Pubdate: Wed, 14 May 2003 Source: Reuters (Wire) Copyright: 2003 Reuters Limited KENNEDY WAS COCAINE USER, NEW BOOK CLAIMS LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - John F. Kennedy snorted cocaine with actor Peter Lawford while the two stayed at Frank Sinatra's Palm Springs house in the late 1950s, according to an excerpt from a tell-all book written by Sinatra's former valet. Writing about the close friendship between Sinatra and the future U.S. president, George Jacobs said that although the Rat Pack singer knew of Kennedy's weakness for women -- and went so far as to arrange liaisons for him -- he would not have approved of his drug use. In an excerpt from his forthcoming book "Mr.S," released in the June edition of Playboy Magazine, Jacobs said he was present on several occasions in Palm Springs "when Peter Lawford and the future president did lines of cocaine together in Lawford's guest rooms." "The first time it happened Jack must have seen the shocked look on my face. 'For my back, George' Kennedy said to me with his bad-boy wink," Jacobs wrote, adding that Lawford pleaded with him not to tell Sinatra. Lawford was married at the time to Kennedy's sister Pat and both men were frequent guests at Sinatra's Palm Springs compound. Jacobs, who was Sinatra's valet from 1953 to 1968, said Kennedy had an "endless obsession with sex and gossip. He wanted to know all the Hollywood dirt." But Jacobs said he never told Sinatra about Kennedy's cocaine habit. "I wasn't about to break the bad news about Jack, who Mr. S. had put on a pedestal. Sex and alcohol may have made Jack a better man in Sinatra's sight. Cocaine was a different story," he wrote. A new biography of Kennedy by historian Robert Dallek published this month disclosed that in the last eight years of his life Kennedy was taking as many as eight medications a day for a variety of medical problems including back pain and Addison's disease, a life-threatening lack of adrenal function. Jacobs' book about his life as Sinatra's right-hand man is to be published in June by HarperCollins. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake