Suit May Settle Out Of Court

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31248, 21 December 1966, Page 21

Suit May Settle Out Of Court

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

NEW YORK, December 20.

Lawyers today tried to settle out of court a suit by Mrs Jacqueline Kennedy to block publication of a controversial book, “Death of a President,” about the assassination of her late husband.

Her suit names the publishers, author and “Look” magazine, which is to publish 80,000 words of extracts from the 300,000word book. The first instalment has already gone to press. The suit is due to be heard on December 27. Mr Cass Canfield, for the publishers, said last night the book was being published “in

the interest of historical accuracy and of the people’s right to know the true facts of the awesome tragedy.” He said:

“Understandably, the members of the Kennedy family were unwilling to read the manuscript themselves and hence they delegated representatives to do this for them. Had they read it themselves, the present situation might have been avoided.”

Family Reply A spokesman for the Kennedy family replied: “No amount of rhetoric about ‘historical accuracy’ or the public’s ‘right to know’ can alter the nature of this controversy —whether the author and the publishers broke a written agreement, from which breach enormous profits will apparently flow. “The question is not the book’s ‘right to live’—no-one has denied that right. “The question is the right of Mrs Kennedy and her children to live with a minimum of privacy and dignity, free from the publication of intimate details of their lives at a time of great sorrow—details which bear no conceivable relation to history.”