RECOVERING MARY MEYER’S DIARY

We write to correct what in our opinion is an error in Benjamin Bradlee’s recently published autobiography, “A Good Life” (reviewed Oct. 15).

This error occurs in Bradlee’s account of the discovery and disposition of Mary Pinchot Meyer’s personal diary. The fact is that Mary Meyer asked Anne Truitt to make sure that in the event of anything happening to Mary while Anne was in Japan, James Angleton take this diary into his safekeeping.

When she learned that Mary Meyer had been killed, Anne Truitt telephoned person-to-person from Tokyo for James Angleton. She found him at Mr. Bradlee’s house, where Angleton and his wife, Cicely, had been asked to come following the murder.

In the phone call, relaying Mary Meyer’s specific instructions, Anne Truitt told Angleton, for the first time, that there was a diary; and, in accordance with Meyer’s explicit request, Anne Truitt asked Angleton to search for and to take charge of this diary. Consequently, according to Cicely Angleton, those present agreed that a search should be made. This search was carried out, Mrs. Angleton affirms, in Mary Meyer’s house in the presence of her sister, Tony Bradlee, the Angletons and one other friend of Mary Meyer’s.

When Tony Bradlee found the diary book and several papers bundled together in Mary Meyer’s studio, she gave the entire package to Angleton and asked him to burn it. Angleton followed this instruction in part by burning the loose papers. He also followed Mary Meyer’s instruction and safeguarded the diary book. Some years later, he honored a request from Tony Bradlee that he deliver this diary to her. Subsequently, Tony Bradlee burned the diary in the presence of Anne Truitt.

CICELY d’AUTREMONT ANGLETON and ANNE TRUITT, ARLINGTON, VA.