Peter Janney

As Steven Spielberg’s upcoming film The Post begins a fastrack trajectory (to be released in late 2017) with Tom Hanks (as Ben Bradlee) and Meryl Streep (as Katharine Graham), I think it’s important to correct something that was missed in John Simpkin’s analysis above (“Ben Bradlee and the Assassination of JFK”). When Bradlee testified at the 1965 murder trial of his sister-in-law Mary Pinchot Meyer, he let it be known that he had entered Mary’s studio on the night of her murder, presumably after Anne Truitt’s call from Japan alerting the Bradlees and Angleton that Mary had kept a diary of her affair with JFK. Here is the verbatim transcript of what prosecutor Alfred Hantman asked Bradlee on the witness stand in his attempt to enter Mary’s studio: Hantman: Did you have access to it [Mary’s studio]? Bradlee: Yes. Hantman: Subsequent to the death of Mary Pinchot Meyer, did you make any effort to gain entry to this studio that was occupied by Mrs. Meyer? Bradlee: I did, yes. Hantman: When was this, sir? Bradlee: The night of October 12. Hantman: Was this studio or the garage which was converted into a studio secured in any manner? Bradlee: Yes, it had a padlock on it. Hantman: And were you able to gain access to this studio at that time? Bradlee: I did. Hantman: Now, besides the usual articles of Mrs. Meyer’s avocation, did you find there any other articles of her personal property? Bradlee: There was a pocketbook there. Hantman: What did the pocketbook contain, sir? Bradlee: It contained a wallet, some cosmetics and pencils, things like that. Hantman: And did the wallet contain any money, sir? Bradlee: I don’t think so. It may have, I just don’t remember. Hantman: Were there keys to her automobile? Bradlee: Yes, there was a key there. Hantman: I have no further questions of Mr. Bradlee, Your honor. Note that Bradlee says the studio “had a padlock on it,” and that he was able to gain access, apparently with no difficulty. Furthermore, Bradlee never revealed during this interchange (nor was he asked) whether he was in Mary’s studio alone, or in the company of someone else—such as Jim Angleton. Thirty years later in his 1995 memoir A Good Life, the Bradlee “fish story,” totally contradicting his 1965 sworn testimony, now had evolved into a very different account. Bradlee was asking his readers to believe that an iconic journalist wouldn’t have checked his own sworn testimony in 1965 at Mary Meyer’s murder trial, before delivering to the public his final statement about one of his sister-in-law’s most intimate possessions. According to Bradlee, he and his wife, Tony, first looked for the diary the morning after the murder—Tuesday, October 13. Bradlee said they first went to Mary’s house that morning, where they were taken aback to find Jim Angleton already inside. Angleton was said to have “shuffled his feet” in apparent embarrassment when he was discovered. At that point, Bradlee claims, the three of them together looked for the diary but found nothing. Later that same day (Tuesday, October 13), Bradlee wrote, he and Tony decided to search Mary’s converted brick garage studio, located in the alley behind their N Street house. “We had no key [to Mary’s studio],” wrote Bradlee, “but I got a few tools to remove the simple padlock, and we walked toward the studio, only to run into Jim Angleton again, this time actually in the process of picking the padlock.” Bradlee went on to say, “We missed the diary the first time, but Tony found it an hour later.” The Bradlee “charade” regarding Mary’s diary is utterly ridiculous, and once again the Bradlee myth of his being the “fearless investigator of the truth and champion of the First Amendment,” is just utter bullxxxx. As I discuss in some depth in Chapter 3 (“Conspiracy to Conceal”) in Mary’s Mosaic, Bradlee was very likely accompanied by Jim Angleton on his trip to Mary’s studio after the Anne Truitt phone call on the night of the murder. Angleton, known as “The Locksmith” in CIA circles, likely picked the lock to gain entrance. There, they found the real diary, not some next-day fabricated ruse called “Mary’s artist sketchbook” allegedly containing so-called cryptic references to her affair with JFK. However, the real diary, according to author Leo Damore and Angleton’s CIA colleague Robert Crowley, was explosive . . . .

