COMMENTARY | According to Irish Central, Mimi Alford, a former President John Kennedy intern, has published a book, "Once upon a Secret," about her 18-month affair with the president that started in 1962. She was 19 years old at the time.
The number of Kennedy's extramarital affairs is the stuff of legends, including movie starlets such as Marilyn Monroe, mob mistresses such as Judith Campbell Exner and obscure secretaries and interns such as Alford without number. But Alford's story is unique, not just because of her youth, but because of some of the sordid details of the affair.
Those details include indulgence in recreational drugs and one occasion of Alford being pimped out to a friend of Kennedy's, David Powers. She found the idea of resisting the advances of the most powerful man in the world impossible. She describes how the president took her virginity in great detail, in an excerpt of the book published in the New York Post.
Besides information of interest to those fascinating by the president's sexual history, Alford's book has some hints of other history as well. At one point Kennedy warned Alford to stay away from then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson, presumably because he feared LBJ would find out about the affair and would use it to his advantage. During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy ruminated to Alford that he would rather see his children, Caroline and John Jr., red than dead, to use a common phrase of the time.
That the early 1960s were a different time when it came to male/female relations, especially in the workplace, is to understate the fact. In many cases attractive women were presumed to be available sexually to their powerful, male bosses. President Kennedy, the most powerful boss of all, took full advantage of that fact.
Kennedy's behavior with women was reckless almost beyond belief, from the point of view of the 21st century, with sexual harassment regulations and a more puritan regard to extra martial affairs by the powerful. President Bill Clinton was impeached and might have been thrown out of office because of his misbehavior. A more compliant media concealed Kennedy's activities. But if news of his behavior had ever become known, the history of the U.S. would have taken a decidedly different turn.
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