April 5, 2009
The Unsolved Murder of JFK's
Georgetown Mistress
by Don
Fulsom
Less than a year after
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, his favorite Washington
mistress—Mary Pinchot Meyer—was shot dead, execution-style, just a short
distance from her home in the safest part of D.C.'s safest neighborhood.
Meyer was a stunning blonde and a free-spirited Georgetown
artist. A pre-hippie hippie, she was a smart Vassar grad, a former reporter for
United Press, a socialist/pacifist, and a sexual adventurer who also
experimented with mind-altering drugs.
The CIA had been able to keep close tabs on Mary's nearly
two-year affair with President Kennedy—partly because the spy agency, it was
later revealed, had been bugging her home and telephones ever since her
late-'50s divorce from Cord Meyer, a top CIA official.
According to Nina Burleigh, author of A Very Private
Woman, the bugs were ordered by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus
Angleton, a strange-looking, heavy-drinking Cold Warrior whose specialties were
illegal break-ins (other spooks called him "the Locksmith") and searching for
Soviet moles within the agency. Angleton had socialized with the Meyers while
they were married and continued to be friendly with both. (Burleigh's
information about the bugging came from an interview she did with Joan Bross,
the wife of John Bross, a high-ranking CIA official.)
Why did Angleton bug Mary? Did he think she was a
potential Soviet spy? Or that she would spill agency secrets Cord might have let
slip during a booze bender or marital pillow talk? Was Angleton spying on Mary
at the instigation of her ex-hubby? Or was Angleton snooping into the love life
of a gal on which he himself had a secret crush, as legendary Washington
journalist Ben Bradlee later theorized?
In Brothers, David Talbot concludes that
Angleton's surveillance "might have been prompted by a disturbing mix of
illicit motives. But what is important here is what he found out about the
relationship between Kennedy and Mary Meyer, in addition to its erotic
details. Angleton would later tell reporters that the lovers experimented
with drugs, smoking marijuana and dabbling with LSD. According to the spy,
Meyer and Kennedy took one low dose of the hallucinogen, after which, he
noted with a cringe-inducing delicacy, 'they made love.'
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C&O Canal towpath
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As the CIA undoubtedly knew, Mary followed her daily
custom on October 12, 1964: She took a break from her latest art project and
strolled along in the picturesque C&O canal towpath. It was sunny and warm.
Meyer was wearing a fluffy light blue angora sweater, pedal pushers and
sneakers.
Amid Mary's screams for help, someone fired two .38
caliber bullets at her at point-blank range. Author Leo Damore suggested Mary
Meyer's death bore the marks of a professional hit, saying: "Two shots were
fired within eight seconds—one behind her ear so that it traversed her
brain, and one behind her shoulder blade so it severed her aorta."
After a lengthy investigation, Damore concluded the CIA
might have killed Mary because it did not want her to disclose her relationship
with Kennedy. He pointed out to the New York Post that soon after Meyer's
murder, the CIA's Angleton and Mary's brother-in-law, newsman Ben Bradlee, were
in Meyer's home searching for her diary—which included accounts of her trysts
with the President. The dairy was eventually found by Bradlee's wife in Mary's
studio, and then turned over to Angleton—who allegedly destroyed it.
Damore, who was writing a book about Mary Pinchot Meyer,
said: "She had access to the highest levels. She was involved in illegal drug
activity. What do you think it would do to the beatification of Kennedy if this
woman said, 'It wasn't Camelot, and it was Caligula's court?'" His book was
never published. Leo Damore committed suicide in 1995.
The first person at the scene of Mary's murder was Lance
Morrow, a cub reporter for the Washington Star who later observed that
the victim "lay on her side, as if sleeping … I saw a neat and almost bloodless
bullet hole in her head. She looked entirely peaceful, vaguely patrician. She
had an air of Georgetown." Morrow recalled the crime in "Woman Interrupted," in
the Dec. 2008 issue of Smithsonian.
Police said this was the first homicide on that stretch of
the canal—from Key Bridge to Fletcher's Boat House—in 10 years.