The Autodafé of Lisa Pease and James DiEugenio: Tomas de Torquemada and the Spanish Inquisition return in a new era of suppression of freedom of thought and adherence to a rigid dogma – namely their own prejudices! Lisa Pease’s six-page diatribe against me and my recent book Mary’s Mosaic is, at the very least, a marvel of subjective distortion and shoddy criticism, fueled by her own personal vendetta that someone dared not follow her as she, and her partner James DiEugenio, have attempted over the years to appoint themselves as the ultimate “guardians of truth” in all things Kennedy (see the following: http://www.ctka.net/reviews/Pease_Janney_Mary's_Mosaic.html ). And as usual, Lisa Pease’s only fallback source in her vain attempts to substantiate anything she writes is James DiEugenio, whom she seems to always regard as unassailable. Together, nothing that these two write can ever be challenged or debated – without one of them launching some kind of personal diatribe against anyone who challenges it, establishing a different opinion. Indeed, during his last appearance on Len Osanic’s Black Ops Radio program (June 28, 2012), DiEugenio gushes over “Lisa Pease’s wonderful – and I really think it’s a really wonderful piece of work . . . because it’s done in her usual very intelligent, very elegant, very incisive kind of a style. And I’m going to be doing Part II to which I am actually working on right now . . .” We wait with bated breadth. What’s particularly revealing in Pease’s latest piece of writing is that she first announces to her readers that she “check every fact, . . . dare[ing] the author to prove his case to me,” and then goes on to continue (along with her partner DiEugenio) to make the absurd claim that JFK was not a womanizer, or sexually promiscuous, but always “adorable and sweet,” (quoting Angela Greene). We are now, after years of revelation by such authors as Ralph Martin, Seymour Hersh, Nigel Hamilton, and Presidential historians Michael Beschloss and Robert Dallek – to say nothing of the women who have come forward (the most recent is Mimi Beardsley Alford in 2012) – supposed to go on believing “The Doctrine of Pease and DiEugenio” that this was all just a “Republican Party” or “CIA” plot to discredit President Kennedy. Following “the two McCarthyites of the JFK assassination research community,” as one researcher recently put it, is like walking into a never-ending fantasy world of ignorance, hopefully having been convinced that the real truth has just been dispensed, when all that has taken place in this case is Pease’s fabricating evidence in order to gin up “facts” to support her delusions. I am not going to try your patience as a reader by writing six pages of rebuttal, though I easily could take issue with every aspect of Pease’s tangled web of claims where she can’t even correctly restate what I wrote. Indeed, it becomes clear that Pease’s greatest talent is attempting to bestow upon her readers her own vitriolic projections that have no basis or understanding of fact. In doing so, she identifies herself as an intolerant critic who must torture (and therefore misconstrue) the facts in an effort to win an argument, so typical of a fanatical mindset that can’t consider any real alternative other than its own projections. And so, despite the fact that there was absolutely no forensic evidence whatsoever (as documented in the FBI Crime Report, which was withheld from the defense until the beginning of the trial nine months after the murder) linking Ray Crump, Jr. to the bloody crime scene or to the body of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Lisa Pease wants her readers to believe, as she does, that Ray Crump was actually guilty, because some of the clothes he was wearing that day matched what eyewitness Henry Wiggins, Jr. saw when he viewed the man standing over Meyer’s body within 30 seconds after the two gunshots had ended her life. Wiggins was 126.5 feet away from the murder scene. This was all documented in 1200 pages of trial transcript, something that Pease fails to mention to her readers, because she never read or studied it. Still, Pease omnisciently claims that in viewing just one picture of Ray Crump in my book, she (and she alone) has decided to proclaim that Crump does, in fact, have a “medium build,” and that Wiggins’ description is completely accurate. Wiggins obviously saw somebody who wore similar clothes to Crump that day, but I maintain it wasn’t Ray Crump. Then, ignoring everyone else’s disposition toward Crump, including his attorney Dovey Roundtree, public defenders George Peter Lamb and Ted O’Neill, and anyone else who actually had contact with Crump at the time of the murder, Pease becomes convinced he was only acquitted because he had “a very astute lawyer.” Never mind the lack of any real evidence, or the fact she was shot execution-style with a gun that was never recovered, or that no one in Ray Crump’s family or community had ever seen Crump with any firearm. To further make her case, Pease invokes the authority of author Nina Burleigh, who like Pease is sure of Ray Crump’s guilt, but who can’t even correctly document the jury’s composition, in addition to a number of other important neglected facts. Then, hanging her hat on the fact that because Crump lied (he was concealing a tryst with a married woman) about why he was in the vicinity of the towpath that morning, this is further proof to Pease of Crump’s guilt. Our Dick Cheneyesque “cherry-picker” of facts then takes her distorted proclamations even further. Creating her own testimony, Pease suppresses that Crump had an organic brain impairment before the murder took place and that he was actively alcoholic, which in the perception of his attorney Dovey Roundtree made him “incapable of clear communication, incapable of complex thought, incapable of grasping the full weight of his predicament, incapable most of all, of a murder executed with the stealth and precision and forethought of Mary Meyer’s [murder].” (Mary’s Mosaic, p. 318). Further accusing me of concealing the fact that Crump had a criminal record before the Meyer murder (which consisted of the unspeakable, heinous crime of having been twice arrested for disorderly conduct, along with having served a 60-day jail sentence for shoplifting – all of which I mention on page 53), Ms. Pease wants her followers to believe that because of Crump’s subsequent career in crime, this is the ultimate sine qua non proof of Ray Crump’s having murdered Mary Meyer. The only thing that becomes clear here is that any psychological understanding and sophistication of the human condition completely eludes Lisa Pease; she’s unable to comprehend how an already psychologically impaired individual subjected to continued abuse over a nine-month period in jail (which according to his attorney Dovey Roundtree likely included sexual assaults) could damage someone to the point of becoming a hardened criminal. And so in Pease’s fantasy world, nothing matters (or is able to be grasped) except her distorted perception of her own opinions that have no real basis in factual evidence. But not yet content, Pease wants her supporters to believe that all of this “illustrates Janney’s shortcomings as a researcher.” She goes on to attempt to prove that I next have “distorted the math” and time intervals in showing that there was a second “Negro male” eluding capture by police immediately following Meyer’s murder. Either Pease didn’t read carefully what I wrote, or she is intellectually challenged by the English language. In either case, she proves only one thing: she hasn’t read the trial transcript. Indeed, her own shortcomings as a researcher won’t even allow her to be factually accurate when quoting what I wrote. “Detective Warner arrested Crump at 1:15pm,” writes Pease, which is not only incorrect (and not what I wrote), but reveals how little Pease actually understood what she read. Very simply (Mary’s Mosaic, pp. 122-128), I demonstrate through an extensive study of the trial transcript, and in an interview with police officer Roderick Sylvis for this book, how he and his partner Frank Bignotti arrived at Fletcher’s Boat House at approximately 12:30pm in order to block the exits of anyone trying to leave the towpath area. That’s what they were supposed to do: wait in their patrol car and guard the exits, a concept that Lisa Pease again is unable to grasp. They waited for about “four or five minutes” and then began hatching a plan whereby Sylvis would begin walking eastward toward the murder scene via the towpath and Bignotti would do the same along the adjacent railroad bed and woods that separated the two. This planning and positioning of themselves, according to Sylvis, took another five minutes or so. We are now at approximately 12:40pm. As soon as they started out, the two officers spotted a young while couple walking westward on the railroad tracks, who they then approached and began talking to. In an interview with Sylvis in 2008, I asked him specifically how long this interrogation had taken. “At least five minutes, probably more,” said Sylvis. It is now conservatively past 12:45pm, and very possibly later, approaching 1:00pm, before the two officers start their journey eastward toward the murder scene. Sylvis told the court that he walked “approximately a mile east on the towpath, at which point he saw “a head jut out of the woods momentarily, just for a second . . .” (Mary’s Mosaic, p.123). When I queried Sylvis about how long it took to walk the mile, he was very clear that he had walked “very slowly” and vigilantly, intermittently stopping to peer into the woods, and periodically calling out to his partner Frank Bignotti. During the interview, Sylvis told me he had to be have been walking for “about twenty minutes.” In my book, I gave him the benefit of doubt and stated that “it has to have been at least fifteen minutes or more” (p. 123), before he spotted the head of a second “Negro male.” That meant that the time was likely to be at the very least 1:15pm (the time Ray Crump was arrested, seven tenths of mile away) and likely significantly later. Yet in Lisa Pease’s reverie, this too becomes incomprehensible for her to grasp. Furthermore, Ray Crump – according to the trial transcript – was already in the company of Detective John Warner sometime before 1:15pm at a location of one tenth of a mile east of the murder scene. I maintain that it could have been as much as ten to fifteen minutes before 1:15pm that Warner first spotted Crump (who Warner said “wasn’t running” when he first spotted the about-to-be defendant), before he started interrogating him – first asking him to produce his driver’s license, which Warner studied, then asking him a series of seven questions, before deciding that he would walk with Crump to his alleged fishing spot in order to help him retrieve his fishing gear that Crump said had fallen into the Potomac River. The trial transcript repeatedly documents that Crump was officially arrested at approximately 1:15pm by Detective Bernie Crooke, but he was in the company of Detective Warner before that time. Therefore, the “Negro male” spotted by officer Sylvis, who successfully eluded capture by police, couldn’t have been the defendant Ray Crump. This isn’t rocket science, but for the challenged Lisa Pease, it’s too much to tolerate, given her desperation to find some way to discredit me, whereby she finally resorts to attacking my educational credentials. In addition, Ms. Pease can’t even seem to fathom or consider how “Lt. William L. Mitchell,” a man who told police he was jogging on the towpath when he passed Mary Meyer – allegedly just before the murder took place – told police that a “Negro male” matching Wiggins’ description was following her in an effort to frame Ray Crump. “Mitchell” would then testify against Crump at the murder trial nine months later in July 1965 as part of the CIA’s assassination operation. It doesn’t seem to matter to Pease that “Mitchell” has never been able to be located since the trial, or that his known address during that time was documented as a “CIA safe house” by three separate former CIA employees. At the time of trial in July 1965, Mitchell told a reporter that he had since retired from the military and was now a mathematics instructor at Georgetown University – yet no record of his employment there could ever be located, nor was there ever any bona-fide military service record located for “Mitchell,” either in the Pentagon where he was listed in the directory at the time of the murder, or in the main military data base in St. Louis. This was thoroughly researched by the Peabody Award-winning journalist Roger Charles, as discussed in my book, a fact that Pease fails to mention in one of her many deliberate omissions, which also included Damore’s consultation with L. Fletcher Prouty (as documented by Damore’s attorney James H. Smith) to finally understand who “Mitchell” was, before Damore confronted him. Of course, Lisa Pease is entitled to whatever flawed point of view she wants to embrace, but she’s not entitled to her own set of facts. The rest of Pease’s long-winded misstatements criticizing author Leo Damore, Timothy Leary, Robert Morrow, Gregory Douglas and other sources who I attempted to unravel – explicitly noting their deficiencies and limitations – completely obfuscates the clarity of the emerging picture: Placed in a larger context, and juxtaposed with firm documentation, the aggregate unfolding scenario clearly indicates that Mary Meyer’s life was ended by a CIA assassination. But in the Pease-DiEugenio fantasy world, people are either all white or all black, complete truth-tellers or liars, completely reliable or unreliable. There are no shades of grey; there is no ambiguity; and there is no room for the analysis of intricacy and complexity. And this is why the Pease-DiEugenio brand of journalistic sophistication (or lack thereof) can’t seem to fathom how JFK advisor Kenneth P. O’Donnell could somehow go on the official record after the 1976 National Enquirer exposé about the Meyer-Kennedy affair and defend the shining Camelot myth in his attempt to negate that there had been a romantic affair between Mary Pinchot Meyer and President Kennedy; yet only a year later, shortly before his death, confide to author Leo Damore some of the intimate details of their relationship. In the same way that O’Donnell never talked publically about how the FBI had discounted his testimony that the Presidential motorcade in Dallas was driving into an ambush where at least two shots had come “from behind the fence [on the grassy knoll],” in front of the motorcade, O’Donnell only mentioned this reality to insiders, which was confirmed twenty-five years later by Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill in his 1987 memoir Man of The House. Both Leo Damore and his attorney James H. Smith worked on one of O’Donnell’s Massachusetts gubernatorial campaigns where the three had become good friends. Yet Lisa Pease can’t fathom that there were many things O’Donnell didn’t want to share publically, and would only confide privately to the people he trusted. Fabricating evidence is a fatal error for any kind of investigative reporter or critic. What kind of a mindset (or person) would do this? Only a callow, dogmatic “true believer” in the childish Camelot myth, who cannot tolerate being challenged, resorts to a riddled analysis that is filled with factual errors and deliberate omissions and misstatements. This episode in their increasingly virulent and intolerant criticism is both tragic and unfortunate, because some (but not all) of the work of Pease and DiEugenio has made a significant contribution to JFK assassination historical research. For example, James DiEugenio’s deconstruction of Chris Matthew’s recent book on JFK was an insightful analysis of a flawed work. In addition, DiEugenio and Pease together edited a useful anthology of articles on the assassinations of the 1960s. However, what they have done to Mary’s Mosaic is all too similar to what they do to other first-time authors writing about the JFK assassination: they delight in subjecting those who dare to write about the Kennedy assassination (in a way that conflicts with their own historical interpretations) to the “CTKA buzz-saw.” So, readers and followers beware (those of you who have the patience to read many of their long and pompous reviews): these two Los Angelinos have an extremely inflated opinion of their own importance in the JFK assassination debate. Fortunately, books last; and reviews are forgotten weeks after they are written (if not sooner). Moreover, we are living in the 21st century. In spite of the fact that Pease and DiEugenio would surely resurrect book burnings for those works of which they disapprove – establishing a modern-day JFK assassination Index Librorum Prohibitorum if they could do so –modern-day JFK researchers and the American public do not hunger for another Torquemada or Cardinal Bellarmine. I dare say that if Pease and DiEugenio had been in charge of Galileo’s heresy trial in Rome, he would have been sentenced to burn at the stake, instead of to the life imprisonment (house arrest) levied on him by the Holy Office. (This article is also posted on Lew Rockwell.com: http://lewrockwell.com/orig13/janney3.1.1.html )

