Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace

by Peter Janney

  3. Ibid., p. 178.

  4. Ibid., pp. 136–137.

  5. Ibid., p. 137.

  6. Henry Wiggins, interview by Leo Damore, Washington, D.C., April 2, 1992.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Trial transcript, pp. 658–659.

  9. Ibid., pp. 657–659.

  10. Department of Defense Telephone Directory, Fall 1964, Area Code 202 Dial Oxford Plus Extension Number or Liberty 5-6700 • Interdepartmental Code II, p. 91. This particular directory was part of Leo Damore’s material and research. All past Defense Department directories can located at the Library of Congress.

  11. Roberta Hornig, “Teacher Says He Passed by Mrs. Meyer,” Washington Star, July 27, 1965.

  12. David MacMichael, interview by the author, June 22, 2004. Leo Damore interviewed Mr. MacMichael repeatedly during 1992.

  13. Donald E. Deneselya, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., May 29, 2007; Victor Marchetti, interview by the author, Leesburg, Va., October 4, 2007.

  14. As of 2011, Roger Charles is coauthoring a book with Andrew Gumbel about Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, entitled Oaklahoma City: What the Investigation Missed and Why It Still Matters (William Morrow, 2012).

  15. Roger Charles, interview by the author, June 10, 2005.

  16. Confidential written interview notes from author H. P. Albarelli Jr. dated September 2001 and faxed to the author on February 11, 2010.

  17. H. P. Albarelli Jr., communications by email and telephone with the author, February 12, 2010.

  18. Ibid.; personal communications between H. P. Albarelli Jr. and his confidential source on February 12 and 13, 2010, as reported to the author via Albarelli’s emails and follow-up telephone conversations.

  19. Timothy Leary, interview by Leo Damore, Washington, D.C., November 7, 1990.

  20. Hilaire du Berrier, Background to Betrayal: The Tragedy of Vietnam (Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1965), p. 143. Du Berrier documents that Bernie Yoh did “public relations” work for the president of South Vietnam, writing that “Bernie Yoh was the stooge to fly back and forth between Washington and Saigon; to Saigon so he could say he had been there, then back to America to tell editors, women’s clubs and congressmen, ‘Don’t believe what you hear. I have just come from Vietnam. I have been in the jungles with the guerillas, killing Communists, and we are winning. You are not going to desert Vietnam as you did my country, are you?” Author David Martin said, however, that “Yoh denied to me that he had ever worked for the CIA, saying that he thought they were too stupid for him to have anything to do with them, but he had lectured to the U.S. Air War College on a subject in which he claimed world-class expertise, psychological warfare.” See David Martin, “Spook Journalist Goulden,” August 11, 1998, DC Dave’s, www.dcdave.com/article1/081198.html.

  21. Bernie Yoh, telephone interview by Leo Damore, Washington, D.C., October 30, 1990. Damore wrote two pages of typewritten notes on the call. It’s not known whether Damore taped the telephone interview.

  22. Leo Damore, to his attorney, James H. Smith, on the morning of March 31, 1993. The exact date of Damore’s communication with Prouty is not known. See Appendix 3.

  23. L. Fletcher. Prouty, The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Institute for Historical Review, 1973), Passim. Prouty’s duties at the Pentagon were to provide the CIA with the military resources needed to carry out its clandestine operations. He created a secret, well-trained network of agents throughout the military service sectors and U.S. government agencies, including the FBI and the FAA, and inside various foreign governments.

  24. James H. Smith, Esq., interview by the author, April 7, 2004.

  25. Leo Damore stated to this author on several occasions starting in 1992 that Mary Meyer had bought a paperback copy of the Warren Commission’s report when it first went on sale in September 1964.

  26. Ibid. See also Appendix 3.

  27. Leo Damore interview by the author, Centerbrook, Conn., April 1993.

  28. See Appendix 3.

  29. Prouty, Secret Team, p. 141, p. 268, pp. 335–336, p. 418.

  30. Albarelli, confidential written interview notes.

  31. Smith, interview. See also page 2 of Appendix 3.

  32. Ibid. See also page 6 of Appendix 3.

  33. 33 See page 3 of Appendix 3.

