the Presidential Studies Quarterly and to judge for ourselves. Here are my notes. Take the examples cited in Table. 1, drawn from Mr. Stern's article. Beginning with example 1, it is apparent that this transcription, if in error, changes substantially the meaning of the conversations. Secretary Rusk's key point, that failure of the United States to respond in Cuba would encourage the Soviets "to go adventuring," appears in the May-Zelikow transcript as "go ahead and eventually ..." The substance of Secretary Rusk's point has to do with the consequences of actions. That May-Zelikow have him considering that the Russians would take some unspecified kind of action differs substantially from the assertion by Rusk that "adventuring" would result. In a world in which leaders wonder about their capacity to "command and control" their nuclear arsenals and insulate them from conventional disputes that spiral out of control, the substance of Rusk's concerns as expressed in Stern's transcription seems an important distinction. TABLE 1 Examples of Errors in The Kennedy Tapes Transcripts, October 18, 11:00 A.M. The Kennedy Tapes transcripts say ... Stern's revisions say ... 1. Rusk: ... I think they Rusk: ... I think they would be would be critically greatly encouraged to go encouraged to go ahead adventuring, and would feel that and eventually feel like they've got it made ... they've got it made ... (p. 127) 2. Taylor: They'll be Taylor: They may be operational operational at the same at any time. time. (p. 132) 3. JFK: It wouldn't really RFK: It wouldn't really have to have to be a call, would it? …