Mary's Mosaic (50 page)

“Anybody can commit a murder, but it takes an expert to commit a suicide,” said legendary CIA asset William (“Bill”) R. Corson, mentor to Roger Charles, an investigative journalist and a former Marine lieutenant colonel, both of whom will figure prominently in a future chapter.
⁹⁷
Corson was never “officially” employed by the CIA, but he often worked closely with Jim Angleton and Robert Crowley, both of whom were deeply ensconced in the Agency’s covert action directorate. The three were also the closest of friends.

By the early 1960s, the Technical Services Staff (TSS) within the CIA, headed by the infamous Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, had a huge arsenal of drugs and other substances that could be clandestinely administered to unwitting victims to create such states as suicidal depression, brain tumors, cancer, or death from natural causes, leaving no trace of any foreign toxin in the body. Under congressional scrutiny in 1975, CIA director William Colby openly exhibited to Senator Frank Church and his committee a CIA-manufactured pistol equipped with undetectable poison darts that would, when silently fired “without perception” at its intended human target, induce a fatal heart attack,
leaving no trace of any toxin. Colby’s sham exhibition was just the tip of the iceberg of the CIA arsenal.
⁹⁸

Since the 1950s, highly classified CIA programs—with code names such as MKULTRA, Artichoke, Paperclip, MKNAOMI—often utilized psychiatric facilities, including nearby Chestnut Lodge and Sheppard Pratt. The Agency spent untold millions to find and develop drugs and other methods, both conventional and esoteric, to bring people under various states of control. It’s no secret the CIA was interested in all the ramifications of “mind control”—altering, or erasing, or even remaking a subject’s mind in whatever direction the Agency wanted. Mind “erasure” was of paramount importance for CIA personnel who were no longer mentally stable, and at risk of revealing classified information. Another long-standing CIA obsession was to create a “Manchurian candidate”—a project involving the use of hypnosis, drugs, deprivation, or other means as a way to turn an individual into a programmable assassin, even to take his own life.

If Phil Graham’s death was something other than a suicide, what had been the motive to get rid of him, and who would have benefited? While Phil’s overall prognosis and recovery seemed to have improved by the summer of 1963, his long-term stability remained uncertain. Did that mean there might be more embarrassing episodes of public disclosures about people in high places? Would he still, at some point, attempt to wrest control of the
Post
away from Katharine? And who would be in charge of the
Post
’s editorial disposition if Phil was no longer running the paper?

Sometime after the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco, Phil had reportedly had an “acute manic-depressive incident”—prior to his Phoenix, Arizona, outburst in January 1963—during which he had talked openly of “the CIA’s manipulation of journalists” and how they were being used to promote whatever slant the Agency wanted promoted. This finally disturbed him, he reportedly admitted to his friends in the CIA. Increasingly, Graham turned against newsmen and politicians whose code was one of “mutual trust” and silence in order to protect those whose reputations might be compromised by revealing association with the CIA.

“He had begun to talk, after his second breakdown, about the CIA’s manipulation of journalists,” said author Deborah Davis. “He said it disturbed him. He said it to the CIA.” Word had started to go out that Phil could no longer be trusted.
⁹⁹

If Phil Graham made revisions to his will during the last two years of his life, none of them were upheld after his death. His widow immediately assumed
the role of publisher of the
Post.
Katharine reverted to the policies Phil had set in place before his 1961 disenchantment. That included, according to journalist Michael Hasty, “the supporting of efforts of the intelligence community in advancing the foreign policies and economic agenda of the nation’s ruling elites.”
¹⁰⁰
FAIR news analyst Norman Solomon was even more blunt in 2001 when he wrote: “Her [Katharine Graham’s] newspaper mainly functioned as a helpmate to the war-makers in the White House, State Department and Pentagon.”
¹⁰¹
For years after Phil’s death, the
Washington Post
continued its tack of employing all kinds of well-known propaganda techniques, as Michael Hasty had pointed out: “… evasion, confusion, misdirection, targeted emphasis, disinformation, secrecy, omission of important facts, and selective leaks.” It was therefore no surprise that Katharine Graham, in a speech at the CIA’s Langley headquarters in 1988, said the following: “We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”
¹⁰²

