Cord Meyer is one of those murky individuals whose careers naturally beget conspiracy theories.

In the late 1940s, Meyer spearheaded the American Veterans Committee’s anti-communist purges. He met Timothy Leary at the second AVC national convention in 1948, and this connection is one reason some people suspect Leary of having been a CIA agent.

Meyer started working for the CIA around 1949 and joined formally in 1951. He became the principal operative for Operation Mockingbird — a CIA program that allegedly planted propaganda in US media — and by the late 1950s was running the CIA’s European trade union infiltration effort. He served as London station chief from 1973 to 1976 and retired from the CIA in 1977.

Meyer was married to Mary Pinchot, whose sister Tony Pinchot was married to Ben Bradlee. According to Wikipedia:

In 1952 Bradlee joined the staff of the Office of U.S. Information and Educational Exchange (USIE). …. USIE produced films, magazines, research, speeches, and news items for use by the CIA throughout Europe. USIE (later known as USIA) also controlled the Voice of America, a means of disseminating pro-American ‘cultural information’ worldwide. … Bradlee was officially employed by USIE until 1953, when he began working for Newsweek.

While based in France, Bradlee divorced his first wife and married Antoinette Pinchot. At the time of the marriage, Antoinette’s sister, Mary Pinchot Meyer, was married to Cord Meyer, a key figure in Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program to influence the media. Antoinette Bradlee was also a close friend of Cicely d’Autremont, who was married to James Jesus Angleton. Bradlee worked closely with Angleton in Paris. At the time, Angleton was liaison for all Allied intelligence in Europe.”

Cord and Mary were divorced in 1958. She then had an affair with John Kennedy, which was revealed in 1963, and there are rumors they had used LSD together. Mary was mysteriously shot and killed in 1964. After her death, Ben and Tony Bradlee said they had seen Angleton, who was the trustee of her children, break into her house in an attempt to make off with the diary describing her affair with JFK.