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The arrest of
Raymond Crump |
A 25-year-old laborer—Raymond Crump—was quickly charged
with Mary's slaying. But after a jury deliberated for 11 hours, Crump was
acquitted for lack of evidence. The gun that fired the fatal bullets was never
found, even though the canal was emptied and scuba divers searched the Potomac
River—which flows along the other side of the towpath. Paraffin tests showed no
evidence Crump had fired a weapon. And there was no apparent motive.
Mary's purse and wallet were found at her home. An
electric fan was still on, drying her most recent canvas. No one else was ever
charged with her murder.
If Crump was indeed innocent, and the CIA did have Mary
Meyer rubbed out, author Leo Damore's suggested reason—that the agency wanted to
protect the murdered President from scandal—just might have a fatal flaw: The
CIA despised JFK and would have been pleased to expose any of the President's
scores of extramarital peccadilloes. Or at least saved such information for
blackmail purposes.
After the CIA botched the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba, JFK fired CIA Director Allen Dulles and pledged to "splinter" the
intelligence agency "into a thousand pieces."
Could a more viable theory than Damore's be that the
nation's top spooks wanted to guarantee the continued cover-up of CIA-Mafia
plots to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro? Might Mary have been privy to such
secrets? Might she have also had some idea of who was behind her paramour's
slaying in the streets of Dallas on November 22, 1963?
James Jesus Angleton, for one, could have greatly feared
the disclosure of any CIA link with the assassination. He had been the chief
liaison between the CIA and the Warren Commission. In The Ends of Power,
President Richard Nixon's chief of staff Bob Haldeman revealed: "The CIA
literally erased any connection between President Kennedy's assassination
and the CIA …In fact … (James Jesus) Angleton … called Bill Sullivan of the
FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren
Commission investigators."
On his deathbed in 2001, Mary's ex-husband, former CIA
bigwig Cord Meyer, speculated on who committed Mary's murder. He is said to have
hissed: "The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy" according to
writer C. David Heymann.
Vice President Nixon, who masterminded the CIA-Mafia plots
against Castro in the Eisenhower years, was in Dallas on the day of the JFK
slaying. A former CIA contract agent, Morita Lorenz, later testified under oath
that she saw CIA agent E. Howard Hunt and CIA asset Frank Sturgis in Dallas on
assassination eve. CIA agent Bernard Barker is reported to have been there as
well. Hunt, Sturgis and Barker went on, of course, to become secret Nixon agents
during the Watergate era. Coincidences? Or key parts in a conspiracy puzzle?
Almost as intriguing as Mary Pinchot Meyer's mysterious
murder, and her affair with President Kennedy, is the fact that she will go down
as a historical footnote as the person who got the President stoned on acid and
pot.
Meyer visited the White House—through a secret entrance
and elevator—about 30 times between January, 1962 and November, 1963. Most of
the visits occurred while First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was out of town.
A former top editor at the Washington Post and Mary
Meyer confidant, James Truitt, was a main source for the eventual details on the
JFK-Meyer relationship. In 1976, he sold his story to the National Enquirer.
Among Truitt's revelations: That on the night of September
27, 1962, Mary and Jack were in the presidential bedroom when Mary pulled out a
surprise for Kennedy—a snuffbox filled with six marijuana joints. After they'd
smoked three, JFK told Mary, "No more. Suppose the Russians did something now?
She said he also told her, 'this isn't like cocaine. I'll get you some of
that.'"
President Kennedy was no stranger to legal drugs either.
He took methadone and codeine for pain, Ritalin as a stimulant, Librium for
anxiety and barbiturates to sleep. Hydrocortisone, testosterone, and regular
injections of Procaine also permitted Kennedy to carry out his duties despite
agonizing pain from a long list of longtime ailments, particularly back pain.
The historian who disclosed JFK's illnesses and drug
dependence—biographer Robert Dalleck—observed that JFK proved to be an effective
and inspiring leader whose health problems did not noticeably affect his
performance in office.
Neither, apparently, did his affair with Mary Pinchot
Meyer.
Sources others than those named include: Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination; and
Washington
Post accounts of the Meyer murder and Crump trial.
Photo Credit:
C&O Canal towpath by
D.B. King.
