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Strange Death of Mary Meyer

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Strange Death of Mary Meyer Reviewer's Notebook lawyer and beat the rap. lb conspiracy theorists left and right, on the other hand, Meyer was "hit" because she knew too much. Without a doubt the Central Intelli gence Agency was keeping a close eye on Mary Meyer, say intelligence sources. As apparently befits anyone who fools around with a presidentof the strange Death United States, her telephone was tapped, her bedroom bugged, her home subject to clandestine searches. Where, conspiracy theorists ask, were her watchers on that fatal day? Well, we know where at least one of of Mary Meyer her watchers was shortlyafterthe mur der. Ben Bradlee, then executive editor By John Elvin of the Washington Post and Mary's brother-in-law, recalls in his autobiog Anew book raises questions about a murder in the inner raphy that, when he and his wife entered Mary's locked house the morn circles ofWashington In 1964. Fiction rarely gets stranger ing after the murder, "we found Jim than this, and journalists are saying it is too true to he good. Angleton." That's James Jesus Angleton, per haps the mostenigmatic, controversial and determinedly patriotic counterin- telligence specialist who ever peeked under a bed for the CIA. He also was a friend of Bradlee's at the time, and the husband of one of Mary Meyer's best friends. What did he wantin ±ehouse? What were all of those close to her feverishly searching for — not her apparently substantial stash of LSD and marijuana, but her diary. Later that day, Bradlee says, the thought struck that perhaps the diary was secreted in Mary's art studio. Having no key, he took along a few tools to aid his entry, "only to run into Jim Angle- ton again, this time actually in the process of picking the padlock." Byall accounts the diary ultimately was located, and its contents deemed sufficiently volatile that it was left to the keeping of seniorCIA operative Angle- ton. Though quite the happy warrior when it came to shredding the reputa tion of another president — Richard Nixon—Bradlee played mother hen for the JFK-related contents of the diary that certainly would, at that time, have Crime scene: There were no witness ^ documented anexplosive story. MaryleadingPinchotrole in conspiraMeyer's es to the murder, and the \ He and a few others read cy lore was secured one case is unsolved. ^ \ Mary's notes, butnoone ever autumn afternoon in \ has talked substantively 1964 when, on her pre secrets involving \ \ aboutthesmoking accounts dictable afternoon walk sex, drugs andper- \ \ \ therein. outof Washington's Georgetown neigh hapsmore. \ V \ According to a recent borhood into the tamed wilderness of Those who have \ \ biography, AVery Private the Chesapeake & Ohio Canaltowpath, gone to the greatest of * vV \ Woman: The Life and she was shot and killed. Perplexing lengths to defend the \ Unsolved Murder of questions linger about who murdered "Camelot" image of the Presidential Mistress herand why. Clues may have existed in Kennedys contend that Mary Meyer, the diary Meyer's diary, thought to have con Meyer was killed by a & eventually went up in tained secrets of an intimate relation predatory derelict who smoke. At least the ship with John F. Kennedy — assassi subsequently obtained ' ' original was burned. nated the year before in Dallas — the services of a brilliant Author Nina Burleigh, a for- March15,1999 mer Time reporter who now is a con became irrational, depressed and sui tributing editorfor New Yorkmagazine, Bradlee recalls in cidal. suspects thatatleastone copy may still Mary Pinchot attended Vassar Col exist. his autobiography lege and first metJohn F.Kennedy dur Passionately feminist and sensu ing those years, published accounts say. ously pro-Clinton, Burleigh became that, when he and After graduation she joined UPI as a something of a media celebrity during feature writer and espoused radical the recent unpleasantness, having sug his wife entered politics, though that was more the turf gested that "American women should of her well-to-do and idealistic fiance. be lining up with their presidential Mary's locked Cord Meyer. An ardent pacifist at Yale, kneepads on to showtheirgratitude for Cord reacted to the treachery of Pearl keeping the theocracy off our backs." house the morning Harbor by joining the Marines. He Burleigh's book is fairly devoid of served heroically, and lost aneye when such provocative quips, however, dryly after the murder, a Japanese grenade blew up in his face abiding by the serious biographer's in a foxhole on Guam. mandate to stick to verifiable facts. She 'vue found Jim After the war, convinced he should "didn'twant... to seem too salacious or have remained a conscientious objec pui-ple," Burleigh tells Insight. Those Angleton' there. tor, Cord joined the World Feder^ist who come to her book for its murder- movement. Coincident with marriage mystery promise may find it