We all want to know what goes on behind closed doors in the White House. What do presidents and their teams actually say? Do they talk just like the rest of us, or is the whole conversation held in that official tone used for public speeches?

Now you can actually hear the cleaned-up tape of meetings Richard Nixon had with his team during his first term in office, and the recordings are very interesting insights into the back-end of policy making. These tapes have been painstakingly transcribed as clearly as possibly for Vanity Fair’s forthcoming book.

LGBT rights are a massive talking-point in the US (and around the world) at the moment and this audio clip is very revealing as to where legislation against homosexuality came from.

Really interesting thought process… paranoid and derogatory, but really fascinating.

Read the transcript prepared for Vanity Fair and find more audio clips here.