Mary Pinchot Meyer
Encyclopedia
Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer was an American socialite, painter, former wife of Central Intelligence Agency
official Cord Meyer
and intimate friend of United States president John F. Kennedy
, who was often noted for her desirable physique and social skills. Meyer's murder, two days before her 44th birthday, in the Georgetown
neighborhood of Washington D.C. during the fall of 1964, would later stir speculation relating to Kennedy's presidency and assassination
. Nina Burleigh in her 1998 biography wrote, "Mary Meyer was an enigmatic woman in life, and in death her real personality lurks just out of view."
, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party
who had helped fund the socialist magazine, The Masses
. Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife, a journalist who worked for magazines such as The Nation
and The New Republic
. She was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot
, a noted conservationist
and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania. Mary was raised at the family's Grey Towers home in Milford, Pennsylvania
where as a child she met left-wing intellectuals such as Mabel Dodge, Louis Brandeis
, Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
, and Harold L. Ickes
. She attended Brearley School
and Vassar College
, where she became interested in communism
. She dated William Attwood
in 1938 and while with him at a dance held at Choate Rosemary Hall
she first met John F. Kennedy.
She left Vassar and became a journalist, writing for the United Press and Mademoiselle
. As a pacifist and member of the American Labor Party
she came under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
.
in 1944 when he was a US Marine Corps lieutenant who had lost his left eye because of shrapnel injuries received in combat. The two had similar pacifist views and beliefs in world government
and married on April 19, 1945. That spring they both attended the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, during which the United Nations
was founded, Cord as an aide of Harold Stassen
and Pinchot as a reporter for a newspaper syndication service. She later worked for a time as an editor for Atlantic Monthly. Their eldest child Quentin was born in late 1945, followed by Michael in 1947, after which Pinchot became a homemaker although she attended classes at the Art Students League of New York
.
Cord Meyer became president of the United World Federalists in May 1947 and its membership doubled. Albert Einstein
was an enthusiastic supporter and fundraiser. Mary Meyer wrote for the organization's journal. In 1950 their third child Mark was born and they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts
. Meanwhile her husband began to re-evaluate his notions of world government as members of the Communist Party USA
infiltrated the international organizations he had founded. It is unknown when he first began secretly working with the Central Intelligence Agency
but in 1951 Allen Dulles approached Cord Meyer, he became an employee of the CIA and was soon a "principal operative" of Operation Mockingbird
, a covert operation meant to sway US print and broadcast media toward the CIA line. Mary may also have done some work for the CIA during this time but her tendency towards spur-of-the-moment love affairs reportedly made the agency wary of her.
With her husband's CIA appointment they moved to Washington D.C. and became highly visible members of Georgetown society. Their acquaintances included Joseph Alsop
, Katharine Graham
, Clark Clifford
and Washington Post reporter James Truitt
along with his wife, noted artist Anne Truitt
. Their social circle also included CIA-affiliated people such as Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
, high ranking counter-intelligence official James Angleton and Mary and Frank Wisner
, Meyer's boss at CIA. In 1953 Senator Joseph McCarthy
publicly accused Cord Meyer of being a communist and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
was reported to have looked into Mary's political past. Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner aggressively defended Meyer and he remained with the CIA. However, by early 1954 Pinchot Meyer's husband became unhappy with his CIA career. He used contacts from his covert operations in Operation Mockingbird to approach several New York publishers for a job but was rebuffed. During the summer of 1954 John F. Kennedy
and his wife Jackie Kennedy bought a house not far from where the Meyers lived, Pinchot Meyer and Jackie Kennedy became friends and "they went on walks together." By the end of 1954 Cord Meyer was still with the CIA and often in Europe, running Radio Free Europe
, Radio Liberty and managing millions of dollars of US government funds worldwide to support progressive-seeming foundations and organizations opposing the Soviet Union
.
