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President John F Kennedy predicted his own assassination

Previously unreleased interviews reveal premonition

By
MOLLY MULDOON,
IrishCentral Staff Writer
Published Friday, June 3, 2011, 2:33 PM
Updated Saturday, June 4, 2011, 9:51 AM

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President John F Kennedy’s secret interviews with his wife claim he warned his assassination would safeguard his legacy around a year before his death.
 
JFK made the prediction about his reputation privately to his wife Jackie.
 
Previously unheard conversations involving the First lady in the months after JFK’s assassination, which are due to be made public in September, reveal the president’s theory.
 
The conversations date back to 1964 when Jacqueline Kennedy had in depth conversations with  historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jnr .
 
Professor Robert Dallek, a popular Kennedy historian made the discovery after closely examining pages of “Jacqueline Kennedy’s Oral History”.
 
“(JFK) said to Mrs Kennedy after his success in the Cuban Missile Crisis: ’If anyone’s going to kill me, it should happen now,”’ Professor Dallek said.
 
Dallek said JFK had been told by a historian that Abraham Lincoln’s legacy may not have been as great if he had lived longer.
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“He had heard a lecture at the White House by distinguished historian David Herbert Donald, a Lincoln, Civil War expert,” Prof. Dallek said.
 
“At that lecture, Kennedy asked Professor Donald if Lincoln had lived, would his reputation be as great as it currently is in the United States? And predictably, Donald said probably not because he would have had to have wrestle with the problems of reconstruction, the post Civil War era.
 
“And Kennedy remembering that said to Mrs Kennedy after his success in the Cuban Missile Crisis, if anyone’s going to kill me, it should happen now.
 
The democratic president was shot on November 22, 1963 as his open-top motorcade travelled through Dallas, Texas.
 
After his death, his wife gave seven undisclosed interviews during which she spoke about her husband’s involvement in the Cuban Missille Crisis; her role as First Lady; the presidents plan for a second term and family and married life in the White House.
 
To mark the 50 anniversary of the Kennedy administration, the family are realeasing both the interview transcripts and the original audio recordings.
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12 Comments

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hermitTalker | Apr 28, 2012, 10:22 AM EDT
The puritanical hang-ups with sex has been an awful cloud over the JFK legacy, and has daunted every politician. Get a woman in bed or send her a nude photo and you are dead politically. Start a war and spend trillions and destroy a nation and get millions killed and... you know the drill.Absolutely crazy moral code of conduct.

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brengun | Jan 04, 2012, 12:09 PM EST
yeh, JFK represented something they could not, despite all the criticism of his human weakness, he had something they feared he had soul and it radiated charisma, and in the end it was that ,his natural appeal as an educated and civilised man that the rightwing junta of the old stinking order couldn,t deal with only in their timehonoured way, to kill it , just look at the of corpses that followed in his wake, it was really that glimmer of hope for the masses of capitalist America that initiated the beauty of the sixties, which the monsters of the dying system dare not allow.

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themurphia | Aug 09, 2011, 06:44 PM EDT
kevinjomlor:YES!WHAT is it..?!

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kevinjomlor | Aug 08, 2011, 03:37 PM EDT
It all makes sense, JFK wasn't stupid. However, you're ALL missing the motive. There in lies the key to the mystery and no one's got it yet. Wanna know?

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Collette2 | Jun 06, 2011, 07:02 AM EDT
With all due respect, look at the company he was keeping and his risque lifestyle. One wouldn't need a fortune teller.

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HogansHeroes | Jun 05, 2011, 09:12 PM EDT
For all his faults,he served his country as a sailor,and as a statesmen. No good deed goes unpunished. The Warren Commission, Evil to the core.

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Woodman | Jun 04, 2011, 08:18 PM EDT
In the last months of his life JFK was received like a rock star almost every where he went. And it was the same in Texas. Almost a million people came to see JFK on the day he was murdered. Kennedy won Texas in 1960, and he needed to win it again in 1964 if he wanted to be elected.

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Gearoid4 | Jun 04, 2011, 02:46 PM EDT
I wonder what legacy JFK would have left if God's Providence would have let him live for a successive, second-tern presidency. He more than likely would have pulled the US forces out of Vietnam around 1963-64 and initiated historical civil rights legislation that would not need to have waited for later enactment as in the case of Lyndon Johnson. Possibly he would have carried on a more pragmatic realpolitik with the then Soviet Administration under Kruschev while never compromising on the security of the US or it's European allies. I suppose this is just speculation from the 'What If' school of history but it is interesting to project possible trajectories for US domestic and foreign policies if JFK had been spared the assassin's bullet.

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SeamusMor | Jun 04, 2011, 01:56 PM EDT
"I shouted out: Who killed the Kennedys? Well, after all, it was you and me."

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cillowen | Jun 04, 2011, 12:13 PM EDT
Anyone with a brain could predict this one. Back then knowing little of politics but reading of the hatred that abounded in America and in Texas in particular. I'm saying to my myself and to others, why go there - don't go there JFK but go he went and met with what I deemed enevitable. Stupid beyond belief.

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Searlit | Jun 04, 2011, 11:35 AM EDT
I suppose he had a lot of death threats during his presidency. There were so many jealous of his authentic power, God love him.

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Liamkeyes | Jun 04, 2011, 10:26 AM EDT
President Kennedy also said "If anyone really wants to assassinate the President,.." there is nothing anybody can do about it..." I don't know which book it's in and I am not going to go looking through my Library. If I come across it, I'll let you know....."

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