TTB Blog Plans

Now that THE GOOD-BYE MAN is finished I have taken the book blog down, however,  I will leave HONK IF YOU KNOW TOWNSEND  up as a resource for future researchers.

If you have any questions about the content or information to add, please contact Rose at:
jlofton dot writer at gmail dot com

rose

Oh My Frogman Gone!

Geoff and Kestrel, that Most Excellent team of British Researchers, have been hard at work on their side of the pond. They tell me that Amazon UK has announced that THE CRABB ENIGMA will be available in August:
,

This is a true story about Commander “Buster” Crabb, a British naval frogman who disappeared whilst undertaking an underwater ‘spying mission’ involving the Soviet cruiser Ordzhonikidze in 1956. Just over a year after he disappeared a body washed up, headless and handless, near Portsmouth. The Establishment took charge of the body and, at an inquest, declared it to be Crabb’s body. However, vital evidence was omitted and key witnesses not called.

It is now known that it was not his body and he was not buried in Portsmouth at that time. The problem for the establishment was that Crabb worked for the then head of the Royal Navy, Lord Mountbatten. At the time the US government security agencies alleged that Mountbatten was doing ‘unofficial’ business with senior officials within the Soviet Union.

This, of course, would be a valid explanation as to why the whole Crabb story is being held secret and cannot be disclosed for 100 years, meaning that the official papers will not be made public until 2056.

What's left to say to that? OMFG about covers it.

Paying it forward

Information has an odd way of traveling in the Townsend Brown world. It is, very often, less about what one knows than about what one shares. FF Arc wrote to say that he appreciated the odd links I posted a few days ago. In return he has sent me a 2010 piece on Townsend Brown's Battery:

To create Townsend Brown's Battery a high dielectric was melted with a metal oxide or carbide (he indicated Tungsten Carbide was the best he found). This was exposed to a high voltage during the cooling processes on the battery electrodes. This process seemed to create a constant low voltage that would not cease (~1V). The leads could be put into a small resistance short circuit for weeks without losing its charge.

I am putting the link up here as a means of paying it forward to young researchers who are just now discovering the formerly hidden science of Townsend Brown. Go forth and do wondrous things, my children.

A Most Important Story: A Hidden World, Growing Beyond Control

Today's Washington Post expose  by Dana Priest and William Arkin reveals the out of control growth of intelligence agencies and budgets and bureaucracies that continue to be one of the most costly legacies of the Bush administration. One has to wonder if there is any way of reining them in again?

"Every day across the United States, 854,000 civil servants, military personnel and private contractors with top-secret security clearances are scanned into offices protected by electromagnetic locks, retinal cameras and fortified walls that eavesdropping equipment cannot penetrate.

At least 20 percent of the government organizations that exist to fend off terrorist threats were established or refashioned in the wake of 9/11. Many that existed before the attacks grew to historic proportions as the Bush administration and Congress gave agencies more money than they were capable of responsibly spending. The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, for example, has gone from 7,500 employees in 2002 to 16,500 today. The budget of the National Security Agency, which conducts electronic eavesdropping, doubled. Thirty-five FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces became 106. It was phenomenal growth that began almost as soon as the Sept. 11 attacks ended."

"There has been so much growth since 9/11 that getting your arms around that - not just for the DNI [Director of National Intelligence], but for any individual, for the director of the CIA, for the secretary of defense - is a challenge," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in an interview with The Post last week.

In the Department of Defense, where more than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside, only a handful of senior officials - called Super Users - have the ability to even know about all the department's activities. But as two of the Super Users indicated in interviews, there is simply no way they can keep up with the nation's most sensitive work."

Odd Links We Find in Our Bookmarks Files

US Patent 5590031

and

Douglas Field Data Acquisition Requirements.


(Not necessarily related, but not necessarily not neither.)

Shady Characters

I may have mentioned that Forum Friend and diligent researcher Pladium recently located a packet of TTB source material in a West Virginia library a few months back. They were in a file in the Gray Barker archives at WV University, of all places.

Gray Barker is the (cough) "journalist" who brought us Adamski, MIB, Mothman and and the Flatwoods Monster story. He appears to have initiated a friendly exchange with Rose Hackett, Townsend's loyal secretary at NICAP and either she, or Townsend sent over a collection of documents for his background reading. That collection is an invaluable resources for gravitics researchers, including as they do, correspondence from Townsend to Ed Hull and a paper by an Army mathematician.

Barker himself is an interesting character, in a fantabulating sort of way. Film Makers and writers still find him to be a fascinating subject, as the latest biopic shows:

http://www.theufostore.com/images/shades.jpg

Another Anti Anti-gravity Man

Townsend hated that his work got saddled with the term "anti-gravity, feeling that it was a misleading description for what happened in the field around his gravitor when it was powered up. Forum Friend Mikado calls that action "displacement." Dr. Erik Verlinde, author of On the Origin of Gravity and the Laws of Newton appears to be thinking along similar lines:

Gravity is explained as an entropic force caused by changes in the information associated with the positions of material bodies.

For readers who really aren't all that interested in scientific papers, today's New York Times carries a more readable introduction to the man who says, "For me, gravity doesn't exist."

Coincidence? Sure it is.

A while back, the Quonset Hut was visited by a former NSA physicist by the name of Robert (Bob) Koontz, Ph.D.  Bob wanted to let us know that he had verified the Biefied-Brown effect in his own experiment.  Later I came across another paper by Thomas B. Bahder which discounts the commonly believed idea that the BBE can be explained as ionic wind.

A bit more googling about this Mr. Bahder reveals that quantum cryptography is also an interest of his. Based on some of his publication titles, I would bet my flip-flops that he worked for the NSA at one time. Of course it is purely a coincidence that these  physicists were members of an organization  once so secret that its acronym was said to stand for No Such Agency.  Why would scientists in the employ of the most technologically advanced communications agency in the world waste their time researching the "crackpot theories" of Townsend Brown?

And poor Dr. Musha also spent years investigating these same theories. I guess he too failed to get the word that he spinning his wheels:

From 1992 to 1996, he conducted experiments to confirm the Biefeld-Brown effect solely and later cooperated with the research group of the Honda R&D institute, and obtained positive results. He also derived the formula to explain the electrogravitic effect from the weak-field approximation of Einstein's General Relativity Theory; a formula that was similar to the formula obtained by Boyko V.Ivanov, which was derived from the Weyl-Majumdar-Papapetrou solutions of the General Relativity Theory.

I Have It on Good Authority

I have it on Good Authority, even if it is presently only a second or third hand report:

In his 1977 book 'The Night Watch', former CIA officer David Atlee Phillips wrote on page 123 (according to Lobster):

"...that small circle of well-bred, highly educated adventurers who were known to some in the CIA as the 'Knights Templars' - Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, Kermit Roosevelt, Tracey Barnes, Dick Bissell, and kindred spirits. Other CIA veterans have confirmed the existence of similar associations within the agency, with names like the "Century group" and the "Gold Key group".

