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ABC Celebrates ..Adulterous Affair of JFK as ..'Torrid' 'Love Story' Involving 'American Royalty'
Newsbusters ^ | 2-15-10 | Scott Whitlock

Posted on 02/15/2010 9:51:10 PM PST by STARWISE

Good Morning America on Monday touted an adulterous affair John F. Kennedy had in the early 1950s as a "love story" and a "torrid and fleeting romance."

Co-host George Stephanopoulos lauded the Kennedys as "American royalty" and the show offered no hint of criticism over the infidelity.

"Love letters" revealing the relationship between an engaged and then just-married Kennedy and a Swedish woman are being put on auction this week.

The correspondence between the two show that JFK was cheating on his wife from the very start. Yet, Stephanopoulos delicately spun, "They've been called a window into the complicated and conflicted existence that was Kennedy's life."

Reporter Chris Bury narrated one of the letters from Kennedy to his Swedish mistress, Gunilla Von Post, asserting that the then-Senator "senses that their destinies are drifting apart."

He quoted, "I just got word that my wife and sister are coming here. It will be all be complicated, the way I feel now, my Swedish flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun and look at the ocean and think of Gunilla. All love, Jack."

In total, Bury and Stephanopoulos referred to the "love letters" or "love story" three times, offering no judgment on Kennedy's adultery. However, this shouldn't be surprising, as Good Morning America has repeatedly fawned over the Kennedy family.

On June 5 2008, Claire Shipman lovingly compared Barack Obama to Robert Kennedy. She noted the "similarities" and then declared, "The search to shift that mantle, futile of course. But also a quintessentially American desire for, if not a happy ending, some sense of completion."

On July 16, 2009, Shipman mourned the tenth anniversary of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., the "prince of Camelot," and hyperbolically suggested his "very existence had somehow come to represent a critical link to our fairy tale past. And always, always the possibility of another chapter."

A transcript of the February 15 segment, which aired at 8:11am EST, follows:

8am tease

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Also ahead this morning, John F. Kennedy's secret love letters. They were written to a mysterious Swedish woman in the early days of his marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy. We're going to take a first look at these letters.

ROBIN ROBERTS: Huh.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And this is really a remarkable and revealing story. You actually learn that President Kennedy talked to his dad about divorcing Jackie Kennedy to marry this woman.

ROBERTS: You find that our through the letters?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Yeah.

ROBERTS: All right, that's ahead.

8:11

STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, we have a story about the family that's been called American royalty, the secret love letters that have been kept under lock and key since they were first sent. Today, for the first time, John F. Kennedy's letters to a Swedish woman are going up for auction. They've been called a window into the complicated and conflicted existence that was Kennedy's life. Here's Chris Bury.

CHRIS BURY: He was the dashing and ambitious senator, 36 and already engaged. She, a beautiful blue-blooded Swede, only 21. They met on the French Riviera in the summer of 1953, danced all night and parted with a passionate kiss. So began a secret romance, documented in these 14 letters and telegrams from John F. Kennedy to Gunilla Von Post. They have never been seen in public before.

JOHN REZNIKOFF (President, University Archives): It's a real sensitive and tender love affair that you could really understand through the correspondence.

BURY: Now, 78-years-old, Gunilla Von Post first revealed the affair in a 1997 book and in this interview on ABC's 20/20.

VON POST: His smile was, absolutely, what you say, contagious. It was really electrical between us.

BURY: Only three weeks after those sparks flew in France, Kennedy married Jacqueline Bouvier in Newport, Rhode Island. But, the very next spring and summer, he wrote Gunilla to rekindle their flame. "I thought I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks with you as crew.

VON POST: My heart, boom, boom, boom. I was very happy to hear from him, but I said, he's a married man.

BURY: That summer, their plans for a secret rendezvous fell apart when JFK badly injured his back. After two months in the hospital and surgery that nearly killed him, he still pursued her. "Under that beautiful controlled face that still haunts me, beats a warm heart." Another year goes by before they finally reunite, slipping away to this old castle in Sweden.

VON POST: I borrowed him for a week, a beautiful week that no one can take away from me with that.

BURY: She kept Kennedy's letters locked up until now. Today, they will be offered to the public on LegendaryAuctions.com Online bidding for the Kennedy notes begins at $25,000.

They will be auctioned off as a collection to preserve the love story and enhance the value. In JFK's final letter to Von Post, writing from the Riviera, he senses that their destinies are drifting apart.

"I just got word that my wife and sister are coming here. It will be all be complicated, the way I feel now, my Swedish flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun and look at the ocean and think of Gunilla. All love, Jack."

REZNIKOFF: I think the correspondence is seeping with regret on both sides that these two people wanted to be with each other and it just wasn't to be.