"[The letter] specifically names Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and George H. W. Bush as co-conspirators, among others." Which is why the letter was published: to support the claim by Bugliosi and others that "conspiracy buffs" know no limits when it comes to fantasizing about what really happened to JFK. I'm afraid that this will amount to a significant net loss for the truth." (Charles Drago) Paul Kuntzler's letter is very well written and articulate; I doubt seriously whether it was published as a pro Buligosi effort. You have to see this and read it to gain some of the impact I suspect this letter will generate. It will be highly controversial, no doubt. But the research has been done to support everything he states, and this is why I believe that it will stir up a hornet's nest, as it should!

In today’s New York Times (July 31, 2007) a remarkable two page letter (section A 16-17) appears from Paul Kuntzler to Chairman of the Board Donald Graham of The Washington Post demanding to know why the Washington Post never returned the evidence he submitted that supported the conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy at the highest levels of government. This letter is remarkable in several respects. It wonderfully summarizes years of painstaking research by a number of dedicated assassination researchers, proving that the JFK assassination was orchestrated at the highest levels among certain individuals within the FBI, CIA, Pentagon and Secret Service. It specifically names Richard Nixon, Lyndon Johnson, and George H. W. Bush as co-conspirators, among others. It is also uncanny that the New York Times decided to publish this letter, for it is clearly one of the best counter-measures to Vincent Bugliosi’s 1600 page propaganda sandbox, Reclaiming History. I urge everyone to go out and buy a copy of the New York Times today to read this (unfortunately as of 8:30amEDT this morning, this letter is not accessible on the NYT website, probably because it is labeled as an “advertisement.”). Truly remarkable!

