by Peter Janney
“This is a typical pattern of people involved in covert intelligence work,” Charles later reported to me. “I’ve come across this kind of thing many times. People like this don’t want to be found. They’re taught how to evade all the conventional bureaucracies and channels. They don’t leave any traces. These people work undercover in places like the Pentagon all the time. Given what I see here—the fact that he’s got no matching military record I can locate—it’s almost a certainty this guy Mitchell, whoever he was or is, had some kind of covert intelligence connection. It’s very strong in my opinion.”15
Sometimes serendipity entwines with providence. In December 2009, I read H. P. Albarelli’s recently published book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. Albarelli’s magnum opus took me by the hand and held me hostage for several days. Extensively researched, the book not only provided the most convincing account of how the CIA “terminated” one of its own, but possibly the best history ever written of the Agency’s infamous MKULTRA program. Albarelli and I soon began talking, and he inquired about my progress. I mumbled something about the trail having ended at “1500 Arlington Boulevard” in Arlington, Virginia. After a moment of silence, Albarelli told me he had lived at that same address when he was a student at George Washington University many years ago. I then mentioned my phantom—William L. Mitchell—and some of the dead-end information I had amassed. “William Mitchell?” Albarelli repeated. He said he would get back to me later; he thought he had come across the name before. Indeed, he had.
An important Albarelli source—someone whom the author had known for many years and whose information had been corroborated by other sources—had revealed in September 2001 something more about the identity of William Mitchell. The source, whose name Albarelli did not want to reveal, specifically identified a man by the name of “William Mitchell” as a member of “Army Special Forces kill teams” that operated domestically for the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA). The source said he and Mitchell had become friends over the years. When Albarelli had further pressed his source in 2001 as to Mitchell’s identity, he said Mitchell was often connected with the Air Force, and that he sometimes used the aliases “Allen Crawford” and “Walter Morse.” At this juncture in his 2001 interview, Albarelli had written in his notes that Mitchell had been “involved” in the “Mary Cord Meyer case.” “Meyer murdered on towpath,” Albarelli’s notes read. Mitchell “did it,” the source had told him, “at the request of the Agency’s [CIA’s] Domestic K [contracts] Office in D.C.”16
Stunned by this sudden revelation, I asked Albarelli if he would telephone the source and confirm several of the statements he’d made during his 2001 interview. In his first attempt at this follow-up, the source wasn’t home, but his wife, whom Albarelli also knew well, was. He asked her about Mitchell. She clearly remembered him, but wasn’t at all fond of him. Mitchell and her husband, she told Albarelli, always drank too much when they were together; “they were drunk and crazy for days,” she said. She found herself “nervous” when Mitchell was around because “he had guns, all kinds of guns, all the time.” She told Albarelli that during one of Mitchell’s visits, things had gotten so out of control, she had asked him to leave.17
When Albarelli called back later that day, he reported he did finally reach the source, but he wasn’t amenable to talking about Mitchell, or even acknowledging whether Mitchell was still alive. Did Mitchell have kids? Albarelli asked. “Yeah, he had a few kids but I never met them or his wife,” the source replied. (The reader will come to know why this question was important.) Bluntly, Albarelli then asked whether he remembered telling him in 2001 that Mitchell had killed Mary Meyer. “Heard he killed a lot of people,” replied the now tightlipped source. “What difference does it make now?”18
By the end of 1992, “playing his cards close to his vest,” Leo Damore had learned something else. In the course of his interview with Timothy Leary in 1990, Damore told Leary that Mary’s real diary still existed and that he believed he had discovered its whereabouts. “Angleton offered the diary in 1980 to a person who I know…. I know where it is,” Damore told Leary. Then he added, “The man who I believe has it is maddeningly this week in Hawaii.”19 Leo had sometimes cryptically referred to Mary’s diary as “the Hope Diamond” of the Kennedy assassination, and perhaps for this reason, he faithfully guarded not only the fact that he had eventually come into possession of it, but its contents as well. He finally revealed both to his attorney Jimmy Smith on March 31, 1993, in a conversation that will shortly be discussed in more detail.
