Cord Meyer

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Cord Meyer Jr. (/ˈmaɪ.ər/; November 10, 1920 – March 13, 2001) was a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) official. After serving in World War II as a Marine officer in the Pacific War where he was both injured and decorated, he led the United World Federalists in the years after the war. Around 1949, he began working for the CIA where he became a high-level operative, retiring in 1977. He was married to Mary Pinchot from 1945 to 1958. After their divorce Mary Pinchot Meyer was romantically linked to President John F. Kennedy. Her bizarre murder in 1964 remains both unsolved and controversial.

After retiring from intelligence work in 1977, Meyer wrote as a columnist and book author.

Early life[]

Meyer was the son of a wealthy New York family.[1] His father, , was a diplomat and real estate developer; his mother, Katherine Blair Thaw, belonged to a Pennsylvania family that earned its wealth in the coal business.[1] His grandfather, also called Cord Meyer, was a property developer and a chairman of the New York State Democratic Committee.

He was educated at St. Paul's School, New Hampshire, and attended Yale University, where he was a member of the Scroll and Key society, and as a senior was awarded the Alpheus Henry Snow Prize.[2] After graduating in 1942, he joined the 22nd Marine Regiment[3] and fought in Pacific War; he took part in the Battle of Eniwetok, and in the Battle of Guam as platoon leader, losing his left eye in a grenade attack. He became a first lieutenant and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. He shared his war experiences, writing for The Atlantic Monthly.[4]

On April 19, 1945, in New York City, he married Mary Eno Pinchot, second daughter of Amos Pinchot.

He was an aide of Harold Stassen to the 1945 San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization, and in 1947, was elected president of the United World Federalists, the organization he helped to fund.

CIA career[]

Circa 1949, Meyer started working for the Central Intelligence Agency, joining the organization in 1951 at the invitation of Allen Dulles. At first he worked at the Office of Policy Coordination under former OSS man, Frank Wisner.[5] In 1953, Meyer came under attack by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which claimed he was a security risk for having once stood at the same podium of a "notorious leftist", and refused to give him a security clearance. An internal CIA inquiry summarily dismissed the claims.[6]

According to Deborah Davis in her 1979 book Katharine the Great, Meyer became the "principal operative" of Operation Mockingbird, a plan to secretly influence domestic and foreign media.[7] Meyer befriended James Angleton, who in 1954 became the CIA's counter-intelligence chief. From 1954 until 1962, Meyer led the agency's International Organizations Division.[8] Meyer headed the Covert Action Staff of the Directorate of Plans from 1962.[5]

On 18 December 1956, Meyer's nine-year-old son, Michael, was hit by a car and killed. Meyer and his wife Mary divorced in 1958. On 12 October 1964, his former wife Mary was shot dead by an unknown assailant alongside the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.[9] Her sister and brother-in-law Benjamin C. Bradlee, later the executive editor of The Washington Post, caught Angleton breaking into Pinchot's residence.[6] Angleton apparently was looking for Mary Meyer's diary that allegedly contained details of a love affair with John F. Kennedy, the recently assassinated U.S. President.[6][10]

From 1967 to 1973, Meyer was Assistant Deputy Director of Plans under Thomas Karamessines,[4][9] and from 1973 to 1976 was CIA station chief in London.[11]

Later years[]

He retired from the CIA in 1977. Following retirement, Meyer became a syndicated columnist and wrote several books, including an autobiography. Some insiders incorrectly suspected that Cord Meyer was Deep Throat, a key informant in the Watergate Scandal.[12]

Meyer died of lymphoma on March 13, 2001.[4]

Allegations of involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy[]

After the death of former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt in 2007, Saint John Hunt and David Hunt revealed that their father had recorded several claims about himself and others being involved in a conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy.[13][14] In the April 5, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, Saint John Hunt detailed how his father drew a diagram of the conspirators:

E. Howard scribbled the initials "LBJ," standing for Kennedy's ambitious vice president, Lyndon Johnson. Under "LBJ," connected by a line, he wrote the name Cord Meyer. Meyer was a CIA agent whose wife had an affair with JFK; later she was murdered, a case that's never been solved. Next his father connected to Meyer's name the name Bill Harvey, another CIA agent; also connected to Meyer's name was the name David Morales, yet another CIA man and a well-known, particularly vicious black-op specialist. And then his father connected to Morales' name, with a line, the framed words "French Gunman Grassy Knoll."

Many presume the "French gunman grassy knoll" were Lucien Sarti and William Harvey.[14][15] The two sons alleged that their father cut the information from his memoirs, "American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond", to avoid possible perjury charges.[13] According to Hunt's widow and other children, the two sons took advantage of Hunt's loss of lucidity by coaching and exploiting him for financial gain.[13] The Los Angeles Times said they examined the materials offered by the sons to support the story and found them to be "inconclusive".[13]

Books[]

  • Peace or Anarchy, Little, Brown (1948).
  • The Search of Security, World Government House (January 1, 1947).
  • Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA, University Press of America; Reprint edition (September 2, 1982). ISBN 0-8191-2559-8

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Burleigh, Nina (1998). A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer. New York: Bantam Books. pp. 83, 85. ISBN 9780307574176. Retrieved February 19, 2013.
  2. ^ Hendrickson, Paul (February 7, 1978). "Behind the Scenes of a CIA Life". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. p. B1. Retrieved February 19, 2013.
  3. ^ Joseph Preston Baratta (2004). The Politics of World Federation: From World Federation to Global Governance. ISBN 0-275-98068-5.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b c Marquis, Christopher (2001-03-16). "Cord Meyer Jr. Dies at 80". The New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2010.
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b Cord Meyer (1980). Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the Central Intelligence Agency. Harper & Row. p. 65. ISBN 0-06-013032-6.
  6. ^ Jump up to: a b c Jackson, Harold (March 16, 2001). "Cord Meyer: CIA chief behind clandestine funding of Encounter and Watergate break-in". The Guardian. Retrieved February 14, 2013.
  7. ^ Deborah Davis (1979). Katharine the Great. p. 226.
  8. ^ Raymond L. Garthoff (2001). A Journey Through the Cold War: A Memoir of Containment and Coexistence. Brookings Institution Press. p. 16. ISBN 0-8157-0102-0.
  9. ^ Jump up to: a b Zielinski, Graeme (March 15, 2001). "Key CIA Figure Cord Meyer Dies". The Washington Post. Retrieved October 4, 2015.
  10. ^ Benjamin C. Bradlee (1995-09-25). "The Bradlee files". Newsweek.
  11. ^ Cord Meyer (1980). Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the Central Intelligence Agency. Harper & Row. p. 222. ISBN 0-06-013032-6.
  12. ^ Riebling, Mark, Wedge (2002) Touchstone ISBN 0-7432-4599-7
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b c d Williams, Carol J. (March 20, 2007). "Watergate plotter may have a last tale". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. Retrieved December 30, 2012.
  14. ^ Jump up to: a b Hedegaard, Erik (April 5, 2007). "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on June 18, 2008.
  15. ^ McAdams, John (2011). "Too Much Evidence of Conspiracy". JFK Assassination Logic: How to Think About Claims of Conspiracy. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books. p. 189. ISBN 9781597974899. Retrieved December 30, 2012.

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