Cord Meyers and his wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer

This is the promise, and the problem, with the internet, and Google, and Wikipedia. Too much information, too available, too immediately.

The previous post about Operation Mockingbird got me reading. The first director of that CIA program was Cord Meyers. Hmmm. That name sounded familiar. Check him out. Then read the entry about his wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer. Her dad was Amos Pinchot. He's worth a look, too.

Finished? Bet you're surprised. My first thought upon seeing her name was, hmmm, wasn't the guy who dammed up Hetch Hetchy in Yosemite named Pinchot? Arch enemy of John Muir? Yep. Her Uncle Gifford.

The twists and turns that the intertwining threads of these stories make are like something out of some PBS mystery. Cord—his dad was Cord, his grandfather was Cord. That's odd enough. His grandfather, by the way, was a chairman of the New York Democratic Committee.

Cord was a Marine who lost an eye fighting in WWII in the Pacific. A preppy a real estate developer. A World Government Fan. Aid to Harrold Stassen. A founder of the United World Federalists, which included members Albert Einstein, Kurt Vonnegut, Sen. Alan Cranston, Mortimer Adler, E.B. White, and Oscar Hammerstein. Began working for the CIA, only to become a target of the FBI and Senator McCarthy. (J Edgar Hoover thought he was a Red.) His boy was hit by a car and killed. Soon after their divorce his wife was shot and killed. Retired as CIA head in London and became a columnist. Was claimed by E. Howard Hunt to have organized the Kennedy Assasination.

Mary, on the other hand, was the daughter of a lady journalist for the The Nation and The New Republic and a guy who was a founder of the Progressive party. She went to Vassar. Met John F. Kennedy at a dance when she was 18. Became friends with Jackie Kennedy when the Kennedys moved in nearby. Her sister married Ben Bradlee of The Washington Post. Mary became friends with Robert Kennedy and his family when they moved into John's house when he moved to the White House. In 1961 she became one of Kennedy's lovers—one whose opinions on policy he supposedly actually listened to. Her diary became quite a hot item.

LSD? Timothy Leary? Possible CIA hit? This story has everything.