JFK wife'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 U.S. 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.

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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, has agreed to release them to US TV 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 Oswald was "part of a much larger conspiracy", and that then vice- president Lyndon Johnson, JFK's successor was involved. "Those businessmen expected that LBJ would give them more favourable treatment in Vietnam War contracts and oil policies," the source said.