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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/Pentagon.md
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---
aliases:
- The Pentagon
- Pentagon Building
- Pentagon building
created: 2026-10-07
updated: 2026-10-07
title: Pentagon
tags:
- Organization
- Government
- USA
- Military
- Dark_Alliance_Investigation
description: Headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, epicenter of UAP secrecy, and the location where Enrique Bermúdez was invited to discuss forming a Contra army.
- UAP
- RemoteViewing
- DarkAllianceInvestigation
- PentagonPapers
description: Headquarters of the United States Department of Defense in Arlington, Virginia, and the site of programs and events that touch the remote viewing, UAP, Contra and protest clusters of this vault.
category: "U.S. Government"
summary: "The Pentagon is the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense, which administered the AATIP program and several classified research programs including STARGATE's successor activities and UAP investigation units."
summary: "The Pentagon is the headquarters of the Department of Defense, built 1941 to 1943, and appears in the record of remote viewing tasking, the AAWSAP/AATIP dispute, and the offices that produced the Pentagon Papers."
start: 1943
location: "Arlington, Virginia"
relations:
- type: subject_of
with: "[[September 11 attacks]]"
start: 2001-09-11
role: "struck by American Airlines Flight 77"
fn: 32
---
The [[Pentagon]] is the headquarters of the United States [[Department of Defense]] (DoD). It is the central location for the command and control of the U.S. armed forces and has been the epicenter of the government's long and complex history with the [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]] (UAP) issue.[^1]
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the [[Department of Defense]] in Arlington, Virginia. Its rooms and offices appear in the record of a remote viewing tasking, a 1979 Army human subjects review of protocols from the [[Stanford Research Institute]], the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force that produced the [[Pentagon Papers]], and the dispute over the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]].[^1]
### Role in UAP Investigation and Secrecy
### Construction, 1941 to 1944
The Pentagon has been the home of official government programs tasked with investigating UAP, including the [[Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program]] (AATIP), the [[UAP Task Force]], and the [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]] (AARO). According to [[Luis Elizondo]], the Pentagon's culture of stigma around UAP made serious investigation nearly impossible.[^1]
On July 17, 1941, [[Brehon Somervell]], then head of the Army's Construction Division, summoned [[Hugh Casey]] and the architect [[George Bergstrom]] and asked for plans for a War Department office building to house 40,000 people, to be on his desk by nine o'clock the following Monday. He first envisaged a four-story building on the site of the Washington-Hoover Airport; General [[Eugene Reybold]] concluded that construction there might not be feasible, and Somervell moved the location to a 67-acre tract at Arlington Farms, east of [[Arlington National Cemetery]], and reduced the height to three stories. The plan called for 5,100,000 square feet of floor space on a site bounded by five roads, and Somervell told a House appropriations subcommittee on July 22 that $35 million would cover everything except parking.[^2][^3]
The building has been the site of numerous key events in the UAP disclosure movement, including the initial briefings of [[Christopher Mellon]] by Elizondo and the internal battles over AATIP's funding.[^1]
Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the first employees moved in on April 30, 1942. The contractors were John McShain, Inc. of Philadelphia, the Wise Contracting Company and Doyle and Russell; Somervell named Captain Clarence Renshaw, one of [[Leslie Groves]]'s assistants, to direct the work. By late April 1942 the job had moved 2,500,000 cubic yards of earth, poured 225,000 cubic yards of concrete and driven over 40,000 piles. Employment at its peak was 13,000 in the Corps of Engineers history and upwards of 15,000 in the [[Defense Media Network]] account. The building was completed in February 1943, covering 29 acres.[^2][^3] The history of the [[U.S. Army Corps of Engineers]] calls the Pentagon "one bright spot in the program" in the winter of 1941 to 1942.[^3]
The Pentagon is also alleged to be the home of the "[[Collins Elite]]," a group of religious fundamentalists who believe the UAP phenomenon is demonic, and the "[[Legacy Program]]," a deeply hidden effort to reverse-engineer recovered UAP technology.[^1]
Groves, then a colonel, was chief of operations for the project. In mid-September 1942, as Deputy Chief of Construction of the Corps of Engineers, he was told by Somervell that he was to take charge of the Army's atomic project (the [[Manhattan Project]]). Groves wrote that in a meeting that day at the office of Major General [[William Styer]] in the Pentagon they agreed that, because the Pentagon was so nearly finished and he had had so much to do with it, he would continue to control its construction, arranged informally, in part because of the interest in the building shown by a number of Congressmen.[^4] A few months after the building was finished, Groves recruited [[Robert Furman]], who had been the project's executive officer and had used a windowless apartment inside the building during construction; Furman was then assigned to discover what he could about the German atomic bomb effort.[^2]
### Dark Alliance Investigation
Cost figures differ by source and date. The Defense Media Network gives more than $83 million. In a House speech on February 29, 1944, Representative [[Albert J. Engel]] fixed the total outlay at roughly $86 million, $51 million more than originally appropriated; a War Department spokesman answered that the cost was $63 million, attributing the difference to highways planned in 1934, sewage and drainage systems used by other buildings, a fifth floor built as a war necessity, and 40,000 caissons required when the site was changed from high to low ground. The Corps of Engineers history records that Groves, from his headquarters on the fifth floor of the New War Building, helped plan the defense, and that Renshaw returned from the Philadelphia District to assist.[^2][^3]
The Pentagon was where [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]] was invited by a U.S. Air Force official to discuss forming a Contra army. The official told Bermúdez he had a friend at the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] who wanted to meet Nicaraguan exiles with military experience. The meeting was a key moment in the creation of the [[FDN]] Contra army, demonstrating that the U.S. military establishment was directly involved in forming the Contra force from its earliest days.[^2]
### Remote viewing tasking and psi review inside the building
A session report from the CIA-RDP96 collection records a remote viewing session, designated CC4 and classified by the Director of the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]], that was conducted "in compliance with a request from SOD, J3, OJCS, Pentagon, Washington, D.C." The stated purpose was information relevant to the hostage situation in the U.S. Embassy compound in Teheran, Iran. The session was part of the program the report calls [[GRILL FLAME]].[^5] An Army Intelligence and Security Command memorandum dated April 23, 1980, written by the project manager (Lieutenant Colonel Murray) to the executive officer of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence's HUMINT office, reports that the Special Operations Division (SOD), JCS "requested we intensify our efforts and that we attempt to set up a situation wherein the possibilities for aborting the mission would be sharply reduced," and that the request was relayed to the command through Mr. Jackie Keith. The same memorandum records a planned April 25 meeting with a CIA representative to arrange a joint INSCOM/CIA effort suggested by the Deputy Director for Operations, and a proposed visit by officers to SRI contacts [[Hal Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]].[^6]
On March 26, 1979, an ad hoc subcommittee of the Army's Human Subjects Research Review Board met at 1100 hours in Room 2E465 of the Pentagon under AR 70-25 to consider protocols from SRI and from the Army Materiel Systems Analysis Activity (AMSAA). Targ and Puthoff presented the SRI protocol. The subcommittee's unanimous consensus was that the SRI protocol "was identified as technology transfer rather than research or testing," that the AMSAA protocol was judged to be phenomenological validation of the technology to be transferred by SRI, and that Federal guidelines and Army regulations on the use of human subjects did not apply. The minutes add that if follow-on work involved human subjects, the subcommittee felt the Army sponsors and action agencies were presently unprepared to address all anticipated problems.[^7]
A briefing by the [[U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command]] (INSCOM) on April 18, 1983 on its study "Beyond Excellence" was held in Room 2E687A of the Pentagon, primarily for Major General John H. Mitchell, Director of Human Resources Development in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, with other ODCSPER representatives, the Army Research Institute, the Army Materiel Development and Readiness Command and selected members of the Army Science Board present.[^8]
On February 21, 1985, a briefing on the CENTER LANE and DRAGOON ABSORB programs ran from 1640 to 1940 hours in the DIA Conference Room in the Pentagon, for staff of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. A memorandum for record by [[Brian Buzby]], who took part in the briefing, records a historical overview of the DOD psychoenergetic program by [[Jack Vorona]], the DRAGOON ABSORB program manager, followed by a review of successful remote viewing examples by Buzby; it states that the briefing and information received "seemed to be well received."[^9]
The [[Office of Net Assessment]] was founded in 1973, with [[Andrew Marshall]] as its first director. A 1999 profile of Marshall in [[The Nation]] describes him as running the office from a small office on the third floor of the Pentagon, with a staff of twelve.[^10] On March 13, 2025, Secretary of Defense [[Pete Hegseth]] signed a memo disestablishing the office, reassigning its civilian employees, returning military personnel to their services, terminating its contracts and directing the Deputy Secretary of Defense to provide within 30 days a plan to rebuild the office consistent with his priorities. Pentagon spokesman [[Sean Parnell]] announced the decision as one ensuring that the department's resources were focused on its most pressing national security challenges.[^11]
### AAWSAP, AATIP and the 2017 disclosures
The Defense Appropriations Acts for fiscal years 2008 and 2010 appropriated $22 million for the DIA, at the direction of Senate Majority Leader [[Harry Reid]], to assess long-term foreign advanced aerospace threats. The [[All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office]] (AARO) reported in February 2024 that DIA established the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Application Program (AAWSAP) in 2009, which "was also known" as AATIP, and that the contract went to a private sector organization.[^12] The contract document released by DIA under FOIA, number HHM402-08-C-0072, carries an effective date of September 22, 2008, was issued by the Virginia Contracting Activity under solicitation HHM402-08-R-0211 of September 1, 2008, and names Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, LLC, whose proposal of September 3, 2008 it incorporates.[^13]
AARO's report states that the names AAWSAP and AATIP "have been used interchangeably for the name of this program, including on official documentation," and that "Unlike AAWSAP, AATIP was never an official DoD program." It adds that after AAWSAP was cancelled, "the AATIP moniker was used by some individuals associated with an informal, unofficial UAP community of interest within DoD," and that this effort "was not a recognized, official program, and had no dedicated personnel or budget." AARO also states that DIA "did not seek, nor specifically authorize" the program's work at a Utah property, although a DIA employee set up and managed the contract, and that AAWSAP/AATIP was terminated in 2012 upon the completion of its deliverables because of DIA and DoD concerns about the project.[^12][^14]
Other records and statements on the same question follow in date order.
