The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence

As I finished this book by British historian, Richard Aldrich. I found myself nodding along on several of the points he made, specifically in regards to Signals Intelligence. My summation of them:

Cold War Historians are  allowed to study only what our governments chose to release. Take SIGINT. While smaller agencies fought over whatever clandestine operations were left to operate at wars' end, SIGINT became the focus of a top secret Anglo-American treaty signed by Truman.  By 1947, it was clear that this was to become the single most significant and costly of all of the intelligence activities.


And almost all SIGINT stories were withheld from the public archives for many years. Even now, what we get is only a bone intended to keep us busy and distracted from what we are not getting.

You tell it, Brother.

Adamski Never Grows Old.

The UFO Iconoclast has revived the Adamski discussion.  I think most posters in the information rich discussion that follows  would say his photos were faked, but the single most important point is buried many replies down:

Why DID he choose the shapes and designs he used?

There's something else going on in the whole Adamski thing...

What that something is makes for an interesting study, if one can get by the excoriation heaped upon the charlatanry of Mr. Adamski.

And why DID Townsend have Chip's father draw sketches of the photos when the book came out?

NROpen House

The NRO recently threw a gala 50th celebration of these programs, displaying the 'birds' themselves for public viewing (for  one day only):

Saturday's spysat unveiling was attended by a number of jubilant NRO veterans who developed and refined the classified spacecraft and its components for decades in secret, finally able to show their wives and families what they actually did 'at the office' for so many years. Both of the newly declassified satellite systems, GAMBIT and HEXAGON, followed the U.S. military's frontrunner spy satellite system CORONA, which was declassified in 1995. 

SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper

In SEAL TEAM SIX Harold Wasdin describes the repetitive selection processes that winnow out 99% of the would-be applicants to the best of the best of US Special Forces.  In his case, as in so many others, a harsh  childhood with a father who beat him mercilessly enabled him to develop a grit-your-teeth endurance that  would see him through the  rigorous physical training courses he would complete on his way to the topmost echelon of SEALdom.  The first course, for all  would-be SEALS, is held at the Basic Underwater Demolition School (BUDS) on Coronado Island,

Because Morgan/JD once said that while he and Townsend enjoyed swimming together, Townsend focused on the pleasure of it and he, Morgan, on how to blow something up, I have assumed that it was at BUDS that he developed such an interest. But Harold's story, though I am only halfway through it, has  put another  piece of the Morgan narrative together for me. I now know that when Juan-Carlos refers to Morgan's people as "the Indians,"  he is using the nickname the Red Team component of SEAL TEAM SIX selected for themselves, in homage to the original American exemplars of bravery, stealth, and cunning.(At the time Wasdin went through the program, SEAL Team Six actually included four individual 16 man teams, known by color. It was the  Red Team which always got first draft from the trainee course graduates.)

If Morgan was involved in it (and he would have been in the prime of his career at the time the teams were formed) the naming of this team may also been a tip of the hat to a predecessor group, the special operations axillary unit that Iain Fleming headed in WWII, known (by those cleared to know) as "The Red Indians."  It is common knowledge that Fleming, who  lived next door to  Sir William in Jamaica after the war, drank martinis with him and modeled many of his James Bond stories after him but I suspect there were some other hidden functions in that 'neighborly' relationship.  Whether or not Morgan ever knew about them is another story to be investigated some other time.

On another note, Wasdin also says the CIA's nickname in  Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) circles is "Christians in Action."   I just have one question: If the CIA gets to be the Christians,  who plays the Lions? Any ideas?

They are (NOT) just about kerfluffled out, I think.

The forum poster known as Linda Brown and the forum poster known as Mikado have (for now) reached some sort of not-so-amicable agreement and retired to their respective corners.

To sum up months of public yammering: Linda thought the Resolute Voyages nee Quonset Hut forum was hers (as in set up, paid for, and gifted to her) to make decisions with.  It wasn't. She ranted. He raged over her raving. She was banned. I forget exactly what the final why was, but  it is irrelevant, anyway.

What is important (to me) is that  the new joint offer an inviting place for people of all nations to come in and sit a while, swapping their knowledge and experiences for our stories. The energy that comes from  joining together like this in these virtual spaces drives the engines of eternal creation.

Edited on 09/18/11 to add

resigning myself to the fact that there is never going to be peace between these two, and with best wishes for all involved I have resigned from one forum and locked myself out of the other.

