Talk:Mary Pinchot Meyer

cleanup
Most of this looks more or less supported, however it's still a mess and needs lots of cleanup, citing and some growth. Gwen Gale (talk) 04:09, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Cleaned up, grown and thoroughly sourced. Gwen Gale (talk) 18:35, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

But... scanning the sources further this is still incomplete and there are some little mistakes here and there. Gwen Gale (talk) 20:38, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, the sources sometimes contradict themselves but the article now gives a more or less helpful overview and mix of their pith. Gwen Gale (talk) 21:16, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

The article reads like something written by a JFK assassination conspiracy nut.---5 June 2008 Susan Nunes —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.228.61.202 (talk) 00:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

KGB
I am wondering why the link to www.scientiapress.com/findings/kgbmeyer.html has been removed. In an otherwise inexplicable case, it offers an explanation of great potential value to readers. They are old enough to judge that value for themselves. My background as a State Department intelligence analyst would seem to provide a reasonable level of credibility. Kenneth J. Dillon Kjdillon (talk) 06:35, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * My thinking on this: Although the publication otherwise seems ok, the article itself is all unsupported hearsay, rumour and speculation and doesn't seem to meet WP:RS or WP:Notability. If you're the author, you might want to have a look at WP:COI (though I bring that up only because you have re-added the link a few times). Either way, I wouldn't believe anything someone from CIA told me unless it was along the lines of "there are some things we don't talk about, you know." If this line of thinking ever does get picked up more widely in published sources I'd be all for putting it in the article but for now it doesn't seem helpful to me. Gwen Gale (talk) 14:18, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Maybe it is a question of background. I knew the CIA officer who told me this information unusually well, and I was familiar with quite a few other people in CIA as well as with how CIA handles information.  As for the analysis in my article, it is standard detective work that intelligence analysts regularly do (I was a Department of State intelligence analyst).  I am an academic historian and have a good deal of experience in dealing with such problems in history and science.  Recently I published a book on how to do this kind of analysis.  And, more important than my background, it is hard to imagine a reader of the Wikipedia article who would not also want to have an opportunity to read my article, regardless of whether he or she accepted my conclusion.  That's why many, many readers have clicked the link and gone on to read other related articles in www.scientiapress.com.  So the issue becomes one of how Wikipedia can best serve its readers.  By providing a link, Wikipedia is not vouching for all the information it might contain; Wikipedia is simply being helpful to readers by letting them know about related information.  Kenneth J. Dillon Kjdillon (talk)

Angleton confirming affair and LSD.
Folks, I added a dubious tag to the following quote:


 * These were given to Angleton, who later claimed he burned the diary, in which he said Mary Meyer wrote she and Kennedy had taken LSD before "they made love."

That statement is sourced back to http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKmeyerM.htm. That page in turn cites a JFK forum post (http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=11208) as the source. The guidelines tell us that self-published sources such as forum posts are "largely not acceptable" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SPS). If someone would like to contact Mr. Simkin and get a source for that statement, that'd be grand. The same claim has surfaced a few times in post 2007 material, usually citing wikipedia.

I'm further bothered by the fact that the claim seems to run counter to published sources and the characterizations how Angleton handled the letters by the Meyer family, journalists and ex-CIA folks that went on the record.

Reve (talk) 06:25, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Who is "she"?
"Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife, a journalist who worked for magazines such as The Nation and The New Republic. She was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot, a noted conservationist and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania."

This should probably be rewritten. It reads as if "her mother Ruth" was "niece of Gifford Pinchot". That sounds kind of incestuous.