BURY: So, exactly two years after it began, the torrid and fleeting romance came to its bittersweet end. For Good Morning America, I'm Chris Bury, ABC News, Lansing, Illinois.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What a story. They actually met many years later when John F. Kennedy was President. He saw her at a dinner, walked up to her and simply said, "I love you." You can read more of JFK's secret love letters on our website. Go to ABCNews.com and click on GMA.


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Government; History; Society
KEYWORDS: adulterer; jfk; johnfkennedy; loveletters
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What twisted on-air people .. glamorizing adultery .. but long as it's a Dem !!!

Audio

Camelot .... yeah, sure ... more like screwedupalot !

1 posted on 02/15/2010 9:51:11 PM PST by STARWISE
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To: jhw61; Sparky1776; onyx; penelopesire; seekthetruth; television is just wrong; jcsjcm; BP2; ...

~~PING!


2 posted on 02/15/2010 9:53:11 PM PST by STARWISE (They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: STARWISE

Tiger Woods for President!


3 posted on 02/15/2010 9:53:50 PM PST by grey_whiskers (The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)
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To: STARWISE
Funny, I don't recognize any American "royalty." I bow to no man. I do kneel for communion, a concept these people probably aren't familiar with.

As for affairs, they are what they are, seedy and immoral. You can wrap a dead fish in pretty wrapping paper and a bow, but it still stinks.

4 posted on 02/15/2010 9:55:36 PM PST by ThunderSleeps (obama out now! I'll keep my money, my guns, and my freedom - you can keep the change.)
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To: STARWISE

My wife and I met a Irish woman on a train out of London whose niece had worked in the Kennedy household. According to her niece, the Kennedy’s believed they were royalty and treated the servants accordingly.


5 posted on 02/15/2010 10:01:49 PM PST by the_Watchman
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To: ThunderSleeps

Oh no. This is different. Had they been together, Gunilla would have understood JFK’s affair with Marilyn and the East German spy, and Tweedle Deeand Tweedle Dum, the twins. This isn’t sin. This is uh, uh, a love story as deep as uh uh Charlie Sheen’s romantic relationships.

parsy, who is shaking his head


6 posted on 02/15/2010 10:03:42 PM PST by parsifal (Abatis: Rubbish in front of a fort, to prevent the rubbish outside from molesting the rubbish inside)
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To: the_Watchman

Not surprising ... they must’ve had
the pre-Obama narcissism disease .. LOL.


7 posted on 02/15/2010 10:03:42 PM PST by STARWISE (They (LIBS-STILL) think of this WOT as Bush's war, not America's war- Richard Miniter)
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To: STARWISE

Poor Gary Hart!

If only he had better flacks like the Kennedys!


8 posted on 02/15/2010 10:06:49 PM PST by SirJohnBarleycorn
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To: STARWISE

This is what political talk has become in our country:
fawning gossip.
A spectator sport, with us filling the stands, passing on
to one another the latest juicy tidbit, even when, like this one, the tidbits are more than half a century old.
The media has been feeding us this junkfood diet for decades, because they have neither the intellect NOR the nerve to do any real reporting/


9 posted on 02/15/2010 10:07:08 PM PST by supremedoctrine (Time is the school in which we learn that time is the fire in which we burn.)
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To: STARWISE
What do you expect from a political hack who helped cover-up Monica Lewinksy. Now they all act as if it was some big surprise to them just like John Edwards. Who do they think they are kidding. It's only wrong (to them) if it's a conservative.

Their phony Camelot & one of his whores, Gunilla Von Post

10 posted on 02/15/2010 10:12:47 PM PST by kcvl
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To: STARWISE

Democrats and other progressive people seem to have a very high opinion of themselves and a very low opinion of the rest of us.


11 posted on 02/15/2010 10:12:52 PM PST by SeaWolf (Orwell must have foreseen the 21st Century US Congress when he wrote 1984)
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To: STARWISE

The letters chronicle an affair Kennedy had with Gunilla von Post in the early 50s, when he was still a young U.S. Senator. Though it began before his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier, the affair continued afterwards as well.

The pair met on the French Riviera in the summer of 1953. At the time, he was 36, 15 years her senior. In a letter from June 28, 1954, just after he was married, Kennedy wrote to von Post “I might get a boat and sail around the Mediterranean for two weeks - with you as crew.”

Those plans went south when Kennedy injured his back. Kennedy wrote to von Post when he was recuperating in Manhattan.

“I am still in the hospital after two months. I was terribly disappointed that at the last moment I was not able to come to Europe, especially when you were going to be in Paris and we could have had such a good time … “

He wrote that he was going to see her without fail if she wasn’t “all settled down” by then.

http://tinyurl.com/ye92em7


12 posted on 02/15/2010 10:14:51 PM PST by kcvl
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To: STARWISE

BOOK DETAILS JFK AFFAIR WITH PAN AM SWEDE

13 posted on 02/15/2010 10:16:40 PM PST by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum!)
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To: STARWISE

Von Post, now 78, told ABC News’ 20/20 in 1997 that JFK’s letter made her heart go “boom-boom-boom-boom.”

