Soledad O'Brien
speaker
904 appearances
45 recordings
7 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 28 Feb
Soledad O'Brien’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And so, the conspiracy goes, she had to be taken out because she knew something about the CIA and Kennedy's assassination. Okay, before we go any further, let's stop here and say something that needs to be said. When we set out to tell the story of Mary's murder, we knew we were going to have to cover some murky ground. Because to this day, her murder is officially unsolved. Even Washington, D.C.
police decided long ago to consider the case closed.
And apparently, police didn't believe there was any good reason to do so. So when the main question behind a murder is left unanswered, namely, who killed Mary, conspiracies can thrive. But because Mary was tied to JFK, that's not all there is to it. Even to this day, more than 60 percent of Americans believe Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone.
Which is to say the majority of Americans don't believe they're getting the full story behind the Dallas shooting of JFK. That fact alone might change some people's opinions about who conspiracy theorists really are. They're not always fringe loonies in their basements concocting alternative narratives. In fact, it's mainstream to believe some conspiracy theories.
We wanted to get a better understanding of why some people gravitate toward conspiracy theories. So we called up someone who studies them.
Dr. Pierre says research shows why some folks are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories than others.
Some conspiracy theorists need closure. They crave certainty. So if something doesn't add up, they might keep looking for connections until a story emerges. We'll hear more from Dr. Pierre later in this episode. But based on that idea alone, you can see why Mary's murder intrigued conspiracy theorists. Her story has lots of unanswered questions.
Now, one of the most well-known conspiracy theories behind Mary's murder is laid out by writer Peter Janney in a book called Mary's Mosaic. Janney has spent years trying to answer what really happened to Mary. Why? Because he grew up down the street from the Myers. Their families were friendly. And Peter's father? Like Mary's ex-husband, he also worked at the CIA.
Peter Janney spent years researching this case. And he uncovered some pretty strange facts about Mary Myers' death. But what Jenny then does is takes those facts and builds a unified theory that argues that the CIA conspired to murder JFK and Mary. That conspiracy has been rejected by many who've reported this story, including Lance Morrow, Nina Burley, and Ron Rosenbaum.
And as for Mary's inner circle, her close friends and her sister, Toni, remained nearly mute on the subject of Mary's murder or any conspiracies connected to it. That said, Janney believes the CIA killed the president because JFK wanted world peace, while the agency had incentives to ramp up the Cold War. Only one of them, the president or his military, could prevail in the end.
And Mary became collateral damage. Why is it that some people find Janney's conspiracy theories so far-fetched? We're going to do our best to answer that question. But before we get into Mary's murder, we're going to give you a Cliff Notes version of the reasons why some believed the CIA killed JFK. It's a story that really begins with a little bit of presidential history.
Namely, JFK's relationship with the CIA and his own military. While Kennedy moved his policy goals in the direction of world peace, the CIA wanted to show the strength of the American military complex, especially as the Cold War was heating up. As a result, Kennedy and the CIA ended up on opposite sides of two big clashes. The first was the Bay of Pigs.
When the CIA-led invasion to remove Fidel Castro from power looked like it was going to be a failure, Kennedy refused to send additional backup. This infuriated Allen Dulles, the legendary CIA director. To add insult to injury, Kennedy fired Dulles. The president wanted him to know exactly who was in charge. The second clash, of course, was the Cuban Missile Crisis.
He called General Eisenhower to bring him up to speed.
Kennedy wanted to save the world from nuclear annihilation, something both he and Mary felt strongly about. But when he tried to de-escalate the crisis by offering to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey if Russia removed theirs from Cuba, well, the CIA thought the president was making America look weak. By then, Kennedy no longer trusted his military or the CIA.
And that's when, according to Janney's theory, the CIA decided to assassinate the president.
News reports said it was the work of one deranged gunman. But those closest to Kennedy weren't so sure. CIA Director John McCone went to Bobby Kennedy's house that day, and the two discussed the assassination. Historian Arthur Schlesinger and Bobby Kennedy's son, RFK Jr., later reported Bobby suspected a conspiracy behind his brother's murder. Many close to Kennedy thought something smelled fishy.
One of the seven members of the Warren Commission charged with investigating the president's death was none other than Alan Dulles, the same man Kennedy fired the year before. Apparently, he shared a book saying American assassinations, unlike European assassinations, were usually the work of a lone gunman. Ultimately, the commission argued one man shot JFK.
The official report was given to President Johnson on September 24, 1964. Less than three weeks later, Mary was dead on the towpath.
Another conspiracy theorist in the 90s looked into Mary's murder. A man named Leo DeMoor. He claims that he learned key information about Mary's death from her diary. the diary that no one else has ever claimed to have seen after Angleton took it. In a 1993 conversation with his lawyer, Damore claims he got his hands on a copy of it.
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