Mary's Mosaic: Entering Peter Janney's World of Fantasy

[Albert Doyle]

Nuttiest covert operation in history



Lisa Pease did a neat job rendering absurd the scenario Janney tries to conjure for his version of what happened on the towpath. We are supposed to believe that this was a precision commando team plot:

I crunched the times involved in witnessing the man with the black face peering out from the bushes and even when you err on Lisa's side with the times Janney still proves that there wasn't enough time for Crump to be arrested when he was and still be that same man.

1. One of the trial witnesses who identified Crump, William Mitchell, was actually a deep cover CIA hit man, the actual assassin. As Lisa points out, in Janney's world, Crump was picked out that morning.

Mitchell was an intel spook out of the Pentagon. He had a full spook profile, lived in a CIA safe house, and held a university CIA cover job. When Janney accused this accredited professor emeritus of being the CIA murderer of Mary Meyer in public he made no public statement (who is the one acting guilty here Jim?). When Crump was set-up is unknown but easily within basic CIA abilities. You don't know if this was a planned operation for weeks or not.

2. Apparently one of the platoon was stationed outside of Sears or Penney's with a walkie-talkie. (Janney actually says they were delivered by CIA technical services.)

That's your strawman. You have no idea if it is accurate or not. Copying Crump's clothes is easy as far as technical services. Do you think the Central Intelligence Agency was not capable of sneaking in to Crump's room and copying all his clothes in advance? I don't know how they did it, but clothes copying is on the easy side of technical services challenges. We don't know exactly how they shot JFK but they did it.

5. The clothes were then delivered to Mitchell. And Mitchell actually killed Meyer.

When I read the book I cringed at this and thought maybe Janney was wrong. But a smart practicer of Deep Politics would realize you don't need Mitchell to be the killer for this to be a CIA black op.

The reader should note: this James Bond scenario has two problems with it. First, it is so precise and intricate it makes the Mossad look like Keystone Cops. Why go through all of in the first place? Why not just kill Mary from any of the concealed areas nearby with a sniper, a silenced rifle and sabot? This would take care of any witness contingencies, or any possible friends joining Mary for her jog. And, in fact, Helen Stern had arranged to meet Mary that day for a run. (Burleigh p. 230. You won't find Stern's name in Janney's book.)

Because a sniper shot would raise questions if she was killed covertly for political reasons. Many people knew her insider status with JFK and protests over the Warren Report.

You're looking through the telescope backwards Jim. CIA was quite capable of making Helen Stern not show up that morning. CIA was quite capable of monitoring their target and knowing someone else was planning to jog with her. The people who broke into Meyer's house could have been planting bugs.

Mary was shot twice. There is evidence her body was also dragged about 20 feet. Janney writes that this was done in order to be sure there was a witness! (Janney, p. 335)

You haven't explained how Crump could drag Mary Meyer while ripping his pants and bloodying himself while leaving zero trace of fibers or any incriminating forensic evidence on Meyer as turned out to be the case? This is why Crump got off.

A credible Military Police black witnesses, Wiggins, was set-up to witness it. The broken down car had zero trace afterwards.

Mary Meyer was killed with trained kill shots to the head and heart. Trained assurance of death in a methodical operation.


Jim, you and Scully make the mistake of focusing on specific errors in Janney in order to discredit the whole theory. He's probably wrong about Mitchell pulling an Al Jolson and doing the murder himself. But that doesn't mean that Mitchell's role wasn't a false witness designed to make it look like the government were the good guys defending a murdered woman while fingering an easily-incriminated black man.

Joe Shimon openly mused to his daughter Toni that people like Mary Meyer were eliminated and that was how it went. Janney spoke to CIA operators who openly admitted Mary Meyer was one of their jobs.


Janney's main talent is that of a CIA family insider. While he is pretty good at writing and not bad at putting a case of covert murder together he might not be a world class detective. So therefore he may have gotten carried away with his speculation about Mitchell's role. That isn't unheard of if you look at assassination research. But I think it is unfair to condemn his entire work, which is fairly convincing otherwise, because he thought Mitchell was the killer.


CIA had the motive, means, and capability. Their safe looting man Angleton was right there on time when the object of their concern needed to be secured. I don't see how you could ignore all that.