by Peter Janney
In his 1995 memoir A Good Life, the former executive editor of the Washington Post wrote that “[i]t was just after lunch” on the day of the murder when he received a telephone call from “my friend,” asking if he had been listening to the radio—a reference, presumably, to the broadcast bulletin that Cicely Angleton claimed had alarmed her. Bradlee hadn’t heard it. The caller also asked Bradlee if he knew where Mary Meyer was. He didn’t. “Someone [has] been murdered on the towpath,” Bradlee reported the caller saying. “From the description,” said the caller, “it sounded like Mary.”16 At the time of this call—”just after lunch,” wrote Bradlee—Mary had been dead for less than two hours, but the police still didn’t know her identity. That would only be finally confirmed “sometime after” six that evening, when Bradlee himself identified her corpse at the D.C. morgue.17
Until he wrote about it in 1995, Bradlee had never publicly mentioned the phone call, nor was this call ever referenced in any police report, or elicited in Bradlee’s testimony at Mary’s murder trial in July 1965. Furthermore, while Bradlee revealed the identity of the caller in his 1995 memoir, a fact that will later be discussed in some detail, he neglected to mention, or omitted deliberately, that his caller “friend” was a career, high-ranking CIA official.
Bradlee has never said why he waited more than thirty years to reveal the mysterious phone call. According to Rosenbaum, Bradlee had considered divulging Mary Meyer’s affair with the president in his 1975 book Conversations with Kennedy (published a year before the story first appeared in the National Enquirer), “until others pressured him against it.”18 It was never known who the “others” were. By the time Bradlee published A Good Life in 1995, his CIA friend—the man who had first alerted him on the day of Mary’s murder—had died.
The question still lingered: How could Bradlee’s CIA friend have known “just after lunch” that the murdered woman was Mary Meyer when the victim’s identity was still unknown to police? Did the caller wonder if the woman was Mary, or did he know it, and if so, how? This distinction is critical, and it goes to the heart of the mystery surrounding Mary Meyer’s murder.
So does the following detail. The CIA caller’s suggestion that something might have happened to Mary Meyer was plausible enough to send Bradlee rushing home to prepare his family for the possibility that the dead woman might, in fact, be his wife’s sister. But it would not be until that evening—sometime before six, in Bradlee’s recollection—that the police would knock on his door to inform him that the dead woman might be Mary. It was only then, shortly before six, that Bradlee went to the morgue to identify Mary’s body.19 This raises another question: If Bradlee had been given information “just after lunch” that Mary Meyer might have been killed, why didn’t he go to the D.C. morgue, or police, sooner?
According to the 1976 Rosenbaum and Nobile account, Jim and Cicely Angleton arrived at Mary Meyer’s house the evening of her murder to pick her up on their way to a Reed Whittemore poetry reading. They noticed her car was in the driveway, but her house was dark. They got no answer when they rang the doorbell. It wasn’t clear whether Mary’s house was locked, or whether, and how, the Angletons gained entry at that time. According to Angleton, it was at his wife’s urging that he called Mary’s answering service—perhaps from inside Mary’s house, perhaps from another location; it was never known. Either way, Rosenbaum and Nobile’s article claims that it was from Mary Meyer’s answering service that Jim Angleton first learned that she was dead. The Angletons then went straight from Mary’s house to Ben and Tony Bradlee’s house where, according to Rosenbaum, they gave their condolences and offered to help with funeral arrangements. How did Mary Meyer’s answering service know that she had been killed? And if the answering service had that information, who informed the service? Furthermore, why would they dispense it so freely? The police had only confirmed Mary’s identity when Bradlee identified her body “sometime after” 6:00 P.M.20
Ben Bradlee returned home that evening after identifying Mary’s body at the D.C. morgue. As he recalled in 1995, the Bradlee house was filling up with friends, “the phones rang, the doorbell buzzed. Food and drink materialized out of nowhere.” He was surprised to receive a call from Pierre Salinger, President Kennedy’s former press secretary, who was in Paris, expressing “his particular sorrow and condolences.” The Bradlees had not been aware that Mary Meyer had known Salinger, or in what context.21
Another overseas call, this one from Japan, wasn’t a surprise. Sculptor Anne Truitt had been one of Mary Meyer’s closest friends. She and her husband, Newsweek journalist James Truitt, had moved to Tokyo in early 1964. As already noted, Anne and her husband had been well aware of Mary’s relationship with the president, because Mary had confided to both of them about the affair. A number of other people in Jack Kennedy’s intimate circle knew about the relationship as well, but Ben Bradlee, once again, couldn’t seem to get his story straight. In 1976, according to Rosenbaum, Bradlee even denied “that he was aware of the JFK–Mary Meyer affair before the [1976] Enquirer story,” though he admitted to having read through the diary in 1964.22 Another source further confided to Rosenbaum that Bradlee had considered exposing the affair himself in his 1975 book Conversations with Kennedy, “until others pressured him against it.”23
