JFK bombshell: New book makes shocking claim about president and flight attendant

It was no secret that President John F. Kennedy was a heartthrob during his time in the White House.

But what was a secret — at least according to a new book — is that he once got a flight attendant pregnant during an affair. The book claims it never came to light because JFK was told of the pregnancy, and then paid for an abortion.

It claims that his wife Jackie Kennedy had no idea about the affair and the secret pregnancy, which took place just months after she gave birth to the couple’s daughter Caroline.

The bombshell claim is revealed in an upcoming new book, “JFK: Public, Private and Secret” by J. Randy Taraborrelli.

The love affair began when Kennedy first met Joan Lundberg in 1956 in California, when she worked for Frontier Airlines and as a cocktail waitress, according to the book.

At the time, Kennedy was a 39-year-old married U.S. senator while Lundberg was 23. In August of that year, Kennedy’s wife Jackie Kennedy suffered a stillbirth of their daughter Arabella.

Two years later, shortly after the former president’s wife gave birth to their daughter Caroline, Lundberg had news for the man she was sleeping with. She called JFK to inform him of her own pregnancy, and he was the father, according to an excerpt of the upcoming book that was shared with People magazine.

“Joan would recall that her news about the baby was ‘like a knife to Jack’s heart,’ ” reads the excerpt. “While it was a shock, Joan wrote that they shouldn’t have been so surprised: ‘I didn’t like wearing a diaphragm, and Jack wouldn’t wear a rubber,’ ” she wrote.

“Jack couldn’t help but wonder if Joan had purposely planned the pregnancy, given that she’d seen his devotion to Jackie after Caroline’s birth. He also wondered if he was really the father, and Joan assured him he was.”

The tell-all also used excerpts from Lundberg’s own, unpublished memoir, which she had shared with her family.

After their phone call, JFK then told Lundberg he would mail her $400, adding, “you’ll know what to do.” Apparently, this signaled for Lundberg to get an abortion.

“ ‘Being a politician is who I am,’ he told her. ‘Politics is all I know. If you take that away …’ His voice trailed off. Before she could respond, he disconnected the line,” the excerpt reads.

But there’s a twist, according to the book.

So, one week later when the envelope arrived, it contained no money.

Per the biography, when JFK learned of what was done, he became “positively unhinged.” He then wired more money to Lundberg and she “took care of things” the next day.

“Jack was very clear; he didn’t want Joan to have the baby… She was angry and disappointed, but also realistic,” Taraborrelli writes.

Tarraborrelli said that Lundberg was “a big revelation” to him, as he described her as having acted as the former president’s “therapist in many ways.”