From: Mermaid <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: [CTRL] Philadelphia experiment
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 23:55:06 -0000
-Caveat Lector-
The Philadelphia Experiment
by Joe Turner
One of the A & E Channel's investigative TV programs has now found
the tables turned on it in the most ironic fashion. "The Unexplained," a
Sightings/Unsolved Mysteries knock-off that deals with the paranormal and
mysterious, has been the focus of an investigation led by one of its past
experts. The findings of this investigation, conducted by a real life "Fox
Mulder," firmly place "The Unexplained" episode, "Strange Disappearances"
in the same context as the Hitler Diaries and CNN's recent news debacle on
nerve gassing Viet Nam deserters.
Like the CNN Viet Nam story, the episode dealt with a military
operation - a test in WWII that would have been the latest development in a
long history of military camouflage. Total optical and radar invisibility -
the Philadelphia Experiment. "...men caught fire, went mad, and - the most
bizarre of all, some were embedded halfway into the deck of the ship.
Others phased in and out of this reality..."
Much has been written and speculated about this legend of an
experiment in "electronic camouflage," both pro and con. Reportedly it
ended with the ship teleporting from Philadelphia to Norfolk with some crew
members becoming embedded in the ship. Sorting the facts from the fiction
has proven an almost impossible task, particularly with the recent flux of
misinformation and deliberate disinformation that has been injected into
the Internet by those connected to the U.S. intelligence community,
professional skeptics, and armchair researchers.
Against this confusing tapestry there have been a few constants. One
is that Carlos Miguel Allende claimed in the 1950s to have been a witness
to a test at sea of a ship being made optically invisible using strong
electromagnetic force fields when he was a sailor onboard the merchant
marine vessel SS Furuseth in 1943. He also claimed that during another test
that went wrong, some of the men caught fire, went mad, and - the most
bizarre of all, some were embedded halfway into the deck of the ship.
Others phased in and out of this reality, only kept here by the laying on
of hands. Allende wrote a series of strange letters in 1955 to Morris K.
Jessup, a researcher who had written the book "The Case for the UFO." It
was Allende's fear that the same technology that was responsible for the
disasters of the Philadelphia Experiment was the secret behind the
propulsion method used successfully by UFOs. Jessup had called for research
into such force fields of UFOs without having any knowledge of the navy
experiment, and this alarmed Allende.
The Eldridge was the ship used in the controversial experiment in
1943. Allende's letters were filled with cryptic references and mailed from
an assortment of locales around America. They can be read on-line at
www.wincom.net/~softarts/PHILEXP/CM_ALLEN.TXT. Jessup eventually dismissed
Allende as a crank until 1957 when he was contacted by Capt. Sidney Sherby
and Comdr. George Hoover, two officers from the Office of Naval Research.
They had received a copy of Jessup's book with strange annotations in the
margins about a vanishing ship, aliens and other anomalies. The officers
from ONR asked Jessup to travel to Washington D.C. to meet with them and
discuss what the annotations might mean. When Jessup got there he was
surprised to see that the annotations appeared to be from Allende, although
they had been written in three different colored inks as though three
separate individuals had been writing comments.
Jessup had no idea what to make of it and was a little unsettled by
the interest that these ONR officers had in the writing, especially about
the ship that was made invisible and it's crew severely injured. The
officers even paid Varo Inc. to reprint copies of the annotated version of
Jessup's book and had them passed around ONR for consideration. Jessup
confided in his friend Ivan Sanderson that he felt the officers might want
to try the experiment again. Meanwhile Jessup's life began to be plagued by
what he called "strange coincidences." He began to complain about his
health, and his research efforts took a turn for the worse. In 1959 he was
found dead in his car from carbon monoxide poisoning and declared a suicide
without the benefit of an autopsy. Many believe to this day that he was
actually murdered, with Allende left roaming the country to escape the same
fate.
The Office of Naval Research has created a number of form "response"
letters over the years to handle public inquiries into the Philadelphia
Experiment. The latest version can be found at
www.onr.navy.mil/foia/PhillyExp.htm. Somewhat embarrassed by all the
attention drawn to them by the activities of the now long gone officers,
and having not been in existence at the time of the experiment, the ONR has
had to handle the lion's share of public requests for clarification and
information. Until 1996 they had no trouble shrugging off accusations of
cover-up with simple explanations about degaussing and misunderstandings
about the word "invisible." They contend that the legend got started based
on the routine task of demagnetizing or "degaussing" the ships so as to be
"invisible" to magnetic mines and torpedoes.
