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

Written by Douglas P. Horne, author of "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board""Mary's Mosaic" is several things at once: an insightful and sensitive biography of both Mary Meyer and her one-time husband, CIA propaganda specialist Cord Meyer; a murder mystery; a trial drama; an expose of secret knowledge and cover-ups inside the Washington D.C. Beltway during the 1950s and 1960s; and of course, a love story about the late-developing relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer, whom he had first met at an Ivy League prep school dance when she was only 15 years old. Their paths had crossed briefly once again in the Spring of 1945, at the founding conference for the United Nations in San Francisco. (Mary, her new husband Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy all attended the conference as journalists reporting on the events there, at the birth of the United Nations.)One of the fascinating aspects of this well-researched book is how it traces the evolution and personal development of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy. As Cord Meyer---a scarred war hero who was once an idealist and a pacifist, and who aggressively lobbied for a united world government following World War II---became a disillusioned cynic and was subverted to the "dark side" by Allen Dulles of the CIA, his all-consuming commitment to the Cold War (and his abandonment of his former idealism) slowly killed his marriage to Mary Pinchot. Mary remained an idealist and an independent thinker, and it was this very independent and unconventional woman whose orbit finally intersected with that of President John F. Kennedy again late in 1961, about two years before his assassination.Janney convincingly documents how their relationship became much more than a series of mere sexual trysts---it became a personal and political alliance of two people who had become thoroughly convinced of the insanity of war between nation states in the Nuclear Age, and who were both determined to do something about it. Jack Kennedy, already sickened by war and skeptical about the wisdom of senior military officers because of his World War II experiences, had become even more skeptical about the desire of many to seek simplistic, military solutions to complex international problems following the bad advice he received from the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Bay of Pigs and Laos in 1961. After the searing crucible of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, JFK embarked upon a program of moral action not only in civil rights, but undertook bold efforts to begin to end the Cold War; to commence a withdrawal from Vietnam which would have been completed by the end of 1965; and behind the backs of the Pentagon and the CIA, embarked upon what he thought was a clandestine rapprochment with Fidel Castro's Cuba. Mary Pinchot Meyer, who had ever been critical and distrustful of the CIA, became a natural ally of President Kennedy's throughout 1963 as he moved to curb the unbridled power of the Agency and defuse the Cold War. (She was present at the "Peace Speech" at American University on June 10, 1963, and Jackie Kennedy was not.) One of Janney's most convincing sources about the nature of the relationship between Mary Meyer and Jack Kennedy was an extremely well-placed official with intimate knowledge of JFK's daily activities and thinking: Kennedy's Presidential Appointments Secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell. Janney used O'Donnell's oral history interview with the late author Leo Damore, recorded years ago shortly before O'Donnell's death, as one of the foundations for his book.For those who revel in study of the Cold War culture in Washington in this era, the book is full of well-documented revelations about Phil and Katherine Graham of the Washington Post; James Jesus Angleton (the Head of CIA Counterintelligence), who was godfather to the children of Cord and Mary Meyer; and Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate era (who is exposed in the book as one of the CIA's major media assets). In my view, knowing that Bradlee was in the CIA's pocket helps explain why the Washington Post was so successful in taking down Richard Nixon following the Watergate break-in. Nixon had used his Chief of Staff, Haldemann, to attempt to get the CIA to "warn off" the FBI in its investigation of the Watergate break-in and the "plumbers." Nixon instructed Haldemann to threaten the CIA (Richard Helms) with exposure of its involvement in the JFK assassination, as an incentive for the Agency to cooperate with him. This "hardball" leverage failed, and Bradlee was allowed (and perhaps encouraged) to take down Nixon. He acted as the CIA wished in the Watergate matter. Unaccountably, Bradlee never employed the considerable investigative resources of the Post to look into the Kennedy assassination...well, perhaps that is not so "unaccountable" after all, now that we know he had been a CIA asset since the early 1950s, a part of the Agency's remarkably successful penetration and control of foreign and domestic media. As Janney reveals, Cord Meyer (Mary's husband from 1945 until the late 1950s) was in charge of that CIA program of media penetration