AUSTIN – Then-President Lyndon B. Johnson called Sen. Edward Kennedy the day after brother Robert Kennedy was assassinated to offer condolences and assistance to the grieving Kennedy family.

“Ted, I know what a burden you bear, but your shoulders are broad,” Mr. Johnson said in a 3-minute conversation, recorded on June 6, 1968, that was released today by the LBJ Library in Austin.

“You’ve got lots of people who love you and who want to help you and make it as bearable as possible,” Mr. Johnson said. “If you just whisper, why, your request will be our command.”

Mr. Kennedy replied, “Well, Mr. President, you are awfully kind about and I don’t know how to tell you how much I appreciate it.”

Referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the senator said, “Both my parents appreciated your call five years ago and certainly here tonight and this morning. It is a terrible time for me personally … and I guess we will just have to feel our way along.”

Mr. Johnson told Mr. Kennedy to “talk to my boy Jim Jones” – a future Oklahoma congressman – if his family needed anything from the federal government.

“Let’s get together when this is all over with,” the president said.

“Fine,” Mr. Kennedy said.

“We’ve too few of us and we’ve got to stay a little closer together. Goodbye,” Mr. Johnson said.

The tape is among 42 hours of recordings from the final months of the Johnson presidency that his library made public. It’s the last batch of the secret recordings to be released, in a series of some 16 unveilings since 1993.

The newly disclosed tapes were made from May 1968 through January 1969 – a period that archivist Regina Greenwell described as “one of the most tumultuous periods in American history,” with the Vietnam war raging, Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and at home, assassination and a tight presidential election.

Some of the new tapes show Mr. Johnson’s heated reaction after learning that surrogates for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon urged the South Vietnamese to stall on participating in peace talks until after the November 1968 American election.

At a press conference, former Johnson aide Harry Middleton said the president and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee for president, decided not to disclose the activity by Claire Chenault and other Nixon supporters out of fear that the nation “couldn’t survive another blow,” though disclosure might have changed the election’s outcome.

Both of Mr. Johnson’s daughters, Luci and Lynda, flashed with emotion as snippets of the tapes were played today.

Lynda Johnson Robb dabbed a tissue at her eyes as she listened to her parents giving a Christmas Day call to former President Harry Truman and his wife, Bess.

Luci Johnson said the tapes, while at times capturing her father’s bawdy humor and outlandish behavior, also show his intense desire for an “honorable peace” in Vietnam and social justice at home.

“You have Lyndon Johnson speaking for himself in candid conversations about the times that try men’s souls,” she said.