-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- from: http://www.webcom.com/ctka/index.html Click Here: <A HREF="http://www.webcom.com/ctka/index.html">CTKA/Probe Home Frames Page</A> ---- >From the September-October, 1997 issue (Vol. 4 No. 6) The Posthumous Assassination of JFK Judith Exner, Mary Meyer, and Other Daggers By James DiEugenio --[1b]-- Exner’s 1988 Version Exner’s writer for her new rendition was none other than Kitty Kelley, the woman who shattered the non-fiction category forever by reducing it to tabloid standards. Significantly, the article was entitled “The Dark Side of Camelot,” a phrase used by Ron Rosenbaum (who will be discussed later) and the title of the upcoming book by Sy Hersh, of whom Kelley is a great admirer. In this new version, Exner now said that she was seeing Sam Giancana at Kennedy’s bidding. She even helped arrange meetings between JFK and Giancana and JFK and Roselli. Some of the meetings took place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Why would Kennedy need personal consultation with gangsters like Sam and John? To cinch elections on his ruthless way to the White House and later to arrange the liquidation of Castro. Kelley adds that the latter meetings were done for operation MONGOOSE. But Exner’s time sequence does not jibe with the lifespan of that operation and, as the record shows, Castro’s assassination was not on the MONGOOSE agenda. In spite of that explicit record, Kelley adds that historians have never been able to pinpoint Kennedy’s role in those plots, thereby ignoring the abundant evidence unearthed by the Church Committee which says he had none. Nevertheless, Kelley and Exner will now exhume the hidden history of those times for People. Let’s examine their excavation. Exner says that Kennedy needed help in West Virginia in the 1960 primary. So her first secret assignment for Kennedy was to arrange a meeting with “Sam Flood” for JFK. (By a coincidence, Kennedy also knew Giancana by the very same alias that Exner did, even though he had fifteen others.) After the meeting, with Exner waiting outside, Kennedy emerged beaming. He was so exuberant he wanted to pay for a mink coat for his girl. And of course, he won the election. On the heels of this success, Exner arranged another meeting between Kennedy and Giancana. (In an insider aside, Exner assures us that Giancana called the president “Jack”). In the ensuing exchanges of sealed envelopes between the two, Exner didn’t open any of them. In another aside, Kennedy cutely tells her, “Don’t let him [Giancana] turn your head.” Later, JFK wanted meetings with Roselli too. After a series of these, the meetings stopped. Retroactively, Exner finally realized that, unbeknownst to her, she was arranging the plots to kill Castro. The trusting Kelley never seemed curious enough to ask the skeptical questions that any researcher would pose. For instance, the Kennedy family’s worth at that time was estimated to be between 400 and 600 million. With that kind of money, why would they need someone like Giancana to buy a state as sparsely populated as West Virginia? Was he supposed to rally up the squirrel vote? Kelley never asked what Bobby Kennedy’s reaction was to seeing Giancana at the White House. But considering his efforts against Giancana, it must have been something like, “Geez Sam, I guess our surveillance slipped. I didn’t know you were going to be here tonight.” Or to his brother: “Jack, this is going to make me look like a hypocrite. Also, it will compromise my case against this guy in court when he shows the judge that photo of us three sitting here.” Finally, Kelley has no questions about a glaring inconsistency in her scenario. In the course of these ongoing meetings, probably at the first one, wouldn’t nice guy Sam say, “Jack I really appreciate the dinner, but this is all kind of redundant. See, I’m already working with Bob Maheu at CIA to kill Fidel.” Evidently, Exner was so convincing that neither Kelley nor her editors ever entertained any doubts. Or to hopeless cynics like myself, maybe they didn’t want to blow the hundred grand they had invested in their cover story. Kelley did ask one pertinent question. Namely, why did Exner not tell Demaris these startling details back in 1977? Why did she wait eleven years to bare her soul? Exner says she was afraid and needed to protect herself. Unfortunately, this rings a bit hollow since 1) Giancana and Roselli were both dead when she wrote her book, 2) the Church Committee spilled all the beans on the plots to kill Castro in 1975, which 3) leaves only the Kennedys to fear, and its clear she doesn’t give a damn about them. But for those still skeptical, she adds the other (clinching) reason for breaking the silence: her doctor told her she had terminal cancer and she had only 36 months to live. The article ends in a crescendo that would move even the world weary Claude Rains: Now that I know I’m dying and nothing more can happen to me, I want to be completely honest. I don’t think I should have to die with the secret of what I did for Jack Kennedy, or what he did with the power of his presidency. I feel that I am finally free of the past. Exner’s 1997 Version I hope Exner sued her doctor, because ten years later she’s still with us. She now turns up in the pages of the January 1997 Vanity Fair which, unembarrassed, again bills her as “facing her death.” This time she was teamed with another questionable expert on Kennedy’s Cuba policy — Hollywood gossip columnist Liz Smith. And evidently, the previous fear of death wasn’t enough to squeeze the whole story out of her. She still has a few goodies to add. The choice of Smith in 1997 is as revealing as Demaris in 1977 and Kelley in 1988. Smith writes for the New York Post, which is literally a tabloid in both format and approach. Like Kelley, Smith is a big fan of Sy Hersh. In fact, her column has released several “teaser” items about his upcoming book. In the past she has also flacked for Tony Summers. What do those two writers have that other Kennedy researchers, say John Newman, do not? They have both pushed the angle that the Kennedys were somehow involved with the death of Marilyn Monroe. Smith dutifully mentions both authors in her Vanity Fair piece and writes, as fact, that RFK was at Marilyn’s the day she died. Exner herself claims that Summers has offered to supply a new “foreword should she write another book” and Smith sent Exner to see Hersh who, predictably, also endorses her story. In the article, Smith seems conscious of her questionable qualifications to address the serious subjects of Kennedy and Cuba and the Church Committee. Throughout, she sprinkles in little aphorisms to neutralize any attacks. She quotes Oscar Wilde (not famous for his history books) when she says that history is merely yesterday’s gossip. Later on she notes that “today’s gossip is tomorrow’s headline,” a bit self-serving considering her profession. Rising to an Exner-like crescendo near the end, she quotes the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who felt that history “is what people have said to me and what I’ve heard, that I must write down.” She leaves out the fact that Herodotus did not have access to the National Archives, 3.5 million pages of newly declassified documents, and the on the record testimony of the principals involved via Sen. Frank Church. Like the Washington Post and New York Times, Smith has her hatchet out for the Church Committee. About the most extensive investigation of the CIA and FBI ever, she says that it was a “little nothing of a half-assed investigation,” that the report was written by “aides and underlings” and that they asked Exner “rather pointless questions.” She finishes them off by characterizing it as “the pathetic 1975 Church hearings,” the implication being that Smith — between interviews of Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts — has been digging through the newly declassified record and will now set us straight. But her only source is Exner. And, like Kelley, Smith seems to avoid asking the tough questions, probably because these two have been pals since 1977. At one point she calls her a “real star.” None of the inconsistencies or absurdities I have noted get into the article. In fact, Smith adds more of her own. As with Demaris, one of her aims is to make Exner a victim of the press so that she can imply that the “liberal media” is “protecting” the Kennedys. As demonstrated above, this is preposterous. Exner was a media creation used by that press to pummel the Kennedys who the Times and Post — and their ally the CIA — never liked. To camouflage this, Smith claims that after her book came out, the Exners “fled” to California. Yet, according to Demaris, Exner and her husband were already in California when he met them to start work on the book. Smith can actually write the Orwellian statement that Safire — author of no less than five pro-Exner columns — “derided” Exner’s story. Again, contradicting her book, Exner now says she never went to bed with Giancana. In fact, in the Vanity Fair version, the whole scene where he proposes to her is different from the book. In the revisionist go round the suggestion is that good Italian Catholics, even though they may be murdering mobsters, don’t believe in premarital sex. More Hidden History What are the new revelations about the Kennedys that merited Exner’s meeting