I don’t think Louis Jolyon West wrote the research proposal to develop a hypnotic messenger after all*

*But that doesn’t mean we should throw out our entire theory

When you’ve read as many MKULTRA documents as I have lately, you get to know people. You learn what their favorite subjects are. Their pet words and phrases. You recognize their go-to stats and data points when they’re sharing their expertise with a new audience or making a pitch for research dollars. You learn how they like to format a page as soon as they’ve cranked a sheet of onionskin paper into the old Smith Corona. You develop a feel for their gloriously, uniquely idiosyncratic THEM-ness. 

Sometimes, if a person has authored a lot of works and those documents have made their way into the public arena, we can identify something else they’ve written, even without being told who the author was. Even if their name is blacked-out. We can tell because it has their DNA all over it, figuratively speaking.

For example: let’s say that a person in the future stumbles upon an old document. The writer in question is going on and on about the topic of Ronald Tammen, her FOIA requests to the FBI and CIA that have been largely ignored, and a missing interview with Carl Knox’s former secretary. Some of her other quirks include a predilection for the word “ostensibly”; a tendency to use “who” even if “whom” is probably correct (but who the heck really knows?); and an unapologetic fondness for the Q&A format. If the document finder has ever been to this blogsite, I think they could easily conclude that the author was yours truly. This is who (whom?) I’ve become, DNA-wise. 

(NOTE: We won’t be discussing AI-generated content at this time, which, as I’m sure you can imagine, is a topic that I find concerning. Please be assured that every word on this blogsite is written by yours truly. Personally, I think writing is a craft that should be performed by an honest-to-goodness human if other humans are supposed to relate, deep down, to what they have to say. Besides, isn’t human-to-human connection what writing—not to mention life here on planet earth—is all about? Controversial, I know. OK, moving on.)

And so, Good Man readers, after getting to know several key MKULTRA players a lot better lately, I find myself forced to modify my initial theory by reporting to you that Louis Jolyon West did not, I repeat did not, write the proposal to develop a hypnotic messenger during the summer of 1957.

George Hoben Estabrooks did.

I can see you have questions.

Who’s George Hoben Estabrooks?

George Hoben Estabrooks (his friends called him Esty, so we will too) was born in 1895 in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, a beautiful and vibrant city on the Bay of Fundy, which is known for its primo whale watching. His education was about as stellar as you can get. He received his undergraduate degree from Acadia University, in Nova Scotia; he attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar; and he earned his Ph.D. from Harvard. He became a psychology professor at Colgate University in Hamilton, NY, specializing in both educational psychology and abnormal psychology. He was named chair of the department in 1938. 

Esty Estabrooks had a passion for hypnosis, a skill he’d developed during WWII when he ostensibly worked in intelligence in the U.S. Army. (Interestingly, Colgate University’s president, George Cutten, had a similar passion. According to a December 1997 article in The Ottawa Citizen, Cutten had written a book on the psychology of alcoholism, for which he studied the use of hypnosis as a possible treatment.)

In 1943, when the United States was still very much at war, Esty Estabrooks published the book Hypnotism,which explained the concept of hypnosis to a general audience. He viewed hypnosis as having tremendous potential for a number of practical purposes and wanted to allay the fear and stigma attached to it. Truth be told, he was a pretty good communicator with lay audiences,  employing analogies and everyday language and even humor to help keep readers interested. (One story he shared involved a group of people who Esty was going to hypnotize using a recording he’d made of himself giving the instructions for going into a trance. When he discovered that he’d loaned his record out, he put on another record to hold the group’s attention, while he fetched the hypnosis record. When he returned, he discovered one subject had fallen into a trance-like state while listening to the other recording, which happened to be of a Swiss yodeler. I mean, that’s pretty funny, right??) As a result, Esty’s book did very well, and was even recommended reading by the Book-of-the-Month Club. In 1957, he published a revised edition, which is the version I have. Chapter 9, Hypnotism in Warfare, is a topic that was especially near and dear to his heart. We’ll discuss portions of that chapter momentarily.

The name Estabrooks may sound familiar to you. I mentioned him in my blog post titled MKULTRA and ‘U.’ His name is frequently tied to the term “Manchurian Candidate” by people who study this topic because, in a May 13, 1968, interview with the Providence (R.I.) Evening Bulletinhe very nearly admitted to creating one. (The original article isn’t available online so I’m linking to sources who have quoted him.) 

Here’s the quote that’s attributed to Esty Estabrooks: “The key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multipersonality, with the aid of hypnotism. This is not science fiction. This has and is being done. I have done it.” And then he added: “It is child’s play now to develop a multiple personality through hypnotism,” which is decidedly not funny—not even a little bit.

Granted, it’s unclear if he was (merely?) admitting to splitting a man’s personality or to going all-in with the creation of an assassin, aka a Manchurian Candidate. But in 1971, he published an article that appeared in Science Digest in which he readily admitted to having created hypnotic couriers that were used as spies during WWII. I find this admission especially surprising since, in chapter nine of the 1957 edition of Hypnotism, he only says that the idea of a hypnotic courier is a proposed use of hypnosis—a possibility, as in we’re just brainstorming here. If the development of a hypnotic courier was already old hat by WWII—I mean, let’s ponder on that for a moment: he claims they were using hypnotic couriers as well as multiple personalities during World War TWO!—I’m guessing he wouldn’t have been shy about taking it to the next level and creating an assassin soon thereafter.

In a quote in the 1997 article of the Ottawa Citizen Sun, author, psychiatrist, and MKULTRA researcher Colin Ross, M.D., said, “In terms of Manchurian Candidate experimentation, he’s the number one person.”

All the while that Estabrooks was being incredibly chatty about his endeavors, particularly between 1957, when he published the second edition of his book, and 1971, when he admitted to creating the hypnotic courier during WWII, the CIA was attempting to keep its MKULTRA-related matters hidden. In the same Providence Evening Bulletin article, Estabrooks revealed that he’d consulted for the FBI and the CIA, which I’m sure pleased both organizations to no end. It also tends to make me question his assertion, since, in my experience, people who brag about being employed by the CIA are generally quite full of it. What’s more, in 1942, the FBI had already scolded Esty about making pronouncements that he was affiliated with the Bureau when they hadn’t even requested his help, which, in that case, had to do with research he was conducting on crime and hypnosis. Yet, in 1968, there he was again…bragging to a reporter about his FBI ties…while J. Edgar Hoover was still alive and well and cranky as all get out. His eagerness to go public on such highly sensitive matters as well as his tendency to state his abilities with so much swagger surely led at least several people from both agencies to view him leerily. I’ll show you what they had to say in a minute.

How do you know he wrote the proposal and not Louis Jolyon West?

Now that I know George Esty Estabrooks far better than I used to, I’m 100% positive that he was the author of the February 1957 proposal to develop a hypnotic messenger. I’m actually a little embarrassed that it took me this long to figure it out, since so many of his go-to words, phrases, and fun facts are scattered throughout the proposal, which was long on promises and short on details. (I think I’ve mentioned before that it would be considered a “trust me” proposal in research circles—a three-pager that basically says “You know me. I’m the best person to do this so can I please have $10K asap?”)

That said, it’s not as if Louis Jolyon West didn’t have an interest in developing a hypnotic courier for use by the military. He most definitely did, and he said so on page one, item #5, of his short-term goals in a six-page letter he wrote to the CIA’s Sidney Gottlieb (S.G.) in June 1953.

Page 1 of a letter written by Louis Jolyon West to Sidney Gottlieb

Also, the title of the February 1957 proposal adheres to the formula Jolly used for titling his own research proposals, which was always “Studies in blibbity blobbity blah blah blah.” Also Major Jolly West had recently ended his obligatory service in the U.S. Air Force at Lackland Air Force Base when the proposal was submitted. Who but a military guy with expertise in hypnosis would write a proposal on the application of hypnosis in the military? Nevertheless, for the reasons I list below, I can tell you with 100% certainty that the hypnotic messenger proposal was written by George H. Estabrooks and not Louis Jolyon West.

Here’s the link to the proposal, with special thanks to The Black Vault for making these MKULTRA documents available to all.

Hypnotism

One of the telltale words in the proposal is “hypnotism,” which was rather out-of-date by then. People still used it sometimes, but just not so much. But Esty used the word hypnotism all the time. That’s what he titled his book, including the 1957 version, and he uses it throughout the book as well. He used the word hypnosis too, but hypnotism was his preference. West, on the other hand, was using the term “hypnosis” in all of his documents from that era. So if he’d been using “hypnosis” in 1953, why would he refer to “hypnotism” in 1957? He wouldn’t. But Esty would.

Psychology

In the first sentence, the author says that “Hypnotism is now a recognized branch of the science of psychology…” yada yada yada. Why would Jolly West open his proposal with a reference to psychology instead of psychiatry? Answer: He wouldn’t. If you’re going to spend all of the time and money required to pursue a degree in psychiatry you wouldn’t lead with a field in which you didn’t pursue a degree. Furthermore, in his budget on page 3, the author says that a “psychiatrist should also be available.” Jolly West was a psychiatrist. If he was the author of the proposal, he would have made himself available. (How did I not catch that earlier?) For this reason, I believe the proposal’s author was a psychologist, namely George “Esty” Estabrooks.

Hypnotic messenger

On June 22, 1954, George H. Estabrooks submitted a memo to someone within the CIA titled “The Military Application of Hypntism [sic].” In that memo, he describes the creation of a courier, but refers to it as a “hypnotic messenger,” adding “if I may use the phrase.” That sounds as if he feels he coined the term. In his book Hypnotism, Esty refers to the hypnotic messenger almost exclusively when discussing the topic. A comparison of the wording and subject matter between the 1954 memo, which is still redacted, and Estabrooks’ book tells us that he wrote the 1954 memo, just as the similarity between those two documents and the proposal tells us that he wrote the proposal too. Oddly enough, in his 1971 Science Digest article, he didn’t call it a messenger but instead referred to it as a courier. He also cut way back on his use of the word “hypnotism” for that article, though not entirely. What can I say? People change. As for Jolly West, in his 1953 letter to Sidney Gottlieb, he used the word “courier.”

The statistic

Esty Estabrooks had one statistic that he used more than any other, and that statistic was that one out of every five adults was capable of going into the deepest hypnotic trance, which he referred to as somnambulism. He never cites the source—which probably means that he’s the source—but that statistic permeates his book to an annoying degree. (One of my chief criticisms of his book is that he’s very, very, VERY repetitive.) On page 44, he states it most strenuously: 

“One out of every five subjects will, on the average, go into deep hypnosis or somnambulism and no operator, whatever his skill, can better this average.” 

Does Esty’s mantra appear in the February 1957 proposal? Oh, you betcha. You can find it in the second paragraph, line two of the Introduction. Honestly, the moment I read that line after having read Esty’s book, I knew Esty had written the proposal. “One out of every five” was the singular phrase that sealed the deal for me.

The sign-off

We all have a favorite way of signing off in a letter. The proposal writer’s cover letter closed with a friendly and less common “Cordially yours.” Jolly West was strictly a “Sincerely” or a “Sincerely yours” kind of guy. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him swerve from that sentiment even once. But Esty? He preferred “Cordially yours.” It’s all over his letters in the file that the FBI kept on him. Sure, he occasionally slipped in a “Sincerely yours”—who among us hasn’t?—but “Cordially yours,” just like “hypnotism,” just like “hypnotic messenger,” was Esty’s M.O.

The file number 

Something I’ve started focusing on lately are the numbers and letters at the top righthand corner of the lion’s share of the MKULTRA documents. They begin with an A/B, a notation that Colin Ross, M.D., says means Artichoke/Bluebird, which makes sense. The A/B is followed by a number from 1 through 7, which is sometimes written as a Roman numeral. I’m not sure of the meaning of those numbers but it appears to be some type of grouping. The grouping that interests me most is group 5, or V, which appears to include various academics and others with whom the CIA may have consulted. The number after that has the broadest range. I’ve seen them reach upwards into the 300s. Following that number, sometimes after a slash mark, is another number that isn’t very big and seems to progress in numerical order. So you may find a document marked 353/1, another one marked 353/2, and so on.

Let’s direct our attention to the tops of the pages of MKULTRA document 147025 and concentrate only on the last two numbers. You’ll see a series of documents, beginning with the first, which is numbered 90/4, the next is 90/5, and the next is 90/6. (You can ignore the last two pages since they appear to have been misfiled. They have nothing to do with the preceding memos.)

Now look at the notations on the proposal. They are A/B, 5, 90/8. There’s that 90 again. I think the second-to-last number—the 90 in this case—is assigned to a particular person, and I think the last number—the 4, 5, 6, and now 8—is the number assigned to the particular piece of communication that pertains to that particular person. If Esty was the subject of the three memos from 1954, and I strongly believe he was, then I believe someone at the CIA assigned the number “90” to Esty’s records, which means that I also believe that he’s the author of the proposal.

By the way, when you have a chance, I recommend that you read the three 1954 memos. You’ll see that the CIA guys weren’t that impressed with him. Neither was the FBI for that matter.

Wow. This is a big shift in your theory.

Yes, it is, and I’m not going to lie, it bummed me out big time when I figured it out. But if we’re going to solve this mystery, we need to let go of the things that aren’t true. It’s taken me a week or so, but I’ve managed to do that and I’m hoping you’ll be able to do it too.

Does anything strike you as weird about Esty’s proposal?

As a matter of fact, yes! If Esty had indeed created a hypnotic messenger during WWII, as he claimed in 1971, I wonder why he didn’t mention that fact in his proposal. Here he was, a known braggart, and he didn’t think to mention this to his potential funder? Why did he make it sound as if this would be the first time? 

Incidentally, another copy of the proposal can be found here, and the person Esty was writing to was Morse Allen. Apparently, they were on a first-name basis, or at least Esty felt as if they were. (Morse may have felt differently.) Louis Jolyon West’s communications, on the other hand, were usually directed to the man on top—Sidney Gottlieb.

