Mary's assassin

[See below for updates]

Fifty years ago this week, Mary Pinchot Meyer was shot and killed while walking on the Chesapeake and Ohio towpath along the Potomac river in Georgetown. According to a retired CIA agent, the assassin was Air Force Lt. Col. David Herbert Strier. He is named in a comment on Steve Pieczenik's blog by one "MITmichael" who also comments as "C_I_A_ operator". According to his short bio he was recruited by Walt Rostow in 1980. Elsewhere in comments on Pieczenik's blog he notes that David Strier was Rostow's "assassin buddy". Other biographical details on Strier: he was counter intelligence in Florence up to '56; he had a brain injury; he "worked as an assassin directly for Jim Angleton"; and he died in 2004.

MITmichael/C_I_A_operator's own blog, Simple Truths from my C.I.A. Career, has a post on the JFK assassination that is well worth a read. Lyndon Johnson is the lynchpin of Kennedy's assassination, without whose guaranteed complicity as POTUS in the ensuing coverup, nothing could have happened in Dallas on that day. Operator writes: "Lyndon broached the topic first with C.I.A. officer Cord Meyer.   Meyer had various motives for wanting to see Kennedy go..." Foremost among those reasons was the fact that Kennedy was having an affair with Meyer's estranged wife.

In his book, Mary's Mosaic, Peter Janney implicates Cord Meyer, along with James Jesus Angleton, Allen Dulles, Ben Bradlee and his own father, Wistar Janney, as having had some complicity in the assassination of Mary Meyer. A William Lockwood Mitchell, however, is named as the trigger man in the first edition of the book. This is based largely on a secondhand report of a phone conversation between journalist Leo Damore (since deceased - suicide?) and Mitchell, or someone claiming to be Mitchell. Mitchell was the star witness testifying to have spotted the accused, the patsy Raymond Crump, following Mary on the path shortly before her murder. The council for the defense, Dovee Roundtree, was able to raise enough doubt about the testimony to have Crump acquitted in the jury trial.

Janney has since backed away from the charge against Mitchell as the trigger man. While Mitchell was likely part of assassination team, it is evident that he already had his role to play as the witness, and it is more likely that the gunman was someone else. 


Memory Hole: The Murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer  

In January 2014 Janney deposed William Mitchell as part of a wrongful death civil lawsuit to procure information on Mitchell’s potential responsibility for Meyer’s murder. “I am still in the last stages of my research that I hope will pull the pieces together that may point to the fact that [William] Mitchell had a specific role in this event on October 12, 1964. But I do want to make clear that I no longer believe that he was the actual assassin.”

Thanks to MITmichael, we have a new lead...

Update, Oct. 20 - In new comments to Steve Pieczenik's article, C.I.A. Finally Tells the Truth about its Past Failures, further allegations are brought against David Strier, particularly for the defenestration of Frank Olson. This case was long thought to be an LSD-induced suicide, but in A Terrible Mistake (2009), H.P. Albarelli Jr. implicates mafia figures Francois Spirito and Pierre Lafitte, under the direction of Federal Bureau of Narcotics and CIA agent George Hunter White (of "Operation Midnight Climax" fame), for the murder of Olson.

We are informing the authors Peter Janney and Hank Albarelli of these claims, if perchance they have come across Strier's name in their investigations. Of course, it is possible that we are becoming the vehicle of a disinformation campaign, and so we must leave off with this disclaimer.

Update 2 - Hank Albarelli's response was quick and succinct: "Total baloney."

Update 3, Oct. 8 2015 - C.I.A./Michael doubles down on claims about Strier - elaborates on his history in extended comments on Steve Pieczenik's 10/8/15 entry. See also quotations attributed to Strier and Michael Froelich at psychologicalwarfare.com.