IT'S GETTING harder to ignore the wide gap between Camelot mythology and historical reality at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
The disconnect is especially pronounced as the library promotes its latest exhibit, a collection of Jacqueline Kennedy's letters. It's timed to the 50th anniversary of Mrs. Kennedy's famous televised tour of the White House and comes just as a White House intern from that era reveals the details of a private tour that she received from President Kennedy.
That long-ago tour, writes author Mimi Alford, ended with the president deflowering the 19-year-old college girl on his wife's bed. In her book, “Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with John F. Kennedy and Its Aftermath,'' Alford declines to label their first sexual encounter as rape. As she describes it, while it was not “making love'' it “was not non-consensual.''
The rest of the book tells the story of a sexual affair that she said lasted more than a year. It includes an episode where the president suggests that she perform oral sex on Dave Powers, his longtime friend and close aide - and she does. According to Alford, she ultimately said no to doing the same for the president's younger brother, Ted Kennedy. She last saw JFK shortly before he left for the November 1963 Dallas trip that ended with his assassination.
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