Tuesday, May 29, 2018

"Two Washington Women"

The death of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, at 104, brings back memories of her most famous case. Roundtree, an impressive black lawyer in Washington, successfully defended a young black day-laborer, Ray Crump Jr., on the charge that he murdered Mary Pinchot Meyer on the C & O Canal towpath, just below Georgetown University, in 1964. Meyer, an artist, was the sometime lover of John Kennedy and ex-wife of high-ranking CIA man Cord Meyer. Her murder (11 months after JFK’s in Dallas) gave rise to conspiracy theories because her personal connections were spectacularly suggestive. Her brother-in-law was Ben Bradlee. James Jesus Angleton, the CIA’s somewhat bizarre and unwholesome chief of counterintelligence, was a sometime friend. After she was murdered, Angleton and Bradlee rummaged in her house and studio, searching for her secret diary. Bradlee eventually found it and turned it over to Angleton, who claimed that he burned it.

Read the rest of Lance Morrow's essay in City Journal.

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