On June 24, 2009, Reid sent a letter to Deputy Secretary of Defense [[William Lynn]] requesting that AAWSAP/AATIP be made a DoD Special Access Program; AARO states that Lynn declined on the recommendation of [[James Clapper]], then Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, that such a designation was not justified.[^14]
[[Luis Elizondo]] resigned effective October 4, 2017. His resignation letter to Secretary of Defense [[James Mattis]], as quoted by The Washington Post, stated: "Despite overwhelming evidence at both the classified and unclassified levels, certain individuals in the [Defense] Department remain staunchly opposed to further research on what could be a tactical threat to our pilots, sailors and soldiers, and perhaps even an existential threat to our national security."[^15]
The [[New York Times]], the [[Washington Post]] and [[Politico]] reported the program on December 16, 2017. Reid told the Times: "I'm not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going. I think it's one of the good things I did in my congressional service." In the GBH summary of those reports the program began in some form in 2007 and officially ended in 2012.[^15] Politico's Bryan Bender wrote that "Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to Politico that the program existed and was run by Elizondo," as quoted by Keith Kloor in The Intercept in 2019.[^16]
On April 27, 2020, the Department of Defense authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos (one taken in November 2004, two in January 2015) that had circulated after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017, and stated that "the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified.'"[^17]
In 2019 Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood told The Intercept that AATIP "did pursue research and investigation into unidentified aerial phenomena," that Elizondo "had no responsibilities with regard to the AATIP program while he worked in OUSDI, up until the time he resigned effective 10/4/2017," and that he "cannot confirm" White's statement.[^16] Pentagon public affairs spokesperson Susan Gough told the Black Vault on June 13, 2019 that a 2009 Reid memo then in circulation was authentic and that DoD "received it and responded to Sen. Reid," and that it "makes no change to previous statements. Mr. Elizondo had no assigned responsibilities for AATIP while he was in OUSD(I). DIA administered AATIP, and Elizondo was never assigned to DIA. Elizondo did interact with the DIA office managing the program while the program was still ongoing, but he did not lead it."[^18]
In May 2021 Elizondo filed a complaint with the DoD Inspector General alleging "malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal and explicit threats" by senior officials, among them Garry Reid, Susan Gough and Neill Tipton, with a chronology of his claimed involvement in AATIP. Inspector General records released under FOIA to [[John Greenewald]] show that the office assigned multiple case numbers to different aspects of the complaint.[^19]
Elizondo describes absorbing the program's remnants into his own portfolio. He has also said that the Pentagon's stigma around UAP made serious investigation nearly impossible.[^20] He describes opposition from a group he calls the [[Collins Elite]], religious fundamentalists within the Pentagon who believed the phenomenon was demonic, and from the [[Legacy Program]], which he says controlled recovered [[Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena]] (UAP) materials.[^21] Elizondo also describes the building as the site of his initial briefings of [[Christopher Mellon]].[^22]
### UAP Task Force and AARO
On August 4, 2020, Deputy Secretary of Defense David L. Norquist approved the establishment of the [[UAP Task Force]], which the Department of the Navy leads under the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security.[^23] AARO's historical record report lists the DoD UAP Task Force, led by the U.S. Navy, among the programs that preceded it,[^24] and describes a 1949 period in which, according to one account, perceived pressure from the Pentagon's leadership led the remaining staff of [[Project Grudge]] who held the interplanetary view to change their minds.[^25]
The statute now codified at 50 U.S.C. 3373 directs the Secretary of Defense, with the Director of National Intelligence, to establish within 120 days of December 23, 2022 an office, to be known as AARO, to carry out the duties of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force as in effect on December 26, 2021. The office's director reports directly to the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.[^26]
### Contra recruitment
In [[Dark Alliance]], [[Gary Webb]] wrote that Major General [[Charles E. Boyd]], described as a top U.S. Air Force official, invited [[Enrique Bermudez|Enrique Bermúdez]] to the Pentagon to discuss ideas. There, after sounding out Bermúdez on the idea of running a rebel force to harass the Sandinistas, Boyd told him that he had a friend at the [[Central Intelligence Agency]] who was interested in speaking with him. Webb wrote that by mid-1980 Bermúdez had moved to a rented house in [[Miami]] and that, according to one account, he was then on the CIA's payroll.[^27] The [[FDN]] was the Contra group that pursued resistance activities on the Northern Front from bases in Honduras, according to the CIA Inspector General's report on the Northern Front Contras.[^28] Charles Graham Boyd, who was Chief of the Western Hemisphere Division of the Air Staff's Directorate of Plans at the Pentagon in 1979 and 1980, gave an oral history in which that division is described as dealing with all the countries of Latin America and Canada.[^29]
### The 1967 march, the Pentagon Papers and the 1972 bombing
On October 21, 1967, a [[March on the Pentagon]] was held against the Vietnam War. The National Archives estimates a crowd of 100,000 gathered at the Lincoln Memorial and gives two arrest figures: "nearly 700 protesters had been jailed" and, on a release sheet, "more than six-hundred persons arrested." NARA holds a Universal Newsreel reel covering the march.[^30]
The Pentagon Papers, officially titled the "Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force," were commissioned by Secretary of Defense [[Robert McNamara]] in 1967. Portions were leaked to the press in June 1971.[^1] The National Archives page links a 1973 interview with [[Daniel Ellsberg]] titled "Why I Did It."[^1] On the fortieth anniversary of the leak, the National Archives, with the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon presidential libraries, released the complete report: 48 boxes and approximately 7,000 declassified pages, about 34 percent of it available for the first time.[^1]
The [[Weather Underground]] claimed responsibility for a number of bombings from 1970 onward. An FBI appendix on the Weathermen, reproduced in the William Kunstler FBI files, lists the U.S. Capitol Building in March 1971 and "the Pentagon Building in May, 1972" among them.[^31]
### September 11, 2001
On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37:46 a.m., traveling at approximately 530 miles per hour. The [[9/11 Commission]] report states that all on board, and many civilian and military personnel in the building, were killed.[^32]
On September 10, 2001, Secretary of Defense [[Donald Rumsfeld]] gave the kickoff remarks for DoD Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week, titled "Bureaucracy to Battlefield," and said: "Our financial systems are decades old. According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions."[^33] A Department of Defense Inspector General report issued February 25, 2000 stated that of $6.9 trillion in accounting entries for fiscal year 1999, $2.3 trillion "was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity," $2 trillion was not reviewed because of time constraints, and $2.6 trillion were supported. A follow-up report dated August 18, 2000 gave a total of $7.6 trillion in department-level entries after an additional $0.7 trillion was identified; $3.5 trillion were supported with proper research, reconciliation and audit trails, and another $1.8 trillion were identified but not reviewed. It described $2.3 trillion of entries as ones that "were made to force financial data to agree with various sources of financial data without adequate research and reconciliation, were made to force buyer and seller data to agree in preparation for eliminating entries, did not contain adequate documentation and audit trails, or did not follow accounting principles."[^34][^35]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent*. William Morrow, 2024.
[^2]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* Seven Stories Press, 1998. Chapter 5: "God, Fatherland and Freedom"
[^1]: National Archives, "Pentagon Papers," Research Our Records, last reviewed July 29, 2019, https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers
[^2]: Zimmerman, Dwight Jon. "Somervell's Folly: The Construction of the Pentagon." Defense Media Network, July 14, 2011, https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/somervells-folly/
[^3]: Fine, Lenore, and Jesse A. Remington. *The Corps of Engineers: Construction in the United States.* United States Army in World War II: The Technical Services, CMH Pub 10-5. Washington: Center of Military History, 1972, pp. 431 to 433 (origin of the project), p. 512 (construction progress), pp. 609 to 610 (1944 cost dispute), https://archive.org/details/CMHPub10-5
[^4]: Groves, Leslie R. *Now It Can Be Told: The Story of the Manhattan Project.* New York: Harper, 1962, pp. 3 to 5.
[^5]: Central Intelligence Agency, CREST reading room, document CIA-RDP96-00788R000800010001-3, Remote Viewing (RV) session CC4 summary analysis, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r000800010001-3
[^6]: Central Intelligence Agency, CREST reading room, document CIA-RDP96-00788R002000250034-7, United States Army Intelligence and Security Command memorandum BF-OPS-HU-SA, "BG Flynn Update Re: GRILL FLAME," April 23, 1980, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r002000250034-7
[^7]: Surgeon General, Department of the Army, memorandum SGRD-HR, "Minutes of Ad Hoc Subcommittee of The Surgeon General's Human Use Review Committee Meeting, 26 March 1979," March 29, 1979, CIA CREST reading room, document CIA-RDP96-00788R001100110002-7, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001100110002-7
[^8]: CIA CREST reading room, document CIA-RDP96-00788R001800020001-1, Army report on the 1983 "Emerging Concepts" meetings (INSCOM briefing of April 18, 1983, "Beyond Excellence"), https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001800020001-1
[^9]: Buzby, Brian, memorandum for record, "CENTER LANE/DRAGOON ABSORB Briefing to Congressional Intelligence Committee Staff Members," February 25, 1985, CIA CREST reading room, document CIA-RDP96-00788R001500020001-4, https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001500020001-4
[^10]: Silverstein, Ken, "The Man From ONA," The Nation, October 7, 1999, https://thenation.com/?p=67067
[^11]: Mehta, Aaron, and Valerie Insinna, "Hegseth 'disestablishing' Office of Net Assessment, Pentagon's strategic analysis specialists," Breaking Defense, March 13, 2025, https://breakingdefense.com/2025/03/hegseth-orders-disestablishing-of-office-of-net-assesment/
[^12]: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, Department of Defense, "Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), Volume I," February 2024, cleared for open publication March 6, 2024, pp. 22 to 23, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF
[^13]: Defense Intelligence Agency, solicitation/contract for commercial items HHM402-08-C-0072 (solicitation HHM402-08-R-0211), award effective September 22, 2008, released in response to FOIA-00269-2018 on June 26, 2023, https://documents2.theblackvault.com/documents/dia/AAWSAP/FOIA-00269-2018.pdf
[^14]: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, "Report on the Historical Record," Volume I, February 2024, p. 23, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF
[^15]: "Secret Pentagon Program Spent Millions to Research UFOs," GBH News, December 17, 2017 (summarizing reports of The New York Times, The Washington Post and Politico of December 16, 2017), https://wgbh.org/news/2017-12-17/secret-pentagon-program-spent-millions-to-research-ufos
[^16]: Kloor, Keith, "The Media Loves This UFO Expert Who Says He Worked for an Obscure Pentagon Program. Did He?" The Intercept, June 1, 2019, https://theintercept.com/2019/06/01/ufo-unidentified-history-channel-luis-elizondo-pentagon/
[^17]: Department of Defense, "Statement by the Department of Defense on the Release of Historical Navy Videos," April 27, 2020, archived capture of https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/2165713/statement-by-the-department-of-defense-on-the-release-of-historical-navy-videos/ (Wayback Machine, August 10, 2025)
[^18]: Greenewald, John, Jr., "Pentagon Reinforces Mr. Luis Elizondo Had 'No Responsibilities' on AATIP; Senator Harry Reid's 2009 Memo Changes Nothing," The Black Vault, June 14, 2019, https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/pentagon-reinforces-mr-luis-elizondo-had-no-responsibilities-on-aatip-senator-harry-reids-2009-memo-changes-nothing
[^19]: Greenewald, John, "The DoD Inspector General Complaint of Luis Elizondo: A Document Archive," The Black Vault, March 18, 2025, https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-dod-inspector-general-complaint-of-luis-elizondo-a-document-archive/
[^20]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.* New York: William Morrow, 2024. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^21]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.* New York: William Morrow, 2024, pp. 80 to 84. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^22]: Elizondo, Luis. *Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs.* New York: William Morrow, 2024. Sole source for the passage so cited.