I would like to say a little about Mary Meyer's relationship with Timothy Leary and her own interest in psychedelic drugs and what actually happened with JFK with regard to this matter. A number of you have asked for comments on this subject matter and frankly, it is one of my favorite subjects in my book. First of all, I want readers to know that I grew up in the 1960s and was very much involved in the counterculture movement and the Vietnam War protest movement. As I make clear in my book, my relationship with my father really started coming apart at the seams in 1969 and 1970, and never recovered. I also studied hallucinogenic drugs intensively and I dare say that for me the responsible use of hallucinogenics was an integral part of my own personal evolution. Having trained as licensed clinical psychologist (and remaining so today, though not currently in professional practice), I believe that such substances like LSD have been deeply misunderstood most of the time by our culture, largely due I might add to certain forces within the CIA in the late 1960s and 1970s and their various campaigns of disinformation. Mind you, I am not advocating illicit drug usage, but we live in world largely devoid of real, genuine mystical and religious experience. This is unfortunate because this kind of experience can have a deep, lasting positive effect upon those who want it. And the latest research in this area proves that to be the case. (see attachment to this post). When Mary Meyer’s son Michael was tragically killed by being hit by a car in December 1956, she was plunged into a place of inconsolable grief. Not wanting to endlessly brood, and on the advice of her lover Ken Noland at the time, she entered Reichian Therapy with Dr. Charles Oller, M.D. in Philadelphia, Pa. Dr. Oller was a first generation protégé of Wilhelm Reich, M.D., possibly one the greatest psychoanalytic thinkers ever and certainly revolutionary in his therapeutic techniques. Reichian Therapy and some of its offshoots such as Bioenergetics, and Rolfing are not examples of “sex drenched” techniques for healing mental illness, as some authors have described it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real aim of all Reichian Therapy was to help people FEEL all their feelings as deeply as possible, so as not to be afraid of feeling anything. It was Reich’s belief, for instance, that people who were endlessly stuck in their grief or depression were not allowing themselves to really feel deeply enough, and that is why they remained stuck. Reich sought to first assist people in breathing correctly and would have patients lie down on a platform bed in their underwear so that he could begin to help them breath more freely; hence he often remarked that “all anxiety was basically just excitement without the support of oxygen.” Mary Meyer was fearless as a seeker. She was not interested in a more traditional, conventional psychoanalytic therapy or psychoanalysis so prevalent in the late 1950s. With Dr. Oller, I believe she was able to largely overcome her crippling grief and sadness, because Oller encouraged her to keep taking it as deeply as she could. Hence, there would times she would be lying on his bed literally kicking and screaming while sobbing inconsolably, while he was working with her, all the while encouraging her to keep surrendering to whatever was moving through her. Now, having been a patient in Reichian Therapy myself, I can tell you first hand that after a certain amount of time, one begins to lose one’s fear about feeling any number of things, no matter how painful the circumstances. This is, in part, a real liberation. As Mary continued to resolve her deeper grief, Ken Noland also introduced her to LSD. Not too much is known as what specifically Mary experienced in her own LSD exploration, but it was significant enough for her to seek out Tim Leary in the Spring of 1962, as Leary recounts in his book Flashbacks. I believe that what Leary largely wrote in Flashbacks about Mary is true. I based that on several sources, one of which is a two hour long recorded interview that Leo Damore did with Tim Leary in November of 1991. No one else has this interview, though I did allow David Talbott a copy of it and he credits me in his book for it. There will be a number of other details in my book that substantiate Leary’s relationship with Mary Meyer and corroborate much of what he wrote about Mary in Flashbacks. Mary did in fact believe that substances like LSD could change the thinking and world view of people who took it. That is why she was working with a group of women who had access to high level government officials. She was training them how to best make use of LSD and Leary assisted her in this process. Leo Damore believed that Katherine Graham ( of Washington Post fame) was a member of that group. Unfortunately, the two women who are still alive and who could shed light on this subject will not talk with me. Did Mary Meyer and JFK do LSD together? Yes, but only once to my knowledge. (Even Jim Angleton admitted this fact, having read Mary’s diary). It was in the early Spring of 1963 at Joe Alsop’s house in Georgetown, where they regularly met sometimes. Do we know what happened during that experience? No, not directly. But consider this: After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, JFK was reportedly very upset and sometimes despondent, having come so close to a nuclear showdown. It was Mary Meyer, among others I am sure, who tried to convince him that the Cold War and the mentality that went along with it was completely futile and would lead only to eventual disaster. Mary tried to impress upon JFK the need for exploring a completely different world view. JFK had heard his brother Bobby talk about his wife’s LSD therapy for alcoholism in Los Angeles. Bobby was reportedly very intrigued by the possibilities of LSD. If in fact Mary and JFK had a LSD experience in the early Spring of 1963, how could we judge the evidence that this might have occurred? I can only make the case that the last eight months of JFK’s life and especially his political life were possibly his most prolific moments as a world leader and as a proponent of world peace, for this was now a man whose political consciousness and world view had changed radically since he took office. JFK’s speech at the American University graduation on June 10, 1963 may be the most remarkable presidential speech ever given. In it, he repudiated the Cold War, saying that we all had to find a way to live together, otherwise we would all perish. But even more importantly, he let it be known, albeit parenthetically, that he was no longer going to kiss any more ass in the Pentagon and the CIA. For in this speech, he made it clear that he was striking out on a new path, a path of his own choosing, a path of his own independence. He wanted to leave a legacy of world peace. During the summer of 1963, he engaged in backchannel communication with Khrushchev behind the backs of the Pentagon and CIA to find common ground for a limited nuclear arms test ban treaty which was ratified by the US Senate in September. Also in September (1963) with Mary Meyer’s help, JFK enlisted the support of Bill Attwood (a former boyfriend of Mary’s who JFK had cut in on at a prep school dance in 1936, having seen the chimera of Mary in the distance), again behind the back of the CIA and Pentagon, to seek out a rapprochement with Fidel Castro. In October (1963) Cuban UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga delivered an official message to President Kennedy that Fidel Castro desired a lasting peace with the United States. JFK made it clear to his closest personal aides and friends that once he was re-elected in 1964, he would end the Vietnam War, even though in public he kept his options open and pretended to be more hawkish (This had been completely documented now). His intention was clear as evidenced by National Security Action Memo (NSAM) 263. And I think we all know what he planned for the CIA when he would be re-elected: neuter it! But it would be incorrect to say that this was all the effect of his having had one LSD experience. I don’t think it was. LSD was, and is, a catalyst for change, growth, evolution, but the human will is the strongest factor. People don’t change unless they are damn well ready. A central part of my point of view about Mary and JFK is that their relationship, and by that I principally mean Mary’s love for him and their love for each other, was an extremely important variable in his choice to proceed down a totally new path of political action, the path toward world peace and how to set the stage for it. With Mary, JFK finally found redemption with a woman who could stand up to him, challenge him, and love him, all simultaneously. According to what Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s special primary assistant) finally told Leo Damore, “he (JFK) was in love with Mary.... He was going to leave Jackie to be with her after he left office.” The story of Mary and Jack is the story of how the world would have changed for the better, had he lived to fulfill his destiny, despite all his flaws both personal and political. It is no wonder then, that shortly after the assassination, Mary – once again sobbing inconsolably - called her friend Tim Leary, saying “they killed him. He was changing too fast. They couldn’t control him anymore......” Psychedelic_mushrooms_earn_serious_2d_look_from_science___The_Boston_Globe.pdf

