Monroe's Dead Shrink and Deep Throat's Promise

A recent LA Times story by Robert W. Welkos (also here) contains comments by former LA Prosecutor John W. Miner, now 86, about transcripts that Miner claims to have made as he listened to secret audio tapes Marilyn Monroe had made for her psychiatrist, Dr. Ralph Greenson.

Miner, then an assistant district attorney heading the DA's Medical/Legal Section, interviewed the psychiatrist after Monroe's death. Dr. Greenson, Miner says, swore him to secrecy then played the tapes to show that the film star was not suicidal and looking forward to the future. Miner kept the "nearly verbatim" notes at close hold. He mentioned that Greenson had made tapes but did not add that he had transcripts when, in 1982, the DA's office reinvestigated the case and found questions but not criminality, according to Welkos' story.

Where is this heading?

At some point there were suggestions that Dr. Greenson had a role in Monroe's death. To dispel that notion Miner wanted to disclose the notes. But the doctor, now dead, swore him to secrecy, he said. "Miner said he couldn't speak about the transcript then because of his promise to Greenson. 'Greenson … was absolutely committed to protecting the privacy of his patients,' Miner recalled. 'He felt he could not let me see what she had said if there was any possibility that her privacy would be violated.' So Miner gave his word," Welkos wrote.

Dr. Greenson was dead. Why didn't Miner simply release the transcripts? Didn't a promise of secrecy expire with the expiration of Dr. Greenson? And Monroe, too, was dead.

Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and the Washington Post confirmed W. Mark Felt as "Deep Throat" after Felt "outed" himself in an article published on May 31 this year. But Felt, they believed, was unable to remember the events of Watergate and, hence, unable to release the three from their promise not to reveal his identity until after he died. So they just confirmed his identity, using the article as proof they had been released.

They could have called the attorney who represented Felt and Felt's family and gotten that release just to tie up loose ends. But they didn't.

However, look what Miner (attorney/not journalist) did. "When some suggested that Greenson himself was the actress' killer, Miner went to the psychiatrist's widow and asked for permission to be released from the promise. Greenson's widow, Hildegard, told The Times this week that she didn't know if the tapes existed and never heard her husband discuss them. Still, she does not discount that Monroe may have given her husband such tapes and that he played them for Miner."