and propaganda, and Ben Bradlee was married to Mary Pinchot's sister, Toni. The proximity of these relationships---between Cord Meyer, James Angleton, and Bradlee---make it easy to believe that Bradlee's links with the CIA, that began in the early 1950s, continued into the 1960s and early 1970s, when he was in powerful positions at Newsweek and the Washington Post.Peter Janney's own father, a World War II Naval aviator and a recipient of the Navy Cross, was also a CIA man, and Peter grew up amidst the CIA culture in Washington. Mary Meyer's son Michael was his best childhood friend. He knew Mary Meyer as his best friend's mother. He was therefore perfectly placed to write this book, for his own family had frequent social contacts with Cord and Mary Meyer, James Angleton, Richard Helms, Tracy Barnes, Desmond FitzGerald, and William Colby. Janney's knowledge of the CIA Cold War culture in our nation's capital in the 1950s and 1960s is very well-informed, on a personal level.Janney compellingly relates how the D.C. metropolitan police and the U.S. Justice Department attempted to railroad an innocent black man, Ray Crump, for the mysterious murder of Mary Meyer in October of 1964, just three weeks after the Warren Report was issued. Due to the heroic efforts of African American female attorney Dovey Roundtree, Janney explains how against all odds, Crump was acquitted. Peter Janney reveals the likely motive for her murder---she was about to publicly oppose the sham conclusions of the Warren Report as a fraud. Furthermore, she had kept a private diary which presumably recorded details of her relationship with President Kennedy (and perhaps even of affairs of state). In October of 1964, she was literally "the woman who knew too much." This book reveals the numerous lies and falsehoods told about her diary (and its disposition) by Ben Bradlee, James Jesus Angleton, and others, in a way not adequately covered by previous articles and books. The media in this country, misled by the CIA and by former acquaintances of Meyer's who had much to hide, has consistently distorted the true story of what likely happened to her diary, and Peter Janney lays all of this out in a way that anyone can understand.Peter Janney also solves the mystery of her murder 48 years ago, in as convincing a fashion as one can, so many years later. Many have asked, "If Ray Crump did not kill Mary Meyer, then who did?" This book answers that question. (I will not provide any spoilers here.)So purchase a copy of this book today. Extensively footnoted and persuasively written, it is the best account in print about the life and death of Mary Meyer, easily eclipsing the sole biography previously written about her by Nina Burleigh. Peter Janney has courageously finished the investigative journey into her life and death begun by the late Leo Damore, and briefly resumed (and then abandoned) by John H. Davis. "Mary's Mosaic" is part film noir thriller, part biography, and also provides a remarkably frank view of the Cold War culture in Washington, and the dark side of the national security state. It belongs on the bookshelf of every Cold War historian, and everyone who is interested in President Kennedy's assassination.

This book is undoubtedly one of the most interesting books that I have read in the last 5 years. In fact, it is probably the most interesting book I can remember reading. It has all the elements required for an outstanding work of fiction: a complex plot, interesting and often extremely sinister characters, and strange plot twists that just don't seem to curve but actually seem to veer off into the stratosphere at warp speed. The irony of it all is that this isn't fiction. It centers on real life occurrences that have been doctored up and obscured at the highest levels of government.The impetus for writing this book was the author's childhood acquaintance with a woman named Mary Pinchot Meyer who was the mother of the author's childhood friend Michael Meyer. Pinchot Meyer was murdered on a towpath in the Georgetown area of DC, but over the past 30+ years has been identified as having had an affair and ongoing friendship with John F. Kennedy up to the time he was assassinated in November, 1963.Mary Meyer was a descendant of a wealthy and extremely prominent Pennsylvania family who travelled in the rarified world of high society and politics. She married a man named Cord Meyer who became a CIA operative after WWII. The marriage tanked after a decade or so, but not before Mary Meyer had been exposed to the workings of the CIA and the agencies attempts to control public policy and eliminate inconvenient people who got in the agency's way.Kennedy's death by assasination stirred Meyer's suspicions and she started asking questions, too many questions. At this juncture, Meyer quite literally was asking questions that the CIA didn't want asked and became a very inconvenient person given her status and connections. The next thing anyone knew was that Meyer had been murdered and an improbable patsy had been implicated in her murder. Her death might have gone completely unnoticed except for her vocal suspicions that she was being spied on. Adding to the intrigue was her relationships with many high ranking CIA officials and operatives. Elements of her death seemed staged. Too