How Collusion Occurs

Government agencies have done a wonderful job through the years of making it seem as though any version of an incident other than the official story was a meaningless conspiracy theory. Some of what you’ll learn in this volume will be predicated on conspiracy theories. One of the arguments against these theories is that it is impossible to hide such huge operations—that there are just too many people involved to keep them quiet. In actuality, conspiracies work not only because the general public wants to believe the official story, but also because each piece of evidence left behind when treated separately isn’t compelling enough to pay that much attention to.

On November 24, 1963, the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald had just begun. Only one FBI officer and one Secret Service agent had barely enough time to get Oswald’s name, let alone siphon all the information that he had to give. Less than forty-eight hours after Oswald’s arrest, Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with known ties to the mafia, broke into the Dallas jail and past police officers to shoot Oswald dead at point blank range, eliminating any chance of knowing who Oswald was, what his motives were, and the wealth of information he possessed.

On September 13, 2001, the FBI and CIA—probably the two largest clandestine domestic and international espionage agencies in the world that had supposedly bumbled their way into allowing such a horrendous act to occur on United States soil—uncovered all of the details of what occurred on September 11 in just forty-eight hours, including the names of all nineteen hijackers and details of the plan that originated from their leader, Osama Bin Laden. Suddenly, out of the clear blue, the American intelligence community developed thorough investigative prowess. It took Colonel Lafayette Baker, under instructions from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, only forty-eight hours to discover every detail of the Abraham Lincoln assassination including all of the conspirators and their location. He almost conclusively knew the plot and the perpetrators prior to Lincoln’s murder. Collusion was rife in 1865, and there’s little doubt that it also played a part in the JFK assassination and the events of 9/11.

As has been pointed out, one of the very first arguments used to counter the efforts of proving that an incident has been caused by additional people is that it is too hard to create a cover-up—there are just too many operatives who could or would be whistleblowers and informants. There are dozens of people connected with the Kennedy assassination who died in mysterious and bizarre ways. A few deserve considerable attention.

Mary Pinchot Meyer was JFK’s lover, and one of the close friends of both JFK and Jackie. In 1944, painter Mary Pinchot met Cord Meyer, a marine who was recuperating from shrapnel injuries, including the loss of an eye. They married a year later, subsequently had three sons, and eventually settled in Georgetown where Cord began working at the CIA in 1951 in the espionage and counterintelligence branch. Meyer was part of Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to influence the media. Disillusioned with the CIA, Meyer quit in January 1954. At about this time, newlyweds Senator John F. Kennedy and Jackie moved in down the street from the Meyers, and the two couples became very good friends, especially Jackie and Mary who went on many walks together. In November, Cord returned to the CIA as head of the International Organizations Division, spending much time in Europe, and in 1958, Mary filed for divorce.

Moving very well within Georgetown’s elite social circles, Mary was friendly with the Washington Post’s Ben Bradlee (who was also her brother-in-law), ABC News reporter Lisa Howard, chief of CIA Counterintelligence James Angleton and his wife, and Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, who moved into John and Jackie’s home after the latter moved into the White House. In late 1961 or early 1962, President Kennedy and Mary began an affair, and she told friends that she was keeping a diary. She and JFK were presumably very much in love, and pacifist Mary quite possibly influenced the president’s views on nuclear disarmament with Russia and rapprochement with Cuba. It was no secret that the FBI was keeping a file on her, and the CIA later admitted that they were bugging her phone.

Mary Pinchot Meyer at JFK’s 46th birthday Party on the presidential yacht Sequoia. Robert Knudsen, 1963.

Peter Janney, in his book Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, details the results of his investigation into her 1964 death:

After Dallas, amid utter horror and shock, Mary had taken it upon herself to discover and make sense of the truth of the conspiracy that had taken place—only to realize the magnitude of the second conspiracy, a cover-up taking place right before her eyes. There, in her diary, she had reached an understanding. It was her own mosaic of people, events, circumstances, and exploration that informed her understanding—not only of the evil that had taken place in Dallas, but of the villainous darkness that was now enveloping all of America. She had furiously confronted her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, possibly Jim Angleton as well, with what she had discovered, not fully realizing the extent of their own diabolical ruthlessness. The Warren Report was ultimately nothing more than a house of cards; once ignited with the right matchstick, it would be engulfed in flames. If Mary courageously went public with who she was, and what she knew, making clear her position in the final years of Jack’s life, people with influence would take notice; the fire of suspicion around Dallas would erupt into a conflagration. She had to be eliminated.⁴⁴