Do you think St. Clair Switzer worked with George Estabrooks instead of Louis Jolyon West in the summer of 1957?

Here’s what we know: St. Clair Switzer had been approved for a sabbatical for academic year 1956-57. However, the researcher he’d originally been planning to work with, Marion A. “Gus” Wenger (no relation), a UCLA psychologist, had decided at the last minute to travel to India to study yogis instead. There’s no way Switzer would have returned to Miami that year—not after waiting so long for his sabbatical. Not after writing in a December 1954 letter to Gus that “It’s quite a job to break out of this teaching straitjacket.” He was working with someone.

We also now know that George Estabrooks had someone working with him for the summer who was “thoroughly familiar with hypnotism at the theoretical level.” That could certainly describe Switzer, since he’d assisted Clark Hull with his 1933 book, “Hypnosis and Suggestibility,” which was both an experimental and theoretical study of hypnosis. Also, a CIA staffer had made the notation “H/B-6” next to that person’s crossed-out name, which I believe indicates that Esty’s helper was a military officer who was affiliated with a military base with an on-site hospital. Again, that could apply to Lt. Col. Switzer, particularly if he was working closely with Wright Patterson AFB.

On the other hand, Jolly West was deep into his research on POWs that year. The focus of that research—interrogation methods—happened to be the reason Switzer’s expertise in hypnosis and drugs was likely being sought by the CIA and military. As you know, I believe the January 14, 1953, memo on “Interrogation Techniques” mentions both Louis Jolyon West (I’m 100% sure) and Switzer (I’m pretty sure) for a “well-balanced interrogation research center.” So it could be that Switzer was at the University of Oklahoma helping West in the use of hypnosis and drugs for the interrogation of POWs, while Esty Estabrooks was across the country working on his hypnotic messenger.

I guess what’s really throwing me off right now are the two letters.

What two letters?

Around the time that Esty submitted his hypnotic messenger proposal to Morse Allen, someone who sounded a lot like St. Clair Switzer wrote two letters to a colleague of his, Griffith Wynne Williams, who was a renowned hypnosis expert and professor of psychology at Rutgers University. (Here’s a link to the December 6, 1956 letter. Here’s a link to the February 8, 1957 letter.) Williams and Switzer both studied under Clark Hull at the University of Wisconsin. Their time with him overlapped when Williams was pursuing his doctorate degree and Switzer was working on his master’s. The letters are congenial, if a little on the obsequious side, and they’re filled with extremely specific questions on hypnosis that quickly enter into the realm of the disturbing. 

The letter writer appears to be working with another researcher on a project of great importance. He makes it clear that the subject is “very highly classified” (December 6, 1956) and “sensitive” (February 8, 1957) and instructs Williams to destroy both letters immediately after he’s read them. Thankfully, we know for sure that Williams is the recipient even though his name is redacted because the CIA staffer with the black pen accidentally forgot to redact the word “Rutgers” (December 6, 1956) and he or she also allowed the word “arthritis” (February 8, 1957), which Williams was burdened with for much of his life, to remain exposed. I love when that happens.

So here’s where the letters are throwing me: in some ways they might support a collaboration between Switzer and Estabrooks, while at other times, they might be more indicative of a collaboration between Switzer and Jolly West, or someone else of his stature.

Do the letters pertain to Estabrooks’ research…

The letters are written around the time of Esty’s proposal, with the second letter being written just two days after the proposal was written. So that might lead us to presume that they were related to a collaboration between Esty and Switzer. 

Also, the letters indicate that the two secretive researchers had visited with Williams in person, once in his office, though they suggested a less visible place for their second meeting, such as the local hotel. It would be a lot easier for them to make a 4-hour drive from upstate New York to New Brunswick, N.J. than if they were traveling from Oklahoma. Of course, I’m sure the CIA could afford the plane fare, but I’m inclined to think that their interest in having multiple in-person meetings instead of talking by phone makes it sound as if it was relatively easy for them to do so. 

Or do they pertain to a researcher of higher stature, such as Jolly West?

At first, the questions that the letter writer asks in the December 1956 letter could be considered relevant to the development of a hypnotic messenger—such as the ones having to do with the production of amnesia (#1), concealed induction methods (#2), and problems with post-hypnotic control (#5). But the other questions go way beyond the scope of a hypnotic messenger, including the series of questions that are focused upon the hypnotizing of large groups of people through various means, such as TV broadcasts, speaking techniques, lighting, stage effects, and so on.

In addition, the letter writer appears open to any guidance that Williams could provide in 12 areas. But in the second edition of Esty’s book, which came out after the December letter was written, he said that the carotid artery technique (he calls it a “neck nerve”) is being done with jujitsu, and has nothing to do with a hypnotic trance, and that of course people can be hypnotized to do something that goes against their beliefs. Therefore, if it was Esty’s project, I can’t see him even asking questions #10 and #12.

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, the letter writer makes a very big deal of the fact that this is a secret project. He even uses the term “very highly classified.” Did you read what the guys in the CIA had to say about Estabrooks behind his back? Plus, you also know what a chatterbox this guy was. I’m just asking: Would those guys have given George Estabrooks a Secret or Top Secret classification? 

They had no problem designating the Top Secret classification to Louis Jolyon West, however.

******

P.S. I’d like to share one additional piece of evidence that St. Clair Switzer wrote the letters to Griffith Williams. You can find most of my reasoning in this blog post, and I’ll let those reasons stand as-is. 

However, one thing I mentioned in that post is the letter writer’s use of the term “Ph.D. thesis” in his December 6, 1956, letter. For most of us who don’t have a Ph.D., we think of a “master’s thesis” and a “doctoral dissertation,” and those terms are absolutely correct. But for some odd reason, some academics with doctoral degrees, not all of them, but some, will refer to a Ph.D. thesis. I don’t know why they do it, but they do.

Here’s a piece of evidence that St. Clair Switzer did it too.

In a letter he wrote to psychologist Ernest (Jack) Hilgard, St. Clair Switzer refers to his dissertation as a thesis. (See page 2, second paragraph.)

Some mothers are a bit more…complicated

A meditation on mothers and Manchurian Candidates

It’s Mother’s Day, and like you, I’ve been spending the day poring over MKULTRA documents. Oh, you haven’t been doing that today? I’m the only one? Well, not for long!

Because today, I’ll be sharing a document that could very well be the official start of the whole Manchurian Candidate thing. What’s more, it’s a true account—of the non-fiction variety.

As you may already know, “The Manchurian Candidate” was a novel by Richard Condon that came out in 1959. The movie, which starred Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey, and Frank Sinatra, was released in 1962. The film is so good that it has a permanent home on my DVR.

The story is about an American POW from the Korean War who was hypnotically programmed to assassinate a U.S. presidential candidate when given a special trigger. He was also instructed to promptly forget what he’d done afterward through a post-hypnotic suggestion. I won’t tell you any more than that, just in case you haven’t seen it yet. Lansbury, the programmed assassin’s mother, is phenomenal. (Spoiler alert: Jessica Fletcher, she is not.) The “Manchuria” reference is based on the fact that POWs passed through that region between China and Russia after being freed from North Korea. (Here’s a map to help you picture it.)

As the world would learn decades later, that wasn’t too different from what the CIA was dreaming up through Projects ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA. What’s more, some of the people in charge probably wouldn’t have felt the need to stop at just one Manchurian Candidate. Once they had the bugs worked out, they could…well, to quote one redacted expert who was bragging to U.S. intelligence officers: “Two hundred trained [BLANK] operators, trained in the United States, could develop a unique, dangerous army of hypnotically controlled agents.” (See document from March 4, 1952.)

I suppose I considered Condon to be incredibly prescient to have written his book 20 or so years before everyone else discovered that a Manchurian Candidate was a thing, of sorts, or at least something that some people within our government had set their sights on. But as John Marks, author of “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control,” footnoted, “Condon consulted with a wide variety of experts while researching the book, and some inside sources may well have filled him in on the gist of a discussion that took place at a 1953 meeting at the CIA on behavior control.”

That’s the meeting that I was reading about as I was blearily clicking on some documents from July 1953 this morning. The meeting had occurred on June 18, 1953, two months after the first POWs had been exchanged with the North Koreans and Chinese (called the Little Switch), yet before the war had ended. I’m linking to the full document here, thanks to The Black Vault.

Probably after the first hour had passed in the meeting, someone had this to share:

Click on image for a closer look.

As Marks noted in his book, “The CIA and military men at this session promised to seek more information but the matter never came up again in either the documents released by the Agency or in the interviews done for this book.”

What do Manchurian Candidates have do with Ron Tammen’s story? Probably, hopefully, nothing. But the fact that these issues were being discussed at the same time that Louis Jolyon West (for sure) and St. Clair Switzer (I strongly believe) were being sought after for their expertise in hypnosis and drugs means that this topic, as well as all other related topics, automatically becomes our business.

Part 4: Was someone from Champion Paper and Fibre helping support St. Clair Switzer’s research activities in 1953?

The last time we talked (which could be 5 minutes ago, 5 days ago, or 5 weeks ago—it’s totally your call), we were discussing the life of Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., the president of Champion Paper and Fibre Company from 1950 to 1955 and from 1957 to 1960. During the interim two years, Robertson was deputy secretary of defense under Secretary Charles Wilson.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that the part about his being the deputy defense secretary is impressive and all, but that was two years after Ron Tammen disappeared. Come to think of it, all of those hires he’d made of top-tier military and intelligence personnel happened during or after his Department of Defense (DoD) gig. What was he doing on a national level in the spring of 1953?

You make a good point. In the spring of 1953, Reuben Jr. had just returned from a trip. In February, he’d been named by President Eisenhower and Harold Stassen, director of the Mutual Security Agency, to lead a team of businessmen on a tour of Germany to assess the effects of U.S. spending there. The Mutual Security Agency was created in 1951 to facilitate the military and economic recovery of America’s allies after WWII. As director of the MSA, Stassen was a member of the National Security Council. He was also a member of Eisenhower’s cabinet. For this trip, 55 businessmen traveled to 14 Western European countries, and Reuben Jr. had led the German contingent, which included six other men. After two days of training, they arrived in Germany on February 16, 1953. Although news articles that I’ve read don’t state how long the trip lasted, I’m guessing that they were back by the end of February or early March.

One month earlier, in January 1953, Reuben Jr. had been elected to serve as one of four vice chairmen on the executive committee of the Business Advisory Council. The Business Advisory Council, now called the Business Council, was, at that time, an esteemed advisory group to the U.S. Department of Commerce, which was headed by the newly-appointed Secretary Sinclair Weeks. President Eisenhower had selected a number of his other cabinet posts from individuals who sat on the BAC, including Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, who was formerly president of General Motors.

So, in a nutshell, in the spring of 1953, Reuben Jr. was in Hamilton, while he was also helping out two of President Eisenhower’s cabinet members when he was asked, which seemed to be on a regular basis. He was traveling in powerful circles and making headlines while doing so. 

Because I’m writing this on a deadline, and because much of this post involves speculation, I think we’ll go back to a Q&A format. Hope you’re cool with that?

Yeah, that’s fine. So you say he was making headlines. Is that how Miami University officials came to know him?

Headlines and word of mouth certainly contributed to his visibility in southwest Ohio. If you have a strong business school—and Miami University certainly does—you’re going to notice the most successful businesses in your area, especially if the company president’s network of friends and associates extends as broadly as Reuben Jr.’s did. People in the business school did take notice. In May of 1951, the School of Business Administration sponsored an industrial management conference and Reuben was the luncheon speaker. He spoke on wage stabilization, a topic he knew well, since his appointment on the federal Wage Stabilization Board was coming to an end in June.

Max Rosselot, an assistant professor of secretarial studies and office management in Miami’s School of Business Administration, spent the summer of 1952 working with Champion’s pool of stenographers, immersing himself in the company’s business practices to enhance his courses for future stenographers and secretaries. Rosselot would later go on to become Miami’s Registrar in the early- to mid-1960s.

Champion had noticed Miami too. In 1947, a staff member in Miami’s Psychology Department, R.C. Crosby, director of student counseling, taught a course in business psychology to 24 Champion employees. According to the December 1947 issue of The Log, “This course deals with some general principles of the psychology of human relationships and their application to business and industrial groups.” If you’re wondering why St. Clair Switzer wouldn’t be teaching the course—after all, business psychology was his baby—this was at a time when Switzer was still counseling veterans after the war and he hadn’t yet gone back to teaching courses at Miami. I’m sure he would have been interested though.

Another way that Miami officials would have known about Reuben Jr. was through his aunt. 

His aunt? Who was Reuben Jr.’s aunt?

Rueben Robertson, Jr.’s aunt was Mary Moore Dabney Thomson, wife of Alexander Thomson, who, in turn, was Reuben Robertson, Sr.’s brother-in-law. (If you need to work that through your heads a minute, I can wait.) Alexander Thomson was a longtime executive with Champion Paper and Fibre, and was chairman of the board from 1935 until his death in 1939. 

But Mary Moore Dabney Thomson did stuff too. From 1933 to 1941, she was a member of the Western College for Women’s Board of Trustees, and during the years 1941 though 1945, she was president of the college. As many of you know, Western College for Women was across the street from Miami University and, in 1974, it became part of the university. In fact, Thomson Hall was named for Mary Moore Dabney Thomson.

Credit: Miami University Special Collections
https://spec.lib.miamioh.edu/home/western-college-presidents/

But here’s the rub: you know how I discussed in part 2 that women in those days tended to relinquish their first names when they got married? One case in point is Mary Moore Dabney Thomson, who was often referred to in the press as Mrs. Alexander Thomson. Seriously. She was president of a prestigious women’s college, and people still referred to her by her husband’s name, even when he was no longer alive. I say this with all due respect, but what the bloody hell is up with that, members of the 1930s…’40s…and ‘50s press?

