07-10-2015, 06:17 PM
Don Jeffries Wrote:Janney's book is far from perfect. As I said, I think it does a good job in covering the details of Mary Meyer's death, as well as providing biographical data about her. I think Janney definitely exaggerated Meyer's influence over JFK's political thinking. But I don't believe someone who was Cord Meyer's wife and was apparently having an affair with a recently assassinated president was murdered for nonpolitical reasons.
I am skeptical about Timothy Leary; as I noted in my book, he was just one of the counterculture icons who had ties to the CIA. As is the case with most books that touch on the JFK assassination, I think it's wise to discount the pet theories of individual authors. But that doesn't mean there isn't valuable information in those books.
John Hankey produced a very important video about the assassination of JFK, Jr. If you look beyond his dubious attempts to pin the crime on the Bush family, the actual data he presents is stunning. I used some of his first-hand research in my book. He was one of the very few who researched that case from the beginning. If you throw out everything he's done because of his theories about Bush, then there isn't a whole lot of material on the JFK, Jr. case to work with.
Mary Meyer was in the midst of the most powerful people in the intelligence community. Janney's own background is crucial here, as his father was a CIA official. Thus, it becomes impossible to believe that someone with those ties just happened upon a poor black criminal that day, who murdered her for reasons completely unrelated to politics.
Don I agree with you. (And Peter, above). On both Janney's book and Hankey's film. The ending is contrived and should be removed, the son killing the son. There is no basis in fact for this. But the rest of the film has incredible research. I have not watched it in several years. Need to watch it again sometime.
Just because Janney and Hankey got some things wrong is not a reason to discount both out of hand. It greatly saddens me that more has not been done on the murder of JFK Jr. and the set up of Ted Kennedy. I have taken a break from reading assassination books, but yours and David Talbot's are my next two. I'll order as a b-day present from me to me.
Dawn