with Smith for a catered dinner at the five star Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach? There are two. First, she forgot to add that Bobby’s crimefighting campaign was a mirage. Not only did he not mind JFK’s White House meetings with Giancana, he encouraged her in arranging them. For Vanity Fair, she remembers RFK’s words to her about the subject: You know I used to be at the White House having lunch or dinner with Jack, and Bobby would often come by. He’d squeeze my shoulder solicitously and ask, “Judy, are you O.K. carrying those messages for us to Chicago? Do you still feel comfortable doing it?” This about the man who had such heavy surveillance on Giancana that the mobster went to court to stop those six FBI agents from following him everywhere. Including the putting green of the golf course. The other revelation is something that she forgot: Kennedy impregnated her and she had an abortion. There are some problems with this that the never curious Smith doesn’t bother to pursue. In 1977, in her book, Exner stated that there was no abortion; that this was a canard made up by the FBI in order to harass her. In fact, it is the one scene in the book that has emotional force. Consider for yourself: “A what?” I yelled, speaking to them for the first time since the day they had broken into my apartment.... “You people are insane! I didn’t have an abortion. How dare you walk in here and accuse me of that....You get out of this room right now!” She then adds: If I could have killed that man, I would have on the spot. There is nothing heinous about having an abortion today, but in 1963, my God, it was the sin of the century. They knew precisely what they were doing when they falsely accused me of something like that. Another problem with this story is how Exner knows it was JFK’s child. She deduces this from the fact she had been with no one else during the whole time, “not ever” she assures us. Trying to remain a gentleman, I will only refer the reader to approximately the second half of the book, which details a rather active social life on her part. Finally, what raises this latest revelation to a jocular level is Exner’s description of Kennedy’s reaction to her pregnancy when she informs him of the news. Again, let us use Exner’s own words as quoted by Smith: So Jack said, “Do you think Sam would help us? Would you ask Sam? Would you mind asking?” I was surprised, but said I’d ask. So I called Sam and we had dinner. I told him what I needed. He blew sky-high. “Damn him! Damn that Kennedy.” He loved to be theatrical, and he always enjoyed picking on Jack. Smith/Herodotus was so carried away by that cute, cuddly Italian mobster that she never bothered to ponder the fact that zillionaires in America have always had quiet, discreet ways to solve such personal problems. How about a private jet to a secretive Swiss clinic? They don’t need Mafia chieftains to help them. Especially one with six FBI agents following him around ready to squeal on Kennedy the minute Hoover wants them to. Say That Again Please There is one revelation in the article that does not come off tongue-in-cheek. After talking to Smith’s pal Hersh, Exner calls Smith back. She states that the Kennedy-Giancana talks could be released under the JFK Act. She then adds: “I hope they will. The government wants me to talk again.” [Emphasis added] No surprise, Smith didn’t ask Exner what she meant by that last comment, which sent the following flurry of questions bursting through my brain: Who in the government wants her to talk? Since she had just talked to Hersh, was it him who relayed this to her? And what on earth does that stunning adverb “again” signify? Does this mean the government pushed her in 1977? In 1988? On both occasions? In retrospect, the recurring intervals of Exner’s appearances are suggestive. Although the Post surfaced her in 1975, her book did not come out until two years later, on the fifteenth anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination. The 1988 People version — boosted by two Times stories previewing its release — seems done to get the jump on other stories for the 25th anniversary (as we shall see, Ron Rosenbaum filled this role for the 20th anniversary). The latest edition, with Exner aware of the JFK Act, was done at the beginning of what was originally to be the last year of the Review Board. Smith wrote the piece before the extra year was granted by Congress. Smith’s friendliness with Hersh, seems to further this. For according to the ARRB’s original timetable, the Vanity Fair piece would arrive at the beginning of its last year and Hersh’s attack book in October, right when the Review Board was originally set to shut