Mary Moore Dabney Thomson was well-known in the Oxford community before the Champion Coated Paper Company merged with Champion Fibre Company in 1935, and well before her nephew Reuben Jr. arrived in Hamilton in 1937. I’d even bet that it was through her that some Miami officials became familiar with the Thomson and Robertson names.

In what can only be described as pure coincidence, Mary Moore Dabney Thomson’s portrait was revealed on April 18, 1953, in Western’s Clawson Hall, the day before Ron Tammen disappeared.

You mentioned previously that Reuben Robertson, Jr., sat on Miami’s Board of Trustees from 1957 until his death in 1960. Did Miami officials seek his input on anything earlier than that, such as when Ron was still a student?

Yes, they sure did. Shortly after President Ernest Hahne died in November 1952, Reuben Robertson, Jr., was asked by the vice president of Miami’s Board of Trustees to sit on the committee that would select the next president. Rueben Jr. represented the public on the six-member committee, which included the president of the Board of Trustees as an ex-officio member. Several months later, that committee decided upon John D. Millett, who was affirmed by the 27-member board in March 1953.

President Millett must have been equally impressed with Reuben Robertson, Jr. In 1956, he would invite him to be a commencement speaker, and, at that time, Reuben was bestowed an honorary law degree.

So…what’s your theory?

I’m thinking that someone contacted Lt. Col. Reuben Robertson, Jr., for help in funding research that was being conducted by Lt. Col. Switzer in Miami’s Department of Psychology. (Using military rank might go a long way when making the ask.) The asker might have come from Miami University, from the military, or from somewhere else. Reuben Robertson, Jr., knew a lot of people.

The reason that someone may have asked for his help is that universities are usually strapped for cash and the restrictions placed on the government’s spending of taxpayer dollars are tight. Perhaps they asked Reuben Jr. if he’d be willing to support students taking part in a university study that would benefit national security. That doesn’t sound too different than asking him if he’d be willing to buy a box of cookies to support the Girl Scouts. Reuben Robertson, Jr., believed strongly in education and national security. He was also a busy man. Maybe that’s all he felt he needed to know.

How might Dorothy Craig have fit into the picture?

Dorothy Craig was a loyal employee of Champion Paper and Fibre Company. In 1953 she’d been working there for 16 years as an order clerk, a job that carried a lot of weight. She was well-liked, and, like Reuben Jr., she treasured her family. Her main activity outside of work was church. 

Even though Dorothy Craig dropped out of high school after her sophomore year, she still attended her alumni reunions—that’s how much of a people person she was. In a Hamilton Journal-News photo of their 45th class reunion, which took place in the summer of 1965, Dorothy is standing on the far righthand side of the third row. When I first saw the picture, I was hoping that Dorothy was the woman who was standing two people to her left. The other woman was tall with short, jet black hair, white-rimmed glasses with dark lenses, and dark lipstick. She looked like a spy who wouldn’t take sass from anybody. Dorothy, on the other hand, looked a little more doughy, a little more motherly—a gentle woman with a genuine, sweet smile. If someone needed a go-between to provide payments to Ron Tammen—someone who could handle an errand without asking too many questions—Dorothy Craig would have been perfect. Besides, she probably would have wanted to help support college students and protect national security too.

(I tried to obtain permission to post the photo, but I haven’t heard back from my contact. If I ever do, I’ll post it. In the meantime, if you have access to Newspaperarchives.com, you can view it here.)

What do you find most telling about the check from Dorothy Craig?

The quiet…always the quiet. When Carl Knox wrote his note about Dorothy, he didn’t include any additional information about the check—the date, the amount, and where it was cashed—even though I’m sure that information was provided to him. He didn’t include contact information for Dorothy Craig either, even though that information would have been given to him as well. And he kept Dorothy’s identity to himself or among a very small circle of people. Neither he nor the Oxford PD ever mentioned her in the news. If someone had contacted her, and her transaction with Ron was deemed inconsequential, they could have still provided an update to news reporters while protecting her anonymity. Something like: “An area woman had written a check to Ron for X dollars, but it turned out to be for (fill in the blank).” 

Likewise, Dorothy Craig had just written a check to Ronald Tammen, a smart, serious-minded college student who disappeared shortly afterward. The news coverage would have been hard to miss, especially for someone who happened to be sitting in a roomful of order clerks at a paper company. Early and often, investigators lamented the lack of clues in the case. If I were Dorothy? I think I would have come forward and told someone about that check, be it the university, the Oxford PD, or even the FBI when they stepped in. Something like: “I just saw him on Saturday when I wrote him a check for (fill in the blank). He seemed OK.”

That is, unless I was instructed not to.

Do you think Dorothy Craig was the ‘woman from Hamilton’?

Let’s put it this way: I think Dorothy Craig was a woman from Hamilton who may have been acting as a liaison to help compensate Tammen for some activity he was involved with, such as a university study, perhaps. Whether she was the woman from Hamilton who I believe drove Ron away from Fisher Hall, I really don’t know.

You know what I’m thinking? 

No, what?

I’m thinking that this new Hamilton connection could make Ron’s blood type test a little more significant. 

Interesting. Also, we may have landed on some new words that Carl Knox’s secretary was told not to say in front of a reporter.

**********

Whew! This concludes today’s posts. I’d love to hear any comments or questions you might have about Dorothy Craig, Reuben Robertson, Jr., or any other topic you feel like discussing concerning Ronald Tammen’s disappearance.

Part 3: The military-industrial complex in Hamilton, Ohio

Hamilton, Ohio, may seem like a long way from our nation’s capital, but in the 1950s, Champion Paper and Fibre Company had garnered the attention of some powerful people at the top. “What people?” you ask. Oh, only Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Both Harry and Ike had a lot of respect for Champion Paper. They or people in their administrations would frequently turn to the company’s leadership for their expertise in business and matters pertaining to national defense. 

You heard me. National defense.

Mostly, it had to do with the company’s president, Reuben Buck Robertson, Jr. Reuben Jr. was intelligent, innovative, and oh my gosh, the man had charm. He had looks too, especially in his youth. His dimples could stop traffic. (He was probably told that a lot.) You could say that he attained his position as a birthright—his father, Reuben Sr., had preceded him as company president—but Reuben Jr. was very good at his job. Exceptional, really.

Reuben Buck Robertson, Jr.
Credit: Office of the Secretary of Defense

Before I tell you anything more about Dorothy Craig’s larger-than-life boss, let’s have a quick run-down on the company’s history and how Reuben Jr. got where he was.

The Champion Paper and Fibre Company had its official start in 1893 as the Champion Coated Paper Company. Its founder, Peter G. Thomson, was a bookstore owner, publisher, and printer from Cincinnati. Because of Thomson’s love for the printed word, he had a high regard for paper as well. When printers started using halftones—tiny dots of ink—to reproduce illustrations instead of hand-drawing or etching them, Thomson knew that the paper needed to be coated to create a smooth surface that would hold the ink in place. If the paper weren’t coated, the ink would sink into little crevices and spread. In 1891, Thomson purchased 200 acres in Hamilton to build a coating mill, and in 1894, his new business was up and running. But there were a few snags: in order to operate a fully-functioning coating mill, he needed sufficient quantities of paper to coat. As a remedy, he constructed a paper mill in town. Next Thomson discovered that, in order to operate a fully-functioning paper mill, he needed a consistent supply of wood pulp. Thomson found an ideal spot in Canton, North Carolina, an area so thick with pine trees, it probably smelled like the world’s best car freshener 24/7. The pulp mill was constructed in 1908, and, with that addition, Thomson now had a self-sufficient paper-manufacturing operation that would continue to develop and grow.

The pulp mill in North Carolina was named the Champion Fibre Company, and Thomson’s son-in-law was put in charge. That son-in-law was Reuben Buck Robertson, and his marriage to Peter’s daughter Hope Thomson would be the start of the Thomson-Robertson dynasty of Champion Paper. Peter’s three sons, Peter Jr., Alexander, and Logan Thomson, would all assume positions of leadership in the company, as would other family members, including Reuben’s son, Reuben Robertson, Jr., who was born in Asheville, North Carolina, in 1908.

Reuben Jr. graduated from Yale Sheffield Scientific School in 1930 with a degree in chemical engineering. That same year, he started working at Champion Fibre for his father. Reuben Jr. was the ultimate Undercover Boss. He started low—as a laborer in the woodyard—and worked his way up the ladder. He toiled and sweated along with everyone else. He asked a ton of questions. In doing so, he developed a keen understanding of every aspect of the papermaking business and the people on whose backs the business relied upon.

In 1935, the two companies were merged to form Champion Paper and Fibre Company, which included adding a new paper mill in East Texas. With the merger, Logan Thomson was made president, Reuben Jr. was vice president, and Reuben Sr. was executive v.p. Two years later, Reuben Jr. moved from North Carolina to work in the General Office Building in Hamilton, a stately building on North B Street that housed roughly 75 Champion office staff. That same year, Dorothy Craig was hired by Champion to work in its General Office Building as an order clerk. 

Seventy-five people is a relatively small number of occupants, and Reuben Jr. was a people person. He would make a point of knowing his employees—both those in the office building, and those in all the other buildings too. Dorothy strikes me as a people person too. 

Why do I think that? A man named Bill McDulin used to write a folksy column for the Hamilton Journal-News titled “Got a Minute?” that shared newsy tidbits for the locals. McDulin’s guiding principle seemed to be to leave people with a good feeling about themselves and their community. Because they happened to be neighbors, Dorothy Craig, of Carmen Avenue, was mentioned several times in McDulin’s column. In one of his “Remember when” blurbs from 1976, he asked his readers “Remember when Charlie Betz was a member of the Hamilton police department?…Mrs. David (Geraldine) Adkins started writing poetry?”…[and so forth, and then]…Dorothy Craig worked at Champion?”

Literally thousands of people worked at Champion Paper and Fibre Company. For Bill McDulin to have singled out Dorothy over everyone else seems…well, it seems like she must have been known by quite a few people. So without question, Dorothy and Reuben Jr. would have known each other, and not just to say “hello.” Reuben Jr. would have asked Dorothy about Henry and the kids, or sometimes he likely would’ve wanted to know “How are the orders coming in today, Dorothy?” Dorothy would have felt at ease with Reuben Jr. and could answer him honestly, without sugarcoating, even if the news was less than favorable. 

Reuben Jr. got his first taste of policymaking on the national stage in 1942, when he was asked to serve on the War Production Board. Although its name sounds as if it was a small group of men in suits sitting around a table and talking about war stuff, the War Production Board was an entire agency tasked with readying the country for WWII. The War Production Board was responsible for converting a variety of domestic manufacturing plants into weapons manufacturers. They’re the agency that coordinated the collection and recycling of aluminum, tin, rubber, steel, and other materials to be used for military purposes. For its part, the Champion Paper and Fibre Company had developed a paper substitute for the aluminum liner that went inside packs of cigarettes. They were brainstorming to that level of detail. And even though people today don’t normally think of foods like coffee and meat as commodities with implications for combat, the War Production Board did, and they formulated strict rules to ration certain foods to conserve resources.

But serving on the War Production Board didn’t stop Reuben Jr. from taking part in the war itself. He also enlisted. From 1942 to 1945, he was an officer in the Control Division of the Army Service Forces, advancing to lieutenant colonel by V-J Day. 

Shortly after Reuben Jr.’s return to Hamilton, the Champion Paper and Fibre Company experienced another musical-chairs-style shift in leadership. Logan Thomson died in 1946, and with his death, Reuben Sr. became president. Four years later, Reuben Jr. would be elected president of the company, and his father would be elevated to chairman of the board.

Even with Reuben Jr.’s added responsibilities in running the entire company, Washington continued to call. Over the next five years, he was asked by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to serve in the following ways:

So, yeah. The people in the highest posts of all the land were interested in hearing what Reuben Jr. had to say. And…are you ready for this? In 1955, President Eisenhower asked Reuben Jr. to serve as deputy secretary of defense under Secretary Charles Wilson. Which. Was. Huge. Reuben’s company would continue to be in good hands while he was away, since Reuben’s father would take over as president in the interim.

Some have described the deputy secretary of defense as the secretary’s alter ego. The deputy secretary knows everything the secretary knows, including issues pertaining to national security. I would hasten to remind readers that the U.S. was now engaged in the Cold War, so there was a lot to know, national-security-wise. I would quickly add that, on an org chart, the deputy secretary is immediately below the secretary and above anyone else having to do with the Department of Defense (DoD), including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Research and Development Board, the heads of all the military branches, you name it. It was Reuben Jr.’s job to oversee the day-to-day matters involved with managing the largest agency in the federal government. Of course, he was a natural. 

Still, while he was in that awesomely important role at the DoD in the middle of the Cold War, Reuben Jr. would commute between Hamilton and D.C. by plane almost daily, according to a knowledgeable source. This was made possible thanks to an airstrip on his home property in Glendale, a small community about 12 miles from Hamilton. With that airstrip, plus the use of the company’s fleet of aircraft maintained at Lunken Airport, and Champion’s team of licensed pilots, Reuben Jr. could rub elbows with the nation’s top brass in the morning and still be home in time for dinner with wife Peggy and their six kids.

Oops, my bad. Did I neglect to mention that Reuben Jr. was an amazing husband and dad? Well, dude was an amazing husband and dad. There’s a photo in the company newsletter, The Log, in which he’s walking hand in hand with two of his children, who were dressed like a cowboy and a cowgirl, and he’s beaming away, dimples fully deployed. It’s so clear that Reuben’s children adored their father, just as Reuben’s employees adored their boss.