[^23]: Department of the Navy, "Establishment of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force," press release, August 14, 2020, archived capture of https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pressreleases/Article/2314280/establishment-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-task-force/
[^24]: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, "Report on the Historical Record," Volume I, February 2024, p. 13, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF
[^25]: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, "Report on the Historical Record," Volume I, February 2024, p. 15, https://media.defense.gov/2024/Mar/08/2003409233/-1/-1/0/DOPSR-2024-0263-AARO-HISTORICAL-RECORD-REPORT-VOLUME-1-2024.PDF
[^26]: 50 U.S.C. 3373, "Establishment of All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office," Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/3373
[^27]: Webb, Gary. *Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion.* New York: Seven Stories Press, 1998, Chapter 2. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^28]: Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Inspector General, *Report of Investigation (96-0143-IG)*, Volume II: The Contra Story, October 8, 1998, section on Northern Front Contras, https://irp.fas.org/cia/product/cocaine2/north.html
[^29]: Boyd, Charles Graham, oral history interview, Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, https://www.adst.org/OH%20TOCs/Boyd.Charles.Graham.pdf
[^30]: "This Week in Universal News: The March on the Pentagon, 1967," National Archives, Unwritten Record blog, https://unwritten-record.blogs.archives.gov/?p=4211
[^31]: Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Weathermen" appendix, reproduced in the William Kunstler FBI files (FBI Vault, William Kunstler), https://archive.pov.org/disturbingtheuniverse/fbi-files/6/
[^32]: National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, *The 9/11 Commission Report*, 2004, p. 10 and note 61, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-911REPORT/pdf/GPO-911REPORT.pdf
[^33]: Rumsfeld, Donald H., "Bureaucracy to Battlefield," remarks as delivered at the Pentagon, September 10, 2001, Department of Defense Acquisition and Logistics Excellence Week kickoff, archived capture of http://www.defenselink.mil/speeches/2001/s20010910-secdef.html (September 15, 2001)
[^34]: Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, Report No. D-2000-179, "Department-Level Accounting Entries for FY 1999," August 18, 2000, https://media.defense.gov/2000/Aug/18/2001713967/-1/-1/1/00-179.pdf
[^35]: Department of Defense Office of the Inspector General, Report No. D-2000-091, "Internal Controls and Compliance With Laws and Regulations for the DoD Agency-Wide Financial Statements for FY 1999," February 25, 2000, https://media.defense.gov/2000/Feb/25/2001715708/-1/-1/1/00-091.pdf

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20 - ORGANIZATIONS/GOVERNMENT/USA/U.S. Navy.md
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@ -1,22 +1,223 @@
---
aliases:
- "United States Navy"
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2025-07-22
- "US Navy"
- "U.S. Navy"
- "USN"
title: U.S. Navy
created: 2025-07-22
updated: 2026-10-07
tags:
- organization
- military
- Organization
- Military
- USA
- USNavy
- OperationUnderworld
- ProjectCHATTER
- Parapsychology
- UAP
- IranContra
- USSLiberty
description: The U.S. Navy is the maritime warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces.
category: "U.S. Government"
summary: "The U.S. Navy is the maritime warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces, connected to this vault through its small SRI psi research contracts, the fabricated USS Nautilus telepathy story, and the Navy A-6 crash successfully remote-viewed by Ken Bell."
summary: "The U.S. Navy is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces, with records in the Luciano, truth drug, psi, UAP, patent, Iran-Contra and USS Liberty clusters."
relations:
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Charles R. Haffenden]]"
reverse: true
start: 1942
end: 1944
role: "Reserve commander, District Intelligence Office, Third Naval District"
fn: 1
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Project CHATTER]]"
start: 1947
end: 1953
role: "sponsoring service of the truth drug program"
fn: 6
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[G. Richard Wendt]]"
reverse: true
start: 1950
end: 1952
role: "University of Rochester psychologist under a $300,000 Navy contract on barbiturates, amphetamines, alcohol and heroin"
fn: 6
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Samuel Thompson]]"
reverse: true
start: 1951
end: 1953
role: "Navy commander, head of psychiatric research at the Naval Medical Research Institute"
fn: 6
- type: funded
with: "[[Stanford Research Institute]]"
start: 1976-02-04
role: "Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research and Naval Electronics Systems Command, extending CIA-sponsored parapsychology investigations"
fn: 13
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Stargate Project]]"
start: 1975
end: 1979
role: "one of the Defense Department service elements that supported psi research, per a CIA response to Senate Appropriations direction"
fn: 16
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Tic Tac]]"
start: 2004
role: "carrier air wing and squadron whose F/A-18 pilots intercepted the object"
fn: 18
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Dave Fravor]]"
reverse: true
start: 2004
role: "commander, Strike Fighter Squadron 41 (Black Aces)"
fn: 18
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Ryan Graves]]"
reverse: true
start: 2014
role: "F/A-18 pilot, Fighter Attack Squadron 11"
fn: 19
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Salvatore Pais]]"
reverse: true
role: "aerospace engineer, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, inventor on Navy-assigned patents"
fn: 26
- type: employed_by
with: "[[John Poindexter]]"
reverse: true
role: "Navy vice admiral, national security adviser from December 4, 1985"
fn: 31
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Paul B. Thompson]]"
reverse: true
start: 1983-06
role: "Navy commander detailed to the National Security Council staff"
fn: 34
- type: participant_in
with: "[[USS Liberty Incident]]"
start: 1967-06-08
role: "operator of the Navy intelligence ship attacked in the incident and convening authority of the Navy Court of Inquiry"
fn: 37
---
The [[U.S. Navy]] is the maritime warfare service branch of the [[United States]]. In the context of the *Remote Viewers* narrative, the Navy was involved in early rumors of a telepathy project with the USS Nautilus submarine, though this was later debunked as a fabrication or disinformation ploy.[^1]
The [[U.S. Navy]] is the maritime warfare service branch of the [[United States]]. Its intelligence office, the [[Office of Naval Intelligence]], has its own page. The Navy's records in this vault include a 1942 intelligence arrangement with the imprisoned [[Lucky Luciano]], a 1940s and 1950s truth drug program, psi and parapsychology contracts with the [[Office of Naval Research]] and [[Stanford Research Institute]], the UAP encounters of the 2000s and 2010s, patents assigned to the Navy, and a small number of officers in the Iran-Contra affair.
More directly, the Navy had small contracts with [[Stanford Research Institute|SRI]] for psi research. The book also mentions a U.S. Navy A-6 attack aircraft that crashed, which [[Ken Bell]] successfully remote-viewed. Additionally, the secret [[NSA]] facility at Sugar Grove, [[West Virginia]], which [[Pat Price]] accurately remote-viewed, was ostensibly a U.S. Navy communications base.[^1]
### Naval Intelligence and Luciano, 1942 to 1954
---
In 1942, after the liner Normandie burned at her pier in the North River while being converted to the Navy auxiliary Lafayette, the Navy's intelligence authorities in the Third Naval District suspected sabotage and espionage on the New York waterfront. Commander [[Charles R. Haffenden]], one of the District Intelligence Officer's assistants, was in charge of the section that conducted investigations in the field of sabotage, espionage and counter-espionage, and was made head of the "F" section, which collected strategic intelligence about possible target and invasion areas, in 1943. [[William B. Herlands]], the New York State Commissioner of Investigation, later reported that the aid of [[Joseph Lanza]] was first enlisted through Gurfein, and that Lanza then suggested that Luciano be brought in. The matter was discussed by Haffenden and [[Murray Gurfein]] of the New York County District Attorney's office, and by Gurfein with District Attorney [[Frank Hogan]]. Contact was made with [[Moses Polakoff]], Luciano's attorney, who brought in [[Meyer Lansky]] as the chief intermediary between Luciano in prison and his outside associates. Haffenden asked in writing that State Commissioner of Correction [[John A. Lyons]] move Luciano from [[Clinton Correctional Facility]] at Dannemora to a more accessible prison, and on May 12, 1942, during the administration of Governor [[Herbert H. Lehman]], Luciano was transferred to [[Great Meadow Correctional Facility]] at Comstock.[^1]
[^1]: Schnabel, Jim. *Remote Viewers*. Dell, 1997.
