From: M. R. D. Foot
Scott Newton’s footnote at the end of his piece on Hess, in your number tries to keep alive Dr Hugh Thomas’s tale that the pilot who reached Scotland could not have been Hess, because he bore no trace of the gunshot wound the real Hess had received in Roumania in 1971.
This was disposed of in 1988, when Charles Gabel published in Paris his Conversations secrets avec Rudolf Hess, without knowledge of which no one should tackle the subject at all. Hess told Gabel that a later team of doctors had, repeat, had, established traces of the wound.
Scott Newton replies:
M. R. D. Foot quotes Pastor Gabel, the chaplain at Spandau, in support of the argument that the man who claimed to be Rudolf Hess really was Rudolf Hess and not a double. Foot claims that Hugh Thomas failed to take into account the evidence of Gabel, an eye-witness who said that Hess had showed him the scars, on his chest, of the bullet which had injured him back in 1917.
There are two problems with this. First of all, as I reported in Lobster 25 (1993), p.22, the Pastor, whose book was published in 1988, was later informed that if the prisoner really had been shot where he said he had been the bullet would have gone straight through his heart and he would have been killed on the spot. What Gabel had seen were the results of a mock suicide attempt made years earlier with a knife. The Pastor’s consternation on hearing this was witnessed by many since it appeared in a French TV documentary, ‘Tribulation’, in 1989.
The second major problem is that Thomas had read the Gabel’s book anyway. In fact it was Thomas himself who lent it to Foot – only to be then accused by the latter of not knowing about its existence!
From: Philip Murphy
One minor quibble about your comment in ‘Spook-wise’ (Lobster 40) about none of the papers picking up on the Sillitoe precedent for Rimington’s book. I got an article into the Guardian only about a day after the Murdoch press splashed the story describing the parallels and pointing to the way in which Sillitoe’s book was neutered (based on a couple of fascinating PRO files). You can still see it on
www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4019317,00.html
From: Martin Cannon
The most fascinating single article I’ve read recently was Douglas Valentine’s piece about Daniel Ellsberg. I can’t address yet the drug-running allegations, although the simple answer seems to be that Ellsberg was involved or had knowledge. What left me thunderstruck was the way the story correlated with a couple of tales I picked up during my ill-advised research into MK-ULTRA.
In 1989, I spoke to one claimed former Navy SEAL who related, rather convincingly, that mind control (specifically hypnosis) was used on individuals sent behind enemy lines on assassination missions during the Vietnam war. This source also spoke of ‘programmed’ soldiers being involved in drug-running. He even used the phrase ‘human tape recorder’, implying that this ability was created by the military rather than inborn. The parallels to Valentine’s Ellsberg piece struck me as uncanny.
There never was a solid explanation as to why the Watergate burglars went after his shrink’s files. Or why Hunt claimed the Ellsberg file was never covertly photographed, when apparently it was. I suspect those photos went directly to the CIA, not to CREEP.
I’ve long wanted to put MK-ULTRA research behind me. I really do not want to be thinking the way I’m thinking. Hopefully, a cooler head such as Jim Hougan’s or Valentine’s can talk me out of the perhaps silly theory I’m starting to form…….
I have to congratulate you on your brilliant catch regarding that great disinformation ploy, ‘You can see these documents, but cannot photocopy them.’ I wish to hell more American ufologists could see your piece. Hell, I wish someone would show it to Linda Howe – a terrific lady who is just too damned credulous.
You should know that the look-but-don’t-take ploy was also used on Bill Moore himself. (I used to have lunch now and then with Bill at a local Italian joint; alas, he seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth.) I seem to recall that in that case, he saw a variant of the MJ-12 papers purporting to be briefing papers for Jimmy Carter.
The Bennewitz affair deserves a book of its own. I poked into it a bit, but I’m still not sure what to make of it. I haven’t checked my files; what I’m writing here is all stuff recollected off the top of my head…….
The key to that business may have been Myrna Hanson, the ‘abductee’ who entered into a strange folie-a-deux relationship with Paul Bennewitz. During that ‘investigation’, Myrna was hypnotized twice by Dr. Leon Davidson, whom I interviewed about four years ago. (I tried to find Myrna, but she doesn’t want to speak to anyone, it seems.) Transcripts of both hypnosis sessions exist.
The first session occurred shortly after the abduction incident. The most noteworthy thing about it: Myrna speaks of being taken by soldiers, not aliens, after she had seen vaguely-described unusual activity taking place near Kirtland AFB in New Mexico. Davidson confirmed for me that, at the time, everyone talking to Myrna merely presumed that UFOs were involved.
This is typical of the conclusion-hopping one encounters in ufology. Davidson didn’t even realise, until I pointed the fact out to him, that everything in the first hypnosis session had an earth-bound explanation.
The second hypnosis session occurred about five months later. That session does include all sorts of loopy and unbelievable ‘alien’ stories. According to Davidson, the personalities of both Hanson and Bennewitz had changed in the intervening months – basically, they were acting rather nutty. (Davidson didn’t use the word ‘nutty’ when he spoke to me, but the technical terminology he employed came to the same thing.)
So what happened during that time? Moore told me (and I hope I’m recalling his words correctly) that the Hanson tale was the mother of all ‘alien implant’ stories. Basically, Bennewitz became convinced that aliens had placed an implant in Myrna’s noggin, and that ‘they’ were tracking her. I don’t know what led Bennewitz to believe this; the implant motif was new to ufology.
Bennewitz went to great trouble to prove the existence of an electromagnetic signal being directed at Myrna Hanson. For reasons I could never understand, he became convinced that the signal’s origin was Kirtland AFB (or perhaps the nearby Monzano area). Then he informed Major Ernest Edwards, Doty’s superior, that Kirtland had an ‘alien’ problem.
Edwards and Doty visited Bennewitz, and, under a pretext, got access to his computers. Shortly afterward, Bennewitz began receiving messages from ‘aliens’ on his computers.
And those messages were the real origin of the whole ‘X-Files’ scenario which has permeated the culture. Bennewitz described the ‘alien’ agenda in a paper called ‘Project Beta’, which spread like a virus throughout ufology. And thus the legend was born.
Edwards (who has somehow successfully kept his name out of most discussions on these matters) was also one of John Lear’s sources.
After more than ten years of puzzling over these matters, I still can’t figure out a proper motive for this massive exercise in disinformation. (And disinformation it surely is – all of it.)
You imply that the purpose might have been to cover up EM warfare. Very possible: I’m sure that’s part of what Bennewitz had stumbled across. The purpose may also have been to cover up a very few abductions – such as Hanson’s – which might actually have been conducted in a manner similar to the scenario outline in The Controllers. (1)
But there was something else going on. Much of the mythos revolves around secret bases in the desert. I cannot believe that the Air Force actually wanted hordes of UFO-spotters scooting as close as they could get to Area 51 and similar areas in California. So why would government disinformers publicise these areas within the UFO subculture?
Also, the Bennewitz mythos was immediately taken up by far-Rightists and thinly disguised neo-Nazis. I personally saw how the mythos brought new audiences to transparently disguised neo-fascist lectures. Planned or accidental?
I haven’t yet read the new book about Jack Parsons, but the review you printed wasn’t quite fair. Parsons perfected solid rocket fuel, he created jet-assisted take-off technology (which helped us win the war in the Pacific), and he more or less started up Jet Propulsion Laboratories. To this day, folks who work there will tell you that JPL really stands for ‘Jack Parson’s Lab’. He was, in other words, an important figure – not the marginal character your reviewer, Simon Matthews, makes him out to be.
Matthews is a tad misleading about OTO history. The OTO wasn’t really associated with the German ultra-Right, although some OTO members (such as Martha Kunzel) certainly were. Nicholas Goodrich-Clarke, cited by Matthews, draws a clear distinction between the OTO and avowedly racist groups such as the ONT. Crowley did do propaganda work for Viereck (who had nothing to do with the OTO), but there’s a good argument to be made that A.C. also snitched on Viereck’s activity to British intelligence.
L. Ron Hubbard, I am convinced, was no spook – just a con man who fleeced Parsons. Parsons had to sell his mansion, which deprived Aleister Crowley of a large chunk of his income. (Boarders paid Parsons rent, which was turned over to A. C.) Crowley, being his usual self-centered self, got so pissed off he kicked Parsons out of the OTO.
I once had a love affair with an OTO member (boy, was that a crazy interlude!), and I can assure you that most of them do not veer far right politically. Some do. (Thelemic ‘philosophy’ segues fairly easily into Nietzschean elitism, which can devolve into racism.) But most OTOers are Bohemians who associate the political right with fundamentalist Christians and other cultural conservatives.
They also don’t worship Satan, or rape children, or deal drugs, or have much money. Some of them do participate in the occasional orgy, but you shouldn’t picture anything like that scene in Eyes Wide Shut – an OTO affair is more likely to feature cheap beer and home-made fudge.
Anyways, the lady I dated took care of Marjorie Cameron [Parsons] in the last years of Cameron’s life. Matthews was unfair to denigrate her as a Hollywood fringe character. Cameron was a very gifted artist in her own right. I’ve seen only photos of her work, but it was genuinely good stuff.
Late in life, Cameron told intimates a particularly bizarre story about Parsons’ possible ‘survival’ of the blast which, in the official story, killed him. I won’t repeat that tale here, because you probably won’t believe me.
Notes
- The Controllers is Cannon’s extremely influential essay on mind control, abductions et al, a bit of which was published in Lobster 23 – ed.