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JFK's liaisons, Jackie's pain
New York Daily News | 5/18/03 | TRACY CONNOR

Posted on 05/18/2003 6:53:16 AM PDT by kattracks

They say a woman always knows - and Jacqueline Kennedy was no exception.

The queen of Camelot was heart-wrenchingly aware of the sexual affairs President John Kennedy engaged in during his years in the White House, a new book reveals.

In "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," author Robert Dallek details how the President tried to satisfy a voracious appetite for sex by bedding a string of party girls and staffers.

In "An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963," author Robert Dallek details how the President tried to satisfy a voracious appetite for sex by bedding a string of party girls and staffers.

The bio also unveiled John Kennedy's long-secret affair with a teenage intern, unmasked by the Daily News last week as Marion (Mimi) Beardsley Fahnestock, now a Manhattan divorcee.

John Kennedy's glamorous young wife was pained by his flagrant philandering, to the point where she made snide or angry remarks about it in dangerously public settings, the book says.

"Isn't it bad enough that you solicit this woman for my husband, but then you insult me by asking me to shake her hand!" she sniped at two aides after spotting one of her husband's sex partners on a receiving line.

Another day, during a tour of the White House, she told a shocked French journalist, "This is the girl who supposedly is sleeping with my husband."

No secret

Edward Klein, author of the 1996 book "All Too Human: The Love Story of Jack and Jackie Kennedy," agrees that JFK's extracurricular activities were no secret to his wife.

"It wasn't a mystery to her that all the young, attractive women in the White House were fair game as far as her husband was concerned.

"Jackie was completely aware her husband was a hopeless philanderer, and when he did it privately and without her knowledge, it bothered her far less than when he would fail to hide it in public."

Before he was elected President, John Kennedy could be cruelly blatant about his skirt-chasing.

"At a dinner party, he would often disappear with a woman who was sitting at the table with them," Klein said.

"It caused a lot of heartache and tension, but she [Jackie Kennedy] was accustomed to men who behaved like that," Klein said, referring to her father, Jack Bouvier, a notorious womanizer.

"Jackie came from an upper class where this kind of behavior, though not applauded by women, was widely expected by them," he said. "Nonetheless, it wasn't easy to live with."

Jackie Kennedy's own alleged love affairs may have salved her wounds. Klein says she carried on with Fiat heir Gianni Agnelli; other accounts say she had a revenge romance with movie star William Holden.

In researching his book - a scholarly tome that for the first time reports how ill John Kennedy was in office and how much medication he took - Dallek hoped to see a 500-page oral history recorded by Jackie Kennedy.

Her daughter, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, blocked access to the papers, which are locked up at the Kennedy Library in Boston. She did not return a call from the Daily News.

Dallek did, however, see reams of letters written by a young JFK to his close friend Lemoyne Billings.

He was 17 years old when he boasted in one letter about his success with girls - decades before his rumored romance with Marilyn Monroe.

"I can't help it. It can't be my good looks because I'm not much handsomer than anybody else," he wrote. "It must be my personality."

Dad's dalliances

Dallek suggests Kennedy's Casanova complex was rooted in the infamous infidelities of his own father, Joseph Kennedy, and a rivalry with his older brother, Navy pilot Joseph Kennedy Jr., who died at age 29 when his plane exploded over the English Channel during World War II.

John Kennedy's constant illnesses, and predictions that he would die young, also may have spurred him on - though his frail health didn't interfere with his sex life.

"The nurses here are the dirtiest bunch of females I've ever seen," he wrote to Billings during a 1934 hospital stay. "One of them wanted to know if I would give her a workout last night. ... I said yes, but she was put off duty early."

During another illness, he whined about being in Boston.

"Millions of beautiful misses arrived in Palm Beach daily so I am getting rather fed up with the meat up here, if you know what I mean," he wrote.

He bragged about having sex with one woman in a bathtub, and told how an aide to his father lined up willing dates for him and his football buddies on Cape Cod, Mass.

By the time he was at Harvard University in 1937, he was known as "Play-boy," and had too many girlfriends to remember their names.

As an unmarried congressman, he had a "smorgasbord of women" - mostly one-night stands with flight attendants and secretaries, the book reports.

Election to the Senate, his marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier and even the spotlight on the Oval Office didn't deter him. If anything, the presidency whetted his thirst.