For about two years Luciano's friends and their contacts were made available to Naval Intelligence. Herlands reported that the visitors to Great Meadow included Polakoff, Lansky, Lanza, Mike Lascari, [[Frank Costello]], [[Willie Moretti]] and Mike Miranda, and that [[Joe Adonis]], Jerry Sullivan, [[Johnny Dunn]] and Willie McCabe took part without visiting him. The network reported suspicious waterfront activity, acted as lookouts, obtained union books and cards so that Naval Intelligence agents could be placed in hotels, piers, docks, trucks and factories, and was used on the Brooklyn waterfront against trouble anticipated when [[Harry Bridges]] came to the East Coast. According to the Herlands report, numerous Italians of Sicilian birth or background and their relatives were enlisted to give Haffenden and his assistants information about the terrain and harbors of Sicily before the Allied invasion, and "friendly Sicilian natives and evn Sicilian underworld and Mafia personalities" were obtained and "actually used in the Sicilian campaign." The wartime head of the Naval counter-intelligence section told Herlands that the information "turned out to be correct."[^1]
Luciano's name first appeared publicly in February 1943, when he moved to reduce his sentence before Justice [[Philip J. McCook]], who interviewed Haffenden and Gurfein privately and on February 10, 1943 denied the motion while writing that Luciano was probably aiding the war effort. Luciano petitioned for executive clemency on May 8, 1945. Haffenden's letter of May 17, 1945 to the Governor's counsel described Luciano's assistance to Naval Intelligence, and the Naval authorities declined to allow disclosure of details or to clear an affidavit Gurfein had executed in Paris in June 1945. Governor [[Thomas E. Dewey]] commuted the sentence on January 3, 1946, the Board of Parole granted parole solely for deportation in February 1946, and Luciano was deported to Italy on or about February 9, 1946 aboard the SS Laura Keane.[^2]
The Senate Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce (the [[Kefauver Committee]]) took testimony on the subject in March 1951. [[George H. White]], a supervising narcotics agent of the Treasury Department, testified that Haffenden, a Reserve officer attached to Naval Intelligence in New York, had interested himself in Luciano's case, that the Navy Department later denied it was interested, that part of the basis for the parole was Haffenden's letter to Governor Dewey, and that when he investigated at the time of the Cuban incident the Army, Navy, Marine Corps and the [[Office of Strategic Services]] all categorically denied that Luciano had furnished information or services of value. White also testified that Luciano was alleged to have been accompanied aboard the Laura Keane by Costello, Lansky and [[Albert Anastasia]] and that a bon voyage party was held on the ship.[^3]
Haffenden himself testified before the committee that he had retired from the Navy in 1946, had been New York City Commissioner of Marine and Aviation under Mayor [[William O'Dwyer]] for five or six months before being fired, and that Gurfein had introduced him to Polakoff as the contact to Luciano and that Lanza, the second informant, came to him through the same channels. He said there was never talk of a trade for leniency, that Luciano's value was "hard to say," that there was "no celebrated case or major job," and that he had never met Luciano. Asked whether information about Sicily had been received, he answered that late in the war a new "F" department had sought information about probable targets, that informants identified by number were asked for anything about Sicily before the invasion, and that they supplied information from "men who lived there." He said he wrote the 1945 letter from a hospital bed after returning from the Pacific, that Polakoff was present, and that he probably overevaluated Luciano's services in using the word "great."[^4]
On September 17, 1954 Herlands reported to the State of New York on the commutation. Herlands wrote that the question whether Luciano's aid was sought by the armed services in inducing others to provide information about possible enemy attack, and whether he cooperated in such effort, was to be answered "yes" to both, though "the actual value of the information procured is not clear." A letter to Herlands from Rear Admiral [[Carl F. Espe]], Director of Naval Intelligence, dated July 26, 1954, stated that in the spring of 1942 the District Intelligence Officer of the Third Naval District "established many systems of confidential informants, including several having criminal records," that one project was "an approach to certain criminal elements through the District Attorney, New York County," that the District Intelligence Office requested Luciano's transfer from Clinton to Great Meadow, made on May 12, 1942, and that his "influence on other criminal sources resulted in their cooperation with Naval Intelligence which was considered useful to the Navy."[^1][^5]
### Project CHATTER and the Navy truth drug program
The Navy ran [[Project CHATTER]], a classified program started in 1947 to develop a drug that would force people to reveal what they knew. [[Samuel Thompson]], a Navy commander, psychiatrist, physiologist and pharmacologist, inherited the program in 1951 when he became head of psychiatric research at the [[Naval Medical Research Institute]]. He recalled that Naval Intelligence told him of the need for a truth drug in case "someone planted an A-bomb in one of our cities and we had twelve hours to find out from a person where it was."[^6]
At the end of 1950 the Navy gave [[G. Richard Wendt]], chairman of the psychology department at the [[University of Rochester]] and a part-time Navy contractor, a $300,000 contract to study barbiturates, amphetamines, alcohol and heroin, with the money routed through the Secretary of Defense's contingency fund. Navy officials obtained drugs from the [[Federal Bureau of Narcotics]], which sent the Navy 30 grams of pure heroin and 11 pounds of Mexican marijuana, among other drugs. In the summer of 1952 Wendt announced a compound that he said would answer the truth drug problem. Thompson contacted the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]], whose ARTICHOKE team agreed to furnish subjects in Germany under the codename [[Operation CASTIGATE]]. Wendt gave five selected subjects combinations that included Seconal, Dexedrine and marijuana, all well-known drugs. [[Morse Allen]], the ARTICHOKE team leader, wrote that he felt he had been the victim of "a fraud or at least a gross misinterpretation" and called the trip "a waste of time and money." Navy officials summoned Wendt to Bethesda, canceled his support and asked for refund of unspent money, and by the end of 1953 the Navy abandoned CHATTER.[^6][^7]
The Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the [[Church Committee]]) reported that CHATTER "was a Navy program that began in the fall of 1947," that it responded to reports of "amazing results" achieved by the Soviets with truth drugs, that the research included laboratory experiments on animals and human subjects involving Anabasis aphylla, scopolamine and mescaline, that overseas experiments were conducted, and that it expanded during the Korean War and ended in 1953.[^8]
Navy money also appears in the record of CIA subproject 54. At the August 3, 1977 joint hearing, [[Stansfield Turner]], the Director of Central Intelligence, testified that the brain concussion project "was canceled, and never carried out," and [[Richard Schweiker]] answered that the first year of the project, 1955, was carried out by the Office of Naval Research according to CIA's own backup material, that the ONR experimenter found out about CIA's role and discovered that it was a cover, and that the project was transferred to MKULTRA in 1956.[^9] At the September 20, 1977 hearing Schweiker read into the record the Defense Department's statement that the project "began in October, 1954 and was terminated, at least with respect to the Navy, in December, 1955," that it was performed by a contractor in California, that "the involvement of the Navy was primarily as a conduit of funds from the Central Intelligence Agency to the contractor," that "a small amount of Navy funds may also have been used for this contract," and that it "apparently became subproject 54 in the [[Project MKUltra]]" afterward. Schweiker recalled that CIA had earlier said the project "was handled by the Office of Naval Research; it was basically their project." [[Frank Laubinger]] of the CIA Office of Technical Service said he had overlooked a January 10, 1956 memorandum showing the proposal was based on prior work funded by the Agency, that "a year's work was done through Navy funding," and, asked whether the Navy had acted as a conduit for the CIA, answered "I think that is correct."[^10]
### Navy psi contracts: Stanford Research Institute, Naval Ocean Systems Center and the Star Gate review
In February 1960 the French magazine *Science et Vie* published "The Secret of the Nautilus" ([[The Nautilus (Telepathy Project)]]), reporting that the U.S. government had used telepathy to communicate with the crew of the [[The Nautilus|USS Nautilus]] under the Arctic ice cap, in a project involving the Navy, the Air Force, [[Westinghouse]], [[General Electric]], [[Bell Laboratories]] and the [[RAND Corporation]]. Jim Schnabel writes that an Air Force officer named in the story denied it, that the skipper of the Nautilus insisted the submarine had been in dry dock during the period, that the article's author [[Gerard Messadie]] had been fed the story by [[Jacques Bergier]], and that Soviet researchers cited the story as justification for psi research.[^11]
In 1973 [[Ingo Swann]] and, to a far greater extent, [[Pat Price]] described details of a secret facility near Sugar Grove, [[West Virginia]], ostensibly a U.S. Navy communications base staffed by [[NSA]] cryptographers. Schnabel writes that the data was accurate enough to prompt a hostile security investigation of Richard Kennett, that [[Harold Puthoff]] and [[Russell Targ]] were interrogated, and that agents of the [[Defense Investigative Service]] questioned their neighbors.[^12]
A CIA memorandum of February 4, 1976, on the Stanford Research Institute investigation into parapsychology states that "the Department of the Navy, the Office of Naval Research and Naval Electronics System Command have also independently decided to support SRI in extensions of the CIA sponsored investigations."[^13] An undated SRI research summary in the CIA files lists tasks that include shielded rooms, an extra-low-frequency model and a "submarine tracking" effort. It states that "arrangements have also been made for use of special shielded rooms at the [[Naval Ocean Systems Center]], San Diego, California," that a "cooperative effort" with Naval Ocean Systems Center personnel was planned for submarine tracking experiments, and that "negotiation for access to a deeper diving submersible is underway between the sponsor and the CNO's office (OPS 23)."[^14]
In September 1978 the Commander of the [[Naval Intelligence Command]] replied to the [[Defense Intelligence Agency]] about a proposed Defense Department remote viewing program, writing that he was "unable at this time to pledge a specific level of funding support."[^15]
An undated CIA response to a Senate Appropriations request for a retrospective review of the [[Stargate Project]] lists the Defense Department service elements that supported psi research between 1975 and 1979. Of the Navy it says: "The U.S. Navy program was to evaluate an individual's ability to perceive remote visual stimuli. This effort was to answer the question whether the phenomena exist. No additional information is on file regarding the Navy program."[^16]
At the [[Fort Meade]] remote viewing unit, [[Frederick Atwater]] received a tasking from the Pentagon, passed through Major Stone, saying only that a Navy A-6 attack aircraft had been lost somewhere in the world. [[Ken Bell]] described a wooded area, trees and bushes and the charred remains of plane and crew, and kept picking up the word "bald." Atwater later learned that the aircraft had crashed into a hill in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia named Bald Knob.[^17]
### UAP encounters and Navy reporting
Commander [[Dave Fravor]] testified on July 26, 2023, before a House Oversight subcommittee that in 2004 he commanded Strike Fighter Squadron 41, the Black Aces, assigned to Carrier Air Wing 11 aboard the [[USS Nimitz]], which had begun a two-month workup cycle off California. He said controllers told the squadron that the objects had been observed for over two weeks, coming down from over 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet. He described a white object with a longitudinal axis, moving abruptly over the water, with no rotors, rotor wash or visible control surfaces, which shifted its axis to align with his aircraft and began to climb. He called it the "[[Tic Tac]]" in the testimony.[^18]
[[Ryan Graves]] testified at the same hearing that in 2014 he was an F-18 pilot in Fighter Attack Squadron 11, the Red Rippers, at NAS Oceana, Virginia, and that after radar upgrades the squadron began detecting unknown objects. He described a training mission in Warning Area W-72, ten miles off Virginia Beach, in which two Super Hornets were split by an object that came within 50 feet of the lead aircraft, a dark gray or black cube inside a clear sphere estimated at five to 15 feet across. He said the squadron submitted a safety report and received no official acknowledgement.[^19]
[[Luis Elizondo]] wrote that in 2015 [[Jay Stratton]] received emails from senior leaders of Navy Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, about encounters involving the aircraft carrier [[USS Roosevelt]], which had already embarked on a ten-month deployment to the Persian Gulf. According to Elizondo, during pre-deployment workups in late 2014, in the waters off Virginia and down to Florida, the aircrew had twenty-two separate encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena after radar upgrades to the Hornets, and Elizondo and Stratton later received from Fleet Forces Command two videos taken by pilots of the Roosevelt carrier strike group with the ATFLIR pod, one of which he identified as the video later known as GoFast.[^20]
