He was raised in Washington, D.C. His father, Frederick Wistar Morris Janney, was a senior career CIA official who began work at the Agency shortly after its inception in 1947.

Away at boarding school in October 1964, when Meyer was murdered, Janney learned about her death only in November when he returned home for Thanksgiving vacation.

[4] In March 1976, the National Enquirer revealed that Mary Pinchot Meyer had been having a serious romantic affair with President John F. Kennedy during the last two years before his assassination in 1963.

[4][6][7] In 1998, Janney was interviewed by Nina Burleigh for the book, A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer.

Janney ultimately did not agree with many of the conclusions in the Burleigh book, including her belief that Ray Crump had committed the Meyer murder.

Janney’s research led him to conclude that his father had not only been a part of the conspiracy to murder Meyer, but had been instrumental in the CIA cover up in the assassination of Kennedy[2][9] In 2012, Janney published Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace after more than 30 years of research.