Why would Phil Graham have committed suicide at a time when, by all accounts, his condition was improving? In June, with Katharine’s support, he had voluntarily returned to Chestnut Lodge. Well into July, those who visited Phil all spoke of his increasingly stable disposition, of his coming to terms with his illness and making a recovery. Might he have succeeded in returning to his former life and continuing his reign at the
Post
? Whether he recovered or not, the risk may well have been that the wealthy, powerful media mogul Phil Graham was no longer willing to toe the party line, that he could no longer be counted on to turn a blind eye if needed.

The silent, invisible tsunami was approaching. An excruciating, earth-shattering moment in American history was about to explode in three months’ time. As little as possible could be left to chance. Not only would there be a well-planned, well-executed conspiracy to take out a sitting American president, but an even more critical and insidious conspiracy—a cover-up—had to be successfully, and immediately, orchestrated in the aftermath. That, of course, meant all the major sources of news—newspapers—had to be securely on board, willing to turn a blind eye to the government’s contrived, fictitious post-assassination narrative, as well as Allen Dulles’s appointment to the Warren Commission. In the approaching moments of a horrific calamity, Phil Graham, owner and editor of the
Washington Post
, had become a problem. Increasingly regarded as a loose cannon, he could no longer be trusted; he
had criticized the CIA’s infiltration of the media and its manipulation of news, as well as having ceremoniously told off some of the CIA’s own collaborators—publishers and senior editors of the mainstream media—in person, in Phoenix, in January 1963.

O
n August 9, Jack and Jackie lost their second child at birth, a boy they had named Patrick Bouvier. Jackie had gone into premature labor two days earlier, and the infant succumbed to complications. Jack reportedly wept inconsolably.
¹⁰³
For Jackie, the loss had to have been compounded by her realization that, in the wake of her son’s death and on the eve of her tenth wedding anniversary, Jack and Mary Meyer were still very much involved.

A month later, Jack and Jackie would celebrate their anniversary in Newport, Rhode Island. Jack would reportedly get down “on one knee, begging Jackie not to go” on a private cruise with Aristotle Onassis.
¹⁰⁴
She was apparently unmoved by his display; she would spend the first two weeks of October cruising the Aegean with Onassis on his yacht
Christina
, her sister, Lee, brother-in-law Stas Radziwill, and friends Sue and Franklin Roosevelt Jr. in tow. For Jackie, it was now payback time. The White House would spin the trip as a getaway for Jackie’s convalescence, but Bobby Kennedy was furious; he vehemently detested Onassis. Franklin Roosevelt Jr., no stranger to the rogue Onassis, asked Bobby how he should position himself during the trip. Bobby grimly replied, “Sink the fucking yacht!”
¹⁰⁵

Peter Evans, author of
Ari
, the only authorized biography of Aristotle Onassis, later documented in his subsequent book
Nemesis
that it was on this October cruise that Jackie and Onassis first became lovers. “According to Onassis,” wrote Evans, “Jackie’s susceptibility at that moment was considerable, especially in the context of her hurt at Jack’s continuing unfaithfulness.” Evans’s research had led him to Mary Meyer: “It was this affair, believed one White House insider, that was the final straw that persuaded Jackie to continue with the cruise despite her husband’s objections and pleas to cut it short.”
¹⁰⁶

S
ometime before September 24, Timothy Leary said, he received a late-afternoon telephone call from Mary Pinchot. Leary described her as sounding on the verge of “hysteria.” She had rented a car at New York’s LaGuardia Airport and had driven up to Millbrook, wanting to meet with Leary privately, but not at the estate. They agreed on a more remote location where, as he wrote, the “trees were turning technicolor” with fall’s foliage, the “sky glaring indigo—with the bluest girl in the world next to me.”
¹⁰⁷

According to Leary, Mary told him: “It was all going so well. We had eight intelligent women turning on the most powerful men in Washington. And then we got found out. I was such a fool. I made a mistake in recruitment. A wife snitched on us. I’m scared.” She burst into tears. Initially, Leary thought her state might have been the result of a bad drug experience; he attempted to console her. She corrected him. Her state of mind wasn’t drug-related at all. “That’s all been perfect,” she told him. “That’s why it’s so sad. I may be in real trouble. I really shouldn’t be here.” Leary asked a second time if she was, at that moment, on drugs.

