Exclusive Interview with
American Computer President Jack Shulman
On the
Roswell/Bell Labs Controversy
by Michael
Lindemann
[Since mid-August, a
controversy has raged on the internet concerning
highly provocative information posted on the web site
of American Computer Company (see CNI News of
September 16, 1997; and visit ACC's web site: http://www.american-computer.com ). In brief, ACC has suggested
that the historic invention of the transistor at Bell
Laboratories in December, 1947 might have been aided
by covert transfer of technology from an alien
spacecraft recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. This
suggestion directly parallels similar claims made by
Lt. Col. Philip Corso in his recent book, "The
Day After Roswell." However, ACC personnel state
they had no knowledge of Corso or his book, but
relied instead on information provided by a
"consultant" who remains nameless.
American Computer's
president and chief technical officer is Jack
Shulman. In recent weeks, Shulman himself has come
under scrutiny by UFO researchers, as have several
other people who have presumed to speak in a
seemingly authoritative way on behalf of American
Computer. Chief among these "others" are
one Ed Wang and one Bob Wolf. Pronouncements
attributed to these two persons have raised
suspicions that Shulman himself may have been writing
under one or several pseudonyms.
CNI News, working in
cooperation with radio host Jeff Rense of the popular
syndicated program "Sightings on the
Radio," [see Jeff's web site at
http://www.sightings.com], is seeking to verify or
dispel the various rumors swirling around ACC and the
person of Jack Shulman, so that public attention can
be refocused to the significant issues raised on the
American Computer web site. This special supplement
to the October 1 edition of CNI News is directed to
that goal.
The following is an
edited transcript of a telephone interview between
Jeff Rense and Jack Shulman which took place on
September 29. Jeff Rense and CNI News editor Michael
Lindemann consulted together on the questions to be
asked prior to the call.
CNI News recognizes
that the statements made by Shulman in this interview
by no means satisfy all the questions we would like
to have answered. However, we hope that this
information represents a contribution to the ongoing
investigation of this unusual case.
Thanks to Jeff Rense
for sharing the complete contents of this interview
with CNI News.]
JEFF
RENSE: It's
September 29, and we're talking with American Computer
Company president Jack Shulman. To begin with, are you,
Jack Shulman, writing under the pseudonym "Ed
Wang"?
JACK
SHULMAN:
No
RENSE: Have you ever met Ed Wang?
SHULMAN: No.
RENSE: Have you ever talked to anyone
calling himself Ed Wang?
SHULMAN:: Yes, he's called here a
couple of times. At one time he had asked us if he
could use an account at one of the computer science
associations nearby to access the internet for the
purpose of investigative reporting. That predated
this whole controversy. We did in fact give him an
account to use, back about eleven months ago. I don't
remember what he was investigating at that time. Then
somebody raised his name, in about the early part of
August, asking us if we could verify something that
he had paraphrased from one of the stories on our web
site. Since he had paraphrased, and it was all quoted
and everything, it would have been just as easy for
that party to just look at our web page. So we said,
"If you'll look at our web page, you'll see that
whatever he's paraphrased here does appear to
resemble exactly the words that are on the web
page." To my knowledge, the only other contact
we've had with Ed Wang is an occasional call from
him, much as you've called me today, and others such
as Stig Agermose, who have contacted us to ask
questions.
RENSE: Who is Bob Wolf? Does he mean
anything to American Computer?
SHULMAN: Again, he's one of the
people, like Jared Anderson, Ed Wang, Linda Moulton
Howe, yourself and others, who've written us. There
have been dozens of people who have either written us
or called us for information. I have spoken to Bob
Wolf at length by phone. I have not personally met
the guy. He does appear to be a very nice fellow.
He's given me some very interesting information. I
don't know if I'd take all of it without the
proverbial grain of salt, because he has told me some
things that led me to believe there are parts of his
background that he doesn't want to disclose to me.
Apparently he worked for the U.S. Navy as a Seal, but
I can't verify that. I can't call the Seals
organization and ask if this guy was a Seal. They
won't respond to that.
RENSE: What is your purpose in exposing
the Roswell/Bell Labs allegations on the ACC web site,
thereby attaching your credibility, for better or worse,
not only to Roswell, but to claims concerning Bell Labs'
access to alien technology -- claims which either must be
substantiated, or which could make you look like a nut,
or a disinformer?