The person to whom Angleton had shown Mary’s diary in 1980 was a man named Bernie Yoh. In 1980, Yoh ran an organization in Washington called Accuracy in Media (AIM). Founded in 1969, AIM described its purpose as the pursuit of “fairness, balance, and accuracy in news reporting.” It claimed to do for print media what the Fox News Network now purports to do for TV news—providing “fair and balanced” reporting. A simple survey of AIM’s intimate connection with many conservative causes, however, left little doubt as to its real purpose: AIM was a mouthpiece for extreme right-wing views. In addition, early in the Vietnam era, Bernie Yoh had his own affiliations with CIA undercover work, although he denied ever having worked for the Agency.20
When David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors was published in 1980, Newsweek carried a positive review of the book that had infuriated former CIA counterintelligence chief Jim Angleton, only because of Martin’s unflattering portrayal of him. The book details the cause of Angleton’s termination in disgrace from the Agency in late 1974. His paranoia had, for years, paralyzed crucial intelligence gathering by the Agency. He had also violated innumerable laws, as had the Agency as a whole, through mail tampering and privacy invasions of hundreds of individual citizens. Finally, CIA director William Colby fired him. Angleton was devastated. He sought out Bernie Yoh at AIM, asking him to “counter-spin” the recent Newsweek story in a way that was favorable to him. Yoh willingly obliged by publishing “An AIM Report” in defense of Angleton.
In his 1990 interview with Leo Damore, Bernie Yoh revealed more about Angleton’s astonishing behavior in 1980—a time when the battered, bruised reputation of the CIA’s most elite Cold Warrior had taken a huge tumble. The grateful Angleton started hanging out at AIM’s offices. One day, according to Yoh, Angleton had “flashed his credentials,” mentioning JFK and the towpath murder of his mistress Mary Pinchot Meyer, also mentioning her tell-all diary.
“Angleton had said, and not without a bit of pride showing,” Yoh told Damore, “‘I have the diary,’ almost wanting me to ask him to produce it, eager to share the special secrets he had tended with such skill during his glory days at CIA.” That conversation, Yoh remembered, had taken place in light of some prior discussion about the Kennedy administration and related matters. At the time, Yoh himself had not fully grasped what Angleton was actually referring to.
“What diary?” Yoh asked Angleton at the time.
“That woman that was killed in Georgetown. I took care of everything,” Angleton had said. According to Yoh, Angleton then produced the diary which he still had intact in his possession, and handed it to Yoh—to show him “the real Kennedy.”
“It’s her diary,” Angleton said, as he gave what was presumably a copy to Yoh.21 At some point, Yoh shared with Damore what Angleton had given him. This was how Leo Damore had finally come into possession of Mary’s true diary.
In his conclusive attempt to finally understand how the murder of Mary Meyer had been orchestrated, Leo Damore consulted former Air Force colonel and CIA liaison L. Fletcher Prouty in 1992.22 Prouty, the reader will recall, knew all about the inner workings of America’s intelligence apparatus, having been summoned to countless classified briefings with Allen Dulles and his brother, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, even at their homes when necessary. Prouty had also attended many of the CIA’s MKULTRA meetings and was considered part of “the nerve cent
er” of the “military–industrial complex” during its establishment in the late 1950s. As one of the architects of America’s secret government, Fletcher Prouty had created a network of clandestine agents throughout the military and other government agencies, including the FBI. But after facilitating many CIA coups d’état around the globe, including military support for these operations, he became deeply disturbed when he discovered the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. He resigned his Air Force commission in 1964 and began writing the secret history of the Cold War.23 Prouty’s two books, The Secret Team (1973) and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (1996), have remained two of the most authoritative works of that era. It wasn’t an accident that film director Oliver Stone used Fletcher Prouty as the template for the character of X, played by Donald Sutherland, in the film JFK.
