By Jon Hilsenrath, Pedro Nicolaci da Costa,Ben Leubsdorf,Kate Davidson and Josh Zumbrun

Janet Yellen was doubtful in 2009 that an emerging U.S. economic recovery would be at all robust and argued regularly for the Fed to ramp up its efforts to boost growth, according to transcripts of 2009 policy meetings released by the central bank Thursday.

A reading of the Fed's transcripts of its policy meetings, released Thursday, reveals fully for the first time the fraught debates at turning points in the aftermath of the financial crisis that nearly wrecked the U.S. economy.

The Fed's internal debates evolved as the year progressed, away from the panic that marked the early part of the year and toward uncertainties about the strength of the brewing recovery, whether to do more and both how and when to plot an exit from the easy money policies. Ms. Yellen was often on the side of those arguing for more.

"The economic and financial news has been grim," Ms. Yellen said at a crucial March 2009 policy meeting when the Fed increased its efforts to boost the economy. "Things are now so bad that I actually open [Fed's staff] economic projections with greater trepidation than my 401(k)."

Ms. Yellen, who was then President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and went on to become Fed chairwoman in 2014, offered at the March 2009 policy meeting a dire analysis of the longer-run economic outlook. The Fed decided at the meeting to buy $300 billion in U.S. Treasury securities, $1.25 trillion in mortgage backed securities and $200 in debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, a massive increase in its efforts launched as markets deteriorated.

In April, she argued the economic outlook was still "fraught with peril" and called for the Fed to ramp up its bond-buying program, which came to be known as "quantitative easing."

"Now that we've tested the waters, it's time to wade in by substantially increasing our purchases of Treasury securities," Ms. Yellen said. "I prefer to take appropriate, bold action to stimulate the economy sooner rather than later."

Ms. Yellen didn't win the argument that day, but the Fed would end up engaging in several more rounds of bond buying in the coming years.

The Fed's bond program became one of the more controversial facets of officials' efforts. The Fed struggled with later decisions to resume the programs. Some economists doubt they had a big impact on the economy. Others said they distorted markets and risked spurring inflation or financial excesses.

Ms. Yellen's views were colored by a dim view of the economic outlook. She said in September that the recovery "will be tepid by historical standards, leaving unemployment unacceptably high for a long time to come."

Ironically, among her concerns were that Fed policies were less powerful than they had been in the past. Because the banking system was so fragile, she argued in March, the low interest rates that the Fed engineered were less likely to boost growth. Still, rather than back off the use of these policies, she pressed for more.

By December, after it was clear a recovery was in hand, she worried about the Fed ending its bond purchases prematurely.

"We just don't know what will happen to [mortgage-backed securities] spreads and mortgage rates as we wind down our purchases over the next several months," she said in December. "Many market participants expect rates to spike up considerably. And if that happens when the economy is still very weak, and the housing markets remain fragile, I think we may need to resume purchases."

The Fed launched a new bond program in November 2010.

The Wall Street Journal has documented that Ms. Yellen correctly foresaw a weak recovery at the early stages, a forecast that led her to call for aggressive easy-money policies through much of the aftermath of the crisis.

To be sure, Ms. Yellen had her share of misjudgments, underestimating at times how long it would take for the economy--and monetary policy--to get back to normal. But the Yellen that emerges in the 2009 meetings is an unmistakable policy "dove," meaning somebody who argues forcefully for easy-money policies. It contradicts, to a degree, her approach since last year as Fed chairwoman, when she has sought to build consensus and hasn't staked out sharp policy positions at odds with other policy makers.

At one point in the March meeting, she said the Fed might be raising short-term interest rates by 2012. Rates today remain near zero, where the Fed put them in December 2008. Ms. Yellen is leading efforts to begin raising them later this year.

Some officials were much less prescient. Philadelphia Fed President Charles Plosser said on April 28 his forecast for inflation "requires that we begin raising the funds rate by the end of this year, certainly by early next year, and then continue to raise it throughout the forecast period. I have it reaching 3 1/2 percent by the fourth quarter of 2011." The fed funds rate, the central bank's benchmark short-term rate, has remained near zero since December 2008. Many officials expect to start lifting it later this year.

The transcripts posted on the Fed's website also shed light on how former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke handled key decisions, including a controversial move that March to ramp up the bond-buying program that came to be one of central bank's signature responses to the crisis.

Central bank officials began 2009 in a panic, scrambling to rescue banks and launch rescue programs as financial markets and stock prices tumbled. By year-end, Mr. Bernanke had been nominated for another four-year term as Fed leader and named Time Magazine's "person of the year" with an economic recovery appearing to be in hand.

In September 2009, just after being renominated, he broached the idea of adding to the bond-buying programs.

"If we're unsatisfied with the situation and we think the federal funds rate ought to be minus 4 percent, why aren't we doing even more?" Mr. Bernanke asked rhetorically at a September policy meeting.

"I don't think we should rule it out," Mr. Bernanke responded to his own question. But "given all the uncertainties we have and the issues about our balance sheet and exit and our uncertainties about the effects of these programs, it's not obvious that we do have a lot of ammunition left even on this unconventional dimension."

The National Bureau of Economic Research eventually pegged the end of the recession in June 2009. The national unemployment rate hit a peak of 10% in October 2009, then began to slowly decline. And the Dow Jones Industrial Average bottomed out in March 2009.

The latest transcripts cover the 11 meetings--eight scheduled and three unscheduled--in 2009 of the Fed's policy making Federal Open Market Committee. The group releases a statement shortly after each meeting announcing its policy decision, and three weeks later releases minutes summarizing the meetings without identifying individuals by name or quoting them. The Fed releases the FOMC transcripts five years after the meetings, revealing for the first time exactly what individual Fed officials said as they debated policy.

Participating in the meeting are members of the Fed's seven-member Washington-based board of governors, presidents of the 12 regional reserve banks and senior central-bank staff.

This year's release comes at potential inflection point for the central bank as lawmakers consider a host of proposals that would subject the Fed to additional congressional scrutiny or restructure it. The new documents could shed new light on who was wrong and who was right inside the central bank as it tried to find a way out of crisis. That in turn could shape proposals on how Congress might want to change it.

Write to Jon Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath@wsj.com and Josh Zumbrun at Josh.Zumbrun@wsj.com

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