SHULMAN: I don't think there was any
purpose -- either to look like nut, a disinformer, a
credible source or anything -- taken into
consideration at first. We had a consultant come to
me and tell me this story. At first, I was quite
skeptical about it. I knew a lot of the facts,
because they are pretty much matters of record, but
had always thought that the reason there was a cloud
of -- shall we say -- controversy about the exact
origins of William Shockley's transistor was that it
stemmed perhaps from a prehistory that AT&T
didn't care to disclose. I didn't have any idea, up
until the time that the consultant came to me and
raised these issues, that it might in fact be related
to the Roswell incident. I originally thought [the
origin] was something like German rocket
scientists....
RENSE: How did this consultant come to
you?
SHULMAN: I had known the consultant
years ago. We had met each other in the hinterlands
of AT&T. I've worked on and off in AT&T
contracts over the course of a couple of decades. And
about a year ago, in my capacity as the chairperson
of the American Computer Science Foundation, I was
asked to review materials that pertained to an
ongoing investigation of telephone company practices
that were pertinent to the success of the computer
industry, during the course of which I happened to
come across some fairly strong allegations that were
made by the consultant in the dominion of that
specific investigation. I was not at that time
informed of the possibility of an alien technology
transfer. It was not until he came to me personally
and suggested it that I said to him, "Well,
you're going to have to show me some bonafide
evidence before I even consider this." About six
months later he came back to me with what appeared to
me to be... some evidence that might suggest in fact
that the transistor came from some kind of a project
involving investigation into an alien technology of
some kind.
RENSE: Can you elaborate on that
evidence at all?
SHULMAN: I can tell you that I have
seen what appears to be some notes from someone.
However, I cannot verify their authenticity, so I'd
really not like to describe them in any detail.
Frankly, Jeff, I grow concerned about leading people
in the wrong direction. They did give me the
appearance of a lab notebook, of a lab-keeper's
notebook. In fact, they did appear to describe or
have an actual memorandum referring to a
disinformation campaign in late 1947 at AT&T. But
again, they could have been a complete forgery. They
could have been anything. They might have been
legitimate too. At that particular juncture, I said
to him, "OK, this now looks like it's fairly
conceivable it might have happened, if in fact this
is bonafide." So he suggested to me, Why don't
we at the American Computer Science Foundation post
some kind of white paper on the subject? I said we
really can't do that. He asked me why, and I said to
him that it was because American Computer Science
Foundation carries the weight of its membership
companies, etc., all of which might lend a greater
weight, in essence underwriting the credibility of
this story in a way that I would not intend it to. I
would prefer that the information somehow stand on
its own. Well, he pestered me for a couple of months.
We were talking over coffee, reviewing the whole
thing, and he suggested, "Why don't you put it
on your American Computer Company web site?" I
said I can't do that, because it might [reflect badly
on ACC]. So he said -- and I'll be blunt with you
here -- "Why don't you make it look humorous?
That way, you have a plausibly deniable excuse."
I said, "It IS humorous, in a way, because if
you look at it, you have a company -- if in fact they
did obtain technology from a technology transfer
source -- that's been running around for fifty years
trying to hide that fact." That's funny. Why
would anybody do that? It struck me at that
particular moment that AT&T would have been
better off admitting it. So I said, "OK, why
don't we make it appear in its proper light -- as
outrageous and/or funny -- and put it on the ACC web
site and see if we get any reaction at all from
anybody who reads it. Perhaps if it strikes a chord,
somebody will contact us and tell us whether this is
ridiculous or not." Initially, we did not expect
anyone from your investigative arena to even notice
the story. At least I didn't. The consultant may
have, but I did not. I initially thought that people
would see it in passing and would say, hmm, how
interesting, how humorous, or whatever.
RENSE: You had no idea of the potential
scope of this?
SHULMAN: Well, interestingly, exactly
what I thought might happen did happen -- that is, it
struck a chord with somebody and they wrote us. Sure
enough, the first week someone wrote us and said,
"Yes, my father worked for AT&T/Bell Labs in
1947, and in the early '60s took me to see a
UFO." I was flabbergasted, absolutely floored.
You could have knocked me over with a feather at that
moment. Not because I was skeptical, but in the
context of how ridiculous it makes AT&T look, I
found it to be humorous. What, are they crazy? Why
didn't they come out with it in 1947? The world would
have been in their debt. AT&T would have been the
greatest company that ever lived. Why would they hide
it?
It was then that the
full import of the suggestion of profiteering began
to occur to me. If in fact this were true, the
profiteering aspect was something that none of us
considered. If people were ready to make billions and
billions of dollars for 200 years on this kind of
technology, and it came from an "alien
source," they would keep it a secret -- because
if it came from outside of AT&T, it wouldn't
belong to AT&T. It hadn't even dawned on us,
because we were looking at it from the perspective of
how amazing the story is, how earthshaking, and how
silly it would be to keep it a secret -- until we
began to realize who was in the business of profiting
from this kind of technology.
