by Peter Janney
“Crowley knew Stahl [Gregory Douglas] was crazy enough to publish whatever he gave him,” Kimmel revealed in an interview for this book. Did he, Kimmel, believe Crowley wanted the real story of the Kennedy assassination to be revealed? I asked
“That’s why he gave it all to Stahl as opposed to Trento or someone else,” replied Kimmel. At the time, so alarmed had Kimmel finally become, he ordered an FBI team to investigate the matter, even dispatching a female agent to Crowley’s house. “It was Bob’s relationship with him [Gregory Douglas] she was investigating,” recalled Crowley’s wife, Emily, in 2007. “The FBI lady was very down on him. I’m not sure why, but she was.”25
It’s not clear whether anyone has ever seen, or verified, the documents Crowley allegedly sent to Douglas, other than what Douglas included in his 2002 book Regicide, which highlighted Crowley’s Operation Zipper record. Nor has anyone ever been able to listen to any of the Crowley-Douglas conversations that Douglas allegedly recorded. When I asked Douglas to produce the tapes, he said he had destroyed them, but later contradicted himself. However, the transcriptions of these alleged calls were available. I reviewed many of them in detail, traveling to Chicago to meet with Douglas on several occasions. Some of the transcripts remain not only intriguing, but also fascinating in terms of certain pieces of information—including specific details about Mary and Cord Meyer that Douglas, in my opinion, could never have fabricated.
In January 1996, Douglas began asking Crowley for specifics about the Kennedy assassination. Point-blank, he asked Crowley: “Was Oswald a patsy?” Crowley’s answer was simple and complete: “Sure. He worked for us once in Japan at Atsugi and also for ONI [Office of Naval Intelligence]. Not high level, but he was a soldier after all.” Crowley then mentioned what a “first class bitch” Oswald’s wife, Marina, had been to deal with when she finally realized the impasse she was in. “No wonder she did what we told her,” he said.
The two men then chauvinistically ruminated about “the mystery of women,” with Crowley finally blurting out, “Most company [CIA] wives are a pack of nuts. Did I mention Cord’s wife?” Douglas vaguely remembered the name Cord Meyer from somewhere, but he wasn’t sure. He appeared to know nothing in 1996 about Mary Meyer.
Crowley then described Cord’s wife as a “very attractive woman but her sister [Tony] was even better. She married Bradlee who is one of the company’s [CIA’s] men. He’s on the Post now. Cord’s wife was what they call a free spirit, liked modern art, ran around naked in people’s gardens and so on. Pretty, but strange and unstable. She and Cord got along for a time but time changes everything. They do say that, don’t they? They broke up and Cord was so angry at being dumped, he hated her from then on. She took up with Kennedy. Did you know that?”
“No,” replied Douglas.
“Oh yes. After Mary—that was her name, Mary. You haven’t heard about her?”
“No,” Douglas said again.
“After Kennedy bought the farm,” Crowley continued, “ex-Mrs. Meyer was annoyed. She had become the steady girlfriend and he was very serious about her. Jackie was brittle, uptight and very greedy. Poor people usually are. Mary had money and far more class and she knew how to get along with Jack. Trouble was, she got along too well. She didn’t approve of the mass orgies and introduced him to pot and other things. Not a good idea. Increased chances for blackmail or some erratic public behavior. But after Dallas, she began to brood and then started to talk. Of course she had no proof but when people like that start to run their mouths, there can be real trouble.”
“What was the outcome?” asked Douglas.
“We terminated her, of course,” Crowley told him.
“That I didn’t know. How?”
“Had one of our cleaning men nail her down by the towpath while she was out for her daily jog.”
“Wasn’t that a bit drastic?”
“Why? If you knew the damage she could cause us.”
“Were you the man?” Douglas wanted to know.
“No, Jim Angleton was. And [Ben] Bradlee, her brother-in-law, was in the know. After she assumed room temperature, he and Jim [Angleton] went over to Mary’s art studio to see if she had any compromising papers, and ran off with her diary. I have a copy of it.”
“Could I see it?” asked Douglas.
