by Peter Janney
Page 2: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993
Page 2: Transcription
Page 2 Discussion
According to Smith, Damore revealed that “William L. Mitchell” currently lived under a different alias in Virginia. “The Real Estate” angle referred to Damore’s letter having been sent to 1500 Arlington Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia, which was “Mitchell’s” previous address. “Mitchell” revealed to Damore during the call that his job listing in the Pentagon directory was just “a light bulb Job,” and that at certain times he was active in the Air Force, the Army, and the Navy. His age at the time of the call was seventy-four.
At the time of Crump’s trial in 1965, “Mitchell” was, according to a Washington Star “news clip” by reporter Roberta Hornig, no longer serving in the military but allegedly “a Georgetown University mathematics teacher.”*
“We had hard leg work” referred to the fact that Damore had finally learned from another former CIA operative that Mitchell’s building at 1500 Arlington Boulevard was a known “CIA safe house,” but Damore was never able to locate any record of any “William L. Mitchell” as a mathematics teacher at Georgetown (nor was this author).
According to Jimmy Smith, Damore explicitly told him that “Mitchell” confessed (“he’s talking”) to Damore: that the murder of Mary Meyer was a CIA contract (“A CIA K”), that the CIA was involved (“CIA inv”), and that “Mitchell” himself was the CIA individual who had been the assassin. “Mitchell” appeared at the trial with a fabricated account in order to corroborate the frame-up of Ray Crump Jr. Damore then told Smith that he had “taped” the entire call with “Mitchell.” Damore then referenced the subject “The” “Angleton connection w/CIA,” which continues on the next page.
Page 3: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993
Page 3: Transcription
Page 3 Discussion
Referring to a passage in Mary’s Diary, Damore emphatically tells Smith that Mary had made up her mind to find some way to go public with what she knew. She was “too strong, too powerful,” and wasn’t about to “back down.” But, said Damore, “Mary – stepped in shit !”
It’s not clear whether Damore, in talking about Hoover (“J.E.H.”), is taking the following revelation from Mary’s diary. Hoover and LBJ were close pals; for years they had Sunday morning breakfasts together, and Hoover gave LBJ’s “kids” a dog named “Edgar.” Hoover did, however, hate the CIA, but he was friendly and a sometime drinking pal with “James Angleton,” probably because Angleton held the ultimate “dirt” on Hoover: compromising pictures of Hoover’s sexual relationship with his colleague Clyde Tolson.
Damore makes reference to William Colby at the time of the Watergate hearings and the House Select Committee on Intelligence, in which the CIA was under intense scrutiny. “How come guys [are] talking?” may be a reference to disclosures at that time. Damore then says that “William L. Mitchell” does “not want to become the fall guy in history” for the murder of Mary Meyer. It appears that before “Mitchell” called Damore, he had read Damore’s book, Senatorial Privilege, about Ted Kennedy’s saga at Chappaquiddick. “Mitchell,” said Damore to Smith, respected how Damore had handled Kennedy’s cousin Joe Gargon’s disclosures to Damore in the book.
Damore specifically states that he already knows who “Mitchell” really is, which was likely revealed to him by L. Fletcher Prouty. “I got [the ] word—he’s a killer [assassin]—[and] he has 5 kids.” Damore then makes the comment that the Washington Post “knew” and “Fear Mary” because she intended to speak out, so her murder was done for the “good of the country.”
Damore’s new literary agent was Richard Pine in New York, who confirmed his representation of Damore, and thought he remembered Damore talking about certain aspects of this call.3
Page 4: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993
Page 4: Transcription
Page 4 Discussion
“On Mary” and the question, “Who pulled trigger … ?” Damore tells Smith that the murder of Mary Meyer was “an operation,” where “Mitchell” and others had first been assigned to a surveillance team in September 1964 around the time the Warren Report was released. This may have occurred before the Warren Report was released, in anticipation of it. It’s not clear.
When the Warren Report was released to the public on September 24, Mary had purchased a paperback copy. Realizing the immensity of the coverup taking place, “she hit [the] roof.” Her Diary makes clear that she first confronted Cord, Damore told Smith, and then Cord informed his close friend Jim Angleton (“husb to Angleton”) about how upset Mary was. The inference was that Mary confronted Cord that she wasn’t going to stand-by and let the cover-up proceed without speaking out. She may have also confronted Angleton as well. “It was not the love affair [with JFK], but the murder of JFK,” and how Mary had finally put certain things together, that pushed Jim Angleton, Cord Meyer, and others to terminate the life of Mary Meyer.
Damore then expressed his suspicions about Ben Bradlee’s meteoric rise at The Washington Post, telling Smith that Bradlee had become Executive Editor within six months after he had become the Managing Editor. That was incorrect; Damore had his facts wrong. After meeting with Katharine Graham in March 1965, Bradlee moved from Newsweek to the Post in August as the “Deputy Managing Editor;” but he was promoted in less than three months in October to the job of “Managing Editor.” Three years later in 1968, he became Executive Editor.4
Damore also told Smith that he believed Philip Graham’s death was suspicious; he didn’t believe it was a suicide. He mentioned to Smith what Dovey Roundtree had told him about what the Graham caretaker had done immediately after the death (“Servant brought body etc.”). Lastly on this page, Damore’s comment about “Kennedys stepping on lots of toes!” refers to the fact that Jack and Bobby had been operating very independently during the Kennedy presidency.