“I was very happy to hear from him, but I said, ‘he’s a married man,’ ” the dowager told 20/20.

She got over it, though. The next year the two shared a tryst at an old castle in Sweden, ABC reported.

“I borrowed him for a week, a beautiful week that no one can take away from me, from that,” she told 20/20. But all good things must end. In the last letter in August 1955, ABC reported that Kennedy wrote, “I just got word today - that my wife and sister are coming here. It will all be complicated the way I feel now - my Swedish Flicka. All I have done is sit in the sun and look at the Ocean and think of Gunilla & All Love, Jack.”


14 posted on 02/15/2010 10:19:36 PM PST by kcvl
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To: STARWISE

Swedish Flicka?!

15 posted on 02/15/2010 10:23:45 PM PST by kcvl
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To: grey_whiskers

Former US president John F. Kennedy had an affair with a Swedish flight attendant, according to a new book based on interviews with current and former Secret Service agents.

According to ex-agent Robert Lutz, President Kennedy took a liking to a Swedish Pan Am Flight attendant who was riding on the press pool airplane which typically follows US presidents while they travel.

While Lutz, who was assigned to the press plane, had initially planned to ask the good looking Swede out for dinner, members of the Secret Service detail assigned to President Kennedy told Lutz to back off.

“She’s part of the president’s private stock,” the head of the president’s Secret Service detail told Lutz, according to an account in the book reported on by the New York Post newspaper.

The book, entitled “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect”, is written by former Washington Post reporter Ronald Kessler and set for release on August 4th.

Lutz’s account of Kennedy’s Swedish mistress is one of many tales in the book detailing the late president’s many extramarital escapades.

In addition to the attractive flight attendant from Sweden, Kennedy also shared intimate relationships with Marilyn Monroe as well as the First Lady’s own press secretary.

According to the book, the Secret Service was also aware of threesomes the president had with two other secretaries known as Fiddle and Faddle.

“Neither did much work,” former Secret Service agent Larry Newman said in the book, according to the New York Post.

The new revelations about Kennedy’s Pam Am Swede come more than 10 years after details emerged of another affair he had with a Swedish aristocrat in the weeks leading up to his 1953 marriage to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier.

In a 1997 book entitled “Love, Jack”, Swede Gunilla von Post tells of a chance meeting she had with the 35-year-old Kennedy while vacationing in the south of France in August 1953.

According to the memoir, Kennedy referred to the then 21-year-old von Post as “My Swedish Gorilla”, having misunderstood the pronunciation of her first name when he had first met her.

Von Post described the future president as making love “with a surprising innocence” and the two maintained a correspondence for six years, with Kennedy visiting her in Sweden for a week in August 1955.

http://tinyurl.com/yjauwva


16 posted on 02/15/2010 10:26:14 PM PST by kcvl
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To: kcvl

Gunilla is prettier than Jackie; their noses, hairlines and facial shape look about the same.

I wonder how much America would’ve continued to fawn over JFK if his adultery had been known. America loved Jackie, too, and, back then, adultery still bothered the mainstream Democrats, particularly when two small children were involved.


17 posted on 02/15/2010 10:29:46 PM PST by skr (May God confound the enemy)
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To: skr
The same as they loved Bill Clinton, enough to cover-up for him.

IMO, Jackie was no better than JFK. They were both phonies.

18 posted on 02/15/2010 10:34:34 PM PST by kcvl
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To: STARWISE

Wow! How romantic and mesmerizing!! Why, none of the other 30 women he was also shtupping at the time mattered at all, not even his wife. This one mistress he REALLY loved! Wow! He, our King of Camelot, Son of Nazi Rumrunner, Lord of the Ladies! Swoon!

Oh, Georgie, how you WISH it had been you he longed for...


19 posted on 02/15/2010 10:40:13 PM PST by Yaelle
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To: STARWISE

“but long as it’s a Dem !!!”

I’m not convinced that it makes much difference what political party they affiliate themselves with. It’s always been my impression that unsupervised married men have a relatively poor track record re. infidelity. Seems like cat’n around has much to do with wealth and power, and it certainly acts an aphrodisiac for more women than you would imagine (but maybe you can imagine quite a lot). Been like that forever, even before there were political parties.

The difference between donkeys and elephants is how it’s perceived. Dems view it as a resume builder. ‘phants are just more likely to keep quiet about it, but they’ll do it if they get the chance (more the rule than an exception). Power, wealth and loads of opportunity make it drearily common on both sides of the political spectrum.

Sad.


20 posted on 02/15/2010 10:46:22 PM PST by Habibi ("It is vain to do with more what can be done with less." - William of Occam)
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