Jackie O's secret tapes to be made public

A series of secret audio tapes made by John F Kennedy's wife Jacqueline are to be made public in a television special show that may blow the lid off her private life with the assassinated US President.

A series of secret audio tapes made by John F Kennedy's wife Jacqueline are to be made public in a television special show, that may blow the lid off her private life with the assassinated US President, a media report said.

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The audio tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and have been sealed in a vault at Kennedy Library in Boston until now.

Jackie O, as the world came to know her after she married Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis some five years later, ordered that the tapes should not be revealed until 50 years after her death.

But, although she died from cancer aged 64 in May 1994, her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, has agreed to release them to US television network giant ABC, the Sunday Express said.

A spokesman there confirmed that the tapes' "explosive" contents will be aired in a two-hour TV special, although he refused to divulge further details.

On the assassination, a network source said that Jackie believed gunman Oswald was "part of a much larger conspiracy", and that then vice president Lyndon Johnson, JFK's successor, and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved.

"Those businessmen expected that LBJ would give them more favourable treatment in Vietnam War contracts and oil policies. There is no doubt that Jackie wanted the truth to come out, but feared that she and her children, Caroline and John Jr, might also be marked for death by the conspirators," the source said.

Another senior source also revealed that, on the eve of JFK's assassination, he and Jackie shared a night of passion and, despite having cheated on each other in the past, "they talked about having more children".