Paměť národa says its 1996 Vévoda interview tape with Max van der Stoel is too audio-degraded to publish beyond already-quoted passages

Paměť národa's own 2024 article states plainly that the archive's named holding on this meeting — a 1996 interview with Max van der Stoel conducted by historian Rudolf Vévoda, given to the archive only in 2024 — cannot currently be heard or read in full: "Unfortunately it is not of sufficient audio quality — time has taken its toll. For now we must limit ourselves to a transcript of selected passages." No public catalogue entry, downloadable audio, or fuller transcript for this specific recording was located in a 2026-09-03 search.

This directly bears on question-verify-van-der-stoel-patocka-meeting-date's narrower half — whether the archive's own 1996 recording settles the January-vs-1-March discrepancy in the same article's own headline. It does not close the question: nobody has read or heard the tape itself. But it explains why that check keeps failing — by the magazine's own editors' account, the tape cannot currently be checked by anyone, including its own publisher. The date is independently settled anyway, by sources that never touch this tape at all (see claim-cts-transcript-confirms-1-march-1977-patocka-van-der-stoel-meeting and claim-verkijk-1977-recording-patocka-van-der-stoel-meeting-survives-zvuky-prahy).