[Sample B: Approval/Signature Sheet] - George Mason University

Bishop received a letter from Jacqueline Kennedy asking him to forbear writing his book,
The Day Kennedy Was Shot, because she feared “’my children might see it or someone
might mention it to him.’” 110 Ironically, she noted that the Kennedy family already had
entrusted Manchester with writing the definitive account of the assassination in an effort
to prevent further commercialization of the event and to ward off a slew of books on the
subject. In December 1966, the family filed a lawsuit against Manchester to force
changes in his book, which Jacqueline Kennedy denounced as “a premature account of
the events of November, 1963, that is in part both tasteless and distorted.” 111
In the end, the lawsuit was settled before it went to trial when Manchester agreed
to delete about seven pages of text, mostly dealing with Mrs. Kennedy’s personal life. 112
Manchester also changed some unflattering descriptions of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the
hopes of preventing further political tensions between Robert F. Kennedy and the
President. John Corry, a New York Times reporter who covered the Manchester lawsuit,
wrote that, “when they [the Kennedys] could not direct him [Manchester] they began to
fight him. It was sad all around.” 113 Such are the dangers of writing an officially
authorized history.
Despite his troubles with the Kennedys, Manchester claimed in Death of a
President, published in 1967, that neither “Mrs. Kennedy nor anyone else is in any way
110
Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, (New York: Random House, 1968), xv.
111
John Corry, The Manchester Affair, (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1967), 173.
112
Corry, 222.
113
Corry, 9.
65