Transcript
Edited by Max Holland, with David Shreve, Ashley Havard High, and Patricia Dunn
See the daily introduction for 1963-11-22 [from the Norton edition]
At 1:33 p.m. CST, acting press secretary Malcolm Kilduff confirmed at a Dallas news conference that President Kennedy died, officially, at 1:00 p.m. CST. Within minutes the information was relayed to 86972.
Andrews, sideband.
Start again, please—
Stand [unclear]—
—[your] party is on.
[NBC Television News broadcast in background, “. . . the last rites have been given. Just before the announcement—”]
Sir, be advised we have another patch to WAYSIDE. Do you wish to break it? It’s from SAM Command Post.
Umm . . . yeah, break it.
Yes, sir.
[in background] Break it first . . .
86972, 86972, Andrews.
[86]972, go ahead.
Roger, sir. I have CROWN on. Would you give him a call, sir?[note 1] The Presidential Recordings Program revised the following section of text in 2021 for inclusion in The LBJ Telephone Tapes, a project produced by the Miller Center in partnership with the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library to commemorate the library's 50th anniversary.
CROWN, [86]972. Go ahead.
This is [the] Situation Room. Relay following to WAYSIDE: We have report quoting Mr. [Malcolm M. “Mac”] Kilduff in Dallas that the [slowly and deliberately] President is dead, that he died about 35 minutes ago. [Pause.] Do you have that? Over.
The President is dead. Is that correct?
[deliberately] That is correct. That is correct. New subject. Front office desires plane return Washington, with no stop Dallas. Over.
[Salinger has left.] That is copied. WAYSIDE copied, all OK, and we return direct to Washington without stopping in Dallas. Roger, Roger.
All right. This is [the] Situation Room, out.[note 2] End of 2021 revisions.
Cite as
“Andrews AFB, WHSR (Oliver Hallett), and 86972 (Pierre Salinger) on 22 November 1963,” Unidentified, Presidential Recordings Digital Edition [The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power, vol. 1, ed. Max Holland] (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014–). URL: http://prde.upress.virginia.edu/conversations/9010015
Originally published in
Lyndon B. Johnson: The Kennedy Assassination and the Transfer of Power, November 1963–January 1964, ed. Max Holland, vol. 1 of The Presidential Recordings (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2005).