“It’s not me. It’s the situation that’s fucked up. You must be very careful now, Timothy. Don’t make any waves. No publicity. I’m afraid for you. I’m afraid for all of us.” The gravity of Mary’s concern was still lost on Leary. He suggested that they go back to the house and have some wine, “maybe a hot bath and figure out what you should do.” Mary persisted.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “This is not paranoia. I’ve gotten mixed up in some dangerous matters. It’s real. You’ve got to believe me. Do you?”

“Yes, I do,” he finally replied.

“Look, if I ever showed up here suddenly, could you hide me out for a while?”

“Sure.”

“Good.” Mary then pulled a pill bottle out of her handbag.

“This is supposed to be the best LSD in the world. From the National Institute of Mental Health. Isn’t it funny that I end up giving it to you?”
¹⁰⁸

Timothy Leary watched Mary drive away. It would be the last time he would see her alive.

Mary wasn’t one to be spooked easily by anything. Leary had no idea what other woman in Washington could be causing her such alarm. During the 1990 Leary-Damore interview, however, the Millbrook incident was discussed at some length.
¹⁰⁹
Both Leary and Damore had come to believe that the woman in question—the woman Mary believed had betrayed her (“A wife snitched on us”)—was, in fact, Katharine Graham. Damore’s theory was that in her desperation to bring her husband under control, Katharine was frantic enough to try anything, including supporting Phil in undertaking a psychedelic exploration. That meant, according to Damore, that Katharine Graham might have been one of the eight women in Mary’s group. His conversation with Anne Chamberlin, a close friend of Katharine Graham’s, may have led him to this conclusion.

Katharine Graham’s biggest influence in this direction, however, likely came from her close friends Henry and Clare Booth Luce, who were, like Katharine and Phil Graham, media moguls. The Luces owned Time Inc. Over the years, Katharine Graham and Clare Booth Luce would become very dear friends.

In the late 1950s, her marriage unraveling because Henry wanted to leave her for a younger woman, Clare Booth Luce, like Mary Meyer, first experimented with LSD. Under the direction of Dr. Sidney Cohen, Clare, at loose ends, further continued her exploration during a time of personal turmoil. In spite of her extraordinarily successful careers, which included writing four critically acclaimed Broadway plays in the 1930s, serving as managing editor of
Vanity Fair
from 1933 to 1934, becoming a two-term congresswoman in the 1940s, serving as American ambassador to Italy from 1953 to 1956, and finding herself regarded as one of the world’s ten most admired women—Clare described herself as “deeply unhappy.”
¹¹⁰
Again, like Mary Meyer and Peggy Mellon Hitchcock, Clare’s psychedelic voyages would turn her into an LSD proselytizer. Starting in 1954 and through 1968, both
Time
and
Life
would publish a number of enthusiastic articles about hallucinogens. According to Columbia University historian Alan Brinkley, Clare also believed that her use of hallucinogens had “saved our marriage.”
¹¹¹

Katharine Graham first caught sight of Henry and Clare Booth Luce in 1948. She marveled at “how important they looked—and indeed they were.”
¹¹²
The two couples fast became friends in 1954. Clare became aware of Phil Graham’s deterioration sometime in 1962,
¹¹³
the same year that Mary Meyer first introduced herself to Timothy Leary and told him she wanted to bring together a group of women who were involved with politically powerful men in Washington. Following Phil Graham’s death in 1963, Katharine turned to Clare as a role model: “Clare gave me interesting and useful guidance on how to handle myself at work … much of it being about a woman in a man’s world. I took to heart what she said.”
¹¹⁴
Years after the
Washington Post
’s Watergate crisis, Katharine would recall how she had, during critical moments, “engaged in a behind-the-scenes back-and-forth with Clare Booth Luce.”
¹¹⁵