One of Pinchot Meyer's close friends and classmates from Vassar was Cicely d'Autremont, who married James Angleton. In 1955 Meyer's sister Antoinette (Tony) married Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post
. On December 18, 1956 the Meyers' middle son Michael was hit by a car near their house and killed at the age of nine. Although this tragedy brought Pinchot Meyer and Cord Meyer closer together for a time, Mary filed for divorce in 1958. Her divorce petition alleged "extreme cruelty, mental in nature, which seriously injured her health, destroyed her happiness, rendered further cohabitation unendurable and compelled the parties to separate."
and became friendly with Robert Kennedy, who had purchased his brother's house, Hickory Hill
, in 1957. Nina Burleigh in her book A Very Private Woman writes that after the divorce Meyer became "a well-bred ingenue out looking for fun and getting in trouble along the way." "Mary was bad," a friend recalled.
Burleigh claims James Angleton tapped Mary Pinchot Meyer's telephone after she left her husband. Meanwhile Angleton often visited the family home and took her sons on fishing outings. Pinchot Meyer visited John F. Kennedy at the White House in October 1961 and their relationship became intimate. Pinchot Meyer told Ann and James Truitt she was keeping a diary.
Mary Pinchot Meyer and John F. Kennedy reportedly had "about 30 trysts" and at least one author has claimed she brought marijuana or LSD to almost all of these meetings. In January 1963 Philip Graham disclosed the Kennedy-Pinchot Meyer affair to a meeting of newspaper editors but his claim was not reported by the news media. Timothy Leary later claimed Pinchot Meyer influenced Kennedy's "views on nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Cuba." In an interview with Nina Burleigh, Kennedy aide Meyer Feldman said, "I think he might have thought more of her than some of the other women and discussed things that were on his mind, not just social gossip." Burleigh wrote, "Mary might actually have been a force for peace during some of the most frightening years of the cold war..."
psychology lecturer
Timothy Leary
claimed that in the Spring 1962, Pinchot Meyer, who according to her biographer Nina Burleigh "wore manners and charm like a second skin", told him she was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War
was meaningless. According to Leary, Meyer had sought him out for the purpose of learning how to conduct LSD sessions with these powerful men, including, she strongly implied, President John F. Kennedy, who was at that time her lover. According to Leary, Pinchot Meyer said she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high ranking government officials. Leary also claimed that Pinchot Meyer had asked him for help while in a state of fear for her own life after the assassination of President Kennedy.
In his biography Flashbacks
Leary claimed he had a call from Pinchot Meyer soon after the Kennedy assassination during which she sobbed and said, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast...They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid. Be careful." During the summer of 1964 Pinchot Meyer reportedly told friends she thought someone had gotten into her house while she was not there and later told a friend from Vassar, historian Elizabeth Eisenstein
, "she thought she had seen somebody leaving as she walked in."
Pinchot Meyer's biographer, journalist Nina Burleigh, is the author of articles for The Washington Post
, Time
magazine, the Chicago Tribune
, and New York Magazine, as well as several other critically acclaimed books. Although Burleigh does not draw a conclusion as to whether Meyer participated in LSD sessions with President Kennedy or other powerful figures, she also does not dismiss Leary's claims out of hand. Burleigh confirms Pinchot Meyer's own use of LSD, her involvement with Leary during Leary's tenure at Harvard, and that this involvement occurred at the same time as Pinchot Meyer's intimate association with President Kennedy. Burleigh also states that the timing of Pinchot Meyer's visits to Leary coincided with the dates of Meyer's known private meetings with Kennedy. Burleigh writes:
LSD was not illegal in the U.S. at that time and its use to facilitate artistic endeavors was not uncommon in some of Pinchot Meyer's social circles.
report was made public, Pinchot Meyer finished a painting and went for a walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
towpath in Georgetown. Mechanic Henry Wiggins was trying to fix a car on Canal Road and heard a woman cry out, "Someone help me, someone help me." Wiggins heard two gunshots and ran to a low wall looking upon the path where he saw "a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman."
Pinchot Meyer's body had two bullet wounds, one at the back of the head and another in her heart. An FBI forensic expert later said "dark haloes on the skin around both entry wounds suggested they had been fired at close-range, possibly point-blank".
Minutes later a disheveled, soaking wet African-American man named Raymond Crump was arrested near the murder scene. No gun was ever found and Crump was never linked to any gun of the type used to murder Mary Pinchot Meyer. Newspaper reports described her former husband only as either an author or government official and did not mention Kennedy, although many journalists apparently were aware of Meyer's past marriage to a high ranking CIA official and her friendship with Kennedy.