I  have been remembering that the early OSS was called the organization of the "Oh So Social," by its detractors. There would have been some truth in the name, since many of the insiders were handpicked by Sir William Stephenson, a man who moved in well-connected and affluent circles. It is only natural that those same insiders would become early participants in the post WWII national intelligence arenas. It also seems natural that this same, well-bred "adventurers club" would have spun off a subset of "gentlemen scientists," sons of wealthy families who encouraged and funded their every intellectual whim with the best available laboratory equipment any autodidact could want. Three who come to immediately to mind are Townsend himself, Alfred Loomis, another radar genius; and cryptographic expert, Beau Kitselman-- not a one of whom ever followed a traditional academic path. My spidey sense says that this same inner (founders') circle was probably less of a formal organization than a network of folks with shared acquaintances and shared histories.

Will I ever be able to prove any of these assumptions? Perhaps not, but I would be very surprised to find that I have missed the mark here.

Quote of the Day

If you can't ride two horses at once, you shouldn't be in the circus.

 --  James Maxton

Chapters 26 and 27 are up

Chapter 26 Philadelphia, Again

Chapter 27 You've Got the Green Light

Transcendental Meditations

Blogger Steve Hammons muses upon a discussion between Jacques Vallee and his own source, a certain "Major Murphy:"

Vallee explained, "Now, the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings." To this, Major Murphy responded, "If it is, then the study of it doesn't belong in science. It belongs in intelligence." 

"Meaning counterespionage," Vallee noted. "And that, he pointed out, was his domain." 

Murphy told Vallee, "Now, in the field of counterespionage, the rules are completely different ... you should look for the irrational, the bizarre, the elements that do not fit ... Have you ever felt you were getting close to something that didn't seem to fit any rational pattern, yet gave you the strong impression that it was significant?"

This leads Hammons to muse. about the UFO phenomenon as it might be explained, if viewed seen through the lens of  Transcendent Intelligence:

Maybe this is part of what has been termed "transcendent warfare." The phrase was used by a Navy SEAL officer for a research paper about the U.S. defense and intelligence program on advanced human perception, Project STAR GATE.

The follow-on concept of "transcendent power" is meant to be one that is complementary to and synergistic with the military, diplomatic and persuasive elements called "hard power," "soft power" and "smart power."

This explanation feels strikingly compatible with the strong mystical streak that runs through the Townsend Brown story, from Kitselman's writings all the way up through many of the statements made to Paul, author of DEFYING GRAVITY by Morgan, the young man who was mentored by Townsend and Twigsnapper.  In fact, Morgan once said that there was a component of the Caroline core that could best be called a Shifted Dimensional Intelligence. In an earlier post, I talked about the INTS of Intelligence, such as HUMINT, SIGINT, COMMINT, etc. I completely forgot about OSINT, or Open Source Intelligence which is one of the newest. Of it, in regard to the idea of learning to access Transcendent Intelligence, Hammond says:

We might even consider that OSINT, though it typically refers to gathering open information from conventional sources, might also have leading-edge aspects related to unusual or alternative acquisition of knowledge and understanding. That is, greater perception by average people at the grassroots can include normal information gathering and more forward-leaning methods, such as intuition and advanced perception that have been identified by U.S. intelligence and defense programs such as Project STAR GATE.

By exploring these kinds of transcendent intelligence, it is possible that we can learn more about the many mysteries that seem to hold the potential for important discoveries.

Bravo, Steve! Well done!

A Sense of Hope revisited

O7/02
Back from a visit to the Gulf Coast and now with time to reread my last jabber, I see it was very thataholic. Now I have time to write like a sane person, so I will try to improve on it:


Somewhere there is a well-hidden  key to the totality of the Townsend Brown story. Those of us who have followed the story from its very beginning think it is not meant to stay hidden much longer, however, and we believe that each of us has a part to play in arriving at the cumulative answer, whatever that may be.

But even over and above The Quest, the best part of the story is that there is something in it that makes us all feel hopeful and hope is a potent motivator, particularly in these seemingly dark times. As my friend Arc says:


If you can stimulate a sense of adventure and inspiration, and leave the world with a sense of hope... then I think you have accomplished something that leaders, nations and empires... struggle to do. 

                                                                    ARC
                                                                    Quonset Hut, June 14

Nothing Succeeds Like a Web Page. Except, Maybe Several Web Pages

New world spymaster, Sir William Stephenson, architect of American and Canadian intelligence programs during WW II, once said, "Nothing succeeds like a document," Sir William's crack forgery team would now have to include a whole army of graphics web designers and html programmers. 

Reading Assignment (yes, this WILL be on the test)

The overview below provides links to more indepth research and resources for anyone who wants to investigate some of the claims mentioned in The Unspeakable Lightness of Boeing, linked in yesterday's post.

Resources about possible UFO physics / propulsion / technology

The Unspeakable Lightness of Boeing; or Terry Hansen, I Love You

This article  by journalist Terry Hansen, Author of The Missing Times, News Media Complicity in the UFO Coverup, was posted online back in 2005. It is one of the best and most objective summaries of what we know about  the work of Townsend Brown in relation to the  idea that the B-2 bomber may be capable of solid-state gravity propulsion.

Kevin on Kingman

Noted UFO Author, Kevin Randle, has found evidence that demolishes one of the substantiating stories behind the Kingman Crash. It is Kingman, not Roswell that is thought by UFO cognoscenti to be the site of First Contact and the seed of all the purported back-engineering programs that followed. Bill Uhouse (who was disclosing before Disclosure was a movement) said that the crash was an intentional gifting of technology from "their" race to ours. It was also he who said that the Visitants called for one certain engineer to be their point of contact in the knowledge sharing process, but that he was not authorized to release that person's name.

A Very Special Bletchley Blessing Upon You, HP

According to BBC news, Hewlitt Packard will donate all of the equipment for digitizing the entire mass of archives at Bletchley Park. Bletchley evokes almost mystical feelings among WW II historians and computer science geeks who know that the Allied Victory in Europe came about in large part because of the  work that was done there. Armed forces and resistance movements throughout that continent and Northern Africa took action based on the information that was decoded and translated there,

This statement from today's announcement is particularly tantalizing. "We found a card talking about 4,400 tonnes of mercury being transferred from Spain - we will be searching for further messages explaining what happened and why this was done."

Good. I want to know who owned it, who it was transferred to, how it was transferred, and where it ended up. Most importantly, I want to know what it was used for, because speculation about mercury and the Nazi Bell propulsion system has been all over the internet for several years now.

But while waiting for the truth to emerge from those original Bletchley Park records, take a look at the location that sheltered the Allied cryptographic geniuses. Most of their work took place in these two huts, which were presumably in slightly better conditions 65 years ago:

    "Hut 6" in red and "Hut 3" in ramshackle

A Bibliography in the Borning.

I found a mother lode at The Cactus Wren used book store yesterday.  Since I came away from the Strand Bookstore in Manhattan with only 2 books last month, I wasn't expecting much of a little strip mall shop in the high desert.  The owner showed me his section on WWII and then apologized for not having much on the Cold War...just a few shelves on espionage! 

