Interview · moment 22 of 25
Mary Meyer, JFK, and CIA Surveillance of the Senate
from Our Best Episode (Inside the CIA with John Kiriakou) · #136
Audio-only archive episode — no video to seek.
6 minGuest
Kiriakou discusses the Mary Meyer murder theory tied to JFK's assassination, the CIA's hacking of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture-report computers, and how the ruined careers of whistleblowers like Kiriakou himself deter future dissent.
- 1:56:18Tim describes Peter Janney's 'Mary's Mosaic,' which uses CIA and DoD documents to argue the agency killed Mary Meyer, JFK's mistress, to prevent her from revealing Kennedy's plan to dismantle the CIA.
- 1:57:42Journalist Michael Hastings died in a suspicious car accident after making problems for powerful people and telling friends the FBI was surveilling him.
- 1:58:28Whistleblowers like the guest and Tom Drake faced multimillion-dollar legal bills, lost pensions and wives, and permanent career destruction for dissenting internally.
- 1:59:16Tim questions whether Michael Hastings' death was truly accidental, saying his instinct now is to question everything he reads.
- 2:00:22The guest notes that major operations like the CIA's 1953 coup in Iran remained secret for 30 to 40 years, only becoming public after Kermit Roosevelt's death.
- 2:00:48The CIA is often portrayed as incompetent, but the guest describes them as sophisticated operators with networks of dark money and drug trafficking to fund operations.
- 2:01:22Tim argues that most intelligence people he knows are idiots, and large conspiracies require too many moving parts and perfect silence to actually succeed.
CIAMichael HastingsPeter JanneyJohn F. KennedyMary MeyerKennedy assassinationTom DrakeCord MeyerJeffrey SterlingKermit Roosevelt