When Did JFK's Infidelities Become Public Knowledge?

When JFK was assassinated in November 1963, his multiple extra-marital affairs were well-known to the American press - but not to the broader public. Most high profile public officials of the 1960s including Eisenhower, LBJ, and many leading Senators were guilty of having affairs. But this was not reported on at the time, as the press generally did not consider a politician's private indiscretions to be newsworthy. It was not until after JFK's assassination that his affairs were reported by the press, revealing his many infidelities to the wider public.

But when exactly did this occur? Were JFK's affairs revealed soon after his death in the 1960s, or later in the 1970s? In 1983, Martin Sheen portrayed JFK in a TV miniseries which depicted Kennedy's affairs, so JFK's infidelities were known to the public by the 1980s at the latest.
 
press generally did not consider a politician's private indiscretions to be newsworthy
I’m going to guess somewhere between the “Pentagon Papers” of June 1971,

and Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” [three-fold firing] of Oct 1973, and this really was the beginning-of-the-end for Watergate.

PS I might hedge my bet just a little bit later, and I might be wrong! :p
 
Last edited:
I don't recall hearing about JFKs sexcapades until the mid 1970s. But I was busy developing my own sexual history and not paying close attention to politics.
 
I think that during the Kennedy administration there was kind of a gentleman's agreement with the press: Kennedy would allow the press a degree of access but they wouldn't report on anything that the administration didn't want revealed. Plus Attorney General Robert Kennedy was very good at keeping his brother's affairs hidden. After both Kennedy brothers' deaths, the releasing of the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal; all deals were off. The press began to look for any kind of scandal involving politicians. Plus given what had happened in the 10 years between Kennedy's death and Watergate, I feel the general population had lost a lot of faith in the government so a lot of the shine was off of Saint JFK so to speak.
 
Politicians' private lives was off limits as long as what they were doing was legal in the 20-70s. Obviously, some relationships were not so legal back then.

I have listened to some interviews between journalists and JFK in the 50s. They knew full well. One comment stands out in my mind of a reporter telling congressman Kennedy you are very popular with the ladies and your wife of course.
 
I'm going to take a punt on the moment the words "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" were broadcast, though I'm not sure when the tape was made public?

Norman Mailer wrote about Marilyn and JFK in... [google says] his 1973 bio of her. I think he later claimed to have made it up, but whether the book or the denial turned out to be the lie, the thought was out there.
 
Politicians' private lives was off limits as long as what they were doing was legal in the 20-70s. Obviously, some relationships were not so legal back then.
Yes. A politicians private life was off limits, as long he followed the rules. When having an affair, don't humiliate your wife, by having your side piece appear with you in public or screw her in the family home. Do not knock her up, if you do, at least arrange for an abortion, or the resulting child's welfare.
Don't be a family values politician and have an affair.
 
When having an affair, don't humiliate your wife
Honest to gosh, this is a marriage lesson we should include in articles and YouTube videos basically trying to give teenagers and young adults realistic advice about sex and marriage.

In a documentary about baseball star Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, his ex-wife recounts how she said to him, “Pete, I know sometimes things happen on the road. Just please don’t embarrass me in Cincinnati.” Well . . . he embarrassed her in Cincinnati.

I have a theory that for men, the percentages of being faithful are 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. One third of men cheat on a regular basis. 1/3 are faithful most of the time perhaps with some struggles, and 1/3 are one-woman kind of guys, to them, it doesn’t even make sense to mess up a good thing.

PS I envy Ronnie and Nancy Reagan their close marriage. And I envy Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter their close marriage.
 
I think that during the Kennedy administration there was kind of a gentleman's agreement with the press: Kennedy would allow the press a degree of access but they wouldn't report on anything that the administration didn't want revealed. Plus Attorney General Robert Kennedy was very good at keeping his brother's affairs hidden. After both Kennedy brothers' deaths, the releasing of the Pentagon Papers, and the Watergate scandal; all deals were off. The press began to look for any kind of scandal involving politicians. Plus given what had happened in the 10 years between Kennedy's death and Watergate, I feel the general population had lost a lot of faith in the government so a lot of the shine was off of Saint JFK so to speak.

If JFK had not been assassinated, do you think the press would have continued to keep his affairs secret?
 
Absolutely. AS long as he kept J Edgar, who had to know all the details, happy; and also doesn't piss off LBJ who I am sure also knew all the details. Of course with LBJ he had his own little black book, but who knows what might have come out if JFK decided to dump him. Blackmail potential can be a good insurance policy. The press is NEVER going to rat him out on their own while he is POTUS and even afterwards until/unless the press ethos goes Gonzo like it did after Watergate.
 
Absolutely. AS long as he kept J Edgar, who had to know all the details, happy; and also doesn't piss off LBJ who I am sure also knew all the details. Of course with LBJ he had his own little black book, but who knows what might have come out if JFK decided to dump him. Blackmail potential can be a good insurance policy. The press is NEVER going to rat him out on their own while he is POTUS and even afterwards until/unless the press ethos goes Gonzo like it did after Watergate.

