An American Affair - Mary Pinchot Meyer

[whipstitch]

Interesting that it's already in stores since Amazon lists it as being released on the 4/2/12 and it's currently only available for preorder. I'm looking forward to reading it... and have been for several years now.

[IanEye]

Well, I finished reading "Mary's Mosaic" by Peter Janney. I am glad I read it. Mr. Janney has some pretty firm opinions, and I am not sure I agree with all of them, but I learned a lot of interesting information about Ms. Meyer.
It seems like there is always a few more layers of onion skin to peel back from the events in Dallas.

I scanned a few pages that I thought might be of interest to some here at RI:





Of personal interest to me was a name mentioned in the book's acknowledgments:



While at Emerson, I took a screenwriting class taught by Christopher Keane. I made mention of it in this thread here.

So, we have the son of a CIA employee initially considering collaborating with a Hollywood screenwriter to tell the tale of Mary Pinchot Meyer, but then Mr. Janney goes back to the drawing board to create what eventually becomes "Mary's Mosaic".

I thought that nugget of info might be interesting.

As I said before, I enjoyed reading the book, but I also know I don't know nearly as much about JFK/Dallas as others here at RI, so I'd appreciate hearing any further critiques of Mr. Janney's work.

[Marie Laveau]

Ha! That needs to go on the Hollywood thread.

[Avalon]

[Or you could start saving your pennies for this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8341078
Battling Wall Street is out-of-print and going for a cool $3,999.00 @ Amazon.

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 60#p453960

It may have been listed on Amazon at $3999 in March, but it's down to $16.95 now at Amazon, and they say they have 3 copies in stock.

[MinM]

Real History Blog: My review of Peter Janney's book "Mary's Mosaic"
Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Peter Janney wrote a book entitled Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and their Vision for World Peace. From the subtitle, researchers can be forgiven for thinking that Janney’s book is a serious contribution to our side, as many of us believe that the CIA killed John Kennedy in part because he was trying to end the Cold War and rein in covert operations. But Janney’s book is such a frustrating mix of fact, fiction, speculation and unverifiable data that I cannot recommend this book. Indeed, I’d rather it came with a warning label attached.

Most people don’t read books the way I do. Most people assume the data presented is true unless proven false, and they give the author the benefit of the doubt. On any topic of controversy, especially the JFK assassination, which has become so imbued with disinformation that it’s hard to know whom to believe, I take the opposite approach. I pretty much dare the author to prove his case to me, and I check every fact I don’t already know from elsewhere against the author’s sources to determine whether or not I find his “facts,” and therefore his thesis, credible.
When I first picked the book up in the store, I turned to the footnotes. You can tell a lot about an author by the sources he cites. From that moment, I knew the book would not be worth reading. As I flipped through the pages, I saw Janney attempt to resurrect long-discredited information as fact. Frankly, I wouldn’t have wasted the time reading it at all had I not been asked to review it.

I cannot, in a book review, take on the task of refuting every factual error and pointing out every unsubstantiated rumor-presented-as-fact in this book, because there seemed to be at least a few per page, and it’s just too big a task. So I’ll focus on challenging some specifics regarding the three key points of Janney’s overall thesis, which are: 1) that Mary Meyer was not killed by Ray Crump, the man arrested and tried but not convicted of her murder; 2) that Meyer had an ongoing, serious sexual relationship with a President Kennedy that involved drug use; and 3) that Meyer’s investigation into the CIA’s role in the JFK assassination got her killed...

