Posted on 05/12/2003 11:31:43 AM PDT by Hal1950
Author says JFK had affair with 19-year-old intern
Claim comes from ex-White House aide
NEW YORK (AP) -- President John F. Kennedy had an affair with a 19-year-old intern who traveled with him on official trips, according to a new biography of Kennedy.
"She had no skills. She could answer the phone," Robert Dallek, author of "An Unfinished Life," told "Dateline NBC" in an interview that aired Sunday. "Apparently, her only skill was to provide sexual release for JFK on those trips and maybe in the White House."
Dallek learned of the affair from a White House aide, Barbara Gamarekian, whose oral history was recently unsealed.
Gamarekian told the Daily News that she remembers only the young intern's first name, which she refused to reveal.
"It amazes me there continues to be such fascination with all things Kennedy," Gamarekian, 77, told the newspaper.
Kennedy is known to have had numerous extramarital liaisons, but this is the first report of an affair with an intern.
"There were lots of women," Dallek, whose book comes out Tuesday, told the newspaper. "The real question is: Did it distract him from his job as president? I think it really didn't."
Gamarekian had asked that the 17 pages in her oral history dealing with the intern be kept secret for a decade, then later asked the Kennedy Library in Boston, where her account is archived, to keep it sealed.
Dallek discovered the blacked-out pages while researching his book and persuaded her to disclose the information.
If JFK was diagnosed in 1947 with a debilitating auto-immune disease that resulted in impotence, I doubt he was the stud-muffin they've speculated.
Of course you're aware being impotent does not preclude one from having children. It just makes it a lot less fun to initiate, and the odds of having a big family are not so hot.
I've been on these threads before; so have you. With the new book coming out soon by that noted Presidential historian, "Frank Sinatra's Butler," I'm sure we'll bump keyboards again.
You're a vital part of the agenda, after all.
I pinged you (and the others) because it gets lonely on these let's-nuke-JFK threads, and I like to keep track of those who have the good sense, intelligence and compassion to agree with me. 8~)
It's much easier to bail out the Pacific Ocean with an eyedropper than to make Clinton respectable.
I take all of it with a grain of salt since researching Judith Exner and learning she wasn't the randy gunmoll she was painted to be. Exner was the rich, well-bred, conntected daughter of German nationals with lots of secrets of her own.
There's always more to these stories than they want us to know.
In this case, I think Addison's disease and 41 years of silence and Clinton's need for rehabilitation trump some questionable 60-year-old intern's sudden catharsis.
You are either a kook or a crank -- in either case no amount of evidence can dissuade you from your preconceived notions.
Kennedy was well known by the press to have had multiple affairs. In this case this "intern" was first described in 1964 and recorded on paper in an interview with Barbara Gamarekian, a White House aide. Thirty nine years later the documented interview is released from the White House records and Gamarekian verifies she said it. Then someone finds "Mimi" Marion Fahnestock (nee Beardsley) and she also confirms she did have an affair with Kennedy.
So we have hundreds if not thousands of JFK contemporaries who knew of his exploits, aides who committed such observations to paper right after his assassination, and now some of those involved in the affairs admit as much.
But oh, no -- crank/kook Dr. Eckleburg knows better -- on the theory that since some diabetics are blind, all diabetics must be blind, the kook Dr. Ecklburg claims that since some Addison's disease sufferers are impotent, all Addison's disease sufferers must be impotent. The logic of a kook.
You are, for the second time, dismissed.
But did he deny it under oath after getting dragged into court for sexual harrassment?
I don't think the concept of "sexual harrasment" had been invented yet. I don't think the Kennedy's would have blinked twice at the idea of trashing anyone that got in their way.
You're a master of the language.
Read more history and watch less reruns of "Saved By the Bell."
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.