The Federal Reserve on Friday released the transcripts of its policy meetings in 2012, providing a window to officials’ behind-the-scenes policy debates in a year when they unleashed a third round of bond purchases aimed at boosting the then-fitful U.S. economic recovery.

The transcripts, released with the customary five-year lag, provide the first verbatim public record of what individual Fed officials and top central-bank staffers said during their policy discussions at eight meetings of the interest-rate-setting Federal...