I came home with a large enough haul to convince myself that it is time to start working on my Bibliography before it becomes a completely onerous chore. At some future date, I will include library books and ebooks, and perhaps hyperlink and annotate them as well.  But today I  am doing well to get the list of hardbound and paperbacks that I actually own together.

What’s It all about, Alfie?

As I was conducting my Memorial Day read-a-thon* this weekend, a blockade breaking drama halfway around the world led to an outcome no one wanted, and no one can take back. Such is the wearing way of the world, always has been, always will be when warriors of different stripes meet. 

I want to have a word with whoever is in charge of those in charge.


* I finished Russel Miller's Behind the Llines: the oral history of Special Operations in World War II and am now mourning over The Book of Honor: the Secret Lives and Deaths of CIA Operatives by Ted Gup.

Memorial Day Reading

Our tall Memorial poppies bloomed early this year, but my research book shipment arrived just in time for this particular holiday.  I am spending it  in the CBI (China-Burma-India) theater, immersed in tales of "Det 101", the first WWII OSS Unit to see combat. Detachment 101 (so named because Detachment 1 sounded rather weak and wimpy) harassed the Japanese army throughout Burma, often from behind their own lines.

Colonel Carl Eifler, the C.O. of the unit, was a Paul Bunyan character, larger than life in both the literal and figurative senses. He bent rules, broke a few in the process and never asked anyone to attempt something he himself wasn't willing to do. He is best known for training and equipping the Burmese hill tribes to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Japanese conquerors, but the depth and breath of his  accomplishments extended far beyond that. Tom Moon, a former member of the detachment and author of This Grim and Savage Game: The OSS and U.S. Covert Operations in World War II, has written an eminently reading book, rich in details that could only have been known to someone close to the action.

My dear forum friend, Merlin, was a young pilot in this same theater, flying supplies "over the hump" from the base at Assam in India, into Burma and China. With the Japanese ability to attack these supply flights by launching Zeros from hidden jungle bases, I can't imagine that there were ever many routine deliveries.  Our generation and all those that follow us will always owe you and yours a huge debt, Merlin. We won't forget.

Cold War Spooks: the quiet warriors

I am reading  Cold War Spooks: Naval intelligence forces intercept Russian communications --On Land, as well as under, above and on the seas.

Author Tony Seidel spent four years as a Communications Technician with the U.S. Naval Security Group which was (until 2005) responsible for collecting communications out of the ether and sending them back to the NSA for processing.  His "fictional" story of this service is convincingly authentic and offers fascinating insights into the day to day life of those quiet Cold Warriors. (Or should I say, Code Warriors?)

Thank you, Tony, and all those who wore the quill and lightening bolt patch, for your silent service in a dangerous time.

Darn it.

Glitch Announcement

Space Watch

A certain Kiwi friend of mine has shared a photo from his collection of space oddities. All he can tell me  is that it is a shot taken by a weather satellite in the early eighties. Unfortunately he saved the picture, but did not save the source URL.

With that image in mind, I took a moment to watch an Ed Grimsley Video of an alleged space fleet in action. The video shows the night sky, as seen through night vision binoculars. I was skeptical at first...yawn, dust particles, been there seen that.  However, what appears to be an indisputably large triangle-shaped craft, traveling at a hella fast speed can clearly be seen toward the end of this clip.  I have done a bit of research on these reported sightings, and so far have not found any creditable alternate explanation.

And from another bit of space news:

Electrostatic ion engines are becoming popular in space missions.

Instead of relying on burning large amounts of heavy liquid propellant for thrust, they use solar power to ionise a small supply of xenon gas.

A high voltage applied across a pair of gridded electrodes sends the positively charged ions rushing at high speed towards the negative electrode.

Most ions pass through the grid, generating thrust.

That's about as succinct a description of Townsend Brown's "Fan" technology as I've ever read.

Yes, Virginia, We CAN teleport people

Quantum teleportation has been much in the news lately. Meanwhile, in the Quonset Hut forum, Linda has quietly admitted to her own teleportation experience  which those of us who read DEFYING GRAVITY have known about for a while.

I find it interesting and downright synchronicious that blogger Will Sheephogan is speculating on the topic in his blog today.  You see, Will Sheephogan is the son of Bill Uhouse. Bill Uhouse, a former US Marine and a space systems flight simulator engineer, was at Cape Canaveral in the mid-fifties, and at Groom Lake later. He came forward in 1994 with a story of crash-recovered  (living) Aliens . He said had been given  permission and instructed to talk about all of the subjects he covered, except for one fact, which he had been specifically told not to divulge. That fact was the name of the ONE engineer that the off-world Kingman Crash survivors chose to lead their team of human researchers and co-workers.

On top of this there has long been a rumor in  the UFO community that Eisenhower met with representatives of an extraterrestrial race while he was president.  A retired state legislator from New England has recently come forth with testimony claiming that he saw documentation of such a meeting.  At the end of the transcript of his speech, the honorable Henry McElroy acknowledges and thanks a handful of people, of whom Mr. Uhouse  is one, for paving the way in the disclosure movement.

As if this all weren't a spicy enough stew leading us to conclude that humans are not alone in the universe, Robert Sarbacher also had a son who has said  that his father essentially admitted the same thing to him, although Dad left Sarbacher, Jr. with the impression that he was talking about his disappointment in not being chosen to work with alien BODIES, not living representatives.

So, as regards this whole teleportation thing, one might be tempted to say of Linda's story, post hoc, ergo propter hoc (I confess, I have always wanted to use that in a sentence):

"Well if she teleported it must be that we were given alien technolgoy and that is how we eapfrogged so far ahead of whatever the admitted level of applied science is today."

I would rather blame all the superpsecret advances on dead Nazis, personally. It's hard enough for the human race to get along all by our widdle self without finding out that we aren't the only fish in the cosmic sea. We just don't seem to handle Different well.

But Alien Beings in underground labs make for a helluva cover up.

So Much to Say, So Little Time

THE GOOD-BYE MAN chapters will hold at #25 for a while, but if I were to continue with my suppositions about Townsend's activities in years covered by these chapters, I would say that upon completing his obligations to the Navy's Vanguard Program, he next brought his noted "radar detection" expertise to the development of  GRAB, perhaps the very first satellite designed for Space-based Electronic Intelligence (ELINT)gathering.

This ELINT satellite system was proposed by NRL in the spring of 1958. In parallel with exploratory development by NRL, the Office of Naval Intelligence obtained endorsements endorsements of Project Tattletale from elements of the executive and legislative branches of the US government. With positive recommendations from the Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency, President Eisenhower approved full development on 24 August 1959. By then, the project had been placed under a tight security control system (Canes) with access limited to fewer than 200 officials in the Washington, DC area. Development and interagency coordination proceeded as the GRAB (Galactic RAdiation and Background) experiment. 