Page 5: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993
Page 5: Transcription
Page 5 Discussion
Damore reveals to Smith that he had talked at some length to L. Fletcher Prouty, who had created a network of clandestine agents throughout the military and other government agencies including the FBI. However, after facilitating for the CIA many coups d’état around the globe, he was deeply disturbed by the revelation of what he quickly came to discover: the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. Prouty resigned his Air Force commission in 1964 and began to study and prepare for publication his account of the secret history of the Cold War. His two books, The Secret Team and JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, have since become classics in understanding America’s Cold War era. So thorough and compelling had Prouty’s analysis been that film director Oliver Stone used his personage for the character of “Mr. X” in his film JFK.
Damore recounts to Jimmy Smith that Prouty had been in New Zealand at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. Prouty told Damore that there was a “staggering” amount of information on Lee Harvey Oswald “already there” in the news, detailing the “how where why” of the assassination when, in fact, Oswald had only been “accused that very afternoon!!” Damore says that Prouty concluded, “[Therefore] prepared in advance,” meaning the assassination.
It was Prouty who finally assisted Damore in putting certain pieces of the murder of Mary Meyer into focus, as well as identifying “William L. Mitchell” as an assassin. A similar (“Same Mod[el]”) CIA template was used for Mary’s murder whereby (1) the murder first takes place; (2) a patsy is “Caught” (arrested); (3) a “Lone Gun” (no conspiracy); (4) “case solved” via a “trial” in the media; and (5) “Home!,” perhaps meaning “home free.”
The notes indicate a powerful role played by the Washington Post—”Trial by newspaper!” Ray Cr
ump’s “mug shots” were everywhere. Damore regarded the murder trial as “so contrived,” with fabricated evidence that included “William L. Mitchell” as a witness, “A Faker!” Finally, Mitchell confesses to Damore that the murder of Mary Meyer had been “a set up away from home in [a] public place.” That had been the Kennedy assassination model referred to.
Page 6: Notes of attorney James Smith’s telephone call with Leo Damore on March 31, 1993
Page 6: Transcription
Page 6 Discussion
Smith again records the date of the telephone call as “31 Mar 93.”
The setup for the murder, Mitchell told Damore, was “standard CIA procedure”—implicitly confirming that there were a number of people involved in the operation. This very likely meant that the operation was radio-controlled with a command center somewhere in the vicinity of the murder.
“Mitchell” then revealed that the young couple walking on the towpath that morning, who police officer Roderick Sylvis had briefly questioned but neglected to ask for identification, were “spotters” (“guy + woman on path…”) for the operation. They were keeping tabs on where Mary Meyer was in the course of her walk along the towpath. Leo told Smith that he “thinks this guy had 1 or 2” spotters working directly with him.
The call ends with Damore telling Smith that he believes he has finally come to “my moment of truth” after finally locating “Mitchell” and having this conversation.
“The guy [William L. Mitchell] opened up and confessed to Leo,” Smith told me in 2004. “He knew Leo had the capacity to be fair and accurate, and this guy “Mitchell” didn’t want to be another patsy like Oswald. I can remember Leo telling me that. He [Mitchell] didn’t want to be the fall guy in history.” 5
2 Author interview with James H. Smith, Esq. April 2, 2011.
3 Richard Pine, interview by the author, October 21, 2004.
4 Bradlee, Ben. A Good Life - Newspapering and Other Adventures. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. pp. 274-283.
5 Author interview with James H. Smith, Esq. April 7, 2004.
Appendix 4:
Ben Bradlee’s 1952 Rosenberg Case Press Liaison with the CIA
Appendix 4:
Ben Bradlee’s 1952 Rosenberg Case Press Liaison with the CIA
(Transcribed)
NOTES
Prologue
1. Erik Hedegaard, “The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt,” Rolling Stone, April 5, 2007.
2. This entire section was based on a collection of notes over a period of nearly twenty years that I began writing in the early 1970s. As a training clinical psychologist, it was part of my orientation to begin an intensive period of personal psychotherapy that lasted a number of years. All of the vivid recollections in this chapter were based on memories that had been elicited, and noted, in various psychotherapeutic encounters.
3. In the fall of 1966, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison reopened his investigation into the Kennedy assassination, after having made the mistake of turning over his earlier investigation to the FBI, which did nothing. Within days after Dallas, Garrison had arrested David Ferrie as a possible associate of Lee Harvey Oswald’s. Further convinced that Oswald could never have acted alone, Garrison soon widened his net to include Guy Banister and Clay Shaw.
In March 1967, Garrison arrested Clay Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. Shaw’s trial would not begin until January 1969, but in the spring of 1968, after having been undermined by Life magazine, Garrison visited with Look magazine’s managing editor, William (“Bill”) Attwood, who had been a Princeton classmate of my father’s. Garrison, according to author Joan Mellen, “outlined his investigation through lunch, dinner, and into the night.” Attwood became so impressed with what Garrison had discovered that he called his friend Bobby Kennedy “at one in the morning.” Look was prepared to do a major feature story on the Garrison investigation, but Attwood unexpectedly suffered a significant heart attack, and the article never materialized. See Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005), p. 259.
