Even less can be said about Richard 'Splicey' Price of Roanoke, Virginia, and 'Connally' of New England. Concerning Price, a brief investigation turned up reasonably reliable information that he died in 1973. As for Connally (whose first name, by the way, appears to have been-Frank or Peter), needless to say there are probably several score of them in the New England area - if indeed the one we would be looking for still lives there.
Since the crew records of the Furuseth no longer exist, it is difficult to come up with anything definite regarding others who might have served on that ship with Allende. but persistent research has turned up the names of three other possible crew members - none of whom the authors have thus far been able to locate.
These are Hermann C. Schultz, who apparently was the ship's bosun; William Reilly (or Ripley?); and Lewis Vincent. All of these were from the New York-New England area. Re'lly mgy have been a professional musician, Vincent was a New England fisherman, and Schultz was a longtime merchant sailor.
As for Admiral Rawson Bennett II, whom Allende refers to in his second letter as 'Navy Chief [sic] of research' and whom he admonishes Jessup to 'contact... for verification of info, herein,' a most curious fact emerges when we examine this further, which leads us to wonder just exactly where Allende did get his information. The strange thing is that while Bennett was indeed chief of the Office of Naval Research at the time Dr Jessup received Allende's second letter (January 13,1956), he had been so only since January 1, when he had replaced Admiral Frederick R. Furth (the 'Admiral N. Furth' to whom Allende had sent the annotated copy of Jessup's book some months earlier). Since Allende must have posted his letter considerably earlier for Jessup to have received it via his publisher on January 13, the question becomes: How did Allende know that Bennett had replaced Furth as chief of ONR? The fact that this letter was postmarked Gainesville, Texas, makes the matter even more perplexing, since while such an event might have been barely newsworthy enough to have made an obscure page in The Washington Post or The New York Times on a slow day, it would hardly have been the sort of thing any of the Texas newspapers would bother with. Such changes of command are virtually everyday affairs in Washington military circles and hardly make for earthshaking news even locally, much less half a continent away.
But if Allende's source of information was close to the top, he seems to slip up badly with the last name on the list. His identification of 'the present boss of the Navy Burke' as having been Chief of Naval Research at the time of the alleged Philadelphia Experiment was completely erroneous. Although there was indeed a real Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, he had virtually nothing to do with Navy Research either during World War II or thereafter. Burke commanded a destroyer squadron
in the Pacific in 1943 during the time of the alleged Philadelphia Experiment, and in fact seems to have been a fleet officer almost throughout his Navy career.
Allende's error may have been a human one, however; for if we read the description he gives of 'Burke' in his third letter to Jessup, we find that this individual is characterized as a man of 'curiosity and willingness and prompting' and that it was 'his attitude towards advanced and ultra-advanced types of research' that was responsible for his rise to the rank of admiral. Curiously enough the man who fits this description was not Admiral Burke but Admiral Harold G. Bowen - who not only was director of the Naval Research Laboratory at the time of the inception of the Philadelphia Experiment project, but was also the prime mover responsible for a whole host of Top Secret 'ultra-advanced types' of projects during World War II! However, while the similarity of the names may possibly account for Allende's confusion on this matter, it does not explain how his information could be so pinpoint accurate on the one account (with regard to Admiral Bennett) and so far off the mark on the other - unless, of course, he felt the need to conceal the name of the person to whom he was referring.
No search for clues in a matter such as this could possibly be complete without at least a brief examination of what other researchers have published on this topic. As was noted at the beginning of this work, although the matter of the Philadelphia Experiment has been lurking in the periphery of research efforts into the unknown for the past two decades, it has not gone entirely without its champions. Admittedly the literature on the topic is sparse, but what there is of it is well worth examining.
Perhaps the earliest attempt to bring some of the mystery to light through the printed page was made by Dr Reilly H. Crabb, an acquaintance of Dr Jessup's and currently director of the Borderland Sciences Research Foundation of Vista, California. BSRF, among other things, publishes a collection of small and relatively inexpensive tracts on various topics of esoteric interest; and although most of these have been of extremely limited circulation, some are quite interesting. The appearance of one of these early in 1962 under the title M. K. Jessup, the Allende Letters and Gravity, edited by Crabb himself, seems to have sparked a great deal of the controversy which followed. At the same time it also provided invaluable primary source material for anyone interested in doing further research into the affair. In it Crabb published for the first time in a civilian source not only the two surviving Allende letters, but also several pages in facsimile of the Varo annotated edition of Jessup's book The Case for the UFO.
Briefly stated, Crabb's conjectures on the Philadelphia Experiment as set forth in this booklet centre around his belief that T. Townsend Brown, a noted physicist and anti-gravity researcher, had at the very least something to do with the invisibility project while head of a department under the Bureau of Ships in the Navy, and that in fact (according to Crabb) the whole thing might actually have been Brown's idea. Brown was involved with the project, but it wasn't his idea, as we shall see later.