The NRL Naval Center for Space Technology [NCST] designed and built the GRAB satellite and a network of overseas data collection facilities. The first launch was approved by President Eisenhower in May 1960, just four days after a CIA U-2 aircraft was lost on a reconnaissance mission over Soviet territory. The GRAB satellite got a free ride into space in June 1960 with the Navy's third Transit navigation satellite. GRAB carried two electronic payloads, the classified ELINT package and instrumentation to measure solar radiation (SolRad). The SolRad experiment was publicly disclosed in DoD press releases on this and subsequent launches. Four more launches were attempted, and one was successful on 29 June 1961.

And on another note, we have recently been talking about advances in artificial intelligence over at the Hut, it tickled me to encounter this cybernetic question/koan over at Intangible Materiality this morning:

"Do Androids dream of electric sheep?"

I'm now inspired to write a new guidebook: Buddhism for Androids: What is the sound of one gate closing?

A Chunk of Chapters and a Hunk of Speculation

You will find a run of new chapters over at THE GOOD-BYE Man covering the next ten years of Linda's life.  Although it was during this span of time that Townsend's career seemed to go dark, I think there is much that we can deduce about it from known facts.

While Townsend  continued his association with Dr. Sarbacher and his work in the lab in Washington, D.C., he also signed a consulting contract with Sud Ouest, a French aerospace firm. Townsend set up a Gravitor-type research project in their facilities and initiated the follow-up work to be conducted in his absence. Jacques Cornillion, the firm's representative in the United States, kept Townsend abreast of the  progress they made, reporting  that successive demonstrations were given to ever more important people, all the way up through the French military and to the cabinet level of government. Based on reported test results, it seems highly likely indicate that the Biefield-Brown effect was shown to occur in a vacuum, an outcome which bode extremely well for the future of space propulsion technology.

After 2 short trips to France, Townsend returned home and then left again fo parts unknownand was gone for the remainder of 1956 and into the early winter of 1957, during which time, the Naval Research Lab was actively planning and building its own satellite program, a program which would be supported by tracking radar located in radio frequency "quiet spots" around the world. My large chunk of conjecture is that Townsend was actively involved in this project.

From the Navy's own historical summary

Between 1955 and 1959, NRL conducted the first American satellite program called Vanguard. The program was initiated to represent the United States in the International Geophysical Year (IGY). IGY was a cooperative international scientific effort…. The nation's leaders in science decided to participate in the IGY by placing an artificial satellite in orbit. Following this decision, a competition was held to determine which U.S. government agency would build and launch the satellite. The plan submitted by NRL was selected due, in part, to its success with the Viking Program. NRL's pioneering task was to design, build, launch, place in earth orbit, and track an artificial satellite carrying a scientific experiment….

And why do I think Townsend had anything at all to do with this, you ask? (Oh please, please, please, do ask!). Because, oh curious one, after disappearing for most of 1956, Townsend popped up again in early 1957 in Umatilla, Florida. The family spent a leisurely few months there and the only work-related travel Townsend undertook during this time was the occasional day trip, 'to see about a construction job.' And let us not forget that his Washington cohort, Dr. Sarbacher was heavily involved with with missile guidance systems.


More from the Navy site:

In 1957, because suitable satellite-launching facilities were not available, NRL constructed the first complete satellite-launching facility at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Central control of this facility was maintained at the main NRL site in Washington, DC. Critical functions involved in attaining orbit had to be performed many hundreds of miles from the launch pad. NRL had developed in 1956 the first satellite-tracking system, called Mini track, which provided the first down-range instrumentation for determining the orbit of a satellite. This system evolved from NRL's work on phase comparison and angle tracking and used a series of fan-shaped, vertical antenna beams.

And perhaps you can guess just what small, sleepy, Florida town lies a short 90 miles inland from Cape Canaveral? 




 

 

Eleven UP

Chapter 11, Will it Move? has been posted to THE GOOD-BYE MAN. It consists of Linda's recollection of times  spent with her Father on overnight outings to Washington D.C. in 1955, including her presence at a very special demonstration attended by Dr. Robert Sarbacher, Bill Lear, and 8 men in uniforms. Although she remembers thinking that the most pompous of the men was a General, I believe, based on a report from Mr. Twigsnapper, that quite possibly he was an Admiral, perhaps even Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who would later assume leadership of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the UFO research organization which Townsend would create the next year.

The Indomitable Jacques Bergier and The Morning of the Magicians

T

THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, coauthored by Louis Pauwls and Jacques Bergier in 1960, was a seminal book in my woo-woo education. As one Amazon reviewer has written, it is one of the few books that dared to ask such questions as:

Are we all in a collective conspiracy to hide the truth, is science such a conspiracy? Do secret societies exist and do they have an influence upon history? What special knowledge did the ancients possess that we may not possess now? What role did secret societies play in the origins of Nazism, and in the Nazi Black Order? How were the Nazis able to rise to power and what did such a phenomenon represent amidst our modern world? What is the historical meaning of the atomic bomb? What does the future promise for our civilization? And, Do [sic] supermen live amongst us men, and if so, have they always? 

The paperback copy that I had was already ten-years old when it came into my hands in the seventies and I had not read anything else by Bergier until my forum friend Geoff  gifted me with SECRET WEAPONS, SECRET AGENTS this past winter.  First published in 1956, it tells of how the French underground alerted the Allies to the nature of the Pennemunde weapons research. 

Bergier was later captured, imprisoned in a concentration camp, and tortured on a daily basis, but he never broke and never gave up anyone in his network. For this he gained the eternal admiration and respect of warriors like Mr Twigsnapper, no slouch in the courage department himself and this 1955 picture of Twigsnapper, Townsend and four sailors in front of Fouquet's in Paris, (discussed in a previous post) was taken just down the street from Msr. Bergier's office, and the original photo has a  Msr. Bergier's underground ID code on the back in penciled numbers, leading me to wonder if he was not the photographer.

Now a new edition of THE MORNING OF THE MAGICIANS, released in 2007, is introducing a whole new generation of readers to the same extraordinary suppositions and conjectures that piqued my interest so many years ago. It would be most wonderful if Mr Bergier's returning popularity  encouraged some adventurous publisher to release new translations of his other work as well. I think they would find an audience eager to read them.

Resuming Our IRregularly Scheduled Programming

2010 is the Year of the (Rose) Family.

Between The Astrologer and myself, ours is spread over three coasts (four, if you count Hawaii separately) and it takes a bit of co-ordination and planning  to visit with everybody. We have just finished our NorthEastern loop, arriving in the cool of a beautiful spring and leaving with the early arrival of late summer-like humidity reminding us of why we enjoy living in the desert.

I also spent far too short a time at the National Archives* in College Park and at the Strand used book store in  Manhattan, looking into WW II Signals Intelligence and Cryptography. One particularly great find was David Stafford's 1987 book, Camp X, which fills in a bit more about the Hydra network and  Pat de Forest Bayly's  role in creating the technology for it.

Anyway, long story short: we went; it was all good; and now we are home again until the next cycle begins. We will be putting out the next chapter of THE GOODBYE MAN in a day or two. In the meantime, you should soon start to see signs of life here at HONK again.

