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 July 6 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.

[Steve Roe]

15 hours ago, Larry Hancock said:

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.

Larry having listened to a few of these tapes last night, I believe you can hear background noises on both ends of the conversations, I.E. the caller and the receiver of the telephone call. Having only listened to the December tapes, I recall where one Mexican national caller was calling on behalf of an American to the Cuban Embassy. You can hear her talking in English to the American. 

[Larry Hancock]

We have some pretty solid descriptions of how the recorders were attached to the phone lines, these were electrical taps on actual phone lines, not wireless bugs.  Which means that either the listening station sites which were locally tapped on the phones or the central switching site taps should have a very solid connection to the line which means they are going to pick up anything coming onto the telephone handset from either the transmitter or receiver.  In those days telephone sets had reasonably sensitive voice pick ups but were obviously designed to pick up the person talking - if they held the receiver as they were supposed to of course. 

So bottom line, we could certainly be hearing surrounding background noise from either end, all it has to do is get into the handset transmitter.  Which unfortunately tells us little about where the line itself was being tapped or for that matter which line...in the case of the Russian embassy we have some solid CIA records that tell us how it was tapped...via the central site...and in a fashion to pick up outgoing dialed digits.  I did hear some dialed digits on a couple of tapes and that would differentiate outbound from inbound calls. Supposedly the Cuban embassy was tapped the same way at the central site.  Its unclear whether the Cuban consulate was tapped either directly or from the local monitoring house in 1963.

We also know that lots of places including private homes of select individuals were also tapped at the central site. So all in all it seems like it would take a lot of time and effort to parse out what locations are on these tapes - and if they are all from Nov 22....

 

 

[Jean Ceulemans]

A direct connection/"hard" tap does explain the quality.  I think the CIA did have transmitter- bugs since the 1950´s (?), but don´t know about their capacity/ performance by 1963.  

Edited July 6 by Jean Ceulemans