Jackie Onassis believed that Lyndon B Johnson and a cabal of Texas tycoons were involved in the assassination of her husband John F Kennedy, ‘explosive’ recordings are set to reveal.
The secret tapes will show that the former first lady felt that her husband’s successor was at the heart of the plot to murder him.
She became convinced that the then vice president, along with businessmen in the South, had orchestrated the Dallas shooting, with gunman Lee Harvey Oswald – long claimed to have been a lone assassin – merely part of a much larger conspiracy.
Texas-born Mr Johnson, who served as the state’s governor and senator, completed Mr Kennedy’s term and went on to be elected president in his own right.
The tapes were recorded with leading historian Arthur Schlesinger Jnr within months of the assassination on November 22, 1963, and had been sealed in a vault at the Kennedy Library in Boston.
The then Mrs Kennedy, who went on to marry Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis, had ordered that they should not be released until 50 years after her death, with some reports suggesting she feared that her revelations might make her family targets for revenge.
She died 17 years ago from cancer aged 64 and now her daughter, Caroline Kennedy, has agreed to release the recordings early.
A programme featuring the tapes will be aired by U.S. network ABC, and it is understood British broadcasters are in talks to show it here too.
ABC executives claimed the tapes’ revelations were ‘explosive’.
They are believed to include the suggestion that Mr Kennedy was having an affair with a 19-year-old White House intern, with his wife even claiming that she found knickers in their bedroom.
And they go on to reveal that she too had affairs – one with Hollywood star William Holden and another with Fiat founder Gianni Agnelli – as a result of the president’s indiscretions. It has also been claimed that, in the weeks before Mr Kennedy’s assassination, the couple had turned a corner in their relationship and were planning to have more children.
Historian Edward Klein, who has written several books on the Kennedy clan, said: ‘Jackie regarded the pretty young things in the White House as superficial flings for Jack. She did retaliate by having her own affairs.
‘There was a period during which she was delighted to be able to annoy her husband with her own illicit romances.’
It is believed that Caroline, 53, agreed to the early release of the tapes in exchange for ABC dropping its £10 million drama series about the family.
The Kennedys, starring Tom Cruise’s wife Katie Holmes as Jackie, critically charted the family’s political and personal trials and tribulations since the 1930s. The series was eventually broadcast on an independent cable channel, and on BBC2 in the UK, against Caroline’s wishes. - dailymail
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"World’s powers will fake alien invasion at the Olympics closing ceremony to keep us living in fear" — Ian Crane at Exopolitics Expo
It's drizzling on a grey Saturday morning and the leafy university campus is deserted.
That's except for the main auditorium, where hundreds of people stream into a lecture theatre where the air is thick with theories and dire warnings, including that next year's Olympics will be an Independence Day-style bloodbath.
This is the Exopolitics Expo in Leeds last weekend - the UK's largest UFO conference.
Among the 300 attendees at the three-day event are computer programmers, full-time mums, engineers and even a police detective constable.
But they all have one thing in common - they are all fascinated by the idea that governments are covering up the existence of aliens - and other things besides.
There are stalls selling everything from healing aura scent sprays to DVDs explaining how the world is controlled by influential cartels hell-bent on global domination.
The notion that the Government is covering up the truth is the strongest theme in Ian Crane's DVD stall at the expo. Dad-of-three Ian, 55, is hoping to spread the word that the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games on August 12 could be a target for a full-scale "alien invasion".
He said: "I think it will be the perfect setting for a 'false flag' invasion, in other words the event will be made to look like an extra-terrestrial invasion but in fact it will be a deception and really the work of the world's governments, to keep us all living in fear.
"I don't care if people call me a nutter, I hope that by spreading the word about what's going to happen I can help save thousands of lives."
"If enough people know about it in advance then the attack will not be carried out. I'm simply sowing the seed in the mind of the public."
Full-time mum Brigitte Barclay has travelled to the conference from her home in Devon.
She may be recognisable to some Sun readers, as in the late Eighties and early Nineties she was one the paper's most popular Page 3 girls.
Brigitte, 40, also posed for Playboy and Penthouse.
But after giving up modelling she moved to LA where she worked as a make-up artist and, she says, had alien encounters.
Brigitte, who founded a support group for other people who have seen UFOs, is here today to share her story.
She told The Sun: "I've always seen UFOs, since I was a little girl. I've had 17 sightings altogether.
"People write off what I'm talking about as nonsense and one bloke even told me I must be on LSD but my memories and things I've seen were real. The information is out there if you want to read it, and for people to just say this didn't happen to me is ignorant."
Brigitte was driving to a colleague's house in February 1993 when she had one of her most memorable ET encounters.
She recalls: "I'd come off the freeway exit in Brentwood, LA, near the Holiday Inn hotel, when I got a sudden feeling of nervous energy like butterflies in my stomach, and I knew something was going to happen.