RENSE: Do you have any relationship with
Bell Labs now, Jack?
SHULMAN: Not really. They call us
every once in a while to look at buying equipment,
but I am no longer personally doing any consulting
for Bell Labs.
RENSE: Does the consultant?
SHULMAN: Occasionally. He or she does
communications-related consulting in the defense
industries, and very specifically his or her identity
is being withheld for security reasons.
RENSE: Has the consultant expressed to
you any surprise at the amount of internet interest in
this story?
SHULMAN: He and several of our public
relations consultant clients said that, frankly, it
will do quite well as a story on the internet because
it will serve to brighten up the interest of some
very frustrated people. This information will give
people in your investigative field some leverage in
dealing with the whole subject. Even if the entire
story might not be 100 percent accurate for whatever
reason, the facts described in our story are
materially largely true. For instance -- and it's
been interesting to see how many people have reacted
adversely to this suggestion -- if you take a look at
the part about the Nike-Ajax missile bases, and the
anti-aircraft guns that preceded them, in and around
AT&T down in Red Bank, outside of Crawford's
Corners, up in Murray Hill and over in Holmdel, it's
almost shocking to discover that, while New York City
and New Jersey sat undefended, AT&T had both
anti-aircraft and then anti-missile batteries
constructed around them in the 1940s and 1950s. This
is painfully humorous. It actually hurts to consider
that AT&T and Bell Labs are more important than
the citizens of our country. So I'm thinking, wow,
there must be more than just the labs there. Because
I know something about the research community, and I
don't know that there is anything at AT&T from
1947 to 1997 that was irreplaceable. Whereas, when I
think of places like the Applied Physics Laboratory,
Cold Springs Harbor, Lawrence Livermore -- there are
projects going on there that are not reproducible,
and I'm not sure they all have Nike-Ajax missile
bases around them.
RENSE: Concerning the allegations about
Bell Labs, then, would you say that you are a conduit for
someone else's information?
SHULMAN: Yes, we are providing a
forum. To date, only Motorola from the AT&T arena
has tried to dispute it. AT&T appears to be
remaining mute on the subject. And Lucent has
remained mute, although I must tell you that our
relationship with Lucent on the technical support
side -- because we support some of Lucent's products
on the AT&T phone systems -- has been less than
warm since August 15. We've actually been hung up on
a few times.
RENSE: But have you had anyone call up
and tell you, Jack, you've really stepped across the
boundary here?
SHULMAN: No, not thus far. We've
gotten a couple of nasty letters from people who
didn't provide a return email address. But we're just
trying to provide a forum for people to hear these
facts and either disprove them or prove them. There's
nothing worse, in my view, than something like this
that's left open to conjecture indefinitely, because
it does nothing but hurt the people who try to
consider it, and I think it hurts the country to some
degree. I think it weakens our country. The fact that
people will continuously arrive at the conclusion,
for instance, that either the DoD, or the president,
or someone like that is not disclosing facts to them
that they ought to disclose, leads to the kind of
thinking that undermines our democratic system. It
tends to erode our confidence in government, and I
think our confidence in government really needs to be
reinforced.
RENSE: Is American Computer consciously
part of a larger coordinated campaign of public
disclosure or education aimed at revealing things about
the alleged alien presence on earth?
SHULMAN: No. Not unless you call ACC's
own campaign that broader one. Nobody came to us
other than this consultant.
RENSE: So would you say that Jack
Shulman, as a matter of conscience and patriotism,
independently decided to put this on his web site?
SHULMAN: Conscience, yes, simply
because I thought that the facts deserved disclosure
and consideration. The public should know. Even if
they're not true, the fact is they appear to have
some degree of plausibility, so they should be
considered on their own weight.
By the way, I was
caught completely off guard by Colonel Corso's book.
I did not know the book existed until Jared Anderson
called here and spoke to John Schwartz, one of my
VPs, who got me on the phone immediately and said,
"Did you know there's a book that describes
transfers of technology from either Roswell or some
other crash to AT&T?" That was the first I
heard of it.
As for what you call
patriotism: We are our government, Jeff. The
government is us. We have this perception of a
dyspeptic, detached entity with X-Files guys running
around in it, Men-in-Black running around in it,
abusive IRS guys running around in it -- all those
reasons are used by people who are insurrectional in
their thinking. I don't happen to share those views.