I would like to say a little about Mary Meyer's relationship with Timothy Leary and her own interest in psychedelic drugs and what actually happened with JFK with regard to this matter. A number of you have asked for comments on this subject matter and frankly, it is one of my favorite subjects in my book. First of all, I want readers to know that I grew up in the 1960s and was very much involved in the counterculture movement and the Vietnam War protest movement. As I make clear in my book, my relationship with my father really started coming apart at the seams in 1969 and 1970, and never recovered. I also studied hallucinogenic drugs intensively and I dare say that for me the responsible use of hallucinogenics was an integral part of my own personal evolution. Having trained as licensed clinical psychologist (and remaining so today, though not currently in professional practice), I believe that such substances like LSD have been deeply misunderstood most of the time by our culture, largely due I might add to certain forces within the CIA in the late 1960s and 1970s and their various campaigns of disinformation. Mind you, I am not advocating illicit drug usage, but we live in world largely devoid of real, genuine mystical and religious experience. This is unfortunate because this kind of experience can have a deep, lasting positive effect upon those who want it. And the latest research in this area proves that to be the case. (see attachment to this post). When Mary Meyer’s son Michael was tragically killed by being hit by a car in December 1956, she was plunged into a place of inconsolable grief. Not wanting to endlessly brood, and on the advice of her lover Ken Noland at the time, she entered Reichian Therapy with Dr. Charles Oller, M.D. in Philadelphia, Pa. Dr. Oller was a first generation protégé of Wilhelm Reich, M.D., possibly one the greatest psychoanalytic thinkers ever and certainly revolutionary in his therapeutic techniques. Reichian Therapy and some of its offshoots such as Bioenergetics, and Rolfing are not examples of “sex drenched” techniques for healing mental illness, as some authors have described it. Nothing could be further from the truth. The real aim of all Reichian Therapy was to help people FEEL all their feelings as deeply as possible, so as not to be afraid of feeling anything. It was Reich’s belief, for instance, that people who were endlessly stuck in their grief or depression were not allowing themselves to really feel deeply enough, and that is why they remained stuck. Reich sought to first assist people in breathing correctly and would have patients lie down on a platform bed in their underwear so that he could begin to help them breath more freely; hence he often remarked that “all anxiety was basically just excitement without the support of oxygen.” Mary Meyer was fearless as a seeker. She was not interested in a more traditional, conventional psychoanalytic therapy or psychoanalysis so prevalent in the late 1950s. With Dr. Oller, I believe she was able to largely overcome her crippling grief and sadness, because Oller encouraged her to keep taking it as deeply as she could. Hence, there would times she would be lying on his bed literally kicking and screaming while sobbing inconsolably, while he was working with her, all the while encouraging her to keep surrendering to whatever was moving through her. Now, having been a patient in Reichian Therapy myself, I can tell you first hand that after a certain amount of time, one begins to lose one’s fear about feeling any number of things, no matter how painful the circumstances. This is, in part, a real liberation. As Mary continued to resolve her deeper grief, Ken Noland also introduced her to LSD. Not too much is known as what specifically Mary experienced in her own LSD exploration, but it was significant enough for her to seek out Tim Leary in the Spring of 1962, as Leary recounts in his book Flashbacks. I believe that what Leary largely wrote in Flashbacks about Mary is true. I based that on several sources, one of which is a two hour long recorded interview that Leo Damore did with Tim Leary in November of 1991. No one else has this interview, though I did allow David Talbott a copy of it and he credits me in his book for it. There will be a number of other details in my book that substantiate Leary’s relationship with Mary Meyer and corroborate much of what he wrote about Mary in Flashbacks. Mary did in fact believe that substances like LSD could change the thinking and world view of people who took it. That is why she was working with a group of women who had access to high level government officials. She was training them how to best make use of LSD and Leary assisted her in this process. Leo Damore believed that Katherine Graham ( of Washington Post fame) was a member of that group. Unfortunately, the two women who are still alive and who could shed light on this subject will not talk with me. Did Mary Meyer and JFK do LSD together? Yes, but only once to my knowledge. (Even Jim Angleton admitted this fact, having read Mary’s diary). It was in the early Spring of 1963 at Joe Alsop’s house in Georgetown, where they regularly met sometimes. Do we know what happened during that experience? No, not directly. But consider this: After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962, JFK was reportedly very upset and sometimes despondent, having come so close to a nuclear showdown. It was Mary Meyer, among others I am sure, who tried to convince him that the Cold War and the mentality that went along with it was completely futile and would lead only to eventual disaster. Mary tried to impress upon JFK the need for exploring a completely different world view. JFK had heard his brother Bobby talk about his wife’s LSD therapy for alcoholism in Los Angeles. Bobby was reportedly very intrigued by the possibilities of LSD. If in fact Mary and JFK had a LSD experience in the early Spring of 1963, how could we judge the evidence that this might have occurred? I can only make the case that the last eight months of JFK’s life and especially his political life were possibly his most prolific moments as a world leader and as a proponent of world peace, for this was now a man whose political consciousness and world view had changed radically since he took office. JFK’s speech at the American University graduation on June 10, 1963 may be the most remarkable presidential speech ever given. In it, he repudiated the Cold War, saying that we all had to find a way to live together, otherwise we would all perish. But even more importantly, he let it be known, albeit parenthetically, that he was no longer going to kiss any more ass in the Pentagon and the CIA. For in this speech, he made it clear that he was striking out on a new path, a path of his own choosing, a path of his own independence. He wanted to leave a legacy of world peace. During the summer of 1963, he engaged in backchannel communication with Khrushchev behind the backs of the Pentagon and CIA to find common ground for a limited nuclear arms test ban treaty which was ratified by the US Senate in September. Also in September (1963) with Mary Meyer’s help, JFK enlisted the support of Bill Attwood (a former boyfriend of Mary’s who JFK had cut in on at a prep school dance in 1936, having seen the chimera of Mary in the distance), again behind the back of the CIA and Pentagon, to seek out a rapprochement with Fidel Castro. In October (1963) Cuban UN Ambassador Carlos Lechuga delivered an official message to President Kennedy that Fidel Castro desired a lasting peace with the United States. JFK made it clear to his closest personal aides and friends that once he was re-elected in 1964, he would end the Vietnam War, even though in public he kept his options open and pretended to be more hawkish (This had been completely documented now). His intention was clear as evidenced by National Security Action Memo (NSAM) 263. And I think we all know what he planned for the CIA when he would be re-elected: neuter it ! But it would be incorrect to say that this was all the effect of his having had one LSD experience. I don’t think it was. LSD was, and is, a catalyst for change, growth, evolution, but the human will is the strongest factor. People don’t change unless they are damn well ready. A central part of my point of view about Mary and JFK is that their relationship, and by that I principally mean Mary’s love for him and their love for each other, was an extremely important variable in his choice to proceed down a totally new path of political action, the path toward world peace and how to set the stage for it. With Mary, JFK finally found redemption with a woman who could stand up to him, challenge him, and love him, all simultaneously. According to what Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s special primary assistant) finally told Leo Damore, “he (JFK) was in love with Mary.... He was going to leave Jackie to be with her after he left office.” The story of Mary and Jack is the story of how the world would have changed for the better, had he lived to fulfill his destiny, despite all his flaws both personal and political. It is no wonder then, that shortly after the assassination, Mary – once again sobbing inconsolably - called her friend Tim Leary, saying “they killed him. He was changing too fast. They couldn’t control him anymore......” Psychedelic_mushrooms_earn_serious_2d_look_from_science___The_Boston_Globe.pdf

Mr. Janney: Thank you for posting this fascinating material, and good luck with your book project. A word of caution: Even a busted clock is right twice a day, but you should know that Robert Morrow is considered a person of very doubtful credibility in JFK/RFK research circles. John Davis (author of Mafia Kingfish) was working on a book on Mary Meyer. I heard that John suffered a serious stroke some time ago and may have been forced to give up the project. Perhaps he would share the results of his own research with you. I am aware that Robert Morrow's reputation as a researcher is questionable in some circles. But both Dick Russell ("The Man Who Knew Too Much) and Noel Twyman ("Bloody Treason") have used some of Morrow's assertions and have found that they checked out with other sources. Furthermore, the actual day that Nina Burleigh called Morrow to interview him for her book on Mary Meyer his good friend John Williams was present during this call. Burleigh tried to completely blow off everything Morrow said, completely discrediting him in her book. She also attempted to do the same thing when she interviewed Dovey Rountree (Crump's attorney), subsequently suggesting that Crump was actually guilty. But Roundtree's authorized biographer, Katie McCabe, was physically present when Burleigh interviewed Dovey and was astounded to read how Burleigh had twisted many things that Roundtree had said. John Williams told me in no uncertain terms that Morrow was more upset at Mary Meyer's death than he was JFK's, as did Morrow's wife. My father entered the CIA in 1949-50, having graduated from Yale University with a master's degree in Russian Area Studies. At one time he ran what was called "OCI," or the Office of Current Intelligence. He held a number of different jobs throughout his career, one was in Science & Technology that I know of, but many others I don't know of. He died young at 59 years old when he was director of personnel. He was career CIA. I knew John Davis but not well. I actually have a copy of his unfinished manuscript on Mary Meyer. A good friend of Davis' asked John "what happened to your book on Mary?" Davis replied "I decided I wanted to live." Davis' friend told me in no uncertain terms that John's life had been threatened and he was told not to publish what he had. Davis, of course, was using much of Leo Damore's research, which I originally tried to procure for Nina Burleigh's book.

