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In between running the Harvard Psilocybin Project and setting up a psychedelic utopia in Mexico, counterculture pioneer Timothy Leary had a brief encounter with a particularly tragic character. Mary Pinchot Meyer, a D.C. socialite, wanted Leary to train her in the fine art of LSD-tripping so that she, in turn, could guide an unnamed friend. As the story goes, the “public figure” for whom Meyer had procured the acid (and the necessary entheogenic training) was none other than President Kennedy, and the hallucinogenic-fueled trysts the two engaged in were enough to get both of them killed.

Dr. Timothy Leary

By the early 1960’s the US Federal Government had already participated in a extensive program of ‘psychomimetic’ (madness-mimicking) drug experimentation, with which they intended to break down enemy spies during interrogation. Interestingly, CIA agents upon which LSD had been tested, and who were thus considered immune to enemy interrogation themselves, were referred to as “enlightened operatives”. However, patriotism was not known to follow exposure to LSD. One CIA official explained how after taking the drug “…you tend to have a more global view of things. I found it awfully hard when stoned to maintain the notion: I am a U.S. citizen – my country right or wrong…You tend to have these good higher feelings. You are more open to the brotherhood-of-man idea and more susceptible to the seamy sides of your own society…”. Along with high-grade acid, these dangerous, one-world ideas were what Meyer brought back to Washington; a subversive gift from the flourishing psychedelic underground.

Mary Pinchot Meyer



Despite their familiarity with the chemical, certain shadowy parties were apparently not amused with the way Mrs. Meyer turned on the president. With the cold war gearing up, these powerful forces were hard at work ensuring that the United States stayed well ahead of the soviets with regard to worldwide military dominance. It seems that whoever was behind JFK’s assassination had no time for the sort of psychotropic dalliance which effectively transferred Meyer’s pacifist ideals to the president. The prospect of an enlightened president, unlike an enlightened CIA operative, apparently ran afoul the long term goals of the burgeoning military industrial complex. The president had to be stopped before he decided to do something silly like make peace with the Communists. The rest, of course, is gory history.

Kennedy was the first to go, but Meyer succumbed to the same sinister forces less than a year later; gunned down in Georgetown in one of the great unsolved murders to distinguish the DC metro area. Why? Mrs. Meyer certainly didn’t have the global influence that Kennedy had, but apparently she made the fatal mistake of keeping a diary in which she revealed the full extent of her relationship with Kennedy, drug experimentation and all. The current location of that particular artifact is hotly disputed. According to conflicting reports it is either ashes, in the hands of a spymaster, or, perhaps, it just slipped through the cracks. So, next time you happen by a garage sale keep a sharp eye out for a diary labeled “MPM”, because it might contain juice on the 20th century’s most intriguing love affair, as well as its most mysterious murders.