An internal Navy public affairs response-to-query document of April 2019 gives a statement attributed to [[Joseph Gradisher]], spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare: "There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years." It continues that the Navy "is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities," that "a message to the fleet details the steps for reporting each incident," and that Navy officials had given congressional members and staff "a series of briefings by senior Naval Intelligence officials as well as aviators who reported hazards to aviation safety." A statement updated at 1525 on April 24, 2019 cited the proliferation of inexpensive unmanned aerial systems, said that guidelines were being updated "to be more aircraft specific" and "to help better remove any stigmas from reporting anything unknown in the airspace," and said security considerations precluded disclosure of them. The question-and-answer section states that sightings "have increased in frequency from 2014 until now" and that the Navy constitutes "anything unknown or unidentified in the airspace as a sighting." The statement also refers to a number of lasing events near Naval Air Station Oceana in 2012 in which the Navy, working with law enforcement, "identified and prosecuted the individual responsible."[^21]
Gradisher told the [[Washington Post]] on April 24, 2019, "Since 2014, these intrusions have been happening on a regular basis." The Post reported that the Navy was drafting formal procedures for pilots to document encounters and that unidentified aircraft had recently entered military-designated airspace as often as multiple times per month.[^22] On September 18, 2019, the Navy told reporters that it considers the phenomena in the three videos that had circulated since 2017 to be unidentified, and that it had not released characterizations, hypotheses or conclusions about the objects.[^23]
On April 27, 2020, a Department of Defense spokesperson, Susan Gough, announced the authorized release of three unclassified Navy videos, "one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015," which had circulated after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017. The statement said the department had determined after review that the release "does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems." A Pentagon spokesperson added that "the aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as 'unidentified.'"[^24]
### Navy patents on propulsion and gravity
[[Salvatore Pais]], an aerospace engineer at the [[Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division]] at Patuxent River, Maryland, is named as inventor on patents and applications assigned to the Department of the Navy, including "Craft Using An Inertial Mass Reduction Device," a "High Frequency Gravitational Wave Generator," an electromagnetic field generator, and "Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor."[^25]
US 10,144,532 B2, "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device," was filed on April 28, 2016 (application 15/141,270) and granted on December 4, 2018, with the Department of the Navy as original assignee; Google Patents lists it as expired for failure to pay maintenance fees effective January 9, 2023.[^26] US 10,135,366 B2, "Electromagnetic field generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field," was filed on July 24, 2015 (application 14/807,943) and granted on November 20, 2018.[^27] US 10,322,827 B2, "High frequency gravitational wave generator," was filed on February 14, 2017 (application 15/431,823) and granted on June 18, 2019.[^28] Application 15/678,672, "Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor," was filed on August 16, 2017 and published on February 21, 2019 as US 2019/0058105 A1; Google Patents lists its status as abandoned.[^29]
The War Zone reports that Dr. James Sheehy, Chief Technical Officer of the Naval Aviation Enterprise, wrote a letter dated December 15, 2017 supporting an appeal of the inertial mass reduction application and stating that "China is already investing significantly in this area."[^25]
### Early Navy UFO reporting
A Navy UFO fact sheet states that "there is no central office or activity in the Department of the Navy assigned the mission of collecting and maintaining information on UFO phenomenon." It records that from 1947 to 1969 the Air Force investigated reported sightings under [[Project Blue Book]].[^30] The same document set includes an Office of Naval Research information sheet, dated 03/29/99, on the "Philadelphia Experiment." That sheet traces the story to [[Morris K. Jessup]]'s 1955 book [[The Case for the UFO]] and to correspondence from [[Carlos Allende]], and says that in 1956 a copy of Jessup's book, with handwritten comments on UFOs, was mailed anonymously to ONR.[^30]
### Iran-Contra
Two Navy officers held National Security Council posts during the [[Iran-Contra Affair]]. Navy Vice Admiral [[John Poindexter]] was appointed President Reagan's national security adviser on December 4, 1985, succeeding [[Robert McFarlane]], and left the White House on November 25, 1986, when he was forced to resign after public disclosure of the diversion.[^31] Poindexter was indicted on March 16, 1988 on seven felony charges, was found guilty on April 7, 1990 on all five counts on which he was tried, and was sentenced on June 11, 1990 by Judge Harold H. Greene to six months in prison on each count. A three-judge appeals panel reversed the convictions on November 15, 1991 on the ground that his immunized testimony may have influenced the trial testimony of witnesses, and the indictment was dismissed in 1993 on the motion of the Independent Counsel.[^32] [[Lawrence Walsh]] concluded that the President's most senior advisers and the Cabinet members on the National Security Council participated in a strategy to make National Security Council staff members McFarlane, Poindexter and North the scapegoats whose sacrifice would protect the administration in its final two years.[^33] [[Paul B. Thompson]], a Navy commander, was detailed to the National Security Council staff in June 1983, became military assistant to McFarlane in January 1985 and also became NSC general counsel in June 1985, holding the dual post under Poindexter.[^34]
[[Oliver North]] was a Marine lieutenant colonel assigned to the National Security Council staff from 1981 until he was fired on November 25, 1986.[^35]
### USS Liberty
On June 8, 1967, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attacked the Navy intelligence ship [[USS Liberty Incident|USS Liberty]] in the Eastern Mediterranean, killing 34 crewmen and wounding 171. [[Seymour Hersh]] writes that [[Walworth Barbour]], the American ambassador to Israel, urged Washington to downplay the attack, and cites a declassified cable on file in the [[Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library]] in which Barbour, hours after the incident, reported that Israel did not intend to admit it and added: "Urge strongly that we too avoid publicity. [Liberty's] proximity to scene could feed Arab suspicions of U.S.-Israel collusion. . . . Israelis obviously shocked by error and tender sincere apologies." Hersh also reports that [[Clark Clifford]], at a National Security Council meeting the next day, said according to the NSC notes: "My concern is that we're not tough enough. Handle as if Arabs or USSR had done it."[^36]
Admiral [[John S. McCain Jr.]], Commander in Chief of U.S. Naval Forces Europe, ordered a Court of Inquiry on June 10, 1967 consisting of Rear Admiral [[Isaac C. Kidd Jr.]] as president and Captains [[Bernard J. Lauff]] and [[Bert M. Atkinson Jr.]] as members, with Captain [[Ward Boston Jr.]] and Lieutenant Commander Allen Feingersch as counsel and assistant counsel. The court met for the first time at 2314 on June 10 in closed session, and before closing on June 16 to deliberate it had taken the testimony of 19 witnesses and received 49 exhibits. McCain's first endorsement, dated June 18, 1967, described the attack as "an unprovoked attack by Israeli air and naval forces in international waters off the coast of the United Arab Republic," and stated: "The foregoing comments by the convening authority lead to an overall conclusion that the attack was in fact a mistake."[^37] The sixth endorsement, by the Commander, Naval Communications Command, dated January 5, 1968, concurred in the findings of fact pertaining to communications except finding number 40, stating that subsequent investigation had indicated that FBIS messages did not contribute to message delays.[^37]
The Joint Chiefs of Staff Fact Finding Team, headed by Major General Joseph R. Russ, USA, states in its report that "interference with the Naval Court of Inquiry was avoided," and that the team accepted the information the Navy Court of Inquiry had been able to deduce, as provided by the senior member of the court. The team's roster of persons visited lists Rear Admiral I. C. Kidd (Chairman, Board of Inquiry) and Captain B. M. Atkinson (Member) on June 15, 1967.[^38]
The NSA released a 1981 cryptologic history report, "Attack on a SIGINT Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty," in a less redacted version of a document first released in 1999, and on July 2, 2003 released three Hebrew-language recordings, English transcripts and three follow-up reports. The history states that within an hour of learning that the Liberty had been torpedoed, the Director of NSA sent a message to intercept sites requesting a special search for communications that might reflect the attack, and that one of the airborne platforms, a Navy EC-121, had collected voice conversations between Israeli helicopter pilots and the control tower at Hazor Airfield near Tel Aviv, in which the tower told helicopter 815 at 1431 hours that a warship "there which we attacked" had men in the water.[^39]
[^1]: William B. Herlands, Commissioner of Investigation, State of New York, report on the commutation of the sentence of Charles Luciano, September 17, 1954, introduction, "The Questions Answered," and "Synopsis of the Evidence," pp. 1 to 8, Thomas E. Dewey Papers, Series 13, University of Rochester Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/IN/RBSCP/ATTACHMENTS/Series-13-17-2-Herlands-report.pdf
[^2]: Herlands report, September 17, 1954, introduction and "Synopsis of the Evidence," pp. 1 and 8 to 9. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/IN/RBSCP/ATTACHMENTS/Series-13-17-2-Herlands-report.pdf
[^3]: U.S. Senate, Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce, *Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce*, Hearings, 82nd Congress, 1st session, Part 7 (New York-New Jersey), testimony of George H. White, pp. 1182 to 1183. https://archive.org/details/investigationofo07unit
[^4]: *Investigation of Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce*, Part 7, testimony of Charles R. Haffenden, pp. 1187 to 1198 (taken at the March 1951 New York sessions). https://archive.org/details/investigationofo07unit
[^5]: Rear Admiral Carl F. Espe, Director of Naval Intelligence, letter to William B. Herlands, Ser 9934P92, July 26, 1954, reproduced in the Herlands report, "Official Confirmation of the War-Aid Project," p. 11. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/IN/RBSCP/ATTACHMENTS/Series-13-17-2-Herlands-report.pdf
[^6]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control*, Times Books, 1979, chapter 2, pp. 35 to 36 (pagination of the Allen Lane/Penguin printing).
[^7]: Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, chapter 2, pp. 37 to 43 (same printing).
[^8]: U.S. Senate, Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, *Final Report*, Book I, *Foreign and Military Intelligence*, S. Rept. 94-755, 94th Congress, 2nd session (1976), chapter XVII, p. 387. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_I.pdf
[^9]: *Project MKULTRA, the CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification*, Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, U.S. Senate, 95th Congress, 1st session, August 3, 1977, colloquy of Admiral Turner and Senator Schweiker on subproject 54 (PDF pp. 44 to 45). https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hearings/95mkultra.pdf
[^10]: *Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 1977*, Hearings before the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Committee on Human Resources, U.S. Senate, 95th Congress, 1st session, on S. 1893, September 20 and 21, 1977, pp. 130 to 131 (running headers of the reprint). https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/media/publications/human_drug_testing_by_the_cia_1977_hearings_before_us_senate.pdf
[^11]: Jim Schnabel, *Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies*, Dell, 1997, Book Two (opening history of government psi research). Sole source for the Air Force and skipper denials and for the Bergier and Messadie account.
[^12]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers*, Book Two (Pat Price and Ingo Swann at Sugar Grove, 1973). Sole source for the security investigation passages.
[^13]: Central Intelligence Agency, OTS/CB Memo #76-18, memorandum for the record, "Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Investigation into Parapsychology," February 4, 1976, CIA-RDP96-00787R000200090006-7. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000200090006-7
[^14]: Stanford Research Institute, undated research summary on psychoenergetic processes, with tasks including shielded rooms, submarine tracking and physical effects, CIA-RDP96-00788R002000010004-6 (undated; its references run to 1977 publications). https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r002000010004-6
[^15]: Commander, Naval Intelligence Command, Ser 01/8116, memorandum to Director, Defense Intelligence Agency, "DoD Program on Remote Viewing," September 14, 1978, CIA-RDP96-00788R001200410025-8. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00788r001200410025-8
[^16]: Central Intelligence Agency, response to Senate Appropriations Committee congressionally directed action on STAR GATE, undated, CIA-RDP96-00789R002900010001-9. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00789r002900010001-9
[^17]: Schnabel, *Remote Viewers*, Book One (Fort Meade unit tasking). Sole source for the A-6 passage.
[^18]: David Fravor, oral statement, in *Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency*, Hearing before the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, Committee on Oversight and Accountability, House of Representatives, July 26, 2023, Serial No. 118-53. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg53022/html/CHRG-118hhrg53022.htm
[^19]: Ryan Graves, oral statement, same hearing, July 26, 2023. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-118hhrg53022/html/CHRG-118hhrg53022.htm
[^20]: Luis Elizondo, *Imminent: Inside the Pentagon's Hunt for UFOs*, William Morrow, 2024, chapter 15, "USS Roosevelt," pp. 139 to 145. Sole source for the twenty-two encounters and the videos' transmittal.
