But, before any information is released it must pass through at least two phases of screening. First, the National Security Council reviews the transcripts to remove all material that may affect current or future national security. Second, the Kennedy family can have a say on what is opened and what is not.
In order to keep personal information from being released, the family selected their own screening committee to review the tapes. The committee consists of Brook Marshall, who is currently a professor at Yale Law School, Samuel Beer, professor of the Science of Government at Harvard and Theodore Sorensen, a former Kennedy advisor and a close friend of the family.
Most of the deleted information, however, is related in some way to national security. In fact, in the last set of transcripts that were released, there was only one deletion as a result of family privacy, whereas there were over 50 related to national security.
Parts may be also deleted from the transcripts if someone who is involved or related in some way to the information on the tapes feels it should not be made public.
For example, if a recording involves names of sources who do not want to be revealed they may have parts of the tapes deleted, says Johnson.
Or if the CIA or any other government agency feels that certain information should remain confidential, they may order it closed. "In fact," Johnson says, "anything can be closed for as long as anyone thinks it should be closed."
Nevertheless, there is a formal procedure to allow researchers to ask that a closed portion of the tapes be made public.
After two years, Desnoyers said, researchers can appeal to the screening committees to reexamine the tapes to determine whether or not they still constitute a threat to security.
While researchers have already used this procedure successfully to open previously closed materials in Kennedy's personal papers, the tapes have not been released long enough to allow this type of preview.
However, Johnson said, "Eventually everything will be opened."