Mary's Mosaic (2 page)

Those questions had long haunted Janney as well, and in a deeply personal way. For, as a child growing up in close proximity to the Meyer family home in McLean, Virginia, one of the Meyer boys had been his best friend. Peter was himself the son of a high-level CIA official, Wistar Janney. When that son set out on his many-year quest to ascertain who was behind the death of his best friend’s mother—and how this may have been related to the assassination of President Kennedy—the journey was one with many surprising, and heart-wrenching, twists and turns. In some ways, this book reads like a murder
mystery, but ultimately it is more like a Greek tragedy: one that does not spare the Homer of this saga, Peter Janney himself.

In painstaking detail, he sets down the sequence of events around Meyer’s demise, a sequence that leaves no doubt that the “official version” was concocted and an innocent black man charged with the crime. This is a story that recalls the Zeitgeist of the 1960s, from the civil rights movement to consciousness-raising through psychedelics—and the change wrought in Kennedy’s conscience and leadership following the near apocalypse of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and through the influence and vision of a beautiful, amazing woman.

Mary’s Mosaic
is also a story about intertwined destinies, about human strength and weakness, and finally about forces of good and evil. The book makes a reader consider those possibilities within each of us, even as what unfolds is on a Shakespearean stage. For those were, indeed, momentous times, and times that reverberate to this day across our national landscape. As we live in one of the most polarized junctures in American history, Peter Janney gets at the root of the origins, the “primary causes” of dysfunctionality and disunion that we need to understand. The author has given us a penetrating insight into the still-hidden history of an era that few other books have achieved. As the philosopher Santayana once said, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

I don’t want to steal the thunder from what also stands as a mesmerizing page-turner, but here are some broad brushstrokes: In
Mary’s Mosaic
, you will learn not only how covert actions are orchestrated, but the many-layered duplicity it takes to conceal the truth about them. You will see how, to use a cliché, “love conquers all”—when a woman of integrity is able to help bring a transcendent vision to the most powerful man in the world. You will observe her courage in seeking to bring out the truth of what happened to him, even knowing full well the powers-that-be she was up against. And you will contemplate, too, the courage of author Janney in pursuing what became a terribly agonizing truth about the role of his own father.

I wish I could anticipate that
Mary’s Mosaic
will be widely reviewed by the major media. But after finishing this book, you will know why this cannot be the case. The CIA set out to manipulate the free flow of information long ago, a blow to our democracy that now sees near-total control by fewer and fewer large corporate owners. The Rupert Murdochs of today would not have been possible without the Ben Bradlees of yesterday, no matter their seeming ideological differences. That is another sad legacy of what happened almost fifty years ago to JFK and Mary Meyer.

So be prepared to be surprised, even astonished, and ultimately outraged by what is set forth in these pages. Not all the answers to what bedevils our nation are here, but enough to make you take a deep breath and realize that if we do not fight for what we believe in, and from the personal depths of our being, then America is doomed to the fate that befalls all imperial powers. Denial will be our downfall, the illusion that things like this do not happen here. But not if Peter Janney has anything to say about it.

Dick Russell
is the author of two acclaimed books on the Kennedy assassination,
The Man Who Knew Too Much
and
On the Trail of the JFK Assassins
, as well as two recent bestsellers with Jesse Ventura,
American Conspiracies
and
63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read
.

For

Quentin and Mark Meyer.

And in memory of their brother Michael,

and, of course, their mother …

“For the greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

—President John F. Kennedy
Yale University
June 11, 1962

P
ART
O
NE

“
I
’M THINKING OF
writing a book about my family,” said the new Roman Emperor Claudius to his trusted friend King Herod.

“What sort of book?” inquired Herod.

“To tell the truth,” whispered Claudius, looking around to make sure no one else was listening.

“Will you tell everything?” asked Herod.

“Everything,” said Claudius emphatically, “as a historian should. Well, not great tales of heroic exploits, like Titus Livius wrote, no. But the plain facts, the kitchen details, even the gossip.”

“Why? Why should you want to write such a book? Why rake it all up?” inquired Herod.

“Because I owe it to the others to tell the truth, to Posthumous and Germanicus,” said Claudius.

“Why?” Herod beseeched.

“Because they’re dead,” said Claudius solemnly. “And a man should keep faith with his friends, even though they’re dead. You see, I’ve been so very fortunate in my life, when they who were born more deserving, have not. I’ve had only three real friends in my life. Posthumous and Germanicus were two – third one is you.”

“Listen Claudius,” admonished Herod. “Let me give you a piece of advice. One last piece and then I’m done. Trust no one, my friend, no one! Not your most grateful freedman. Not your most intimate friend. Not your dearest child. Not the wife of your bosom.
Trust no one!”

“No one?” asked Claudius, looking into Herod’s eyes. “Not even you ?”
¹

1
    From the 1976 BBC Masterpiece Theatre production of
I, Claudius
.
(Based on:
I, Claudius: from the autobiography of Tiberius Claudius born 10 B.C. murdered and deified A.D. 54.
and
Claudius The God,
both authored by Robert Graves. New York: Vintage International Edition, 1989, originally published by Random House, 1935.

P
ROLOGUE

“He was perfect for the CIA. He never felt guilt about anything.”

—St. John Hunt, reflecting on the life
of his father, E. Howard Hunt
¹

T
HANKSGIVING VACATION IN
the fall of 1964 offered a welcome respite from the rigors of boarding school life in New Hampshire.
²
At seventeen, I was full of both testosterone and a lust for freedom that didn’t find much outlet at a New England prep school. I was a “lifer,” as we used to say. I had arrived in the ninth grade, or what was commonly known in the English boarding-school system as “the third form.” I would stay until the end and graduate, but that fall, in my fifth-form junior year, I felt engaged in a Sisyphean struggle to break free: five days off—this year with a driver’s license!—followed by another long slog up the hill. It was 1964. Just a year and half more of this, I kept telling myself, and I’d be out of what seemed like jail. Adolescence, with all of its possibilities, sometimes felt like prison. Dreams and a rich fantasy life were often the only escape.

