New York: Jackie Kennedy did not have much kind words in 1964 for India's future Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, whom the widow of former US President JF Kennedy, called a 'bitter and a horrible woman'.
According to interviews, Kennedy gives "tart commentary on former presidents, heads of state, her husband's aides, powerful women, women reporters, even her mother-in-law."
She calls Gandhi as "a real prune bitter, kind of pushy, horrible woman."
Gandhi became Prime Minister of India in 1966. Kennedy called French president Charles DeGaulle "that egomaniac".
Martin Luther King Jr is "a phony" whom electronic eavesdropping has found arranging encounters with women.
The seven-part interview was conducted in early 1964 and is now being published as a book and an audio recording.
The interviews with historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger centre around JFK's presidency, their marriage and her role in his political life but do not touch the subject of his death.
The eight and a half hours of interviews had been kept private at the request of the Jackie Kennedy.
The transcript and recording have been obtained by The New York Times and offer an "extraordinary immersion in the thoughts and feelings of one of the most enigmatic figures of the second half of the 20th century."
In the interviews, Kennedy told Schlesinger that the then White House social secretary Letitia Baldrige loved to pick up the phone and say things like "Send all the White House china on the plane to Costa Rica" or tell them they had to fly string beans in to a state dinner.
She quotes her husband as saying of his vice president Lyndon Johnson, "Oh, God, can you ever imagine what would happen to the country if Lyndon was president?"
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