A BOOK alleging that former US president John F Kennedy’s widow, Jackie, began a four-year affair with her brother-in-law, Robert, within months of her husband’s assassination has sparked controversy in the US.
Bobby and Jackie: A Love Storyby C David Heymann alleges that the relationship grew so intense that when Robert Kennedy was shot in 1968, it was Jackie, not his wife, who told doctors to turn off life support.
Heymann says the accounts are based on the recollections of a clutch of Kennedy confidants, including Pierre Salinger.
But Salinger dismissed the account as “bullshit”, while Heymann’s critics say he has been caught making egregious errors in previous books.
Heymann quotes Mary Harrington, a well-known socialite of the time, as saying she saw Robert Kennedy fondling his widowed sister-in-law at the family’s Palm Beach estate at Christmas in 1964.
“As they began to kiss, he placed one hand on her breast and the other inside of her bikini bottom,” Harrington, who also had an affair with Kennedy, is quoted as saying.
But Kennedy experts are deriding the allegations. “It’s a new low, and you just wonder how far people are willing to go,” author Laurence Leamer said. – (Guardian service)