Introduction
1. David S. Lifton, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Dell, 1982). See also Douglas P. Horne, Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK., 5 vols. (printed by author, 2009).
2. Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice (Dulles, Va.: Potomac Books, 2005), pp. 383–384. Mellen further discussed and confirmed this event in an interview by this author on November 19, 2006.
3. Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), p. 31; Gaeton Fonzi, interview by the author, February 24, 2010.
4. David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 381. See also, Anthony Summers, Conspiracy (New York: Paragon House, 1989), pp. 143–149. That Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a 1959 false defection program administered through the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) in Nags Head, North Carolina, was first discussed in an interview that Summers conducted with former CIA officer Victor Marchetti, who later confirmed this account in an interview by this author on October 4, 2007. According to author Joan Mellen, the ONI program was overseen by the CIA’s counterintelligence chief, James Jesus Angleton. Upon Oswald’s return to the U.S. in 1962, he was, in fact, “debriefed” by a CIA officer named Aldrin (“Andy”) Anderson. The debriefing report was read by CIA officer Donald Deneselya, who confirmed this in an interview for this book on May 25, 2007, as well as in the 1993 PBS Frontline program, “Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?”
5. Ibid. David Talbot, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007), p. 381.
6. L. Fletcher Prouty, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy (New York: Citadel, 1996), p. 81.
7. Ibid., p. xxii.
8. Martin Duberman, Waiting to Land: A (Mostly) Political Memoir, 1985–2008 (New York: New Press, 2009), p. 288.
9. David Brooks, “Bookshorts: Kennedy’s Big Mess; Savitch’s Sad Life,” Wall Street Journal, August 16, 1988, p. 26.
10. Gale Reference Team, “Biography: Damore, Leo J. (1929–1995),” Contemporary Authors (Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thompson Gale, 2004).
11. Francis I. Broadhurst, “A Refreshing View of Kennedy,” Cape Cod Times, November 18, 1993.
12. Letter from Seymour Hersh to Mark O’Blazney, November 1, 1995.
13. Ibid.
14. James H. Smith, Esq. interview by the author, April 6, 2004. Smith recounted verbatim the conversation with his friend John H. Davis.
Chapter 1. Fate’s Engagement
1. Mary Pinchot, “Requiem,” New York Times, January 25, 1940, p. 16. The poem was a tribute to her half-sister Rosamond Pinchot, who committed suicide in 1938.
2. The nature of Mary Meyer’s involvement with President Kennedy and their mutual concern with world peace initiatives, away from the Cold War, is the focus of this book and will be demonstrated throughout. Significant support for this perspective came from former presidential adviser Kenneth P. O’Donnell’s extensive interviews with the late author Leo Damore, shortly before O’Donnell’s death, as well as other sources and interviews with Damore. The most recent account of Mary Meyer’s influence in the Kennedy White House was provided by David Talbot in his book Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (New York: Free Press, 2007).
3. James McConnell Truitt, letter to author Deborah Davis, dated May 11, 1979. The letter was part of the files of the late author Leo Damore, and was confirmed by author Deborah Davis in 2005.
4. Mary Meyer’s intention to go public with her revelations about the CIA’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination has been documented in a number of sources. It was revealed, according to author Leo Damore, in Mary’s real diary, which Damore finally obtained and described in detail to his attorney, James H. Smith, Esq., on March 31, 19
93 (see Appendix 3). Mary Meyer’s awareness of CIA involvement in the Kennedy assassination is also alluded to by Robert Morrow in his book First Hand Knowledge: How I Participated in the CIA-Mafia Murder of President Kennedy (New York: S.P.I. Books, 1992), 275–280, and in two transcripts of alleged conversations between CIA covert action specialist Robert T. Crowley and author Gregory Douglas on January 27, 1996, and April 2, 1996. The mutually reinforcing effect of these sources, and the way in which they aggregate, establish Mary Meyer’s intention to go public (after the Warren Report’s release in September) with all that she had discovered throughout the year of 1964, are discussed in greater detail in chapters 11, 12, and 13 and the Epilogue.
5. Leslie Judd Ahlander, “Frederick Drawings Exhibited,” Washington Post, November 24, 1963, p. G10.
6. Leo Damore, interview by the author, Centerbrook, Conn., February 1992. Between 1992 and 1994, there were at least five face-to-face meetings between Damore and this author, in addition to numerous follow-up telephone conversations regarding the life of Mary Meyer, her death, and Damore’s research. Damore stated that Mary Meyer had sought out Bill Walton’s counsel in early 1964.
7. See note 4 above. Leo Damore, who had acquired a copy of Mary Meyer’s real diary, told his attorney, James E. Smith, on March 31, 1993, that Mary had made a decision to go public with what she had discovered, sometime after the Warren Report had been released. See Appendix 3. Chapters 11, 12, and 13 also cover this arena thoroughly.