You may be wondering what papermaking could possibly have to do with the nation’s defense (other than the manufacture of paper liners for cigarette packs, that is). It had to do with the times they were living in. Back then, paper was—let’s see, I need to be careful not to overstate this—paper was everything. If someone from the DoD had an idea they wanted to put into motion, then they were going to need a sh*t-ton of paper to get that idea across to other people. It’s how the government communicated. It was how information was disseminated. After all, they didn’t earn the name “paper pushers” for nothing. Those ration books?  Paper. The Uncle Sam posters asking people to bring in their toothpaste and shaving cream tubes for the tin? Paper. And maps. Millions of paper maps. In an August 1995 article, Jim Blount, a former editor for the Hamilton Journal-News who was also a treasured local historian for many years, shared this information that he’d found in a Champion newsletter concerning the importance of paper during WWII:

“For army maneuvers in 1942 in the Carolinas, 95 tons of paper went into 4.5 million maps. Every soldier in that operation received 21 maps covering the 12,000-square-mile area. 

‘All ration cards and instructions must be printed on paper, and there is hardly a branch of this defense wherein paper is not used wholly or in part,’ noted The Log, a Champion publication. ‘It is necessary to plotting systems, giving instructions for air raid precautions, first aid instructions, communications and records of all kinds. Bonds, tax stamps, notes, orders, correspondence, even money itself is paper required by the Treasury Department, and the chances are that the bond you buy or the revenue stamp which is canceled on the can of tobacco is made by Champion.’

The 1942 article said ‘in this greatest of all wars in the history of mankind, there is needed for this year alone, 18 million tons of paper.’”

And that was just WWII. The United States needed paper during the Cold War too, for which 1950 was a banner year. On June 27, 1950, which happened to be Reuben Jr.’s 42nd birthday, the United States had entered the Korean War. On September 4, 1950, then-General Eisenhower—he wouldn’t be president until January 1953—kicked off Crusade for Freedom, a CIA-backed endeavor to raise funds for Radio Free Europe, which, at that time, was a U.S. propaganda tool based in West Germany. Even though it was said to be supported privately by everyday Americans, government dollars were also invested into the printing of stamps, posters, and leaflets by the millions. Some leaflets were used for fundraising at home and abroad. Others were dropped from balloons behind so-called Iron Curtain countries, such as East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland, denouncing communism and advertising radio wavelengths and program schedules. Crusade for Freedom, which ran from 1950 to 1960, was a paper-palooza, and Champion Paper was there for it. Reuben Sr. oversaw the crusade’s two-state region of North and South Carolina. You can watch a 5-minute video on the Crusade for Freedom on C-Span’s Classroom program. 

There was talk that Reuben Jr. would become defense secretary after Charles Wilson stepped down, but Reuben wasn’t interested. He wanted to be more present for his family, and he tendered his resignation in 1957. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t still have an avid interest in defense. In 1955, the same year in which he started at the DoD, Reuben Jr. kicked off the Chapaco Council—“Chapaco” being the initial letters from the three words Champion, Paper, and Company—which was a series of retreats for company management at Lake Logan in North Carolina. The line-up of speakers was a mix of military might with big names in business, industry, higher education, and journalism.

Speakers representing the U.S. government for the five years in which the retreats were held were:

Reuben Jr. also hired some of the highest military and intelligence officials the country had to offer to work for Champion Paper and Fibre Company. Conversely, one man, Thomas D. Morris, would be propelled from Champion to the DoD. Here’s the list that I’ve been able to assemble of Reuben’s most decorated hires. To keep things brief, instead of including their entire resume, I included the last position(s) held before they made their career change.

  • Col. Kilbourne “Pat” Johnston
    • Assistant director of CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, 1950-52
    • Champion Paper and Fibre in Texas, 1955
    • Champion Headquarters in Hamilton, 1957
    • Vice president of Champion Paper and Fibre, 1962
  • Thomas D. Morris
    • Director of management and planning, asst. to the president of Champion Paper, and Fibre 1958-60
    • Assistant secretary of defense 
      • Installations and Logisitics, Jan 29, 1961-Dec 11, 1964
      • Manpower and Personnel, Oct 1, 1965-August 31, 1967
      • Installations and Logistics, Sept 1, 1967-Feb 1, 1969
  • Col. Karl Bendetsen
    • Assistant secretary of the Army, 1950-52
    • Undersecretary of the Army, 1952
    • Vice president, Texas Division, Champion Paper and Fibre, 1955
    • Vice president of operations, Champion Paper and Fibre, Hamilton, 1957
    • Vice president, Champion Paper and Fibre, 1960 
  • Admiral Arthur Radford
    • Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1953-1957
    • Consultant for Champion Paper and Fibre, 1957, Washington, D.C. office
  • Major General Frederick J. Dau
    • Assistant for materiel program coordination to the commander, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, August 1952
    • Deputy director of supply and services, WPAFB, November 1952
    • Director of supply and services, WPAFB, May l954
    • Awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, the highest military award during peacetime, 1959
    • Accepted position at Champion Paper and Fibre, 1959

I’d challenge anyone to find a similarly elite cadre of military brass working together at one civilian business anywhere. I have to believe that Reuben Robertson, Jr., was the reason.

Look, there’s no easy way to tell you what happened next. In the early hours of Sunday morning, March 13, 1960, Reuben Jr. was driving home with his wife Peggy from a social engagement in Cincinnati. On a dark stretch of highway, the Robertsons were startled by a car that was sitting in the center lane, unable to move. According to an Associated Press account: “Robertson swerved his Cadillac, but he clipped the stalled car and grazed a passenger who was standing outside.” Evidently, the other car had run out of gas. Of course, Reuben got out of his car to talk to the people in the disabled vehicle, probably to find out if they were OK and to tell them that his insurance would cover the damage to their car. I wouldn’t be surprised if he also offered to bring them back some gas. Suddenly, a drunk driver came careening down the road and knocked into Reuben, throwing him 50 feet into the air. Reuben Buck Robertson, Jr., died almost instantly at the age of 51.

I’m sure you can imagine the news coverage. Everyone who knew him was devastated, including, I’m sure, Dorothy Craig. His memorial service was attended by dignitaries, Champion employees, and family and friends. A memorial issue of The Log was dedicated to his life and career. (I encourage you to download it so you can view all of the pictures.) Miami University’s Board of Trustees, of which Reuben Robertson had been a member since 1957, issued a statement on the loss of their friend and colleague. 

Oops, sorry. Did I neglect to mention that Miami University had known Reuben B. Robertson, Jr., quite well? My bad.

**************

UPDATE: Two readers have asked for more details about the accident, wondering if its cause could have been more nefarious in nature. The driver of the car that killed Reuben Jr. was Willie Lee Griffin, age 31, of Rockdale Avenue, in Avondale, Ohio, which is part of Cincinnati. Oddly, he was only charged with drunk and reckless driving even though he killed someone. Vehicular manslaughter, a felony, was definitely a charge that could have been brought against him at that time. Later, in 1967, Ohio law divided the category into first and second degree vehicular manslaughter, with drunk and/or reckless driving considered to be first degree offenses, and therefore, still a felony. I don’t know why they didn’t hold him accountable for Reuben Jr.’s death.

Part 2: Desperately seeking Dorothy

Before we conduct our search for Dorothy Craig, let’s think a little about how unusual it was for Dorothy’s name to be written at the top of Carl Knox’s notepad. In those dwindling days before Ron Tammen disappeared, all of his other check-writing or check-cashing or check-depositing activities pertained to businesses or organizations: places like Cleveland Trust, Delta Tau Delta, Shillito’s, and whatever entity had given him a loan. But Dorothy Craig wasn’t a business. She was a person. And weirder still, Dorothy Craig happened to be a female person. 

In the year 1953, women weren’t generally known for their business transactions. Women were known for getting married. And once a woman was married, her identity was pretty much subsumed by her husband’s. Even her name. Once she was married, her signature would no longer begin with the name she was lovingly given on day 1 of her life—be it Helen, Margaret, Sadie, and, yes, Dorothy. Rather, she was now expected to use her husband’s name with the title “Mrs.” slapped in front. She was now Mrs. William this or Mrs. A.K that. 

A woman in the 1950s was frequently told not to worry her pretty little head about something she was worried about. She would be asked to leave the room so the men could discuss something that was way too complicated for her cute, loveable brain. Actually, men in the 1950s were pretty ingenious. By telling women over and over (and over) that their place was in the home, they’d essentially removed half of the competition for the jobs they were vying for. Plus after a long, hard day of glad-handing and 2-hour lunches, they could come home to a clean house with sparkling children, not to mention dinner and a cocktail. Brilliant, boys…brilliant.

Sorry. I realize that last part comes off as a bit harsh, and I also realize that it doesn’t hold true for every ‘50s-era man. However, if you’ve read as many articles and ads from back then as I have lately, well, it can make a girl cranky. 

Back to Dorothy Craig. What could this female person of the feminine persuasion have to do with Ronald Tammen that would have warranted her writing him a check? Conversely, what good or service could Ronald Tammen have provided in order to have earned said check?

As I began my search for Dorothy Craig, I soon realized that lots of women back then were named Dorothy. The surname of Craig was also common. I needed to establish some criteria. Here’s what I came up with:

First, she must be at least 18 years old in 1953 in order to have her own checking account.

Second, because the check was written on Oxford National Bank, which had no branches, she should live relatively close to Oxford, preferably within an hour’s drive.

And third, although this isn’t a requirement, I think it would be helpful if she had a job outside the home, since she would need some form of income in order to have her own checking account. Look at it this way: If Dorothy Craig had been single and living on her own, she would have needed a job—and a checking account—until she got married, that is. But if she were married and not working outside the home, Dorothy Craig would likely be the second name listed on a joint checking account. And if that had been the case, then Carl Knox would in all probability have written her husband’s name at the top of his notepad. See how it worked back then? If a man’s name had been anywhere near that check, even if Dorothy had written the check and signed it at the bottom, he would be given top billing and Dorothy would be largely ignored.

Keeping the above in mind, I conducted a search of the 1940 and 1950 censuses for all of the relevant counties and, if available, 1953 city directories for the tri-state area of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. I looked for anyone named Dorothy Craig who fit the first two criteria, and I also kept track of each contender’s employment status. I also checked Miami University’s 1953 student directory as well as the alumni database to see if Dorothy Craig could have been a fellow student. (Answer: no.) I also checked the census forms of any Miami students in the 1953 directory who had the last name of Craig to see if their mother’s name might be Dorothy. (Answer: again, no.) Then I made an interactive map. 

So let’s interact, shall we? Here’s how:

  1. Click on the map above, which links to the interactive map.
  2. In the legend at the left, there are three categories. The first category is the location of unemployed Dorothy Craigs. The second category is the location of employed Dorothy Craigs. The third category is the location of Miami University.
  3. Start by checking the box next to each list so you can see all of the Dorothys at once and where they were located in comparison to Miami University.
  4. Now uncheck the Dorothys who were employed to see only the stay-at-home Dorothys and their location in comparison to Miami University. Click on each pin or the address in the legend to learn a little more about each person.
  5. Now uncheck the Dorothys who were unemployed and check the Dorothys who were employed and their location in comparison to Miami University. Click on each pin or the address in the legend to learn a little more about those Dorothy Craigs.

The best I can tell, there were 10 Dorothy Craigs that fit the criteria. Four Dorothy Craigs lived in Cincinnati; one lived in Newport, Kentucky, but worked in Cincinnati; one lived in a rural township in Montgomery County that later merged with the small town of Clayton; one lived in Dayton; one lived in Hamilton; one lived in Covington, Kentucky; and the last lived in Richmond, Indiana. 

Let’s start by discussing the unemployed Dorothy Craigs. I don’t know about you, but I’m having trouble imagining how Ron’s life would have intersected with a random home-bound housewife whose husband worked in a factory or on a farm. It might happen if Ron were selling something door-to-door, but I’ve seen zero evidence of that—especially if said door was 40 miles away. 

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that, if Dorothy had anything to do with Ron’s disappearance, she might have been covertly working for a government agency—the CIA perhaps—and had purposely sought Ron out. Where better to conduct clandestine activities than a farmhouse in Randolph Township, Ohio?

Well, maybe. But she herself would have to be discovered by the CIA in the first place. If Dorothy were married to a mechanic or salesman and living in a brick bungalow in Cincinnati, well…I don’t think she would have been hobnobbing with the sorts of people who might have approached her with an opportunity filled with mystery and intrigue. If Roscoe Craig, husband to the Dorothy in Dayton, had been working for Wright Patterson Air Force Base, I suppose it would be somewhat possible, but he wasn’t. He was a maintenance worker at General Motors. I could be wrong, but I just don’t see how a housewife named Dorothy Craig could have sashayed her way into the CIA.

Only three Dorothy Craigs were employed. One was a single woman of 24 who worked at a drugstore in Cincinnati. The second was a 34-year-old married mother of four sons under 12, who commuted to Cincinnati from Kentucky to work for Gibson Art, forerunner to Gibson Greeting Cards. The third was a 51-year-old married mother of three adult children who worked at a paper mill in Hamilton.

Speaking of children, one issue that I began to consider a potential dealbreaker was the issue of offspring. Raising kids can be a lot of work, or so I’ve been told. They can take up a lot of their parents’ time and resources, particularly if they’re school-aged. No matter if Dorothy Craig was employed or unemployed, I think it would be way more difficult for her to have the motive, means, and opportunity to develop some sort of business relationship with Ron Tammen if she was raising one or more children under the age of 12 or 13. If Ron had been known to make some side money through babysitting, then maybe, but we have no evidence of that.

Which Dorothy Craig was it?

Let’s imagine that we have a bunch of ping pong balls, and each ball represents a different Dorothy Craig on our list. Now imagine that each individual ball is magically weighted according to how well that particular Dorothy Craig meets the criteria we’ve set for Ron’s Dorothy plus a few bonus attributes. The heavier the ball, the better the candidate. If we put the balls into one of those wire Bingo cages, and turned the crank, the heaviest ball would tumble out first, which would indicate that the Dorothy Craig it represents is more likely than the rest to have written the check to Ronald Tammen. And the most likely candidate to tumble out first is…

…51-year-old Dorothy Craig, on Carmen Avenue, in Hamilton, Ohio!