I very strongly believe that JFK would not have dumped LBJ. It is often assumed that had JFK not been killed, the Bobby Baker scandal would have engulfed LBJ and forced him off the 1964 ticket. I do not share this view. Firstly, Bobby Kennedy had already influenced the Senate's Bobby Baker scandal by pressuring Senators not to look into Baker's ties to Ellen Rometsch (a woman who had an affair with JFK). Any investigation of LBJ would inevitably make the Kennedy administration look bad, so I see no reason why RFK wouldn't pressure the Senate not to pursue Johnson. (RFK may have hated Johnson, but if JFK wants the Senate investigation into his Vice-President shut down then Bobby will do what his brother wants). Secondly, JFK visited Dallas in November 1963 specifically because he was focusing on Texas as a key swing state. He openly campaigned with LBJ during the Dallas trip, making comments like "nobody cares what me and Lyndon are wearing" (because they were paying too much attention to Jackie), etc, signalling that he was closely tying himself to Texas' favorite son. Ahead of the Dallas trip JFK told Ben Bradlee that he would keep LBJ on the ticket because dropping Johnson would cost him Texas and other key Southern states. JFK may have vented to his secretary Evelyn Lincoln about his issues with LBJ (Lincoln claimed that JFK told her that he wanted to dump Johnson), but I think comments like this are just Kennedy privately expressing his frustration with Johnson rather than a definite decision to dump him.
 
If memory serves, the first hint of extramarital affairs was in the book "The Death of a President" in 1967.


I must couch this in a context. I say the following as absolutely no excuse for his behavior, but as a comment on the social understanding and narrative of the Kennedy affairs as a concept:

In the 1960s and later, politician's private lives were not as looked into as today. You would certainly have what would make for good PR and photo ops. But it was very much an official version. It was the culture and if nothing else, it was for press access. A journalist may know something as an open secret that the average American will never know. That is not necessarily an era of lies. But it is an era of truth until we just don't talk about something. That is a lie of omission but not a lie of distortion (albeit a lie of omission can create a distortion).

Our understanding of the Kennedy affairs as a meme (or this idea that has a life, personality, mood and narrative in the abstract that is part of the collective unconscious) is heavily influenced by the details of actual history. It was a society after his assassination, after Vietnam where the individual understanding of the world was only as expansive as three television channels, as much college education as the individual may have, books written in a flat, surface level style (comparatively), newspapers and whatever lived experience they had. It was a lofi access to the wider world, and based on the information presented by those areas and shaped by narratives of those areas.

This relates back to distortion by omission. Kennedy was the big infidelity story that leaked early on in this modern history we've lived in since 1963. It looked like Kennedy was unique in that context of normal being fidelity and here is major infidelity. But that context was wrong. The unfortunate reality is that politicians and men with power in that era were frequently promiscuous. Lyndon Johnson had many affairs, as did Nelson Rockefeller. An investigation into an call girl service with connections to East German spies was shut down because it would have brought down half of Washington. Hoover had a dirty log of blackmail precisely because of these infidelities.

The summary of all that is: Kennedy was not unique. He appears unique because the information broke and understanding of that information came in an era that did not know their leaders were doing bad things. Therefore the narrative, even subconsciously, is JFK as an outlier in adultery and that as a defining character trait. That view remains even despite the academic context broadening with further information (sometimes unverified) of other adultery by other individuals in positions of power.

In a scenario where Kennedy lives: firstly, the context of everything would be different because the mental context of OTL America was defined by an abandoned, bloodstained Lincoln Continental pulled over to the side of Route 66 (if I can get poetic). Secondly, there's no more reason to think they would have become public anymore than Johnson's affairs had in the same time frame.

They may eventually come to light in later decades, possibly during Kennedy's life time or after his death. However, that depends on the evolution of the manners and moods of the press, academia, politics and populace. That is such a cascade effect of different possibilities and interrelationships that I can't fathom it here.
 
Last edited:
I very strongly believe that JFK would not have dumped LBJ. It is often assumed that had JFK not been killed, the Bobby Baker scandal would have engulfed LBJ and forced him off the 1964 ticket. I do not share this view. Firstly, Bobby Kennedy had already influenced the Senate's Bobby Baker scandal by pressuring Senators not to look into Baker's ties to Ellen Rometsch (a woman who had an affair with JFK). Any investigation of LBJ would inevitably make the Kennedy administration look bad, so I see no reason why RFK wouldn't pressure the Senate not to pursue Johnson. (RFK may have hated Johnson, but if JFK wants the Senate investigation into his Vice-President shut down then Bobby will do what his brother wants). Secondly, JFK visited Dallas in November 1963 specifically because he was focusing on Texas as a key swing state. He openly campaigned with LBJ during the Dallas trip, making comments like "nobody cares what me and Lyndon are wearing" (because they were paying too much attention to Jackie), etc, signalling that he was closely tying himself to Texas' favorite son. Ahead of the Dallas trip JFK told Ben Bradlee that he would keep LBJ on the ticket because dropping Johnson would cost him Texas and other key Southern states. JFK may have vented to his secretary Evelyn Lincoln about his issues with LBJ (Lincoln claimed that JFK told her that he wanted to dump Johnson), but I think comments like this are just Kennedy privately expressing his frustration with Johnson rather than a definite decision to dump him.

