Interview reveals other side of Jackie Kennedy

The seven-part interview conducted in early 1964 — after Kennedy’s assassination — is being published as a book (Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy) and an audio recording. In it,the young widow speaks with Arthur M Schlesinger Jr.,the historian and Kennedy aide,about her husband’s presidency and their marriage. They do not discuss his death. The eight and a half hours of interviews had been kept private at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy,who never spoke publicly about those years again before she died in 1994. The recording,obtained by The New York Times,offer an extraordinary immersion in the thoughts of one of the most enigmatic figures of the second half of the 20th century.

At just 34,and in what her daughter,Caroline Kennedy,describes in the foreword “the extreme stages of grief,” Jacqueline Kennedy displays a cool self-possession and a sharp,somewhat unforgiving eye. Charles DeGaulle,the French president,is “that egomaniac.” The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is “a phony” whom electronic eavesdropping has found arranging encounters with women. Indira Gandhi,the future prime minister of India,is “a real prune — bitter,kind of pushy,horrible woman.”

She quotes Kennedy saying of Lyndon B. Johnson,his vice president,“Oh,God,can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?”

She suggests that “violently liberal women in politics” preferred Adlai Stevenson,former Democratic presidential nominee,to Kennedy because they “were scared of sex.” Of Madame Nhu,the sister-in-law of the president of South Vietnam,and Clare Boothe Luce,a former member of Congress,she says,“I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians.”

There is no talk of her husband’s extramarital affairs. She says he wept in her presence a handful of times. She describes how he cried over the debacle at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.JANNY SCOTT