Here’s why:

She lived and worked roughly 12 miles from Oxford, Ohio.

The Dorothy Craig on Carmen Avenue was the closest of all the Dorothy Craigs to Miami University—roughly 17 miles closer than the second-closest Dorothy Craig, who lived in Richmond, Indiana. It would have been more convenient for her to open a checking account at Oxford National Bank in comparison to the others. Likewise, it wouldn’t have been too out-of-the-way for her to make periodic in-person visits if she needed to make a deposit or withdrawal. 

For those of you who are in your 20s, 30s, or, good grief, even your 40s, this may be new information to you, but that was something that people used to do in those days. They would make a trip to the bank, in person, all the time, especially on pay day. There was no such thing as direct deposit. There were no ATMs. What’s more, banking hours were super tight in those days. In that part of the state, the commonly observed hours of operation back then were 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. Friday nights for people who weren’t able to get there during the day. There were no Saturday hours.

If my experience as a bank teller in the late 1970s and early ‘80s is any indication, we used to see the same customers routinely—some every day, others weekly. We knew people by name. We had conversations with them that had nothing to do with banking. We had our favorites and they had theirs. From the sound of it, Dorothy Craig was a friendly, likeable woman, and Oxford was a tiny little town. I’d venture to say that one or more of the cashiers at Oxford National Bank had probably gotten to know her by face and name as well.

She had an income.

Dorothy Craig didn’t just have an income—she had a good income.

This is despite the fact that, in her youth, Dorothy Mueller (her maiden name) had dropped out of high school after the 10th grade. At first, it seemed odd to me that she would end her education so soon, but I don’t judge. Apparently, people, especially women, did that a lot more back then. (See paragraph two.) I mean, if a young girl was constantly being told that a woman’s place was in the home, would she really need to learn about Euclidian geometry?

But Dorothy had ambition. She mastered the skill of stenography and landed herself a good-paying job at the local paper mill. For many years, she worked as an order clerk in the General Scheduling Division at the paper mill, a job for which accuracy would be imperative. From what I gather, Dorothy and her colleagues in Scheduling helped ensure that enough paper was being manufactured from pulp in order to meet the demand of customer orders. That seems important.

In 1939, Dorothy had earned $1300, which was $180 more than her husband Henry, a laborer at a stove foundry, had earned. Although that may not sound like a big difference, salaries back then were distributed along a much narrower spectrum. A person earning a salary of $5000 was at the upper end of the pay scale, according to the U.S. census. In the 1940 census, if you made more than that—if, for example, you were the boss of a major corporation or if, say, you were the beloved exuberant singer of show tunes known as Ethel Merman—your salary was marked down as “$5000+.” 

Back at the paper mill, a secretary with two years of college had earned $1000 in 1939, $300 less than Dorothy. An order clerk with two years of college had earned $1800 that year, just $500 more than Dorothy, and he was male, which was always more lucrative. Another high school classmate of Dorothy’s—also male—with a bachelor’s degree and a lofty post in personnel at the paper mill, made $2000—just $700 more than Dorothy had earned that year. So she was well compensated. In 1949, her salary had nearly doubled to $2500. 

By 1951, all three of Dorothy’s children were married and living their own lives. She and Henry were officially empty nesters, which allowed her to concentrate more on her work as well as the outside activity that seemed to buoy her most: her church. In the 1955-56 Hamilton city directory, Dorothy was listed as an order editor, which ostensibly was a promotion from clerk. In 1960, Henry passed away after a lengthy illness, but Dorothy kept working. In 1961, she was listed as an office secretary at the paper mill. According to her obituary, she retired in 1967 after 30 years of service. She died at the age of 80 in 1982.

Dorothy didn’t just work at any paper mill. She worked at THE paper mill.

It was probably sometime around 2012, not long after reading Carl Knox’s note for the first time, that I’d found Dorothy Craig of Hamilton in the 1940 census. So I’ve known about her for a while. When the 1950 census was released last year, I’d looked her up there too. Both said she worked at a paper mill, and my reaction was, “?” I figured she must be the wrong Dorothy Craig. I couldn’t imagine Ron Tammen ever bumping into someone who worked as a stenographer at a paper mill, just as I couldn’t imagine a stenographer at a paper mill writing a check to Ron Tammen.

But that changed last month. As I’ve mentioned earlier, in his book Baseless, Nicholson Baker described a person who was high up in the CIA—Col. Kilbourne Johnston, the assistant director of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination, AKA covert activities, from 1950 to 1952. Shortly after his time at the CIA, Johnston had joined the Champion Paper and Fibre Company, one of the most successful paper manufacturers in the country. He started at their Texas location in 1955, and in 1957, he moved to their headquarters, which was based in Hamilton, Ohio, and worked as director of operations programming staff. (He chose to go by “Pat” instead of Kilbourne now.) He was named vice president in 1962. 

Col. Kilbourne Johnston aka Pat Johnston, credit: The Log, November 1958; Fair Use

“Hold on,” thought I, “The number two guy in the CIA’s covert activities division moved to Hamilton, Ohio?”

I love Hamilton. It’s an easy-going, walkable city that celebrates its art, music, and history—everything I adore in a town. It has a fantastic library too. You should go there sometime.

Could I picture the assistant director of the CIA putting down roots there in the mid-1950s? Not really. I knew that St. Clair Switzer would have loved having a fellow military officer and former CIA guy living close by. I wondered who or what might have lured Johnston there.

Several weeks later, when I set out on my Dorothy Craig search, I reread the census forms for the Dorothy Craig who lived in Hamilton, and was reminded that she’d worked for a paper mill. Those words had suddenly taken on new relevance. I wanted to know which paper mill, since there was more than one in Hamilton. Sure enough, Dorothy Craig had worked at Champion Paper and Fibre. In the company’s vernacular for all of its valued employees, Dorothy Craig was a Champion.

I have no idea how well Dorothy Craig and Kilbourne Johnston knew one another. Nevertheless, I’m 100 percent confident that the two of them were sharing the same hallways for years, beginning when he arrived in Hamilton in 1957. That realization led me to ask if anyone else of importance was sharing those hallways with her in the days before Dorothy Craig wrote the check to Ronald Tammen.

Part 1: A woman named Dorothy Craig wrote a check to Ron Tammen shortly before he disappeared. Did the university ask her why?

According to Carl Knox’s notes, shortly before Ronald Tammen disappeared, he cashed a check from Dorothy Craig. He doesn’t say the date or the amount of the check. He doesn’t say why the check was written. He doesn’t say where Ron cashed it. And he doesn’t say who Dorothy Craig was. Why do I even bother to mention it here? I mention it because of all the information he did say. Despite the ambiguity, he still managed to tell us quite a bit.

Here are the exact words that Carl Knox had written at the top of one of his note pages:

Oxford Natl

Dorothy Craig

Where was it cashed

For this first blog post of the 70th anniversary of Ron’s disappearance, I think I’m going to return to my favorite format—good ol’ Q&A—because Q&As are the cotton blend joggers of journalism, the baggy shorts of blogging, which is to say that they’re my comfort zone. You get to bounce around from topic to topic without an outline or even a game plan and yet, in the end, you still end up with something reasonably cohesive. Also, the topic we’re about to discuss just naturally raises a bunch of questions. It just does. 

I should probably also let you know that I was a bank teller at one time. I wasn’t the head teller or even the back-up head teller when the head teller was sick or on vacation. I was just a run-of-the-mill teller in her late teens to early 20s who was trying to figure out her life’s purpose and, during that time, cashed checks for people. It’s just kind of hilarious that I’m having to tap into that forgettable part of my past now as I try to figure out this aspect of Ron’s case.

OK, let’s do this.

How do you know that Dorothy Craig wrote the check to Ron and not the other way around?

Four words: Where was it cashed. (He left off the question mark.) I love Carl’s question soooo much. We know that Dorothy Craig wrote the check to Ron Tammen because Carl wouldn’t care where the check was cashed if Ron had written the check to Dorothy. He might have asked “Who’s Dorothy Craig?” or “Why did Ron write the check to Dorothy?” but not “Where was it cashed?” Carl Knox cares where the check was cashed because it’s an obvious question to ask when you’re busy looking for a missing person. If Carl found out where Dorothy’s check was cashed, he might have learned something about Ron’s whereabouts. 

Which bank was the check written on?

As you’ll soon see why, I’m convinced that the check was written on an account from “Oxford Natl,” short for Oxford National Bank. In 1953, the Oxford National Bank was located at 7 West High Street, where Rapid Fired Pizza is now located. The building was impressively bank-like in appearance, constructed of etched stone and, according to a picture in the 1957 Miami Recensio, a lit sign that provided the time and temperature to passersby. There were no branches in nearby cities and towns—the building on High Street was all there was. 

To say that the Oxford National Bank had close ties to its collegiate community would be a colossal understatement. Sure, both Miami and the Western College for Women had bank accounts there. But more than that, several individuals affiliated with Oxford National Bank concurrently held high positions at Miami University. 

Take A.K. Morris, for example. According to the Dayton Daily News, Morris was president of Oxford National Bank from 1932 until 1960. But that wasn’t all he did for a living. Beginning in 1922, he’d worked in a variety of roles, including alumni relations, as an assistant to Miami University Presidents Raymond Hughes and Alfred Upham. In 1937, Morris was named vice president of Miami, and in 1946-47, he became acting president of the university—again, while serving as president of Oxford National Bank. At the time of Ron’s disappearance, Morris was working solely at the bank, though he undoubtedly knew Miami’s leadership well.

Two other individuals with an Oxford National Bank/Miami University connection were Philip D. Shera and his brother Donald. Their father, Caleb, had founded the bank in 1902. For 12 years, until his death in 1942, Philip was treasurer of Miami’s Board of Trustees while also serving as vice president and cashier at the bank. Donald Shera was named to the post of treasurer of the Board of Trustees in 1949, also while serving as vice president and cashier at the bank. You might remember Don Shera’s name from an earlier blog post. He was corresponding with Carl Knox about how to apply Ron’s bank balance of $87.25 to Ron’s outstanding university bills after he’d disappeared. Don Shera replaced E. Bruce Ferguson, who died unexpectedly, and who was a treasurer for the Board of Trustees from 1942 to 1949 while also an assistant cashier for the bank.

If you think these dual appointments seem unusual and, quite frankly, a conflict of interest, I agree with you. But I’m so happy that they didn’t see it that way back then. As a result of Oxford National Bank’s close ties to Miami University, we can feel confident that Carl Knox had first-hand knowledge of Ron’s bank account information, not to mention Dorothy Craig’s. 

How do you know that Carl was talking to someone from Oxford National Bank about Dorothy Craig’s check?

We already know that Ron banked there, since we have Don Shera’s letters to Carl Knox about Ron’s balance after Ron disappeared. Carl Knox certainly would have contacted someone there early in his investigation to learn as much as he could about Ron’s finances.

At the top of the same note that held Dorothy Craig’s information is a note about a $15 deposit to the Cleveland Trust Co. that Ron had written concerning an American Express account. Therefore, it’s logical to conclude that the source was someone from Oxford National Bank. I suspect that, in those frantic early days, Carl’s source was Don Shera or A.K. Morris.

What makes you think that Dorothy had a checking account at Oxford National Bank?

It’s true that the words “Oxford Natl” above Dorothy Craig’s name could be interpreted in a few ways. While one interpretation is that it refers to Dorothy’s checking account, another view could be that it’s in reference to Carl’s source—the person he’s speaking with—and a third might be that Oxford National was the institution who cashed Ron’s check for him. There may be other interpretations as well.

Here’s why I believe the first interpretation is the correct one:

We know that Carl is speaking with someone from Oxford National Bank because of the information about the $15 deposit to Cleveland Trust. We know that Dorothy wrote the check because of Carl’s question, “Where was it cashed.” And we also know that Ron had cashed the check versus depositing it, again because of Carl’s question.

If Shera or Morris had told Carl “We recently cashed a check for Ron Tammen from someone named Dorothy Craig,” then Carl might have jotted down the bank’s name above Craig’s in response, but he also would have had his answer regarding where the check had been cashed. In other words, if Oxford National Bank had cashed Ron’s check, Carl wouldn’t have even written the question down. Therefore, we can conclude that Ron had cashed the check somewhere else.

But here’s the kicker: If Ron had cashed the check somewhere else, and if Dorothy’s check had been written on another bank account, then Oxford National Bank officials wouldn’t have even known about the check. They would have been bypassed completely. But they did know about the check so the check must have been written on an Oxford National Bank account—Dorothy Craig’s.

Carl’s brilliantly simple 4-word question gave us two key pieces of intelligence: that Dorothy Craig had written a check to Ron Tammen and that Dorothy’s checking account was with Oxford National Bank, which happened to be an annex of sorts to Miami University.

Why wouldn’t Ron have cashed the check at the Oxford National Bank?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Not sure. It’s where he banked. It was conveniently located on High Street and he could have cashed it when he was depositing another check. Of course, in those days, bankers would frequently call it a day at 2:30 p.m.—something known as bankers’ hours—so maybe the bank had closed and Ron decided to cash the check elsewhere. Or perhaps he did it for another reason.

Is it possible that Dorothy alerted the university that she’d written the check to Ron?

Unlikely. If she’d notified the university, there would have been more info in Carl’s notes concerning who she was, why she’d written the check, how she knew Ron, perhaps his disposition when she last saw him—things like that. Carl’s note was about a check, not a person. It came from a bank official.

Do you think Carl got an answer to his question of where the check was cashed?

Carl’s notes don’t indicate whether he’d received an answer to his question, though he should have. No matter where Ron cashed the check, the Oxford National Bank, as the drawing bank, would have received the check back from the establishment that had cashed it, likely for deposit, or from the establishment’s bank. Officials could have easily told Carl where the check was cashed as well as the date of the check and the check’s amount, just as they did for another check that Ron had cashed at a drugstore up the street, which you’ll hear about in a second.