*Lesson Number One about visiting the National Archives: Don't bother bringing a pen scanner, you can't use it in the textual records department, no matter who told you you could in an email before hand..

*Lesson Number Two: If you have only a few days to spend, plan them so they include a Thursday and a Friday when the Archives are open until 9:00 pm.

Book Report

"I read THE GOOD-BYE MAN during my somer vacatshun. It was good. it would have been better If it would have had sum pitchers "


Can you tell that Linda and I are back in elemetary school right now?

If you recall,  the Brown family had returned to Zanesville and that is where we last left off with the story. However, after mulling over the feedback from our sterling critics and talking it over, Linda and I have decided to back up and take another approach to that  previously published  Chapter Eight: Joseph Townsend Brown . The first part of it has been revised to include some vital information about an event that occurred before the family's departure from Hawaii, information that Linda would not learn until many years had passed.

The next two chapters are up now as well; albeit minus The Astrologer's last pass and editorial fine tuning. They are as perfect as these bleary eyes can make them.

Chapter Nine The Embassy Laundry


Chapter Ten: Helen Towt, Lessburg, Montressor

If you are a completely new reader please note that I have also added chapter links to the left hand column, to make it easier for you to access them individually.

Bearing Witness

These days most of the threads over at the Quonset Hut either take off into mathematical realms or dive  into the ponderment of the Mystery of the Green Eyed Man, the essence of which is this:

Is the green-eyed ex-hippy who professes to have fried his brains on acid, (and yet is still sharp enough to hold his own in chess games with Mikado) the very same JD who has guided the development of the  Linda & Townsend books through his direct and personal intervention?

The most simple, and grounded in reality answer  is: Yes, this chess player is indeed this same person with a foolproof cover identity.. After all, who pays attention to the comings and goings of the odd loners of the world? But, in keeping with the overall nature of this Townsend Brown story, nothing is ever simple, and  we have many shades of answers to the Mystery of the Green Eyed Man under consideration right now.  By and large, ours is a level headed bunch of analysts and engineers all educated (over-educated, some might say) in the scientific tradition of rational positivism.  We do not put forth "alternate reality" theories lightly, but we are not dismissive of them either. If  Mikado's best observational and intuitional skills tell him that there is more than one physical copy of this  JD walking the earth, then it is our scientific duty to ask when, why and how this came to be?

But for now, all any of us can say is that it has to be YOUR call, Mikado, to tell us just how anomalous you feel the situation is.

Sixes and Sevenses

I'm all sixes and sevenses right now. I don't actually know what that means, except that I learned to write from reading old English novels.  I fancy that it means that I am in a quandary. Chapters Six and Seven of The GOOD-BYE MAN are up.

Chapter Seven leaves the Brown family in Hawaii.  Those of us who know Linda's story know that a huge event happened there, something that shaped the family history for the next five years.  Those of you who don't will just have to "wait for it." But if it is any comfort, I am SO tempted to blogblab what I know about that event here, now,  Maybe I will after we get the Return to Zanesville chapter up.

News from The Quonset Hut

Andrew recently posted a link to my old friend Beau's handwritten 1962 rant, "Hello Stupid!" over on the Quonset Hut forum.  Much of the document is his scathing indictment of the the traditional scientific establishment's resistance to ideas they can't explain, but some of it has the forum mathematicians and engineers engaged in a spirited conjecture over the type of analytical tools he was using.

Unfortunately the  Flash player format that Kris Tyler used for presenting the document makes for impossible reading on a netbook (even with a magnifying glass in hand and a pair of reader glasses layered over prescription glasses) but if you have access to a large screen, have a go at it.

The Missing Whys and Hows

Linda and I have been talking about secrets recently, and about the obligation that goes with them to protect certain identities. And yet, (I believe that) writers also have an obligation to the reader to tell the truth as we experience it.   These needs often conflict, but in the case of Linda's OWN story, the truth is that even she does not know the meaning behind some of the more  bizarre er...urm ,,unusual events that dance around her..Happily, we have a natural ending place for THE GOOD-BYE MAN, but the larger story is still unfolding in unexpected ways.

Garrity and J.D. each came back into her life for brief periods of time throughout the course of the writing of DEFYING GRAVITY, and then disappeared, leaving her pointed her toward some new direction, without a signpost in sight. They also influenced others to initiate or to continue with research into Dr. Brown's work.  From what I hear of the preliminary results in the various areas, they are looking encouraging.

But none of that is very helpful to the overall sense-making process that has to go into pulling the continuing-even-as-we-speak story together. The whys and hows of it still seem to be missing.

Roadblocks and Detours

Chapter 5 is up.  I take full credit for any typos or errors you may see, as The Astrologer has not made an editorial pass through this yet.

ETA: Technically speaking, this book is a memoir, which is something less than a full autobiography. One of the better-known blogging agents has said that memoirs should NOT identify people by their real names, which is incredibly difficult to do when the individual in question has published two books under that name.

As the clock strikes midnight we are still trying to decide whether or not it is worth it to flaunt the "rule" at this point. 

Happy 105, Townsend

The 18th of this month would have been Townsend's (one hundred and fifth) birthday, a day when Linda often receives special information in some form or another. The pattern ran true again but differently so this year.  Recent events sent from the realms of  high strangeness (or high consciousness or high trickery) have set up an obstacle course that only she can negotiate.

There is always the clear possibility that she/we are dealing with a master of disguise operating within an elaborate framework of deceit.  But tonight I wonder if it is not possible that we are the perpetrators of  the disguise in the way we hide ourselves from ourselves.

Thank you for your prayers.

My 82 year-old  mom, who fusses if I say she is 83 by mistake,  has had three bad falls this year, the last and worst of which occurred the night I arrived for a short visit.  She was x-rayed and blood-tested, and EEGed the next day and beyond being bruised and shaky,  the doctors do not think that she has any serious ailments.  There is, however, a high probability that she was extremely over-medicated, so she is going to try the next month au natural, if you will. The positive side of this crisis is that it forced us to talk about, and  take a practice run at, some of the geriatric care issues that we may encounter over the next 10-20 years.

I appreciate the positive energies and prayers you sent our way.

And now we will return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

I may be gone, but you're not forgotten

What was originally intended to be a short visit to see my Mom has been extended to allow me time to help with a medical crisis. All the good thoughts, prayers, and positive energy you can spare will be greatly appreciated.

Ta-da! Enter Barrett!

Continuing with THE GOOD_BYE MAN, meet JD Barrett, first love and future intelligence operative.  J.D. would arise from his reported death to play an influential role in the telling of the Townsend Brown biography:

CHAPTER FOUR: ASHLAWN ONE, cont

Take a bow, Mr. Barrett, wherever you are.

EHD is alive and well.

Professor J. Reese Roth of the University of Tennessess, published: Electrohydrodynamic Flow Control with a Glow-Discharge Surface Plasma in the year 2000, his work in the field of EHD was highly classified and he was found guilty of failing to protect his research and given  received a four year sentence for (willfully) allowing secrets to fall into the hands of the People's Republic of China.
What the Chinese have done with said information may be deduced from the 2010 publication of Numerical Investigation of Plasma Active Flow Control out of the School of Jet Propulsion at Beijing University.

