Former intern details affair with JFK

A woman who says she had an affair with president John F. Kennedy fifty years ago is now sharing her story.

Her name is Mimi Beardsley Alford.

And the 69-year-old grandmother writes in a new book, "Once Upon a Secret," that she began an 18-month affair with president Kennedy in the summer of 1962.

Four days after starting as a White House intern, she says she met the president in the White House swimming pool after being invited by a presidential aide.

"The president slid into the pool and floated up to me," she writes.

It's Mimi, isn't it? He said.

Yes sir. I said. Mimi Beardsley.

And you're in the press office this summer, right?

"Yes sir, I am," I replied.

In an exclusive interview with NBC's 'Rock Center, which aired on Channel 2 Wednesday night, Alford says she didn't consider the invitation unusual.

"But it really didn't seem unnatural, just because everyone was friendly, and I went back to work afterwards," said Alford.

Later that day Alford said she had sex -- for the first time in her life -- with the 45 year old president, in Mrs. Kennedy's bedroom.

She claims she stayed over at the White House on many occasions, as Mrs. Kennedy was away that summer.

"Do what you want..the president would say to me. You can go home or you can stay," said Alford.

In the NBC interview, Alford also detailed some odd habits of the president, saying he enjoyed playing with rubber ducks while the two took baths together.

Alford claims to have traveled with the president on several occasions, and writes that after returning to college, she was flown to Washington.

And that includes a visit, she claims, in October of 1962, during the cuban missile crisis.

The last time, she says, she saw the president was on November 15th at the Carlyle Hotel in New York -- just days before he was assassinated.

"He took me in his arms for a long embrace and said I wish you were coming with me to Texas. And then he added..I'll call you when I get back."

Alford says she reminded the president she was to be married in just months, but says he told her he'd call her regardless.

The one person Mimi mentions who knew about the relationship was an aide named Dave Powers. But whatever he knew, he took to the grave, dying in 1998.

Mimi Beardsley Alford first spoke of the affair in 2003, issuing a statement after being tracked down by a New York Daily News reporter.

It came after historian Robert Dallek wrote that it was rumored president Kennedy had an affair with a young intern.

And then there's this account from a White House press aide during the Kennedy years, found at the Kennedy library.

It's a transcript from 1964 in which she talks about Mimi having a special relationship with president Kennedy.

She talks about the press inquiring why Mimi was on presidential trips, and she talks about girls in the White House going swimming with the president and Dave Powers.