The Missing Years
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2008 8:43 pm
In another thread (People, Places, and Dates), a discussion has begun in the past day or so about Townsend Brown's "Missing Years" from 1958 to 1967. Linda has mentioned the family's proximity to Chantilly, Virginia at one point during those years -- which corresponds with the formation of a new intelligence service, the National Reconnaissance Office.
Here are the posts that started the discussion, which I propose to continue here:
Mark Culpepper picks up the theme:
Then rose picks drops another pearl:
This was followed by some (tangential?) discussion about 9/11 and an NRO drill conducted that day, but between Mark's use of the word "piggyback" and Rose's mention of GRAB, bells started ringing, which compelled me to compile this post:
All of which brings us headlong into a timely discussion of "The Missing Years."
Figure out this riddle, and you just might have the first rung of the ladder that will get us out of this rabbit hole.
--PS
Here are the posts that started the discussion, which I propose to continue here:
Rose responds:Linda Brown wrote: viewtopic.php?p=17159#p17159
Paul's book and the way it is developing might just serve as the landing lights for ships circling the field right about now. I suspect that there are MANY out there that know far more than they have ever said. Maybe many of them were treated much the same way I was treated. Maybe they took things for what they seemed to be and of course were bitterly disappointed when the project they had sunk so much of their time and energy into didn't go anywhere.... or didn't seem to go anywhere.
I suspect that the gentlemen that you have mentioned just might be in that situation, possibly.... or POSSIBLY, like me, they are beginning also to put two and two together.
Then there I am sure are a whole bunch of others. "Leftovers" Mr. Twigsnapper snorts ... who knew fairly well what was going on but who are still bound by the strange secrecy thing that basically says " I can't mention anything until it specifically comes out into the publics view"
If thats the case and we can get specific enough in our speculations then you see that we are serving the purpose by switching on those landing lights. I am sure that some of those circling would be very happy to see that happen but they can't and won't come in before those lights go on.
And those nine years are dark, very dark.
Question here for all of you and for Paul as he considers what to do with this information.
What does the year 1960, (the summer expecially, mean to everybody) Why would A.L. Kitselmen, William Lear, Robert Sarbacher and Townsend Brown be meeting consistantly in the same area around Alexandria Virginia? Beau mentions that summer in his " Hello Stupid" but he certainly doesn't say much more.
I know so far that it had something to do with missiles .... communications ... because look at the background of these gentlemen.
I just see it as a kid would. I harbor the loving memory of Dad showing me a beatuiful substantial house during that summer. It was located in a little town in the country called Chantilly and I remember him saying to both Mom and me that his lab would be right down the street and that we could stay there in that area until I graduated ... and that she wouldn't have to worry about moving anymore ... and that we would own that piece of property ...... and two months later ......He was in Meadville Pa ..... and that dream had blown apart.
Some of you already perhaps see the connections here. I mention them because even though they don't answer any real questions they are important in their own right and need to be out there.
Paul , you know the story better than any one. It might seem like just more of the same but it still is a vital part of what was going on. Am I wrong? Linda
rose wrote: viewtopic.php?p=17161#p17161
1960 Kennedy and Nixon were campaigning.
The space program was focused on putting John Glenn into orbit. From mission design to mission support, all of that would have brought new challenges.
But wasn't it about this time that Bill Lear wrote his enthusiastic article the instant travel method" that was to be arriving within a decade? Speculation time: We have been given the consideration that when TTB was doing subtests at the Philadelphia navy yard, some of those tests may have been for performance effects of something unkown, and over and above whatever else may have geen going on.
i wonder if a similar operation, intended to accompany/or piggyback on Glenn's mission was being designed and run by those men?
Mark Culpepper picks up the theme:
Mark Culpepper wrote: viewtopic.php?p=17162#p17162
Piggyback Rose is the operative word here.
I have been watching this forum for a long time now and the one thing that I have picked up on right away is ....... intelligence and communications.... thats what all of these men were all about. Intelligence and communications in 1960 means to me .... spy satellites. And thats where I would focus your energies if I were you.