down. This would make a nice pincers movement with which to smother the Board’s serious and blockbuster work amid sexy smears about abortions and Marilyn Monroe (Hersh). In historical perspective, the Times and Safire, and the Post and Ben Bradlee (who, as we shall see, also embraced Exner) opened the flood gates to all kinds of National Enquirer type stories about JFK’s private life. Rumors about Monroe, numerous secretaries, these all started to get tossed about. A prominent one about to be recycled emerged just a year after Exner. It was promulgated again by Bradlee’s Post via The National Enquirer. Mary Meyer Mary Pinchot was the niece of that early conservationist hero Gifford Pinchot. She married CIA officer, and Allen Dulles protégé, Cord Meyer. Mary’s sister was named Tony and was married to Ben Bradlee. Mary and Cord divorced in 1956 and he later went on to become a CIA — associated reporter for various papers including the Chicago Tribune. In the fall of 1964, while walking along the tow path of the C & O Canal in Georgetown, Mary Pinchot Meyer was murdered by being shot through the face. A suspiciously acting black man was apprehended nearby and was identified by a witness as being the nearest person to Meyer before she was killed. At the trial, the man was acquitted through the efforts of a very good defense attorney, mainly due to the circumstantial nature of the case. Many years after Mary’s death, the Nati onal Enquirer revealed that she had been a girlfriend of Kennedy. Before getting into all the details of this story and its aftermath, it is necessary to note a bit about Ben Bradlee’s actions in both the Exner and Meyer stories. Bradlee is essential, not just because of his personal involvement in the matters under discussion, but because he was the editor of the Washington Post in 1976 when the Enquirer broke the story. As with the Exner story, once the Meyer story broke, the Post gave it its imprimatur by filling out certain elements of the story and giving it respectable, mainstream play. Thirty five years later, the essentials I have drawn out above are really all that can be known for certain about this tale. All the remaining details are hazy, confusing, or contested. This is not surprising since two of the people involved in shaping the story are CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and Ben Bradlee. Relating to the Kennedy murder, much has been written about the former (and more will come in Probe). Little has been written about Bradlee (see the sidebar on page 30). Bradlee, JFK & Meyer Bradlee’s background, and his need to hide it, are important in his role with Kennedy and in the origin and evolution of the Mary Meyer story. Bradlee has always tried to suggest that he had a fairly normal, middle-class WASP background in Massachusetts. In fact, in his book Conversations With Kennedy, there is a charming subtext by Bradlee implying that Kennedy comes from a high social strata to which Bradlee can’t relate. For instance, Bradlee makes Kennedy out to be a fashion plate, changing shirts two or three times a day. Bradlee has to remind him that common folk sometimes wear the same shirt two days in a row. Like he does. When he and Kennedy are talking about the tax code, they commiserate over there not being enough tax breaks for middle class people like Bradlee. Having swallowed this, I was surprised to learn that Bradlee’s family spent each summer with the Astors in Maine (the Astor Foundation owned Newsweek which is how Bradlee got started there); that one of Bradlee’s early mentors was Walter Lippmann, that fabled adviser to presidents and confidant of OSS chief Bill Donovan; that on his father’s side, the Bradlees went back five generations at Harvard. That his father married into the law firm of Cravath, Swain & Moore, John McCloy’s firm. In other words, Bradlee was Boston Brahmin all the way. David Halberstam once described a typical Saturday morning in the Bradlee household as follows: 9:00 AM — French lesson, 10:00 AM — piano recital, 11:00 AM — horseback riding, 12:00 AM — ice skating. Bradlee’s first marriage was into another wealthy Massachusetts family, the Saltonstalls. Bradlee may or may not have succeeded in deceiving Kennedy about who he was (I hope not). But the fact that he feels the need to hide all this — and more — from the reader is instructive to the matter at hand. Because, as we will see, Bradlee’s writings on the Meyer story are at odds with other renditions. And no one has ever bothered to point out the many discrepancies, or a possible motive for them. Bradlee’s Version We now come to the most relevant part of the Meyer story: the circumstances surrounding her lost diary which