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com ... marys.html

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/Pease_Janne ... osaic.html

Show #584
Original airdate: June 28, 2012
Guest: Jim Marrs / Jim DiEugenio

# HBO, it was going to be a mega series, Bill Paxton had seen JFK that morning
# Apollo 13, Playtone, Hanks, he finally wised up, they payed Bugliosi off
# Jack White had a lot to do with Harvey and Lee and John Armstrong
# CTKA, Lisa Pease's review of Mary's Mosaic (Janney 2012) ...

http://www.blackopradio.com/pod/black584b.mp3

[Schmazo]

It's relatively rare for somebody to become murdered in the friendly atmosphere of the C&O towpath. I remember seeing a murder map from years ago, which clearly indicated this. I'm having a challenge unearthing that old map again, but this one may serve to better highlight my point:

http://www.burgersub.org/washingtondctotal.htm

[cptmarginal]

Thank you, MinM, for posting Lisa Pease's review of Janney's book; I hadn't realized how credulous I was being in reading it so enthusiastically. His story of growing up around the Meyer family sucked me in, and subsequent chapters which had a lot of questionable assertions didn't really ring the alarm bells because the book was pretty thoroughly sourced and I was willing to cut him some slack. Janney struck me as an honest-but-flawed seeker of truth, ready to bring up relevant historical facts such as MKULTRA or Operation Northwoods.

I still do lean towards him not being an asset, but this statement from Pease definitely does ring those alarm bells (and makes me notice once again that Jim Marrs is quoted on the jacket)

A mutual friend had put me in touch with Janney years ago, and we had a series of email arguments back and forth. At that time, Janney was peddling a screenplay based on this scenario, with the added twist that Kennedy and Meyer were killed because they knew the truth about UFOs.

Another thing, regarding Meyer's accused murderer who was acquitted - Pease thinks he was probably guilty; I'm really not sure about that, but neither do I accept the scenario of how her murder occurred as put forth in Mary's Mosaic. However, this part of that review isn't quite accurate:

The lack of logical rigor is not Janney’s problem alone. He shares that with Leo Damore, who should reasonably be called the book’s co-author. Janney relies on him at every turn, even buying Damore’s deus ex machina solution to Meyer’s murder: a CIA hit man did it. Which hit man? William Mitchell, says Janney, based on Damore’s lawyer’s notes of a call with Damore.

A jogger named William Mitchell had gone to the police after hearing of the murder to describe a man who had been following Mary. The man that Mitchell saw exactly fit Crump’s clothing and description. And what is Damore’s evidence that Mitchell was hit man and not just witness? Janney tells us that Mitchell appeared to have used military and teaching titles as fronts for CIA work, and once lived in a nearby CIA safe house.

William Mitchell may well have been an intelligence agent, but that doesn’t mean he killed Mary Meyer. Oh, but Mitchell confessed, according to Damore, says Janney. That’s right. Janney actually believes a CIA hit man would confess to a journalist who had every intention of making the comment public that he had killed Mary Meyer.

Leo Damore does seem be tainted as a researcher - but the supposed confirmation of "William Mitchell" as a CIA hit man actually came to Janney after 2009, in correspondence with H.P. Albarelli regarding a 2001 interview by Albarelli of a trusted source. His source said that Mitchell was a member of "Army Special Forces kill teams" operating for the CIA & NSA, that he sometimes used the aliases "Allen Crawford" & "Walter Morse", and that he was "involved in the Mary Cord Meyer case." Peter Janney says that Albarelli's source pointed to "William Mitchell" as the one who murdered Mary Meyer "at the request of the Agency's Domestic K Office in D.C."

[MinM]

Another thing, regarding Meyer's accused murderer who was acquitted - Pease thinks he was probably guilty; I'm really not sure about that, but neither do I accept the scenario of how her murder occurred as put forth in Mary's Mosaic...

I tend to agree with that and what Robert Charles-Dunne posits below...