I want to say a few things about Mary Pinchot Meyer's diary. I will also say now that earlier this year Ben Bradlee allowed me to interview him for my book and film, having refused to talk about Mary Meyer et al. to any other authors regarding this subject matter. (I have known Ben since I was a child as our families spent much time together). There are details about this interview that I am not willing reveal right now, because I don't want to give it away. But allow me to say this: First of all, I believe it is a myth that Mary Meyer entrusted her diary to Jim Angleton, should anything "happen" to her. I understand that her good friend Anne Truitt called the Bradlees the night of the murder from Japan saying that "Mary had entrusted her diary to Jim Angleton...." No one has ever asked the question how Anne and Jim Truitt found out about Mary's murder within a couple of hours of Ben Bradlee having gone to the morgue at approximately 6:00pm the evening of the murder. Who called Anne & Jim Truitt to tell that what was going on? I think I know who that was. Secondly, it wasn't just the diary that was being looked for. Mary had in her possession a lot of "private" letters, some of which were from JFK. All of these papers, including the diary, were given to Jim Angleton. Angleton returned some of the letters to the people who wrote them, one of which was Mary's former lover the artist Ken Noland. Noland told this to author Nina Burleigh in an interview of which I have a copy. Angleton never destroyed the diary and made at least one and very possibly three copies of it. He showed it to two people that I know of, even after giving back the original to Mary's sister Toni Bradlee. Toni then in the presence of Anne Truitt burned what Angleton gave back to her in her fireplace. What was in the diary? We may never know exactly, but it was a lot more than just "vague references to Mary's affair with JFK." After JFK was assassinated, it is pretty clear that Mary was very upset. I dare say she used her diary to write about a lot of things, and certainly what she was finding out. We know for sure now from David Talbott that Bill Walton, who was a dear friend of Mary's and who would escourt her to White House social functions so that she and JFK could from time to time have a few moments together, knew much of what Bobby Kennedy suspected - that his brother's death was indeed a conspiracy at the highest levels. Not too long ago, I tried to interview Anne Truitt's daughter, given that Anne herself had recently died. Anne Truitt was one of Mary Meyer's closest friends. The daughter would not talk because she was still afraid she might be harmed for what she knew, even after 40 years has gone by.

Let me try to answer some of the question that the members of this panel have raised, based on my research for my book (tentatively entitled Mary's Mosaic). . The question has been asked who really was "William L. Mitchell," the alleged assassin of Mary Pinchot Meyer? What we know about Mitchell is that the day after the murder, he went to police in Washington and told them that he believed he passed Mary Meyer on the towpath as he was running east back to Key Bridge and she was walking west toward Fletcher's Boat House. Mitchell told police that a black man (who just happened to fit Ray Crump's description - the man who was charged with the murder) was following her about six hundred feet behind her. Mitchell told police that he ran the towpath regularly, worked at the Pentagon, and was a part time teacher at Georgetown University. Mitchell testified at Crump's murder trial in July, 1965, but his testimony was largely discredtied by Crump's attorney, Dovey Roundtree, Esq. who became a legend after getting Crump acquitted. Mitchell was listed in the DoD directory in the fall of 1964 as "2nd Lt. William L. Mitchell." But then he disappears from the directory in the winter (1965). He shows up at the trial (July, 1965) and tells reporter Roberta Hornig that he is now a full time teacher in the mathmatics department at Georgetown University (GTU). The only problem with this is that there is no record of any "William L. Mitchell" ever teaching at Georgetown. Leo Damore thoroughly researched this in 1991-2. I again researched it a couple of years ago: there is no record of any "William L. Mitchell" teaching in ANY department at GTU. Mitchell's place of residence was an apartment at "The Virginian" at 1500 Arlington Blvd. in Arlington, Va. Damore researched this address and found evidence that this was a known CIA safehouse. I followed this up two years ago and two former CIA personnel confirmed that it was indeed an agency safehouse, as were certain teaching appointments at GTU. In my possession are several hours of tape recorded interviews between Damore and Crump's attorney Dovey Roundtree, Esq. (Award winning author Katie McCabe is now finishing the authorized biography of Dovey Rountree). Both Roundtree and Damore talk about Mitchell and how "convenient" his testimony was, and they both suspected his involvement. Mitchell never returned any of Roundtree's calls before the trial, and Damore could never locate him. So, as a last resort, Damore wrote Mitchell a letter and sent it to his last known address, the address given in the court transcript. During the very late evening of 3/30/93, "Mitchell" contacted Damore by telephone. The call allegedley lasted more than two hours into the early morning of 3/31/93. At approximately 8:30am on the morning of 3/31/93, Damore called his attorney and good friend Jimmy Smith. Damore started to tell Jimmy about the call and Jimmy started taking notes - 5 pages of them. I have these notes and I have a recorded interview with Attorney Smith going over every detail of his notes. "Mitchell" told Damore that he had been very impressed with his book Senatorial Priveledge (SP) and what he had uncovered. He wanted to tell Damore what happened but did not want to be the fall guy. "Mitchell" told Damore that he had several aliases, had been a former FBI agent, and then was recruited into the CIA. He had been assigned to surveillance of Mary Meyer right after the Warren Commission had been released. The order then came down to terminate her. There are a number of other details that I do not want share at this point because they are central to my book. Damore told his attorney that he had taped the call, but I could never find the tapes. I have substaniated however from talking to two of Damore's closest friends that he became quite anxious subsequent to this call in the weeks following because he believed he was being watched. I have not given up finding the real identity of "William L. Mitchell." But my main military researcher, Roger Charles who won the prestigious Peabody Award for his research with SY Hersch on Abu Ghraib for 60 Minutes II, says the area that Mitchell worked in at the Pentagon was surrounded by other CIA spooks. Charles feels that there is a good case to be make that "Mitchell" was CIA. Ironically, the last job my father had at the CIA was "Director of Personnel" when he died in 1979..... Now, let's look at another question: Why was Mary Meyer assassinated (not murdered) ? Mary was killed two weeks after the Warren Commission was released. She bought a paper back condensced version of the WC the day it was released and started reading it. She was furious. She knew it was a complete whitewash, and wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. She told friends that she was thinking seriously of coming out and revealing the truth of what she knew. Allegedley, she confronted Angleton and her former husband Cord about the absurdity of the WC. I think she knew at this point that certain people within the Agency had engineered the assassination. For the future of the CIA, she was definitely a big problem. And she was courageous enough to speak out. Robert Morrow in his book First Hand Knowledge (Morrow, Robert. First Hand Knowledge. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992. pp. 274-280) recounts his encounter with another CIA assett who tells him that Mary Meyer has told another CIA wife too many things and that she is trouble. Substaniating this event, I have an account from another CIA official who worked under Richard Helms in the Plans Directorate that they had asked another "helpful" CIA wife to talk to Mary and "settle her down...." in an effort to keep her quiet. In David Talbott's new book Brothers, the author mentions Bill Walton and how Bobby Kennedy urged him to keep his trip to Russia right after the JFK assassination and take a message to Georgy Bolsholakov. Bobby knew Oswald was just the patsy, and eventually came to believe that the Agency was deeply involved in his brother's demise. Bill Walton was also an artist and a very good friend of Mary Meyer's. He would often escort her to White House social events, knowing full well the affair she was having with JFK. Without going into further details, let's just say that Walton talked to Mary after the assassination and tried to help with her grief. Mary knew too much. As someone once said, "she knew where all the bodies were buried....." They had to get rid of her because she was too independent and could not be controlled. Think of the trouble she would have caused. I have not forgot about further comments about Timothy Leary and the CIA and will tackle that one shortly.