supposedly contained notes on her affair with Kennedy. No one today can say what happened to it, or what it actually contained. To begin to explain why, let me summarize the account about the matter given by Bradlee in his 1995 autobiography A Good Life. The night of the Meyer murder, at his home, Bradlee got a call from Anne Truitt, Mary’s artist friend and then the wife of Jim Truitt, Newsweek’s Tokyo correspondent. Mary had told Anne to retrieve the diary in case anything happened to her. The next morning, Ben and Tony went to Mary’s house. Once inside they discovered James Angleton there (Bradlee provides no explanation as to why he was there). No diary is found. But later in the day the Bradlees decide to go to Mary’s art studio which is down the alley in their garage. They again discover Angleton there in the process of picking the lock. Embarrassed, the super spook walks off. The Bradlees make a pass through the studio and don’t find the diary. But an hour later, Tony secured it. In Bradlee’s telling, there is only a diary. Bradlee writes that, although Kennedy’s name was not in it, it was clear that he was the person having an affair with her. Bradlee decides not to make the diary public and a day or so later, gives it to Angleton because he felt he would be able to ensure that it would be permanently destroyed. Years later, when Tony Bradlee asked Angleton how he had destroyed the diary, he admitted he hadn’t. She demands it back. He gives it to her and she burns it with a friend (not named) as a witness. Bradlee’s version was sharply criticized in a letter to the Los Angeles Times published on November 12, 1995. The letter was from Anne Truitt and Angleton’s widow Cicely. They write that Mary’s instructions to Anne had been that the diary should be entrusted to James Angleton himself and that Anne Truitt called for Angleton that night and found him at Bradlee’s house (it’s not specified how she found out he was there). Angleton and Cicely were there because the Bradlees had asked them to come over after Mary’s death. Once Truitt got Angleton on the phone, she told him for the first time about Mary’s wishes. At this point, the Angletons, Tony Bradlee, and another (unnamed) person make a search at Mary’s home. Again, the diary is not there. The search continued in the garage-studio (time not specified). In this version, several papers and the diary are discovered. Tony Bradlee gives it all to Angleton and asks him to burn it. Angleton burns the papers only. He “safeguarded” the diary. Years later, Tony asked for the diary. Angleton gave it to her. She burned it, and the witness was Anne Truitt. Ron Rosenbaum The longest treatment of this whole affair was one of the earliest. Ron Rosenbaum did a story for New Times in 1976. In his version, the Angletons went to Mary’s the day she died. When no one answered, they entered the house. From her answering service(!), they found out she was dead. They proceeded to the Bradlees’ home to make funeral arrangements. Later that night, Jim Angleton returned to Mary’s, but only to retrieve her kittens. The Truitts then called the Angletons (the time is not mentioned). In Rosenbaum’s version, it is the Truitts who are entrusted with the diary. In an even more serious difference, the search for the diary occurs five days after the murder. This time the search party includes the Angletons, Tony Bradlee and — making their first appearances — Mary’s ex-husband Cord Meyer, and Mary’s old college roomie Ann Chamberlain. The search goes on for hours amid drinking and even dishwashing by Angleton. The diary is not found. Later (at an unspecified time) Tony Bradlee finds it in the studio, this time in a locked steel box. And this time, there are “hundreds” of letters, not just several. In the Rosenbaum version, Angleton says that he burned the whole package. Yet Rosenbaum also writes that other unnamed sources say the contents were sent to the Pinchot estate in Milford, Pennsylvania. I could also quote other versions of the diary search e.g. the sketchy one in the book Katherine the Great. But the point is clear that someone — perhaps more than one — is lying. The versions are not reconcilable. And they can’t be chalked up to memory lapses, not for such an unusual, even singular event. It is striking that even the time frame and principals involved change between versions. Concerning the former, if the call from the Truitts came in the night of Mary’s death, why wait five days to search for the diary? About the latter, either all the people who say they were there were not, or are lying about the presence of others. Rosenbaum got interviews with some of the principals, Angleton, Bradlee, and others who gave him bits