Subject: Re: Mary Pinchot Meyer Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 07:37:33 GMT From: jimh@wwa.com (Jim Hargrove) Organization: WorldWide Access - Midwestern Internet Services - www.wwa.com Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk On Thu, 27 Aug 1998 23:37:04 -0700, no-spam@sonic.net (Fathom) wrote: >Does anyone have more on this story? Sure. . . . CORD MEYER, MARY PINCHOT MEYER, and JFK Cord Meyer is a prime example of the common "CIA liberal" reportedly so common in the agency. He was personally recruited by Allen Dulles in 1951 to join the CIA and was immediately attacked by Senator Joseph R. McCarthy as a "world federalist," which was true, but several evolutionary steps above worms like McCarthy. As a Marine in the Pacific theater in WWII, Meyer wrote: There are very few of us here who in private life would kill a man for any reason whatsoever. The fact that guns have been placed in our hands and some of us wear one uniform and some another is no excuse for the mass murder we are about to commit. There are differences between us, I know, but none of them worth the death of one man. Most of us are not here by our own choice. We were taken from our peaceful lives and told to fight for reasons we cannot understand. Surely we have far more in common than that which temporarily separates us. Fathers, go back to your children, who are in need of you. Husbands, go back to your young wives, who cry in the night and count the anxious days. Farmers, return to your fields, where the grain rots and the houses slide into ruin. The only certain fruit of this insanity will be the rotting bodies upon which the sun will impartially shine tomorrow. Let us throw down these guns that we hate. [_Waves of Darkness_, by Cord Meyer Jr.] His war career was cut short in 1944 on Guam when a Japanese grenade blew away one of his eyes. After the A-bombs were dropped, he became a committed advocate of world government and the United Nations as the only way to stem nuclear disaster. He became deeply concerned with the fragility of the peace and the seeming inevitability of world-consuming nuclear warfare unless the United Nations was given the power to impose disarmament by its own forces. ["A Hidden Liberal, Cord Meyer Jr.," NYT, March 30, 1967] This type of stance is anathema to many on the far right and underlies many of their attacks on the Council on Foreign Relations, UN. etc. To this day, fossils like Sen. Strom Thurmond raise the spectre of loss of "sovereignty" to the UN in his opposition to President Clinton's appointment for assistant Secretary of Defense for Peacekeeping Operations. Meyer said in 1946: World government is possible. It is possible in our lifetime. We can and we will make it happen, and by doing so we shall achieve peace not only for our children but for our children's children, a peace that will survive to the end of time... Those who wrap the skirts of nationalism around themselves are living in the dangerous past... The blood pressure of any CFR basher reading those words just went up. The source is a piece on Meyer by Merle Miller,"One man's long journey: From a one world crusade to the 'department of dirty tricks'", NYT Magazine, Jan. 7, 1973. Miller writes: The years passed; we heard that after retiring from the World Federalist crusade Cord had gone into the C.I.A., but in those days, the early nineteen-fifties, that was a respectable--even an admirable--thing for a liberal and humane man to do. It was necessary to keep the agency out of the hands of the reactionaries, and some years later didn't McGeorge Bundy, then himself still a knight in fairly shining armor, say that there were more liberal intellectuals in the C.I.A. than anyplace else in Government? And hadn't he named Meyer as one of the best examples? On this point, the NYT noted: In the late 1940's and early 1950's many liberals who wished to serve their country found in the C.I.A. not only a personal haven, safe from the onslaughts of McCarthyism, but also an opportunity to bring to bear on the problems of the cold war a realistic and liberal understanding of the pluralism of emerging countries. But his employment in the CIA was out of character, according to one of his friends: "It was a great surprise to his friends. He was not the C.I.A. type. He was a world government man." At the CIA he became the quintessential company man. "He is totally gray," said one official, "gray hair, gray suit, gray look, and he gives you the gray answer. He is schooled and skilled in the art of indirection." [NYT 3/30/67] "He was one of the most promising guys," said one of his friends. "Very sensitive, very intelligent. His whole spirit was one of great humanity. He got cold warized." [NYT 3/30/67] Meyer's activities at the CIA ironically consisted of supervising the covert funding of overseas activities of the types of organizations he was associated with in his World Federalist days. These included labor and professional organizations and youth groups like the National Student Association. Thus, the CIA was able to keep tabs on such activities and infiltrate various leftist and "one world" organizations. Their financial support also insured a level of control as well, as many of the organizations received their main funding from the CIA. Overtly however, these were supposedly independent privately-funded groups. This is basically the same modus operandi the CIA used to influence labor unions in Europe during the years of the Marshall Plan, when they tried to co-opt the labor movement from the leftist and communist labor factions. These folks had provided much of the resistance against the fascists and therefore couldn't be brushed aside too lightly. But nothing destroys