Let me try to answer some of the question that the members of this panel have raised, based on my research for my book (tentatively entitled Mary's Mosaic. . The question has been asked who really was "William L. Mitchell," the alleged assassin of Mary Pinchot Meyer? What we know about Mitchell is that the day after the murder, he went to police in Washington and told them that he believed he passed Mary Meyer on the towpath as he was running east back to Key Bridge and she was walking west toward Fletcher's Boat House. Mitchell told police that a black man (who just happened to fit Ray Crump's description - the man who was charged with the murder) was following her about six hundred feet behind her. Mitchell told police that he ran the towpath regularly, worked at the Pentagon, and was a part time teacher at Georgetown University. Mitchell testified at Crump's murder trial in July, 1965, but his testimony was largely discredtied by Crump's attorney, Dovey Roundtree, Esq. who became a legend after getting Crump acquitted. Mitchell was listed in the DoD directory in the fall of 1964 as "2nd Lt. William L. Mitchell." But then he disappears from the directory in the winter (1965). He shows up at the trial (July, 1965) and tells reporter Roberta Hornig that he is now a full time teacher in the mathmatics department at Georgetown University (GTU). The only problem with this is that there is no record of any "William L. Mitchell" ever teaching at Georgetown. Leo Damore thoroughly researched this in 1991-2. I again researched it a couple of years ago: there is no record of any "William L. Mitchell" teaching in ANY department at GTU. Mitchell's place of residence was an apartment at "The Virginian" at 1500 Arlington Blvd. in Arlington, Va. Damore researched this address and found evidence that this was a known CIA safehouse. I followed this up two years ago and two former CIA personnel confirmed that it was indeed an agency safehouse, as were certain teaching appointments at GTU. In my possession are several hours of tape recorded interviews between Damore and Crump's attorney Dovey Roundtree, Esq. (Award winning author Katie McCabe is now finishing the authorized biography of Dovey Rountree). Both Roundtree and Damore talk about Mitchell and how "convenient" his testimony was, and they both suspected his involvement. Mitchell never returned any of Roundtree's calls before the trial, and Damore could never locate him. So, as a last resort, Damore wrote Mitchell a letter and sent it to his last known address, the address given in the court transcript. During the very late evening of 3/30/93, "Mitchell" contacted Damore by telephone. The call allegedley lasted more than two hours into the early morning of 3/31/93. At approximately 8:30am on the morning of 3/31/93, Damore called his attorney and good friend Jimmy Smith. Damore started to tell Jimmy about the call and Jimmy started taking notes - 5 pages of them. I have these notes and I have a recorded interview with Attorney Smith going over every detail of his notes. "Mitchell" told Damore that he had been very impressed with his book Senatorial Priveledge (SP) and what he had uncovered. He wanted to tell Damore what happened but did not want to be the fall guy. "Mitchell" told Damore that he had several aliases, had been a former FBI agent, and then was recruited into the CIA. He had been assigned to surveillance of Mary Meyer right after the Warren Commission had been released. The order then came down to terminate her. There are a number of other details that I do not want share at this point because they are central to my book. Damore told his attorney that he had taped the call, but I could never find the tapes. I have substaniated however from talking to two of Damore's closest friends that he became quite anxious subsequent to this call in the weeks following because he believed he was being watched. I have not given up finding the real identity of "William L. Mitchell." But my main military researcher, Roger Charles who won the prestigious Peabody Award for his research with SY Hersch on Abu Ghraib for 60 Minutes II, says the area that Mitchell worked in at the Pentagon was surrounded by other CIA spooks. Charles feels that there is a good case to be make that "Mitchell" was CIA. Ironically, the last job my father had at the CIA was "Director of Personnel" when he died in 1979..... Now, let's look at another question: Why was Mary Meyer assassinated (not murdered) ? Mary was killed two weeks after the Warren Commission was released. She bought a paper back condensced version of the WC the day it was released and started reading it. She was furious. She knew it was a complete whitewash, and wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. She told friends that she was thinking seriously of coming out and revealing the truth of what she knew. Allegedley, she confronted Angleton and her former husband Cord about the absurdity of the WC. I think she knew at this point that certain people within the Agency had engineered the assassination. For the future of the CIA, she was definitely a big problem. And she was courageous enough to speak out. Robert Morrow in his book First Hand Knowledge (Morrow, Robert. First Hand Knowledge. New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992. pp. 274-280) recounts his encounter with another CIA assett who tells him that Mary Meyer has told another CIA wife too many things and that she is trouble. Substaniating this event, I have an account from another CIA official who worked under Richard Helms in the Plans Directorate that they had asked another "helpful" CIA wife to talk to Mary and "settle her down...." in an effort to keep her quiet. In David Talbott's new book Brothers, the author mentions Bill Walton and how Bobby Kennedy urged him to keep his trip to Russia right after the JFK assassination and take a message to Georgy Bolsholakov. Bobby knew Oswald was just the patsy, and eventually came to believe that the Agency was deeply involved in his brother's demise. Bill Walton was also an artist and a very good friend of Mary Meyer's. He would often escort her to White House social events, knowing full well the affair she was having with JFK. Without going into further details, let's just say that Walton talked to Mary after the assassination and tried to help with her grief. Mary knew too much. As someone once said, "she knew where all the bodies were buried....." They had to get rid of her because she was too independent and could not be controlled. Think of the trouble she would have caused. I have not forgot about further comments about Timothy Leary and the CIA and will tackle that one shortly.