--WithGLEE (talk) 19:34, 20 April 2012 (UTC)

"Former wife"
"former wife" in lede seems a bit of an awkward phrase for someone who is no longer alive. Would you call Catherine of Aragon the "former wife of Henry VIII"? - Jmabel &#124; Talk 17:33, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Cord Meyer's allegations
I have removed the following per WP:REDFLAG, WP:UNDUE, and WP:RS:
 * In February 2001, Cord Meyer told writer C. David Heymann, "My father died of a heart attack the same year Mary was killed. It was a bad time." When asked who had murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer, the retired CIA official, six weeks before his own death from lymphoma, reportedly "hissed" back, "The same sons of bitches that killed John Kennedy."[citation needed]

It appears as though Heymann claimed he was told that, and Heymann had "a reputation for not letting the facts stand in the way of a good story". Location (talk) 22:32, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Sourcing
The Robert Anton Wilson book Everything Is Under Control: Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups does not even make a pretense of the assertions it contains being true. It is a catalog of conspiracy theories.... many of which are very outlandish and does not differentiate between ones that might be plausible and ones that are very dubious. It's not really an appropriate source for the rather strong claims made in this article. Klaun (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 02:54, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * see Reliable sources/Noticeboard. - Location (talk) 03:29, 7 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Neither of us think this is a good source and the two editors who responded on WP:RSN seem to agree. I have removed the source and the material attributed to it. - Location (talk) 02:41, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Diary
The diary section of the article seems largely unsubstantiated. The reference for the whole section is an essay hosted on University web server. Further, the essay does not substantiate the last statement in the section and in fact does not contain a claim that anyone read the diary. http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-12/books/bk-2048_1_anne-truitt-cicely-angleton-james-angleton Provides a primary source on the fate of the diary (that is, it was in Angleton's possesion and then destroyed by Tony Bradlee.   Klaun (talk) 23:46, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Crump
seems pretty suspect to have it mentioned--in every article involving Crump--that he "went on to what has been described as a "horrific life of crime."[17]". the source cited is a short book review that is itself quoting another text, it's not a relevant follow-up, and it's frankly frustrating that a falsely-accused black man who was acquitted has such a permanent, vague addendum to his public image. does it need to be mentioned at all? I don't believe so. but if it does, there must be a better way (AND some actual sources and details) to present it.

-P

104.153.190.100 (talk) 19:41, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

The wording is absolutely vague and unprofessional. While things like the arson convictions are perhaps not relevant, the fact that he later went to jail for rape, robbery, and assault with a firearm arguably are.

Reve (talk) 19:58, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Which RS, if any, says that after Crump's acquittal in Pinchot Meyer's murder he was convicted of rape, robbery and assault with a firearm? Can Newspapers.com be helpful? Does anyone know in which of the 50 states he was convicted and incarcerated? Take into account that in the 1960s the District of Columbia was a federal district, not part of a state.Brent Brant (talk) 21:37, 5 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Crump's history after his trial for Pinchot Meyer's murder is detailed in Nina Burleigh's biography of Pinchot Meyer. Vincent Bugliosi's endnotes to Reclaiming History (p. 708) summarize as follows:
 * In 1969 he was charged with assault with a deadly weapon (ADW), but the disposition of the case is unknown, the old records having been destroyed. In 1971, he committed arson by dousing a tract house with gasoline and setting it aflame while his new wife and her children were inside. They escaped unhurt and he served eighteen months for the lesser crime of “malicious burning.” While on probation he assaulted a police officer and was arrested again on an ADW charge for pointing a gun at his wife, causing her to jump out a window and sustain serious injuries. Again, disposition is unknown. Between 1972 and 1977, he was charged with assault with a knife, grand larceny, another arson, and several charges of destroying property. During that period he spent seven months in jail. In January of 1978 he set a fire in the entryway of the building where a girlfriend of his lived, after threatening to kill her. He was convicted of arson and served four years. Before his conviction he was charged with raping the seventeen-year-old daughter of a friend, but the case was never prosecuted. In 1983 he torched a neighbor’s car and served two and a half years in prison.
 * The citations for all of this are in Burleigh. Rgr09 (talk) 22:58, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Mary's Mosaic
This article is built almost entirely on Janney's book Mary's Mosaic. This is an extremely problematic source. It should be replaced, as much as possible, with Nina Burleigh's biography of Pinchot Meyer. Conspiratorial claims without reliable sources behind them should be pruned, bloat removed, and the article trimmed back to a more reasonable length. Rgr09 (talk) 11:26, 8 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I had removed that source once before, but it's back with a vengeance. - Location (talk) 16:02, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