When Crump came to trial, judge Howard Corcoran
ruled Mary Pinchot Meyer's private life could not be disclosed in the courtroom. Corcoran had recently been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson. Pinchot Meyer’s background was also kept from Dovey Johnson Roundtree
, Crump's lawyer, who later recalled she could find out almost nothing about the murder victim: "It was as if she existed only on the towpath on the day she was murdered." Crump was acquitted of all charges on July 29, 1965 and the murder remains unsolved (Crump went on to what has been described as a "horrific" life of crime).
In February 2001 writer C. David Heymann asked Cord Meyer about Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder and he replied, "My father died of a heart attack the same year Mary was killed. It was a bad time." When asked who had murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer, the retired CIA official, six weeks before his own death from lymphoma
, reportedly "hissed" back, "The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy."
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
official Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer
Cord Meyer, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency official.-Early life:Meyer's father, Cord Meyer Sr., was a diplomat and former real estate developer. His grandfather, also called Cord Meyer, was a property developer and a chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. He was...
and intimate friend of United States president John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
, who was often noted for her desirable physique and social skills. Meyer's murder, two days before her 44th birthday, in the Georgetown
Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
Georgetown is a neighborhood located in northwest Washington, D.C., situated along the Potomac River. Founded in 1751, the port of Georgetown predated the establishment of the federal district and the City of Washington by 40 years...
neighborhood of Washington D.C. during the fall of 1964, would later stir speculation relating to Kennedy's presidency and assassination
Assassination of John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
. Nina Burleigh in her 1998 biography wrote, "Mary Meyer was an enigmatic woman in life, and in death her real personality lurks just out of view."
Early life
Mary Pinchot was the daughter of Amos PinchotAmos Pinchot
Amos Richards Eno Pinchot was an American reformist. He never held public office but managed to exert considerable influence in reformist circles and did much to keep progressive ideas alive in the 1920s....
, a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party
Progressive Party (United States, 1912)
The Progressive Party of 1912 was an American political party. It was formed after a split in the Republican Party between President William Howard Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt....
who had helped fund the socialist magazine, The Masses
The Masses
The Masses was a graphically innovative magazine of socialist politics published monthly in the U.S. from 1911 until 1917, when Federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription. It was succeeded by The Liberator and then later The New Masses...
. Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife, a journalist who worked for magazines such as The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...
and The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
. She was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot
Gifford Pinchot was the first Chief of the United States Forest Service and the 28th Governor of Pennsylvania...
, a noted conservationist
Conservationist
Conservationists are proponents or advocates of conservation. They advocate for the protection of all the species in an ecosystem with a strong focus on the natural environment...
and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania. Mary was raised at the family's Grey Towers home in Milford, Pennsylvania
Milford, Pennsylvania
Milford is a borough in Pike County, Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat. Its population was 1,021 at the 2010 census. It was founded in 1796 by Judge John Biddis, one of the state's first four circuit judges, who named the settlement after his ancestral home in Wales.Milford has a...
where as a child she met left-wing intellectuals such as Mabel Dodge, Louis Brandeis
Louis Brandeis
Louis Dembitz Brandeis ; November 13, 1856 – October 5, 1941) was an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.He was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Jewish immigrant parents who raised him in a secular mode...
, Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
Robert Marion "Fighting Bob" La Follette, Sr. , was an American Republican politician. He served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, was the Governor of Wisconsin, and was also a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin...
, and Harold L. Ickes
Harold L. Ickes
Harold LeClair Ickes was a United States administrator and politician. He served as United States Secretary of the Interior for 13 years, from 1933 to 1946, the longest tenure of anyone to hold the office, and the second longest serving Cabinet member in U.S. history next to James Wilson. Ickes...
. She attended Brearley School
Brearley School
The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City, New York, United States. It is located on the Upper East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. The school is divided into the Lower School , Middle School and Upper School...
and Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
, where she became interested in communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
. She dated William Attwood
William Attwood
William Hollingsworth Attwood was an American journalist, author, editor and diplomat.Born in Paris, France, he received his education at Choate Rosemary Hall and Princeton University, editing The Daily Princetonian and later serving as a Princeton trustee...
in 1938 and while with him at a dance held at Choate Rosemary Hall
Choate Rosemary Hall
Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut...
she first met John F. Kennedy.