Closely following Crabb's lead in the matter came Gray Barker, flying saucer researcher, and a local publisher working out of Clarksburg, West Virginia. Relying largely on information gleaned from Crabb, but adding some of his own, Barker
took the initiative in 1963 in publishing what is still regarded today as one of the most valuable works on the topic of the Allende letters: The Strange Case of Dr M. K. Jessup (Clarksburg, West Virginia: Saucerian Press, 1963). Unlike Crabb, who seems to have published his tract mostly as a service to interested BSRF members and associates. Barker was actually interested enouah in the mystery to try to discover a few answers on his own.
Although Barker's book doesn't do much in the way of providine clues towards solving the mystery, it does provide considerable background information on Tessuo himself, including excerpts from several of his more obscure articles and letters. Also noted is the fact that no autoosv was ever performed on Dr Jessup because of his desire that his body be used for scientific purposes. Final cremation, we are told, took Place on January 30, 1962.
The one other item of interest in Barker's book is Ms reproduction of a rather curious letter which Barker claims to have received from an anonvmous source known to him onlv as 'Colonel B.' While admonishing us that the desiena-tion 'Colonel' is 'not necessarilv to be construed as representing a military commission or decree,' the 'Colonel* does indeed make some interesting points. An excerpt from this letter follows:
... It will be indeed unfortunate if you make too much of a mystery out of the suicide of Dr Jessup.
When I met Jessup in 1958, his mind seemed to be occupied with gaming proof as to the authenticity of certain psychic claims—
He also made a great deal of emphasis on a mimeographed version of one of his books, allegedly circulated in the Armed Services. He also told me of certain letters he had received purporting to contain information about a secret experiment by the military, involving an application of the Unified Field Theory.
I personally feel that too much was made of this by Jessup, though this can be understandable when one considers it in the light of the sensitivity shown in government circles about the UFO investigation. It is my educated guess that the allegations contained in [these] letters regarding secret experiments were hoaxes of
some sort. Yet because this information DID COME CLoSe [emphasis his] to some of the circumstances of ACTUAL experiments (of a much less dramatic nature), it may have been thought that there had been some security leak and this may very likely have been the reason for the great interest by the military.
Even though I could make an educated guess as to the nature of the actual experiments, I certainly do not feel it would be in order to do so_
Whoever this mysterious informant might have been, he certainly came closer to the truth of this matter than almost anyone else - as we shall come to see.
Through the years it has been largely through the efforts of Gray Barker and his small but persistent Saucerian Press operation that the mystery surrounding Jessup and the Allende letters has been kept alive - and this in spite of the fact that his books have had a limited circulation. But perhaps his greatest contribution came in the summer of 1973 when, as we have already mentioned, he succeeded in obtaining a nearly mint copy of the Varo annotated edition of The Case for the UFO and published and sold it in a limited edition of 500 facsimile copies. After seventeen years of whispers and rumours about the document's existence, Barker finally succeeded in bringing the matter into the light of day.
The first attempt to link Allende's account of the events of the Philadelphia Experiment (and other force-field phenomena in general) to the weird and inexplicable events of what we today tend to refer to as the Bermuda Triangle, was made in a 1964 book by Vincent Gaddis entitled Invisible Horizons. By and large the book itself is an excellently researched and detailed study of some of the strange disappearances and other unexplained events which have occurred at sea over the past few hundred years, and is highly recommended to anyone interested in this particular topic. It is the last chapter of this book that we are interested in, however; for in this chapter (entitled 'Is There an Answer?') Gaddis suggests that the frightening results of the Philadelphia Experiment might provide clues to what was behind some of the other more fully documented but equally perplexing cases of ships and crews that disappeared while at sea.
During the course of this chapter Gaddis also happens to add a few hitherto unpublished clues of his own which presumably constitute the fruits of his own researches into the matter. Among these appeared the following interesting item (p. 219): 'Did Jessup ever have further contact with Allende? We do not know.
From some source, however, he apparently did secure some additional information. He told friends that a man went to the Navy and said, in effect:
"You want camouflage, gentlemen! Give me a ship and I'll show you perfect camouflage." When this man went aboard the experimental ship, he was carrying a black box.'
Gaddis also reports, apparently on the basis of an interview with Gray Barker on the topic, that 'a close friend of Jessup's ... is said to have documents "which might solve the mystery,"' and that this 'friend' had once tried to find Allende without success.
Gaddis' book, which generally tended to ask questions rather than provide answers, was far from the last word on the topic. In 1967, the controversy was suddenly stirred up again by a new and relatively sensational writer on things unexplained who called himself Brad Steiger. In the final analysis, Steiger (real name: Olson) really had nothing new to offer in the matter. His interest rather derived from the fact that during the course of his investigations of strange phenomena he had happened to run into someone who had a microfilm copy of the Varo annotated edition of Jessup's book. Amazed at what he read and realizing that he might have stumbled on a potential hot potato, Steiger created a rather sensationalized account of the story which was published, along with several reproductions of actual pages from the Varo edition, in the November 1967 issue of Saga magazine.