I happen to love this country and the people who live
here, and I think that if they have a gripe or a
beef, it deserves to be aired. And this is one of
those that appears to deserve to be aired.... I
raised that very issue in a letter to, dare I say,
Secretary of Defense William Cohen. I stated my
concern that -- what do they say, "Sooth the
savage beast"? -- I'm concerned that a
"savage beast" will emerge eventually from
the disinformation, lack of information, strangely
conflicting or compelling stories, and the lack of a
basic kind of town-hall sit-down to discuss these
matters. I mean, how expensive is it for the
government to respond to a million FOIA requests a
year, compared with one concerted effort to gather
all the information, keep it pure, break down a few
barriers that might be left over from some nameless
classified project....?
RENSE: It sounds like you don't
subscribe to the idea of a fifty-year, coordinated
cover-up of the UFO subject.
SHULMAN: I think I would have to see
actual evidence of a coordinated cover-up. It's not
that I don't subscribe to it. It's that I don't as
yet see evidence of anything other than bureaucracy,
technical deficiencies in requests [for information],
a disinclination on the part of the government to
discuss the matter. I think, if anything, I'd call it
a fifty-year disinclination, rather than cover-up.
RENSE: But the reasons for that
"disinclination" are the key...
SHULMAN: That's correct. That's one of
the things we raised in the Shadowlake Invitation
page on our web site [an open letter to the Secretary
of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top
officials to participate in an open forum on the
subject of UFOs.]
RENSE: That letter has caused a lot of
reaction. Who wrote that?
SHULMAN: It was written by American
Computer Company. You have people working here,
including myself, who are less than inclined to seek
the public spotlight on this issue. We are not what
you'd call publicity hounds.
RENSE: I understand. What is your
personal opinion about the ET issue, vis a vis our
military and our government?
SHULMAN: My personal opinion is a very
troubled one. I have a degree of personal integrity
that forbids my [drawing conclusions] until I've seen
the absolute facts. I have not concluded one way or
the other. But I am inclined to believe that it is
more likely that there is some shred of truth to
visitation than that there is no shred of truth.
RENSE: Do you expect any more
information from your consultant to come through ACC's
web site?
SHULMAN: I can't say at this moment.
We have a plan in place, that we're considering, to
raise the ante a little bit to try to generate some
kind of reaction out of the Department of Defense
that might lean toward the town-hall, public-forum
type of meeting. But I really don't want to reveal
any more about this now.
RENSE: Is the consultant's agenda, in
your opinion, personal, or is he or she being directed by
any agency?
SHULMAN: The consultant does not work,
to my knowledge, on this particular story for any
agency, because that would probably violate the
consultant's security oath. The consultant has been
advised, and has advised us, that the information
that he or she has given us is "allowed" to
be given to us by whatever agency he or she consults
to, because the information was obtained other than
through their employment by the U.S. government.
Meaning, the guy worked at AT&T, came across this
information, and was not working for the federal
government at the time, so the federal government
cannot prevent him or her from releasing it to us.
But to be very distinct here... the federal
government is not particularly happy that the
information is being given out.
RENSE: How do you know that?
SHULMAN: That's a comment from the
consultant. He said, "I don't think they're
happy that I'm talking. I don't think they're upset,
but I don't think they're happy."
RENSE: To summarize: Would you say that
you think the information given by the consultant is
credible and believable? This seems to go without saying,
or you wouldn't have put it on your web site.
SHULMAN: "The information"
is rather broad. There are a lot of different parts
to this, and some feel more accurate to me than
others.
RENSE: On balance, would you say that
ACC's web postings on this subject are important?
SHULMAN: That's been said to me.
Again, we did not do it to attract this kind of
publicity. We did it because we thought we would
attract some interest from someone, somewhere, who
might know whether it's true or not -- meaning other
than from sources that the consultant has, such as
past contacts with John Morton [formerly of Bell
Labs], William Shockley, others at AT&T and
Defense who were involved with him at the time. The
problem is, too many people are trying to read into
it, Jeff. If it's true, it's true -- if it's not,
it's not. I was not there in 1947. I cannot swear if
it is or isn't. A complete charade could be presented
to me, and I could be fooled if it were presented
properly. It could be suggested that the consultant
is a bold-faced liar, or that he has had information
given to him that is untrue but looks very plausible
and believable at the level of detail that we
presently know.
RENSE: Thanks very much for your time.
[Jeff Rense has
invited Jack Shulman to be a live guest on
"Sightings on the Radio," where many of the
foregoing issues might be explored in greater depth.
No date for that interview has yet been announced.
Meanwhile, CNI News will continue to pursue the
ACC/Bell Labs/Roswell story.]
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