New JFK biography revives claim of racy photos framed by Secret Service

A forthcoming biography of John F. Kennedy revives a decades-old allegation that a Secret Service agent brought risque photographs of the president to a downtown Washington frame shop. The shop’s owner disputed key details of that story nearly 30 years ago.

In “Ladies’ Man: The Careless Heart of John F. Kennedy,” biographer Laurence Leamer writes that an agent arrived on various mornings at Sidney Mickelson’s shop with photos to be framed, according to Entertainment Weekly, which cited an excerpt published by People. Some of the images showed naked women in a bed in the Lincoln Bedroom, Mr. Leamer writes. In one, “the masked president lay next to two masked women.”

Mr. Mickelson measured each picture for a frame, and the agent took it away and returned it by day’s end, Mr. Leamer writes. He calls the scheme a “crazy thing to do” but consistent with what he describes as Kennedy’s compulsions.

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The story is not new. Journalist Seymour Hersh reported a version in his 1997 book, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” and recalled Mr. Mickelson telling him in mid-1996 that the shop framed photographs of naked people lying on beds in the Lincoln Room.

Mr. Mickelson gave a different account, however, when Time magazine reviewed Mr. Hersh’s book that November. He told the magazine he had described only two pictures of three masked figures in a bed, covers pulled to their necks. He said he never told Mr. Hersh the president was among them. “There wasn’t any picture of anybody naked there,” he said.

Mr. Hersh told Time he had other sources for the story but did not explain why they went unnamed in the book. The magazine also noted that he removed material alleging a hush-money contract between Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe after document experts warned it appeared to be counterfeit.

Mr. Mickelson, a well-regarded Washington art dealer and gallery owner, died of cancer July 15, 1999, at age 74, according to his Washington Post obituary. He cannot respond to the new account. Kennedy died in 1963.

“Ladies’ Man” is due Oct. 20 from G.P. Putnam’s Sons.

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