ABC to air unsealed Jacqueline Kennedy interviews in September

Forget The Kennedys — ABC News has the real deal: Jacqueline Kennedy talking about her life with husband President John F. Kennedy. The network announced on Wednesday that the First Lady’s conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., which have been sealed up until now, will be featured in a series of television and radio programs, including a one-hour 20/20 special anchored by Diane Sawyer in September. There will be high interest in these eight-and-a-half hours of interviews, which were recorded in the spring of 1964, less than a year after President Kennedy was assassinated; the fashionable First Lady, who passed away in 1994, never really talked publicly about her time with her husband in the White House, save for a 1963 interview with Look magazine following his death. The audio tapes cover her days campaigning for him to their final days in the White House. A book titled Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, will be released in tandem with the Sawyer-hosted special; the foreword is being written by daughter Caroline Kennedy, who was bequeathed the tapes with instructions for their release. “It is a great privilege to be able to share these recollections with the millions of people who admire my parents,” she said in a statement. “My mother took very seriously the obligation to preserve and document the history of my father’s administration — and these interviews are the result. I am honored to play a small part in that effort by bringing them forward in connection with the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy administration.”