Mary Pinchot Meyer

Mary Eno Pinchot Meyer (October 14, 1920 – October 12, 1964) was an American painter who lived in Washington D.C. She was married to Cord Meyer from 1945 to 1958, and became involved romantically with President John F. Kennedy after her divorce from Meyer.

She started dating William Attwood in 1935 and, while with him at a dance held at Choate, first met John F. Kennedy.

After her graduation from Vassar in 1942, Meyer became a journalist, writing for the United Press and Mademoiselle.

As a pacifist and member of the American Labor Party, she came under scrutiny by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Pinchot met Cord Meyer in 1944 when he was a Marine Corps lieutenant who had lost his left eye because of shrapnel injuries received in combat.

The two had similar pacifist views and beliefs in world government and married on April 19, 1945.

That spring they both attended the UN Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, during which the United Nations was founded, Cord as an aide of Harold Stassen and Pinchot as a reporter for a newspaper syndication service.

She later worked for a time as an editor for Atlantic Monthly.

Their eldest child Quentin was born in November 1945, followed by Michael in 1947, after which Pinchot became a homemaker, although she attended classes at the Art Students League of New York.

Cord Meyer became president of the United World Federalists in May 1947 and its membership doubled.

Mary Meyer wrote for the organization's journal.

In 1950, their third child, Mark, was born and they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Meanwhile, her husband began to re-evaluate his notions of world government as members of the Communist Party USA infiltrated the international organizations he had founded.

In 1951, Cord joined the Central Intelligence Agency after being recruited by Allen Dulles.

With her husband's CIA appointment, they moved to Washington, D.C., and became highly visible members of Georgetown society.

Their acquaintances included Joseph Alsop, Katharine Graham, Clark Clifford, and Washington Post reporter James Truitt and his wife, noted artist Anne Truitt.

Their social circle also included CIA-affiliated people such as Richard M. Bissell, Jr., high-ranking counter-intelligence official James Angleton, and Mary and Frank Wisner, Meyer's boss at the CIA.

In 1953, Senator Joseph McCarthy publicly accused Cord Meyer of being a Communist and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was reported to have looked into Mary's political past.

Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner aggressively defended Meyer and he remained with the CIA.

However, by early 1954, Cord Meyer had become unhappy with his CIA career.

He used contacts from his covert operations in Operation Mockingbird to approach several New York publishers for a job but was rebuffed.

In the summer of 1954, John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy bought the house in McLean, Virginia next door to the Meyers'; at some point Pinchot Meyer and Jackie Kennedy became acquainted and eventually, after both had moved back to Georgetown, "they went on walks together."

By the end of 1954, Cord Meyer was still with the CIA and often in Europe, running Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and managing millions of dollars of U.S. government funds worldwide to support progressive-seeming foundations and organizations opposing the Soviet Union.

One of Pinchot Meyer's close friends was a fellow Vassar alumna, Cicely d'Autremont, who married James Angleton.

In 1955, Meyer's sister Antoinette (Tony) married Ben Bradlee, who was then Washington bureau chief of Newsweek.

On December 18, 1956, the Meyers' middle son Michael, aged nine, was hit by a car near their house and died.

She also started a close relationship with abstract-minimalist painter Kenneth Noland and became friendly with Robert F. Kennedy, who had purchased his brother's house, Hickory Hill, in 1957.

Although this tragedy brought Mary and Cord Meyer closer for a time, Mary filed for divorce in 1958.

After the divorce, Pinchot Meyer and her two surviving sons moved to Georgetown.

She began painting again in a converted garage studio at the home of her sister Tony and Tony's husband, Ben Bradlee.

Pinchot Meyer was murdered on the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal towpath in Washington, D.C., on October 12, 1964.

A suspect, Ray Crump, Jr., was arrested and charged with her murder, but he was ultimately acquitted.

Beginning in 1976, Pinchot Meyer's life, her relationship with Kennedy, and her murder became the subjects of numerous articles and books, including a full-length biography by journalist Nina Burleigh.

Pinchot was born in New York City, the elder of two daughters of Amos and Ruth (née Pickering) Pinchot.

Amos Pinchot was a wealthy lawyer and a key figure in the Progressive Party who had helped fund the socialist magazine The Masses.

Her mother Ruth was Pinchot's second wife and was a journalist who wrote for such magazines as The Nation and The New Republic.

Mary was also the niece of Gifford Pinchot, a noted conservationist and two-time Governor of Pennsylvania.

Pinchot and her younger sister Antoinette (nicknamed "Toni") were raised at the family's Grey Towers home in Milford, Pennsylvania.

As a child, Pinchot met such left-wing intellectuals as Mabel Dodge, Louis Brandeis, Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and Harold L. Ickes.

She attended The Brearley School and Vassar College, where she became interested in Communism.