US National Archives turns to Wikimedia to help release new JFK assassination discovery

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I am excited to announce that today the United States National Archives has released a new audio recording from the John F. Kennedy assassination to Wikimedia. You can find the files on Wikimedia Commons:

As a work of the American federal government, the recording is in the public domain. This two-hour tape recording of the communications of Air Force One personnel following the assassination is a new discovery which was recently donated to the National Archives. As part of NARA’s roll-out strategy for this high-profile item, the digitized recording was uploaded to Wikimedia Commons at the same time as it was revealed on archives.gov.  We hope that the upload of these files to Wikimedia Commons will help increase their exposure while encouraging Wikimedians to add value to them through transcribing them or using them as encyclopedic source material and subject matter.
In preparation for the release, NARA provided me an advance copy of the 1.4 GB raw WAV files from the digitization (you will only get MP3 from NARA’s site). I must also thank Wikimedia Poland, who kindly donated server space to store and convert the files to OGG before upload. According to the National Archives press release:

The Raab Collection recently discovered two ¼” open reel audio tapes containing identical excerpts from the Air Force One flight on Nov. 22, 1963… The tape also includes communication between the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) and a second aircraft of the Presidential fleet, known as 86972 (by its tail number), which was en route to Tokyo at the time of the assassination with members of the President’s cabinet.

 The recording includes references to new code names and incidents. Among them are a private conversation by head of the Secret Service Jerry Behn about the disposition of the President’s body; an expanded conversation about how to remove the body from the plane and where to take it; an urgent effort by an aide to Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay to reach General Clifton; and attempts to locate various Congressmen from Texas. (read more)

This development is part of the ongoing relationship between the US National Archives and the Wikimedia projects, which my service as Wikipedian in Residence represents. It is not NARA’s first upload to Wikimedia Commons—since I announced the first upload of over 200 high-resolution Ansel Adams photos last June, we have added tens of thousands of high-resolution historical documents to Wikimedia Commons. That press release is also not the first NARA web page to link prominently to Wikimedia projects. Some NARA educational pages reference Wikipedia articles written in response to an editing challenge, while documents that Wikisource has transcribed are linked from the online catalog.
We’re also running a multilingual featured article contest and are encouraging transcriptions on Wikisource. And when the National Archives’ new Citizen Archivist Dashboard was launched, garnering lots of buzz within the archival community, it included Wikipedia editing and Wikisource transcription missions for the public. In addition, NARA has hosted a series of on-site events for Wikipedians which included tours into the stacks, scanning parties, and even a trip on board the real Air Force One (albeit the one on display at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California). If you would like to get more involved, the NARA collaboration has WikiProjects on Wikipedia, Wikisource, and Commons.
Dominic McDevitt-Parks
Wikipedian in Residence, National Archives and Records Administration

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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This is so amazing!
Elle 🙂

Thanks Wikimedia for your effort to publish such important docs. A great leap towards forgotten history…

[…] Force 1 Audio Tapes: Nov. 22, 1963 For those history buffs……. US National Archives turns to Wikimedia to help release new JFK assassination discovery document.write(''); OX.requestAd({"auid":"33539"}); __________________ Socialism is the […]

Wow, great news! Any chance you could upload the original WAV files somewhere (maybe Internet Archives)? The MP3 and OGG files are lower in sound quality.

its interesting!!!!!!!:)

Hi Hypercube,
Wikimedia Commons doesn’t accept the WAV file format, or I would have uploaded it, and NARA doesn’t offer it because of the large file sizes. For now, you can still download the WAV files from the WMPL FTP server where I was using them: ftp://tools.wikimedia.pl/. You are free to upload them wherever you like.

We have uploaded two torrents to share original WAV files:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/7000116
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/7000124

Amazing audio (indeed the .WAV files are of better quality). Thank you Dominic for making this available.

need the transcript for people who r hard of hearing

[…] Wikimedia Commons […]

which are the new parts ????

[…] Ολόκληρη η ταινία μπορεί να ακουστεί εδώ: http://diff.wikimedia.org/2012/01/30/us-national-archives-wikimedia-release-jfk-assassination-discov… […]

How do I get copy of that 1.4 GB raw WAV files from the digitization?

[…] κασέτες περιέχουν ηχογραφήσεις διάρκειας 42 λεπτών από το προεδρικό αεροσκάφος Air Force One που μετέφερε τη […]

Please see fetch torrents: http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/7000116 http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/7000124 using any BitTorrent client (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BitTorrent_clients) like for example one in the Opera web browser.

[…] Ακούστε τα ηχητικά ντοκουμέντα εδώ:http://diff.wikimedia.org/2012/01/30/us-national-archives-wikimedia-release-jfk-assassination-discov… […]

[…] κασέτες περιέχουν ηχογραφήσεις διάρκειας 42 λεπτών από το προεδρικό αεροσκάφος Air Force One που μετέφερε τη […]

[…] link. Find Side 2 and more information at the GPO website (MP3 format) or at Wikimedia Commons (OGG format). If you can settle for nothing less than the real thing, the Ardmore-based Raab […]

[…] US National Archives turns to Wikimedia to help release new JFK assassination discovery […]

Thanks saperski for the wav files, although I have problems downloading them. The article is great, worth reading. Regards.