only teas- to Mary, he was named a U.S. delegate ingly fulfilling, a bit like ordering a big to the San Francisco convention at steak and being served a cow and a which the United Nations was founded butcher knife. under acting general-secretary Alger Burleigh says her fascination with Hiss. At those meetings in San Fran Mary Meyer developed through read cisco, attended in lieu of a honeymoon, ing Bradlee's autobiography, A Good Mary Meyer renewed her acquain Life. Bradlee may not appreciate the tance with Kennedy, then a young honor. The authorof a honeyed homage reporter covering the event for the to his friend JFK, That Special Grace, Hearst newspapers. Cord reportedly Bradlee seems to have done his best to snubbed Kennedy, turning him down bury the Meyer story deep in history's for a requested interview,and Kennedy dustbin. But Burleigh says she has -- never forgot it. Cord believed in later heard Bradlee considers her book years, the commentators say, that JFK "accurate." Now retired and devoted to hadsidetrackedhis intelligence career church work in a quaint village on out ofpersonal dislike. Maryland's Eastern Shore, Bradlee did Ambitious and dashing, Cord not respond to Insight's request for a became a national figure as president firsthand assessment. of the World Federalists; he then helped Bradlee devotes scant and cautious found the American Veterans Commit mentions in his autobiography to the Mistress in training:Meyerfirst met tee, or AVC, to further the internation murder of this mysterious, free-spirit- John Kennedy while a student at alist cause. But, though he plowed ed woman who not only was his sister- Vassar College. ahead with his chosen course, Cord is in-law but JFK's intimate in more than said to have become increasingly disil one way. Coached as a guide for LSD nated society photographers, became lusioned with the prospects for inter trips by Timothy Leary, who spun the legendary for buck-naked, thunder- national cooperation and with the com heads of anentire generation with psy hooved, moonlight rides across the munist worldview in particular. chedelic mumbojumbo, says Burleigh, estate. In the audience, coincidentally, dur Meyer was a member of a circle of Mary's father, Amos Pinchot — a ing one of Cord's speeches to the AVC female mystics who spoke among founder ofthe left-wing,antiwarAmer opposing a Communisttakeover ofthat themselves of a mission to turn world ican Progressive Party and a noted organization, was Timothy Leary, an leaders on to LSD and thus secure forester — came from an eccentric idealistic Berkeley psychology student. peace on earth. It was the sixties, after family that shaped American conser This coincidental link took on some all. Of the bizarre clique, Meyer may vation policy; his brother, Gifford, significance a decade or so later, the have had the best shot at success. guided IfeddyRooseveltin creating the story goes, when Leary became Mary Drawing on Burleigh, Bradlee and government's vast national-forest hold Meyer's mentor in learning to guide the diverse array of related books and ings. Amos also helped launch the psychedelic "trips." articles, readers will learn that young National Civil Liberties Bureau, which In the interim, afterteachingat Har Mary Pinchot grew up between the became the American Civil Liberties vard, Lea^ became the guru of the World Wars in a wealth-fortified won Union, and was active in defense ofthe psychedelic generation. To the later derland. Her home was Grey TDwers, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bar- chagrin of his "drop-out" flock, he 3,600 acres of woodland, orchard and tolomeo Vanzetti, the convicted bank acknowledged links for funding and gardens on the Delaware River, where robbers and murderers. Later in life, drugs to the CIA, where mind-control Pinchot women "often wandered the Amos became disillusioned with the experiments were being conducted in grounds near the pool and waterfall left and turned for political balm to hopes of finding a truth serumand tem naked," to the delight or bemusement Father Charles Coughlin, a firebrand porary destabilizer. It seems likely to of guests, staff and peeping townies. populist and anti-Semite. He also those who followed his career during Herhalf-sister, Rosamund, a disturbed, sought solace in alcoholand, like many this period that Leary was a prized ultimately suicidal beauty who fasci- of its ardent devotees, eventually (continued on page 44) March15.1999 Insight' 15 MARY MURDER the establishment aristocracy in gen days had the CIA to thank for it. "No one (continuedfrom page 15) eral. These were the sons and daugh could enter the world of psychedelics ters of the advantaged few chronicled without first passing, unawares, informant, eventually adding to the by F.Scott Fitzgerald in his novels, and through doors opened by the Agency." Meyer dossier as well as to many oth in fact his own daughter, Scottie, was A number of researchers say that the ers.
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