Posted 08 July 2012 - 04:29 PM

View Post Jim DiEugenio, on 08 July 2012 - 01:19 AM, said:

5. He then says there was no forensic evidence to link Crump to the crime scene. In his unrepetant defense of a man who went on to become a habitual and violent criminal, one who used guns and firebombs to terrorize many innocent people, he leaves out a rather relevant fact.; Crump was found soaking wet in some underbrush near a culvert. In other words, in those valuable minutes on the river bed and in the underbrush, he easily could have washed off the nitrates from the weapon, and even buried the handgun. He also had his fly down--geez Peter I wonder why? And in his desire to escape recognition, he had ditched his cap and jacket. When the witness Wiggins approached the scene he said Crump was the man he saw standing over the body. If this is not probable cause, i don't know what is. And this is why Roundtree would not put him on the stand. He would have been demolished.

I don’t wish to comment on Janney’s book, as I haven’t read it. But I have read several essays and posts by Jim and Lisa and am troubled by their apparent disregard for certain facts in the case in their zeal to eviscerate Janney and/or his book. And their willingness to keep their own readers ignorant of facts that require inclusion in any fair assessment of this event.

That Ray Crump subsequently became a violent criminal is rendered irrelevant by a singular, undeniable fact: this detail couldn’t have been known by any party at the time of the trial.

An anachronistic prediction of criminality in the future, in order to convict a man today, is not an element of law. It is evidence of the weakness of the case, for those who have no forensic evidence instead stretch the bounds of credulity, to convict a man based upon subsequent behaviour. Needless to say, such bumbling today would have been rendered unnecessary were the grounds to convict present at time of trial, yet they remain absent even unto today. It is unseemly for persons of Jim and Lisa’s stature to resort to the use of so transparent a debate tactic to achieve what they otherwise cannot.

Nor have I ever read any indication that Jim and Lisa have ever entertained the notion that any part of Crump’s subsequent behaviour may have been instigated or exacerbated by the experience of being falsely accused of murder, with all its attendant stresses and anxieties. Better men have cracked for less.

Let us say that for us, today, Crump’s later violent criminal acts suggest he was prone to such behaviour. Fair enough. What is the evidence that he indulged in such behaviour with Meyer? There was none then, and is none today. Jack The Ripper murdered some women. That this is true doesn’t necessitate that he killed all women who were ever murdered. If I have robbed a dozen banks, and been caught for each, it doesn’t follow that I am automatically guilty of robbing every other bank that’s ever been held up. This entire line of reasoning is out of bounds for far more than one reason alone.

Such stacking of the deck is then compounded by inference after innuendo in a doomed effort to retroactively convict Crump. He ditched his outerwear, he was wet, his fly was at half mast, he washed off the nitrates, he buried the murder weapon. Why, yes, all of that could have happened (although all evidence of nitrates doesn’t simply disappear or vanish upon contact with water). But in order to demonstrate one's case, one would need to prove that they did happen, not simply that they are possible, or be revealed as guilty of precisely the same degree of baseless supposition as the author they pillory for purportedly doing the same.

Jim and Lisa leave unreported the extent of police resources used to solve the Meyer murder case, no doubt because to admit to their own readers the fervent efforts employed by DCPD would illustrate just how unlikely it was that Crump could ditch the weapon in a place where police were forever after unable to locate it. It does not make one’s case more persuasive to ignore that which impeaches it. It just makes one appear dishonest for failing to disclose so salient a fact, simply because one has no credible rationale for it.

It is also untrue to state that Dovey Roundtree refrained from placing Crump on the stand because she thought it would prove his guilt. She did so because Crump was clearly a mentally defective character of low intelligence, education and breeding.

Yes, the prosecutor could have destroyed him on the stand, because Crump had the same mental acuity as the likes of Helen Markham and Mary Bledsoe. Being an idiot doesn’t make one guilty of anything, but it certainly makes it easier for opposing counsel to create the impression of guilt. Race, class, vocabulary, breeding and comportment are all invariably part of a jury’s considerations, though they should not be. Not one of those factors would have favoured Crump on the stand. Dovey Roundtree made the right call, but Jim asserts without evidence the wrong motivations, in order to further his own cause where he otherwise cannot.