of information (Cord Meyer would seem to be a source). Yet in his detailed account he can, with a straight face, write that the bonds among those involved in the search were so strong that years later, some of them attended a seance to attempt to establish contact with Mary’s departed spirit. Can anyone imagine Angleton or Bradlee sitting through a seance? (I could imagine Angleton arranging a fake one.) That Rosenbaum can unabashedly write such a thing tells us a good deal about him (for more on Rosenbaum see the sidebar at left). The fact that he never notes any of the discrepancies in the story that he himself presents, tells us even more. For example, he relates that Tony Bradlee found the diary. Yet in the article, in the presented notes of an interview with her, she seems to refer to more than one person being with her at that time. Also, in those notes, Tony states that they were all honor bound not to look at the diary. Yet Rosenbaum says that Angleton read, indexed, and took notes on everything she found. As is his bent, Rosenbaum seems intent on not probing key parts of the story. The man who thinks Oswald shot at Kennedy (and believes John Davis’ Mafia Kingfish is as close as we will get to a conspiracy alternative to Oswald), does not ask the question as to why the Truitts seem to be siding with Angleton. That is, unlike Bradlee’s version, there are no hints of Angleton breaking into places unexpectedly. Also indicative of this is that Angleton, a source for Rosenbaum in 1976, said the diary was to be entrusted to the Truitts. Yet Anne Truitt signed off on the 1995 L. A. Times letter saying it was meant to be handled by Angleton himself. Both cannot be true. This is interesting because it implies a relationship between the two couples. And his wife’s loyalty to Angleton is proven. Truitt and Leary add Drugs As noted earlier, Jim Truitt gave this curious tale its first public airing in 1976, on the heels of the Church Committee. From there, the Washington Post (under Bradlee) picked it up. There had been an apparent falling out between Truitt and Bradlee and Truitt said that he wanted to show that Bradlee was not the crusader for truth that Watergate or his book on Kennedy had made him out to be. In the National Enquirer, Truitt stated that Mary had revealed her affair with Kennedy while she was alive to he and his wife. He then went further. In one of their romps in the White House, Mary had offered Kennedy a couple of marijuana joints, but coke-sniffer Kennedy said, “This isn’t like cocaine. I’ll get you some of that.” The chemical addition to the story was later picked up by drug guru Tim Leary in his book Flashbacks. Exner-like, the angle grew appendages. Leary went beyond grass and cocaine. According to Leary, Mary Meyer was consulting with him about how to conduct acid sessions and how to get psychedelic drugs in 1962. Leary met her on several occasions and she said that she and a small circle of friends had turned on several times. She also had one other friend who was “a very important man” who she also wanted to turn on. After Kennedy’s assassination, Mary called Leary and met with him. She was cryptic but she did say, “They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much.” The implication being that a “turned on” JFK was behind the moves toward peace in 1963. Leary learned about Meyer’s murder in 1965, but did not pull it all together until the 1976 Jim Truitt disclosure. With Leary, the end (for now) of the Meyer story colors in JFK as the total sixties swinger: pot, coke, acid, women, and unbeknownst to Kennedy, Leary has fulfilled his own fantasy by being Kennedy’s guide on his magical mystery tour toward peace. But there is a big problem with Leary, his story, and those who use it (like David Horowitz and Peter Collier). Leary did not mention Mary in any of his books until Flashbacks in 1983, more than two decades after he met Mary. It’s not like he did not have the opportunity to do so. Leary was one of the most prolific authors I know. He got almost anything he wanted published. Although it is hard to keep track of all his work, he appears to have published over 40 books. Of those, at least 25 were published between 1962, when he says he met Mary, and 1983, when he first mentions her. Some of these books are month to month chronicles e.g. High Priest. In none of the books I could find, i.e. most of them, is Mary mentioned or even vaguely described. This is improbable considering the vivid, unforgettable portrait that Leary drew in 1983. This striking looking woman walks in unannounced, mentions her powerful friends in Washington, and later starts dumping out the CIA’s secret operations to control American