  34. Richard Pine, interview by the author, October 21, 2004.

  35. Mark O’Blazney, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., November 27, 2008.

  36. Smith, interview. See also pages 4–6 in Appendix 3.

  37. Joseph J. Trento, The Secret History of the CIA (Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 2001), p. 89. Nowhere is the capacity of the CIA’s Technical Services Division better explained than in H. P. Albarelli Jr.’s book A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments (Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2009).

  38. McCabe and Roundtree, Justice Older Than the Law, p. 195. See also trial transcript, p. 493. Crump’s neighbor, Elsie Perkins, testified that she saw Crump leave his house that morning “between five minutes of eight and eight o’clock.”

  39. Trial transcript, p. 140.

  40. Ibid., pp. 129–130.

  41. McCabe and Roundtree., Justice Older Than the Law, p. 195.

  42. Ibid., pp. 195–196.

  43. Trial transcript, p. 134.

  44. Ibid., p. 259.

  45. Ibid., p. 661.

  46. Ibid., p. 425.

  47. Ibid., p. 569.

  48. Ibid., pp. 407–408.

  49. Ibid., p. 608, p. 649.

  50. Benjamin C. Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 266.

  51. In passing, Bradlee did reference Wistar Janney earlier in his memoir (p. 118), but the page reference was not part of Wistar Janney’s heading in the index of the Bradlee memoir. The passage read as follows: “Socially our crowd consisted of young couples, around thirty years old, with young kids, being raised without help by their mothers, and without many financial resources. The Janneys—Mary and Wistar, who worked for the CIA; the Winships—Leibe and Tom who worked for Senator Lev Saltonstall of Massachusetts …”

  52. Ben Bradlee, interview by the author, Washington, D.C. January 31, 2007.

  53. Trial transcript, p. 608, p. 649.

  54. Christopher Janney, interview by the author, February 20, 2010.

  55. Bradlee, Good Life, p. 143.

  Chapter 13. How it went down: The Anatomy of a CIA Assassination – Part II

  1. John M. Newman, “James Jesus Angleton and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” (lecture, “Cracking the JFK Case,” symposium sponsored by the Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, D.C., November 19, 2005).

  2. Cord Meyer Jr., Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), pp.143-144.

  3. C. David Heymann, The Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club (New York: Atria Books, 2003), p. 167.

  4. Carol Delaney, telephone communication with the author. February 22, 2010.

  5. Heymann, Georgetown Ladies’ Social Club, p. 168.

  6. The most recent criticism of author C. David Heymann’s journalistic credibility has come from researcher Lisa Pease. See her review of Heymann’s book Bobby and Jackie: A Love Story (2009) at Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, www.ctka.net/reviews/heymann.html.

  7. C. David Heymann, interview by the author, New York, N.Y., March 18, 2005.

  8. C. David Heymann, voice mail left on the author’s home telephone, March 9, 2007.

  9. David Wise, Molehunt: The Secret Search for Traitors That Shattered the CIA (New York: Random House, 1992), p. 38.

  10. Ibid., p. 293.

  11. Zack Corson (son of Bill Corson), interview by the author. New York, N.Y., October 25, 2007.

  12. Joseph J. Trento, The Secret History of the CIA (Roseville, Calif.: Prima, 2001), p. xiii.

  13
. Ibid.

  14. J. Michael Kelly, interviews by the author, March 9, 2004, and April 12, 2007. Mike Kelly and Tom Kimmel were classmates at Annapolis. Roger Charles, who became the executor of Bill Corson’s estate, was in the class behind them. All three were mentored by Bill Corson when he taught at the U.S. Naval Academy.

  15. J. Michael Kelly, interview by the author, March 9, 2004.

  16. Both Roger Charles and Tom Kimmel recalled and confirmed the accuracy of this event. Roger Charles, interview by the author, April 13, 2007; Thomas K. Kimmel, interview by the author, May 14, 2007.

  17. Plato Cacheris, Esq., interview by the author, Washington, D.C., April 27, 2007.

  18. Roger Charles, email communication with the author, December 5, 2007.

  19. Gregory Douglas, Gestapo Chief: The 1948 Interrogation of Heinrich Müller, vol. 2 (San Jose, Calif.: R. James Bender Publishing, 1997), p. 5.