“Now, Gregory, don’t ask too many questions. Maybe later.”
Later on, during the same conversation, Crowley referred to his colleague Cord Meyer as a “nasty, opinionated, loud, general asshole.” Douglas was curious to know how Cord felt about the CIA “terminating” his wife. Crowley replied matter-of-factly: “Ex-wife. Let’s be accurate now. Ex-wife. When Jim [Angleton] talked to Cord about this, Cord didn’t let him finish his fishing expedition. He was in complete agreement about shutting her up. Gregory, you can’t reason with people like her. She [Mary] hated Cord, loved Kennedy, and saw things in the Dallas business that were obvious to insiders or former insiders, but she made the mistake of running her mouth. One of the wives had a talk with her about being quiet, but Mary was on a tear and that was that.” Crowley then added, “It wasn’t my decision [to “terminate” Mary Meyer]. I was there, but Jim [Angleton] and the others made the final decision. You know how it goes.”26
The two continued their conversations throughout 1996 about various aspects of the Kennedy assassination, but in early April of that year the subject of Mary Meyer came up again. In this instance, Crowley talked about how the sale of Newsweek to the Washington Post had been engineered by the CIA’s Richard Helms.
“In the early 1960s,” Crowley said, “Helms told Bradlee that one of his relatives wanted to sell Newsweek, and Bradlee brokered the deal with the Post people. We [the CIA] had a firm ‘in’ with the Post [already] and now with Newsweek, a powerful opinion molder and a high-circulation national magazine.” Crowley continued: “Then there was the towpath murder. Cord’s ex-wife was one of Kennedy’s women and everyone felt she had too much influence with him, not to mention her hippifying him with LSD and marijuana. We can discuss the Kennedy business some other time, but Mary was threatening to talk and you know about the rest.”27
Without access to Douglas’s tape-recorded phone calls with Bob Crowley, it is impossible to confirm whether the voice speaking was Crowley’s, and therefore impossible to verify the authenticity of the statements. Moreover, the unsavory character of “Gregory Douglas” (a.k.a. Peter Stahl and/or Walter Storch) leaves a great deal to be desired. And yet there remain details included here that are confirmed by other, more credible sources already presented.
First of all, Crowley’s allegation that Cord Meyer was devastated after Mary left their marriage was true. It was well known to Cord’s CIA colleagues and closest friends that he had been furious. “Cord was so angry at being dumped, he hated her from then on,” said Crowley. Indeed, Mary’s departure from the marriage had turned Cord upside down. He became increasingly hostile, and increasingly alcoholic. Cord, the reader will recall, had once lunged for Ben Bradlee’s throat during a Washington dinner party conversation subsequent to his divorce from Mary. Cord’s Yale classmate, U.S. attorney David Acheson, recalled Cord physically threatening to fight another guest “at a dinner party at my house. We had to tell him to calm down. Cord could be downright mean.”28 Crowley’s account also dovetailed with what journalist Charlie Bartlett, Cord’s close friend and Yale classmate, told me: “Cord was shaken after his divorce. He played on the wild side. He was drinking too much and making an ass out of himself.”29
Second, Crowley mentions twice the fact that both Angleton and Bradlee together were in Mary’s studio sometime after her murder that evening. According to Crowley’s account, it appears that Jim Angleton had, in fact, accompanied Ben Bradlee to Mary’s studio on the night of the murder, and that this was when Mary’s real diary had been stolen. How could Crowley—or Gregory Douglas—have fabricated the content of Bradlee’s obscure 1965 trial testimony, if it weren’t true? Bradlee himself appeared to have lost
track of his various versions of the story, as he completely contradicted his own sworn testimony thirty years later in his memoir.
Leo Damore told his attorney Jimmy Smith that he had recovered Mary’s diary (“The diary found!”), and that it, or a copy of it, had apparently come from Bernie Yoh in 1990, to whom Jim Angleton himself had given it in 1980. That likely meant that Angleton had made at least one copy of the diary, before giving what he had to Yoh.
