Mary's Mosaic: Toward Consensus

[Albert Doyle]

Albert:

Please, did you not read my review? Did you not read Janney's book?

DiEugenio reviews are generally so good that they usually spare me having to read the subject work. This is the only time I have had issues with a DiEugenio review.

The divorce was not for those reasons. And I backed that up. What Janney tries to do is build a case out of essentially nothing in order to advance that idea. For instance, he uses anonymous sources to say Mary did not like Allen Dulles. Why would that be necessary today?

I'm having problems seeing how it couldn't be. I believe MPM's main social circles were of such a nature that she couldn't come out and say Cord was too CIA and therefore possessed an irreconcilable difference. Look at MPM's direct relatives and inner Beltway social circles and ask yourself how that would have played had she come out with her true feelings? I don't see how you could praise Douglass yet deny MPM whose background perfectly melds with the peace-making agenda Douglass presents. Meanwhile those persons were not the type who would miss MPM's leanings or fail to act upon them like they had in other documented cases. Not only was her close friend and sister married to serious CIA players but James Angleton was a direct household acquaintance. And with MPM's documented personality and separation from Cord she would have damned good reason to not like Dulles, especially if she had spoken to JFK privately - who also didn't like Dulles. Sorry Jim, but you seem to be going against some fairly seriously established grains here and fishing for the weak point. If MPM told people at her Washington banquets that she divorced Cord because he had become a fascist CIA wolf that probably wouldn't fly that well. If she said he spent too much time at the office it would be a polite euphemism that basically said the same thing in a tolerable way.

Please explain to me how Burleigh veriified Angleton had tapped Mary's phone?

Another good issue to be pursuing.

Because Burleigh also reported that Mary never questioned the WR. So what was the point?

Again, questioning the Warren Report was probably something those banquet people would not be doing too forthrightly. Especially if MPM had inside information gained from private conversations with JFK that led her to believe it wasn't safe to do so. I believe MPM was like Dorothy Kilgallen and out ahead of the general public on the credibility and political purposes of the Commission. You don't know what kind of head-start MPM might have had on the Report from the inside information she had gained. Even more so than Janney she was an adult looking at the reactions of some pretty serious players like Angleton from a very close perspective. I don't see how that could be ignored. Especially if she had JFK as a personal interpreter of those reactions. You have to admit, that's about as close to the action as you could possibly get. How would you act if you realized you were right in amongst the dangerous bastards that did it? Bastards who could, and probably did, kill you just as easily as they did JFK?