  20. Emily Crowley, interview by the author, March 24, 2007; Thomas K. Kimmel, interview by the author, March 13, 2007. In a telephone conversation in early 2011, Philip Kushner, a lecturer in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Texas, also told the author that he had talked with Bob Crowley’s wife, Emily, and she had verified her late husband’s telephone relationship with Gregory Douglas.

  21. “Gregory Douglas” (Peter Stahl), interview by the author, Aurora, Ill., April 10, 2007.

  22. Emily Crowley, interview.

  23. Kimmel, interview, March 13, 2007.

  24. Ibid.; Thomas K. Kimmel, interview by the author, November 20, 2008.

  25. Emily Crowley, interview.

  26. Transcription of alleged tape-recorded telephone conversation between Robert Crowley and Gregory Douglas, January 27, 1996.

  27. Transcription of alleged Crowley-Douglas conversation, April 2, 1996.

  28. David Acheson, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., December 10, 2008.

  29. Charles Bartlett, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., December 10, 2008.

  30. James H. Smith, Esq., interview by the author, April 7, 2004, quoting from pages 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6 of his notes on his March 31, 1993, conversation with Leo Damore. See Appendix 3.

  31. Crowley-Douglas conversation, January 27, 1996.

  32. Robert L. Morrow, First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIAMafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992), p. 277.

  33. John Williams, interviews by the author, May 18, 2007, and November 16, 2009; Jeanne Morrow, personal communication with the author, January 28, 2004.

  34. During the author’s three-year association with Leo Damore starting in 1992, Damore mentioned O’Donnell’s comments on this matter repeatedly. Damore’s former wife, June Davison, also remembered Leo discussing O’Donnell’s statement with her, as did Damore’s attorney, James H. Smith, Esq.

  35. Email communication from Gregory Douglas to Joseph Trento,, November 19, 2001, given to the author by Gregory Douglas.

  36. Email communication from Joseph Trento to Gregory Douglas, November 3, 2002, given to the author by Gregory Douglas.

  37. The Operation Zipper file appears prominently in Gregory Douglas’s Regicide: The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Huntsville, Ala.: Monte Sano Media, 2002.

  38. There are two excellent sources for how the CIA, and particularly James Jesus Angleton, controlled Lee Harvey Oswald, starting with his fake defection to Russia in 1959: John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (1995; repr., New York: Skyhorse, 2008), pp. 613–637; James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 2008), pp. 75–84.

  39. In John Newman’s latest edition of Oswald and the CIA (pp. 613–637), the author included a new chapter entitled “Epilogue, 2008:—The Plot to Murder President Kennedy; A New Interpretation.” Here, as a result of records made available through of the passage of the 1993 JFK Records Act, historian Newman sheds light “on the nature and design of the plot and the national security cover-up that followed.” He continues: In my view, whoever Oswald’s direct handler or handlers were, we must now seriously consider the possibility that [James Jesus] Angleton was probably their general manager. No one else in the Agency had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot. No one had the means necessary to plant the WWIII virus in Oswald’s files and keep it dormant for six weeks until the president’s assassination. Whoever those who were ultimately responsible for the decision to kill Kennedy were, their reach extended into the national intelligence apparatus to such a degree that they could call upon a person who knew its inner secrets and workings so well that he could design a failsafe mechanism into the fabric of the plot. The only person who could ensure that a national security cover-up of an apparent counterintelligence nightmare was the head of counterintelligence (p. 637).

  40. Email communication from Gregory Douglas to Joseph Trento, November 3, 2002, given to the author by Gregory Douglas.

  41. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and Her Washington Post Empire (New York: Sheridan Square Press, 1991), p. 304. See also Appendix 4.

  42. Davis, Katharine the Great (1991), p. 286. See also Appendix 4.

  43. “An Interview with Deborah Davis,” in Popular Alienation: A Steamshovel Press Reader, ed. Kenn Thomas (Lilburn, Ga.: IllumiNet Press, 1995), pp. 79–81.

  44. Benjamin C. Bradlee, A Good Life: Newspapering and Other Adventures (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 267.

  45. Ron Rosenbaum and Phillip Nobile, “The Curious Aftermath of JFK’s Best and Brightest Affair,” New Times, July 9, 1976, p. 29.

