John F Kennedy's wife Jacqueline pleaded with him to allow her and their children stay with him in the event of a nuclear war, around the time of the Cuban missile crisis, according to new audio tapes.
The transcripts are being released in a book this month entitled "Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F Kennedy." ABC News broadcast the tapes in a special programme last night.
In them, the former first lady talks of pleading with her husband to let her and the two young children stay with him no matter what, as the prospect of nuclear war with Soviets weighed heavily on the world.
"Please don't send me anywhere. If anything happens, we're all going to stay right here with you," she told the president.
In the event there was not enough space in the White House bomb bunker, she told him: "Please, then I just want to be on the lawn when it happens - you know - but I just want to be with you, and I want to die with you, and the children do too - than live without you."
Mrs Kennedy's recollections are from a series of interviews conducted by historian Arthur Schlesinger in 1964, months after Mr Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
The tapes have been kept private by the Kennedy family until now.
In another episode, Mr Kennedy wonders out loud whether Abraham Lincoln, the US civil war president who was also assassinated during his term in office, "would have been as great a president if he'd lived."
In a discussion with historian David Donald, Jacqueline said they had agreed that in fact it "was better for Lincoln that he died when he did."
Last week, first reports on the tapes found that President Kennedy "worried for the country" should his vice president Lyndon Johnson succeed him, with Jacqueline even saying her husband had begun discussing how to ensure Mr Johnson did not run for president in 1968.
"Bobby told me this later, and I know Jack said it to me sometimes. He said, 'Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?'" she said, referring to Robert Kennedy, the president's brother.
"He didn't like that idea that Lyndon would go on and be president because he was worried for the country," she said.
Mr Johnson completed Mr Kennedy's term and won the presidential election in 1964.
His White House years brought a major escalation in the Vietnam War and the passage of landmark civil rights legislation.
Mrs Kennedy also criticised civil rights activist Martin Luther King and French President Charles de Gaulle.
She said she found Mr De Gaulle to be "so full of spite" and disliked the French in general.
"I loathe the French … They are not very nice, they are all for themselves," she said.
And at one point she reveals that she had told her husband that Mr King was a "phony".
Mr Kennedy described Indira Gandhi, the future Indian prime minister, as a "bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman".