At the end of 1992, unable to locate Mitchell or any forwarding address, Leo Damore had reached an impasse. His last resort was sending a letter to Mitchell to his last known address—the CIA “safe house” at 1500 Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia. While the actual contents of Damore’s letter were never known, it had to have contained something that would motivate Mitchell to reply; and that could have only been what Damore had learned from Fletcher Prouty. Had Prouty, in fact, revealed Mitchell’s true identity? It was never known. But sometime between the evening of March 30, 1993, and early morning of March 31, Leo Damore’s telephone rang. The caller identified himself as “William Mitchell.” He had received Leo’s letter, he said, and had also read Leo’s book Senatorial Privilege. He agreed to talk with Damore, but made it clear he didn’t want to be labeled the fall guy in history. The two reportedly talked for four hours.
At approximately 8:30 on the morning of March 31, 1993, the telephone of James (“Jimmy”) H. Smith, Esq., in Falmouth, Massachusetts, began to ring. Jimmy Smith and Leo Damore were the closet of friends. Their camaraderie deep, they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. Often, as they parted, either in person or on the phone, Leo would invariably give his friend, a stalwart Boston College alumnus, his favorite parting shot, “… and fuck Holy Cross [college]!” Jimmy was also Damore’s attorney, and Leo had dedicated his 1988 book Senatorial Privilege to him, for it had been Jimmy who years earlier introduced Leo to Senator Ted Kennedy’s cousin Joe Gargan—the man who ultimately would reveal to Damore what had been taking place behind the scenes while Mary Joe Kopechne’s drowned body lay trapped underwater in Ted Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick.
Jimmy Smith had returned to his private law practice after a stint as a U.S. magistrate and federal trial judge. A longtime Kennedy insider, and a member of the elite Kennedy “Irish Mafia,” Smith had been one of Robert Kennedy’s chief advance men for his presidential campaign in 1968. As an honorary pallbearer at Bobby’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral funeral in New York, Jimmy had stood by the casket “at the last hour,” along with Kenny O’Donnell, George Plimpton, Jimmy Breslin, and others. Having endured Jack’s assassination five years earlier, Smith was so traumatized by Bobby’s death, he momentarily lost his struggle with alcoholism. Scarred again by the second Kennedy assassination, Kenny O’Donnell lost his own battle and died in 1977. Determined to save himself, Smith had returned to his law practice on Cape Cod and recommitted to a life of sobriety.
“I’ve solved the case!” were Leo’s first excited words when Smith answered the phone. Reaching for the yellow legal pad he unfailingly kept on his desk next to his phone, attorney James H. Smith began writing what would turn out to be six pages of notes, all of which he meticulously saved. The following account is reconstructed from Smith’s original notes (see appendix 3), interpreted and explained by Smith over many hours of reviewing their meaning and context.
“I cracked it!” Smith remembered Leo shouting on the phone. “I got the guy—and the [JFK] assassination link, too!” Smith quickly began writing, trying to keep up with Leo’s exhilaration. Damore mentioned a name, and Jimmy asked him to repeat it: “William L. Mitchell,” said Damore. “He was an ex-FBI man!” Damore then revealed that he had Mary’s real diary in his possession (“The diary found!”) and that in the diary, Mary had made a connection between the Kennedy assassination and the CIA that involved “James Angleton.” Mitchell, said Damore, had confessed to him a few hours earlier that morning: The murder of Mary Meyer had been “a CIA operation” in which Mitchell had been the assassin.24
“Mitchell” confirmed that his name, “William L. Mitchell,” was an alias and that he now lived under another alias in Virginia. He said his position at the Pentagon in 1964 had been just “a light bulb job,” a cover for covert intelligence work. He had done stints in the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy, he told Damore, all of which were also part of his cover, and he had also been “an FBI man” when circumstances required it. His listed residence at 1500 Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, Mitchell told Damore, was in fact a CIA safe house. He was now seventy-four years old and had five children.