"I saw a 50ft craft about five metres away. It had no wings but a glowing orange light underneath it. It was right in front of me and I was gripping the steering wheel very tightly.
"I felt myself being sucked through the car and suddenly I was in a field with three beings and a child. They were around 6ft tall, naked with iridescent, shimmering skin and pieces of white hair. Their energy was amazing and I didn't feel scared. There was no talking or conversation, I just felt a strong bond with them.
"Then all of a sudden I was back in the car."
Conference organiser Anthony Beckett, 35, from Skipton, North Yorks, is one of the few people I meet who hasn't had an alien encounter.
"I don't think we're oddballs, as UFOs and extra-terrestrial life are questions everyone has considered," he explains.
Not that Anthony should care - with tickets selling at £99 for a three-day pass, the organisers are quids-in whether flying saucers turn out to be real or imaginary. - thesun
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Lecture explores 'supernatural' past of Pennsylvania Dutch
There were no ghost stories at the Berks County Heritage Center on Sunday afternoon, no tales of UFO sightings or mind reading.
Instead it was a tour through the paranormal history of the Pennsylvania Dutch, stories of hexes and charms to ward off evil.
The heritage center hosted "Hex Signs and Himmelsbriefs: Pennsylvania Germans and the Supernatural," a lecture by Candace Kintzer Perry, curator of the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center in Pennsburg, Montgomery County.
Himmelsbriefs were words written on paper, kept to ward off evil spirits.
Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, Kintzer Perry spoke of the paranormal activity she said was commonplace from the 1700s to the early 1900s.
"Berks County is a hotbed of weirdness," said Kintzer Perry. "It's very clear that a lot of these beliefs hung on longer here and in Schuylkill County than other places."
A famous example Kintzer Perry gave was Mountain Mary, a woman who lived as a hermit in the Oley hills during the Revolutionary War.
"We know for a fact she was a country doctor of some kind," Kintzer Perry said. "But others call her the 'patron saint of pow wow' in Berks County, which can't be proven."
For the Pennsylvania Dutch, the term pow wow was a type of folk medicine based on charms. A common pow wow practice to extinguish a fire without water was to write an ancient palindrome - "sator, arepo, tenet, opera, rotas" - on both sides of a plate and throw it into the fire, Kintzer Perry said.
"This palindrome was written on the walls in Pompeii, it was found on shards of pottery in England," Kintzer Perry said.
"It's not like they just came up with random words, these things were around for a long, long time."
Ruth Post and her husband, Bob, of Wernersville came to the lecture to learn more about their German ancestors.
"We just moved to this area about two years ago, so we're trying to learn as much as we can," Ruth Post said.
Some of the paranormal practices of the Pennsylvania Dutch are still around today. Hex signs were commonly placed on barns in the 1850s, and were said to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. They were often used on early tourism posters enticing visitors from Philadelphia and New York City.
Kintzer Perry said these compass-style drawings are common in Pennsylvania Dutch art. Whether they were good luck charms or decorations is unknown, she said.
Berks County residents were also known to have himmelsbriefs folded away in their wallets or posted on their walls at home. Himmelsbriefs reminded people to keep the Sabbath holy or suffer the wrath of God. The letters also said if you reprinted the notes, you would be rewarded in the future.
"They were a staple in Pennsylvania Dutch homes," Kintzer Perry said. "And they also happened to be the earliest form of the chain letter or dreaded chain email." - readingeagle
NOTE: a brief post on my personal history with pow-wow, talisman, family hex-meisters, etc. - The Hex Hollow Murder. I was raised around the practice and witnessed several of the healing and binding spells as a child. I occasionally refer to these mystical arts for certain situations. One day I may go into greater detail on these experiences...Lon
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Iceberg Hauling Pitched As Drought Cure
French entrepreneur backed by a software company claims to have proved that he can tow giant icebergs across the world to end drought conditions.
Georges Mougin, 86, has championed his plan to harvest icebergs to solve water shortages for 40 years -- and a computer simulation now shows that the ambitious project might be possible, The (London) Sunday Times reported.
Under the plan, engineers would encircle an iceberg with a harness that contains a skirt made from an insulating textile. The skirt unfolds underwater and covers the iceberg to stop it from melting.
With the help of ocean currents, the iceberg is then towed to drought-stricken lands.
"They are floating reservoirs," Mougin said.
He formed his company, Iceberg Transport International, in 1976 but shelved his iceberg-towing project after he was told repeatedly that it was too expensive and too difficult.
However, in 2009, he was approached by the French software firm Dassault Systemes, which provided Mougin with 15 engineers to build a computer simulation to test his ideas.