Anne Truitt’s reason for calling the Bradlees wasn’t only to offer sympathy. According to Bradlee’s 1995 account, the purpose of Truitt’s call was to inform Ben and Tony of Mary’s “private diary,” and the fact that Mary had asked her—not Jim Angleton—”if anything ever happened to me,” to take possession of her diary. Anne issued an urgent directive that evening: The diary needed to be retrieved as soon as possible. Yet, according to Rosenbaum, Anne Truitt was desperately trying to locate Jim Angleton and found him at the Bradlees, whereupon she informed him about the need to procure Mary’s diary immediately. Mary Meyer “had entrusted to her friends James and Anne Truitt the fact of her affair with JFK and the existence of a diary recounting some of her evenings with the President,” noted Rosenbaum. It appears, then, with the Truitts in Japan, a decision was made by persons unknown that the diary was to now be safeguarded by Jim Angleton: “The Truitts were still in Tokyo when they received word of the towpath murder, and the responsibility for the diary was communicated to their mutual friend James Angleton, through still uncertain channels.”24
Presumably, the revelation of this detail came from Jim Truitt himself, since Anne did not make herself available to be interviewed for the 1976 Rosenbaum article. More important, however, there was never a record or any mention of Mary Meyer herself instructing the Truitts, before they left for Tokyo, to make sure Jim Angleton took charge of her diary, should unforeseen events in her life take place. As Rosenbaum insightfully noted: “Before the Truitts departed for Tokyo in 1963 [sic], where Jim [Truitt] was made Newsweek bureau chief, Mary discussed with them the disposition of her diary in the event of her death. She asked them to preserve it, and to show it to her son Quentin when he reached the age of 21.”25 Angleton’s role as “the diary’s protector” was likely invented immediately after the Truitts were informed of Mary’s demise, which brings us to a still unanswered question: Who called the Truitts in Tokyo to inform them of Mary’s death? What “channels” were employed to inform Angleton of his newfound responsibility for the diary? Both questions have remained “dangling in the wind,” and for good reason.26
The actual search for and discovery of Mary Meyer’s diary immediately following her murder, and the differing accounts given by the people involved, have taken on a mythology in Washington that to this day remains an impenetrable labyrinth of confusion and deceit. Like idiot Keystone Kops, none of Mary’s closest friends and family members could even get their own stories straight. There are at least three separate existing accounts of the search and discovery of what was eventually called “Mary’s diary.” A possible fourth account was never divulged by the cagey, tight-lipped, former journalist Anne Chamberlin,3 who, shortly after
Mary’s death, according to Leo Damore, allegedly fled Washington out of fear. And a fifth account, which emerged in December 2011, casts doubt on the veracity of almost every one of the principal actors in this drama.
The first account of the search for Mary’s diary came from the July 1976 Rosenbaum and Nobile New Times magazine article, just four months after the National Enquirer exposé in March. In Rosenbaum’s version, the search took place inside Mary’s house on Saturday, October 17, five days after her murder. It involved the Angletons, Tony Bradlee, Cord Meyer, and Anne Chamberlin. Ben Bradlee was not present. Jim Angleton, sometimes known as “the locksmith,” was said to have brought along his bag of tricks: “white gloves, drills,” and other implements that one might expect the CIA’s counterintelligence chief to possess. The search party tapped walls, and “looked in the fireplace and turned over bricks in the garden.” During the event, “the whiskey flowed,” as it often did in those days. Cord Meyer reportedly “lit a smoky fire,” while “Angleton pitched in washing dishes.” One of the party members reportedly stepped into the garden and issued a skyward plea, “Mary, where’s your damn diary?”27
The search party found nothing. Later that the same day, Tony Bradlee was said to have discovered a “locked steel box” in Mary’s studio. Inside it was one of Mary’s artist sketchbooks, a number of personal papers, and “hundreds of letters” of a personal nature. Some of them were reportedly “love letters” from Jack Kennedy, though it has never been established whether they had been written before or after he became president.28 Tony Bradlee later claimed that the presence of a few vague notes written in the sketchbook—allegedly including cryptic references to an affair with the president—persuaded her that she’d found her sister’s missing diary. But Mary’s artist sketchbook wasn’t her real diary. It was just a ruse.
The second account of the search for Mary’s diary came from Ben Bradlee’s 1995 memoir A Good Life. There, he asked the reader to believe that an iconic journalist wouldn’t have bothered reviewing the material already published in 1976 (in part, based on Rosenbaum’s interview with Bradlee), or even 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.”29 According to Rosenbaum, Angleton was furious at Bradlee’s claim, calling him a liar, and denying he had ever been at the studio.30 Bradlee went on to say, “We missed the diary the first time, but Tony found it an hour later.”
