A yr before assassination, JFK predicted his death would protect his legacy

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London, June 3: A historian, who has examined unreleased interviews with John F Kennedy’s wife Jacqueline, claims that the former US President had predicted that his death would protect his legacy.

Kennedy made the assessment after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a year before his assassination.

The astonishing revelation was made by eminent Kennedy historian Professor Robert Dallek after examining the pages of Jacqueline’s Oral History – conversations the former First Lady had with historian Arthur M Schlesinger Jnr in 1964, reports the Daily Mail.

The series of seven undisclosed interviews are to be broadcast in September, as part of events to mark the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy administration.

Dallek said the interviews revealed JFK’s remarks had been inspired by one of late historian David Herbert Donald’s lectures on Abraham Lincoln.

“At that lecture, Kennedy asked Professor Donald, if Lincoln had lived, would his reputation be as great as it currently is in the United States?,” he said.

“And predictably, Donald said probably not because he would have had to have wrestled with the problems of reconstruction, the post-Civil War era.

“Kennedy, remembering that, said to Mrs Kennedy after his success in the Cuban missile crisis…’if anyone’s going to kill me, it should happen now’,” said Dallek.

Kennedy was shot on November 22, 1963 as his open-top motorcade travelled through Dallas, Texas. (ANI)