Do you remember how newspaper reports said that Ron had $11 or $12 on him when he disappeared? Could that be the value of Dorothy’s check?

Interesting theory. Actually, newspapers credit Charles Findlay with that guesstimate, which is all I think that it was. I don’t think he was basing that number on any prior knowledge regarding Ron’s check-cashing activity. For example, Carl Knox had written a note saying that, on April 16, Ron cashed a $5.00 check at John Minnis Drugstore. Does that mean that Dorothy’s check was for $6.00 or $7.00? I doubt it. My guess is that Dorothy’s check was for a larger amount.

Did Carl Knox try to track down Dorothy Craig? 

This, I believe, is the crucial question, since, In the eyes of university officials, this could have been a big clue. Carl had undoubtedly been told by students and the Oxford Police about a woman from Hamilton who was spotted driving Ron away the night of April 19. Was this our girl? Regardless of whether she was or wasn’t, Carl should have been interested in tracking her down. He could have done so easily thanks to the contact information that she would have supplied when she opened her bank account—information that Morris or Shera could have given to him. So far, I’ve seen no evidence that a conversation took place, however.

If the check was written by Dorothy Craig to Ron, and he cashed it somewhere else, how did bank officials manage to flag it?

I think it could have happened like this: Carl Knox appears to have had at least two conversations with officials of Oxford National Bank concerning Ron’s bank transactions. In the first conversation, which appeared to occur very early in Knox’s investigation, officials reported on checks that the bank had received by April 6, 1953. In other words, when Carl first contacted them, let’s say sometime around April 22 perhaps, the bank had only received checks that Ron had written up through April 6, 1953. (Things obviously moved at a slower pace back then.)

After their initial conversation, however, several additional checks had arrived at the bank. In the second conversation, officials had reported on checks that the bank had received later—most of which were written during the week prior to Ron’s disappearance. Among those checks was the check written by Dorothy Craig to Ron.

Here’s a timeline of Ron’s banking activity according to Carl Knox’s notes:

Conversation #1

Knox wrote down the words “$10 check $30 check” and beside that: “Playing Jobs,” in reference to a couple of Ron’s gigs. Ron had either cashed or deposited those checks, likely the latter.

Knox wrote “$100 check on a Loan,” which evidently would have been a check that Ron had written to help pay off one of his loans.

Beneath those two notes, Knox had written “No activity in Bank Account since April 6th,” which supports the conclusion that this information came from the first of two conversations.

Conversation #2

On Monday, April 13, Ron wrote two checks. One was for $24.45 to Delta Tau Delta, Ron’s fraternity, and the other was to Shillito’s, a Cincinnati-based department store for which Oxford had a small outlet, for $4.07. 

On Wednesday, April 15, he wrote the $15.00 check for deposit to the Cleveland Trust Company, which had to do with an American Express account. 

On Thursday, April 16, he wrote a $5.00 check payable to “cash” at John Minnis Drugstore. 

(Note: In 1976, we learned from Joe Cella, reporter for the Hamilton Journal-News, that on Friday, April 17, Ron had paid a car insurance premium of $17.45 by personal check to Glenn Dennison. I’m not sure why Carl Knox hadn’t learned of this check during his second conversation, although, perhaps it hadn’t arrived at the bank yet.)

It was sometime during this second conversation that Carl Knox would come to learn that Ron had cashed the check from Dorothy Craig. This is further confirmation that the check had been written on the Oxford National Bank and had made its way back to them by way of the establishment that had cashed it or the establishment’s own bank. The check’s amount would be withdrawn from Dorothy’s account and Dorothy would receive the canceled check with her next statement. (Can you imagine being Dorothy Craig and reading all of the headlines about Ronald Tammen going missing and you’re sitting there with a canceled check with his signature on it? Too bad they didn’t have eBay back then.)

Although I don’t know exactly how bank officials managed to flag it, my guess is that, by the time it had arrived, they were on high alert for anything with Ronald Tammen’s name on it. Still, I think we’re fortunate that someone did catch it and let Carl Knox know.

What isn’t clear is why Carl Knox didn’t write down the date and amount of Dorothy’s check as he had been doing for every other check during that second conversation. 

So who was Dorothy Craig and why did she write a check to Ron Tammen?

Exactly. 

Introduction: In recognition of the 70th anniversary of Ron Tammen’s disappearance, four fairly major blog posts in one fell swoop

Hey there! Good to see you. I imagine you’re checking this blog site because it’s the 70th anniversary of Ron Tammen’s disappearance from Miami University. In recognition of this day, I’m happy to report that we—you and I—are now in the number three spot whenever someone Googles “Ronald Tammen”—which floors me, since I’ve done absolutely nothing special to achieve that position other than post updates when I have them. If you Google the more familiar “Ron Tammen,” we’re at number two, and that’s really amazing too. What I’m trying to say is that this is on you, Good Man readers. Your visits and clicks and comments and likes have put us near the top of the search engine heap, and I thank you so, so much.

If Ron’s still alive, he’d be 89 years old. And, by the way, if he is still living and he’s landed here after Googling his former name, I only ask that he leave a comment below, no matter how strange or out-of-the-blue it might feel to him. Ron, if you’re reading this, the door is wide open, and we would love to hear from you. But no pressure.

Speaking of which, I was beginning to feel a little pressure myself about a month ago when I was thinking about what to write about today. Things have been happening research-wise, the wheels are still turning, but I just didn’t feel like I had anything new to report just yet.

Well, I do have something new to report, thanks to reader Julie Miles, the same Julie Miles who recently created a searchable, sortable MKULTRA index that’s available on the homepage of this blog site. (If you haven’t explored it yet, I encourage you to download it and have a look around. If you ever feel the desire to go through some of the CIA’s MKULTRA documents, the Miles index—should we call it that? I think we should!—will give you a ginormous head start.)

Back to today’s news. Last month, I read a book by Nicholson Baker—a book that Miles had recommended to me—in which he describes his experiences with the Freedom of Information Act. On page 231, Baker shared a fact that, although relatively minor in the grand scheme of his narrative, struck a major chord for me. A few days later, as that new piece of information was rolling around somewhere in my brain, I reread a note that Carl Knox had jotted down in 1953 and revisited some U.S. Census forms from 1940 and ’50. That’s when a neuron must have fired, which caused a synapse to form, and so on down the line, resulting in the aha moment that was the inspiration for today’s post. 

Some of you may recall how, for other Tammen milestones, I’ve given away T-shirts, Christmas ornaments, and key chains with Ron’s face on them. We’ve had quizzes and a Twitter chat and beers at Mac and Joe’s. On anniversary number 65, I did a Facebook Live Stream from my sister’s kitchen, and nervously leafed through a copy of the psychology textbook that Ron would have used, giving you my best guess of the page it was opened to when he stepped away from his desk for the last time. We’re not going to do any of those things this time. God knows the planet could use a few less promotional items, and livestreaming still scares the crap out of me.

Besides, I believe that what you want is information—new, compelling information about the Tammen case. So that’s what I’ve decided to give you this year. What’s more, you know how great it is to be able to binge a TV series in one night as opposed to having to wait each week for a new episode to drop? Well, THAT, my friends, is what we’re doing this year. Today, I’m dropping four fairly major blog posts all at the same time. They’re separate, but related, and you can read them whenever you’d like—binge them all now or read them one at a time, whenever. It makes no difference to me. There are no rules. Well, you may want to read them in order. That would probably help.

Two important final points: 

  1. I’ll be discussing several people by name, especially two key people. Please keep in mind that the year was 1953, at the height of the Cold War. If someone—anyone—back then were asked to do something for national security, most would probably do it. If they were asked to keep quiet about it, again, for national security’s sake, a typical person would do that too. The two people I’ll be focusing on were very nice, wonderfully admirable human beings, as you’ll soon learn. I just think they may have known something more about Ronald Tammen when the news broke that he’d disappeared.
  2. When I present my hypothesis, please recognize it as just that—a hypothesis. There’s always the chance that I could be wrong. 

It’s Sunshine Week! Let the Sunshine In

It’s March 12, 2023, the first day of Sunshine Week, a time when journalists, authors, bloggers, documentarians, archivists, librarians, historians, students, teachers, and inquisitive citizens of all stripes pay homage to our right to review government files. Whether they’re old or new, hard copy or electronic, sleep-inducing or eye-opening, pristine or heavily redacted to the point of being laughable, public records can help us develop a better understanding of how our tax dollars are spent. It’s a way of holding public officials accountable.

In writing this, I’ve been humming that one song from the musical HAIR—starting with “Aquarius” and ending with “Let the Sunshine In.” As the lyrics have been going through my head, I’m like “Dang, gurl! These lyrics are apropos to Sunshine Week in a trippy sort of way!” But song lyrics are copyrighted. If I print them on my blog site, I’ll be going straight to song lyric jail, and I don’t think I’d last very long there. (Titles are OK though.)

Here’s what we’re going to do: I’m including a link to the lyrics here and you can fill in the blanks in your heads as you read along, Mad Libs–style.

Does everyone have the two web pages open, so you can toggle back and forth? Good. Let’s begin by focusing on PARAGRAPH 3 of the lyrics.

*************************

Thanks to our right to seek public records through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and state sunshine laws, 

we can achieve _____________________________________________,

PAR 3, LINE 1

__________________________________________________________,

PAR 3, LINE 2

__________________________________________________________,

 PAR 3, LINE 3

maybe even the occasional____________________________________,

 PAR 3, LINE 4

plus, if we’re lucky, __________________________________________,

 PAR 3, LINE 5

and, ultimately, if the CIA finally comes clean about what’s still hiding in the MKULTRA documents,

__________________________________________________________.

 PAR 3, LINE 6

What then? Maybe, just maybe, if our ongoing quest for transparency inspires our government institutions to do their jobs ever more responsibly, and more responsively, for the citizens it serves, 

__________________________________________________________,

PAR 1, LINE 3   

__________________________________________________________!

PAR 1, LINE 4

*************************

Clearly, we have a ways to go.

Incidentally, if you’ve never heard the above sung by a Broadway cast, it’s time. I’m posting two renditions that were performed in NYC’s Ed Sullivan Theater. The first aired on March 30, 1969, on the Ed Sullivan Show, and the second was performed 40 years later, on April 30, 2009, on the Late Show with David Letterman. If you have a little time, consider watching both, paying close attention to the audiences’ reactions at the end. Fellow Boomers, I know we get mocked a lot these days, but if there’s one thing we’ve managed to accomplish, it was that, on our watch, people loosened up a bit more. 

That was fun, but, in all seriousness, transparency in our public institutions is extremely important. We’d never have gotten as far as we have in our fact-finding mission on Ronald Tammen without FOIA and Ohio’s Public Records Act.

And now, in the spirit of Sunshine Week, I’d like to make several announcements on the topic of FOIA and public records requests as they pertain to Ron’s story. Announcement #1 is enlightening, #2 is vindicating, #3 is…what it is, and you’re not going to believe how cool announcement #4 is.

Announcement #1

You should totally read:

 “Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act,” by Nicholson Baker

Thanks to a reader’s recommendation, I recently finished reading Baseless (etc.), by Nicholson Baker, and maaaan, could I relate with the frustration he’s experienced when submitting FOIA requests to the CIA and Air Force. It appears that he has similar views about how the CIA treats its FOIA requesters—they’re just waiting for us to die. 

For years, Baker has been studying whether there’s truth to the rumors—which U.S. officials have summarily denied—that the United States had deployed biological weapons during the Korean War. He presents a strong case that they did. On the face of it, it might appear as if bioweapons research has little to do with the mind control research that we’re interested in, however, it is related. As you may recall, Frank Olson, who’s discussed in Baker’s book, was a prominent bioweapons researcher at Camp Detrick (later named Fort Detrick), in Maryland, in 1953. He’d had a bad reaction to some LSD that had been slipped into his drink at a CIA-sponsored retreat that took place November 18-20, 1953, and, on November 28, just two days after Thanksgiving, he fell (read: was likely pushed) out of a tenth-story hotel window in Manhattan. His case is directly linked to MKULTRA. 

I also learned a few things that are tied somewhat to Ron’s story, or, more specifically, to Ron’s former psychology professor, St. Clair Switzer.

First, Baker discusses several organizations that I’ve been bumping into in my research on Switzer. He has a lot to say about the Department of Defense’s Research and Development Board (RDB) as well as the Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), both of which were advocating for the use of bioweapons during the Korean War. In my post from May 20, 2021, I discuss Switzer’s possible relationship with both the RDB and the PSB. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen no evidence that links Switzer to possible bioweapons research—I still believe he was focused mostly on interrogation techniques, such as hypnosis and drugs, and the possible development of a hypnotic messenger—but he may have been running in the same circles as people who were.

Second is a random factoid that I find particularly fascinating. A man who has received a sizable word count in Baker’s book is Frank Wisner, the former director of the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), the epicenter for the CIA’s covert operations. Wisner had his hand in pretty much all of the CIA’s misdeeds at that time, including the importation of Nazi scientists after WWII through Operation Paperclip and the CIA’s overthrow of the democratically elected president of Guatemala in 1954 because they felt like it. He was a huge supporter of the use of bioweapons, and, naturally, he was involved in MKULTRA too. 

The person I find even more compelling was Wisner’s assistant director, Col. Kilbourne Johnston, who was an expert on biological and chemical warfare and who, according to Baker, was employed with the Air Force at the same time he was with the CIA. 

Let me just say that Baker has some seriously mad research skills, because I’ve found no online sources linking Kilbourne Johnston to the Air Force—only documents pertaining to his stint with the Army Service Forces during WWII. But Baker found hard copies of documents that identify a Mr. Johnson—which was Johnston’s original surname—in the Air Force who had the same phone number as the CIA’s Kilbourne Johnston. According to Baker’s citations in the back pages of his book, Johnston was in the Air Force’s Air Targets Division, which, well…I think we have a pretty good notion of their area of expertise.

