Did Jackie Kennedy believe that President Lyndon B. Johnson, her husband’s vice president, was responsible for her husband’s assassination? According to new reports from London’s Daily Mail, this is but one of several stunning revelations in tape recordings the former first lady made within months of John F. Kennedy’s death. Writes Liz Thomas:
Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B. Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F. Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.
The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.
She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald–long claimed to have been a lone assassin–merely part of a much larger conspiracy.
The recordings were made by historian and Kennedy ally Arthur Schlesinger Jr. within a year of the late president’s death. The tapes were then locked away at the Kennedy library where they were supposed to stay until 50 years after Mrs. Kennedy-Onassis’s death in 1994. But the Daily Mail reports that the ABC made a deal with Onassis’s daughter, Caroline Schlossberg, to release the tapes in exchange for refusing to air The Kennedys miniseries. (A cable network and the BBC later aired the controversial series.)
However, if the Daily Mail reports are true, a number of Kennedy assassination researchers will wind up with egg on their faces, like the father of George W. Bush’s press secretary, Scott McClellan, experienced in 2003. Barr McClellan’s book Blood, Money, & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK was widely condemned at its publication, however, Jackie Kennedy-Onassis’s tapes may give new life to conspiracy theorists, and leave lone-shooter believers like Vince Bugliosi and Gerald Posner red-faced.
An ABC News spokesperson has denied the reports in the Daily Mail, calling them “completely erroneous.” They anticipate releasing the tapes sometime in September, but additional bombshells are expected, not least that Mrs. Onassis is further said to have admitted to an affair with movie star William Holden in retribution for her husband’s many alleged affairs.
When Tony Hays isn’t traveling the world, teaching students, and adopting puppies, he takes time out to write the Arthurian Mystery series from Tor/Forge.
“if the Daily Mail reports are true, a number of Kennedy assassination researchers will wind up with egg on their faces.”
Well, no, because the Daily Mail is only passing along what may or may not be Jackie Onassis’s opinion about how her first husband died. There’s nothing in these accounts that suggests she had anything remotely resembling evidence.
the said assasination to late president Kennedy has been a great issue in America from the moment he was killed and even up to now. A couple of days ago I’ve heard in the news that The Kennedy Vaults in Boston will become available long enough to produce a series of tapes that will prove questionable. The “Jackie O tapes” recorded by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. will be released. Her views on the John F. Kennedy assassination are the focal point of what insiders claim is a culture blaze of facts. Jacqueline Onassis apparently thought that Lyndon Johnson and a “cabal of Texas tycoons” were responsible for Kennedy’s death. It must have cost installment loans to get all the deals worked out.
When the McClellan book was published, the History Channel aired a special on it, for which they later executed a 180-degree mea culpa after the vigorous complaints of Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford, among others. Some people’s reflexive derision of the idea didn’t have much to say about the corroboration presented, which is made of facts, which can be verified (or not) before a person decides they’re incomplete, mis-weighted, or unconvincing.
However, if someone as close to the situation as Jackie Kennedy had a similar suspicion about LBJ just months after JFK’s death, while doing nothing to prove whether it’s true, of course, it does indicate the notion isn’t as left-field preposterous as some tried to claim in order to bar it from further examination and public discourse.
What a great picture of Jackie. I watched a documentary which gave the men, who were the secret service detail, on the day of Kennedy’s murder, the opportunity to talk for themselves. It was very touching to hear their stories.