As the plane began its final approach into Washington’s National Airport, I picked out a number of familiar places stretched out below, including my old alma mater, Georgetown Day School (GDS), the sight of which stirred a flood of memories from my childhood. Something had been lost while I was a student there; and, nearly a decade later, emotional scar tissue still lingered. My best friend and classmate, Michael Pinchot Meyer, had been killed when we were both just nine years old. It had been my first experience with death—losing someone I had been deeply fond of. I didn’t want to think about it.

I consoled myself instead with the promise of freedom that lay before me. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. My father would still be at work when I got home, but my mother and my younger brother would likely be
around. I would have most of the afternoon to cruise about town with old friends—certainly enough time to sneak a beer or two and a few cigarettes.

M
y family’s home was a modern architectural marvel for its time. A long, split-level structure, spacious and light-filled, with large picture windows in most rooms, the house was nestled in one of the last enclaves of Washington’s woods, sheltered from the cacophony of distant traffic. At dinner that evening, I looked out from the split-level dining room through the living room’s floor-to-ceiling windows. Beyond the verdant lawn was the concrete swimming pool, half-drained and dotted with logs to prevent winter ice from cracking its walls. I took my usual place at the table facing my brother, Christopher, with my mother to my left and my father to my right. On the wall behind my mother, an original black-and-white Morris Rosenfeld photograph,
Spinnakers Flying
, announced the family passion—sailing. My parents had met during summers spent on Cape Cod, and they had imparted their love of navigating the open sea to my brother and me. By the age of seventeen, I had already spent long stretches offshore in the Atlantic racing to Bermuda, and from Annapolis to Newport, Rhode Island.

During dinner that evening, my father mentioned that it was not too early to think about racing our sailboat from Annapolis to Newport again in the coming year. Sailing was a rite of passage for me, and I looked forward to continuing to master its intricacies under my father’s guidance. The previous summer had already extended my knowledge and experience with a small group trip down the Dalmatian coast from Venice to Athens on a seventy-seven-foot Rhodes ketch. Its colorful skipper, a gallant, distinguished former World War II Marine combat captain named Horace (“Hod”) Fuller, had been a delightful legend to sail with. An accomplished sailor, he sometimes kindly took me aside for tutorials on some of the idiosyncrasies of sailing in the Adriatic Sea.

There were, however, a couple of instances during the trip that disturbed me. Late one night, I had awakened to the sound of Hod Fuller having what sounded like combat nightmares from his World War II experiences. No one else in our group wanted to acknowledge it. Years later, my father, a career CIA senior official, having had his usual “generous” intake of alcohol one evening, remarked that “Hod Fuller was one of the best damn assassins we ever had….” A bit stunned, I curiously inquired as to how he went about his assignments. In at least one instance, my father said, Hod had taken his victim out in a rowboat and shot him in the back of the head and then dumped him overboard.

But on the evening before Thanksgiving, diving into a sumptuous meal of veal scaloppini, I was happily anticipating the short recess that lay before me, and dreaming about being on the ocean again, a place where my freedom flourished. It was comforting to be home, to have a reprieve from academic pressures and boarding-school life, and to be with my family. Amid the challenges and turbulence of adolescence, hearth and home was still a place I could count on. It wouldn’t last much longer, I soon discovered. I wasn’t at all prepared when the conversation took a sudden turn.

“
M
ary Meyer died earlier this fall,” my mother said, looking at me. I reached for my water.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Her words bludgeoned me.

“She was murdered while walking on the canal towpath,” my mother explained. “They caught the guy who did it. She was taking one of her usual walks during the day. It was a sexual assault.”

Reeling, I tried to make sense of what she was saying. “How was she killed?” I asked, trying to orient myself over the eruption of pounding in my chest.

“She was shot. It’s very sad for all of us.”

I pressed her for more details but absorbed little. Numbness and shock were setting in. I remember my mother mentioning Mary’s funeral, and then something about how my father and another man had gone to the airport to meet Cord Meyer, who had been away on the day of his ex-wife’s murder. My mother was doing all the talking; my father didn’t say anything. He just sat there, staring vacantly off into space. There was something almost eerie about his silence.

My stomach was in knots. Was it only confusion, or was it fear? After a while, I excused myself from the table, saying that I had plans to go out for the evening. In fact, my only impulse was to go to my room and curl up in my bed. That night, I was in and out of sleep. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. Memories crashed through my mind like a hurricane’s pounding surf. Seeing Georgetown Day School from the plane earlier in the day had already stirred something in me, and now there was no escape.

I had known the Meyer family since 1952, when I was five years old. My mother, Mary Draper, and Mary Pinchot had been classmates in Vassar College’s class of 1942. My father, Wistar Janney, had met Cord Meyer after World War II, and they now worked together at the CIA. Our families were socially entwined—we went camping together, played touch football, visited each other’s homes frequently. The Meyers had three children: Quentin, Michael,
and Mark. Michael and I had been born less than one month apart, and Quentin—or “Quenty,” as we called him—was a year and a half older. Mark and my brother, Christopher, were the same age, about two years younger than Michael and I. By the time Michael and I were seven, we were best friends, and often inseparable. We shared a number of bonds, especially baseball and fishing. We had been in the same class at Georgetown Day School for three years, our desks side by side for two of them.