Master of CIA covert action dies

WASHINGTON -- Cord Meyer, a legendary CIA master of covert action during the Cold War, has died at the age of 80.

"This was a titan. This was a guy who was one of the great minds of covert action," Lloyd Salvetti, director of the CIA's Center for the Study of Intelligence, said.

Family members said Meyers died of natural causes Tuesday.

"I am greatly saddened by the death of Cord Meyer, a passionate defender of freedom around the world," CIA Director George Tenet said in a statement.

Rumors and mystery

Meyer's family said they were skeptical about suggestions over the years in newspaper reports and some books that Meyer may have been the famous "Deep Throat," the source for Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal.

Meyer's name cropped up in recent years in the book, "A Very Private Woman" by Nina Burleigh, about his first wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, described as a paramour of the late President John F. Kennedy.

Mary Meyer, the sister of the second wife of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, was found shot to death in 1964 on the towpath along the C&O Canal. A man was arrested and then acquitted for the murder and her death remains a mystery. Meyer and his wife were estranged at the time of her death.

In the early 1950s, Meyer became a target of Sen. Joseph McCarthy's hunt for communists in the U.S. government, but he was later cleared.

"He was called up during the McCarthy trials," Alexis Anderson, his stepdaughter, told Reuters. "He was accused during that period and cleared."

Reaching through the Iron Curtin

Meyer joined the CIA in 1951 and was considered one of the founders of covert action, including operations to counter Soviet influences in international labor and student movements.

One of Meyer's projects involved CIA funding, which he increased, for the National Student Association, according to the book "The Agency," by John Ranelagh. That covert funding was aimed at countering Soviet propaganda efforts in youth movements.

He was responsible for running Radio Liberty, which targeted the former Soviet Union, and Radio Free Europe, which disseminated outside information through the Iron Curtain to Eastern Europe.

"Cord defined the concept, doctrine and implementation of covert action on behalf of the security and interests of our nation," Tenet said in a statment. "At the height of the Cold War, he played an instrumental role in America's effort to counter Soviet influence," Tenet said.

Tenet said Cord retired from the agency in 1977 after serving in a variety of posts, including station chief in London.

Meyer was a columnist for the Washington Times for much of the 1980s and 1990s.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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