Frederick Wistar Morris Janney

Frederick Wistar Morris Janney
Born March 15, 1919
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Died January 18, 1979
Metropolitan Club, Washington, D.C.
Cause of death Heart attack
Nationality American
Alma mater Princeton University (B.A. 1941)
Yale University (M.A. 1948)
Harvard University (AMP 1969)
Spouse(s) Mary Draper
Children 2
Parent(s)

Walter Coggeshall Janney

Pauline Flower Morris
Spying career
Allegiance United States of America
Service Central Intelligence Agency United States Navy
Active 1941-1979

Frederick Wistar Morris Janney (March 15, 1919 – January 18, 1979) was a career Central Intelligence Agency officer who was recruited by Allen Dulles in 1949. He held a number of positions during his thirty-year career and was awarded the Agency's highest honor, the Distinguished Intelligence Medal four days after his death.[1]

Early and personal life

Janney was born on March 15, 1919 in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania on Philadelphia’s main line.[2]

Wistar Janney attended the Fessenden School in West Newton, Massachusetts and then Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating from Exeter in 1937. He then attended Princeton University and pursued a major in Politics, graduating in June 1941.[3] The youngest of six children, "Wistar," as he was affectionately called by his family, was the son of Walter Coggeshall Janney and Pauline Flower Morris. Walter Coggeshell Janney was a prominent Philadelphia investment banker, who maintained a large estate in Bryn Mawr, and built a summer estate on Cape Cod near Woods Hole, Massachusetts for his family.[4][5]

World War II

Soon after graduation from Princeton, knowing that he would be quickly drafted, Wistar reportedly watched the film Flight Command starring Robert Taylor, and then impulsively enlisted in the Naval Air Corps, much to the chagrin of his father. He trained at the Corpus Christi Naval Air Station in Texas in the newly designed Grumman Avenger Torpedo Bomber and became a designated Naval Aviator in April 1942. He was immediately assigned to Torpedo Squadron 13 (VT-13) on the USS Franklin aircraft carrier.[6]

With two tours of duty in the Pacific Theater during World War II, Lt. Janney quickly became a seasoned combat pilot who distinguished himself with two Distinguished Flying Crosses and three Navy Air Medals.[7] On October 25, 1944, as the Flight-Executive Officer for Torpedo Squadron 13, he led the squadron into the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history. He personally scored a direct torpedo hit on the Japanese aircraft carrier Zuihō, which eventually sank. For his leadership at Leyte Gulf, he was awarded the Navy Cross.[8]

CIA career

He married Mary Draper of Brooklyn, New York in January 1944 before his second Pacific tour, and returned from combat in the Pacific in 1945. The two entered Yale University graduate school on the G.I. Bill, she in sociology, and he in Russian Area Studies. They both graduated in 1948.[9]

World War II had had a profound impact on a number of elite, well-educated combat veterans. Like Cord Meyer, Jr., Tracy Barnes, Desmond FitzGerald, Frank Wisner and others, Janney was a part of an idealistic young group who were determined to prevent another nuclear conflict. Along with Meyer, Barnes, FitzGerald and others, he was soon recruited by Allen Dulles into the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He and his wife moved their family from New Haven to Washington, D.C., where others they had known growing up, and in college, were gathering to raise their families and start careers as well.[10]

Early in his CIA career, Janney was assigned to the Office of Current Intelligence. By 1963, he had become Chief of the Sino-Soviet Bloc Area, according to Victor Marchetti , who worked for him at this time.[11] Janney later served in the Agency's new Science & Technology directorate (DS&T), which was formed in late 1963. He initially worked for Col. Lawrence K. “Red” White, before becoming chief deputy to directorate head Carl Duckett, according to Dino Brugioni, who worked at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) which was part of DS&T.[12]

Janney's last documented job at CIA was as the Agency's Director of Personnel, which he began in 1975. During this time the CIA became concerned about Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits and began waging court battles to block the release of documents, arguing that such release exposed "sources and methods" of intelligence work. The extent of this concern was shown recently when the agency worked to block a suit involving CIA operations at the University of California at Berkeley. "In many fields," said Janney in his role as CIA personnel director, "it is absolutely essential that the agency have available to it the single greatest source of expertise: the American academic community."[13] The agency has also argued that revelations of academic involvement with the Agency would expose certain academics to "shame and ridicule" of their peers, "clearly a tacit admission that at least some of these people have something to be ashamed of," wrote author Ami Chen Mills.[14]

Death of Mary Pinchot Meyer

At approximately 12:24 p.m. on October 12, 1964, Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of CIA officer Cord Meyer and paramour of President John F. Kennedy for the last three years of his life, was violently murdered as she took her customary walk along the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath in Georgetown after her usual morning of painting at her Georgetown studio. Her body had two bullet wounds, one in the left temple and one in the back.[15] Her identity remained unknown to police until her brother-in-law Ben Bradlee identified her corpse at the D.C. Morgue at approximately 6:00pm that evening.[16] However, at approximately 2:00 p.m.[17] on the day of the murder, Ben Bradlee had received a call from his friend Wistar Janney. He asked Bradlee whether he had been listening to the radio; Bradlee said no. "Someone had been murdered on the towpath," he [Janney] said, "and from the radio description it sounded like Mary."[18]

