Charles De Gaulle and Jackie Kennedy

[John Simkin]

After the assassination of JFK, De Gaulle was asked what would become of his widow, Jackie. He replied: "She will end up on the yacht of an arms dealer." What a strange thing to say?

De Gaulle always believed that there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. It is assumed that he got this information via his country's intelligence services. I wonder if this strange reply was a sort of clue.

As it happens, Jackie ended up on the yacht of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

[Charles Drago]

Are you sure that De Gaulle didn't say, "in the arms of a yacht dealer"?

[Michael Hogan]

After the assassination of JFK, De Gaulle was asked what would become of his widow, Jackie. He replied: "She will end up on the yacht of an arms dealer." What a strange thing to say?

De Gaulle always believed that there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. It is assumed that he got this information via his country's intelligence services. I wonder if this strange reply was a sort of clue.

As it happens, Jackie ended up on the yacht of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

Fred Sparks won the Pulitzer Prize for international reporting in 1951. In 1970 he released The $20,000,000 Honeymoon, Jackie and Ari's First Year, published by Bernard Geis Associates.

Sparks wrote that Senator and Mrs. Kennedy met Onassis and his guest, Winston Churchill, aboard his yacht (the Christina) in the summer of 1958. In the following years, Lee Radziwill was a frequent guest of Onassis.

After John Kennedy was elected to the White House, Jackie gave birth to Patrick Kennedy, who died two days after being born. Understandably, Jackie became very depressed. One day, she received an invitation to join others for a cruise on the Christina. According to Sparks, Kennedy wavered, then "entirely ceased his opposition to the cruise when Jackie assured him that, while Mr. Onassis was placing his yacht and full crew at her disposal, he would not be there himself."

According to Sparks, Onassis was discovered coming down the gangplank in the port of Istanbul. The story quickly became international news and in a phone call to Jackie, JFK told his wife, "I know you're on the high seas, and I don't care how you get off that yacht, but get off! I know you're a good swimmer."

According to Sparks, "Jacqueline Kennedy was never again the same woman. The cruise with Onassis had been a turning point in her life." Sparks goes on to detail how impressed Jackie was with Onassis. Sparks does say that there is no evidence that the cruise was not a platonic one for Onassis and Mrs. Kennedy. Jackie's relationship with Lee Radziwill remained strong.

Slightly more than a month after Mrs. Kennedy's cruise aboard Onassis' yacht, the President was murdered in Dallas.

Edited January 14, 2008 by Michael Hogan

[Michael Hogan]

After the assassination of JFK, De Gaulle was asked what would become of his widow, Jackie. He replied: "She will end up on the yacht of an arms dealer." What a strange thing to say?

De Gaulle always believed that there had been a conspiracy to kill JFK. It is assumed that he got this information via his country's intelligence services. I wonder if this strange reply was a sort of clue.

As it happens, Jackie ended up on the yacht of Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis.

From Oh, No....Jackie-O! by January Jones (1998), p21:

Charles De Gaulle, a connoisseur of personal as well as national destiny, was fascinated by Jacqueline Kennedy. "What do you think of her?" De Gaulle privately asked his Minister of Culture, Andre Malraux. "She is unique for the wife of an American President, sir," Malraux replied. "Yes, she's unique," said De Gaulle. "I can see her in ten years from now on the yacht of a Greek oil millionaire." Within two years of this uncanny prediction, Jackie was a guest of Aristotle Onassis on his yacht, the

Christina

. Within eight years, Jackie was honeymooning with Ari on the yacht.

The author's footnoted source for the above was:

Aristotle Onassis

by Nicolas Fraser, Philip Jacobson, Mark Ottaway, Lewis Chester, J B Lippincott Co, 1977