Can details be provided as to exactly why Janney's Book "Mary's Mosaic" is "extremely problematic?"Cd195 (talk) 04:41, 24 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Skyhorse, the publisher of Mary's Mosaic is generally not RS. They are the main publisher of most JFK conspiracy books. Not surprisingly, there are many, many problematic citations and sources used throughout Mosaic. Burleigh is not a great book perhaps, but it does not suffer from this problem at least. It is certainly more reliable than Mosaic. Rgr09 (talk) 22:52, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Revising the lead
I have deleted the following from the lead section:
 * [Meyer was shot to death ] three weeks after the release of the Warren Commission Report, whose conclusions Meyer reportedly challenged. Meyer's long history of criticism of the CIA, the timing of her killing, the CIA's wiretapping of her phone, and the effort by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton to retrieve Meyer's diary immediately after her death prompted investigation of possible CIA involvement in her murder. Additionally, Army personnel records for prosecution witness Lt. William L. Mitchell, released in 2015 and 2016 under the Freedom of Information Act, corroborate his ties to the intelligence community. CIA involvement has also been suggested by the phone call that was placed by top Agency official Wistar Janney to Ben Bradlee, hours before the police had identified Meyer's body.

Mary's Mosaic (MM) is a conspiratorial work by Peter Janney with numerous problems. The first issue here is the attempt to tie Pinchot Meyers' murder to the release of the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President Kennedy. This is a frequent theme in JFK conspiracy works, unsupported even in MM except for PJ's assertion. There is an attempt to buttress this claim with a reference to Morrow's book First Hand Knowledge. This is another conspiratorial, unreliable work, discussed and dismissed in Nina Burleigh's biography of Pinchot Meyer, A Very Private Woman (VPW), on pp. 291-292.

The claim on CIA wiretapping Pinchot Meyer's phone is from Burleigh, and should go in the article, but no way it belongs in the lead. That Angleton looked for Pinchot Meyer's diary is true, discussed in both VPW and in Ben Bradlee's autobiography, but again it does not in any way belong in the lead. The statement all these things "prompted investigation of possible CIA involvement in her murder is sourced to Bradlee's autobiography. NO such claim is in there. I have deleted all of this. I will put back the wiretapping claim and Angleton in the article in the appropriate sections. Janney's speculation about the intelligence ties of William Mitchell does not belong in the article period. Rgr09 (talk) 00:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

I have also removed the following from the lead:


 * No weapon was ever located, and no forensic evidence linking Crump to the victim was presented. Witness identification of Crump was discredited under cross-examination by Crump's lawyer, legendary civil rights attorney Dovey Johnson Roundtree. In her 2009 memoir, Justice Older than the Law (reissued in 2019 as Mighty Justice), Roundtree states, "...in winning acquittal for Ray Crump, I made it impossible for the matter of Mary Pinchot Meyer's murder to be sealed off and forgotten, as the government so clearly wanted to do.  There is much about the crime that bears the most serious and sustained investigation, and to the extent that my efforts in defending Raymond opened the path for researchers seeking to know more about the troubling circumstances surrounding the murder, I am gratified."

Most of this should go below in the section on the murder trial.


 * [The murder] remains officially unsolved

The trial transcript should not be cited in the article. As for officially unsolved, this is a POV claim that the transcript could not have substantiated in the first place.


 * [Meyer's murder has been the subject of] extensive investigation by a number of writers, including the late Leo Damore, journalist Nina Burleigh, and psychologist Peter Janney.

The best known and best reviewed work on Pinchot Meyer is Burleigh. This is sufficient for the lead. The relationship between Janney's book and Leo Damore needs to be spelled out. This should be done below. Rgr09 (talk) 01:16, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Removed reference to a minor painting exhibit in the lead:


 * Her work is considered part of the Washington Color School and was selected for the Pan American Union Art Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in Buenos Aires.

This is not a significant venue or event. It does not belong in the lead. There should probably be a section on Meyer's painting somewhere in the article. Rgr09 (talk) 23:24, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Leary autobiography
The article has a lengthy section on claims about Pinchot Meyer Timothy Leary made in his 1983 autobiography:


 * In 1983, former Harvard University psychology lecturer Timothy Leary claimed that in the spring of 1962, Pinchot Meyer, who, according to her biographer Nina Burleigh "wore manners and charm like a second skin", told Leary she was taking part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take mind-altering drugs, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War was meaningless.


 * According to Leary, Meyer had sought him out for the purpose of learning how to conduct LSD sessions with these powerful men, including, she strongly implied, President John F. Kennedy, who was then her lover. Leary alleged that Pinchot Meyer told him she had shared in this plan with at least seven other Washington socialite friends who held similar political views and were trying to supply LSD to a small circle of high-ranking government officials. Leary also claimed that Pinchot Meyer had asked him for help while in a state of fear for her own life after the assassination of President Kennedy.


 * In his biography Flashbacks (1983), Leary claimed he had a call from Pinchot Meyer soon after the Kennedy assassination during which she sobbed and said, "They couldn't control him any more. He was changing too fast ... They've covered everything up. I gotta come see you. I'm afraid.  Be careful."

This description is heavily influenced by Janney's book Mary's Mosaic. Quotes and presentation all have problems. Revisions coming up. Rgr09 (talk) 03:01, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Section revised. The idea that Meyer gave Kennedy LSD converting him from an aggressive warmonger to a pacifist, thus saving the world from nuclear conflict springs directly from Leary's book. Needless to say, this is not a reliable claim. Yet this is the main point of Peter Janney's book, hence the subtitle "The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace". More work needed badly on this article. Rgr09 (talk) 08:44, 27 June 2020 (UTC)


 * Related to this, I have removed from this article. That category appears to be a dumping ground for conspiratorial links. - Location (talk) 21:00, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Murder section
The article now has a lengthy section on Meyer's murder which relies almost completely on citations from the original trial transcript. This is a primary source and should not be used. There is a careful description of the Meyer's murder and the subsequent trial which gives more than enough detail for the article. I will replace the current section with a summary from Burleigh. There are also several points where what seems to be original research/unsourced claims are made. I will remove these and note here. Rgr09 (talk) 13:03, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

An instance of original research occurs in the description of Meyer's injuries:


 * Confusion about the critical forensic issue of blood on or near the victim arose decades later after publication of a 2008 Smithsonian Magazine article by writer Lance Morrow, who was present at the murder scene as a cub reporter and who recalled the victim's head wound as "almost bloodless." However, trial testimony by Washington DC Deputy Coroner Linwood L. Rayford indicated "profuse bleeding" from the victim's head wound. A nearby tree limb, introduced into evidence by the prosecution, was spattered with Meyer's blood.

No source is given for anyone mentioning the supposed contradiction between the trial testimony and Morrow's article, written 44 years after the trial. This is the editor's personal opinion. Again the details of the trial presentation are given from the trial transcript. None of this belongs in the article. Adding to all this is a strong element of special pleading. Meyer was shot in the head, but still was able to ran across the path before she fell and was shot again in the back. The blood from the tree was from where she was shot in the head, not from where Morrow saw her after she fell. Rgr09 (talk) 13:26, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Art career
This article is so slanted around her relationship with Kennedy and the murder that I could not find a spot to mention that she is in the collection of the Smithsonian. That is a very large accomplishment for an artist, although you would not know it from this article. --- Possibly (talk) 04:46, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

WhoWhatWhy.com is not a reliable source
This and this indicate that WhoWhatWhy is not a reliable source. JoJo Anthrax (talk) 19:49, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Toni, Tony
under relationship with Kennedy Mary's sister's name is spelled Tony. Under early life it is spelled Toni. Ellteethom (talk) 20:45, 29 June 2023 (UTC)