EHD has been the open secret of propulsion research for some time. This excerpt from an Air Force Research Lab press release, AFRL Proves Feasibility of Plasma Actuator, describes the  applications of it for propulsion purposes:

AFRL is laying the groundwork to develop revolutionary hypersonic aerospace vehicles. Researchers are examining the feasibility of replacing traditional mechanical actuators, which move like wing flaps to control an air vehicle's flight control surfaces, with plasma actuators that require no moving parts and are more reliable.

As part of its Boundary Layers and Hypersonics program, AFRL conducted a wind tunnel test to evaluate the feasibility of using plasma actuators for airframe flight control. The Boundary Layers and Hypersonics program is developing the knowledge of fluid physics to facilitate future revolutionary aerospace vehicle designs."

Another applied variant of EHD  principles led to an ion propulsion (IP) method, ideal for  in-spaace propulsion (as opposed to hypersonic flight within the earth's atmosphere). Apparently this technology has been known to be feasible since the first  working ion thruster engine was  developed by Harold Kaufman at Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center  in 1960.

And all of this relates to Townsend, how?

Well, in  the summer of 1953, Townsend was in Cleveland, reportedly reviewing the newly uncovered notes of Charles Fuller Brush. .That autumn, he called upon GE to make a presentation of  what has been presumed to be Wintherhaven....never mind that I think the Winterhaven document that is in public domain was a decoy for counterintelligence purposes. Anyway GE found something or another of such value in his work that they turned it over to their Washington office to push through. (summation of Townsend correspndence with Jo of that year)

Now I'm not saying that any of this is connected but by the time we launched our first satellites 4 years later, GE was the prime contractor for the CIA/NRO satellite contracts and Brush Materials of Cleveland,  the manufacturer of composites that would be used for re-entry vehicles. 

"Radar Material," that  stuff was called  when it was first appended to the name of the Atlantic Fleet Radar school back in 1941.  Scientists were just then discovering that properly engineered material could bend, absorb, and reflect the pings of incoming radar. They had no idea that it could also be used in more active applications.

Townsend Brown was the handpicked head of that school back then . Its name changed, first from the Atlantic Fleet Radio School to the Radar School to the Radar and Materials school with just a few months. And then Townsend 'left' the navy and moved right down the street from the Army Radar Command on Wonderland Ave. Sometimes chains of coincidences aren't.

Meet Dr. Gee

You will want to read the entire two-part article about Scott and Susan Ramey's conclusions after ten years of investigation of the  Aztec (New Mexico) UFO crash.   For now let's just start with this bit of quote from Frank Scully's 1950 book on the topic. Keep in mind that the mysterious Dr. Gee was rumored to be the researcher called in to investigate the crashed craft.

I met a man of science whose contemporaries rated him the top magnetic research scientist in the United States. He had more degrees then a thermometer, and had received them from such diverse institutions as Armour Institute, Creighton University, and the University of Berlin. He is the scientist called Dr. Gee.

He had been assigned to direct a division of top scientists during the war. Their task was to knock submarines out of the seven seas . ... They worked out of two laboratories and had a budget of one billion dollars at their secret command.

Townsend had told Linda that one of his duties, while on his 1938 active duty cruise, was to oversee the loading of several tons of British gold aboard a US bound Navy ship.  Linda has also been told that some of the gold was to fund the establishment of his (Brown's) private laboratory which would carry out stepped-up defense  (and communications) research. 

Continuing to quote from the linked article:

In point of fact, there was indeed a division of scientists involved in anti-submarine warfare during the war years—it was "Division 6" of the "OSRD..."

"Division 6" (sub-surface warfare) of the OSRD was headed by an individual that very much fits the description of Dr. Gee, or at least one of the collective. [Scully would later say that Dr. Gee was a blended character, made of a select group of scientists.] Its primary facility was the "Airborne Instruments Laboratory" (AIL) of Mineola, New York. Moreover, he indeed directed a division of "magnetic scientists" as stated in the book.

One of the devices developed by "Division 6" was the "Magnetic Anomaly Device" (MAD), the origins of which were borne by the "oil industry," more specifically in the exploration thereof. After the design was completed, GSI (Geophysical Service Inc.), the predecessor of "Texas Instruments," mass-produced them for the war effort.

Townsend's service records that show that he was working in  magnetic minesweeping  research and design throughout 1939-41.  On March 29, 1941, travel orders directed Lt. Brown, USNR, to visit the National Geophysical Co. of  Morgan City, LA and Dallas, TX for the purposes of examining "equipment to be used in conjunction with mine sweeping problems and to investigate manufacturing facilities."

And what does this prove? Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

More Sarbacher

 FM No Static dug up a good bit of information about Dr. Sarbacher quite some time ago and posted it in the original TTB forum. If you are not familiar with the man, you might want to look in on that thread.

Power Outage at the Quonset Hut.

The Quonset Hut forum is still down as of noon PST.
For the Hutmaster who is struggling heroically to get it up and going again:

White Sands, V2 Rockets, UFO's and Dr. Robert Sarbacher

"New research reveals that the V-2's also somehow "attracted" UFOs- and that our military even purposely cast up V-2's that were mounted with cameras to take motion pictures of the discs! A world-famous physicist, a former state congressman, an expert radar operator and a government atmospheric scientist all confirm: flying saucers were drawn to the V-2's and were filmed by the pernicious projectiles- and there may well have been a Roswell crash."

More information, along with a bio of Dr. Sarbacher who is mentioned briefly here on this blog,  and again  here in The Good-bye Man

The Preface: It's in again

The part of the book we call the Preface  has been in and out. Now it is in again.

Linda first found what she calls the " Rain on the Window" papers in the Ashlawn library when she was just a teenager. It was raining then, too, and she was in search of something to read. She remembers that the loose manuscript read like a science fiction story, but the pages didn't keep her interest for very long.  Nor did the story grab her when she encountered it again years later.. But for the seemingly  prophetic message written on one of the pages, the R.O.W.  paperswould have  been left them out of the story all together. Today, however, the Preface is in again.  As mysterious as  that message and those pages are, as inexplicable as the circumstances around them are, we can't NOT mention them. And so, for today, at least, the Preface is in again.

Ball Lightning, the Genesis

We have long running discussions going on over at the Quonset Hut,  discussions that have been carried on from forum to forum. One of our favorite topics is the Moore/Berlitz story of  the alleged 1943 Philadelphia Experiment which implies that  Townsend Brown had something to do with a disappearing ship called the USS Eldridge.

Some of us Brown Hounds are on the trail of an entirely different rabbit, ball lightning, and a reported accident aboard the USS Cutlass (SS 478) marks its starting point.

Chapter Four is Up

Chapter Four: Ashlawn One

The Cady Report, Part B

I am {still) deep into  Cady's report, which can be read online at Andrew Bolland's's Qualight site. It is a wonderful document because it provides informative details for all aspects of Townsend's work at the time.  It is equally wonderful because I see how effectively Tee (as his friend Merlyn calls him) sandbagged the study.

The Muse Leads the Dance.

I have no TTB topic for today. Blogs don't just write themselves by themselves, you know. The muse comes and goes as she will and ALWAYS leads the dance when she arrives.

The Controversial Cady Report

Townsend received all sorts of attention in 1952. His sidereal radiation data was being hyped, not by him, but by those around him as valid stock market indicators, and he was being investigated for fraud by the FBI.  He was demonstrating "flying saucers" for the press at his Townsend Brown Foundation office in Los Angeles.. And his  Winterhaven Proposal (for the propulsion of aerial vehicles) was being read and studied in military aviation circles.

William Cady of the Office of Naval Research was tasked with preparing an analysis of Townsend's supporting research work. The Cady Report concluded that Townsend was observing nothing more than electric wind in action.  While the holes and the contradictions in this report are obvious to  trained scientific researchers,  the astute reader will find that it is very informative in what it does NOT say:

Projects Zenith, Winterhaven, Xerxes

Toward the end of his life, Townsend's stationery carried the Project Xerxes reference.  However, we have no knowledge (yet) of the purpose or scope of this project. Of those listed in the title of this blog, the 1952 Project Winterhaven proposal is the best known. It is often cited as evidence of the "antigravity" research that was carried out in the fifties..

I have recently come across a carbon for an undated proposal for a Project Zenith that appears to be a Winterhaven predecessor, or possibly, a Winterhaven offshoot, though I can't yet determine a specific year. It is likely that it was written after 1953, as that was the year Townsend spent time in Cleveland. a The phone number is given as "Metropolitan 8-6070." which makes me want to break out into a 1940's boogie-woogie for some reason.  (I need a reverse look-up phone book for 1954-1960, please, Google.)

The proposal kicks off with this information: .

Quite recently, careful studies of the detailed records of the Brush experiments on Gravitation have been completed. The unpublished notes and letters, uncovered last year, in the old files of the Brush estate in Cleveland have been examined. There seems to be no doubt that Dr. Brush's findings, if confirmed, are of tremendous importance and may easily provide the answer to an urgent and unsolved problem in the control of guided missiles.

Weekend Reading Plans

The Edge is first on my weekend reading list, as soon as I download it to my (ahem!  Drumroll, please!) ebook reader. But as nice as the digital book technology is, I'm really looking forward to spending time with my nice fat new volume of Spycraft: The secret history of the CIA's spytechs, from Communism to Al-Quaeda (Wallace and Melton).  In my imagination I will be walking some of the same halls that Townsend once trod.

Energy on the Edge

I have discovered a beautifully done magazine devoted to scientific explorations at the outer edges of knowledge. The second issue is linked here. Just look at their wonderful table of contents!  It's enough to set any Brownie's heart a-patter! 

INSIDE ISSUE 2 EDGE SCIENCE (January 2010)

Next chapter

Chapter Three: The Soul's Code is up

Carolines, the condensed version

Before he was thirty years of age, Townsend would be introduced to an informal, but powerful, network of wealthy industrialists. These "influential connections" were dubbed the Carolines in DEFYING GRAVITY.  The name was taken from the private yacht (the second longest in the world at that time) used for the research expedition that brought LTJG Townsend into William Stephenson's circle.  Eldridge Johnson's boat was so luxurious that it even had a wood-paneled library graced with Lewis Carroll's original manuscript of Through the Looking Glass (under glass, of course).

Linda. the horsewoman

A new/old Facebook friend recently asked me to tell him about the book we are writing. Don, this one's for you:

The GOOD-BYE MAN is the story of how Linda Brown learned of her father's clandestine career. And how that career has extended its effect into her own life in the most unusual of ways.

Linda epitomizes what I love most about the denizens of this high desert region: She is private, practical, down-to-earth and gifted in unusual ways. However, she would be the VERY last person in the world to seek the limelight for those gifts. The most boastful thing I have ever heard her say is that she hasn't been thrown from a  horse in years.  To which I mentally hear her add, "And I'm not about to start now!"  (She is also a very determined person, once her mind is made up.)

The Atomic Heritage Foundation's Version of the Philadelphia Experiment

 The Quonset Hut visitors from down under are particular stars in their areas of specialty. Friend Langley is the expert on the history of the development of atomic energy and on the effects of the atomic tests conducted in the South Pacific.  He was one of the first to educate me to the fact that America's quest for atomic energy  originated before the war at the Naval Research Lab as part of their search for a silent propulsion system.

By the time General Groves and the Manhattan Project came along, the Navy had mastered isotope separation via the thermal diffusion method. Their success was one of the most closely held atomic secrets for many years. So was the accident that killed three people in a demonstration put on for visitors from Oak Ridge. The full story of this documented "Philadelphia Experiment" is  now on the Atomic Heritage website.

The Professor on NICAP and Ball Lightning.

Looks like The Professor has been reviewing old files.

The Friday Finale

The forum friends and diligent duo, Geoff and Kestrel have turned up what seems to me  to be a likely explanation  for the sailors in the mystery uniforms in the Fouquet's photo. I promise, I am capering!

02/16/10 UPDATE: the Quonset hut was moved to a new server over the weekend and the above link was lost. I apologize. I will see what I can do about getting the information back.

Forget the filler, let's go straight to the main course

Chapter Two: First Contact is now up. Enjoy.

Boundary Layers. And Fillers.

Dr. Anderson also talked about some other intriguing topics. One was the use of the Temporal Tremor Detector.  Another was his lab experiments with the timewarp generator, which he says can shape a  time field  that is easily three orders of magnitude greater than the six-minute delay/progression that they had achieved eight years ago.

Sourcing the Story

The template for this blog includes a "label cloud," (see the one at the bottom of the page) that prints the most frequently used labels in larger, bolder print. At the time of this writing, I see that my favorite Irishman is getting the top rating and I'm afraid to mention his Twiggy name again, lest it take over completely.

Time Wars

Thank you, Hobbit Kevin, for this easy to play link to Dr. Anderson's January interview with Art Bell.   Anderson comes across as a serious and knowledgeable expert and I believe him when he says all nations of the world are pouring huge amounts of money into time travel research.  His greatest concern is that time warfare will be developed and used before the general public even knows such a thing is now possible. 

I sure wish he had sounded more like a whack-o nut job.

Oh, Shoot, Let's Make it a Three-fer.

I must have had a brain fart when I said that time travel and UFOs were the two elements of the Townsend Brown story that prevent people from taking it seriously.  How could I have forgotten  the infamous Philadelphia Experiment, the place where the rubber really meets the road. I don't know what that means, but it sounds emphatic, and I like that.

Going for a Two-fer

I might as well go for a two-fer by following my previous post with one on UFOs, the second biggest hot-potato on the Townsend Brown topic list. Townsend cemented his role in UFOdom for all time by founding NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) in 1956.  Personally, I believe his interest in the subject dated further back, at least to the spring of 1945 when he "jumped" at the chance to parachute behind the lines and vet a German scientist claiming expertise in "ball lightning,"  the suspected root cause of the early foo-fighter sightings reported by Allied pilots.

Anti-gravity is the shibboleth

If there is one word that that will give away a newcomer to "Brownan" research, it is  "anti-gravity," a term Townsend personally disliked.   I see that it  is being revisited over at the Above Top Secret forum and someone has also posted some terrific TTB background information in that thread.

Thank you, "Slayer"....that was a big HONK!

Beau "Peepless" Kitselman

Alva Lasaile Kitselman....

Beau was one of Townsend's closest friends and associates  and. like Townsend,  his tracks through history are, nearly invisible. Appropriate for a man whose intelligence codename was "Sandcastle" in honor of the  thoroughness and speed with which he could create and erase full blown operations.

Time to Talk Time Travel

Time Travel is one of the  two hottest (potato) topics in the Townsend Brown story. UFOs run a close second. The barest whiff of either of them sends people scurrying away muttering something about whack-o nut jobs; so I might as well bring this one up for discussion now. At least it will help to cull  the closed-minded from the eventual book-reading audience.

The Good-Bye Man: read it here first

Linda and I are starting the second draft of her memoir. I will be posting the chapters over at The Good-Bye Man. Comments and corrections will always be welcome. Enjoy!

But for now, until we have the first chapter ironed out between The Astrologer and myself, since I have been talking about a photo taken on Townsend's 51st birthday, the first post over there is a later segment of the book, Linda's memory of that day.

I'm still juggling those 03/18 and 04/18 dates, wondering what the significance of 04/18/55 might be. Was the intentionally misdated check just a homage to the date of Einstein's death? Was it less? Was it more? Was it just a cigar?

Before we leave "Buster"...

The LIFE magazine story of May 28, 1956, provides a detailed account of the days before and after Commander Crabb's disappearance.  Many think this last dive was done at the behest of  the foreign arm of  British Secret Intelligence, a belief  bolstered by the publication of  Peter Wright's SPYCATCHER. Wright claimed that Crabb was sent down to observe the hull and propeller design of the Ordzhonikidze, the radically fast new Russian cruiser that brought Premier Krushchev to Great Britain on a diplomatic call.

Elite Warriors of the World

This 1200 page book provides a detailed look at the special forces of every country in the world. I have found it to be an invaluable resource for tracking the relationships between and among the elite paramilitary services.  Required reading for the reference links alone!

The Human Side

When Trickfox, a Canadian scientist and fellow forum member requested some beta testers for an invention of his,  Mr. Twigsnapper asked Linda to bring me a test unit.  The Astrologer and I rendezvoused with her and Tractorman George at our local Chevron station. It was a brief but intense get acquainted meeting and I remember being struck by something she said as we nattered away in the back seat of the Prius: “You ought to see some of the pictures!”

I assumed she was talking about surveillance photos, but the significance of that statement didn't really click until I read  JD's reference to pictures “taken through the Keyhole,”  made  in one of his e-mails to the author of "Defying Gravity," (Once Linda decided to write her memoirs, someone, presumably JD, arranged for her to be handed a packet of printouts of their (JD and the author's) correspondence on the anniversary of her Dad's birthday in 2009, and I have read through most of it. ) Anyway, wonderful though reconnaissance satellites are, the need for boots on  the ground will always remain.

JD  and Mr. Twigsnapper represent the human side of the espionage world or HUMINT, as it is known.   Although I have seen photos of each of them, I imagine that I might be sitting in the same room with either one of them and not know who they were, unless they wanted to be known.

On being all covert and stuff...

Way back in the dark ages, while I was still a grad student at San Diego State, I was recruited to design a logistics management program for a very new, very different type of Navy project, based on (gasp!) COMPUTERS!  I had to get a top secret clearance for that job and for my next job with the Air Force Systems Command, and for all the jobs after that until I quit that type of work.

First Impressions

I was intrigued with the people gathered around Defying Gravity. They seemed to be a motivated and intelligent crew focused on researching and discussing Townsend Brown's life and career. As I mentioned in the previous blog post, Linda Brown's presence came across loud and clear. Her forum self was bright, staunch, eloquent, gracious, and loyal. She was just as I expected her to be. But I had to depend on observation and intuition to tell me about the other posters.

Almost everyone stood up to my sincerity tests. I was sure that the majority of the posters were exactly who they claimed to be. There was also a notable contingent of spooky folks there, members and former members of three-letter intelligence agencies. Beyond adopting noms de forum even they did not go out of their way to create false posting personas. I soon learned to pay attention to one of them in particular.

Mr. Twigsnapper was (and is) a charming octogenarian who knows more about Townsend Brown than anyone else alive other than Linda. He freely admitted to being one of the two significant sources for Defying Gravity. He introduced himself as Garrity to Linda and her husband, Tractorman George, shortly after they moved to the high desert but his real name was lost ages ago.

The original primary source also made a brief appearance on that forum as J.D. Barret. "JD" had been Linda's First Love and his relationship with her family dated back to the early sixties when "Dr." Brown helped him along with his dream of becoming a real life James Bond. From what I know now, it would be safe to say that his career has outstripped his wildest dreams.

Mr. Twigsnapper's career has also been a successful and colorful one. Many of us followed his posts avidly because he was adept at sharing previously unknown and seemingly irrelevant stories that sent us off to do further research. More often than not, we found independent verification of his facts and some connection to the Townsend Brown story. The more I researched, the more I came to believe that we had barely scratched the surface of a most remarkable story.

After eighteen months of near daily immersion in it, I am more than ever convinced that this is so. It is a complex and multi-generational story that affects us all and it may take many tellings before we understand the full ramifications of it, but it is time now for the next chapters to unfold.

It all started way back when...

In the spring of 2008, I happened across the mention of electro-culture in an old organic gardening book. A quick Google search told me that the term was coined by Townsend Brown in his 1948 report about the positive effects of weak electrical fields on the growth of sugar cane. Further research brought me to a forum where the first draft of Paul Schatzkin's Defying Gravity, the Parallel Universe of Thomas Townsend Brown was published.

I had never heard of Townsend Brown before but I read the entire 700 page book online. And that was before I owned an e-reader which should tell you how entranced I was, I fell in love with the Brown family. After I finished the book, I lurked at the forum for a bit.

Writers always recognize other writers' wordsmithing and I became ever more certain that the author's research assistant, a poster who called herself "Elizabeth Helen Drake," was actually Townsend Brown's daughter, Linda.  I recognized her writing style from the many excerpts of her early journals that were quoted in "Defying Gravity."  After“Elizabeth” mentioned being able to see Giant Rock from her place of work, I was also sure that she was a fellow high desert resident.

I joined the forum as Rose, introduced myself, and learned that I was right on both accounts. We met in person shortly thereafter.Two forum incarnations later I am still Rose; but Linda has come out of the EHD closet.

2012 Update: and her memoir, is now available from Smashwords, at the link to the left  I'm the co-author. Further works are in process by each of us.