Damore, the reader will recall, had been very specific about what was in the diary: “Mary made connection w/it [the Kennedy assassination] … CIA involved … James Angleton.” Her murder, said Damore, had been “an operation. … standard CIA procedure.” “It wasn’t the affair,” he said, “but the murder of JFK” that had done Mary in. “Mary – stepped in shit! She would not back down …”30
As Crowley allegedly told Douglas, “she [Mary] made the mistake of running her mouth … she was threatening to talk.” He also said: “Good old Ben and his friend Jim went to Mary’s little converted garage studio which Ben just happened to own, and finally found her diary. They took it away and just as well they did. She had it all down in there, every bit of the drug use, all kinds of bad things JFK told her as pillow talk, and her inside knowledge of the hit [Kennedy’s assassination]. Not good.”31 Crowley’s account of what Mary’s diary actually contained further dovetailed with what Damore had told his attorney, Jimmy Smith, was in the copy of the diary that he (Damore) now possessed. Mary’s mosaic had been completed. She had finally put the pieces together and was getting ready to talk. Alas, it was Mary’s “inside knowledge of the hit” that made it necessary for her to be “terminated.”
Intriguing also, was Crowley’s statement about how they had used another CIA wife to try to persuade Mary to keep quiet: “One of the wives had a talk with her about being quiet but Mary was on a tear and that was that.” The reader will also recall from a previous chapter CIA contract agent Robert Morrow’s account of a conversation with his CIA boss, Marshall Diggs, in which Diggs told him the following: “… there’s a certain lady [Mary Meyer] in town who has an inside track to Langley, and most importantly, to Bobby [Kennedy]. Fortunately, an intimate friend of mine is one of her best friends…. [Mary] Meyer claimed to my friend that she positively knew that Agency-affiliated Cuban exiles and the Mafia were responsible for killing John Kennedy. Knowing of my association with [Mario] Kohly, my friend immediately called me.”32 Was Diggs’s “intimate friend” the CIA wife that Crowley said “had a talk with her [Mary] about being quiet”? Additionally, recall that right before his death, Robert Morrow told his biographer-to-be, John Williams, that he was more sure than ever that “Angleton did it.”33
If the Crowley account approximates some level of truth, it also increases the likelihood that Mary and Jack did have some involvement with psychedelics, that Mary had been “hippifying him with LSD and marijuana.” Crowley also mentions that “everyone [within the CIA] felt she had too much influence with him.” Kenny O’Donnell had expressed a similar fear regarding Mary’s influence. Mary did, in fact, have significant influence with Jack, particularly in matters that involved the pursuit of world peace after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Was it any surprise then that Jack, according to O’Donnell, wanted to divorce Jackie so that he could be with Mary after he left the White House?34
There is one last linchpin to the Crowley-Douglas caper that gives it further credibility. After the publication of Joseph Trento’s The Secret History of the CIA in 2001, Gregory Douglas sent Trento a congratulatory email in November 2001. It read, in part, as follows:
From: G Douglas [email address withheld]
Sent: Monday, November 19, 200 11:17 P.M.
To: Joe Trento [email address withheld]7
Subject:
Dear Mr. Trento:
I got your address from Walter Storch.
I enjoyed reading your book on the CIA and was gratified to see your comments on the CIA’s employment of Heinrich Müller on page 29. Also gratified to note your citation of Crowley’s CIA files as a source.
Bob sent me two large boxes of his files in 1996 in which his connections with Müller were documented therein. I have written six books on the subject of Müller and his CIA connections and authoritative support is certainly helpful.35
Here, Douglas noted Trento had verified, through Crowley’s bequeathed papers and files, that Heinrich Müller had, in fact, been employed by the CIA. Douglas then mentioned the fact that Crowley had sent him “two large boxes of his files in 1996.” Trento appeared to be oblivious to the Douglas bombshell statement. In a subsequent email communication later that same day, Douglas also mentioned “there is a new book coming out around Christmas [2001] on the Kennedy assassination with great emphasis on papers from Crowley.” Unbeknownst to Joe Trento, Douglas was referring to his own book, Regicide.