Echoing this position on "The Unexplained" as an official
representative of the U.S. Navy was historian John Reilly. Reilly stated
that, as far as he knew, the navy never experimented with making ships
invisible with magnetic fields. The Navy has been long indirectly assisted
in these apologetic efforts by the usual gaggle of disinformants. "The
Unexplained" featured an interview with researcher Robert Goerman, saying
that he solved the mystery of the Philadelphia Experiment by a discovery he
made about Carlos Allende. A writer from Pennsylvania who penned articles
for pulp UFO magazines in the '70s, Goerman considered himself to be "a
player," at least an also-ran amongst the galaxy of name UFO researchers of
the time. When the book, "The Philadelphia Experiment: Project
Invisibility," by William Moore and Charles Berlitz came out in 1979,
Goerman was motivated to do his own investigation, but in a different
direction. Instead of checking into the new information and science that
the book mentioned, he latched onto Allende because of a quirk of fate -
his parents were neighbors of the parents of Allende. Furthermore,
Allende's real name was Allen, Carl Meredith Allen. Goerman's daughter used
to visit the Allens, and it was by chance that he discovered that they were
in fact the family of the elusive Philadelphia Experiment "witness."
After agreeing to keep certain information about the family
confidential, the Allens allowed Goerman to review various cards, letters,
and other things that Carl had sent to his family. They described Carl as
"a leg puller," and someone who was very intelligent but lacked the
discipline to achieve his full potential. It was clear from the items that
Goerman looked over that Carl would annotate everything. He was even
quirkier and more eccentric than he had ever imagined. Armed with this new
information, Goerman was convinced that he had the truth, especially after
having conversations with Carl himself. Ignoring all other available
information, Goerman wrote "Alias: Carlos Allende" and it was published in
"Fate" magazine in 1980, now archived on the Internet at
www.parascope.com/en/articles/allende.htm.
But Goerman's article was not well received by others in the UFO
community. He has remained bitter about this, accusing those who ignore or
disagree with his analysis as only being interested in "selling their
books." An accusation that Goerman made on "The Unexplained" and
intentionally or not, inferred this as a motive of the wrong researcher.
"I know the applicable laws, how to operate with law enforcement, do
investigations, have a badge and I.D., weapons, the whole nine yards and
all legal. I'm versed in psy-ops, surveillance, counter-surveillance,
stings, non-lethal weapons. I know how and can intervene in a felony in
progress and execute arrest procedures until law enforcement arrives. I've
actually been involved in cases against pedophiles, a rouge psychic spy,
Men In Black related activity, potential terrorism related to Y2K that
threatens national security. No cops or state police have complained so
far. I think that earns me the 'special'."
So says Special Civilian Investigator Marshall Barnes who "The
Unexplained" had contacted through his book distributor because he was
described as an expert on the Philadelphia Experiment. Under the pretext of
trying to get to the truth, Mark Caras allegedly got Marshall to agree to
appear on the show and not allow arguments that Marshall had disproved to
go unchallenged.
"...the crux of it all came down to the use of an intense
electromagnetic field that would create a mirage effect of invisibility by
refracting light..."
Marshall had been in a similar situation in November of 1996 with
the Sci-Fi Channel's version of Sightings, the magazine format show that
the Fox network originally created. It was the first to break ground in the
field of reporting the strange and paranormal. Marshall used an eleven
point white paper to successfully pitch the idea of doing a story on how he
could prove that the last paragraph of the ONR information letter was
false, that there was in fact a scientific basis for invisibility known
before the letter was written. Marshall assembled all of the evidence to
prove his case along with a physicist for Sightings' cameras. Six months
later, after he and the physicist had been told separate stories about why
the episode hadn't aired yet. Marshall took things into his own hands and
used a bit of his investigator know-how to trick his way into talking with
one of the executive producers. She told him the episode had been canceled
because there were no witnesses to verify the Philadelphia Experiment had
taken place.
"That was not part of the deal," Marshall recalls. "I never said
that I could prove that it happened; only that the ONR's statement was
false about the science and that's what I did. The story was sold on that
basis. It passed muster in a production meeting where ideas were voted on
up or down. Maleka Brown brought it to that meeting and Ruth Rafiti was the
producer it was assigned to. They sent out a director who hired a two-man
production crew to shoot all day. The first excuse was they ran out of
editing money. Then they had to wait to see if they would be renewed for
the next season. Finally someone admitted the episode was canceled but
wouldn't tell me why. Then I tricked my way into getting a phone call to
one of the executive producers who told me it was because there were no
witnesses, which had nothing to do with the idea that Maleka sold at the
meeting. This producer wasn't even in on it until later. It made no sense
to kill that story, except for one thing - I proved I was right, and I did
it right in front of their cameras with one of my experiments and they were
stunned. It was probably too good. It left no doubts. I had heard that
Sightings had been infiltrated by government types after all the complaints
that they got from the Pentagon when they were on Fox exposing Area 51, and
all that. I had no opinion about that before. Now I'm almost convinced."
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