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A Kennedy-crazed Princess Diana was obsessed with becoming America's first lady - and plotted to use her torrid affair with a mysterious, older, New York billionaire to pull off the sensational scheme, the tragic royal's butler reveals in his explosive new book.
"She had it all dreamed out in her head - how she would redecorate the presidential apartment and become 'the new Jackie O,' " Paul Burrell writes in "The Way We Were: Remembering Diana," which hit bookstores yesterday.
Despite persistent rumors, Diana never had an affair with John F. Kennedy Jr., whom she considered intellectually challenged, Burrell scoffs.
Instead, "she had built up an exceptionally close relationship with a politically well-connected billionaire" - a silver-haired, 50-something, Manhattan bachelor she met at Wimbledon in 1994 - and the princess "felt that he was capable of running for office," the ex-servant asserts.
"With me beside him and him beside me, how could we fail?" the ex-servant says a starry-eyed Diana told him.
"She'd been a huge fan of Jackie Onassis for years and a huge admirer of Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton, too. But Jackie Onassis had the edge," Burrell told ABC's "Good Morning America."
"It wasn't a fantasy," Burrell added of his former boss's ambition. "It could have been a reality. It really could. They would have been a golden couple."
Burrell says in the book that Diana even giggled to him, "Can you imagine, Paul, me coming to England as first lady on a state visit with the president and staying at Buckingham Palace?"
But Diana eventually broke up with her unidentified philanthropist lover over what Burrell surmises were her fears of relationships with older men, given the outcome of her miserable marriage to Prince Charles, who was 12 years her senior, Burrell says.
The breakup would ultimately leave the unlucky-in-love former "Lady" open to finally meet "The One" - prominent London heart surgeon Dr. Hasnat Khan, Burrell writes. Unfortunately, the stubborn pair's passionate affair was over after a tumultuous two years, mainly because Khan was reluctant to be dragged into the public spotlight, the ex-butler says.
But there was no denying their love lasted right up until the end, when she died in a fiery car crash in Paris on Aug. 31, 1997, Burrell says. The former servant says the heart surgeon phoned him days after the tragedy, sobbing, "I could have saved her!"
The ex-butler also notes Di's kindness of spirit while alive.
Burrell details how his compassionate boss allowed grieving friend Rosa Monckton to bury her stillborn daughter in the private garden of her home, Kensington Palace - and even helped dig the grave herself.
Halfway through the butlers' digging, Burrell says he emerged from the hole muddy and with blistered hands, as a concerned Diana, wearing a silk dress, looked on.
" 'Let me help,' she said, and jumped in and took the spade as I climbed out," Burrell writes.
The obviously emotional princess later told him sadly: "The only problem is that people will find this baby one day and say it was mine."
kate.sheehy@nypost.com
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