Spotlight

Summer 2009                                                                Back to Spotlight home page

An alum helps to unravel presidential involvement in Vietnam and more

Barbara (Constable) Cline (MS’06), Austin, Texas, is a Lyndon B. Johnson Library archivist, involved in a project to release telephone conversations indicating that Richard Nixon’s campaign staff was working behind the scenes in South Vietnam. The project highlights the actions of Richard Nixon's associates to influence South Vietnam, the Paris peace

talks, and the November 1968 elections. The highlights for some of the best conversations can be viewed at the LBJ website. Cline says there are several conversations related to this situation - what President Johnson called "treason" in his talks with Illinois Senator and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen (Republican). Cline suggests listening to a conversation on the website listed as citation #13706. 

Cline says she was a part of a 10-12 person effort to release the tapes: to transfer the sound from dictabelts to DAT tapes, review the tapes for security and privacy closures, prepare  descriptions of the conversations, review the tapes against the transcripts prepared by the President's clerical staff, prepare copies of the tapes and transcripts for the Reading Room and for purchase, and deal with the media. Her part of this process

includes retrieving the transcripts and comparing them to the audio tapes to look for "egregious" errors by the White House clerical staff. She also redacts classified and closed information from the transcripts before they are opened for research.

Cline began working at the LBJ Library on the campus of the University of Texas in January 2004.  Before moving to Texas, she worked for over 20 years at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kan. 

Last Updated July 29, 2009