She left Vassar and became a journalist, writing for the United Press and Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle (magazine)
Mademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Condé Nast Publications....
. As a pacifist and member of the American Labor Party
American Labor Party
The American Labor Party was a political party in the United States established in 1936 which was active almost exclusively in the state of New York. The organization was founded by labor leaders and former members of the Socialist Party who had established themselves as the Social Democratic...
she came under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
.
Marriage
Pinchot met Cord MeyerCord Meyer
Cord Meyer, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency official.-Early life:Meyer's father, Cord Meyer Sr., was a diplomat and former real estate developer. His grandfather, also called Cord Meyer, was a property developer and a chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee. He was...
in 1944 when he was a US Marine Corps lieutenant who had lost his left eye because of shrapnel injuries received in combat. The two had similar pacifist views and beliefs in world government
World government
World government is the notion of a single common political authority for all of humanity. Its modern conception is rooted in European history, particularly in the philosophy of ancient Greece, in the political formation of the Roman Empire, and in the subsequent struggle between secular authority,...
and married on April 19, 1945. That spring they both attended the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, during which the United Nations
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
was founded, Cord as an aide of Harold Stassen
Harold Stassen
Harold Edward Stassen was the 25th Governor of Minnesota from 1939 to 1943. After service in World War II, from 1948 to 1953 he was president of the University of Pennsylvania...
and Pinchot as a reporter for a newspaper syndication service. She later worked for a time as an editor for Atlantic Monthly. Their eldest child Quentin was born in late 1945, followed by Michael in 1947, after which Pinchot became a homemaker although she attended classes at the Art Students League of New York
Art Students League of New York
The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...
.
Cord Meyer became president of the United World Federalists in May 1947 and its membership doubled. Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was a German-born theoretical physicist who developed the theory of general relativity, effecting a revolution in physics. For this achievement, Einstein is often regarded as the father of modern physics and one of the most prolific intellects in human history...
was an enthusiastic supporter and fundraiser. Mary Meyer wrote for the organization's journal. In 1950 their third child Mark was born and they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
. Meanwhile her husband began to re-evaluate his notions of world government as members of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
infiltrated the international organizations he had founded. It is unknown when he first began secretly working with the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
but in 1951 Allen Dulles approached Cord Meyer, he became an employee of the CIA and was soon a "principal operative" of Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird
Operation Mockingbird was a secret Central Intelligence Agency campaign to influence foreign media beginning in the 1950s.The activities, extent and even the existence of the CIA project remain in dispute: the operation was first called Mockingbird in Deborah Davis' 1979 book, Katharine the Great:...
, a covert operation meant to sway US print and broadcast media toward the CIA line. Mary may also have done some work for the CIA during this time but her tendency towards spur-of-the-moment love affairs reportedly made the agency wary of her.
With her husband's CIA appointment they moved to Washington D.C. and became highly visible members of Georgetown society. Their acquaintances included Joseph Alsop
Joseph Alsop
Joseph Wright Alsop V was an American journalist and syndicated newspaper columnist from the 1930s through the 1970s.-Early years:...
, Katharine Graham
Katharine Graham
Katharine Meyer Graham was an American publisher. She led her family's newspaper, The Washington Post, for more than two decades, overseeing its most famous period, the Watergate coverage that eventually led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon...
, Clark Clifford
Clark Clifford
Clark McAdams Clifford was an American lawyer who served United States Presidents Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter, serving as United States Secretary of Defense for Johnson....
and Washington Post reporter James Truitt
James Truitt
James Truitt was an American journalist who worked for Life and Time magazines. He later became the vice president of Newsweek magazine.-Career:...
along with his wife, noted artist Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt
Anne Truitt was a major American artist of the mid-20th century; she is associated with both minimalism and Color Field artists like Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland....
. Their social circle also included CIA-affiliated people such as Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
Richard M. Bissell, Jr.