It would be another year – November 2002 – before Trento read Regicide; and when he did, he began to see red. He threatened Douglas immediately:
From: Joe Trento [email address deleted]
To: G Douglas [email address deleted]
Subject: RE:
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2002 7:14 P.M.
Just read a copy of the Kennedy book. I want you to know, as I told Walter earlier, that I am the literary executor of Bob Crowley and that I have the legal right to all of his documents. I notice that you are using documents from him in your book and this has to be stopped right now. This is a gross slander on the reputation of a fine American and, I want you to know, these papers are all classified documents under Federal law and you may not keep or use them. I intend to write to your publisher and inform him that if he does not cease and desist selling this book, I will sue him and you. Also, I have strongly suggested to both Emily and Greg [Bob Crowley’s son] that they sue you for defaming Bob’s good name. Now you can stop all of this legal action by sending me a full list of all the papers you got from Bob and then sending me the actual papers. Apparently you got an original file that Bob made a copy of and gave to Bill Corson. This copy was retrieved by myself after Bill’s death and returned to the proper agency but apparently, Bob had sent out the original to you. As you know, Bob was badly failing in his last years and I and others, including Tom Kimmel, think it was a low blow for you to trick a trusting Bob into giving you sensitive papers. If you want to avoid future problems, I suggest you do as I say, make a list of all your documents you got from Bob, send it to me and then return all of these documents to me immediately. Tom Kimmel has told me all about you and I want you to know I won’t hold still for any monkey business from you and if you don’t want the FBI knocking your door down, do as I say.
Joe36
Joe Trento had just inadvertently confirmed that the Crowley documents Douglas had in his possession were, indeed, legitimate. That included the Crowley “Master Plan”—the file entitled “Operation Zipper,” which was a time line and a logistical account of telephone calls, meetings, people, and places, all indicating how the CIA had orchestrated the plan to assassinate the president of the United States.37 Nowhere in Trento’s book The Secret History of the CIA does he even mention or allude to Crowley’s “Operation Zipper” document (although Trento was well aware it existed); nor had Trento discussed the CIA’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Instead, Joe Trento had done what Bob Crowley feared he would do: He pimped Angleton’s ridiculous, longtime public assertion that the Kennedy assassination was the work of the Soviet KGB using Lee Harvey Oswald as a tool.38 Trento appeared to be unaware (or possibly colluding to obfuscate the truth) that Angleton himself had designed the demonic, viral master plan that would paralyze the entire national security apparatus, including the CIA, except for a “gifted few,” from discovering the real conspiracy that had actually taken place under Angleton’s direction. Trento’s shoddy journalism was both underhanded and deceitful.39
Likely, it was attorney Plato Cacheris who alerted Trento to the importance of Corson’s safe-deposit box. In
any case, Trento noted the contents were “returned to the proper agency,” undoubtedly referring to the CIA. But he also finally realized it had only been a copy—”apparently, Bob [Crowley] had sent out the original to you.” The cat, indeed, was out of the bag!
Two hours after receiving the Trento threat, Gregory Douglas responded in kind:
From: G Douglas [email address deleted]
Sent: Sunday, November 03, 2002 9:15 P.M.
To: Joe Trento [email address deleted]
Subject: RE:
Mr. Trento:
The documents I received from Bob Crowley, mailed by his son Greg, in 1996, were freely given to me as an author. Bob had been assisting me with important material for several years previously.
His only caveat was that I not make use of these before he died and I have not done so.
I know from Bob that he gave a copy of the Kennedy file to Corson and that it vanished after his death.
What I have are the originals and also the originals of many other fascinating subjects.
Please be advised that Bob sent these to me prior to his death and that they therefore do not fall under any literary property over which you now claim to have rights.
In answer to your specific demands, be advised that I have no intention of sending you any list of this material in question and neither do I have any intention of sending you anything else.
In the event that you dare to address me again, I will personally post some of the more sensitive documents on the Internet and personally thank you for having sent me these from your own holdings of Crowley’s papers.
Bob told me you were a light weight hack and it is also obvious that you have no knowledge of the law.