Carlos Allende, as chance would have it, read this account and was considerably stirred up by it. Looking into it a bit further, Allende soon discovered that Steiger. together with Florida occultist and researcher Joan W. O'Connell. was in the process of publishing a UFO-oriented book which would include this particular version of the story as one of its chapters. Worried that the book might set the Navy on his trail again, and not wishing publicity in any event, Allende fired off several angry letters to Steiger's publisher asking that the material be suppressed. He was unsuccessful. Not only did the book appear on the shelves, but the publisher had actually added Allende's name to the title! The new book, called The Allende Letters, New UFO Breakthrough, appeared in 1968. Allende, who by this time had gone into hiding, steamed on in silence.
Somewhat earlier, in 1967, Dr Jessup's friend Ivan Sanderson had published a book entitled Uninvited Visitors, in which he discussed the affair (although again adding nothing new save for his opinion that 'after many years of just such "research" I feel that this "bit" is more worthy of further investigation than any other I have come across')-By this time Allende was enraged at the unwanted publicity (although an admirer of Sanderson himself), and furious that others were busily making a profit on his story while he himself was nearly penniless. He apparently hit on a plan of revenge: He would admit it was all a hoax. Not only would such an action serve to embarrass and discredit those who had caused him the problem, but it would also diminish their book sales.
Thus resolved, Carlos Miguel Allende walked into the headquarters of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (A.P.R.O., the oldest and most influential of the UFO research organizations) in Tucson, Ariz., in June 1969, and 'confessed all.'
Both his letters to Dr Jessup and the annotations of the Varo edition were hoaxes, he said, designed specifically to 'scare the hell out of Jessup.' Interestingly, although unknown to the A.P.R.O. people, he had first gone to Varo itself and proceeded to shake down then corporate president Austin Stanton for a copy of what he said was 'his book' (the Varo Ed.), as well as a small payment designed to 'get him out of [their] hair.' Thus armed, he went to Tucson and it was this copy of the annotated edition of The Case for the UFO that he presented to Jim Lorenzen of A.P.R.O. with the following 'confession' added to the top of the second page of the Appendix:
'All words, phrases, and sentences underlined on the following pages in brown ink are false. The below page and the top part of the following were and are the crazyest [sic] pack of lies I ever wrote. Object? to encourage ONR Research and to discourage Professor [sic] Morris K. Jessup from going further with investigations possibly leading to actual research. Then I feared invisibility and force-field research; I don't now.'
For all its apparent bravado, however, Allende's confession purposely falls short of saying that the Philadelphia Experiment itself was a hoax, for the placement of the 'confession' in the Varo edition is neatly done and worded so as to exclude that part of his letter to Jessup which states that such a thing did occur. In fact, Lorenzen
(who spoke with Allende for ever an hour in the privacy of a parked automobile) himself states that 'Allende still believes ... that a U.S. vessel ... disappeared from its Philadelphia dock and reappeared seconds later in the Norfolk-Portsmouth area, then disappeared again to appear once more in its original berth.' Allende suggested, he went on, 'that the incident could be verified by contacting sailors who were assigned to the ship at the time - some of whom he served with and knew personally.' The only part of the letters actually included in the so-called 'confession' was the one page and part of the next which dealt with the bizzarre after-effects of the experiment upon the crew members of the ship.
With his plot now hatched and the seeds of his revenge sown (or so he thought), Allende again disappeared from public view.
He later completely repudiated his confession, but for the time being, the ruse worked. In 1971 when Paris Flam-monde, producer, of the 'Long John Nebel Show' in New York for many years, spoke of the events surrounding Jessup's death, he failed even to so much as mention anything concerning the Allende affair. And in fact, with the exception of another book by Steiger. Mysteries of Time and Space, most of the other authors who bothered to mention the topic at all spoke disparagingly about it. (S
ee, for example, F. H. Salisbury, The Utah UFO Display; and Vincent Sladek, The New Apocrypha.) And so it went until mid-1975 when, with the release of the worldwide best seller The Bermuda Triangle, the entire question was reopened.
This new account of the Jessup-Allende affair approached the problem from an entirely new angle. It contained the one essential item in this matter which no one else up to that point had been able to supply: a witness!
The breakthrough came in the person of Dr J. Manson Valentine, an oceanographer, zoologist, archaeologist, and longtime (since 1945) student of the Bermuda Triangle, and a close friend of Dr Jessup's during the time that Jessup had resided in Florida.
Jessup, feeling increasingly depressed and in need of someone to talk to, had spent a great deal of time with Dr Valentine in the months before his tragic death, and it was during the course of these conversations that he had seen fit to confide to him many of his private thoughts and feelings concerning the Philadelphia Experiment. In fact, Valentine was very possibly the last person to talk to Jessup before his death. He had spoken with his friend during the day on April 20, 1959, and during the course of the conversation, had invited Jessup to come to dinner that evening. Jessup accepted, but never arrived.
The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility Page 8