Richard Mervin Bissell, Jr. was an American Central Intelligence Agency officer responsible for major projects such as the U-2 spy plane and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.-Early years:...
, high ranking counter-intelligence official James Angleton and Mary and Frank Wisner
Frank Wisner
Frank Gardiner Wisner was head of Office of Strategic Services operations in southeastern Europe at the end of World War II, and the head of the Directorate of Plans of the Central Intelligence Agency during the 1950s....
, Meyer's boss at CIA. In 1953 Senator Joseph McCarthy
Joseph McCarthy
Joseph Raymond "Joe" McCarthy was an American politician who served as a Republican U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957...
publicly accused Cord Meyer of being a communist and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation is an agency of the United States Department of Justice that serves as both a federal criminal investigative body and an internal intelligence agency . The FBI has investigative jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crime...
was reported to have looked into Mary's political past. Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner aggressively defended Meyer and he remained with the CIA. However, by early 1954 Pinchot Meyer's husband became unhappy with his CIA career. He used contacts from his covert operations in Operation Mockingbird to approach several New York publishers for a job but was rebuffed. During the summer of 1954 John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
and his wife Jackie Kennedy bought a house not far from where the Meyers lived, Pinchot Meyer and Jackie Kennedy became friends and "they went on walks together." By the end of 1954 Cord Meyer was still with the CIA and often in Europe, running Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress that provides news, information, and analysis to countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East "where the free flow of information is either banned by government authorities or not fully developed"...
, Radio Liberty and managing millions of dollars of US government funds worldwide to support progressive-seeming foundations and organizations opposing the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
One of Pinchot Meyer's close friends and classmates from Vassar was Cicely d'Autremont, who married James Angleton. In 1955 Meyer's sister Antoinette (Tony) married Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
. On December 18, 1956 the Meyers' middle son Michael was hit by a car near their house and killed at the age of nine. Although this tragedy brought Pinchot Meyer and Cord Meyer closer together for a time, Mary filed for divorce in 1958. Her divorce petition alleged "extreme cruelty, mental in nature, which seriously injured her health, destroyed her happiness, rendered further cohabitation unendurable and compelled the parties to separate."
Relationship with Kennedy
Pinchot Meyer and her two surviving sons remained in the family home. She began painting again in a converted garage studio at the home of her sister Tony and her husband Ben Bradlee. She also started a close relationship with abstract-minimalist painter Kenneth NolandKenneth Noland
Kenneth Noland was an American abstract painter. He was one of the best-known American Color field painters, although in the 1950s he was thought of as an abstract expressionist and in the early 1960s he was thought of as a minimalist painter. Noland helped establish the Washington Color School...
and became friendly with Robert Kennedy, who had purchased his brother's house, Hickory Hill
Hickory Hill (McLean, Virginia)
Hickory Hill is a large brick house in McLean, Virginia, in the United States, believed to have been built ca. 1840 . The land on which it is built is part of a Lee family tract of land called Langley. General George B...
, in 1957. Nina Burleigh in her book A Very Private Woman writes that after the divorce Meyer became "a well-bred ingenue out looking for fun and getting in trouble along the way." "Mary was bad," a friend recalled.
Burleigh claims James Angleton tapped Mary Pinchot Meyer's telephone after she left her husband. Meanwhile Angleton often visited the family home and took her sons on fishing outings. Pinchot Meyer visited John F. Kennedy at the White House in October 1961 and their relationship became intimate. Pinchot Meyer told Ann and James Truitt she was keeping a diary.
Mary Pinchot Meyer and John F. Kennedy reportedly had "about 30 trysts" and at least one author has claimed she brought marijuana or LSD to almost all of these meetings. In January 1963 Philip Graham disclosed the Kennedy-Pinchot Meyer affair to a meeting of newspaper editors but his claim was not reported by the news media. Timothy Leary later claimed Pinchot Meyer influenced Kennedy's "views on nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Cuba." In an interview with Nina Burleigh, Kennedy aide Meyer Feldman said, "I think he might have thought more of her than some of the other women and discussed things that were on his mind, not just social gossip." Burleigh wrote, "Mary might actually have been a force for peace during some of the most frightening years of the cold war..."