[^21]: U.S. Navy Chief of Information and N2/N6 Public Affairs, "Unidentified Aerial Phenomena RTQ," internal working document, statement attributed to Joseph Gradisher, April 2019 (updated April 24, 2019, 1525), released through The Black Vault. https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/RTQ_Unidentified-Aerial-Phenomen.pdf
[^22]: Deanna Paul, "How frustrated pilots got the Navy to stop dismissing their UFO sightings," *The Washington Post*, April 25, 2019, reprinted by the *Anchorage Daily News*: https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2019/04/25/how-frustrated-pilots-got-the-navy-to-stop-dismissing-ufo-sightings/
[^23]: "Navy Confirms UFO Videos Posted by Blink 182 Rocker Are Real and Should Not Have Been Released," NBC San Diego, September 18, 2019, quoting Navy spokesman Joseph Gradisher. https://www.nbcsandiego.com/news/national-international/navy-confirms-ufo-videos-are-real-and-should-not-have-been-released/1965555/
[^24]: Susan Gough, Department of Defense spokesperson, statement on release of three Navy videos, April 27, 2020, as quoted in "Pentagon declassifies Navy videos that purportedly show UFOs," ABC News, April 28, 2020: https://abc7ny.com/navy-ufo-videos-aliens-alien-caught-on-video-sightings/6134626/
[^25]: Brett Tingley and Tyler Rogoway, "Docs Show Navy Got 'UFO' Patent Granted By Warning Of Similar Chinese Tech Advances," *The War Zone*, updated June 28, 2019: https://twz.com/28729/docs-show-navy-got-ufo-patent-granted-by-warning-of-similar-chinese-tech-advances
[^26]: US Patent 10,144,532 B2, "Craft using an inertial mass reduction device," inventor Salvatore Cezar Pais, original assignee US Department of Navy (assignment record: Department of the Navy, Maryland), application 15/141,270, filed April 28, 2016, granted December 4, 2018. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10144532B2/en
[^27]: US Patent 10,135,366 B2, "Electromagnetic field generator and method to generate an electromagnetic field," inventor Salvatore Pais, assignee US Department of the Navy, application 14/807,943, filed July 24, 2015, granted November 20, 2018. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10135366B2/en
[^28]: US Patent 10,322,827 B2, "High frequency gravitational wave generator," inventor Salvatore Cezar Pais, original assignee US Department of the Navy, application 15/431,823, filed February 14, 2017, granted June 18, 2019. https://patents.google.com/patent/US10322827B2/en
[^29]: US Patent Application Publication 2019/0058105 A1, "Piezoelectricity-induced Room Temperature Superconductor," inventor Salvatore Cezar Pais, original assignee US Department of the Navy, application 15/678,672, filed August 16, 2017, published February 21, 2019. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190058105A1/en
[^30]: Department of the Navy, "UFO Fact Sheet," and Office of Naval Research Information Sheet, "Philadelphia Experiment; UFO's," dated 03/29/99, PDF mirrored at https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/UFOs/dod174.pdf
[^31]: Lawrence E. Walsh, *Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters*, vol. I, chapter 3, "United States v. John M. Poindexter," http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_03.htm
[^32]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, summary of prosecutions, entry for Poindexter, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm
[^33]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, executive summary, http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/execsum.htm
[^34]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, chapter 4, "Paul B. Thompson," http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_04.htm
[^35]: Walsh, *Final Report*, vol. I, chapter 2, "United States v. Oliver L. North," http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_02.htm
[^36]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*, Random House, 1991, chapter 12, "The Ambassador," pp. 167 to 168. Sole source for the Barbour passages; Hersh cites a declassified cable on file at the Lyndon B. Johnson Library and, for Clifford, the Johnson Library's National Security Council notes.
[^37]: U.S. Navy, Record of Proceedings, Court of Inquiry to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the armed attack on USS Liberty (AGTR-5) on 8 June 1967, with endorsements, as released by the Judge Advocate General: summary of events (PDF pp. 8 to 10), CINCUSNAVEUR first endorsement of June 18, 1967 (PDF pp. 34 to 38, paragraphs 2 and 15), and Naval Communications Command sixth endorsement (PDF p. 3). https://libertyincident.com/docs/CourtOfInquiry.pdf (the original is held by the U.S. Government; a photocopy is held as Liberty (Ship) Court of Inquiry records, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, collection 86041, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/kt4p30341f).
[^38]: Report of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Fact Finding Team, "USS Liberty Incident," June 1967, introduction and roster of persons visited. https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/terrorism/liberty/173.pdf
[^39]: National Security Agency, "Attack on a SIGINT Collector, the U.S.S. Liberty," U.S. Cryptologic History, Special Series, Crisis Collection, vol. 1, 1981, pp. 34 to 35 (declassified November 8, 2006, MDR 51712), copy at the National Security Archive, https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa10.pdf; release summary at https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/u-s-s-liberty-attack/

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---
created: 2024-05-11
updated: 2024-05-11
title: IBM
tags:
- IBM
- technology
- history
description: IBM, founded in 1911, is a multinational tech company specializing in computers and computing technologies. Known for inventing the relational database in 1969, it provided mainframe and minicomputers during the 1960s-70s, used by organizations and governments worldwide.
aliases:
- International Business Machines
- International Business Machines Corporation
- IBM Corporation
- Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company
category: "Private Organization"
summary: "International Business Machines (IBM) is a multinational technology company founded in 1911 and headquartered in Armonk, New York, whose mainframe and minicomputer systems were used by the government agencies that became targets of the PROMIS software distribution network."
start: 1911
location: "Armonk, New York, USA"
tags:
- Organization
- Private
- Technology
- Dehomag
- NaziGermany
- Holocaust
- LosAlamos
- SAGE
- NationalSecurityAgency
- Antitrust
- Apartheid
- PROMIS
- Inslaw
- USA
summary: "IBM is a computer company whose German subsidiary, by Edwin Black's account, supplied punch cards to Nazi Germany; it also built SAGE and NSA computers and was sued over South African identity records."
created: 2024-05-11
updated: 2026-10-07
relations:
- type: head_of
with: "[[Thomas J. Watson Sr.]]"
reverse: true
role: "president and chief executive"
start: 1924
fn: 2
- type: owned
with: "[[Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft]]"
role: "majority shareholder after Watson acquired 90 percent of Dehomag in 1922, per the Grossman complaint and Edwin Black"
start: 1922
fn: 2
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment]]"
role: "AN/FSQ-7 combat direction computer designed with MIT Lincoln Laboratory"
start: 1952
fn: 10
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[National Security Agency]]"
role: "HARVEST computer system, a Stretch derivative delivered January 1962"
start: 1958-04-30
end: 1962-01-01
fn: 11
- type: contractor_to
with: "[[Los Alamos]]"
role: "punch-card accounting machines for the critical-mass calculations, delivered April 4, 1944"
start: 1944-04-04
fn: 8
- type: partner_of
with: "[[INSLAW]]"
role: "co-marketing agreement for Enhanced PROMIS in the public sector, found by the bankruptcy court to have been entered between August and December 1982"
start: 1982-08-01
end: 1982-12-31
fn: 15
- type: prosecuted
with: "[[Department of Justice]]"
reverse: true
role: "Sherman Act monopolization defendant; complaint filed January 17, 1969, stipulation of dismissal filed January 8, 1982"
start: 1969-01-17
end: 1982-01-08
fn: 17
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Grossman v. International Business Machines]]"
role: "sole defendant in Holocaust-era class action, withdrawn March 2001"
start: 2001-02-12
end: 2001-03-29
fn: 7
- type: participant_in
with: "[[Khulumani v. Barclay National Bank]]"
role: "defendant named in Alien Tort Claims Act suit over apartheid-era conduct"
start: 2002-11-01
fn: 21
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Kenneth W. Dam]]"
reverse: true
role: "joined IBM after serving as deputy secretary of state"
start: 1985-06-14
fn: 13
- type: employed_by
with: "[[Richard L. Garwin]]"
reverse: true
role: "IBM scientist associated with the Thomas J. Watson Research Center"
fn: 26
---
> [!INFO] THIS IS NOT WIKIPEDIA
> This page is not all encompassing. The company is obviously much larger and deserving more detail than the scope of this page. Consequently, only general information and details relevant to other research thrusts are included.
International Business Machines Corporation, known as [[International Business Machines|IBM]], is a technology company headquartered in [[Armonk, New York]].[^1] It traces its origin to the [[Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company]], formed in 1911 by merger and renamed International Business Machines in 1924.[^2] [[Edgar F. Codd]] of the IBM Research Laboratory in San Jose, California, published his relational model of data in the June 1970 issue of the *Communications of the ACM*; the paper is marked as received in September 1969.[^3]
International Business Machines, or IBM as it’s commonly known, is a multinational tech and research company headquartered in Armonk, New York. It was founded in 1911. The company specializes in computers and computing technologies and has close ties with governments around the world (most infamously with Nazi Germany as part of the Holocaust).
### Dehomag and the Hollerith machines
In 1969, IBM invented the relational database. During the 1960’s and 70’s, IBM was a major provider of mainframe and later minicomputers. These large, powerful (for the time), and expensive machines were used by organizations like the [[LEAA]] or countries like [[Canada]] to run software including [[PROMIS]].
