Jackie Kennedy turned a blind eye to one of JFK’s most infamous affairs because she believed it didn’t qualify as cheating.

A recent biography suggests that the First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy, accepted her husband, President John F. Kennedy’s interactions with socialite Mary Meyer, viewing their connection as not a true romance.

In his latest book of the Kennedy family, acclaimed Camelot biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli says that Jackie nevertheless had a ‘dim view’ of Meyer.

The book, titled ‘JFK: Public, Private, Secret,’ scheduled for release on Tuesday, reveals that Jackie once declined to shake hands with Meyer during a White House luncheon, opting instead to pass her a glass of champagne, treating her like a server.

Had Jack not met Jackie, then Meyer – a graduate of the elite Brearley School and Vassar College – may have made an ideal match.

They met briefly at a school dance when Jack tried to cut in on her date.

Mary Meyer, who moved within the same elite circles as the Kennedys, had a distinguished political lineage as well; her uncle, Gifford Pinchot, was the 28th governor of Pennsylvania and a close friend of President Theodore Roosevelt.

Meyer’s father, Amos Pinchot, was a well-known lawyer in the 1920s and her sister Toni married Ben Bradlee, who later became executive editor of the Washington Post during its coverage of the Watergate and Pentagon Papers scandals.

Jackie Kennedy turned a blind eye to one of JFK’s most notorious affairs with the ex-wife of a top CIA official because she didn’t consider it cheating, believing his claim that it was ‘only oral sex’

The mistress in question was socialite Mary Meyer (right), who moved in the same circles as the Kennedys and briefly met him at a school dance when Jack tried to cut in on her date

‘Public, Private, Secret’, reveals that Jack and Meyer first became intimate in January 1962 at the White House.

Jack suggested to his wife that she go to Virginia with her sister, Lee Radziwill, and their children. That evening, Meyer arrived at the White House, and the pair went up to his private residence.

Jack had been thinking about Meyer since seeing her at a lunch the previous September and had invited her over.

Unfortunately for the president, one member of Jackie’s family was at the White House, her mother Janet, who remarked: ‘What is she doing in the residence when my daughter isn’t home? I’m going up there right now to find out.’

It took the intervention of Jack’s personal secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, who was well aware of the President’s dalliances, to convince Janet to stay put.

What appears to be utterly brazen behavior becomes more understandable given that Jackie was aware of what was going on, Taraborrelli writes.

Secret Service agent Anthony Sherman would later say that Jackie knew ‘all about Mary Meyer and the President’.

The first explicit rendezvous with Meyer happened when JFK sent Jackie and their young children to stay with her sister Lee in Virginia

The animosity was on full display in October 1962 when Meyer and Jackie were at the same White House dinner, and the mistress asked her about ‘redecorating’ Lafayette Park

‘Very little got by the First Lady,’ he said, adding that she had a ‘spy’ in Lincoln’s office and had others filling her in about what her husband did.

Yet still the question remains: why did she tolerate it, given she had asked him to be discreet?

Citing an unnamed family member, Taraborrelli writes that Jack had ‘sworn to her (Jackie) that Mary only offered him oral sex, nothing more’.

Taraborrelli writes: ‘Many women of the 1950s and ’60s believed that sex of that particular nature wasn’t ‘real sex’, and Jackie agreed with that premise.’

The family member said: ‘Jackie took a dim view of Mary because of the way she knew she serviced Jack.

‘She had no respect for her.’

Jackie supposedly said: ‘”If that’s the kind of reputation she wants around here”, meaning the White House, “that’s her problem”.’

The former first lady also felt Meyer was jealous of her standing and ‘wants all of this’, referring to the White House.

Meyer, who was previously married to Lieutenant Cord Meyer, a CEO official and veteran, was given no respect by Kennedy and frequently demeaned and mocked

Jackie would tell an unnamed friend that Meyer would ‘never have it’ and brutally remarked that ‘someone should tell her that easy women don’t find husbands’

‘She’ll never have it,’ Jackie told the family member. ‘Maybe someone should tell her that easy women don’t find husbands.’

Jackie also hated the fact that Meyer was a divorcee – she had left her husband, Cord Meyer, a CIA official and war veteran – and was flaunting convention.

The family member said: ‘She (Jackie) was all over the map when it came to divorced women. She once told me: “I can’t help it. I always have this feeling a divorced woman is on the prowl”.

‘”My own mother and sister have been divorced, so I wrestle with it”.

‘She said she’d talked to other married women and knew she wasn’t alone.’

Taraborrelli suggests that perhaps Jackie felt the freedom that Meyer enjoyed may have been another reason for her animosity.

Speaking to a family friend many years later, Jackie remarked: “‘I was doing my best with the cards I’d been dealt”.

“I loved Jack. I know he loved me. I had to ignore the rest of it.

Jackie not only corrected Meyer on the name of the park, she also coolly handed her an empty champagne glass when Meyer extended her hand to say goodbye (PICTURED: Jackie looking at her design for restoring Lafayette Square)

“My marriage was like a deep black hole, and I knew that if I looked down, I’d fall in”.’

The animosity was on full display in October 1962 when Meyer and Jackie were at the same White House dinner.

When Meyer asked about Jackie redecorating Lafayette Park – or Lafayette Square – next to the White House, Jackie corrected her.

The former First Lady said: “Restore, Mary. I do not redecorate. I restore. And it’s Lafayette Square, Mary. Not park”.’

As Meyer was about to leave, she went to shake Jackie’s hand, but instead, Jackie smiled and handed her an empty champagne glass.

‘”Thank you”, Jackie said as if speaking to a servant. Jackie later told a friend: “Oh I cut her dead, all right”.’

But that didn’t stop Jack from keeping Meyer close to him, including for an intimate dinner at the White House after his October 1962 address to the nation about the Cuban missile crisis.

Taraborrelli writes that Meyer’s presence was a ‘mystery’ until an unpublished 1998 interview with Helen Chavchavadze, whom Jack was also having an affair with, emerged.

The relationship would come to a tragic end when JFK was assassinated in November 2022. Meyer was shot and killed the following year – her murder remains unsolved to this day

Chavchavadze said that Meyer was supposed to come with her date, Bill Walton, but he took her instead.

So Meyer, who was upset at the danger facing the nation, called up Lincoln, who told her she could come.

The account also meant that two of Jack’s lovers were at the White House that night.

According to Taraborrelli, Bobby Kennedy’s wife Ethel gave Jackie a look to say she ‘knew exactly what was going on’.

Jackie was enraged at Meyer’s presence and thought to herself: ‘”Are you kidding me with this goddamn woman?”‘

Some accounts over the years have claimed that Jack was so in love with Meyer he was going to divorce Jackie and make her First Lady if he had a second term.

Fate intervened to put paid to that.

Meyer was shot dead on a towpath in Georgetown, a wealthy area of Washington, in 1964, and the only suspect, a black man seen in the area, was acquitted of her murder, and the killing remains unsolved to this day. 

The case attracted a tsunami of press when it became apparent that Meyer was Jack’s lover and added to the many conspiracy theories surrounding his life and death by assassination a year earlier in 1963 in Dallas, Texas.