Claims by Timothy Leary
In 1983 former Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
psychology lecturer
Lecturer
Lecturer is an academic rank. In the United Kingdom, lecturer is a position at a university or similar institution, often held by academics in their early career stages, who lead research groups and supervise research students, as well as teach...
Timothy Leary
Timothy Leary
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and writer, known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. During a time when drugs like LSD and psilocybin were legal, Leary conducted experiments at Harvard University under the Harvard Psilocybin Project, resulting in the Concord Prison...
claimed that in the Spring 1962, Pinchot Meyer, who according to her biographer Nina Burleigh "wore manners and charm like a second skin", told him she was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
was meaningless. According to Leary, Meyer had sought him out for the purpose of learning how to conduct LSD sessions with these powerful men, including, she strongly implied, President John F. Kennedy, who was at that time her lover. According to Leary, Pinchot Meyer said she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high ranking government officials. Leary also claimed that Pinchot Meyer had asked him for help while in a state of fear for her own life after the assassination of President Kennedy.
In his biography Flashbacks
Flashbacks (book)
Flashbacks is Timothy Leary's autobiography published in 1983. It was reprinted in 1990 and 1997. The new edition has a foreword by William S. Burroughs, and a new afterword by Leary....
Leary claimed he had a call from Pinchot Meyer soon after the Kennedy assassination during which she sobbed and said, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast...They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid. Be careful." During the summer of 1964 Pinchot Meyer reportedly told friends she thought someone had gotten into her house while she was not there and later told a friend from Vassar, historian Elizabeth Eisenstein
Elizabeth Eisenstein
Elizabeth Lewisohn Eisenstein is an American historian of the French Revolution and early 19th century France. She is well-known for her work on the history of early printing, writing on the transition in media between the era of 'manuscript culture' and that of 'print culture', as well as the role...
, "she thought she had seen somebody leaving as she walked in."
Pinchot Meyer's biographer, journalist Nina Burleigh, is the author of articles for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine, the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, and New York Magazine, as well as several other critically acclaimed books. Although Burleigh does not draw a conclusion as to whether Meyer participated in LSD sessions with President Kennedy or other powerful figures, she also does not dismiss Leary's claims out of hand. Burleigh confirms Pinchot Meyer's own use of LSD, her involvement with Leary during Leary's tenure at Harvard, and that this involvement occurred at the same time as Pinchot Meyer's intimate association with President Kennedy. Burleigh also states that the timing of Pinchot Meyer's visits to Leary coincided with the dates of Meyer's known private meetings with Kennedy. Burleigh writes:
- Mary's visits to Timothy Leary during the time she was also Kennedy's lover suggest that Kennedy knew more about hallucinogenic drugs than the CIA might have been telling him. No one has ever confirmed that Kennedy tried LSD with Mary. But the timing of her visits to Timothy Leary do coincide with her known private meetings with the president.
LSD was not illegal in the U.S. at that time and its use to facilitate artistic endeavors was not uncommon in some of Pinchot Meyer's social circles.
Murder
On October 12, 1964, eleven months after John F. Kennedy's assassination and two weeks after the Warren CommissionWarren Commission
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963...
report was made public, Pinchot Meyer finished a painting and went for a walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
Chesapeake and Ohio Canal
The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, abbreviated as the C&O Canal, and occasionally referred to as the "Grand Old Ditch," operated from 1831 until 1924 parallel to the Potomac River in Maryland from Cumberland, Maryland to Washington, D.C. The total length of the canal is about . The elevation change of...
towpath in Georgetown. Mechanic Henry Wiggins was trying to fix a car on Canal Road and heard a woman cry out, "Someone help me, someone help me." Wiggins heard two gunshots and ran to a low wall looking upon the path where he saw "a black man in a light jacket, dark slacks, and a dark cap standing over the body of a white woman."
Pinchot Meyer's body had two bullet wounds, one at the back of the head and another in her heart. An FBI forensic expert later said "dark haloes on the skin around both entry wounds suggested they had been fired at close-range, possibly point-blank".
