by Peter Janney
“Okay,” she said, not expecting to hear what followed.
“The vice president [Lyndon Johnson] has asked me to give him more security than the president,” said Shimon. As they continued walking, Toni’s mood began to darken. There was something ominous in her father’s voice, she remembered feeling.
“What’s he afraid of, Dad?” she asked her father.
“What do you think?” Her father responded, wanting to see if she understood and connected the dots. There was an awkward silence. She knew she was being tested. Toni would remember that moment and the darkness that had come over her that day.
“Something’s coming down, Dad,” she said. “Does President Kennedy know about this?”
“I haven’t mentioned it,” she remembered her father telling her.
“What do you think?” her father asked again.
“Something’s going to happen and Johnson knows about it,” Toni immediately responded.
“Good girl!” said Shimon, proud of his tutelage of his only child.49
Later that spring, Mary returned to Boston for her third visit with Timothy Leary. Without mentioning any names, she reportedly alluded to Phil Graham’s outburst in Arizona earlier that year. “Oh God, where to begin,” Leary recalled her saying. “There’s a tremendous power struggle going in Washington. A friend of mine was losing the battle, a really bloody one. He got drunk and told a room of reporters about me and my boyfriend.50
“It’s really scary,” Mary continued. “You wouldn’t believe how well-connected some of these people are, and nobody picked it up.”51 Mary was alluding to the fact that Graham’s Phoenix outburst had not appeared in any newspaper or media outlet. She urged Leary to keep a lower profile with his psychedelic research. They also discussed the state of world affairs, with Mary telling him, “America doesn’t have to be run by these cold-war guys. They’re crazy, they are. They don’t listen. They don’t learn. They’re completely caught up in planning World War III. They can’t enjoy anything but power and control.”52 Her comments to Leary suggested that Jack might have told her about the July 1961 National Security Council (NSC) meeting in which the Pentagon and the CIA seriously considered a preemptive nuclear attack on the Soviets in late 1963.
Leary invited Mary to Mexico for further training in leading psychedelic sessions. She declined and offered a warning: “If you stir up too many waves, they’ll shut you down. Or worse.” She no longer trusted the phones or the mail, she told him, but said she would find a way to stay in touch. “And do be careful,” she underscored.53
On the sixth of May, 1963, the Harvard Corporation voted to fire Timothy Leary, not for giving hallucinogens to students, but for failing to show up and teach some of his classes that spring. Leary received the news while in Mexico. He appeared to be relieved. His former Harvard boss, Professor David McClelland, the man who originally brought Leary to the university in 1959, thought he had become psychotic; his biographer thought he’d never been happier.54 Five years later, Leary reflected on his firing from Harvard:
I was never able to commit myself to the game of Harvard or even to the game of rehabilitation. Not even to the game of proselytizing for LSD itself. Nothing that doesn’t ring true to my ancient cell wisdom and to that central vibration beam within can hold my attention for very long. From the date of this session it was inevitable that we would leave Harvard, that we would leave American society, and that we would spend the rest of our lives as mutants, faithfully following the instructions of our internal blueprints, and tenderly, gently disregarding the parochial social insanities.55
While in residence that May just north of Acapulco, Leary lamented: “One thing that didn’t happen was a visit from Mary Pinchot. I received a short cryptic note, postmarked Washington, D.C., typed and unsigned.” The note read:
PROGRAM GOING VERY WEL HERE. EXTREMELY WEL!!! HOWEVER, I WON’T BE JOINING YOU. TOO MUCH PUBLICITY.
YOUR SUMMER CAMP IS IN SERIOUS JEOPARDY.
