When Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died in 1994 at the age of 64 in her Manhattan apartment, the world mourned one of America's most iconic first ladies. Few knew that she had left behind something extraordinary. Sealed in a vault at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston were eight and a half hours of audio recordings she had made in 1964, just months after her husband's assassination.
The tapes were supposed to remain sealed for 50 years after her death, which meant they would not be released until 2044. But 17 years later, in 2011, her daughter Caroline Kennedy made a decision that would draw enormous public attention. She chose to release the tapes early, in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of her father's presidency.
What the world heard was nothing like the soft-spoken fashion icon remembered from the early 1960s. Instead, listeners encountered a woman in her mid-30s, recently widowed, but dry-eyed and determined. Her voice was distinctive and breathy, at times wistful, at times wickedly irreverent. You could hear matches striking, ice cubes clinking, and even her children playing in the background.
The interviews had been conducted by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a Kennedy family friend and former White House aide. In March 1964, just four months after the assassination that had shattered her world, Jackie sat down in her Georgetown home to record seven lengthy conversations. Schlesinger gently guided her through her memories of the Kennedy presidency, from the 1960 campaign to the Cuban Missile Crisis, from daily life in the White House to the personalities and politics of the era.
Jackie agreed to the interviews because, as her daughter Caroline later explained, she was guided by her sense of history. Her husband had been shot and killed before he could give his own perspective on his presidency, so Jackie felt an obligation to provide hers. She told her children that she was putting the tapes away for 50 years, presumably so that everyone involved would be long gone before the world heard what she really thought.
What she really thought was far more candid than anyone expected. The recordings revealed a woman who was funny and inquisitive, canny and cutting. She shared keen observations on world leaders and American politicians. She spoke critically of figures like Charles de Gaulle, calling him an egomaniac. She described Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi as pushy and bitter, and she made controversial comments about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.
But some of the most striking revelations concerned Lyndon Baines Johnson, the man who had been John F. Kennedy's vice president and who succeeded him as president after the assassination. What Jackie said about LBJ painted a picture of deep tension and mistrust that had existed between the Kennedy inner circle and Johnson even before that fateful day in Dallas.
According to Jackie's recollection on the tapes, President Kennedy had discussed political concerns about Johnson's future role in the party. Jackie recalled that her husband had said to her, "Oh God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?" She said that both Jack and his brother Robert Kennedy were worried for the country about this prospect.
In her account, Kennedy had begun conversations with Bobby about potential alternatives, discussing who might become the Democratic Party standard-bearer in 1968 instead of Johnson. This revelation sparked debate among historians. It meant that JFK was apparently thinking about finding a way to prevent his own vice president from succeeding him in a second term.
The relationship between Kennedy and Johnson had never been warm. Johnson had competed bitterly with Kennedy for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1960, and many in the Kennedy camp had been shocked when JFK chose Johnson as his running mate. The selection made political sense, since Johnson brought Texas and Southern support to the ticket, but it created an uneasy partnership.
Jackie's recollections depicted Johnson as someone the Kennedy family viewed with suspicion and even disdain. Many Kennedy staffers were known to view Johnson as politically and culturally different from the Kennedy circle. These Harvard-educated intellectuals saw the Texas politician as coming from a different world than their own. Jackie herself seemed to share some of these views, at least in the spring of 1964 when the interviews were recorded.
But historians who studied the tapes carefully noted something important. Michael Beschloss, the presidential historian who wrote the introduction and annotations for the book version of the interviews, emphasized that these recordings were a snapshot in time. What Jackie thought and felt in the spring of 1964, still raw with grief and adjusting to Johnson's presidency, may not have reflected her feelings later on.
In fact, other sources show that Jackie's relationship with the Johnsons evolved significantly over the years. In January 1974, a full decade after the Schlesinger interviews, Jackie sat down with Joe B. Frantz at the LBJ Presidential Library. This interview painted a very different picture. She spoke warmly about Lyndon Johnson's generosity and spirit. She talked about her closeness to Lady Bird Johnson. She recalled how Johnson had supported projects that were important to her, like the Kennedy Library and the renewal of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
Letters between Jackie and the Johnsons, housed in the LBJ Library, tell an even more nuanced story. These were not just polite thank-you notes. They were intense and emotional, revealing ties that were almost familial. On November 26, 1963, just four days after the assassination and one day after the funeral, Jackie wrote a startling seven-page handwritten letter to President Johnson. The tone was warm and supportive, hardly what you would expect if she truly held him in contempt.
Over the years that followed, Jackie maintained contact with both Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson. She wrote to them about the Kennedy Library, thanking LBJ for his help with what she called the cause closest to her heart. She attended events at the White House during the Johnson administration. She even asked President Johnson to receive the Pennsylvania Avenue Commission early in his presidency to give approval to work she and JFK had started.
So what explains this contradiction? How could Jackie speak so negatively about Johnson in 1964, but maintain such a close relationship with him and Lady Bird in the years that followed? The answer lies in understanding the context and timing of each set of recordings and letters.
In March 1964, when Jackie sat with Schlesinger, she was still processing trauma. Her husband had been murdered just four months earlier. She was trying to preserve his legacy and make sense of what had happened. Johnson had just become president, and she was watching as he began to put his own stamp on policies and initiatives.
There were small personal tensions, too, things that probably seemed larger in her grief. Johnson was eager to move into the White House and get on with governing. Jackie needed time to pack up her life and move out. These practical realities created friction.