elections to him. Leary, who mentioned many of those he turned on throughout his books, and thanks those who believed in him, deemed this unimportant. That is until the 20th anniversary of JFK’s death. (Which is when Rosenbaum wrote his ugly satire on the Kennedy research community for Texas Monthly which in turn got him a guest spot on Nightline.) This is also when Leary began hooking up with Gordon Liddy, doing carnival-type debates across college campuses, an act which managed to rehabilitate both of them and put them both back in the public eye. There is another problem with Leary’s book: the Phil Graham anecdote. In his book, Leary has Mary tell him that the cat was out the bag as far as her and JFK were concerned. The reason was that a well-known friend of hers had blabbed about them in public. This is an apparent reference to Post owner Phil Graham’s outburst at a convention in Phoenix, Arizona in 1963. This famous incident (which preceded his later alleged mental breakdown) included — according to Leary — a reference to Kennedy and Mary Meyer. The story of Graham’s attendance at this convention and what he did and said has been described in different ways in different books. Unfortunately for Leary, his dating of the convention does not jibe with any that I have seen. In 1986, Tony Chaitkin tracked down the correct date, time, and place of the meeting. No one had done it correctly up to that time. But Chaitkin and his associates went one step further. They interviewed people who were there. None of the attendees recalled anything said about Mary Meyer. To me, this apocryphal anecdote and Leary’s book seem ways to bolster a tale that needed to be recycled and souped up before its chinks began to show. Leary’s reason for being a part of the effort may be through his association with intelligence asset Liddy. Or it may be because he was never enamored of the Kennedys’ approach to the drug problem, which was antagonistic to Leary personally and a lot less liberal in its approach. Leary was quite frank about this in his book High Priest (p. 67) and later in Changing My Mind (pp. 143 ff.). Whatever his motives, Leary’s retroactive endorsement is just not credible. The Split at the Post In fact, when it comes to Mary Meyer, stories between the same couple are not consistent. As mentioned previously, Bradlee states in his book that Kennedy’s name was not in the diary. Yet his wife told The National Enquirer, that although she only looked at it briefly, Kennedy’s name was there. According to an interview with writer Debbie Davis, Ben Bradlee once told television personality David Frost that the diary was not even a diary but in fact a sketchbook. In this regard, Tony Bradlee made a telling comment to the National Enquirer i n 1976. In the notes written up from her interview, after she has discussed (with a bit of ambiguity) whether or not Kennedy’s name was in the diary, she is quoted as saying: “But the diary was destroyed. I’ll tell you that much is true.” The suggestion in the last sentence is that everything else is not. Or, at least, the diary’s destruction is all she knows for a fact. If Mary’s own sister is not forthright, then who among the rest is? Don’t rely on Rosenbaum to find out. He is a friend of both Angleton and the Post. Consider the man who helped him write his 1976 Mary Meyer piece, one Philip Nobile. When I interviewed Deborah Davis about the attempted censorship of her book, which exposed the Post’s ties to the CIA, she told me that her troubles began with a whispering campaign to her publisher. The whisperer was Rosenbaum’s partner Nobile. When that wasn’t enough, Nobile talked to Alexander Cockburn of the Village Voice. Cockburn printed the rumors that her book was unfounded and that she had cried in her publishers’ office when challenged on this. Both accounts were untrue. But Cockburn was not an unbiased observer. As Nobile must have known, his live-in girlfriend at the time was Kay Graham’s daughter. It is odd that Rosenbaum would choose to write on such a controversial subject with someone who seems to be such a friend to the Post. Related to that, in his 1991 reflections on the 1976 article, and in the article itself, he tries to insinuate that these people — Bradlee, the Truitts, the Angletons — are actually friends of Kennedy. In addition, Rosenbaum and others never seemed to ask why those involved all seemed so eager to violate Mary’s privacy by reading the diary. In no version I have read was that ever part of Mary’s instructions. And Angleton, the man who the Truitts seem to side with against Bradlee, supposedly went through them like an archivist. The Truitts’ trust for and seeming loyalty to the Angletons is