"Kennedy's womanizing had, of course, always been a form of amusement, but now it also gave him a release from unprecedented daily tensions," Dallek writes.

During a 1961 meeting with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, he confided that he got headaches if he went three days without sex.

His mistresses included Pamela Turnure, Jackie's press secretary; Mary Pinchot Meyer, Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee's sister-in-law; two secretaries nicknamed Fiddle and Faddle, and mob moll Judith Campbell Exner.

JFK & intern

Then there was a 19-year-old "tall, slender, beautiful" White House intern.

Her identity remained a secret until last week, but JFK came close to having several other "other women" publicly named during his time in office - including Ellen Rometsch, a suspected East German spy who romped naked in the White House pool. While Kennedy's tomcatting has long been a source of fascination, Dallek doesn't believe it altered history.

"As far as I can tell," he wrote, "Kennedy's dalliances were no impediment to his being an effective President."

Originally published on May 17, 2003



TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: beardsley; jackiekennedy; jfk; mimi; robertdallek; smorgasboard
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Chapter three: the part of this saga where we're supposed to compare the "long suffering hillary! with Jackie.
1 posted on 05/18/2003 6:53:16 AM PDT by kattracks
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To: kattracks
"Jackie came from an upper class where this kind of behavior, though not applauded by women, was widely expected by them,"

Upper class? I guess that depends on what the meaning of "class" means.

2 posted on 05/18/2003 6:57:11 AM PDT by csvset
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To: kattracks
See..Clinton's not so bad and Hillary is a saint.
3 posted on 05/18/2003 6:58:51 AM PDT by MEG33
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To: kattracks
No big deal Jackie was French and the best part of it she was a Democrat. Democrats have no morals, no rules, no laws, they kill babies and have no God.
4 posted on 05/18/2003 7:00:58 AM PDT by Nagual
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To: Howlin; Miss Marple; StarFan; JulieRNR21
ping
5 posted on 05/18/2003 7:02:17 AM PDT by kattracks
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To: kattracks
I do believe the dear boy forgot to mention the East German spy Kennedy was messing around with. Oh well, we can't put anything in there that might impact negatively on national security can we...

When I was a kid I thought Kennedy was 'the guy'. It's been a rather slow process over the years, but I've come to the conclusion that Kennedy was a moral wasteland. Aided by the press his true character was hidden and a make-believe version honed to build him up.

Look at the trash leaders the Democrats have foisted off on this nation in the last forty-five years. And people are upset about Bush????? He may not be perfect, but he's no John Kennedy, thank God.
6 posted on 05/18/2003 7:08:33 AM PDT by DoughtyOne
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To: kattracks
I guess Jackie had a "boys will be boys' outlook. What could she do? Sad. I hope Father Oscar Huber was quick with the Last Rites thing in Dallas.
7 posted on 05/18/2003 7:11:22 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Kim Jong Il had ANOTHER bad underwear day . He found "decapitate" in his English-Korean dictionary.)
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To: kattracks
We may pity the long-suffering Jacqueline Kennedy, but she knew the deal going in. The Kennedy clan was no mysterious cult among those of their social level, they were bad boys, and all the interested parties were aware of their reputation. All this only made them interesting, but not deities. The God-personas were conferred upon them by the relatively ignorant (not a few of whom were and are in the national mass media).
8 posted on 05/18/2003 7:19:18 AM PDT by alloysteel
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To: AmericanInTokyo
I guess Jackie had a "boys will be boys' outlook.

A boys will be boys outlook where the "boy" constantly abuses his wife (as in flaunting his girlfriends in front of her) seems to be somewhat over the line, imo. I guess one learns to put up with these "little annoyances" when the reward is power and prestige and fawning from an adoring public who have absolutely no idea of the disgusting truth behind the myth.

9 posted on 05/18/2003 7:22:21 AM PDT by kattracks
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To: kattracks
I am sure this hurt Jackie quite a bit, and I think she expected him to cut it out after their marriage. Perhaps she believed she could change him. Instead she shopped and spent his money like water, which annoyed the heck out of JFK, and she spent 4 day weekends out of Washington and away from the shenanigans at the WH and on JFK's overseas trips. She also made sure to be seen occasionally in the press with rich, dashing men, like when she was in Italy with Caroline and John, she and hung out publically with Gianni Agnelli, which bugged JFK.

