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“Mary’s Mosaic”: A litmus test of JFK research integrity Jim Fetzer “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” – Anis Nin Some issues within JFK research represent litmus tests that separate the competent from the frivolous, the courageous from the cowardly, and the honest from the dishonest, where some estimates have gone so far as to suggest that as much as 95% of members of the JFK research community are promoting an agenda to sow confusion and uncertainty, even in those cases where the evidence for a conclusion has made the question beyond reasonable doubt, precisely because, once the evidence has been properly understood, no alternative explanation is reasonable. That, I submit, is the case in relation to the fabrication of the Zapruder film and the other home movies, as I have documented over and over again. The 60 witnesses to the limo stop, a series of actions taken by Clint Hill, Officer James Chaney’s motoring forward (none of which are present in the extant film) and the blacking out of the fist-sized wound at the back of JFK’s head in frames after 313(but where the wound itself can actually be seen in later frames such as 374)–serves as a litmus test that differentiates between researchers who are competent, courageous and honest from those who are not. Another now appears to be the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, where the evidence of CIA complicity in her death, as in the assassination of JFK, persuasively presented by Peter Janney in Mary’s Mosaic (2012), is simply overwhelming. I submit that anyone who reads this book is going to be astonished at the depth, the passion and the intelligence with which it has been written–and the rigor and detail with which it explains her assassination by the CIA. Mary was the former wife of Cord Meyer, who began his career dedicated to the promotion of world peace but ended it working for the military-industrial-intelligence complex as the Director of Plans for the CIA. In his “Last Confessions”, E. Howard Hunt confided in his son, St. John, that those who had been responsible for the death of JFK had included Lyndon B. Johnson, Cord Meyer, David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Sanchez Morales and Frank Sturgis, among others. Cord Meyer and John F. Kennedy had both enjoyed enormous success early in their careers, where JFK would enter the political arena as a candidate for office, first as Senator from Massachusetts, later as President of the United States, while Cord would by induced by Allan Dulles to join the CIA. Mary Pinchot was a remarkable woman who fascinated them both, where she would marry Cord Meyer but later divorce him and subsequently become involved with JFK in what was far more than an affair, where she appears to have become enormously important to him as he became a statesman for peace. In the aftermath of his assassination, she became determined to expose those who had been responsible for his death, which led to her death, in turn, which, as Peter Janney explains, involved high-level officials of the CIA, including his own father, Wistar Janney, and James Jesus Angleton (who apparently authorized her murder), but where even Ben Bradlee, who was married to Mary’s sister, helped to cover it up. Mary was found on a towpath adjacent to a pond on 12 October 1964, which she used to walk from her Georgetown home to her artist’s studio, where she had been apprehended and, after a brief struggle, during which she cried out for help, was shot in the left temple. Remarkably, the bullet did not kill her outright. She crawled to a nearby tree and tried to regain her footing, but was dragged back to the path and shot again, this time through her back and into her heart, killing her instantly. Her cry for help had brought Henry Wiggins, who had come to fix a faux stalled Nash Rambler on the roadway above the crime scene, to look over the wall and observe a man standing over her, whom he described (and as was broadcast by the police) as a Negro male wearing a dark baseball cap, light-colored jacket and dark shoes, who appeared to be five feet eight or ten inches tall and weighing about 185 pounds (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 42). When he was apprehended in the vicinity, however, Ray Crump was only partially attired as the person Wiggins had described. He was weighed in at five foot, five and a half inches tall and weighed 145 pounds, which may have been exaggerations, because his driver’s license showed him to be only five foot three and a half inches tall and weighing only 130 pounds (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 51). Subsequently, a man who identified himself as “Lt. William L. Mitchell”, who claimed to have been jogging on the towpath and to have passed by a person fitting the description that Wiggins had provided (but whose name and identity would turn out to be fabrications), likewise described him as a Negro male, wearing a baseball cap, a light-colored jacked and dark shoes (Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 61-62). When Ray Crump was apprehended, soaking wet, with his fly still open (from the sexual escapade he had been engaged in with “Vivian”, a married woman, who confirmed their tryst on the rocks not long before the murder in a sworn affidavit, but was unwilling to testify because she feared her husband would kill her if he found out; Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 95-96), he was wearing neither the baseball cap nor the light-colored jacket, which had been temporarily lost when he had fallen into the water upon awakening on the rocks. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that both Wiggins and “Mitchell” are describing someone other than Ray Crump, who was not only substantially shorter and far lighter in weight than the man Wiggins, in particular, had described, but could not have been wearing the dark baseball cap or the light-colored jacket at the time. As “Vivian” had confirmed, they had been having a sexual dalliance on the rocks. He had fallen asleep and she had departed, where he lost them both in the water when he awakened disoriented and fell into the pond. The police and the DA’s Office realized that they had a weak case, where there was no forensic evidence that tied Ray Crump to the crime: there was no weapon; he did not own a gun; his height and weight did not match; even the jacket, when recovered from the water, had no signs of blood, even though they believed the killer would have been coated with it. While there was a trace of lipstick on his jacket (which was no doubt Vivian’s or even Ray’s wife’s), they did not pursue it–and even acknowledged in a memorandum that their case against Ray Crump “was very weak” (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 398). Nevertheless, they assigned their strongest, most aggressive prosecutor, Al Huntman, Assistant Chief of the Criminal Division, US Attorney’s Office, Washington, DC, to the case. While Ray Crump was defended by a brilliant attorney, Dovey Roundtree, who emphasized the kinds of discrepancies that I have noted here, it is difficult to believe that anyone today, unless they have either an inadequate understanding of the evidence or a powerful bias against truth and justice, would continue to maintain Ray Crump had actually committed the crime (CTKA review). Even then, in the highly impoverished state of the evidence, Dovey was able to create sufficient reasonable doubt that Ray Crump was unanimously acquitted at trial. And, as readers will discover for themselves, the additional evidence that Peter Janney was able to uncover makes the case for Ray Crump’s innocence simply overwhelming and beyond reasonable doubt. I am aghast at the dimensions of the distortions in this review. Lisa Pease, the closest collaborator of Jim DiEugenio, begins her review as follows: “Peter Janney wrote a book entitled Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and their Vision for World Peace. “From the subtitle, researchers can be forgiven for thinking that Janney’s book is a serious contribution to our side, as many of us believe that the CIA killed John Kennedy in part because he was trying to end the Cold War and rein in covert operations. “But Janney’s book is such a frustrating mix of fact, fiction, speculation and unverifiable data that I (Lisa Pease) cannot recommend this book. Indeed, I’d rather it came with a warning label attached” (CTKA review). However, having investigated more than one strange death myself, I (Jim Fetzer) must say that I find these introductory passages both grotesque and irresponsible. Given the consideration that, by the end of Mary’s Mosaic, the actual assassin had actually confessed and explained in detail how it had been done and that Peter Janney has convincingly established the complicity of the CIA–which had to silence Mary Meyer, because she was uncovering its role in the assassination of JFK and was in a position to do something about it–I find her complaints to be virtually incomprehensible. While Lisa Pease does her very best to create the impression that Ray Crump (who had no motive) could actually have committed the crime, the kinds of things she says about Peter Janney’s brilliant book (where Peter had known Mary in his childhood and whose research would lead led him to the agonizing realization that his own father had been complicit), which is a completely unwarranted characterization of Mary’s Mosaic, appear to me to be completely justified in relation to her own review, where I (Jim Fetzer) would fashion a parallel complaint about her review as follows: “Researchers can be forgiven for thinking that Lisa Pease’s CTKA review is a serious contribution to JFK research. Mary’s Mosaic provides ample substantiation that the CIA killed John Kennedy in part because he was trying to end the Cold War and rein in covert operations. But her review of Peter Janney’s book is such a frustrating mix of fact, fiction, speculation and unverifiable data I cannot recommend it. I’d rather that it came with a warning label attached”. Indeed, it is inconceivable to me that anyone who has actually read the book completely to its end, where crucial aspects of what Peter Janney reports there about uncovering the actual plot to murder Mary Pinchot Meyer are presented, could continue to regard Ray Crump as anyone other than the “patsy”. Since those include the detailed confession of the actual assassin, who was the very “Lt. William L. Mitchell”, who explains how it had been done, including the use of spotters and luring the auto repair man to the scene to witness Mary’s screams, I am baffled how anyone could entertain reasonable doubts about it. There is no reasonable alternative explanation for what happened to Mary and, instead of attempting to debunk his landmark research, she and her associate ought to be touting it as a major contribution to JFK research, which I would liken to an insider’s view that confirms the findings of Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason (1997). What also stuns me is that I find a pattern emerging from the work of Lisa Pease and Jim DiEugeio. I have had several encounters with Jim over the years, one of which occurred some time back on an extended thread devoted to Judyth Vary Baker, who has authored Me & Lee (2010). Jim DiEugenio sought to debunk a fascinating report of a woman who remained sitting in a car during the visit of Lee Oswald to State Representative Reeves Morgan–whom Judyth claims to have been herself–whose presence was witnessed by his daughter, Mary, where Mary’s report surfaced during the trial of Clay Shaw. Jim DiEugenio attempted to debunk Mary’s corroborating testimony on the ground that she had later repudiated it, which, as I observed to him at the time, was a violation of the principle that earlier testimony is preferable to later, especially when witnesses have been subjected to pressure to change it. And, in another case, I faulted the biased research of Jefferson Morley and David Talbot related to the presence of CIA officials at the Ambassador Hotel at the time of Bobby’s shooting–he would die the following day–where I had to reprimand Jim for his irresponsible acceptance of their shameless efforts to whitewash the identifications, which was supported by overwhelmingly more evidence than they produced against it. Why Lisa Pease would attempt to cast doubt on Peter Janney’s thoroughly researched and meticulously documented study, which carefully ties together the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, the CIA and the assassination of JFK, is difficult to fathom. But there is a troubling pattern here, which suggests to me that, whatever their motives may be, Lisa Pease and Jim DiEugenio, who has been praising Lisa’s review, appear to be undermining research (and not in this case only) concerning major advances in our understanding of the modus operandi of the CIA in events of this kind.