  46. Ben Bradlee, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., January 31, 2007.

  47. Bradlee, Good Life, p. 266.

  48. Gabe Torres, interview by the author, Washington, D.C., April 22, 2010. As a chief consultant for this production, I had purposely not been present during the filming of Bradlee’s segment, but conferred with Torres afterward. Torres had been made aware of the Wistar Janney phone call, however.

  49. Trial transcript, United States of America v. Ray Crump, Jr., Defendant, Criminal Case No. 930-64, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, Washington, D.C., July 20, 1965, p. 47.

  50. Bradlee, Good Life, pp. 274–283.

  51. Rosenbaum and Nobile, “Curious Aftermath,” p. 32.

  52. Bradlee, Good Life, p. 266.

  53. Ibid.

  54. Nancy Pittman Pinchot, interview by the author, December 2, 2008.

  55. Antoinette Bradlee letter to Leo Damore, dated July 29, 1991.

  56. Betsy Karasik, “Anne Chamberlin: A life to emulate,” Washington Post, January 6, 2012.

  57. John Newman, personal communication with the author, Harrisonburg, Va., April 29, 2004.

  58. Ron Rosenbaum, The Secret Parts of Fortune: Three Decades of Intense Investigations and Edgy Enthusiasms (New York: Random House, 2000), pp. 503–504.

  59. David Philips, The Night Watch (New York: Atheneum, 1977), p. 189.

  60. Nowhere is this thesis more carefully and thoroughly researched than in the most recent edition of John Newman’s Oswald and the CIA (1995; repr., New York: Skyhorse, 2008). See “Epilogue, 2008: The Plot to Murder President Kennedy; A New Interpretation,” pp. 613–637.

  61. Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior: James Jesus Angleton; The CIA’s Master Spy Hunter (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), p. 30, p. 358n1.

  62. Trento, Secret History, p. 280.

  63. Ibid., p. 479.

  64. Ibid., pp. 478–479.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Rosenbaum, Secret Parts of Fortune, p. 143.

  67. Ibid., pp. 141–143.

  Chapter 14. Epilogue

  1. William E. Colby, testimony, U.S. Senate, September 16, 1975, Hearings Before the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, vol. 1, pp. 16–17. During the Church Committee’s Senate investigations in 1975, CIA director William Colby presented to committee chairman Fr
ank Church a pistol resembling a.45-caliber automatic equipped with a telescopic sight. Time magazine reported that “the gun fires a toxin-tipped dart, almost silently and accurately up to 250 ft. Moreover, the dart is so tiny—the width of a human hair and a quarter of an inch long—as to be almost undetectable, and the poison leaves no trace in a victim’s body.” Senator Church referred to the pistol as follows: “As a murder instrument, that’s about as efficient as you can get, is it not?” To which Colby’s response was, “It’s a weapon, a very serious weapon.” Time further revealed “the agency has also developed two other dart-launching pistols, as well as a fountain pen that can fire deadly darts and an automobile engine-head bolt that releases a toxic substance when heated.”

  2. Joseph Trento, The Secret History of The CIA (Roseville, Ca: Prima Publishing, 2001), p. 89.

  3. Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer (New York: Bantam, 1998), p. 133.

  4. Toni Shimon, interviews by the author, June 17, 2004, February 15, 2007, and January 7, 2008.

  5. Ibid., February 15, 2007.

  6. Anthony Summers, The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover (London: Victor Gollancz, 1993), pp. 81–84. Joseph Shimon’s professional life is well documented in this book.

  7. Shimon, interview, February 15, 2007.

  8. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1989), pp. 558–566.

  9. Shimon, interviews, February 15, 2007, and January 7, 2008.

  10. Jack Anderson and Joseph Spear, “Witness Tells of CIA Plot to Kill Castro,” Washington Post, November 1, 1988.

  11. Shimon, interview, January 7, 2008.

  12. Anderson and Spear, “Witness Tells of CIA Plot,” C19.

  13. Ibid.

  14. Shimon, interview, February 15, 2007.

  15. Ibid.

  SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Albarelli, H. P., Jr. A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. Walterville, Ore.: Trine Day, 2009.