the credibility of such organizations so quickly as when the news gets out that they are dependent on foreign largess. Thus, when it became apparent that the story of his subsidy program was about to blow (which it did), Meyer advocated that it be stopped. When Ramparts magazine broke the story in February 1967, the program was still in operation, and President Johnson was forced to formulate a new policy where all direct government funding of these organizations would be stopped. Henceforth any government funding would be channeled through "public-private" partnerships based on the model of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations or the British Council, which dispensed $30,000,000 of mostly government money annually to organizations deemed worthy by its largely private board. I believe these are also the types of organizations woven into CFR "Anglo-American" conspiracy theories. Backing up, in 1945 Meyer married Mary Eno Pinchot, daughter of Amos Pinchot, lawyer and publicist and founder of Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Progressive Party, and niece of Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior, Gifford Pinchot, who was an ecologist before his time. They had met before the war when he was at Yale and she at Vassar. She had been a journalist, accomplished painter, and like her husband a committed liberal. Not to mention beautiful. Their marriage ended in divorce. During 1962-3 she was the number one paramour and soulmate of President John F. Kennedy. She had known Kennedy from way back, and he was a great admirer of her and her sister Tony (who later married Washington Post editor and friend of JFK, Ben Bradlee). In the spring of 1962, Mary paid an unexpected visit to Timothy Leary, professor at Harvard engaged in psychedelic research. She took a few steps forward and held out her hand. "I'm Mary Pinchot. I've come from Washington to discuss something very important. I want to learn how to run an LSD session." "That's our specialty here. Would you like to tell me what you have in mind?" "I have this friend who is a very important man. He's impressed by what I've told him about my own LSD experiences and what other people have told him. He wants to try it himself." [Timothy Leary, _Flashbacks_, 1983, p. 129] Pinchot continued: "You have no idea what you've gotten into. You really don't understand what's happening in Washington with drugs, do you?" "We've heard some rumours about the military," I said. "It's time you learned more. The guys who run things--I mean the guys who *really* run things in Washington--are very interested in psychology, and drugs in particular. These people play hardball, Timothy. They want to use drugs for warfare, for espionage, for brainwashing, for control." "Yes," I said. "We've heard about that." "But there are people like me who want to use drugs for peace, not for war, to make people's lives better. Will you help us?" Leary felt uneasy: I asked once again, "Who are these friends of yours who want to use drugs for peace?" "Women," she said laughing. "Washington, like very other capital city in the world, is run by men. These men conspiring for power can only be changed by women. And you are going to help us." Leary eventually supplied Pinchot with his expertise on running an LSD session. He heard from her again in the fall of 1962: "Your hush-hush love affair is going well?" "Oh yes. Everything is going beautifully. On all fronts in fact. I can't give details, of course. But *top* people in Washington are turning on. You'd be amazed at the sophistication of some of our leaders. And their wives. We're getting a little group together, people who are interested in learning how to turn on." "Really. I thought politicians were too power-oriented." "You must realize, implausible as it may seem, there are a lot of smart people in Washington. Especially now with this administration. power is important to them. And these drugs do give a certain power. That's what it's all about. Freeing the mind. Until very recently, the American consciousness was a simple matter for the guys in charge. The schools instilled docility. The radio and TV networks poured out conformity." "No doubt about it," I agreed. "You may not know that dissident organizations in academia are also controlled. The CIA creates radical journals and student organizations and runs them with deep-cover agents." "Oh come on, Mary," I said. "That sounds pretty paranoid to me." Mary sipped at her glass and shook her head. "I hate to be the one to break the news to you. Do you remember the American Veteran's Committee, that liberal GI group you belonged to after the war? The CIA started that. Just like Teddy Roosevelt started the American Legion after the first World War. Remember your friend Gilbert Harrison? He ran the radicals out of the AVC. And he later bought the _New Republic_--that so-called progressive magazine--from Michael Straight, your hero. Do you know why Michael Straight backed Henry Wallace for president in 1948? To siphon votes away from Truman?" "How do you know all this? How did you know I knew Michael Straight?" "I knocked you with those facts to get your attention. It's a standard intelligence trick. I could tell you hundreds of little stories like that." [_Flashbacks_, p. 154] The site of the LSD sessions was at Meyer's apartment, which was a converted carriage house on her brother-in-law Ben Bradlee's property in Washington. This loft also served as her art studio. Quite a pad for the powerful to get their consciousness raised from. On June 10, 1963 at American University in Washington, President Kennedy gave the greatest speech of his life. This was a typical media reaction: Peacemongers Gain Respectability