Many CIA Mexico City Tapes of Russian and Cuban Embassies Are Now Available!

[Denis Morissette]

They were found by Alex Harris and I assisted him in obtaining them. Some are of November 22, 1963, but many of December 1963 will be posted first. So you will need to be patient. Alex indicates the date in each video he'll be posting. We don't know yet if there is any of Lee's visit. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jean Ceulemans]

Thank you very much. I´m a little busy for the moment, but couldn´t resist listening to some random parts. Compared to other typical phone recordings the quality is just great!  It´ll be a nice opportunity to refresh my (basic) Spanish a little... It sure has been a loooooong time,  my aunt´s partner was Spanish, he taught me the basics, later on I took some - job related - classes.  But if one doesn´t use it regularly, it sure fades in a hurry.

[Larry Hancock]

Have you found anything which suggests the actual location of the point where the recordings were made - individual taps on building phone lines, the central switch tap facility or even wireless bugs in the area of the phones.  At this point I'm quite puzzled by the degree of background conversation and even music on what were supposedly direct wire to recorder taps of phone lines locally or at the switching center? 

[Denis Morissette]

All great questions, Larry. We received the tapes this morning. Alex Harris is very busy uploading all of them. Audio from November 22 through December 12, at least. About 200 individual audio all in all. He’ll eventually upload the recordings of the Russian embassy.

[Larry Hancock]

Well at least the dates probably explain why they were actually saved and entered into the collection of materials related to the assassination. Sounds like these are all from the Cuban facilities - three observations that might be relevant.  First, I heard dialed digits in a few of the calls and those were collected by the central switch facility which had the ability  to collect outbound dialed digits.  The taps and the local safe houses did not. Second, I wonder if the CIA even went so far as to use audio bugs on pay telephones near the embassies, if so that might explain the background noise - and they might have pulled out all the stops after the assassination, expecting the Cubans and Russians both to be suspicious of using business lines.  In addition, as Bill Simpich has pointed out, central site taps were even placed on some private residences, that might also explain some of the background conversations and music. If anything following the assassination it might have been decided to tap a host of personal lines of diplomatic personnel.

[Jean Ceulemans]

In one of them it sounded like a radio playing in the background (Cubans like music, also in offices or at the reception desk), other people talking could simply be a busy day.  A good quality tap pickes it up. That´s what surprised me the most, the quality. I would think close to the primary source, not somewhere up/down the line.

Edited 6 hours ago by Jean Ceulemans

[Robert Reynolds]

Thanks for the link Denis, and for your help in getting the tapes online.

If convenient, I'd like to hear more about the source of the tapes, and any identifying info available. It looks like these are the tapes mentioned in the ARRB Final report (here). There are MC teltap tapes in the JFK collection database, the MFF JFK explorer link is here. The relevant records are listed on disk no 104-10314, a total of 201 records. Eight are "summary transcripts", the rest are listed as "magnetic tape". That makes a total of 193 tapes, a little more than the ARRB report's estimate of 185. The database gives some useful metadata, with the usual bloopers as well. Dates range from 11/22/63 to a "Cuban facilities tap" recorded as late as 2/14/64.