Minutes later a disheveled, soaking wet African-American man named Raymond Crump was arrested near the murder scene. No gun was ever found and Crump was never linked to any gun of the type used to murder Mary Pinchot Meyer. Newspaper reports described her former husband only as either an author or government official and did not mention Kennedy, although many journalists apparently were aware of Meyer's past marriage to a high ranking CIA official and her friendship with Kennedy.
When Crump came to trial, judge Howard Corcoran
Howard Francis Corcoran
Howard Francis Corcoran was a United States federal judge.Born in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Corcoran received an A.B. from Princeton University in 1928 and an LL.B. from Harvard Law School in 1931. He was a Department of Agriculture from 1933 to 1934. He was a Tennessee Valley Authority from 1934...
ruled Mary Pinchot Meyer's private life could not be disclosed in the courtroom. Corcoran had recently been appointed by President Lyndon Johnson. Pinchot Meyer’s background was also kept from Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree
Dovey Johnson Roundtree is an African American civil rights activist, ordained minister, and attorney. Her 1955 victory before the Interstate Commerce Commission in the first bus desegregation case to be brought before the ICC resulted in the only explicit repudiation of the separate but equal...
, Crump's lawyer, who later recalled she could find out almost nothing about the murder victim: "It was as if she existed only on the towpath on the day she was murdered." Crump was acquitted of all charges on July 29, 1965 and the murder remains unsolved (Crump went on to what has been described as a "horrific" life of crime).
Diary
In March 1976 James Truitt told the National Enquirer Meyer was having an affair with Kennedy. Truitt claimed Meyer had told his wife Anne she was keeping a diary and had asked her to safeguard it "if anything ever happened" to her. Anne Truitt, who was living in Tokyo when Meyer was murdered, called Tony (Mary's sister) and Ben Bradlee and told them of the diary and its location. (Ben Bradlee: "We didn't start looking until the next morning, when Tony and I walked around the corner a few blocks to Mary's house. It was locked, as we had expected, but when we got inside, we found James Angleton, and to our complete surprise he told us he, too, was looking for Mary's diary.") James Angleton was a high ranking CIA official, however that Angleton's wife, Cicely Angleton was another close, personal friend of Mary Meyer. Those who did read the diary reportedly said it confirmed Meyer's intimate friendship with Kennedy but gave no suggestion it contained any information about his assassination.Cord Meyer's later statements about the murder
Cord Meyer left the CIA in 1977. In his autobiography Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA he wrote, "I was satisfied by the conclusions of the police investigation that Mary had been the victim of a sexually motivated assault by a single individual and that she had been killed in her struggle to escape." However his former personal assistant Carol Delaney later claimed, "Mr. Meyer didn't for a minute think that Ray Crump had murdered his wife or that it had been an attempted rape. But, being an Agency man, he couldn't very well accuse the CIA of the crime, although the murder had all the markings of an in-house rubout."In February 2001 writer C. David Heymann asked Cord Meyer about Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder and he replied, "My father died of a heart attack the same year Mary was killed. It was a bad time." When asked who had murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer, the retired CIA official, six weeks before his own death from lymphoma
Lymphoma
Lymphoma is a cancer in the lymphatic cells of the immune system. Typically, lymphomas present as a solid tumor of lymphoid cells. Treatment might involve chemotherapy and in some cases radiotherapy and/or bone marrow transplantation, and can be curable depending on the histology, type, and stage...
, reportedly "hissed" back, "The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy."
See also
- An American AffairAn American AffairAn American Affair is an independent film starring Gretchen Mol, James Rebhorn, Noah Wyle, Perrey Reeves, Mark Pellegrino, and Cameron Bright, which was released theatrically by on February 27, 2009....
, a 2009 film starring Gretchen Mol as a character based on Mary Pinchot Meyer.
External links
- Phillip Nobile and Ron Rosenbaum, "The Curious Aftermath of JFK's Best and Brightest Affair," New Times, July 7, 1976, pp. 22–33.
- Undated photograph of Mary Pinchot Meyer, most likely from about 1940
- 44 Years Later, a Washington, D.C. Death Unresolved by Lance Morrow at smithsonianmag.com
- Photograph of Mary Pinchot Meyer (far right) with John F. Kennedy, taken about 1963
- Photograph of Mary Pinchot Meyer's body being examined by police at the spot where she was murdered, October 1964