I’LL CONTACT YOU AFTER YOU RETURN TO USA.56
The note, in all probability, was from Mary, but what did it mean? According to author Leo Damore, it was corroborating evidence of a “mild LSD trip” that Mary and Jack had shared at Joe Alsop’s home in Georgetown in May 1963. Sometime after Damore’s November 1990 interview with Timothy Leary, it appeared that Damore learned of this event. When I met with Damore in April 1993, he confided that the same confidential source who had told him about Mary and Jack’s rendezvous in Provincetown, Massachusetts, during the summer of 1959 had later also confided that Mary and Jack had, in fact, taken a “mild LSD trip” together several weeks before Jack’s commencement address at American University, and before his forty-sixth birthday party on May 29. Despite my repeated inquiry about the identity of the source, however, Damore would never reveal it.57
As to the note’s authenticity, it appeared to be legitimate: Timothy Leary was well known to be an obsessive pack rat who never threw away anything. According to his biographer, Robert Greenfield, Leary’s hoarding of his papers, letters, any kind of communication whatsoever, was legendary. “Throughout his life, Tim saved every scrap of paper that had ever crossed his desk,” said Greenfield. “The archive he had assembled was second to none. The sheer volume of the 465 boxes holding his papers was so overwhelming that at his death, they entirely filled a large two-bedroom apartment in the San Fernando Valley.”58
During what would turn out to be the last five months of his life, President Kennedy would further define himself and his presidency. His newfound political trajectory would eventually distance him from Cold War ideology and move him closer to setting the stage for world peace. For years, Kennedy had been quietly nurturing the notion of disarmament. The Cuba debacles had awakened and emboldened the president. Twice burned by both the military and the CIA, Kennedy’s independence became clear. After the Cuban Missile Crisis and for the remainder of his presidency, he sought not only to avoid military and intelligence oversight, but also to evade their scrutiny as well. He was determined to forge a path toward setting the world stage for peace.
Yet despite ongoing secret negotiations with Prime Minister Harold Macmillan of Great Britain and Khrushchev in the early part of 1963, President Kennedy seemed pessimistic about the possibility of a nuclear arms treaty. At his news conference on March 21, when asked about the possibility of a test-ban agreement, he replied, “Well, my hopes are dimmed, but nevertheless I still hope.” On May 20, just three weeks before his historic, unprecedented commencement address at American University on June 10, he was quoted as saying, “No, I’m not hopeful, I’m not hopeful…. We have tried to get an agreement [with the Soviets] on all the rest of it and then to the question of the number of inspections, but we were unable to get that. So I would say, I’m not hopeful at all.”59
Whatever transpired during the latter half of May remains unknown, but something somewhere seems to have made a significant impact. No other presidential address in history would provoke such a remarkable impact on world opinion—or stir the latent hope of mankind—as did President Kennedy’s American University commencement address on June 10, 1963. Kennedy wanted the entire world to believe in the possibility of peace. As Secretary of State Dean Rusk noted after the speech, “The speech was remarkable, I feel, because it had so much of President Kennedy personally in it… And because it reflected his total commitment to peace.”
If some part of his transformation was catalyzed by a horizon-altering psychedelic excursion with Mary Meyer, then so be it. He wouldn’t have been the first iconic figure in human history to partake, nor would he be the last. Stepping out of the proverbial box of normal perception—surrendering to what Timothy Leary once referred to as the “niagara of sensory input”—has, in fact, changed the course of events and perspectives for many respected notables. Dr. Francis Crick, the Nobel laureate and progenitor of modern genetics, reportedly was under the influence of LSD when he first deciphered the doublehelix structure of DNA sixty years ago.
Before his death in 2004, he told a colleague that he had often used small doses of LSD to boost his powers of thought. It was reported that “it was LSD, not Eagle’s warm beer, that helped him to unravel the structure of DNA, the discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.”60
Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, was first introduced to LSD in 1956 by psychedelic pioneer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. He emerged completely enthusiastic about the experience, believing that the drug was a kind of “miracle substance” that had the potential to facilitate a deeper spiritual connection with life—something he was convinced was missing for people who struggled with alcohol addiction. Enthralled by his own realizations, Wilson continued his own exploration of LSD well into the 1960s, at one point considering “a plan to have LSD distributed at all A. A. meetings nationwide.”61
The late Steve Jobs, a Reed College dropout and the founder of Apple Computer (now Apple, Inc.), became a veritable New Age Thomas Edison—possibly one of the greatest technological inventors and entrepreneurs the world has ever witnessed. He once told author John Markoff that he “believed that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had ever done in his life,” and that people who had never taken psychedelics would never be able to fully understand him.62
In a televised interview with political commentator and comedian Bill Maher in 2009, acclaimed film director Oliver Stone said of psychedelics: “I wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t been for it. I grew a lot. It opened my mind.” Stone later added, “Those people who stayed human in the platoons [in Vietnam], in the combat platoons I saw, were doing grass [smoking marijuana]. It kept them human throughout a very deadening process.”63
No longer regarded as just a passing fad of the 1960s counterculture, the long-awaited resurgence in psychedelic research has finally resumed. Since 2008, at Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and UCLA, U.S.-government-sponsored studies with the hallucinogen psilocybin have repeatedly demonstrated that subjects who volunteered for this opportunity came to regard their experience as one of the most meaningful, spiritually significant events in their lives. The experience of ordinary people in this kind of research has resembled those recorded in the annals of mystical traditions. Dr. Roland Griffiths at Johns Hopkins now entertains the idea that the human brain may, in fact, be “hardwired” to undergo these kinds of “unitive” experiences.64
Whatever curiosity might have propelled Jack Kennedy to partake of a “mild” psychedelic excursion, beyond Mary Meyer’s example, will probably never be revealed, unless Mary’s diary turns up. In any case, even a minimal dose of a psychedelic like LSD or psilocybin could have chemically catalyzed the opening of Jack’s “hard-wired” capacity for a “unitive” state of consciousness. It would have further set into motion the insights already taking hold in the president for an entirely new political trajectory, away from the Cold War.