The simulation proved that it was possible to tow a seven-ton (6.35-tonne) iceberg from the waters around Newfoundland, eastern Canada, to Spain's Canary Islands in 141 days, with only 38 percent of the iceberg melting.
But the cost of the enterprise remains prohibitive. To tow the iceberg from Newfoundland to the Canary Islands would cost an estimated £6 million ($9.8 million). - myfoxdfw
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The incident had been known as Britain's Roswell: a group of American servicemen stationed in Suffolk go into a forest to investigate mysterious lights and emerge convinced they have seen an alien spacecraft.
The sightings, in December 1980, remain unexplained and have become the country's most tantalising and enduring UFO riddle.
One of those involved even claimed to have touched an alien spacecraft.
Now, the man who led the only investigation into the “Rendlesham Forest Incident” has spoken about the sightings - but his decision to end thirty years of silence is unlikely to please the UFO-believers as he suggests his men could have been hoaxed.
In 1980, US Air Force Colonel Conrad was base commander of the twin airfields of Woodbridge and Bentwaters, near Ipswich, which are understood at the time to have stored nuclear weapons.
Just after Christmas mysterious lights were seen in the sky above nearby Rendelsham Forest, and after a second night of reports from his men, Col Conrad investigated himself.
During the day, he went into the forest himself to a clearing where the lights had been seen and where markings on trees and on the ground had been found, indicating a possible landing by a spacecraft.
Col Conrad said he found them "unremarkable". Nevertheless, he returned to the base and hand picked a team of his best security officers and sent them in the forest that evening to investigate.
Armed with a Geiger counter, cameras and night vision devices they staked out the "landing site". After seeing nothing suspicious, most of the team returned to base late that night. A handful remained, including his deputy, Lt Col Charles Halt, who stayed in contact with his superior by radio.
It is his account of what happened next which has fuelled rumours of a UFO landing. Over the radio, he reported seeing more lights on the ground and in the sky.
At home on the base, the commander and his wife went outside to look for the lights after hearing about the sighting. Other senior officers on the base – and their wives – did the same. But despite it being a clear, cloudless night, they saw nothing suspicious.
Lt Col Halt filed a report of the incident to the Ministry of Defence some days later and has since go on to say the lights he saw were “extraterrestrial in origin” and accuse the US and UK security services of a cover-up. Col Conrad, who had gone home convinced he had seen nothing unusual, has remained silent.
Now he has provided a series of statements about the sightings to Dr David Clarke, a Sheffield Hallam University academic and the UFO adviser to the National Archives - which this week will release some Ministry of Defence files relating to the incident.
"We saw nothing that resembled Lt Col Halt's descriptions either in the sky or on the ground," Col Conrad said.
In a damning indictment of his former deputy, Col Conrad added: "We had people in position to validate Halt's narrative, but none of them could."
He said there was no "hard evidence" of anything suspicious.
The Geiger counter was initially said to have given slightly elevated readings in the clearance, but that these were later found to indicate "normal" levels of background radiation.
Col Conrad is scathing about his former deputy.
"He should be ashamed and embarrassed by his allegation that his country and England both conspired to deceive their citizens over this issue. He knows better," he said.
The former base commander also disputes the subsequent testimony of another serviceman, Sgt Jim Penniston, who had gone into the woods on the first night of the sightings and has since claimed he touched an alien spacecraft.
Col Conrad said he interviewed the officer at the time and that, while he described seeing strange lights which had moved off into the distance, he had not mentioned touching a spacecraft.
Although he cannot explain the subsequent accounts of his subordinates, Col Conrad said he thinks the incident may have been a hoax.
This chimes with the theories of some experts who suspect the lights the men first saw were actually from a fireball or Orford Ness lighthouse, about five miles away, and that they were subsequently hoaxed by their colleagues, including some who went on to hold senior positions in the US military.
Col Conrad said: "The search for an explanation could go many places including the perpetration of a clever hoax. Natural phenomenon such as the very clear cold air having a theoretical ability to guide and reflect light across great distances or even the presence of an alien spacecraft.
"If someone had the time, money and technical resources to determine the exact cause of the reported Rendlesham Forest lights, I think it could be done. I also think the odds are way high against there being an ET spacecraft involved, and almost equally high against it being an intrusion of hostile earthly craft."
Dr Clarke, who is a sceptic on UFO issues, believes Lt Col Halt saw some form of optical illusion and that his and Sgt Penniston's claims have become increasingly extreme over the years, as speculation over the sightings has increased.
"I don't think anyone, least of all Conrad, doubts that Halt and his men saw "something" in the woods. They had an extraordinary experience. And that experience would remain extraordinary regardless of whether ultimately it was a lighthouse or poacher's lanterns – which has also been suggested.
"But Col Conrad is responsible for the only proper investigation of this incident. He went to look and if there was anything to be seen, I cannot see how he could not have seen it." - telegraph