with Suddenness by Edwin A. Lahey Chicago Daily News Service WASHINGTON (6/12/63) -- The peacemongers have become respectable with a suddenness that almost brought a traumatic shock. President Kennedy announced at American University that discussions would shortly begin in Moscow looking toward a nuclear test ban treaty. His address was a lofty, soul-searching plea for a peace that had some traces of the Holy Thursday message of the late Pope John XXIII... In a nearly unprecented move, official Soviet news agencies translated the speech for distribution to Soviet citizens. Jamming of radio rebroadcasts of the speech behind the iron curtain was stopped. Right wingers and cold warriors in the United States were incensed. Here is a bit of the editorial reaction: Republican leaders in congress are labeling the Kennedy statement and all its implications "a triumph for the accommodators in his administration which flies in the face of all known experience in dealing with the Communists" and are calling for a review of US foreign policy by Congress. Sen. Strom Thurmond, North Carolina Democrat, charges that Mr. Kennedy has made it clear that the U.S. Policy "is to accept the status quo between the Communists and the free world" and that the president is being deluded into the belief that if we hold onto the status quo, the Soviets will evolve or change -- that "the leopard is really changing its spots" despite all evidence to the contrary. President Kennedy had first drafted this speech personally in January of 1963. Ted Sorensen writes: When he decided that the civil rights crisis necessitated his addressing the U.S. Mayors' Conference in Honolulu, on Sunday, June 9, at the close of a long Western trip, he instructed me to stay behind and complete the American University draft. He was due to deliver it Monday morning, and I was to fly out with it Saturday. It was not until Sunday evening, returning home on "Air Force One," that he applied the finishing touches... Soviet officials in Moscow and Washington, and weary White House correspondents on the plane back, had been briefed in advance that the speech was of major importance. That description was wholly accurate. [Sorensen, _Kennedy_, p. 731] Here are some of President Kennedy's comments: I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived -- and that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana forced on the world by American weapons of war, not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace -- the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living -- and the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women -- not merely peace in our time but peace in all time. I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the Allied air forces in the second world war. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn. ... Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament -- and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitudes -- as individuals and as a nation -- for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward -- by examining his own attitude towards the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home. ... So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal. ... Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system -- a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. ... This will require a new effort to achieve world law -- a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. ... All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's ways please the Lord," the scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis basically a matter of human rights -- the right to live our lives without fear of devastation -- the right to breathe air as nature provided it -- the right of future generations to a healthy existence? His prose has echoes of the young Cord Meyer, and, presumably, Mary Pinchot. Leary writes: Ever since the Kennedy assassination I had been expecting a phone call from Mary. It came around December 1. I could hardly understand her. She was either drunk or drugged or overwhelmed with grief. Or all three. They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast." Long pause. Hysterical crying. I spoke reassurance. She sobbed. "They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid. be careful." Almost a year later, Mary Pinchot was on one of her frequent walks along a canal towpath near the Potomac. She was shot and killed. Her murder is unsolved to this day. After her death, her apartment was searched and her diary removed for "disposal" by CIA chief of counterintelligence James Angleton. [S.F. Chronicle, Feb. 23, 1976, p. 16] Another woman in Pinchot's group was Lisa Howard. In 1965 she was found disoriented in a parking lot, under the influence of about 100 phenobarbitols. She had been recently fired from ABC News because she had "chosen to participate publically in partisan political activity contrary to long-established ABC news policy." Her subsequent death was ruled a suicide. --- Joe Knapp This article was originally posted to Usenet in 1993 by Joe Knapp, but the above was a 3/94 repost, as follows: From jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com Tue Mar 29 09:08:55 CST 1994 Article: 1639 of alt.conspiracy.jfk Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Path: sashimi.wwa.com!news.sprintlink.net!qns1.qns.com!constellation!paladin.american.edu!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!hookup!decwrl!decwrl!news.bu.edu!att-in!cbnews!jmk From: jmk@cbnews.cb.att.com (joseph.m.knapp) Subject: Re: mary pinchot meyer Organization: AT&T Date: Sun, 27 Mar 1994 12:33:09 GMT Message-ID: References: Lines: 378 It's a helluva story. Is it true??? --Jim Hargrove