She kinda "did her own thing" when she was First Lady, a term she hated. She said it sounded like a show horse. She refused to attend many official functions, preferred to stay in bed all morning and hang around the WH in casual clothes. She was a borderline upper-crust beatnik in a way. A fascinating woman IMO.

10 posted on 05/18/2003 7:33:14 AM PDT by veronica
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To: kattracks
sounds like Hillary to me. They bear equal responsibility, though.
11 posted on 05/18/2003 7:41:48 AM PDT by AmericanInTokyo (Kim Jong Il had ANOTHER bad underwear day . He found "decapitate" in his English-Korean dictionary.)
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To: kattracks
Spare me! Jackie was the highest priced hooker America has ever known. Old Joe Kennedy paid her [big bucks] to marry Jack and make him look responsible so he could becaome president (with Joe and the mob's help). Then, Onasis paid her big bucks to be his trophy wife.

What did Jackie care about Jack getting some on the side? He didn't bother Jackie and she was able to do what she wanted. Same as when she became JackieO.

Jackie is one of those media creations left over from their imaginary Camelot, a fable created by the left wing media to help ease the country into socialism. We will never know JFK's true agenda but Jackie was never a "partner," merely an ornament.

12 posted on 05/18/2003 7:44:58 AM PDT by Tacis
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To: DoughtyOne
The article mentions the East German spy of Cold War era, but not the Nazi spy he diddled with 20 years before. I seem to recall reading about a campaign worker he impregnated in the 1950s (right on a desk in his Boston campaign office), whom he forced to have an abortion.
13 posted on 05/18/2003 7:47:11 AM PDT by mountaineer
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To: AmericanInTokyo
I guess Jackie had a "boys will be boys' outlook. What could she do?

Come on, him being a "bad boy" was the initial attraction. Why do you think "bad boys" have so many women throwing themselves at them.

14 posted on 05/18/2003 7:48:53 AM PDT by jlogajan
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To: veronica
I am sure this hurt Jackie quite a bit, and I think she expected him to cut it out after their marriage.

Probably. That's kinda the standard outlook -- a high attraction level for the "bad boy" type and then an expectation that they'll reform once you marry them.

15 posted on 05/18/2003 7:51:20 AM PDT by jlogajan
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To: mountaineer
Thanks for pointing that out. I guess I missed it. I hadn't heard about the NAZI spy or the abortion.
16 posted on 05/18/2003 8:02:03 AM PDT by DoughtyOne
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To: Tacis
Please provide proof that Joe Kennedy paid Jackie "big bucks" to marry JFK. Hard proof.

While it's true that Jackie needed and wanted money, if your husband was murdered and then your brother-in-law was murdered, you too might seek the comfort, privacy, and security someone like Onassis could provide, especially if you feared for the lives of your children.

Whatever their relationship, Jackie spent months and months after JFK's murder crying and mourning. I have done extensive research on the Kennedys, read most of the books written about them, (including a very interesting and revealing one by Jackie's personal WH assistant Mary Barelli Gallagher) and while the marriage was on some levels a strange one, not unlike the marriages of other "bluebloods", I have come to conclusion that Jackie loved JFK, whatever other ambitions she had which made him attractive to her.

17 posted on 05/18/2003 8:12:28 AM PDT by veronica
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To: kattracks
"I can't help it. It can't be my good looks because I'm not much handsomer than anybody else," he wrote. "It must be my personality."

And being a multimillionaire had nothing to do with it, right? < Extreme heavy Sarcasm with a capitol S. >

18 posted on 05/18/2003 8:13:52 AM PDT by Shooter 2.5 (Don't punch holes in the lifeboat)
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To: kattracks
I knew Jack Kennedy, and you Sir are no Jack Kennedy

Dan Quale should have stood up and bragged that he wasn't. Maybe he should send an autographed copy of this book to all of the slobbering hypocritical democrats that criticized him with a notation that includes, I am no Jack Kennedy, I am better than this.
19 posted on 05/18/2003 8:20:17 AM PDT by vetvetdoug
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To: AmericanInTokyo
..."sounds like Hillary to me."

I'm sure at least that Jackie spoke to WH employees and that no one was afraid to look her in the eye. As well, Jackie's office wasn't down the hall from the Oval Office, nor did she probably play a role in making policy decisions.

20 posted on 05/18/2003 8:36:19 AM PDT by mass55th
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