The tapes remain a largely untapped resource, in part because they are enormous, unwieldy, badly organized, often bleeped, crackly, laborious to transcribe, and hard to understand.
Another 700 hours of Nixon tapes remain classified or restricted and haven't been released because of national security and privacy concerns.
At each seam, the original packing tape remained intact.
The bridge where the victims died, closed off with yellow tape, remained littered with shoes and bits of clothing that had been torn off in the crush.
The political impact of the bin Laden tape remained unclear, although even some Democrats said it was probably welcome news for President Bush who, polls find, Americans prefer over Senator John Kerry to lead the fight against terrorism.
By midafternoon the deepest frowns had faded, the bazaar had reopened and, while police tape remained up, people were returning to their homes and the streets were bustling again with boys on bikes and men and women preparing for the holidays and buzzing over the day's startling events.
He wasn't lying; over the course of the 45-minute drive Ahmed's homemade Bowie mix-tape remained jammed in the cassette player, tinny repeats of Starman reminding us to let the children boogie as the Balqa hills folded and unfolded neatly ahead.
Yet the words on the tape remained unaltered.
While ICG tried to release it, Narain said that she would work with Farrell to ensure that the tape remained private; Farrell said she tried to release it to damage his acting career and "make money out of it", a claim Narain denies.