It's a work in progress

It's still in the construction stages, but feel free to drop by The Sword and The Teapot and share a noggin of brew or two.  Now open for business at the http://www.cosmic-token.com/forum

Every Ship Needs a Captain

Tom Beale, who would be something like Josephine's great nephew, has been churning out artwork for the new site. This splendid image with Townsend on deck is hot off his metaphorical press:

Moral Compasses

Linda asks: "Now that Mikado has effectively taken over does that mean that he has the moral responsibility now to keep all of the discussions going.... as was the initial intent?"  

Social behaviors such as adherence to a moral code are group driven: everyone in the group operates according to a moral compass that point to the same star.  But different groups have different teachings and values, so I have to say that although I have no idea what  his initial intent was when he bought the TTownsendBrown domain name and offered it up as as a forum host site. I do know that whatever Mikado does, he will do according to his own moral compass.  Of that I have always been certain.

Watch This Space

Those who wish to continue the recently interrupted forum discussions are invited to join Linda and Rose  in the new place. It should be up and running in a few days, and I will be posting the new address here. In the mean time, feel free to use the comment space below for any messages you wish to pass along to the group at large.

MI-5 and SOE Documents: Taking Down the Norwegian Heavy Water Program

Available as a free download from BACM's Paperless Archives

102 pages of British Intelligence MI5 - Special Operations Executive files on Knut Magne Haugland.

Knut Haugland (September 23, 1917 - December 25, 2009) was also known by the codenames N.7 and Primus. Haugland is best known for his role in Operation Gunnerside, which ended what the allies suspected to be a German nuclear bomb project. The 1943 destruction of the Nordsk Hydro plant in Telemark, Norway ended the manufacturing of heavy water for use in German projects. Heavy water can be used in one type of reactor, in which plutonium can be bred from natural uranium.

Hold the presses! Scratch Stalin's Nazi Mutant Children

Unlike most of the speculation on the truth of the Roswell story, this one is based on demonstrable science.  Assuming all statements are true, the only hole a skeptic might find would be in the chain of evidence. AFIK, Isotope ratios have been considered pretty reliable:

Test confirms Roswell debris is not from this earth

The test was done on tiny particles of aluminum ound at the crash site. Although it proves nothing, I  should note that the Washington, D.C. address that Townsend used throughout the 1930s was in the same building as the Aluminum Association of America then at 900 19th St. NW.

An Afternoon with George

I had the  pleasure of hanging out and swapping stories with George this afternoon. George is one of the last living bridges to Townsend in the flesh. And I am one of the very few people who have been able to read Townsend's early history in the fragile pages of records themselves, so we had much to share with one another.

George spoke of his day spent touring Stanford campus with Townsend.  Lunch was attended by  several professors who, in his recollection and estimation, though they came from many disciplines, all seemed most differential to his father-in-law*.  He also recalls that he had a startling interactive learning experience in the plant intelligence lab. Here he demonstrates a plant cringing in fear when he (mentally) zapped it with destructive intent.  He said  that Townsend's comment about the work in that particular lab,which he seemed quite cognizant of, was that they were "on the right track" but George felt as though he was saying they were still missing something and it was almost as if Townsend knew what it was.

And, in return, I tell him of having seen and read Townsend's own research action plan for1928 which included demonstrating his work via a  model ship. The construction of the model and the demonstration my have been held first for Charles Kettering, the depression intervened and that it was almost four years later before the correspondence in his Naval records indicates that he wowed his NRL bosses with a demonstration of a boat that was somehow propelled without batteries.  A couple of months later, Seaman Brown became Lt.jg  Brown of the Naval Reserves Engineering Bureau and silent running was never heard from again until fifty years later when Ronald Regan and Tom Clancy made submarines fashionable reading.
Huh.

George never saw Townsend get angry. And he says that though Townsend's mind was always in science, he was also a man who absolutely reveled in the natural world. When I asked about his since of humor, what made him laugh, George tells me that most often it was something he saw in the way nature had constructed herself. I remember a vignette of him that Linda once shared.

Whenever Townsend had a cat or kitten who let him hold her upside down in his lap, he would play with her paws, and flex her toes, causing her to sheathe and unsheathe her claws. "Just look at that!" he would say."Isn't that wonderful?

George also said Townsend was also capable of being very  boyish when he was teasing Josephine to get her attention.  I like knowing that about him. And I like knowing that in return, Josephine had a favorite shtick with him, which she brought out when they were in a Naval town. "Sailors!" she would exclaim at the first sighting in (what I imagine to be) a tone of lascivious delight.

* And they ALL called him Dr. Brown.