Jackie’s Diss List

In newly released audio interviews recorded in 1964, Jackie Kennedy, the usually demure former first lady, really takes her claws out. Look through photographs of her with some of the people she criticized.

Charles de Gaulle

French President Charles de Gaulle and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy are all smiles during the gala event at the Theater of Versailles' Castle in June 1961. A total “egomaniac,” she called him in the newly released tapes.

AFP/Getty Images.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Responding to tapes that the FBI had recorded of Martin Luther King Jr. during the March on Washington that year in which King allegedly “arranged … sort of an orgy in the hotel,” Jackie said, “I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible.” Here, civil rights movement leaders meet with John F. Kennedy in 1963.

Photograph by Cecil Stoughton/White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.
Indira Gandhi

According to Jackie, Indira Gandhi, the then-future prime minister of India, was “a real prune—bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman.” Here, Jackie visits India in the spring of 1962.

Courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
Letitia Baldrige

Jackie reported that her social secretary, Letitia Baldrige, had a penchant for making absurd requests, such as to “send all the White House china on the plane to Costa Rica.” Here, Baldrige accepts art at the White House in March 1961.

Photograph by Abbie Rowe/White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Lyndon B. Johnson

According to Jackie, JFK had low regard for his vice president: “Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?” Here, Jackie oversees the swearing-in of Lyndon B. Johnson after her husband’s assassination in 1963.

Photograph by Cecil Stoughton/White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Jackie’s feelings about the 32nd President were pointed: “Charlatan is an unfair word,” but “he did an awful lot for effect.” Here, Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at a Tehran conference in 1943.

Correction, Sept. 15, 2011: The year of the Tehran conference was incorrect in the original version of this slide show. It was 1943, not 1961.

Courtesy John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Adlai Stevenson

Jackie said that “violently liberal women in politics” liked Adlai Stevenson, her husband’s opponent in the 1960 presidential race, because they “were scared of sex.”

Courtesy Harris & Ewing/Library of Congress.
Clare Boothe Luce and Madame Nhu

Of Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce (left), and Madame Nhu (right), the sister-in-law of the president of South Vietnam: “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were lesbians.”
Nhu: AFP/Getty Images; Luce: Photograph by Arnold Genthe, Library of Congress.