The DISC Debate

Bob Harris contributed the following correspondence on the topic of the existence of Defense Industrial Security Command. The Torbitt Document names DISC as the police agency behind the Kennedy assassination. For background on this debate, see the Steamshovelbook, NASA, Nazis & JFK. Bob Harris is a stand-up comedian, Jeopardy champion, and longtime writer for National Lampoon who has also given serious lectures on covert politics at over 250 colleges nationwide. His commentaries now air daily on CBS News radio in Los Angeles, and his columns appear weekly in a dozen alternative newsweeklies and monthly in Z magazine. His online archive is at www.goodthink.com/harris.html. Re DISC: yes, apparently it exists, but evidently not in DC under another name. When I mentioned it once in passing to a close friend who works pushing papers for a defense contractor and has a pretty high clearance, he casually said, "oh, you mean Disco." Disco? "Yeah, Disco, those are the people who keep all the files on anyone with a security clearance." (The "o" stands for "organization.") My friend thought that everyone knew what Disco was. Probably everyone he works with does. If he's right, certainly anyone who processed clearances would, and that would be thousands of people. I've since asked two other folks I know who have clearances; one confirmed, one claimed (truthfully, I think) ignorance. The address given in the Torbitt Document (1064 W. Broad St. in Columbus, Ohio, if memory serves), could have been correct at the time, but I was there once and it's still a federal building, except I seem to recall it was a GSA storage facility or something like that. I suppose it could have some secret offices, but that sounds a little too James Bondian for my tastes. My friend thinks it's now in Alabama, possibly at the big Huntsville NASA facility. He also seems to think Disco was always a NASA thing. Apparently, Disco was/is a classified aspect of what (I think) was called the Industrial Security Act of 1957, which mandated that all contractors doing classified work maintain files and run internal anti-communist surveillance. You'll find what I'm trying to remember in Peter Dale Scott's book Deep Politics And The Death of JFK.As you probably know, Scott proposes the possibility that Oswald became an internal security dangle, both at JCS in Dallas and Reily in New Orleans, possibly even at the TSBD, where where another employee, Joe Molina, was under some sort of investigation. This would sure explain all those Reilly workers who got jobs at NASA. Unless I'm mistaken, Linda Hunt notes in Secret Agendathe Lodge Act of 1950, which made it easier for defense contractors to hire Paperclip exiles than America citizens. Many of the hired exiles went, of course, into anti-communist security. This might Oswald's milieu of Soviet exiles in the DFW area as a Disco thing, not a CIA thing. That Albert Jenner, who Scott notes was legal counsel to General Dynamics, was put in charge of the conspiracy segment of the WR screams out confirmation of this hypothesis. This is in the WC testimony, but highly overlooked (except by Scott and on my CD/ROM): Oswald's first attempt to get a job in DFW was a phone call to Max Clark, a former anti-communist security officer at General Dynamics. This is utterly wrong is Oswald was a real commie, but makes perfect sense if he's a free-lance Disco dangle. Not that Jenner mentioned that in the WR. I also suspect there was a Disco or similar connection to the Texas Employment Commission's contact with Oswald, which would explain the way the folks there got the hell out of dodge after Dealey Plaza. Wandering into the deep end, of course DISC/Disco imaginably also fits w/King and RFK shootings as the source for intel access both to Ray's Canadian aliases and Thane Cesar via his previous employment at (I think) Lockheed... notice I said imaginably. Now if you'll excuse me, Scully, Mulder, and Jolly West are at the door. If I don't know you tomorrow, please don't be offended. ________

More On Maury Island

Ron Halbritter first examined the Maury Island incident in Steamshovel Press #12, uncovering the connection of the famous UFO incident to JFK assassination figure Guy Bannister. Ron Halbritter has written at length on Maury Island in major magazines, and has been featured on the television show Sightings discussing the topic. Steamshovel currently plans a volume on the subject for release early next year by IllumiNet Press.

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THE TRUTH BEHIND MEN IN BLACK by Jenny Randles (St. Martin) and

ALIEN AGENDA by Jim Marrs (HarperCollins) reviewed by Ron Halbritter

Woe, woe, woe is me. Two books that include the Maury Island incident and two respected writers crash and burn. The big problem is that they appear to believe what other people have written without taking the basic steps of confirming the copied data.

On page 31 of her MIB book, Jenny Randles says that Harold Dahl, fearing damage from the UFO with mechanical trouble above him, "fled for the safety of some caves."

Jenny, where did these caves come from? There are no caves on Maury island and there doesn’t seem to be any references to the caves in statements by Harold Dahl, Fred Crisman, Kenneth Arnold, Captain Emil Smith or by the reporters Paul Lance and Ted Morello. Note the SIGHTINGS television episode f February 12, 1997, where the Reverend Bob Le Roy is sitting on the gunnel of a boat with the Maury Island location behind him . You can see the beach, trees and some steep bluffs, but no caves. (Bob Le Roy’s brother, Barney Le Roy was a witness to the Maury Island UFO and can identify the correct location to within 50 feet.)