many of her friends gave out conflicting stories which would be revised or completely recanted decades later.If Mary's relationship with Kennedy had remained a secret, it's unlikely that Mary's murder would have seemed like anything but a random act of violence. However, the Kennedy connection and Mary's suspicions linked both their deaths and those of other people who got suspicious.The author really gets to the heart of this story quickly, but more gradually manages to weave a story that is complex and extremely detailed based on eyewitness accounts and missing and/or doctored and fabricated evidence which point to the theory that JFK was assassinated by the CIA and so was Meyer.I could enumerate at length about all the lies, mistruths, and contradictory testimonies that pointed to this conclusion, but the reality is there is so much evidence that refutes the Warren Commission's conclusions and the investigation into Mary Meyers death combined with information about the CIA's methods that this book makes an extremely convincing argument that Kennedy wasn't assassinated by a lone gunman and that Mary Meyers death was not purely a random act of big city violence in one of the toniest areas of DC.As for this book's length, I loaded it on my Kindle before I boarded a plane for a 3+ hour flight. When I landed I had only read the first 8% of this book. I mention this because I am a fairly proficient speed reader and this is an extremely long, detailed and complicated story which was the result of the author's investigation and those of other people who also were on to this story. It was really necessary for me to take notes and bookmark the text to refer to later. The author initially drove me a tad crazy with the often repeated statement that said 'this will be referred to later in the book' or something along that line. As the story progressed it was apparent that many statements made needed to be referenced later on in the text when those statements were contradicted by subsequent information or evidence or were expanded upon.While I definitely buy into the idea that Kennedy was earmarked by the CIA for assassination (for any number of good reasons) as was Mary to a lesser extent mostly because she was causing too much trouble, I don't necessarily buy into the author's representation that Mary was Kennedy's muse for the goal of world peace. I don't know that much about Kennedy's Presidency or his commitment to his relationship with Meyer, but a 'vision of world peace and achieving it' seems a bit lofty after the Bay of Pigs fiasco left most people quaking in their drawers and Kennedy was involved in his postumously reported extracurricular activities with many women other than Mary Pinchot Meyer.If you are considering purchasing the Kindle edition as I did, be aware that the pictures featured in the hard cover version are not present in the digital version. Also, the book is ver heavily footnoted and it is preferable to reference the footnotes as you read. Since I had already seen a couple of pictures of Mary Pinchot Meyer, I knew what the author was talking about regarding her appearance. However, seeing photographs of Meyer and some of the key players in this book really enhances this long and extremely complicated story.Ironically, after I got home I watched a 3 hour program about the Kennedys and saw a lot of the people mentioned in this book talking about JFK and his assasination. I was fascinated yet also repelled after having read this book with so many details still fresh in my mind. Many people were involved in this smoke job and many were high government officials, the socially prominent, and somewhat shockingly Mary's friends and family members.Ultimately, this is a fine book that delves into the inner workings of the CIA and is thoughtful, complex, and revealing. It is also extremely plausible that everything in this book is true, but I doubt that the revelations in this book will go anywhere for the obvious reasons.

Fantastic …. one of the biggest thrillers in world history ….

A must read for anyone who is the least bit curious about the era of the Kennedy assassination and the people involved. This book starts out being about the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyers but morphs into a story about silencing a generation fighting for peace and the two world leaders at the forefront of bringing about world peace. If the Khrushchev - Kennedy relationship had been allowed to flourish, Russia might be an ally. The author is exacting and thorough in supporting what he has written. Initially, I was sceptical about his assertion that Mary Meyers was assassinated as was Kennedy but now I can't see how you can c

This book has been so well researched and constantly updated over the years as new evidence came to light that I don't think anyone could accuse the Author of being a conspiracy nut. I have always believed that the shot that killed JFK came from in front of him not behind. Likewise I never believed Lee Harvey Oswald was the killer. I had also read an article some time ago that claimed LBJ was involved in the conspiracy against JFK but what I was not aware of was, how deeply corrupt this man was. If you only ever read one book about the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, make it this one.