[[Thomas J. Watson Sr.]] joined the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company as general manager in 1914 and became its president within a year.[^2] [[Herman Hollerith]] licensed his patents in 1910 to the German businessman [[Willy Heidinger]], who created [[Deutsche Hollerith Maschinen Gesellschaft]], known as [[Dehomag]].[^4] According to the complaint in the 2001 suit described below, which cites a 1943 letter from Heidinger, Heidinger was forced by 1922 to relinquish 90 percent ownership of Dehomag to Watson, which reduced it to a subsidiary of the parent company.[^2] [[Edwin Black]] writes that Watson raised his demand from 51 percent to 90 percent, that Heidinger felt "cornered," and that Heidinger kept approximately 10 percent of the stock.[^4]
Richard L. Garwin, a prominent scientist, was associated with IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He was a member of an ad hoc panel of distinguished scientists tasked with studying the VELA data related to a probable nuclear explosion in the South Indian Ocean in 1979. Garwin was known for his independence as a government consultant.[^1]
Black writes that Hollerith decided that his systems would be leased, not sold, and that this decision "would dominate all major IBM business transactions for the next century."[^4] Black states that Dehomag computed the 1933 German census, which recorded about half a million Jews, and that the 1939 census was designed to identify the so-called "racial Jews."[^4] Black opens his account with a scene in which Watson's company "custom-designed and leased the Hollerith card sorting system to the Third Reich for use at Bergen-Belsen and most of the other concentration camps."[^4]
The reviewer [[Terry W. Hartle]], writing in the [[Christian Science Monitor]] in March 2001, summarized Black's thesis as being that Nazi Germany leased several thousand punch-card machines from Dehomag, used them for the population censuses of 1933 and 1937, and so was able to identify Jews and target them for asset confiscation. Hartle wrote that Black "never convincingly demonstrates that IBM knew about the deadly uses to which its technology would be put," and that Black found no "smoking gun" showing that Watson knew how the machines were used. Hartle also wrote that Watson "was certainly naive and probably indifferent."[^5]
The complaint alleges that IBM Hollerith machines were located in concentration camps as early as 1940.[^2]
### The Order of the German Eagle
In 1937 Watson received the [[Order of the German Eagle|Merit Cross of the German Eagle]] with Star at the [[International Chamber of Commerce]] congress in [[Berlin]]. Hartle describes the award as ranked second in prestige only to the German Grand Cross, and as designed to honor foreign nationals who made themselves deserving to the Third Reich.[^5] Black writes that the medal was bestowed by [[Hjalmar Schacht]] as newsreel cameras whirred.[^4] [[Sam Jaffe]] wrote in [[Bloomberg]] in April 2001 that Hitler had personally draped the medal over Watson's chest in 1937.[^6]
Black writes that on May 16, 1940, the day after Holland capitulated, Watson sent a note to Secretary of State [[Cordell Hull]] asking whether the government wanted him to return the medal, and that Hull replied that the decision rested entirely with Watson.[^4] On June 6, 1940, Watson returned the medal to [[Adolf Hitler]] with a letter castigating Hitler's Nazi policies.[^6] Black quotes the letter as stating that "the present policies of your government are contrary to the causes for which I have been working and for which I received the decoration," and writes that Watson released it to the newspapers. Black states that Hitler's newspaper, the *Volkischer Beobachter*, reviled Watson in response and that Dehomag's management in Berlin reacted with alarm.[^4]
### The 2001 class action
The complaint in a class action against IBM is dated February 2001 in its signature block, with the day left blank. A [[Jewish Telegraphic Agency]] report dates the filing to February 12, 2001.[^7] The suit was brought in the [[Eastern District of New York]] by Thomas Grossman, Fanny Aizenberg, Oldrich Stransky, Felix Kolmer and Anatoli Markowitsch Manitsh, on behalf of themselves and others similarly situated, with IBM as the only defendant. The complaint states that its claims rest on the conduct of IBM in the United States, distinct from the conduct of its German subsidiary, which it describes as the successor to Dehomag and which it states is not a defendant. Count I alleges violations of customary international law. Count II alleges unjust enrichment. The prayer for relief seeks class certification, an injunction against destruction of documents about IBM's role in the Holocaust, and an order that IBM open its archives and produce data derived from its Hollerith technology.[^2]
The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, [[Michael Hausfeld]], announced in March 2001 that the suit was being withdrawn so that Germany would have "no excuses whatsoever" to withhold payments. Hausfeld said the lawsuit could be refiled if IBM's archives remained closed. The [[United States Department of State]] reported that Germany had indicated the lawsuit endangered the "legal peace" condition attached to the German compensation arrangement, under which companies that paid into the fund, including IBM's German subsidiary, would not face further legal claims for their activities during the Holocaust.[^7]
### Punch-card computing at Los Alamos
[[Wallace Eckert]] persuaded IBM in 1937 to support the Watson Astronomical Computing Bureau at [[Columbia University]] with Punch Card Accounting Machines, and [[Dana Mitchell]], who had worked in Eckert's laboratory, recommended the machines to [[Hans Bethe]] in the fall of 1943 for the critical-mass calculations at [[Los Alamos]].[^8] The machines were delivered on April 4, 1944. Because of the classified nature of the site, IBM was not told where they were going and could not send a maintenance man.[^8] [[John von Neumann]] urged Los Alamos in September 1943 to pursue the implosion method and to use the machines for the calculations, and the first program on them solved a set of hydrodynamics equations.[^8] In May 1944 the machine operator John Johnston suggested a prototype multiplier he had seen at IBM; Los Alamos "decided to have IBM build triple-product multipliers and machines that could divide," three were ordered after a visit to an IBM vice president in early June 1944, and they were delivered in late 1944 and in use in November 1944.[^8]
### SAGE air defense computers
The AN/FSQ-7 computer of the [[Semi-Automatic Ground Environment]] (SAGE) air defense system was designed by [[MIT Lincoln Laboratory]] and IBM, and was based on the earlier design of the Whirlwind computer at the [[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]]. A 1959 [[MITRE Corporation]] report describes it as a binary, parallel machine with a 32-bit word, a 250,000-word core memory, an operating speed of 75,000 instructions per second and 60,000 vacuum tubes, consisting of two computers of which one was active while the other stood by, monitored by about 100 Air Force operators at each direction center.[^9] IBM states that it handled hardware development and manufacturing for SAGE while [[Burroughs]] oversaw inter-site communications, [[Western Electric]] contributed building construction and the System Development Corporation, part of the [[RAND Corporation]], delivered software, and that between 1952 and 1955 80 percent of the company's computing revenue came from SAGE.[^10]
### The HARVEST computer for the National Security Agency
IBM representatives contacted the [[National Security Agency]] in May and August 1955 about a high-performance system, the [[IBM 7030 Stretch|Stretch]] program, which they said would have one hundred to two hundred times the power of the best existing machine.[^11] IBM proposed that the first Stretch system be built and delivered for a fixed price of $3,500,000. The agency rejected the offer, and instead awarded two study contracts of eighteen months, SILO, for high-speed memory development at $821,203, and PLANTATION, later renamed RANCHO, at $828,340, which led to the agency-oriented system HARVEST.[^11] A third study contract, TRACTOR, for a high-performance tape system, began in January 1957 at $337,443.[^11] IBM delivered a preliminary HARVEST manual of operation on May 1, 1957. In April 1958 the agency presented the formal purchase description, and two letter contracts were ratified by IBM on April 30, 1958.[^11] The system was delivered in January 1962, about fifteen months after the original target date, and its cost exceeded the original estimate by about 32 percent.[^11] The NSA history also states that the agency's PLANTATION (RANCHO) contract for the HARVEST design, together with its support for memory and magnetic tape research, influenced IBM's 7030 (Stretch) machine, and that IBM based much of its early computer philosophy on the agency's experience with large data-processing problems.[^11]
### Export controls and the Soviet Union
In August 1984 the national security affairs assistant [[Robert McFarlane]] recommended that President [[Ronald Reagan]] approve the reexport of a used IBM central processing unit, which [[Austrian Airlines]] had applied to send to [[Hungary]]. The unit would increase the computing capacity of a Soviet computer at the [[University of Budapest]] used for teaching and research. McFarlane wrote that the unit "does not carry with it significant technology loss risks," though it conflicted with guidelines set out in a 1974 directive that he described as no longer relevant.[^12]
[[Kenneth W. Dam]], who had served as deputy to Secretary of State [[George P. Shultz]] since October 1982, left the Department of State on June 14, 1985 for a job at IBM.[^13]
[[Ari Ben-Menashe]] wrote in 1992 that [[TransCapital Corporation]] was allowed in 1986 and 1987 to export high-tech IBM computers to the [[Soviet Union]] despite a general ban on such equipment to the East Bloc, and that [[Robert Gates]] lifted the barriers. He wrote that when the Soviets wanted [[PROMIS]], [[Degem]] technicians fitted it to the IBM computers, complete with the trap door.[^14] Ben-Menashe also wrote that [[Medan Computers Ltd.]], the Israeli franchise of [[Honeywell]] whose technicians were military intelligence reservists, pointed out that its computers would not suit a PROMIS installation in [[Guatemala]], and was then arranged to broker IBM equipment there.[^14]
### PROMIS and Inslaw
The bankruptcy court that heard the case of [[INSLAW]] found that earlier versions of PROMIS ran on Digital Equipment Corporation PDP 11/70 computers and on computers sold by IBM, Wang, Honeywell and Burroughs, and that between August and December 1982 INSLAW entered a co-marketing agreement with IBM for the public sector, after IBM had asked for evidence that the Department of Justice consented to INSLAW's marketing plans for Enhanced PROMIS.[^15] An April 22, 1983 Justice Department memorandum by Jack Rugh, acting assistant director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys' management systems office, quoted in the House Judiciary Committee's 1992 report, states that all four [[LEAA]] versions of PROMIS (DEC, IBM, Wang and Burroughs) were supplied to bidders for use in benchmarking their equipment.[^16] The same report records [[Michael Riconosciuto]]'s allegation that modified PROMIS software was ported to systems at the [[Royal Canadian Mounted Police]] and the [[Canadian Security Intelligence Service]] and that [[Earl Brian]] brokered the sale to the government of [[Canada]]; the report does not state which computer hardware the Canadian agencies used.[^16] The bankruptcy court's judgments were reversed on May 7, 1991 by the [[United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit]] on primarily jurisdictional grounds.[^16]
### Antitrust case, 1969 to 1982
The Justice Department filed a complaint on January 17, 1969 alleging that IBM had monopolized the market for general purpose electronic digital computer systems in violation of section 2 of the Sherman Act.[^17] In 1974 Chief Judge [[David N. Edelstein]] of the [[Southern District of New York]] ruled on the privilege claims over documents generated by the so-called Cravath, Swaine & Moore task forces and IBM's Office of Business Practices, holding most of them privileged as work product or attorney-client communications unless their content showed otherwise.[^18]
The case had been pending for thirteen years, at a cost of between $1 million and $2 million a year, when [[William Baxter]], assistant attorney general for antitrust, ended it in January 1982.[^19] Some career trial staff had wanted the case continued. Baxter argued that under Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, IBM could not be sued simply because it held a monopoly, and that the monopoly must have been obtained illegally. He said the government probably would lose the case, and that for it to stretch on another twenty years would be "the ultimate horror."[^19] The stipulation of dismissal, signed by Baxter and IBM's counsel and filed on January 8, 1982, recites that the Antitrust Division began a review of the case in June 1981 and concluded that the case was "without merit." Baxter's memorandum stated that continued litigation offered "little prospect of victory or meaningful recovery."[^17]
