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The role of first lady suited Jacqueline Kennedy perfectly. Her husband may have been a serial philanderer, and her country was caught in a Cold War showdown that led to the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, but Mrs. Kennedy refused to let her elegant image falter. She dressed to please both her president and her people, hosted TV tours of the White House she had studiously redecorated and never let slip a word that was incompatible with her sense of public duty and wifely devotion.

But behind the pearls and pillbox hats was a different Jackie – cattier, cruder, no less admiring of her husband but much more realistic and blunt about the political world they inhabited.

With the publication this week of interviews she gave to historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. in 1964, four months after her husband's assassination, Mrs. Kennedy takes off the elbow-length gloves and comes out swinging. French president Charles de Gaulle, who was charmed by her graceful airs and soignee fashion sense, is described as "that egomaniac" and "that spiteful man." Indian politician Indira Gandhi was "a real prune." Most surprising and disturbing of all is her terse analysis of Rev. Martin Luther King: "a phony."

Dr. King, it seems, didn't meet the Camelot standards of upper-class propriety – Mrs. Kennedy had heard rumours about his extramarital sexual encounters, which she found distasteful, and didn't like some joking remarks he made during her husband's funeral. "I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King," she told Mr. Schlesinger, "without thinking, you know, that man's terrible."

As first lady and presidential widow, Jackie Kennedy embodied a kind of ethereal perfection that no longer seems possible or desirable or even believable. Both Ms. magazine and Mad Men say you can't constantly strive to look perfect in Oleg Cassini gowns and stare lovingly at your hypersexed husband and find inner peace through redecoration without feeling a twinge of discontent and dislocation. And if there's a dark side or a nasty streak, history will eventually trump the image makers.

The interesting thing about these interviews is that Mrs. Kennedy was complicit in her own reinterpretation – on the understanding, of course, that they would not see the light of day until she was not around to care. But even in 1964 she had enough self-awareness to recognize the fine line between being an obnoxious political wife and being a beloved first lady.

"I was never any different once I was in the White House than before," she said. "But the press made you different. Suddenly everything that had been a liability before – your hair, that you spoke French, that you didn't just adore to campaign, and you didn't bake bread with flour up to your arms – everybody thought I was a snob and hated politics."

Her daughter, Caroline, has arranged for her revelations and remarks to be published this week as a book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, and an audio recording, ostensibly to mark the 50th anniversary of her father's presidency but also to give her mother some credit for being an independent thinker and not just a pre-feminist domestic goddess.

The public image of Jackie Kennedy did indeed evolve beyond the White House fantasy – as Jackie O, remote wife and then wealthy widow of Aristotle Onassis, she lost her mythical status suddenly and drastically, returned to New York as an elusive celebrity given to paparazzi-averse sunglasses and finally found a useful identity as a busy book editor, counting Michael Jackson and Carly Simon among her authors.

But she never subsequently spoke about those strange far-off days when she became the first lady as a 31-year-old mother. So the 1964 interviews have added piquancy for their close-up view of the JFK era, which even transmitted through Jackie's breathy voice sounds much more Machiavelli than Camelot. Political figures in the Kennedy orbit, according to her up-close perspective, are dismissed as much for their weak mouths and their lack of sex appeal as their indecisiveness or egotism. The rough operator Lyndon Johnson is a particular target of Kennedy disdain.

"Oh, God," she remembers her husband saying, "can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?"

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IN HER OWN WORDS

What Jacqueline Kennedy said about Indira Gandhi, Charles de Gaulle and her husband

Jacqueline Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, JFK, Historic Conversations, Indira Gandhi, Sukarno, de Gaulle, Adlai Stevenson, roosevelt, Arthur Goldberg, Dean Rusk, Victorian, Asiatic

Excerpts from Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy to be published this week.

On foreign politicians

Indira Gandhi:

"A real prune – bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman."

Charles de Gaulle:

"That egomaniac."

Sukarno:

"The only person I met who you knew was a bandit before he came and turned out to be all you expected."

On U.S. politicians

Quoting JFK on Franklin D. Roosevelt:

"He often thought he was rather a – charlatan is an unfair word – a bit of a poseur. … You know, that he did an awful lot for effect."

On cerebral Democrat Adlai Stevenson:

"Jack so obviously demanded from a woman a relationship … where a man would be the leader and a woman would be his wife and look up to him as a man. With Adlai you could have another relationship where, you know, he'd be sort of sweet and you could talk but you wouldn't ever ... I always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai."

Secretary of State Dean Rusk:

"Dean Rusk seemed to be overtaken by that apathy and fear of making the wrong decision that so many people in the State Department have."

Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg:

"I mean. I know he's brilliant. I just think it's such a shame to be so pleased with yourself."

Life with Jack

Their style of marriage:

"Rather terribly Victorian or Asiatic." Her role was to create "a climate of affection and comfort and detente."

The Kennedys' White House popularity:

"The tours would start going ... and every night he'd come home and say, 'We had more people today than the Eisenhowers had in their first two years.' "

The Cuban missile crisis:

"I said, please don't send me away to Camp David, me and the children, don't send me anywhere. If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you. Even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House, which I'd seen, I said please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens. I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do too – than live without you."

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