I agree this book derserves 5 stars (I am very confused why the review by a Mr Bradley Martin has given 4 stars because he totally does not like the book)My review agrees 100 per cent with a review I spotted on the American Amazon Website. Please read it.Written by Douglas P. Horne, author of "Inside the Assassination Records Review Board""Mary's Mosaic" is several things at once: an insightful and sensitive biography of both Mary Meyer and her one-time husband, CIA propaganda specialist Cord Meyer; a murder mystery; a trial drama; an expose of secret knowledge and cover-ups inside the Washington D.C. Beltway during the 1950s and 1960s; and of course, a love story about the late-developing relationship between President John F. Kennedy and Mary Pinchot Meyer, whom he had first met at an Ivy League prep school dance when she was only 15 years old. Their paths had crossed briefly once again in the Spring of 1945, at the founding conference for the United Nations in San Francisco. (Mary, her new husband Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy all attended the conference as journalists reporting on the events there, at the birth of the United Nations.)One of the fascinating aspects of this well-researched book is how it traces the evolution and personal development of Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord Meyer, and John F. Kennedy. As Cord Meyer---a scarred war hero who was once an idealist and a pacifist, and who aggressively lobbied for a united world government following World War II---became a disillusioned cynic and was subverted to the "dark side" by Allen Dulles of the CIA, his all-consuming commitment to the Cold War (and his abandonment of his former idealism) slowly killed his marriage to Mary Pinchot. Mary remained an idealist and an independent thinker, and it was this very independent and unconventional woman whose orbit finally intersected with that of President John F. Kennedy again late in 1961, about two years before his assassination.Janney convincingly documents how their relationship became much more than a series of mere sexual trysts---it became a personal and political alliance of two people who had become thoroughly convinced of the insanity of war between nation states in the Nuclear Age, and who were both determined to do something about it. Jack Kennedy, already sickened by war and skeptical about the wisdom of senior military officers because of his World War II experiences, had become even more skeptical about the desire of many to seek simplistic, military solutions to complex international problems following the bad advice he received from the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the Bay of Pigs and Laos in 1961. After the searing crucible of the Cuban Missile Crisis in the fall of 1962, JFK embarked upon a program of moral action not only in civil rights, but undertook bold efforts to begin to end the Cold War; to commence a withdrawal from Vietnam which would have been completed by the end of 1965; and behind the backs of the Pentagon and the CIA, embarked upon what he thought was a clandestine rapprochment with Fidel Castro's Cuba. Mary Pinchot Meyer, who had ever been critical and distrustful of the CIA, became a natural ally of President Kennedy's throughout 1963 as he moved to curb the unbridled power of the Agency and defuse the Cold War. (She was present at the "Peace Speech" at American University on June 10, 1963, and Jackie Kennedy was not.) One of Janney's most convincing sources about the nature of the relationship between Mary Meyer and Jack Kennedy was an extremely well-placed official with intimate knowledge of JFK's daily activities and thinking: Kennedy's Presidential Appointments Secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell. Janney used O'Donnell's oral history interview with the late author Leo Damore, recorded years ago shortly before O'Donnell's death, as one of the foundations for his book.For those who revel in study of the Cold War culture in Washington in this era, the book is full of well-documented revelations about Phil and Katherine Graham of the Washington Post; James Jesus Angleton (the Head of CIA Counterintelligence), who was godfather to the children of Cord and Mary Meyer; and Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post during the Watergate era (who is exposed in the book as one of the CIA's major media assets). In my view, knowing that Bradlee was in the CIA's pocket helps explain why the Washington Post was so successful in taking down Richard Nixon following the Watergate break-in. Nixon had used his Chief of Staff, Haldemann, to attempt to get the CIA to "warn off" the FBI in its investigation of the Watergate break-in and the "plumbers." Nixon instructed Haldemann to threaten the CIA (Richard Helms) with exposure of its involvement in the JFK assassination, as an incentive for the Agency to