What’s stunning and fascinating about this account was that it completely contradicted Bradlee’s sworn testimony at Mary’s murder trial in 1965. There, he testified he was inside Mary’s studio on the night of her murder—with no mention of any trouble whatsoever gaining entrance. Presumably, this took place after Anne Truitt’s phone call from Japan alerting both Angleton and Bradlee that Mary had kept a diary of her affair with Kennedy, though Angleton was undoubtedly already aware of Mary’s diary long before her murder, as the reader will come to understand in a later chapter. At the trial in July 1965, prosecuting attorney Alfred Hantman asked Bradlee the following:
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. 31
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. Furthermore, if he had no trouble gaining entrance on the night of the murder, why the need of “a few tools to remove the simple padlock” the following day? Had “the locksmith” Angleton facilitated Bradlee’s entrance that night? If Mary’s actual diary was in her studio that night, it was likely stolen by Bradlee and Angleton at that time—the night of the murder—and given to Angleton for safekeeping.
A third account of the diary search came from Cicely Angleton’s and Anne Truitt’s November 1995 letter to the New York Times in response to William Safire’s review of the 1995 Bradlee memoir. The two women for some reason felt it particularly urgent “to correct what in our opinion is an error in Ben Bradlee’s autobiography.” They wrote:
This error occurs in Mr. Bradlee’s account of the discovery and disposition of Mary Pinchot Meyer’s personal diary. The fact is that Mary Meyer asked Anne Truitt to make sure that in the event of anything happening to Mary while Anne was in Japan, James Angleton take this diary into his safekeeping.
When she learned that Mary had been killed, Anne Truitt telephoned person-to-person from Tokyo for James Angleton. She found him at Mr. Bradlee’s house, where Angleton and his wife, Cicely had been asked to come following the murder.
In the phone call, relaying Mary Meyer’s specific instructions, Anne Truitt told Angleton for the first time [author’s italics], that there was a diary; and, in accordance with Mary Meyer’s explicit request, Anne Truitt asked Angleton to search for and to take charge of this diary.32
“This search was carried out,” Mrs. Angleton affirms, “in Mary Meyer’s house in the presence of her sister, Tony Bradlee, and the Angletons, and one other friend of Mary Meyer’s.” That unidentified friend was Anne Chamberlin, still not wanting her name brought into the fray even thirty years later. But the Angleton-Truitt letter never revealed the date of the search, though it did assert that neither Cord Meyer nor Ben Bradlee were present. The two Mary Meyer confidantes then concluded their letter with the following: “When Tony Bradlee found the diary and several papers bundled together in Mary Meyer’s studio, she gave the entire package to Angleton and asked him to burn it. Angleton followed this instruction in part by burning the loose papers. He also followed Mary Meyer’s instruction and safeguarded the diary. Some years later, he honored a request from Tony Bradlee that he deliver it to her. Subsequently, Tony Bradlee burned the diary in the presence of Anne Truitt.”33
Anne Truitt and Cicely Angleton now wanted the public to believe that Jim Angleton had “safeguarded” the diary on instructions from Mary Meyer. But if Mary had truly wanted Angleton to take possession of her diary in the event of her death, why wo
uldn’t she have told him so herself? According to journalist William Safire, “in the mid-1970’s” (the time when both the National Enquirer exposé and the Rosenbaum article had been published), Angleton’s spiel was that it was only his “loyal concern for the slain President’s reputation [that] led him to search for and destroy Meyer’s diary,”34 yet he never once mentioned that Mary Meyer herself had requested him to take possession of her diary, or destroy any part of it. Jim Angleton was a consummate, pathological liar and a master of duplicity—not only to Safire, but to everyone else—except to his close friend and colleague Cord Meyer and possibly in this instance Ben Bradlee, as the reader will eventually discover.
Furthermore, Jim Angleton never destroyed anything.35 And both Anne Truitt and Cicely Angleton in 1995, it appears, either intentionally left out another critically important piece of the fable, or chose not to reveal a new level of subterfuge that would finally be inadvertently divulged at the end of 2011 by the Angleton children. It was this: In the fall of 2011, Tony Bradlee died. Reviewing her life in her obituary, the Washington Post quoted Ben Bradlee’s memoir A Good Life: “The Bradlees saw CIA counterintelligence chief James J. Angleton picking the padlock on [Mary] Meyer’s Georgetown art studio in an attempt to retrieve her diary.”36 This so upset Angleton’s three children that they wrote a letter to the Post editor on December 2, 2011, in an attempt to correct the account. In doing so, the Angleton children made public for the first time the following (see author’s italics below):
Anne Truitt, a friend of Tony Bradlee and Bradlee’s sister, Mary Meyer, was abroad when Meyer was killed in the District. Truitt called Bradlee and said that Meyer had asked her to request that Angleton retrieve and burn certain pages of her diary if anything happened to her [author’s italics].