Edelstein criticized the dismissal in a [[Wall Street Journal]] article of January 26, 1982, and at a hearing on March 2, 1982 placed in the record letters indicating that Baxter had served as a consultant to IBM during the early stages of the private antitrust suit brought by [[Memorex]]. On August 13, 1982 the [[Second Circuit]] issued a writ of mandamus in the matter.[^17]
### South African computer systems and apartheid litigation
A report by Thomas Conrad in the April 1982 *Multinational Monitor* states that IBM received its first order for an "electronic tabulator" in 1952 from Pretoria's Division of Economics, that the Interior Department ran its population registry on two IBM 370 computers storing details on seven million people classified as coloureds, Asians and whites, and that the passbook system for those classified as black was maintained on a different computer. Conrad wrote that IBM reportedly bid on the contract to run the pass system and lost to the British firm [[ICL]], that IBM officials said the Interior Department installation was not objectionable because it did not cover the black population, and that a 1980 South African software catalog listed an IBM "Law Enforcement System" which IBM at first did not deny and later said was not available in South Africa.[^20]
The [[Khulumani Support Group]] filed a complaint in the Eastern District of New York in November 2002, according to a report of the filing. The complaint states that "for several years IBM knowingly rented a Model 370 computer system to the South African department of the interior which [was] used for the regime's national identity system," and that the machine stored files on seven million people the regime designated as coloureds, Asians and whites.[^21]
On October 12, 2007 the Second Circuit, in an Alien Tort Claims Act case in which IBM appears among the defendants-appellees in the caption, held that a plaintiff may plead a theory of aiding and abetting liability under the statute. It vacated the district court's dismissal of the ATCA claims and remanded.[^22]
On April 8, 2009 the Southern District of New York held that the Ntsebeza plaintiffs had adequately pleaded that IBM aided and abetted the South African government's denationalization of black South Africans, and the crime of apartheid. The plaintiffs alleged that IBM sold the South African government and the governments of the bantustans computers used to register individuals, strip them of South African citizenship and segregate them, that IBM employees assisted in developing software and support designed to produce identity documents, that IBM sold its South African subsidiary to local employees in 1987, and that it executed a buy-back provision in 1992. The court found a plausible inference that IBM understood the nature of the projects it assisted, and held that the plaintiffs had not pleaded a claim of aiding and abetting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment against IBM, because computers were not an essential element of that crime.[^1] The Khulumani plaintiffs' claims against IBM were dismissed with leave to amend.[^1]
On July 27, 2015 the Second Circuit affirmed the August 28, 2014 order of the district court in the claims against [[Ford Motor Company]] and IBM, holding that the plaintiffs had not rebutted the presumption against extraterritoriality under the Alien Tort Statute.[^23]
### Israel
In November 1994 the [[National Security Council]] approved a supercomputer sale to [[Israel]], after five federal agencies fought for months over whether to allow Cray Research to sell its machine to a network of Israeli universities. Approved IBM systems, by composite theoretical performance, went to [[Tel Aviv University]] (6,796.1), [[Hebrew University]] (1,421.0), [[Bar-Ilan University]] (1,421.0), the [[Technion]] (1,278.1) and the [[Weizmann Institute]] (1,278.1). The [[Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control]] reported that a 1987 Pentagon-sponsored study found the Technion to be helping design Israel's nuclear missile re-entry vehicle and that Hebrew University supplied physicists to the nuclear laboratory at Soreq.[^24]
### Richard Garwin and the Vela data
[[Richard L. Garwin]] was associated with IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. [[Seymour Hersh]] describes him as a member of an ad hoc panel of distinguished scientists tasked with studying the [[VELA Satellite|Vela]] data related to a probable nuclear explosion in the South Indian Ocean in 1979, and as known for independence as a government consultant.[^25] The [[National Security Archive]] describes Garwin as then with IBM's James Watson Laboratory at Columbia University and the body as a White House panel chaired by [[Jack Ruina]], on which Garwin served. It states that Garwin, who had first read the Vela data as indicating a nuclear event, changed his view while on the panel, and quotes an October 19, 1979 letter in which Garwin wrote that "I would bet 2 to 1 in favor of the hypothesis" that the incident was a nuclear explosion.[^26]
### Footnotes
[^1]: Hersh, Seymour M. *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy*. Random House, 1991. Chapter 11.
[^1]: *In re South African Apartheid Litigation* (*Ntsebeza v. Daimler AG*), 617 F. Supp. 2d 228 (S.D.N.Y. Apr. 8, 2009) (headquarters of IBM in Armonk; aiding and abetting denationalization and apartheid pleaded against IBM; Khulumani claims against IBM dismissed with leave to amend, amended complaint due May 1, 2009). https://static.case.law/f-supp-2d/617/cases/0228-01.json
[^2]: Complaint, *Grossman v. International Business Machines Corp.* (E.D.N.Y., signature block dated "February __, 2001"), including footnote 3 of the complaint on the Dehomag and Watson history, paragraphs 19 and 22, and counts I and II. Copy from the Wayback Machine raw capture: https://web.archive.org/web/2016id_/https://www.asser.nl/upload/documents/DomCLIC/Docs/NLP/Switzerland/Grossman_v_IBM_US_10-02-2001.pdf. Sections citing this note state the plaintiffs' allegations as the complaint states them.
[^3]: E. F. Codd, "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks," *Communications of the ACM* 13, no. 6 (June 1970), pp. 377-387 (author's affiliation: IBM Research Laboratory, San Jose; "Received September, 1969; revised February, 1970"). https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~zives/03f/cis550/codd.pdf
[^4]: Edwin Black, *IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America's Most Powerful Corporation* (Crown, 2001; page numbers here are those of the 2002 paperback printing with the new afterword): Hollerith leasing policy, pp. 26-27; Hollerith's 1910 license to Heidinger and the creation of Dehomag, p. 30; Watson's 90 percent demand and Heidinger's 10 percent, pp. 44 and 75; Dehomag and the 1933 census, p. 89; 1939 census, p. 169; Bergen-Belsen scene, p. 22; award of the Merit Cross, pp. 131-134; Watson's note to Hull of May 16, 1940, the reply (letter of Hull to Watson dated May 20, 1940, per Black's endnote, IBM files) and the June 6, 1940 letter, pp. 213-217; reaction in Germany and at Dehomag, p. 219. Lending copy: https://archive.org/details/ibmholocaustt00blac. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^5]: Terry W. Hartle, "An eager vendor in deadly computations," review of Edwin Black, *IBM and the Holocaust*, *Christian Science Monitor*, March 2001. https://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0301/p16s1.html
[^6]: Sam Jaffe, Bloomberg, April 12, 2001. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2001-04-11/ibm-the-holocaust-and-my-grandfather. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^7]: "IBM Holocaust suit dropped," *Jewish Telegraphic Agency*, March 29, 2001 (dateline Washington). https://www.jta.org/2001/03/29/default/ibm-holocaust-suit-dropped. Sole source for the withdrawal quotations as reported.
[^8]: [[B. J. Archer]], "The Los Alamos Computing Facility during the Manhattan Project," Los Alamos National Laboratory, LA-UR-21-20164 (draft, February 17, 2021), pp. 1-4. Archer cites R. B. Lazarus et al., "Computing at LASL in the 1940s and 1950s," LA-6943-H, and L. Hoddeson et al., *Critical Assembly*, for the April 4, 1944 delivery date. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.05705
[^9]: D. R. Israel, *The Integration of Air Traffic Control and Air Defense*, MITRE Corporation, SR-6, September 1959 (Defense Documentation Center copy), pp. 3-4. https://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/www.bitsavers.org/pdf/mit/mitre/charm/ESD-TDR-63-390_The_Integration_of_Air_Traffic_Control_and_Air_Defense_195909.pdf
[^10]: IBM, "SAGE," IBM Heritage. https://www.ibm.com/history/sage. Sole source for the division of work and the 80 percent revenue figure, which are IBM's own statements.
[^11]: [[Samuel S. Snyder]], *History of NSA General-Purpose Electronic Digital Computers* (Department of Defense, 1964): IBM influence and early computer philosophy, p. 7; Stretch contacts of 1955 and fixed-price offer, pp. 40-41; SILO, PLANTATION and TRACTOR contracts, pp. 41-42; May 1, 1957 manual, p. 42; April 1958 purchase description and April 30, 1958 letter contracts, p. 45; January 1962 delivery and 32 percent cost overrun, pp. 45-46. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/3121322/Document-02.pdf
[^12]: Memorandum, Robert McFarlane to Ronald Reagan, August 1, 1984, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981-1988*, vol. X, Eastern Europe, doc. 30. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v10/d30
[^13]: Memorandum, Kenneth W. Dam to George P. Shultz, June 12, 1985, *Foreign Relations of the United States, 1981-1988*, vol. V, Soviet Union, March 1985-October 1986, doc. 40, note 1. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v05/d40
[^14]: Ari Ben-Menashe, *Profits of War: Inside the Secret U.S.-Israeli Arms Network* (TrineDay, 1992). Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^15]: *In re Inslaw, Inc.*, 83 B.R. 89 (Bankr. D.D.C. Jan. 25, 1988), findings of fact 34 (PROMIS versions on PDP 11/70, IBM, Wang, Honeywell and Burroughs computers) and 192 and 202 (IBM request for the Department of Justice letter; co-marketing agreement). https://static.case.law/br/83/cases/0089-01.json
[^16]: U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary, *The INSLAW Affair: Investigative Report*, H. Rept. 102-857 (September 10, 1992): LEAA versions, p. 47; Riconosciuto's allegation on the Canadian agencies, p. 52; appeal of May 7, 1991, pp. 39-40. https://archive.org/details/InslawAffairInvestigativeReport. Sole source for the Riconosciuto allegation as recorded by the committee.
[^17]: *In re International Business Machines Corp.*, 687 F.2d 591 (2d Cir. Aug. 13, 1982), Background section (docket *United States v. International Business Machines Corp.*, 69 Civ. 200, S.D.N.Y., filed January 17, 1969). https://static.case.law/f2d/687/cases/0591-01.json
[^18]: *United States v. International Business Machines Corp.*, 66 F.R.D. 154 (S.D.N.Y. June 27, 1974), No. 69 Civ. 200 (DNE). https://static.case.law/frd/66/cases/0154-01.json
[^19]: "Impact of AT&T, IBM decisions," *Christian Science Monitor*, January 11, 1982. https://www.csmonitor.com/1982/0111/011144.html
[^20]: Thomas Conrad, "U.S. Data Processing Corporations Are Supplying South Africa with the Brains of Its Military and Police Services," *Multinational Monitor* 3, no. 4 (April 1982). https://www.multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1982/04/conrad.html. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^21]: "South Africa: IBM, ICL Accused of Apartheid Collaboration," allAfrica, November 15, 2002, quoting the Khulumani complaint as filed in the Eastern District of New York. https://allafrica.com/stories/200211150560.html. Sole source for the quotation as reported.
[^22]: *Khulumani v. Barclay National Bank Ltd.*, 504 F.3d 254 (2d Cir. Oct. 12, 2007) (per curiam). https://static.case.law/f3d/504/cases/0254-01.json
[^23]: *Balintulo v. Ford Motor Co.*, 796 F.3d 160 (2d Cir. July 27, 2015). https://static.case.law/f3d/796/cases/0160-01.json
[^24]: "Israel Gets High-Speed Computers," Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, page dated January 1, 1995. https://wisconsinproject.org/israel-gets-high-speed-computers
[^25]: Seymour M. Hersh, *The Samson Option: Israel's Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy* (Random House, 1991), chapter 11. Sole source for the passages so cited.
[^26]: National Security Archive, "Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash, September 1979," December 6, 2016. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2016-12-06/vela-incident-south-atlantic-mystery-flash-september-1979