Speculation mounts over Jackie Kennedy tapes

President John F. Kennedy‘s widow taped herself in eight hours of conversation with historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr in 1964, shortly after JFK’s shooting, and stipulated that the tapes be sealed.

The release, authorized by the Kennedy family in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of JFK‘s inauguration, will take place in the form of a book and CDs, along with an ABC television network special, this September.

Those in the know have said nothing concrete about the tapes’ contents.

However, British newspapers claim sensational revelations will be made -- most explosively, that the former first lady believed vice president Lyndon Johnson was behind JFK‘s assassination in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.

ABC says “the tabloid reports about the content of the tapes are totally erroneous. ABC News isn’t releasing any content from those tapes until mid-September at which point it will be clear how off base these reports are.”

But that is unlikely to stop speculation over what by any standards is likely to be a goldmine for fans of the colorful and controversial Kennedy clan.

The publishers, Hyperion Books, promise “an astonishingly detailed and unvarnished account of her experiences and impressions as the wife and confidante of John F. Kennedy.”

There will be “a unique and compelling record of a tumultuous era, providing fresh insights on the many significant people and events that shaped JFK‘s presidency but also shedding new light on the man behind the momentous decisions,” the publisher says.

Insights will include JFK’s thoughts about his brother Robert, Kennedy‘s US attorney general who was later assassinated, and youngest brother Edward Kennedy, who filled JFK’s vacated US Senate seat and served 46 years in the chamber until his death in 2009.

It will be “perhaps the most informed, genuine, and immediate portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy we shall ever have.”

Caroline Kennedy, the only surviving child of JFK and Jackie Kennedy, said in a video message that her mother made sure the recordings were “for history.”

 “She wanted to make sure that the interviews that she gave with reflections about life with my father would really stand the test of time,” Kennedy said.

The tapes will give people “an insight into the way she approached the world, how she looked at things, how she judged people, and give them a sense of her as a person that I don‘t think people have ever been able to have before.”

However appetizing that might be, the passionate bands of conspiracy theorists who for years have argued that the investigation into JFK’s assassination was a cover-up will be looking for more.

According to London‘s Daily Mail, which did not name a source for its article, the tapes will satisfy even the most wild-eyed of historians.

The tapes, says the Mail, show Jackie Kennedy “believed that Lyndon B. Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband.”

“She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald -- long claimed to have been a lone assassin -- merely part of a much larger conspiracy.”