Wilson to hold Clinton tapes

In a few months, a series of secret interviews covering the scandal and political battles of an eight-year presidency will reside in UNC’s library.

A new collection of 79 recordings based on interviews between former President Bill Clinton and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Taylor Branch, as well as correspondences between the two men, will become available to the public in January in Wilson Library.

The files are based on a series of interviews conducted between Clinton and Branch, a UNC alumnus, during the eight years of Clinton’s presidency.

“These papers are going to provide information on the Clinton presidency that has never been available before,” said Tim West, director of the Southern Historical Collection.

The documents form the basis of Branch’s book, “The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President,” which will be published Tuesday. Following the book’s completion, Branch donated his files to the library’s Southern Historical Collection.

“For those who want to get behind the book, we have the raw stuff here,” West said.

Branch met Clinton while campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972 in Texas.

When Clinton was elected president, he invited Branch to conduct the series of interviews during his term.

“Twenty years later, out of the blue, I get a call to come see him, surrounded by secret service agents,” Branch said. “This project really grew out of his interest in preserving historical materials.”

Branch secretly interviewed Clinton 79 times during his presidency.

“I would get a call late in the afternoon saying ‘the president wants to see you at night, can you come down?’” Branch said. “They would always want to do it at night, when most of the staffers went home, and always in the residential part.”

Clinton still has the original tapes from these sessions, but Branch made his own recordings after each one to preserve his memories.

“Branch recorded everything he could remember about those meetings,” West said.

“No sitting president has ever done something like this,” Branch said. “When you write such a personal account of someone, it’s hard to do it in ways that aren’t uncomfortable on both sides.”

Most of Branch’s papers are already at UNC but are still undergoing preparation by librarians for public use.

In January, they will officially join the Taylor Branch Papers, a collection opened in 1998. It already includes about 52,000 items, mostly related to Branch’s research on the civil rights movement for his Pulitzer Prize-winning trilogy on Martin Luther King Jr.


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