It is astonishing to me that writers with the decent track record that Jim and Lisa can proudly boast, are so willing to readily dispense with the legal requirements needed to obtain a conviction. The jury heard the case and found it lacking. No witness to the crime itself, no murder weapon, no ties between Crump and an even hypothetical weapon, no forensic indication that Crump had any interaction with Meyer at all. With so flimsy a prosecution case, upon what basis would Jim and Lisa have a jury pronounce guilt? Suspicion? Gut feelings? Race? Or is proximity to a crime all that it required? If so, let’s pronounce Oswald guilty and get on with our lives.

If Jim and Lisa believe that the jury reached an incorrect verdict because of something unknown to it, what was it the jury didn’t know then that we now do? I have yet to read a word from either Jim or Lisa disclosing a greater reason to believe in Crump’s guilt today than was available to the jury then.

That Jim and Lisa are demonstrably wrong about the Crump case doesn’t make Janney right. It’s not a zero sum game, and alternatives exist to both their respective scenarios.

I would note only what I have written here before. It is incredible to me that writers like Jim and Lisa, who correctly make use of every legal manoeuver in order to question Oswald’s guilt, which was never adjudged at trial, now dispense with the not guilty verdict rendered in Crump’s case on nothing more than their own inferences, preferences and suppositions.

If Peter Janney feels he is the victim of a "personal vendetta," perhaps it is because the reasoning used by his critics to convict Crump is so remarkably, risibly shoddy. And that has nothing to do with sourcing Leary, Hersh, et al. Janney can be entirely wrong about everything else, and yet still be right about Crump’s innocence. Certainly, nothing provided thus far by Jim and Lisa constitutes new evidence suggesting Crump’s guilt...

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index ... ntry256395

BTW there's an interesting ongoing debate between Janney and DiEugenio in that thread.

[chump]

We are engulfed in war. Not simply a war fought with guns and bombs 'somewhere out there.' The skirmishes take place in the region of one’s own mind. The less one is aware of the invisible war, the more receptive one is to its ongoing process of demoralization, for the insensate human is vulnerable, malleable, weak, and ripe for control.
Anton LaVey .

All this work to repaint JFK as a sex addict? I don't know a single person who doesn't already accept that as historical fact.

I guess the smear worked it's magic well, then. I for one find it exceedingly difficult to view JFK as a sex addict. He seems like a man with rather average sexual inclinations for one with huge sources of money and power at his disposal.

I don't think everyone takes that as a smear. Here's what someone posted on a thread about this movie on another forum I posted to...

Banging chicks on acid... will there be a cooler Prez than JFK?

I think not.

http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2013/ ... d-lsd.html

JFK and LSD

Did John Kennedy use LSD during his short time in the White House? Was his source for the acid his lover and confidant Mary Pinchot Meyer who was a protege of Timothy Leary?

Could his hallucinogenic experiences have triggered a paradigm shift in his thinking where he moved towards ending the Cold War, bringing all military back from Vietnam and working towards world peace and equality, which would have solidified his legacy?

...

The Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer (JFK's Lover & Confidante)
Published on May 10, 2013
"The Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer" written by Timothy Leary. The article, which was taken from Leary's autobiography, Flashbacks, appeared in premier issue of Larry Flynt's "The Rebel" magazine.Narrated by Clifford Shack.

Cool story - whether he was on acid, or not.
--------------

http://www.worldwatchers.info/admin/Rebel_11-22-83.pdf

===================
-------------
Some more links via Aangirfan... Great post, as usual:

http://aangirfan.blogspot.com/2013/11/j ... drugs.html

[KUAN]

JFK was a Rock Star. Just remembering the days I remember.

Kennedy's death.In my room listening to short wave.. Buddy Holly's... Peggy Sue was the first record I ever bought..My mom said "I guess it doesn't matter any more does it" which I thought was corny even as a 10 year old.. 911 of course, I hid all day watching tv with the curtains drawn.

Let me think, not much else
Where'd I put my fucking glasses