The president wrote his American University address with a small cadre of trusted aides who worked hard to keep its contents from the Cold War national security establishment.65 The powerful speech marked an abrupt departure from Cold War bluster and announced a new era of global cooperation and coexistence. Ascending the dais at 10:30 that morning, the president said, “I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived—yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace.”66
The press immediately dubbed it Kennedy’s “peace speech,” and two days later, the New York Times gave it only a tepid response: “Generally there was not much optimism in official Washington that the President’s conciliation address at American University would produce agreement on a test ban treaty or anything else,” wrote reporter Max Frankel.67 This, despite the fact that the speech was perhaps the most visionary, spiritual clarion call of awakening ever put forth across the divide of all nation-states, and mankind.
First, as Kennedy outlined the new direction his administration would undertake, he invited all Americans to examine what the advent of a genuine peace would mean for them: “What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”68 An American president was holding the entire world in his arms. His emerging vision of peace for the planet was no less important than his vision of peace for his country, for in the “unitive” state of consciousness, we are all one.
Unwilling to let his own countrymen off the hook, the president then challenged the notion that if only the Soviets would “adopt a more enlightened attitude,” there would be peace. World peace, Kennedy exhorted, was everyone’s responsibility: “I also believe we must examine our own attitude—as individuals and as a nation—for our attitude is as essential as theirs.” Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. would later assess the remark as “a sentence capable of revolutionizing the whole American view of the Cold War.”69 Kennedy’s first invitation urged all Americans to reframe their thinking:
First: Let us examine our attitude toward peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable—that mankind is doomed—that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable—and we believe they can do it again.70
The evolution of humanity toward world peace would require, the president underscored, a “gradual evolution in human institutions.” He would go on to say:
Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process—a way of solving problems.
… Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all peoples to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly toward it.71
Encouraging all Americans to “reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union,” this dramatic oration was as much for the Russian people as it was for America. Kennedy accepted his share of responsibility (much of it manufactured by the CIA) for the destructive Cold War mentality that had so far prevailed, saying, “We are both caught up in a vicious cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.”
Today, should total war ever break out again—no matter how—our two countries would become the primary targets. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours.72
President Kennedy then reminded his audience of the following:
Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique, among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union suffered in the course of the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and farms were burned or sacked. A third of the nation’s territory, including nearly two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland—a loss equivalent to the devastation of this country east of Chicago.73
He then called for a strengthening of the United Nations, highlighting the need for the UN to become the final arbiter for world peace crisis and conflict, “capabl
e of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished.” That had been, in 1945, the sanguine vision of Cord Meyer in a postwar world struggling for peace. But it would be his archrival Jack Kennedy who would finally articulate the inspiration that would echo into eternity. “For in the final analysis,” said the president, “our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”74
The president also announced his intention to establish a telephone hotline between the Soviet premier’s office and the White House. Such a phone line, the president told his audience, could help deter “dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of other’s actions which might occur at a time of crisis.” Yet the most important, groundbreaking announcement in this address was Kennedy’s declaration that he would not only cease nuclear atmospheric testing immediately, but soon join Prime Minister Macmillan and Premier Khrushchev in Moscow for talks that he hoped would yield the first nuclear test ban treaty: “[T]o make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on the matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.”75
President Kennedy’s conclusion was no less dramatic, or unclear:
All this is not unrelated to world peace. “When a man’s ways please the Lord,” the Scriptures tell us, “he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence?