Chapter 25

THE FIRST STORM AT THE ASPR
- FEBRUARY 1972 -

I don’t remember the exact day when the first storm arose -- seemingly out of nowhere.
But it was just after the second of the formal OOB experiments, and just two or three days before the first of the outbound "beacon" remote viewing experiments which was conducted on February 22.
This first storm was awful enough, but not as bad as the second much greater storm which still lay in the future coming closer.

One might wonder, of course, why there should have been ANY great storms at the ASPR. The experiments had been pre-approved by the board and the research committee. In spite of the many session failures regarding my "perceptions," the work was efficiently organized and going well and many successful experiments had accumulated.
The gossip about the experimental successes had energized everyone. As a result, the ASPR, somewhat an antiquated non-entity within the whole of parapsychology, was beginning to receive a great deal of renewed interest.

I would not drag the reader through the details of the two great storms except for the fact that it was because of them I eventually decided to accept Dr. H. E. Puthoff’s invitation to visit Stanford Research Institute in California.
As you will see ahead, without the stimulus of the two storms, I believe I would not have accepted the invitation.

But there is another reason to reveal the details of the two storms here.
For they demonstrate the traditional Western way to keep knowledge hidden about the superpowers of the human bio-mind. To wit: discredit and destroy experiments, evidence and individuals which might bring that knowledge to the surface.

Such, of course, is typical of most skeptical tactics. And I knew this years before it came about that I could work as a test-subject in laboratories.
But at the time in 1972, I was astonished to find the same tactics employed in parapsychological research itself. This Machiavellian issue was also occasionally to hound the work at Stanford Research Institute in the years ahead.
Western information and knowledge about the superpowers has been immeasurably retarded thereby.

Several members of the ASPR’s board had taken the kindness to get to know me, among which were Dr. Alice I. Bryan and Mr. A. C. Twitchell, Jr., of former fame as a Broadway producer, etc., and who resided in the famous Player’s Club in New York.
He had invited me several times to lunch at the Player’s Club, and was interested in my views. Of course I hardly ever held anything back, and my mouth was yet quite big.
Twitchell had a very good, self-studied background in psychical and parapsychological research, was reasonably wealthy, and sometimes contributed small sums to the ASPR.

My telephone rang quite early one morning. It was Twitchell, who finally got around to saying: "I’ve something to tell you which I probably shouldn’t, so don’t say you got it from me.
"There’s a move afoot at the ASPR to have you ejected on the grounds that you are a Scientologist. It’s circulating that you are Hubbard’s spy and seeking to take over the ASPR on his behalf. What are you going to do about it?"
"Who’s putting THAT out?" I asked.
"That I don’t think I should say. This is supposed to be a deep, dark secret. What can you do to prevent this?"
Since I hadn’t the faintest idea, I replied: "You’ll know when it happens, I guess."

I was surprisingly calm at this news. After all, I’d been persecuted as a bookworm sissy as a child -- since my body was frail and I stood only five feet tall. This condition took me out of rough and tumble ball games, and it was difficult for me to hit a ball because the bats were too heavy.
I learned to live with this persecution -- a childish persecution because of an inequality and a differentness. It wasn’t until my twelfth year in high school that I suddenly spurted up one foot.
I was still slender and a "weakling," certainly no George Atlas or Arnold Schwarzenegger. But I had put on enough musculature sufficient to make a sudden strike and punch out an erstwhile jock persecutor. When word of this got around, the persecution MERDE stopped -- with the additional result that several female peers took interest in me.

In mulling over the ASPR situation, I knew I couldn’t stride into the venerable Society and start protesting and defending myself because I was interested in Scientology. Even if someone had decided that the Scientology thing was my vulnerable spot, to me it was not, of course. But in the minds of the gullible the accusation might be made to seem meaningful.
I certainly had never made a secret of my considerable interests, including those of Scientology which was among the many topics I openly talked about.

But I felt I now knew something of what a Jew, a member of a minority race, or someone of a different religion might feel upon an occasion of prejudice or persecution of them.
Besides, this great nation was one in which certain freedoms and civil rights were supposed to be guaranteed. I had a right to study what I wanted, and a right to form opinions either of my own or because of my studies.

And there was yet another consideration. For the accusers clearly did not understand especially Mr. Hubbard -- who would have no possible interest in the ASPR nor even in parapsychology itself. This idea was especially laughable -- if one understood the goals of Scientology. And indeed, I was working at the ASPR against the recommendations of almost everyone except the kindly Wingates, everyone including a few Scientologists themselves who thought the whole ASPR/parapsychology effort a complete waste of time.

In any event, no one TELLS me what to do -- as my family, friends, and a few future colleagues found out to their dismay. I don’t respond very well to outside pressure, either -- unless it pleases me to do so.

The sudden persecutorial event at the ASPR did not please me.

Admittedly, though, I was flummoxed during the hour after Twitchell had telephoned me. Strangely, I didn’t get angry, but rather thought of this as a push-comes-to-shove event.
And here was a test provided regarding the nature of my self-designed lean, mean, fighting machine concept.

Then I knew what had to be done.
It came in one intuitive swoop which sometimes happens with me under stress or duress. This accusation represented a dirty war of disinformation -- and it was not for nothing that I had studied "dirty tactics" in the past regarding my interests in reading about conspiracy theory.

The persecutorial gossip about me was being conducted in secret. So my first strategic move had to be making the "secret" a non-secret, to draw it into the open.
After all, intrigues and Machiavellian plots don’t survive very long if EVERYBODY knows about them.

So my lips pressed tightly together, my eyes narrowed, I calmly called Ruth Hagy Brod Central, Zelda Central and Buell Mullen Central -- and narrated this dreadful attack on my name, honor, reputation and my freedoms and civil rights.
After all, what good were my three Centrals for, my own spy and active measures networks?

I then went back to bed since I wasn’t going to work at the ASPR that day. I knew that shortly the telephones would be smoking far and wide. I remember falling into a deep sleep, muttering "to hell with it all and the world, too."

The phone woke me out of this deep sleep at about 2:30 p.m.
It was Janet Mitchell. "What the f_ _ _ is going on. The phones are ringing off the hook here. Are you ever going to come back. I can’t blame you if you don’t. The OOB experiment will be trashed if you don’t do something."
"I’ll be in tomorrow as scheduled, don’t worry."
"’Worry!’" Janet almost screamed. "Are you joking. Everyone knew of your Scientology interests before you came here. This is awful. It will wreck the experiments. Some on the Board hate this OOB experiment, anyway."

Next was the hard part.
When I walked through the ASPR’s door the next day, there I was again in the titty-pink lobby. Godzilla’s worst nightmare was at her desk. Before I could open my big mouth, she stood up to her full five foot height and said: "Ingo. I swear that no one in this building had anything to do with it."
"Is Dr. Osis in?" I asked.
"Yes, but he’s asked not to be disturbed."
"Come with me. I think you should hear what I’ve to say."

We marched up to the fourth floor, strode right past Vera Feldman, Dr. Osis’ secretary and assistant. I left the door open so she could hear.
I then delivered the following speech somewhat reconstructed from my cellular memories so deeply is it stored.

"I would be quite glad right now to leave this place that many call a cesspool of parapsychology intrigue.
"But this situation has made it impossible for me to bow out with any dignity. I can now see why its called a cesspool of hidden intrigues and shoot-yourself-in-the-feet place. You can put back into this ugly gossip line that I will not put my tail between my legs and fade away into oblivion.
"If the formal experiments fail, I will also be glad to depart under my own will power.
"But my choice to study Scientology, or anything else, is guaranteed in this nation of the free -- free to chose, free to have and hold opinions and voice them, free to study. These freedoms are guaranteed by this nation’s founding documents.
"While in the Army I was required to die if necessary to protect and uphold those freedoms.
"This situation is NOT about the experiments. Nor is it about Scientology or anything else I might study and investigate. It’s about my civil rights guaranteed -- and I shall interpret it that way, and only that way.
"For the record, but not as a defense here, I can guarantee you that Mr. Hubbard would have no possible interest in this Society, or in anything else along these lines. In fact, if Scientology proper knew I was here doing what I’m doing here, the chances are that I might get expelled from Scientology.
"I will not leave the ASPR for this ugly reason, this ugly far-fetched conspiratorial gossip.
"If I am forced to leave for THIS reason, you can be sure that I will lodge a battery of civil rights violation lawsuits which will keep your Board busy for the next twenty years.
"The Board can depend on it. I trust you will make this clear to those concerned.
"Do I need to repeat or simplify any of what I’ve just said?"

I felt sorry for Dr. Osis. Obviously he was not the culprit, but he, and Godzilla’s worst nightmare, were the only ones who could convey the message to the Board.
No one said anything. The entire staff of the ASPR was lurking just outside the door trying to be nonchalant.
"Well, then," I said, "Janet and I have the third formal experiment to do, and I propose we do that and the next one until the Board makes up its mind."

And that’s how the third formal experiment -- and all the rest of them -- came to get done.
You see, I knew the Board of the ASPR feared one thing more than anything else -- lawsuits. You see, it pays to thoroughly research everything one gets involved with.
But I WAS serious -- and still am about my freedoms and my civil rights.

But as you will see ahead, "they" managed to demolish the formal experiments in an entirely different and even more disgusting way.

It wasn’t until 1974 that Arthur Twitchell, after binding me to eternal secrecy, told me the names of the two principal Board members who were behind this persecutorial plot -- who were trying to install the elements of fear and suspicion. But I’ll not give their names since both are now dead.
Both were noted parapsychologists, and should be remembered for their contributions. In any event, I’ve no desire to jump with persecutorial revenge on their graves (as some few other parapsychologists have, and in print -- in one case, believe it or not, in the JOURNAL of the ASPR itself).

After the third formal experiment, Janet and I went to a local coffee shop for hamburgers. There we discussed this miserable little storm with a stream of mighty four-letter invectives. I felt like a flea-bitten dog.

But this event was a "learning experience" regarding being directly in the field of fire. I was to benefit from it in the difficult years ahead. At first I thought this event was merely the product of a few scumbaggy minds. Later I found it indicative of something far more insidious, even diabolical -- as we’ll see somewhere ahead.
Unfortunately, this little miserable event blighted my overviews about parapsychology proper, at times perhaps even unfairly so.
But such Machiavellian intrigues went on within all the organizations I reviewed in the preceding chapter -- ALL of them. And all of them suffered internally because of intra-organizational persecutorial gossip.
The noble and brilliant Madam Blavatsky, for example, was actually ejected from Theosophy proper, the very organization she had founded.

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