After an extended illness following a trip to Asia in May 1952, Johnston left both the CIA and the Air Force and started a lithograph business. (I don’t care who you are;  when your inner voice tells you that life’s too short and that you need to start something new, like lithography, for example, it’s best to heed the call.) In 1955, at the still-youthful age of 48, he signed on with the Texas Division of Champion Paper, a name that probably rings a bell for readers who are familiar with the paper mill that used to occupy 601 N. B Street in Hamilton, Ohio. And for good reason. Because in the late 1950s, this highly decorated Air Force colonel and assistant director of the CIA moved to Hamilton to work at the headquarters of Champion Paper, and in 1962, he was named vice president. He remained in that position until 1966. 

In other words, this Army/Air Force colonel who knew everything there was to know about what the CIA was up to in the early 1950s was living 10 miles from Miami University not too long after he left the Agency. Did he and Lt. Col. Switzer ever meet up for coffee or a cold one to, you know, talk about sensitive stuff? If Switzer had known who was living nearby, I think he would have conjured up a way.

The third take-home I learned from Baker’s book could turn out to be a game-changer. It has to do with a more efficient, more effective way to search for CIA documents that are posted in their Electronic Reading Room. If you visit the search page for the CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room and type in a word or term such as “hypnosis,” you’ll probably bring up a huge number of pages to wade through, most of which have no bearing on what you’re actually looking for. But if you type “hypnosis” site:cia.gov into the Google search bar, a more digestible list of documents will pop up, with short descriptions that give you a clue what they’re about and quick links that take you straight to the document instead of an intermediary page that the CIA has set up. It’s usually faster too.

This search technique plus a document that Baker describes in his book concerning the CIA’s sanitization process directly applies to…

Announcement #2

The unredacted July 15, 1952, memo still hasn’t turned up

Remember the CIA memo dated July 15, 1952, in which a group of panelists is named for a [BLANK] Study Group? As I mentioned in my May 20, 2021, blog post, I think that the letters RDB (abbrev-speak for the Department of Defense’s Research and Development Board) occupy the blank next to “Subject” and I also believe, based on the chronology of various related memos, that the RDB’s study group had to do with Project ARTICHOKE.

All of the names listed in the memo are blanked out as well. Here’s that memo: 

In August 2016, I submitted a FOIA request to the CIA asking them to lift the redactions from the list of names. Almost three years later, on May 12, 2019, they responded as follows: “Please be advised that we conducted a thorough and diligent search in an effort to locate a full-text version of the document, but unfortunately were unsuccessful.” 

In other words: Sorry, but we only have the whited-out version.

I appealed on the basis of, well, here’s an excerpt: “I find it inconceivable that a government employee charged with the critical responsibility of declassifying national security documents would be so sloppy and abusive in his or her handling of this information as to somehow misplace or destroy the original document, particularly given the CIA’s already embarrassing history with mishandling documents pertaining to MKULTRA.” 

I also quoted Senator Edward Kennedy, who said the following during the Joint Hearing before the Select Committee on Intelligence on MKULTRA in August 1977:

The intelligence community of this Nation, which requires a shroud of secrecy in order to operate, has a very sacred trust from the American people. The CIA’s program of human experimentation of the fifties and sixties violated that trust. It was violated again on the day the bulk of the agency’s records were destroyed in 1973. It is violated each time a responsible official refuses to recollect the details of the program. The best safeguard against abuses in the future is a complete public accounting of the abuses of the past. [bold formatting added]

On June 11, 2021, they wrote and said that I should receive a ruling sometime around December 8, 2022. I’m not sure what I was doing on December 8, 2022, which was a Thursday, but I know for sure that I wasn’t reading the CIA’s ruling on my appeal, which has yet to arrive.

Last week, I called the CIA and left a message asking for a status update on my appeal. Still no word. 

But in the book Baseless, Nicholson Baker discusses a CIA document from 1975 (the year when the Church Committee was investigating the intelligence activities of the CIA and other agencies) that describes a process by which the CIA sanitized its records in response to requests from members of the House and Senate. Its title, “Workers’ Kit for Sanitizing Documents,” is friendly and adorable and almost sounds as if they could create a child’s version to sell on Amazon. I’m including it here:

In that process, for every original document that was requested, the worker made two Xerox copies. On copy 1, the worker drew lines through words that they felt needed to be covered up, and on copy 2, they put correction tape over those words and typed less specific words to take their place. Then they made more copies of the taped-over version for people up the chain to review and for the worker to keep as a record. I’m sure this protocol is different than the one used in declassification—at least from my experience, they don’t type over their redactions in declassification—but I’m guessing it’s not that different.

If you look at the July 15, 1952, memo, you can see that it’s a copy, and a really bad copy at that. Also, the whited-out parts are super straight, as if it was done with correction tape. My guess is, not only is there an original version, but there are likely several versions of this memo, including the original, the taped-over version, and at least one of several copies that were made of the taped-over version for the higher-ups. They can’t have lost all of those copies, can they? 

Besides, what would it say about the CIA’s declassification process if the original copy—the one containing all the ostensibly classified information—is the one that gets mislaid somewhere while the taped-over copy is the only one they can find?

Speaking of taped-over copies…

Announcement #3

Most of the posts on Carl Knox’s former secretary and/or the Miami Stories Oral History Project have been pulled down

If you’ve been wondering what happened to my posts concerning my search for an interview with Carl Knox’s former secretary—the ones where I talk about edited tapes, missing tapes, the recorded-over tape, and ice hockey—I’ve pulled most of them down for now. They still exist and there may come a time when I repost one or more or all of them, but for now I’ve decided to handle things this way.

If I have something truly significant to share, I will, however, most activity on this topic is now being conducted behind the scenes.

I just don’t want you to feel out of sorts when you run searches for them and come up empty.

But speaking of sorts and searches…(😬 …too lame?)

Announcement #4

For the first time ever, you can download a sortable, searchable MKULTRA index here, on this website!

I’ve saved the best announcement for last. I am totally pumped to let you know that Julie Miles, AGMIHTF reader, frequent commenter, good book recommender (she’s the one who recommended Nicholson Baker’s book to me), and computer sorceress, has taken the CIA’s mammoth index of MKULTRA titles and…

…wait for it….

…made a spreadsheet out of it. 

I’m. Not. Joking.

Anyone who’s explored the MKULTRA collection understands that you have to start with the index to figure out which documents are pertinent to whatever you’re researching. But the index is 84 pages long and incredibly random—dates, topics, you name it, are all over the place. It’s almost as if the CIA made it that way on purpose. Plus, the PDF pages that are posted online aren’t searchable. Until now, you had to scroll through the index, page by page, to figure out which documents you’d like to review, and then you opened one of four folders originally provided by the CIA, now posted on the Black Vault website, and searched for the ID number. In 2018, the Black Vault posted additional MKULTRA documents that they’d obtained from the CIA. 

Now, thanks to Miles, the index is transcribed as a spreadsheet into Google Sheets. You can copy/paste it as-is to your hard drive, or download or copy/paste it to a preferred software, such as Excel. Then, run with it, have fun with it! You can organize it however you’d like: alphabetically, topically, chronologically, etc., which makes it sooooooo much easier to find what you’re looking for. Then you can locate the pertinent document or documents from the Black Vault site.

As far as I can tell, not only has no one attempted this before, but no one has even considered attempting it before. It’s that daunting. But Miles thought it seemed doable, and then she went ahead and did it. 

[Wait for applause.]

Meryl Streep Applause GIF by SAG Awards - Find & Share on GIPHY

And now, without further ado, here’s the link to the MKULTRA index:

LINK TO INDEX

User notes as well as other helpful info can be found at the bottom.

If you prefer to have it in Excel, here you go:

Although I happen to think it looks perfect, Miles says that it’s still a draft, so there may be tiny corrections or style changes in store. If anyone wants to assist in proofing it, please contact me at rontammenproject@gmail.com and I’ll pass along your info. Also, Miles has created an email address specifically related to the MKULTRA index for questions, comments, suggestions, whatever. But please bear in mind that this isn’t her full-time job, so she can’t guarantee a response: mkuitranscribed@gmail.com. Nevertheless, she’s interested in your feedback.

So happy Sunshine Week, y’all! If you have any FOIA stories to share to help us celebrate, please feel free to comment below. Also, this is a reminder that the 70th anniversary of Ron’s disappearance is fast approaching. If you have ideas on how we might observe the date of April 19, 2023, please feel free to suggest those below as well.

Breaking the CIA’s MKULTRA code, part deux

Credit: Photo by Cottonbro Studio at Pexels.com

Happy New Year! 

In celebration of the first day of 2023—the 70th year in which Ron Tammen has been missing not to mention the 70th anniversary of when Allen Dulles formally signed off on MKULTRA—I’d like to offer up the following new meanings for letters in the CIA’s MKULTRA coding system. (For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, you may want to read my previous post first.)

The letter D

D is for….a subject matter expert in an area of specialization pertaining to ARTICHOKE, and someone with whom the CIA may wish to follow up. 

I guess we should have figured the whole “let’s use the first letter of the word it represents” thing wouldn’t last. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t give it a D word anyway. And the D word that seems most appropriate is: doyen (pronounced DOI-en or DWI-yan, your choice), which I’d never heard of before, but which showed up in a list of synonyms when I typed in the word “expert.”

I have a feeling that the D label was used somewhat broadly. While it might be used for someone in academia, it might also be used as a reference to a news event in which a person or group of people appeared to possess a desired knowledge or skillset that the CIA wanted to learn more about. An outlier document used Ds to highlight possible interrogation questions.

So even though the D category still seems a little squishy, here’s a link to the document that sealed the deal for me.

In that document, every time you see the letter D, you see a reference to an expert in the field. In this case, the people with Ds next to their blacked-out names knew all about certain drugs.

This document also has a few Ds in front of the names of individuals (page 3) or specific cases (pages 1, 6, and 8) that the CIA could follow up with or investigate further.

And in the case of our March 25, 1952, memo, the doyens are our three hypnosis experts: Clark Hull, St. Clair Switzer, and Griffith W. Williams. The CIA categorizers didn’t seem to care that the writer had said that Hull was feeble and no longer interested in hypnosis. “So? He can’t even answer the phone in the interest of national security?” the categorizers hypothetically countered in their snide little way. “He’s getting three Ds anyway.” (Of course I’m kidding. As you know, I feel nothing but gratitude for the CIA categorizers.)

Page 1 of March 25, 1952, memo; click on image for a closer view

The letter H

The letter H is for…

…wait for it…

…the Department of Defense. (I’m a little flummoxed as to why the CIA categorizers didn’t assign the letter D to the DoD. Would that have been too obvious?)

We’d almost figured it out a few days ago, but I was thinking too granularly (as I am known to do). I’d seen the document with the H next to the paragraph that talked about the pilots, and had immediately thought Air Force. But I couldn’t understand why the other military branches wouldn’t have their own letter as well, since they were doing ARTICHOKE stuff too.

As I focused on the stand-alone H’s in the MKULTRA collection, I started noticing them in places of prominence: next to names cc’d at the bottoms of memos with other higher-ups, and on Louis Jolyon West’s Subproject 43 materials, including in the “From” line of a handwritten memo. As you may recall, West was a major in the Air Force before moving on to head the Department of Psychiatry and Neurology at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine.

Click on image for a closer view

And then I came upon a memo that we already knew about—one that I’d submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the CIA about in August 2016 and appealed in 2019. (I’m still waiting to hear back from them, even though the last time they wrote to me, they claimed I’d have an answer by the very specific date of December 8, 2022. I guess someone will be getting a phone call tomorrow.) 

Click on image for a closer view

The heavily redacted memo is a list of the members of a study group that had been commissioned by the DoD’s Research and Development Board (RDB), a board I’d written about in May 2021. The CIA had asked the RDB to investigate the feasibility of using ARTICHOKE techniques and the RDB  chose to conduct its investigation through the ad hoc group of experts. When I reexamined that document closely, I saw that the crossed-out subject of the RDB’s study group name was assigned an H, even though its members were all Cs (consultants) who represented an assortment of Bs (research organizations). That’s when I began to think more broadly.

In another document, I noticed an H next to the black blotch before the word “officers” and I found a handwritten document with an H before the phrase “Man to contact in AF film” (the AF ostensibly refers to the Air Force) on page 1 and, on page 4, another H alongside the words “several service representatives.” Who but the DoD would have access to representatives of several branches of the military service?

Click on image for a closer view

I’m convinced—H on its own stands for the DoD as a whole, one of its service branches, or someone affiliated with the DoD, usually someone at a higher level.

BONUS LETTERS

The letter E

Remember the E that I talked about at the end of my last post? (Alas, I can’t find the document where I’d first seen it.)  I now believe that E stands for…a line item or account with a financial institution of some sort. 

We learn this from Louis Jolyon West’s Subproject 43 materials that say: “I hereby acknowledge receipt of check #”…blah blah blah…“drawn on the BLANK,” the latter of which is marked with an E. It happens in other places in his materials as well.

Click on image for a closer view

Unless I find another use that changes my mind, the E category seems pretty obvious. It’s an account of some sort.

The letters D/H and I

As I was focusing on H’s, I landed on a document that used the letters D/H together in a whole new nefarious way throughout pages 1-5, with the letter H flying solo on page 6. The CIA categorizers threw the letter I into the fray as well.

Page 1 of June 21, 1952, memo on ARTICHOKE Techniques; click on image for a closer view

Based on this document, the letters D/H together appear to signify a test subject who has received drugs and hypnosis. This is in contrast to page 6, where the writer is recommending that, after conducting experiments on the two human subjects (D/H and D/H), the H (DoD) should consider using the ARTICHOKE technique whenever they see fit. In his view, “there will be many a failure but also that every success with this method will be pure gravy,” which is one of the most bizarre sentences I’ve read in the MKULTRA materials.