Friend Timothy Leary claims that Mary called him the day after the assassination and said, “They couldn’t control him anymore. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much . . . They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid. Be careful.”⁴⁵

Prior to her death, Meyer told friends that she believed that there had been some people in her house while she was away, and that she believed she saw someone leaving her apartment as she was entering. Both incidents were reported to the police. On October 12, 1964, less than a year after the assassination, Mary was shot at or near point-blank range in the head and heart while walking along the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath in Georgetown. A car mechanic, working on a car nearby, heard a woman shouting, and as he ran toward the scene claimed that he saw an African American male standing over her body. Police shortly arrived, catching Raymond Crump, who not only fit the description but also had his fly open.

The murder weapon was never found, and the mechanic couldn’t positively identify Crump. Due to circumstantial evidence, Crump was not convicted. The murder remains an unsolved mystery. Six weeks prior to his death, author C. David Heymann asked Cord Meyers who he thought killed Mary. “The same sons of bitches,” he hissed, “that killed John F. Kennedy.”⁴⁶ Significantly, during the arrest and trial of Crump, it was never reported that the murdered woman had been JFK’s mistress or that her ex-husband was a CIA operative. As a matter of fact, the presiding judge in a pretrial motion didn’t even allow the private life of Mary to be mentioned during the trial.⁴⁷ Not surprisingly, the case was of very little interest to the public, exactly what a cover-up would strongly desire.

Mary Pinchot Myer’s good friend Lisa Howard was fired by ABC News for her involvement in Kennedy’s Castro negotiation dealings (to be discussed fully later in the chapter, “The Second Successful American Coup d’état: The JFK Assassination”) and died on July 4, 1965. Found staggering in a parking lot, it was reported that she committed suicide by taking 100 phenobarbital pills because she was depressed over losing her job.

Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, who was also a regular panelist on the television series What’s My Line?, was deeply involved in the Kennedy assassination story and convinced that Oswald was innocent. She once wrote that if Marina Oswald told the “whole story of her life with President Kennedy’s alleged assassin, it would split open the front pages of newspapers all over the world.”⁴⁸ Kilgallen, the only person to interview Jack Ruby, was writing a book to be titled Murder One and bragged that she would reveal the contents of the interview and the real story behind the assassination. Kilgallen told friends that she was close to discovering who actually killed the president. Soon afterward, on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found dead, sitting upright in bed with a book on her lap, an apparent suicide by alcohol and barbiturates. Her personal hairdresser, Marc Sinclaire, who often woke Kilgallen, immediately concluded that she had been murdered:

• According to Sinclaire, Kilgallen would never have gone to bed dressed as she was discovered, with a blouse over her nightgown.

• She was in the master bedroom, which, according to Sinclaire, she hadn’t occupied for many years.

• Kilgallen had Robert Ruark’s novel The Honey Badger on her lap. Her reading glasses were nowhere to be found. Sinclaire pointed out that Dorothy could not read without eyeglasses and had already read the book several weeks earlier, having discussed it with Sinclaire.

• Although Kilgallen always removed her fake eyelashes and makeup prior to retiring each night, she was still wearing them when her body was found.

Though it is true that Kilgallen was in serious financial trouble and feared that she would be forced to sell her beloved Manhattan apartment, she was also expecting to earn a fortune from Murder One, making it highly unlikely that her death was a depression-caused suicide.

The kicker, however, is that longtime JFK mistress Florence Pritchett Smith, who was Kilgallen’s close friend (both wrote for the same newspaper and appeared on What’s My Line?), died just two days later. Even though Smith suffered from leukemia, it is just too much of a coincidence. Was Smith in possession of Kilgallen’s missing notes, or did she just know too much?

The Kennedy assassination is a classic example of how cover-ups are covered up. H. R. Haldeman, President Nixon’s chief of staff, claimed in his book The Ends of Power that: “After Kennedy was killed, the CIA launched a fantastic cover-up. The CIA literally erased any connection between Kennedy’s assassination and the CIA . . . in fact, Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton of the CIA called Bill Sullivan of the FBI and rehearsed the questions and answers they would give to the Warren Commission investigators.”⁴⁹