Moreover, Jackie was still very much part of the Kennedy camp in early 1964. She was close to Robert Kennedy, who served as Johnson's attorney general but had a famously terrible relationship with the president. Bobby and his supporters, many of whom were part of JFK's inner circle, viewed Johnson with suspicion and resentment. Jackie's comments on the Schlesinger tapes likely reflected the prevailing attitude in that Kennedy circle.
Johnson himself was acutely aware of this tension. According to Beschloss, LBJ had nightmares that at the 1964 Democratic Convention, Bobby and Jackie Kennedy would sweep in and stampede the delegates to vote for RFK instead of Johnson for president. Johnson made very deliberate efforts to keep Jackie, in Beschloss's phrase, "on the reservation."
According to the tapes, he kept calling her and asking her to come to the White House, and Jackie, still grieving, would tell people, "I can't bear to do it. It'll make me start crying again." But as time passed, perspectives shifted.
Johnson won the presidency in his own right in 1964 in a massive landslide. He pushed through landmark civil rights legislation that JFK had proposed but could not pass. He created Medicare and Medicaid. He launched the war on poverty. Whatever Jackie's initial reservations, she could see that Johnson was in many ways fulfilling and even expanding on her husband's vision for America.
At the same time, Johnson went out of his way to honor the Kennedy legacy. He renamed Cape Canaveral as Cape Kennedy. He supported the Kennedy Library. He was gracious to Jackie and her children. And Lady Bird Johnson throughout it all maintained a warm and genuine friendship with Jackie.
The two women had known each other since 1960, when their husbands ran together. They had shared the traumatic experience of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Lady Bird had been kind and supportive to Jackie during the transition.
The evolution of Jackie's feelings is stark when comparing her interviews. In 1964, Jackie had critically remarked that Lady Bird was like a trained hunting dog, constantly carrying a spiral pad to jot down names for political gain. But by her 1974 oral history for the Johnson Library, Jackie spoke about that exact political drive with a mature, warm appreciation. She praised the Johnsons as a brilliant political team and fondly recalled getting to know them better when they visited Hyannis Port.
In that 1974 interview, Jackie spoke deeply about Lyndon Johnson's kindness. She recalled dancing with LBJ at past state dinners and described his expansive personality. She talked about how the Johnsons had used her ideas and continued her work, mentioning the warmth and generosity of spirit that LBJ showed to her and her children. This was a far cry from the worried disapproval she had expressed a decade earlier.
While she credited the Johnson administration for fiercely supporting the creation of the official Kennedy White House portraits, her deep aversion to public grief meant she never actually returned to the mansion while LBJ was in office. When she finally did return for a secret emotional viewing of the finished portraits in 1971, it was the Nixon administration that quietly hosted her.
Caroline Kennedy, when she decided to release her mother's tapes early, understood that they would cause controversy. She told ABC News that some of her mother's opinions were shocking and that her own daughters were "absolutely horrified" by some of what their grandmother had said. But Caroline also understood that her mother had been brave to speak so honestly, knowing these tapes would eventually be heard. Jackie had been guided by her sense of history and her obligation to be truthful about her experiences.
The tapes reveal something else important about that period. Johnson's concerns about Jackie and Bobby Kennedy were not entirely paranoid. The Kennedy family and their supporters really were discussing alternatives to Johnson. Bobby Kennedy did resign as attorney general in September 1964 to run for the Senate from New York. He did eventually challenge Johnson's policies, especially on Vietnam, and he did ultimately run for president in 1968, though by then Johnson had already decided not to seek re-election.
Here is what matters most. The relationship between the Kennedys and Johnsons was not simply a story of contempt or a story of friendship. It was both, depending on when you looked and who was speaking. This is the essential truth that the tapes reveal.
The immediate aftermath of the assassination was fraught with tension, suspicion, and grief. The years that followed saw reconciliation, mutual respect, and genuine affection, at least between Jackie and the Johnsons.
What makes the 1964 tapes so valuable to historians is not just the specific revelations, though those are certainly fascinating. It is the window they provide into Jackie Kennedy's state of mind in that terrible spring after the assassination. They show us a woman trying to make sense of her husband's death, protect his legacy, and navigate an impossible situation. They reveal her intelligence, her wit, her sharp observations, and yes, her biases and resentments.
But we must remember, as Michael Beschloss cautioned, that these tapes are a snapshot in time. If Jackie had been asked in 1980 or 1990 what she thought of Lyndon Johnson, her answer might have been very different from what she said in 1964. People change, perspectives evolve, wounds heal, relationships deepen.
The full picture of what Jackie really thought about LBJ can only be understood by looking at all the evidence. The 1964 Schlesinger tapes, the 1974 Johnson Library interview, the letters spanning more than a decade, the personal interactions remembered by others. Taken together, they tell a story not of simple hatred or simple friendship, but of a relationship that shifted and evolved over time.
In the end, the so-called secret tapes were not really that secret. Jackie had always planned for them to be released. She wanted future generations to hear her voice and understand her perspective. She just thought it would happen much later, when everyone involved would be long gone and the political implications would be purely historical.
Caroline's decision to release them early meant that some people who had known and loved Jackie, including her own grandchildren, had to grapple with her unfiltered opinions while those opinions still felt current and potentially hurtful. But that is the nature of history. It is messy and human.
Jacqueline Kennedy was not a saint or an icon frozen in time. She was a real person with strong opinions, changing feelings, and evolving perspectives on those around her. The tapes she left behind, both the critical ones from 1964 and the warmer ones from 1974, help us understand not just what she thought about LBJ, but who she was as a person navigating impossible circumstances with grace, honesty, and humanity.