cooperate with him. This "hardball" leverage failed, and Bradlee was allowed (and perhaps encouraged) to take down Nixon. He acted as the CIA wished in the Watergate matter. Unaccountably, Bradlee never employed the considerable investigative resources of the Post to look into the Kennedy assassination...well, perhaps that is not so "unaccountable" after all, now that we know he had been a CIA asset since the early 1950s, a part of the Agency's remarkably successful penetration and control of foreign and domestic media. As Janney reveals, Cord Meyer (Mary's husband from 1945 until the late 1950s) was in charge of that CIA program of media penetration and propaganda, and Ben Bradlee was married to Mary Pinchot's sister, Toni. The proximity of these relationships---between Cord Meyer, James Angleton, and Bradlee---make it easy to believe that Bradlee's links with the CIA, that began in the early 1950s, continued into the 1960s and early 1970s, when he was in powerful positions at Newsweek and the Washington Post.Peter Janney's own father, a World War II Naval aviator and a recipient of the Navy Cross, was also a CIA man, and Peter grew up amidst the CIA culture in Washington. Mary Meyer's son Michael was his best childhood friend. He knew Mary Meyer as his best friend's mother. He was therefore perfectly placed to write this book, for his own family had frequent social contacts with Cord and Mary Meyer, James Angleton, Richard Helms, Tracy Barnes, Desmond FitzGerald, and William Colby. Janney's knowledge of the CIA Cold War culture in our nation's capital in the 1950s and 1960s is very well-informed, on a personal level.Janney compellingly relates how the D.C. metropolitan police and the U.S. Justice Department attempted to railroad an innocent black man, Ray Crump, for the mysterious murder of Mary Meyer in October of 1964, just three weeks after the Warren Report was issued. Due to the heroic efforts of African American female attorney Dovey Roundtree, Janney explains how against all odds, Crump was acquitted. Peter Janney reveals the likely motive for her murder---she was about to publicly oppose the sham conclusions of the Warren Report as a fraud. Furthermore, she had kept a private diary which presumably recorded details of her relationship with President Kennedy (and perhaps even of affairs of state). In October of 1964, she was literally "the woman who knew too much." This book reveals the numerous lies and falsehoods told about her diary (and its disposition) by Ben Bradlee, James Jesus Angleton, and others, in a way not adequately covered by previous articles and books. The media in this country, misled by the CIA and by former acquaintances of Meyer's who had much to hide, has consistently distorted the true story of what likely happened to her diary, and Peter Janney lays all of this out in a way that anyone can understand.Peter Janney also solves the mystery of her murder 48 years ago, in as convincing a fashion as one can, so many years later. Many have asked, "If Ray Crump did not kill Mary Meyer, then who did?" This book answers that question. (I will not provide any spoilers here.)So purchase a copy of this book today. Extensively footnoted and persuasively written, it is the best account in print about the life and death of Mary Meyer, easily eclipsing the sole biography previously written about her by Nina Burleigh. Peter Janney has courageously finished the investigative journey into her life and death begun by the late Leo Damore, and briefly resumed (and then abandoned) by John H. Davis. "Mary's Mosaic" is part film noir thriller, part biography, and also provides a remarkably frank view of the Cold War culture in Washington, and the dark side of the national security state. It belongs on the bookshelf of every Cold War historian, and everyone who is interested in President Kennedy's assassination.

If you were alive at the time of JFKs' assassination , or are interested in what to you would be a history book , this is a great eye opening tale.Every person alive at the time remembers where they were when they heard the tragic news. Lee Harvey Oswald was presented not as a suspect but as the killer and then tried and convicted by a media circus , and then conveniently executed immediately , before he had any chance to blab.This book tells an inside story of the era. It appears certain that JFK smoked pot , had a Peace Movement bent , and , as he knew contemporariesof Timothy Leary , perhaps went further than just pot. Mary attended college with JFK , and became his paramour later , when he was estranged from Jackie. Mary was a peacenik with an inside track , and it seems obvious that she was also executed when she became committed to becoming a whistle blower. My copy is the 2012 edition , and it is fascinating and totally convincing , with copious notes and backup sources , the newer edition must be even more so.