It had been “an operation,” Mitchell disclosed. He had been “assigned” in September 1964 to be part of a “surveillance team” that was monitoring Mary Meyer. Mitchell appeared to suggest that the trigger for the surveillance had been the release of the Warren Report: “24 Sept Warren Report. She hit [the] roof.” Damore reiterated that Mary had bought a copy of the paperback version of the Warren Report when it first came out.25 She was outraged by the cover-up taking place. According to Smith’s notes, “She went to husb [ex-husband, Cord Meyer] + [and] husb [Cord] to Angleton …” This particular detail came from Mary’s diary. Damore was emphatic: It was the “Angleton connection w/CIA [with the CIA]” and the CIA’s orchestration of the events in Dallas that put her in harm’s way. “Mary – stepped in shit! She would not back down. Her [something] too strong + [and] too powerful.”26
Throughout 1993, Leo Damore had always been emphatic, as he was that morning with Jimmy Smith, that it wasn’t Mary’s affair with Jack that had put her in jeopardy; it was what she had been able to put together, as Smith’s notes revealed, about “the murder of JFK.” Her indignation at the cover-up in the Warren Report pushed her to confront her ex-husband, Cord, and possibly Jim Angleton as well. Smith’s notes, however, indicated that it had to have been Cord who conveyed to Jim Angleton how infuriated Mary had become. Whether Mary subsequently had a separate confrontation with Jim Angleton alone, or with Cord present, wasn’t clear. But it was almost certain both men realized—knowing Mary as well as they did—that she wasn’t the kind of person who was going to keep quiet.27
Regarding Mitchell, Damore told Smith: “I got [the] word [about him]—he’s a killer—+ [and] he [also] has 5 kids!”28 It appeared “William L. Mitchell” had been a trained assassin. Fletcher Prouty’s former network of agents had included FBI personnel as well as CIA operatives.29 It also gave further credence to what author H. P. Albarelli had been told by his longtime source in 2001: that “Mitchell” had been “involved” in the Mary Meyer murder, and that he, in fact, “did it at the request of the Agency’s [CIA’s] Domestic K [contracts] Office in D.C.”30 Mitchell, it appears, told Damore something almost identical: “On the murder … A CIA K [contract]…. A CIA individual.”31
On page 5 of his notes, Smith wrote: “Leo had talked to Prouty (Oliver Stone guy.)” It then appeared that Fletcher Prouty had assisted Damore in understanding more clearly how Mary Meyer’s murder had itself been a microcosmic copy of what had taken place in Dallas. Like Lee Harvey Oswald, Ray Crump Jr. had been used as the patsy. And, as in Dallas, Mary’s murder had all been planned in advance, designed to take place in an open setting, away from home territory—creating the illusion of an arbitrary, indiscriminate randomness to explain the event. The murder, Smith’s notes read, had been “set up away from [Mary’s] home in [a] public place.” It was followed by the speedy apprehension of a plausible suspect, a patsy who happened to have been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. The police would also unknowin
gly feed the details to the media that would, in turn, be used to publicly imply the suspect’s guilt, complete with mug shots of suspect Ray Crump in handcuffs at the murder scene and the police station. It had all been “standard CIA procedure,” Mitchell said to Damore, as recorded in Smith’s notes. The couple on the towpath that morning—and seen by police officer Roderick Sylvis—had been spotters for the operation, Mitchell disclosed, as was “the bermuda [sic] shorts” runner that no one had seen except Mitchell.32
Scribbled at the bottom of page 3 of Jimmy’s notes were the words “New Agent Richard Pine.”33 Richard Pine had recently become Leo Damore’s new literary agent. “Did Leo ever tell you that he thought he had solved the murder of Mary Meyer?” I asked Pine in the fall of 2004.
“Yeah, I believe he did,” recalled Pine. “I remember he had lots of tape. I think I remember he kept them in some kind of private place where no one could get at it…. He felt he had such dynamite material on such powerful people.”34 Yet despite the Mitchell bombshell revelations Damore possessed, all of which he recorded, he never turned in a manuscript for “Burden of Guilt” to his new agent. Two and half years later, Leo Damore, on October 2, 1995, would take his life one day after William Safire reviewed Ben Bradlee’s memoir A Good Life in the New York Times.
Damore’s former wife, June Davison, kindly gave me as much assistance as she could in my attempt to locate Damore’s tapes. At my request in 2004, she made searches of their home in Old Saybrook, Connecticut, but could find nothing. I even went to Damore’s last residence in Centerbrook, Connecticut, where he had received the phone call from Mitchell and then placed the call to Jimmy Smith on the morning of March 31, 1993. Fruitlessly, I scoured the area around the building, thinking he might have buried the tapes somewhere near, but to no avail.
