Historians have speculated for decades that John F. Kennedy carried on an affair with Marilyn Monroe while he was president, and now a new book alleges that Jacqueline Kennedy was not only aware of the relationship but, in one phone call with Monroe, actually gave the Hollywood icon her snarky blessing to inherit the difficulties of First Lady. In These Few Precious Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie, Christopher Andersen writes that Jackie was well aware of her husband’s extra-marital dalliances and was willing to tolerate them as long as he did not publicly humiliate her. Of all of J.F.K.’s alleged love interests, Monroe bothered Mrs. Kennedy the most, Andersen claims, because “Marilyn was a loose cannon who could go public at any time, causing a scandal that would obliterate her husband’s reputation, destroy her marriage and hold her up to public ridicule.” 
 
 
 
 According to Andersen, the two reportedly went head to head in a phone call initiated by Monroe, who believed that the president would make her his second wife. Per CBS’s write-up: 
 
 Andersen says Monroe even called Jackie and told her of JFK’s promise to marry her. Jackie was unfazed, saying, according to Andersen’s book, “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great . . . and you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems.” 
 
 Point: Jackie. 
 
 
 
 While the claims have not been substantiated, presidential historian Doug Wead told CBS that Andersen’s assertions could very well be true. “It’s the sort of thing that’s unbelievable but really happens in history,” he said. “Some of these things we’re uncovering right now will move from speculation to fact as time progresses.” 
 
 ||||| Marilyn Monroe 'hoped to marry JFK' 
 
 By Leila Macor (AFP) – Aug 6, 2013 
 
 LOS ANGELES, California — Marilyn Monroe, who notoriously had an affair with John F. Kennedy, apparently believed she was going to marry the president, even phoning the White House to tell his wife. 
 
 The story, reported in a new book out Tuesday by journalist Christopher Andersen, asserts that Jackie Kennedy even told Monroe that the screen siren was welcome to take over her role as first lady. 
 
 "And you'll move into the White House and you'll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I'll move out and you'll have all the problems," she reportedly told Monroe. 
 
 The incident is just one layer of the complex marriage in the year before the president was assassinated, according to the new account. 
 
 The book chronicles how Jackie was begged to stay by her husband even in the face of a nuclear strike, how the couple withstood the death of their newborn son Patrick, as well as how they weathered JFK's many extramarital affairs. 
 
 It aims to answer whether the pair, 33 and 46 when JFK was killed, who captured the hearts of the nation, truly loved one another. 
 
 According to Andersen's research, Jackie was well aware of her husband's many infidelities, but was only upset over Marilyn -- not because of the affair, itself, but because the first lady feared the scandal set her up for public ridicule. 
 
 And when the Cuban Missile Crisis was brewing in 1962 amid rising Cold War tensions, Jackie protested plans to send her and the children to shelter away from Washington in the event of a nuclear attack. 
 
 "Please don't send me anywhere if anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you," she said. 
 
 "I want to die with you, and the children do too -- rather than live without you." 
 
 "These Precious Few Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie," also recounts how the couple mourned their third child, Patrick Bouvier, who died two days after being born on August 7, 1963. 
 
 "The president returned to the vacant room upstairs, closed the door behind him, sat on the edge of the bed, and wept," Andersen reports. 
 
 "But when Jack walked in the door of her hospital room, they broke down together: 'Oh, Jack, oh, Jack', she sobbed. 'There's only one thing I could not bear now -- if I ever lost you.'" 
 
 Just months later, on November 22, 1963, she did lose him -- when gunman Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated the president in Texas. 
 
 Jackie, who outlived her husband by another 30 years, remarried five years later, to Greek business tycoon Aristotle Onassis. 
 
 "The ultimate question remains: On that day in Dallas fifty years ago when Jack was shot to death with Jackie at his side, did they truly love each other?" Andersen asks. 
 
 "After the affairs, the humiliations, the triumphs, and tragedies both known and unknown to the public, had they finally come together?" the author asks in his preface to the 336-page book, published by Simon and Schuster. 
 
 Copyright © 2013 AFP. All rights reserved. More » ||||| New book details JFK's last year with Jackie: Affair with Marilyn, amphetamines from 'Dr. Feelgood' 
 
 (Page 3 of 4) 
 
 She wondered if her own sexual inadequacies had pushed Jack away. 
 
 To a gob-smacked Finnerty, Jackie described her husband’s usual modus operandi in bed: “He just goes too fast and falls asleep.” 
 
 Was there something she could do to change that? There was, and after some understandable hesitation Finnerty spelled out in clinical detail how foreplay could be used to improve their sex life. 
 
 Jackie reported back to Finnerty that relations between the president and the first lady had improved significantly — although not enough to stop Jack’s skirt-chasing. If nothing else, from this point on Jackie had no reason to blame herself for her husband’s sexual compulsions. 
 
 And she was right to fear Marilyn Monroe. The actress had always grappled with severe psychiatric and emotional problems, made worse by alcohol and prescription drug abuse. At thirty-six, she realized her sex symbol days were numbered and began to see a new role for herself: as the second wife of the president. Confiding the most intimate details of the affair to her friend Jeanne Carmen, Marilyn was convinced JFK was about to leave Jackie for her. “Can’t you just see me,” she asked Carmen, “as first lady?” 
 
 Peter Lawford claimed that Monroe called the White House and told Jackie of the affair, of Jack’s alleged promises to her. “Marilyn, you’ll marry Jack, that’s great,” Jackie reportedly responded in that breathy voice that sounded not unlike Monroe’s. “And you’ll move into the White House and you’ll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I’ll move out and you’ll have all the problems.” 
 
 * * * 
 
 Max Jacobson, known as Dr. Feelgood, administered high-dosage amphetamine shots laced with steroids to the president on a regular basis. In fact, he would do multiple duty injecting the president, first lady, and members of their inner circle at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. 
 
 Apparently even Jacobson, aware that the other physicians treating the president vehemently objected to his methods, entertained doubts about whether his was the right approach. Although JFK assured him that the regular four-times-weekly injections weren’t interfering with his work, Jacobson handed Jack his resignation. JFK tore it up. 
 
 AFP/Getty Images 
 
 “The President was very fond of Max Jacobson, and it wasn’t just because of the boost he was getting from those shots,” conceded press secretary Pierre Salinger. “He came to rely on Max to bolster Jackie’s spirits. The quicksilver changes in her mood were getting pretty hard for him to take.”
– It's not exactly a revelation these days that JFK had an affair with Marilyn Monroe while president, but a new book is making headlines for adding a new wrinkle. The book, by journalist Christopher Andersen, says Monroe actually called Jackie Kennedy and told her that JFK planned to marry her, reports AFP. To which Jackie is said to have replied, "And you'll move into the White House and you'll assume the responsibilities of first lady, and I'll move out and you'll have all the problems," according to These Precious Few Days: The Final Year of Jack with Jackie. "Point: Jackie," writes Julie Miller at Vanity Fair, who likes the snark factor. Still, Andersen's book makes the case that while Jackie knew all about her husband's dalliances, it was only his affair with Monroe that worried her because she knew how huge the scandal would be if it became public. And Monroe seemed pretty sure she would be living in the White House someday, notes the Daily News summary of the book. “Can’t you just see me as first lady?” she is quoted as asking friend Jeanne Carmen. (In other Marilyn news, rare photos taken just six weeks before her death have entered the spotlight; click for that story.)