I agree. The Baker scandal could be killed short of getting Johnson and left to be forgotten by the public.

In regards to the Evelyn Lincoln comment: one of the good and frustrating things I have come to understand in my years of being one of this site's JFK wunderkinds is that history is not flat or direct. It is not contained in a book that is absolute. History is people, with their flaws, contradictions and vagueness. People can have bad moods or a bad day. People can twist the truth, lie or play with context. People can have very different opinion on the same subjects. People can change their minds, albeit we can guess at what actions they may take based on their psychology / personality and previous actions in context. And everything is a matter of context. If you don't have the right context, small things look huge or defining. Or things appear to have a different meaning. And those collect to create a narrative that may be flawed or completely incorrect. They live in the consciousness between people even despite those people.

I feel that her comments are truthful. However, I feel like she caught JFK on a certain day, in a certain mood and expressing an opinion at a time that were not reflected later. Those comments are written on stone now, but objectively may have no more importance than I myself muttering that I've got to leave this job any day now at 2pm on a random Tuesday. I'm just blowing off steam and dreaming up possibilities I'm not going to pursue. It's not a plan; it's a red herring that really just means I'm frustrated. It doesn't outline what I'll do because I'm frustrated.
 
Last edited:
one of the good and frustrating things I have come to understand in my years of being one of this site's JFK wunderkinds is that history is not flat or direct. It is not contained in a book that is absolute. History is people, with their flaws, contradictions and vagueness. People can have bad moods or a bad day.
This is a good description of the “messiness” of history, and thank you very much. :)

As yet another example, my previous doctor once told me that a study found depressed people are more realistic than non-depressed people, as if we need a bias of optimism in order to get our butts in gear and try things!
 
Honest to gosh, this is a marriage lesson we should include in articles and YouTube videos basically trying to give teenagers and young adults realistic advice about sex and marriage.

In a documentary about baseball star Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds, his ex-wife recounts how she said to him, “Pete, I know sometimes things happen on the road. Just please don’t embarrass me in Cincinnati.” Well . . . he embarrassed her in Cincinnati.

I have a theory that for men, the percentages of being faithful are 1/3, 1/3, 1/3. One third of men cheat on a regular basis. 1/3 are faithful most of the time perhaps with some struggles, and 1/3 are one-woman kind of guys, to them, it doesn’t even make sense to mess up a good thing.

PS I envy Ronnie and Nancy Reagan their close marriage. And I envy Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter their close marriage.
Very few men have women as hot as Marilyn Monroe throwing themselves at them. Accordingly it's really hard for average guys like well, most of us, to pass judgment on men who DO have women of that level seriously coming onto them on a regular basis. It's quite likely many of us are no 'better' than JFK on that score, we're just way less attractive.
 
I agree. The Baker scandal could be killed short of getting Johnson and left to be forgotten by the public.

In regards to the Evelyn Lincoln comment: one of the good and frustrating things I have come to understand in my years of being one of this site's JFK wunderkinds is that history is not flat or direct. It is not contained in a book that is absolute. History is people, with their flaws, contradictions and vagueness. People can have bad moods or a bad day. People can twist the truth, lie or play with context. People can have very different opinion on the same subjects. People can change their minds, albeit we can guess at what actions they may take based on their psychology / personality and previous actions in context. And everything is a matter of context. If you don't have the right context, small things look huge or defining. Or things appear to have a different meaning. And those collect to create a narrative that may be flawed or completely incorrect. They live in the consciousness between people even despite those people.

I feel that her comments are truthful. However, I feel like she caught JFK on a certain day, in a certain mood and expressing an opinion at a time that were not reflected later. Those comments are written on stone now, but objectively may have no more importance than I myself muttering that I've got to leave this job any day now at 2pm on a random Tuesday. I'm just blowing off steam and dreaming up possibilities I'm not going to pursue. It's not a plan; it's a red herring that really just means I'm frustrated. It doesn't outline what I'll do because I'm frustrated.

My opinion with regards to the 1964 election in general is that had JFK lived, he would likely have kept LBJ on the ticket. The campaign wouldn't be as negative as LBJ's campaign, but JFK would still emphasize the peace and prosperity under his administration in contrast the damage that Goldwater would do if elected. JFK wins by a decisive margin, but by a margin more similar to Eisenhower's 1952 and 1956 victories. The Democrats may not have a 2/3 majority in the House, but the House would still have a liberal majority regardless due to the votes of liberal Republicans. This would put JFK in a position to pass most of the major bills passed under LBJ.
 
Very few men have women as hot as Marilyn Monroe throwing themselves at them. Accordingly it's really hard for average guys like well, most of us, to pass judgment
Point well taken. Yes, it’s very difficult to judge when we’re not in the same position, and probably unfair as well.

And perhaps, my estimate that 1/3 of men are naturally monogamous is on the high side. And I know ‘natural’ is a loaded term. [yes, even though pair-bonding has its evolutionary advantages, and so on, and so forth . . . ]
 
Last edited:
Top