Jackie Kennedy tapes: Excerpts

Audio tapes have been released of interviews with the former US First Lady Jackie Kennedy, recorded four months after the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy in 1963. Here are some excerpts:

On her husband's opinion of Lyndon Johnson

"Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, 'Oh, God can you ever imagine what would happen if Lyndon was president?'

"Jack would say you could never get an opinion out of Lyndon at any cabinet or national security meeting. He'd just say, you know, that he agreed with them - with everyone - or just keep really quiet.

"So Lyndon, as vice-president, didn't just do anything."

On Charles de Gaulle and France

"De Gaulle was my hero when I married Jack," she says.

But after meeting the French leader during a May 1961 visit, she says she found him "so full of spite".

She also says: "I loathe the French... They are not very nice, they are all for themselves."

On fears during the Cuban Missile Crisis

"I went up and listened and eavesdropped [to a debate on the issue]. I could hear [Former Secretary of Defence Robert] McNamara saying something and then I thought I must not listen and went away. But from then on it seemed there was no waking or sleeping.

"And I just don't know which day was which. And I never left the house or saw the children and when he came home if it was for sleep or for a nap I would sleep with him.

"Please don't send me away to Camp David. Please don't send me anywhere, if anything happens we're all going to stay right here with you. Even if there's not room in the bomb shelter in the White House, which I'd seen I said then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens, well I just want to be with you and I just want to die with you and the children do too."

On JFK joking about the threat of assassination

"And then I remember Jack saying after the Cuban missile crisis, when it all turned [out] so fantastically, he said, 'Well, if anyone's ever going to shoot me, this would be the day they should do it.'"

On her husband

"I just wish he could have seen some more good things come in, that he worked so hard for. The tax bill, the civil rights bill, the economy up so high.

"He really did so much. There wasn't that much more to do, except it would have gelled."

"Once I asked him - I think this is rather touching - if he could have one wish, what would it be? In other words, you know, looking back on his life, and he said, 'I wish I had more good times.'"

On JFK's reaction to the botched Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba

"He came back over to the White House to his bedroom and he started to cry, just with me. You know, just for one - just put his head in his hands and sort of wept.

"It was so sad, because all his first 100 days and all his dreams, and then this awful thing to happen. And he cared so much."

On Martin Luther King

"I just can't see a picture of Martin Luther King without thinking, you know, that man's terrible."

On entering the White House

"I was always a liability to him [John F Kennedy], everyone thought I was a snob from Newport who had bouffant hair and had French clothes and hated politics."

"When we got in the White House all the things that I'd always done suddenly became wonderful. And I was so happy for Jack. He could be proud of me then because it made him so happy. Made me so happy. So those were our happiest years."

On JFK meeting Winston Churchill in the 1950s

"Jack had always wanted to meet Churchill. Well, the poor man was really quite ga-ga then.

"I felt so sorry for Jack that evening because he was meeting his hero, only he met him too late."

On future Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi

She calls Ms Gandhi a "bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman."