While delving into the myths and history of the counter-culture of the 1960’s, I came across a curious possibility: JFK may have been “turned on”, he may have taken LSD. And he may have liked it.

The speculative “evidence” for this theory comes mainly from the autobiography of Timothy Leary, entitled Flashbacks. In it, he recounts the tale of being visited by one Mary Pinchot Meyer who, without naming names, informed Leary that she wanted to start “turning on” some of the most powerful men in Washington. From an excerpt of Leary’s 1983 book (which in my opinion should be taken with a grain of salt, knowing his history of deceit):

She took a few steps forward and held out her hand. “I’m Mary Pinchot. I’ve come from Washington to discuss something very important. I want to learn how to run an LSD session.

[…] I have this friend who’s a very important man. He’s impressed by what I’ve told him about my own LSD experiences and what other people have told him. He wants to try it himself. So I’m here to learn how to do it. I mean. I don’t want to goof up or something.”

“Why don’t you have your important friend come here with you to look over our project for a couple of days. Then if it makes sense to all concerned, we’ll run a session for him.”

“Out of the question. My friend is a public figure. It’s just not possible.”

Leary reports being skeptical, worrying that power-minded individuals don’t make good subjects. But Mary insists that the world would be a better place if people in power could be turned on by wives or girlfriends, and unleash creative new potentials for solving world problems. Leary eventually goes for it. Mary also tells him that the government is working on negative applications of drug use, and that she wants to learn how to “brainwash” but for good. She also dangles him the carrot of helping to fulfill his own dreams for consciousness-expansion:

“We can do on a bigger scale what you are already doing with your students - use these drugs to free people. For peace, not war. We can turn on the cabinet. Turn on the Senate. The Supreme Court. Do I have to explain further?”

According to an article by Mark Riebling:

He provides her with drug samples and “session” reports, and is in touch with her every few weeks, advising her on how to be a “brainwasher.” She swears him to secrecy.

Mary’s background is rather worth investigating at this point before we go any further. What were her possible motivations for droppin acid with JFK? There’s an excellent in-depth look at her life here, but I’ll pick out some of the most relevant material for this discussion. Mary’s father, Amos Pinchot was a wealth lawyer who helped fund a radical journal and member of the Progressive Party. She became a journalist after college and joined the American Labor Party, garnering her an FBI file of her own. Mary married Cord Meyer, a Marine lieutenant who was working as an aide to Harold Stassen, a man involved in the creation of the UN. After seeing the horros of war and the atrocities of the atomic bombs, Cord Meyer had become an ardent pacifist, and believed that world government was the solution to end war. From the bio of her:

Like her husband, Mary became an advocate of world government. In May, 1947, Cord Meyer was elected president of the United World Federalists. Under his leadership, membership of the organization doubled in size. Albert Einstein was one of his most important supporters and personally solicited funds for the organization. Mary wrote for its journal, The United World Federalists.

Mary’s third child, Mark, was born in 1950. The family now moved back to Cambridge. Cord was showing signs of becoming disillusioned with the idea of world government. He had experienced problems with members of the American Communist Party who had infiltrated the organizations he had established. It was about this time that he began working secretly for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Cord was “officially” recruited into the CIA in 1951 by Allen Dulles, which most probably means that his pre-existing cover was blown. Cord also supposedly became the “principal operative” for Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program intent on influencing the media. Cord’s office was also involved in:

“propaganda, economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states, including assistance to underground resistance groups, and support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world.”

Cord was accused of being a communist by McCarthy in 1953, but Dulles got him off the hook. Around that time, the Meyers also moved in next door to the Kennedy’s (although they’d been acquainted for years already). The next year, Meyer oversaw Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. In 1958, two years after the suspicious death of their 9 year old son, Mary filed for divorce:

In her divorce petition she alleged “extreme cruelty, mental in nature, which seriously injured her health, destroyed her happiness, rendered further cohabitation unendurable and compelled the parties to separate.”

Mary continued living in her home, and also got to know Robert Kennedy who moved in after JFK and Jackie moved out in 1960. In 1961, Mary began her affair with Kennedy, and told her friends, the Truitts that she was keeping a diary of the affair. It came out later on that the FBI was tapping her phone and otherwise keeping tabs on her during this time period as well.

1962 brings us back to the time period when Mary visited Leary for help with dosing the president. Leary claimed that “Mary helped influence Kennedy’s views on nuclear disarmament and rapprochement with Cuba”, and a Kennedy aide later confirmed in an interview that the President may have discussed real issues with her:

“I think he might have thought more of her than some of the other women and discussed things that were on his mind, not just social gossip.”

According to James Truitt and/or Mary’s journal, the actual LSD experience with the President went something like this:

She and the President of the United States smoke two joints of marijuana, reportedly prompting the leader of the free world to say, “This isn’t at all like cocaine. I’ll get you some of that.” Once he is suitably “loosened up” — Leary has emphasized the need to put subjects in a “benevolent state” before turning them on — Mary dispenses to Jack a dose of LSD. As it starts to “kick in,” he goes out and stands on Harry Truman’s balcony overlooking the rose-garden fountain, a soothing sight before him….

Leary saw her again later that year in which she discussed how well the acid sessions were going; they compared notes and he gave her further information about running sessions and psychedelic use. Late in 1963, he saw her again, and she was hysterical. They’d been found out.

“It was all going so well.” she said. “We had eight intelligent women turning on the most powerful men in Washington. And then we got found out. I was such a fool. I made a mistake in recruitment. A wife snitched on us. I’m scared.” She burst into tears.

[…] “I know what you’re thinking. But this is not paranoia. I’ve gotten mixed up in some dangerous matters. It’s real. You’ve got to believe me.” She glared at me. “Do you?”

Mary asked if it would be possible for Leary to hide her for a while if she needed it. He agreed, but never saw her again. Shortly after the Kennedy Assassination though, he got a phone call from her in which she sounded either “drugged or stunned with grief”. She exclaimed:

“They couldn’t control him any more. He was changing too fast. He was learning too much.”

“Who? You mean Kennedy?” Long pause. Hysterical crying. I spoke reassuringly. She kept sobbing. “They’ll cover everything up. I gotta come see you. I’m scared. I’m afraid. Be careful.”

The line went dead.

About a year later, Mary was murdered while walking along a canal in Georgetown. A gas station attendant heard her screams for help, but the police arrived too late. They sealed off the exits of the scene and began to sweep the area. A black laborer named Raymond Crump was arrested on the scene, apparently with his clothes soaking wet (indicating he may have tried to flee by water) and his fly was allegedly unzipped - indicating it may have been a possible rape attempt. When questioned though, Crump testified that the police had unzipped his pants. No murder weapon was ever found, and Crump maintained that he had waded into the water to retrieve his fishing pole which he had dropped.

Ray Crump was found not guilty though, thanks to lawyer Dovey Roundtree who defended him for free. Leary describes an encounter with a friend of his, Van Wolfe, while trying to find out more info about Mary’s murder. Van Wolfe explained:

“My friend in police intelligence knew all about the Mary Pinchot Meyer case. Apparently a lot of people are convinced it was an assassination. Two slugs in the brain and one in the body. That’s not the MO of a rapist. And a mugger isn’t going to shoot a woman with no purse in her hand.”

The bio of Mary also has some interesting information about the judge in the case:

The trial judge was Howard Corcoran. He was the brother of Tommy Corcoran, a close friend of Lyndon B. Johnson. Corcoran had been appointed by Johnson soon after he became president. It is generally acknowledged that Corcoran was under Johnson’s control. His decision to insist that Mary’s private life should not be mentioned in court was very important in disguising the possible motive for the murder. This information was also kept from Crump’s lawyer, Dovey Roundtree. Although she attempted to investigate Mary’s background she found little information about her: “It was as if she existed only on the towpath on the day she was murdered.”

After her death, her brother-in-law Ben Bradlee went to her apartment to recover her diary, which she had told them to find if anything ever happened to her. While there though, they discovered James Angleton, a friend of her husband’s looking for the very same thing. Not knowing any better, they entrusted it to Angleton (a CIA asset) to destroy. The story of Mary’s involvement with JFK didn’t come out publicly until 1976 when James Truitt divulged it in an interview with the National Enquirer. (Ben Bradlee was supposedly one of the liberal journalists who helped break the Watergate scandal - and also an asset of Operation Mockingbird).

Some years later, Mary’s ex-husband Cord Meyer stated in a book about his life that he was “satisfied” with the police investigations and conclusions about the case. But a personal assistant of his said:

“Mr. Meyer didn’t for a minute think that Ray Crump had murdered his wife or that it had been an attempted rape. But, being an Agency man, he couldn’t very well accuse the CIA of the crime, although the murder had all the markings of an in-house rubout.”

In February 2001, on his deathbed, Cord was questioned who he thought had killed his wife: “The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy.” So was it all because of her secret cadre of housewives and mistresses who were dosing powerful men in Washington and turning them on to the psychedelic possibilities of the universe? Or was it a simple matter of keeping her affair quiet? Or maybe JFK trusted her enough to tell her things she shouldn’t have known. In any event, the possibility that JFK’s death was caused by his “changing too fast” and “learning too much” as a result of dropping acid is definitely a tantalizing one. I’m surprised this myth - whether real or imagined - isn’t more important in the history of the psychedelic counter-culture.