I have asked my informant if I can name Mary Pinchot Meyer's killer on the Forum. I am awaiting his reply. Hello - My name is Peter Janney and I am the person John is referring to. I have actually been researching the life and death of Mary Pinchot Meyer for over thirty (30) years now. I am in the midst of producing a full length Hollywood drama called "Lost Light" which deals with Mary's relationship with JFK and her death. I also writing a book on the same subject ("Mary's Mosaic") which I am hard at work at. I am going to post a much larger reply than I can at the moment in few days or so, but let me say this as an introduction: Mary Meyer most certainly had a relationship with Tim Leary. I own all of Leo Damore's research on Mary Meyer. Damore was a prodigious researcher, just read his book Senatorial Priveledge and you can see for yourself. Damore even knew what room number Mary stayed in at the Ritz Carlton when she first came to meet Leary in the Spring of 1962. I also have a two hour tape recorded interview with Leary and Damore talking about the Meyer-JFK relationship. There are details on that tape that Leary talks about that he could have never known about if he had not known Mary back in the 1960s. Mary Meyer and JFK did take LSD together at Joe Alsop's house in Georgetown in the early Spring of 1963. I believe this experience was a catalyst for JFK's evolution of his political dispostion toward world peace initiatives. Soon after this experience JFK gave his legendary commencement speech at American University on June 10, 1963. More on that later. Mary Meyer was not murdered; she was assassinated. I believe I am well on my way to proving this. The assassin's name was William L. Mitchell and he testified at the Crump murder trial as the "jogger" who passed Mary on his way back to Key Bridge. He testified that a black man, allegedly Ray Crump, was following Mary after he passed her. It was a complete frame up, again generated by certain individuals within the CIA. Leo Damore interviewed "William L.Mitchell" ("Mitchell" told Damore that his name was an alias and that he had several aliases that he used) on March 31, 1993 on the phone for several hours. He allegedley recorrded the call but I could never find the tapes. "Mitchell" confessed to Damore that he had been ordered to take out Mary Meyer. Immediately, after the call, Damore called his attorney. His attorney took five (5) pages of notes on that call and he saved them and has given the notes to me. Damore told me personally in 1993 that he had interviewed the assassin, but I was too heart broken at the time from a broken engagement to really get into it with him at the time. I shared my taped interview between Leary and Damore with David Talbot and he credits me for that in his footnote. As much as I respect Jim Eugenio, he is wrong about Leary and Mary Meyer and I believe I have enough evidence to prove that. Please feel free to post questions and I will try to respond. More later. Thank you.

I want to comment on Mel's input and the discussion between Mel and John here. There are a number of things to elaborate on. Since I now own all of Damore's manuscripts for his book on Mary Meyer (which was to be entitled "Burden of Guilt" ) as well as all of his research for this book, I believe that Damore actually solved the murder (assassination) of Mary Pinchot Meyer. I will return shortly to elaborate about this.

My perspective about the JFK Assassination, the assassination of Mary Pinchot Meyer (who was JFK's last true love), and The Warren Commission, as well as a number events has been informed largely by my growing up in Washington, D.C. My father was career CIA and as a family we were in close proximity with many of the controversial power broker people in Washington at the time (i.e. Ben Bradlee, Kay Graham, James Jesus Angleton, Tracy Barnes, Richard Helms,etc). I knew these people; I was friends with many of their children. I witnessed many, many things in regard to what was going on at the time. Like many of you, I have spent a number of years being overwhelmed with what Hollywood director called "the crime of the century," which was the assassination of JFK. I have met privately with Stone and talked with him about a number of things. I also knew Mary Pinchot Meyer and her family. Mary's husband, Cord Meyer, worked together at the CIA. Our families were quite close; her middle child Michael was my "best friend" at age 9 when he was killed by a car crossing the street at dusk. My mother and Mary Meyer were college roomates at Vassar, along with Scottie Fitzgerald (F. Scott Fitzgerald's only daughter) and several others. Since 1976, I have made it my business to get to the bottom of Mary Meyer's murder. There have been three attempts by authors to write books about Mary Meyer. The first attempt, and by far the most thorough, was made by author Leo Damore. Damore created a legendary reputation as a dogged, thorough researcher with the publication of his book Senatorial Privilege This was the definitive book about Ted Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopeckne. Damore brought that same tenacity to his research on Mary Meyer, all of which I currently own. It was Damore who solved the crime about who actually murdered Mary Meyer, and I will go into that later. Damore committed suicide in 1995 and his book, Burden of Guilt, was never published ( I have several of his manuscripts). John Davis, a well-respected author and JFK researcher, then tried to pick up some of Damore's research and tried to write his book about Mary. He never finished it.(though I have his manuscript) When asked by a close friend why he did not finish it, he replied, "I wanted to live..." meaning that his life had been threatened. Davis has since had a bad stroke and is barely coherent. Nina Burleigh, as many of you know, has so far written the only book about Mary Meyer. There is another book, however, in the works by authors Myrna Firestone and Don Shannon who will claim that the CIA was responsible for Mary Meyer's death. I have talked to them, but they did not want to reveal anything to me. The question, with regard to Mary Meyer's assassination, is why was it necessary to take her out? What did she know that could have proven to be so important and potentially embarassing to any number of people in the government and particularly the CIA? The last published piece about Mary Meyer so far came out in 2003. It was a chapter in C. David Heymann's book The Georgetown Ladies Social Club. I know Heymann well and we have talked for hours. When he confronted Cord Meyer shortly before his death and asked him who he thought had actually killed his former wife Mary Meyer, Cord replied, "the same sons of bitches who killed John F. Kennedy!"

It is time for me to join this discussion, and I am very glad to be here. Thank you John Simkin for making this forum available! Let me say some general things first which many of you may wish to respond and then I will begin to get much more specific. My perspective about the JFK Assassination, the assassination of Mary Pinchot Meyer (who was JFK's last true love), and The Warren Commission, as well as a number events has been informed largely by my growing up in Washington, D.C. My father was career CIA and as a family we were in close proximity with many of the controversial power broker people in Washington at the time (i.e. Ben Bradlee, Kay Graham, James Jesus Angleton, Tracy Barnes, Richard Helms,etc). I knew these people; I was friends with many of their children. I witnessed many, many things in regard to what was going on at the time. Like many of you, I have spent a number of years being overwhelmed with what Hollywood director called "the crime of the century," which was the assassination of JFK. I have met privately with Stone and talked with him about a number of things. I also knew Mary Pinchot Meyer and her family. Mary's husband, Cord Meyer, worked together at the CIA. Our families were quite close; her middle child Michael was my "best friend" at age 9 when he was killed by a car crossing the street at dusk. My mother and Mary Meyer were college roomates at Vassar, along with Scottie Fitzgerald (F. Scott Fitzgerald's only daughter) and several others. Since 1976, I have made it my business to get to the bottom of Mary Meyer's murder. There have been three attempts by authors to write books about Mary Meyer. The first attempt, and by far the most thorough, was made by author Leo Damore. Damore created a legendary reputation as a dogged, thorough researcher with the publication of his book Senatorial Privilege This was the definitive book about Ted Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopeckne. Damore brought that same tenacity to his research on Mary Meyer, all of which I currently own. It was Damore who solved the crime about who actually murdered Mary Meyer, and I will go into that later. Damore committed suicide in 1995 and his book, Burden of Guilt, was never published ( I have several of his manuscripts). John Davis, a well-respected author and JFK researcher, then tried to pick up some of Damore's research and tried to write his book about Mary. He never finished it.(though I have his manuscript) When asked by a close friend why he did not finish it, he replied, "I wanted to live..." meaning that his life had been threatened. Davis has since had a bad stroke and is barely coherent. Nina Burleigh, as many of you know, has so far written the only book about Mary Meyer. There is another book, however, in the works by authors Myrna Firestone and Don Shannon who will claim that the CIA was responsible for Mary Meyer's death. I have talked to them, but they did not want to reveal anything to me. The question, with regard to Mary Meyer's assassination, is why was it necessary to take her out? What did she know that could have proven to be so important and potentially embarassing to any number of people in the government and particularly the CIA? The last published piece about Mary Meyer so far came out in 2003. It was a chapter in C. David Heymann's book The Georgetown Ladies Social Club. I know Heymann well and we have talked for hours. When he confronted Cord Meyer shortly before his death and asked him who he thought had actually killed his former wife Mary Meyer, Cord replied, "the same sons of bitches who killed John F. Kennedy!" Enough for now, but I shall return soon.

This is a test just to make sure I am showing up on the posts.