Page 6 of the June 21, 1952, memo; click on image for a closer view

As for the I, it appears to be a country against whom the CIA is developing its interrogation techniques.

So there you have it, my attempt at cracking the CIA’s MKULTRA code so far. The plan is to post a chart on the homepage to help anyone who is researching the MKULTRA documents.

MKULTRA Shorthand Guide

A                      Agency (CIA)

B                      Research Org/Business

C                      Consultant

D                     Expert/Knowledgeable Source in ARTICHOKE-related topic

E                      Financial Account

F                      Foreign 

G                     CIA Internal Group/Office

H                     Department of Defense

I                       Enemy Country/CIA target for ARTICHOKE method 

J                       ?

D/H                 Human Subject of ARTICHOKE method 

B/1                  ?

B/3                  Military Base

B/6                  Military Officer

H-B/1              ?

H-B/3              Military Base Hospital

H-B/6              Officer/Medical Specialist at Military Base Hospital

S                      ?

(Note: We may never know S, since it only appears at the top of some docs, but not in association with redacted text.)

More evidence that St. Clair Switzer was on the CIA’s payroll

Plus a bonus puzzler: Let’s make a little history and break some CIA code

Have you had enough holiday yet? Same. You want to do something kinda wild during this down week before New Year’s? Me too.

Let’s break some CIA code.

The CIA code I’m referring to can be found on a large number of MKULTRA documents that have already been released to the public. According to Google, the project I’m proposing has never been done before. If we can do this—and I believe that we can—we’ll be ripping open a whole new portal into the top secret world of MKULTRA. 

You heard me right. Us. Remember us? The ones who, I believe, first put two and two together to reveal Commander Robert Jay Williams as the former project coordinator of Project ARTICHOKE? The first ones who let the universe at-large know about St. Clair Switzer’s MKULTRA connections? The ones who discovered—much to the consternation of the FBI—why they’d purged Ron Tammen’s fingerprints 30 years ahead of schedule? We’re qualified to do this. We’re credentialed. The good news is that we won’t even be starting at square one. I do believe I’ve figured out some of the code already. And the better news is that the code I’ve figured out tells me that St. Clair Switzer was indeed working for the CIA at some point of his career. They said so themselves. Let’s do this!

Background

At an unknown point in time, one or more persons within the CIA had gone through every surviving MKULTRA document and, on many of them, had written a letter of the alphabet and sometimes an accompanying number alongside key places of redacted text. The alphabetical list isn’t very long. It starts with the letter A and ends with H.** To the best of my knowledge, only three numbers were used: 3, 6, and, on the rarest of occasions, 1.

The letters or letter-number combos appear to refer to a person who is employed by an organization, the organization as a whole, or, very generally, a place, be it domestic or international. The CIA categorizers, as we shall refer to them, probably did this because lots and lots of names are dropped in CIA memos. It’s useful to have some additional identifying information about who Joe Blow is and what his role is in the grand scheme of things. 

I don’t know who the intended audience is or was of this helpful, categorized information. The CIA staffers of the future? The guys and gals in the business wing at Langley who were keeping the books? (If you’ll recall, most of the MKULTRA docs had been destroyed in 1973, so the only surviving records originated with the people in accounting.) Given the CIA’s distaste for the Freedom of Information Act, I doubt very much that they were doing it to help out you and me. 

But therein lies the poetic justice in all of this: even as someone at the CIA was busily crossing out names and job titles and hometowns and whatnot, someone else at the CIA was actually offering up a clue into a certain person’s identity. Very, VERY cool of you, CIA. 

The puzzle

You know the letter that I believe was written by Louis Jolyon West to the CIA on February 6, 1957? In that letter, the man whom I believe to be Jolly West refers to another man who is spending the 1956-57 academic year helping him with his research. It was (I believe) West’s intention to create a hypnotic messenger during the summer of ‘57 and to have his eminently qualified helper, well, help him. And it’s my hypothesis that his helper was St. Clair Switzer, who was Ronald Tammen’s psychology professor the semester that Tammen disappeared.

At that point in our country’s history, the CIA and U.S. military wanted to learn as much as possible about interrogation techniques that could be used on prisoners of war, such as those involving hypnosis and drugs. They wanted to learn how they could elicit treasure troves of intelligence from POWs that the Americans had captured, and, conversely, how to ensure that American POWs wouldn’t give away the store to their captors. The interrogation aspect of the CIA’s mind control endeavors was known as Project ARTICHOKE, which was later broadened in scope beyond POWs. The creation of a hypnotic messenger—someone who could be hypnotized to deliver a detailed message of high sensitivity to an intended recipient without ever knowing what the message was—would’ve been right up the CIA’s alley back then. 

Let’s begin by reexamining that letter, which was mailed to the CIA’s Morse Allen to accompany the hypnotic messenger proposal. The author (who, again, I believe to be Louis Jolyon West) has the letter C written next to his blacked-out name. The letter-number written next to his associate’s name is H-B/6. If we could figure out the meaning of H-B/6, we could further strengthen, or weaken, our argument that Jolly West’s helper was St. Clair Switzer. 

Document provided thanks to TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view

After rereading a lot of MKULTRA documents—especially those pertaining to Project ARTICHOKE—and comparing notations from one document to the next, I think I’ve figured out the meaning of H-B/6. And (spoiler alert!) I believe that our argument has been strengthened. What’s more, I think I’ve found additional evidence to show that the CIA welcomed St. Clair Switzer to its cadre of hypnosis researchers with open arms.

The letters

The letters and letter-number combinations that the CIA uses throughout the MKULTRA documents, some more frequently than others, are as follows:

A

B

C

D

F

G

H

B/1

B/3

B/6

H-B/1

H-B/3

H-B/6

That list may not seem too terrible, but there’s a reason that (to the best of my knowledge) this project has never been attempted before by a layperson. Reading MKULTRA documents is always irritating. No one does it for fun.

The ones I think we know for sure

Let’s start with the easy letters—the meanings for which I’m 99.9% certain:

A is the Agency itself. Anyone with an A next to his or her name is employed by the CIA. It’s written next to a lot of important job titles in the “To” and “From” lines of a CIA memo, and it’s often written next to an author’s name at the bottom of a CIA-composed letter. It’s written next to the names of CIA staffers whose identities have been revealed—people like Morse Allen and Robert Jay Williams. It’s this simple: if you have an A next to your name, you, my friend, are in the CIA.

B, I believe, stands for a Business or Organization that conducts the type of research in which the CIA was especially interested. And, in the early to mid-1950s, the type of research that the CIA’s ARTICHOKE program was especially interested in pertained to hypnosis and drugs. As you can see on the February 6, 1957, letter, an address at the top right is blacked out and marked with a B, which is likely Jolly West’s business address. 

Here’s a table in which the letter B clearly signifies a Research Organization, versus C, which stands for…

C stands for Consultant. Anyone with a C next to their blacked-out name is employed by another entity, likely a university or research organization. They may be partially supported by the CIA through a grant or contract or some other temporary means for their expertise, although not everyone with a C was paid. Some offered up their expert opinions free of charge. In the February 6 letter, ostensibly, Jolly West was considered a C, but his workplace was categorized as a B.

F is for Foreign. The letter F is used to signify a country whose name has been redacted, sometimes as a location to conduct ARTICHOKE experiments or perhaps to denote other related overseas travel or consultation.

Clever, right? Our friends at the CIA came up with alphabetical shorthand that uses the first letter of the word it represents. I don’t know if that will apply to all of the categories, but it’s a nice way to start. As you can probably imagine, the letters A and C are by far the most frequently ones used in the ARTICHOKE documents.

The tougher ones

The Bs and Hs gave me the biggest trouble, since they appeared alone as well as with numbers. I also knew that the three main branches of the military were heavily involved in ARTICHOKE, but I was having difficulty identifying which branch might be represented by a corresponding letter. I won’t bore you with why I thought this, but for a while, I thought the B might mean Navy, the H might mean Air Force, and the G might be the Army. But that system didn’t play out in the documents.

Just an example of a confusing document; click on image for a closer view

And then I started to think like the bean counters in the CIA. You know what? If they can lump all the research orgs together, and they can lump all the consultants together, and they can lump everyone in the CIA together, then they can certainly lump all of the people in uniform together. I’d concluded that the B/3s and B/6s were part of the military because of their “tour of duty” and war talk and their inclination to measure hours in a day by the hundreds. That’s when I determined that B/3 meant a military base and B/6 meant an officer who is affiliated with a military base. As for the H that precedes the B/3s or B/6s, I figured out what that meant when I read the following two paragraphs from page 5 of a lengthy document in which the writer was kvetching about how no one, particularly researchers affiliated with the military, ever briefed him on any of their ARTICHOKE-related activities. Here are the two most awesome grafs:

So, now we know, and I just want to thank the CIA categorizers for practically handing us the working definitions of an H-B/3 and an H-B/6. H-B/3 ostensibly refers to a hospital or clinic on a military base and an H-B/6 ostensibly refers to an officer, and most likely a medical specialist, who is affiliated with a military base that has a hospital or clinic on site. A hospital on a military site would be considered a huge plus in conducting ARTICHOKE research. You, as an ARTICHOKE researcher, would be among friends. You wouldn’t have to hide what you’re doing nearly as much as if you were in a non-military hospital. 

Aaaaand, guess what? Wright-Patterson Air Force Base had just completed a 314-bed, 7-floor, state-of-the-art hospital facility in June 1956. So, yeah, if psychologist St. Clair Switzer was still active in the Air Force Reserves in 1957, and he very much was, and he was known in the hallways of Wright Patterson AFB, and he no-doubt was, then an H-B/6 next to his name would be apropos. I’d think that having an H-B/6 next to your name would be one of the more glowing attributes in the eyes of Morse Allen, the recipient of (ostensibly) Jolly West’s letter.

The ones that could use more research

Before I get to the most exciting part of this post, here are the categories that I’m still stuck on. If anyone has an inkling to visit The Black Vault’s MKULTRA collection to find occurrences of the following and to help figure out their meaning, I’d be grateful:

D – The March 25, 1952, letter that (ostensibly) refers to Clark Hull, St. Clair Switzer, and Griffith Williams, the Rutgers professor and hypnosis expert who’d also worked under Clark Hull, is studded with handwritten letter Ds. Because Ds weren’t used very frequently in the MKULTRA documents I’ve examined, I haven’t yet figured out a pattern. Perhaps it indicates referrals for consideration, but I don’t know. I don’t think it stands for drugs, since neither Clark Hull nor Griffith Williams had expertise in that area.

G – I think G stands for an internal group within the CIA, such as the gadgetry group mentioned in this memo. (Good Lord, do you think it stands for Gadgetry?) A letter for various separate internal groups makes sense if we’re considering the perspective of an Agency accountant. If they need to expend money from a specific line item for a designated group within the Agency, then that would be an important distinction.

H – I’m most stymied by the letter H when used on its own, with no B/3s or B/6s nearby. At one point I thought it represented hypnosis, but I don’t think so. When I noticed the blurb about the pilots, that’s when I thought it might mean the Air Force. But that would be weird to have a special designation for the Air Force and not the other military branches, wouldn’t it?This one definitely needs to be investigated further. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

B/1 (H-B/1) – I haven’t seen enough of this designation to ascertain how it differs from the B/3 and B/6 designations, but I think it’s probably similar. I don’t think it matters for our purposes though.

The most exciting part: why I think St. Clair Switzer was on the CIA payroll

In my blog post about how St. Clair Switzer spent his 1956-57 sabbatical, including the summer of 1957, I introduced two letters that I believe were written from St. Clair Switzer to his former colleague under Clark Hull, Griffith Williams. In the letters, Switzer is hoping to obtain guidance from Williams, who was, by then, an internationally recognized expert in the field of hypnosis.

Let’s have another look at those letters with our newfound knowledge.

Document provided thanks to TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view
Document provided thanks to TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view
Document provided thanks to TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view
Document provided thanks to TheBlackVault.com; click on image for a closer view

As you can see, any references to Williams have a C attached to them—in CIA lingo, he was considered a Consultant. But in the December 6, 1956, letter, references to West and Switzer were bestowed with As. They were considered Agency. Curiously enough, in the February 8, 1957, letter, West and Williams were designated as Cs, while the letter writer, whom I believe to be St. Clair Switzer, was an A-lister once again.

You may ask: are you sure that it was Switzer who wrote the two letters? Couldn’t it have been Morse Allen? I honestly don’t think so. First, the letters aren’t written in Allen’s style. Allen wasn’t an academic. The two letters were written by someone who clearly was. His words, “We grant that the above list is long and that any item individually could well deserve a Ph.D thesis,” tells me that the writer held his own doctorate degree, and he was acknowledging that the recipient did as well. He’s comfortably collegiate. In addition, the letter writer is gracious and deferential, both to the recipient, who is unquestionably Williams, but also to the researcher with whom the writer is working. He uses the term “we” quite a bit. Morse Allen worked alone. There was no “we” when he wrote his letters and memos about ARTICHOKE. From what I’ve read, Morse Allen didn’t do gracious. Switzer was no sweetheart either, but he knew how to write as if he were.

If St. Clair Switzer was the letter writer, and I continue to believe that he was, then he wasn’t a wannabe sitting on the sidelines. Switzer was CIA, at least for part of his career. That’s big. I also think he was running in those circles for quite a while.

******

P.S.: This post came to be because of one person’s recent email asking a question about Lackland Air Force Base. His question led me back to the MKULTRA documents, which was when I started fixating on the H-B/6 notation. I’m not sure I would have tried to figure out its meaning without that email. So…thank you…to all of you, for your input. You really do contribute to this process and influence my thinking in new ways.

******

** Late in the process, I noticed a faint S at the top of several documents, and on one document to date, several Js and Es. These are the exceptions to the rule. I’m going to ignore them for this blog post, since they don’t pertain to the question at hand, but I acknowledge their existence. If you can figure out what in the heck they mean, let me know!