I appreciate the Philadelphia Navy Yard stories but we are looking for a reason to be really BLACK during 1960 and I swear to you that the beginning of something that turned into the National Reconnaissance Office ..... ( Chantilly Virginia, by the way) would have been the most secret thing going. Chantilly. What are the chances of that being coincidental. NOT. Worth dragging your family from pillar to post? Hopefully worth all of the tears that I can feel in Lindas words. Am I off base here? I don't think so.
Then rose picks drops another pearl:
rose wrote: viewtopic.php?p=17174#p17174
Or for communicating with GRAB, the nation's first sigint signals intelligence sat system, launched in 1960?
Or for some NRO mission that remains classified still?
http://www.nro.gov/NRO_Fact_Sheet.pdf
This was followed by some (tangential?) discussion about 9/11 and an NRO drill conducted that day, but between Mark's use of the word "piggyback" and Rose's mention of GRAB, bells started ringing, which compelled me to compile this post:
And I just read the excerpt from Morgan's message at the start of "Chapter 73: Something Happened" in which he drops this hint:Paul S. wrote: viewtopic.php?p=17206#p17206
... is exactly the word.
And Rose replies:Mark Culpepper wrote:Piggyback Rose is the operative word here.
"Chapter 71: Missing Daddy" quotes some material from James Bamford's book about the NSA, "Body of Secrets," which describes some of the seminal work that went into surveillance satellites. The suggestion to look at pages 364-365 came directly from Morgan.rose wrote:Or for communicating with GRAB, the nation's first sigint signals intelligence sat system, launched in 1960?
Re-reading that chapter now, I'm seeing that it possibly goes off in the wrong direction, or is at least incomplete. I'll type in some of page 365 here.
We pick up 6 weeks after Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy plane is shot down over Russia in the spring of 1960. Eisenhower has approved a new plan. Bamford describes a Thor rocket launch:
James Bamford - Body of Secrets wrote: Packed tightly in its fiberglass shroud was the world's first operative spy satellite.
The worLd was told that the package aboard the Thor contained two scientific satellites, one to measure solar radiation, known as as Solar-Rad, and the other to aid in navigation. "Piggy-back Satellites HaIled as Big Space Gain for U.S. Satellite," said the headline in the Washington Post on the morning of June 23. But hidden within the Solar Rad satellite was NRL's Elint Bird, codenamed GRAB, for "Galactic Radiation and Background." At a dwarfish six watts and forty two pounds, GRAB looked a bit like a silver soccer ball.
As GRAB orbited about 500 miles over Russia, it would collect the beeping pulses from the hundreds of radar systems throughout the forbidden land. The signals would then be retransmitted instantly on narrow VHF frequencies to a small collection of huts at ground stations in Turkey, Iran, and elsewhere, where they would be recorded on reels of magnetic tape. Flown to Washington on courier flights, the tapes would go to NRL scientists, who would convert the data into digital format and pass them to NSA for analysis.
The thing that strikes me as I read this again now is that GRAB was the "NRL's Elint Bird." This thing belonged to the NRL, and they controlled all the data before it went to the NSA for analysis. And who do we know who worked for the NRL in the 1930s, for whom the NRL could find NO RECORD of his engagement there. Hmmmm???
Sounds about right to me.rose wrote: Or for some NRO mission that remains classified still?
But remember, here we're only talking about stuff that is merely "classified." We haven't even gotten to the stuff that is really secret.
Now I'm trying to remember who planted the bug in my ear a while back that "if there's any government agency that would be responsible for intercepting or monitoring extra-terrestrial communications... it'd be the NRO."
Which was formed during "The Missing Years," during which, as Linda has pointed out, the Brown's were circling a domicile in Chantilly, VA.
Do we need a new thread on "The Missing Years"? If we do, it will have to be in the moderated section.
--PS
Now, we may never know for sure, but there is reason to believe that "the organization that I now call home" was the National Reconnaissance Office - the NRO.Morgan wrote: However, in August of 1958 something major happened which changed his course suddenly and drew him almost immediately into the organization that I now call home. As in my situation, this move was encouraged by old ties put together initially by the Caroline Group.
All of which brings us headlong into a timely discussion of "The Missing Years."
Figure out this riddle, and you just might have the first rung of the ladder that will get us out of this rabbit hole.
--PS