Author Peter Janney (son of Wistar Janney) maintains in his book Mary’s Mosaic that the CIA orchestrated Pinchot Meyer's murder and controlled the operation from start to finish. Wistar Janney's call to Bradlee occurred after suspect Ray Crump had been arrested at approximately 1:15 p.m. and the Deputy Coroner had pronounced the unknown victim dead at 2:05 p.m.[19] According to author Janney, "the only thing left to do for the 'operation' was to establish the victim's identity."[20]

Wistar Janney also called Pinchot Meyer's ex-husband Cord Meyer, a close friend and CIA colleague, later that afternoon in New York.[21]

CIA’s Infiltration of Jim Garrison’s case against Clay Shaw

In 1993, after the JFK Records Act became law (1992), the CIA Historical Review Program released a number of documents related to the 1963 JFK Assassination. In this collection were the minutes of two high-level internal CIA meetings known as the "Garrison Group Meetings," the first of which took place on September 20, 1967.[22] Both meetings were chaired by F.W.M. Janney, who wrote memoranda summarizing the proceedings. During the first meeting, Raymond Rocca, who was James Jesus Angleton’s chief assistant in the counterintelligence directorate, was recorded as stating: "Rocca felt that Garrison would indeed obtain a conviction of [Clay] Shaw for conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy."[23] Author Peter Janney has argued that the Rocca statement "was nothing less than prima facie evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of a sitting U.S. President, which amounted to an open, documented admission by a high-level CIA officer — during an internal CIA meeting — that Clay Shaw (as well as the CIA itself) was "indeed" part of the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy.[24] The Agency launched targeted assassinations as well as smear campaigns to sabotage Garrison’s effort to convict Clay Shaw before the case went to trial in late January 1969. Their effort ultimately proved successful; Clay Shaw was acquitted of all charges, and he denied throughout the proceedings that he ever had any association whatsoever with the CIA.

In 1979, Richard Helms, former director of the CIA, testified under oath that Clay Shaw had been a part-time contact of the Domestic Contact Service of the CIA.[25] In 1992, Chief of the CIA History Staff J. Kenneth McDonald, in a Memorandum for the Director of Central Intelligence, stated that Clay Shaw "was a highly paid CIA contract source until 1956." [26]

References

  1. ↑ "F.W.M. Janney, CIA Director Of Personnel". The Washington Post. January 19, 1979. Retrieved April 13, 2017.
  2. ↑ Janney, Peter (2016). Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. pp. 66–67.
  3. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary’s Mosaic. p. 67.
  4. ↑ Witzel, Susan Fletcher (Summer 2005). "Gardeners and Caretakers of Woods Hole". Spritsail: A Journal of the History of Falmouth and Vicinity. Woods Hole Historical Collection). Woods Hole, Mass. 19 (2): 31.
  5. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary’s Mosaic. p. 67.
  6. ↑ Prados, John (2016). Storm over Leyte: The Philippine Invasion and the Destruction of the Japanese Navy. New York: Nal Caliber. pp. 121–2, 124–5, 269.
  7. ↑ "Air Medal (AM)". World War 2 Awards.com. Retrieved April 20, 2017.
  8. ↑ "Navy Cross Awards to members of the U.S. Navy in World War II". Retrieved April 17, 2017.
  9. ↑ "In Memoriam: Mary Draper Janney". Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. October 20, 2012. Retrieved April 20, 2017.
  10. ↑ Thomas, Evan (1995). The Very Best Men: The Early Years of the CIA. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 9–13.
  11. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary’s Mosaic. p. 67.
  12. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary’s Mosaic. p. 67.
  13. ↑ Robinson, Timothy S. (June 12, 1978). "Academics Still Secretly Inform CIA". Retrieved April 20, 2017.
  14. ↑ Mills, Ami Chen (1991). CIA OFF CAMPUS: Building the Movement Against Agency Recruitment and Research. Boston: South End Press. pp. 29–30.
  15. ↑ United States of America vs. Ray Crump, Jr. (United States District Court for the District of Columbia July 20, 1965).
  16. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary's Mosaic. p. 19.
  17. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary's Mosaic. p. 19.
  18. ↑ Bradlee, Ben (1995). A Good Life - Newspapering and Other Adventures. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-684-80894-9.
  19. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary's Mosaic. p. 19.
  20. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary's Mosaic. p. 338.
  21. ↑ Meyer, Cord (1980). Facing Reality: From World Federalism to the CIA. New York: Harper & Row,. p. 143. ISBN 978-0819125590.
  22. ↑ "NARA Record Number: 104-10428-10023 MEMO FOR: GARRISON GROUP MEETING NO.1- 20 SEPTEMBER 1967". Mary Ferrell Foundation. CIA. 20 September 1967. Retrieved 2018-05-13.
  23. ↑ "NARA Record Number: 104-10428-10023 MEMO FOR: GARRISON GROUP MEETING NO.1- 20 SEPTEMBER 1967". 20 September 1967.
  24. ↑ Janney, Peter. Mary’s Mosaic. p. 448.
  25. ↑ Holland, Max (2001). "The Lie That Linked CIA to the Kennedy Assassination: Deposition of Richard McGarrah Helms, 1 June 1984, E. Howard Hunt, Jr., Plaintiff, v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., Defendant, No. 80-1121-Civ.-JWK, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, Box 6, Jim Garrison Papers, JFK NARA". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2018-05-13.
  26. ↑ McDonald, J. Kenneth (10 February 1992). "NARA Record Number: 104-10428-10104. MEMO FOR: SURVEY OF CIA'S RECORDS FROM HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS INVESTIGATION". Mary Ferrell Foundation. CIA. Retrieved 2018-05-13.
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