particularly interesting. In Rosenbaum’s 1976 piece, the following passage appears: 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. With the quiet skill of a cardsharp, Rosenbaum avoids an important detail. Namely, how the Truitts found out about Mary’s death in the middle of the night halfway around the world. Someone must have either called or wired them. Why is this matter never addressed in any version? The logical choice as contacts would be the Angletons. This is apparently off limits for Ron. If he drew attention to his lack of curiosity on this matter, it would hint that something is being papered over in order to conceal a point. If that were so, then a previous occurrence in Jim Truitt’s career would bear mentioning, since it quite closely resembles what he did later in 1976. In August of 1961, Truitt had called Bradlee and said he had evidence that Kennedy had been previously married before his wedding to Jackie, and that this fact had been covered up. Both Bradlee and Truitt pursued the story. But before they printed it they asked Kennedy about it. He referred them to Pierre Salinger, his press secretary. Salinger had already heard the charge from rightwing commentator Fulton Lewis. He had all his points lined up and proved the story false. Bradlee’s account in Conversations With Kennedy (pp. 43-49) seems to suggest that Truitt and Bradlee still worked on the story after they were shown it was wrong. Also intriguing is a flourish added in Rosenbaum’s version, which appears heavily reliant on the Truitts and Angletons as sources. Rosenbaum writes that Mary’s diary, although usually laid upon her bedroom bookcase, was found in a locked steel box in her studio. Rosenbaum doesn’t probe as to why it was not found in its usual resting place. The locked steel box is not a part of any other version of the story I know, including Tony Bradlee’s, and, in all versions, she supposedly found the diary. Of course, a locked box suggests intrigue, but it strains reality. Are we to believe that every time Mary wanted to make an diary entry she would first fumble for her keys? Even in her own bedroom while she’s living alone? Of course, Rosenbaum makes nothing of the two most obvious paradoxes in the entire tale. Almost everyone agrees that, while the Meyers were married, she was knowledgeable about his CIA activities and that Cord Meyer was close to Angleton. Reportedly, the liberal Mary grew disenchanted with Cord, his cohorts, and the Agency shop talk. She wanted to become her own person, hence her interest in painting. She also admired Kennedy’s policies. If the above is true, why would she entrust the secrets of her diary to, of all people, Jim Angleton? This, plus the fact that his wife and Anne Truitt now say that Angleton found out about his “inheritance” of the diary on the transcontinental call, seem to suggest some sort of collusion between the couples. Or else why would Anne Truitt switch the “entrustment” of the diary from her to Angleton, as she did in 1995, as if they were interchangeable? And if Mary had instructed the diary be given to Angleton, why would he then turn it over to Tony Bradlee? Finally, let us assume for a moment that the diary did record the Kennedy-Meyer affair and/or the pot smoking. If that were so, does anyone who knows anything about the CIA think that Angleton would not have found a way to get it into the press? Or did I just answer my own question? If no such entries existed, Angleton would do the next best thing. He would call on his friend Jim Truitt to accomplish it for him through The National Enquirer, and into the mainstream via Kennedy’s false friend Bradlee at the Post. For good measure, Truitt poured on the pot angle which does not figure in the Exner story. Need I add that the Meyer story came out right after the Exner story, i. e. on the heels of the Church Committee’s report. And Ron Rosenbaum, an unquestioning backer of Exner, was there to unquestioningly accept the package on Meyer. When Mary Meyer died in 1964, Angleton had just finished — with the help of Richard Helms and Allen Dulles — the CIA’s Warren Commission cover-up. As we shall see in part two, Angleton will also figure in another packaged “Kennedy brothers affair,” namely Marilyn Monroe. We shall also see that Rosenbaum’s favorite conspiracy author, John Davis, will pick up the baton on Mary Meyer. Read Part II of this article. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Return to Previous Page | Get Subscription Information | Return to the Home Page Probe Magazine. The Truth Is In Here. ® http://www.webcom.com/ctka ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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