Researchers at the University of Virginia's Miller Center of Public Affairs will finally be able to finish work on the secret presidential recordings of Lyndon Johnson, and begin work on those of Richard Nixon, thanks to a $130,000 federal grant.
The Miller Center has published eight different volumes of transcripts. The latest round of studies will conclude work on Johnson's private discussions about everything from the Vietnam War to the tumultuous civil rights era.
The center can now keep digging with help from a $130,000 grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
Guian McKee has worked with the project for nine years. He says it gives us a fascinating look into an otherwise unknown world, "You can literally hear history as it's happening, and you really do start to get a sense of events as they occurred in the time, and who these people were that were making key decisions."
The center's work focuses on studying and documenting the recordings of six presidents - Roosevelt through Nixon - created between 1940 and 1973.
Scholars, staff and students hope to complete the latest round of research by July of 2012.