Jenny Randles

On page 37 and 38 Jenny Randles, refers to the much quoted Harold T. Wilkins investigation of 1951. Wilkins describes his attempt in Flying Saucers On The Attack , page 62.

"I wrote an air mail letter from Bexleyheath, Kent, England, to Chrisman, at Tacoma, on January 23, 1951... was returned, arriving back at my English address in Kent, on April 7, 1951. I had endorsed the front of my air letter asking that it be forwarded to Mr. Chrisman’s private address, if he were no longer in the US Coastguard Service. Someone at Tacoma had written on the letter: "Not Coast Guard". ... and it was returned to me undelivered. Yet, it is certain that someone in the Coast Guard Service knew where Mr. Chrisman had gone and declined to forward the letter to him.

Wilkins wrote a single letter to the wrong NAME ( it’s Crisman, not Chrisman) and sent to the wrong address. Crisman was not ever associated with the Coast Guard and "Not Coast Guard" seems an appropriate response. No one in the Coast Guard knew Crisman nor had an obligation to track him down to deliver a letter. Dahl and Crisman were "patrolling for logs", a time-honored method for Pacific Northwest fishermen to meet their bills when the fishing is bad. Loose logs in the bay are not only a hazard to navigation, but are worth cash at the lumber companies. Ray Palmer changed "patrolling for logs" to "Harbor Patrol" and Wilkins assumed "Harbor Patrol" meant the US Coast Guard. I wonder what would happen if I wrote, "Jenny Randles, c/o RAF, England.

Much has been made of the "disappearance" of Harold Dahl, and Fred Crisman because the truth is not exciting enough to be good journalism. In fact, Dahl had to make payments on his 83' ex- minesweeper, and with the loss of his boom of logs during the UFO event had his boat repossessed by the finance company. Dahl moved twenty miles south to Tenino, Washington, where he started a used furniture/second hand store and lived peacefully until his death in 1982. Crisman "disappeared" by using his G.I. Bill and attending the University of Oregon to become a school teacher.

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Behind Fox Mulder’s desk in The X-Files, hangs a poster that states, "I want to Believe!" and so it is when one picks up Alien Agenda. I want to believe, not in aliens, but in Jim Marrs. I want to believe that he has done the research and combed his facts as carefully as he did in Crossfire, The Plot That Killed Kennedy. I want to believe that this is an author I can trust, someone I can quote as an authority.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the case. One example, is the Maury Island incident. Marrs spends 20 pages (79- 99) discussing the Maury Island case, quoting at length from Paris Flammonde’s book UFO EXIST! and throughout it appears that Marrs didn’t notice that Paris Flammonde didn’t do any original research; Flammonde simply quoted from the Kenneth Arnold / Ray Palmer book, Coming of the Saucers. Doesn’t the legal community call that hearsay?

Marrs also uses as a reference UFO’s the Final Answer by David and Therese Marie Barclay. Readers will recall that Kenneth Arnold first observed "flying saucers" while searching for marine C-46 that had crashed in the cascade mountains with 35 marines aboard. Eight months after the C-46 crash, while investigating the Maury Island case, two Army Intelligence officers were killed when their B-25 crashed. The Barclay’s research was so poorly done that on page 109 of their book they placed the missing marines aboard Davidson and Brown’s B-25. Mr. Marrs, this not a reliable source.

And how did Jim Marrs, famous for his investigation into the Kennedy assassination overlook the curious business that Guy Bannister, the FBI agent who investigated Kenneth Arnold, was the same Guy Bannister that District Attorney Jim Garrison two decades later would accuse of participating in the Kennedy conspiracy.

And that is just the beginning, for decades, there have been privately circulating a manuscript called The Easy Papers. The manuscript claims to be a service record of Fred Crisman, as a CIA "internal disruptor". Shame on Jim Marrs for giving credence to this piece of nonsense. Those who have actually studied the document realize it was written in the very distinct style of Fred Crisman himself. The contents of The Easy Papers are at best simply silly. It begins, as all CIA reports must, with the hyperbole, "Lord Help us if Crisman finds out about this report".

The body of the report consists of a Fred Crisman resume, with an explantions that all those jobs he got fired from were actually CIA assignments and he claims he was getting paid to "disrupt".

In real life, between 1953 and 1960 Crisman had, and lost teaching positions at Elgin, Oregon; Huntingdon, Oregon; Tacoma, Washington; Buckley, Washington; Tacoma, Washington, Longview, Washington; Salem, Oregon and finally from 1960 to 1963 at Rainier, Oregon.

 

Examples of statements from the Easy Papers with Ron Halbritter's commentary.

Steamshovel!