The Conspiracy Hypothesis*

*Hypothesis: Something that is taken to be true for purposes of argument or investigation.

The possibility of a U.S. intelligence/security community conspiracy being responsible for voices heard by Urantia movement leader, Vern Grimsley, in 1982-83, continued.

Related Links: | Conspiracy Overview | In-Depth Timeline | Short Timeline | ACIM: Lie Down With Dogs, Get Up With Fleas!|

---

PHASE II
(< Phase I)

THE AFTERMATH:
Life In the Post-Nuclear Holocaust URANTIA Movement
(Or How the URANTIA Movement Learned to Love and Live with Acoustic Psycho-Correction)

Mind-Control Technology

The pawns in a chess game are used in various ways: some are employed to open a space for a more potent chessman, to block an advancing opponent, or to check or checkmate a king. And then there are those relative few which upon reaching kings row become a substitute for the most powerful piece on the board. But most of the pawns are simply sacrificed to “the greater good" -- what in terms of the game might well be considered to be for national security purposes. Since the early 1950’s the U.S. intelligence community has been employing drugs, hypnosis, electronic mind-reading and thought-injecting technology to spin the behavior of unwitting subjects -- to turn them into exactly the same kind of pawn which Vern Grimsley became for his voices (“When they tell me to ‘jump’, I only ask, ‘How high?’").

So-called “mind control" technology (it would more appropriately be called “mind-penetrating behavior influence and control") has progressed so far beyond merely putting a “voice" into someone’s head that, according to Alex Constintine in his book, Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations, it is now able to “map out electrical activity from the visual cortex of a subject’s brain” on a computer monitor allowing the on-screen viewing of both dreams and memories, as well as covertly putting “images into the subject’s brain while in REM [rapid eye movement] sleep for brain programming purposes." Earlier it used other methods to obtain similar input results. What is new is the extraction ability -- seeing what is in the mind of another. However the existence of this new computer technology has not been confirmed to the degree that “voice" insertion has. This latter is being commercially produced in the United States at present.

[NOTE: This technology, old and new, is discussed in detail elsewhere on the web and may be found with simple keyword searches, however CAUTION is advised in perusing those materials if one has any tendency at all towards paranoia.]

Constintine says the intelligence community calls its pawns “hypno-patsies”. The term coming into vogue for the induction of visual and aural materials into an unwitting subject’s mind, reputedly the Pentagon term for it, is “synthetic telepathy" (also to be encountered with the same meaning is the term “artificial telepathy").

“Hypno-Patsies"

What happened to Vern Grimsley finds parallels in probable “hypno-patsies” like Jim Jones, who told a reporter that he believed all of his thoughts came from the CIA. [NOTE: Congressman Leo Ryan was assassinated near Jonestown by two of Jones’ People’s Temple cult-members while he was investigating what he called “CIA-cults”. This act apparently set the mass suicide/child-murder at Jonestown into effect.]

Hypno-patsy David Koresh, also followed a “voice” he believed to be God (and it got him and his followers destroyed). Koresh had his reportedly “video-like” photographic memory of the Bible apparently inserted into his brain’s memory cells during a very strange experience in Israel before he became the Branch Davidian leader, in which he believed that he was taken to heaven in a Biblical-style UFO, where he met God (who turned out to be an ordinary man). The “voice of God" stayed with him after this event until his death*. Koresh’s experience in Israel bears striking resemblance with any number of reported examples of false memory programming attributed to the CIA under the guise of UFO abductions. It was in Israel, also, that Vernon Howell became “David Koresh". The Mossad -- Israeli Intelligence -- is obviously implicated in the operation.

[*NOTE: One exception worth pointing out is that after the initial BATF shootout with the Branch Davidians, Koresh’s communications with “God" apparently ceased. They were not restored until after two individuals days apart had passed through the FBI lines and entered the besieged headquarters. The possibility that they were respectively a technician and a parts supplier sent to replace or repair hidden equipment knocked out by a stray round must be entertained. Both men left before the destruction.]

Another likely hypno-patsy on whom synthetic telepathy was used is Eileen Caddy, who followed a “voice” which told her it was God (and which she accepted as being genuine only after having undergone what appear to be nothing other than variations -- not once but twice -- of Chinese-technique brainwashing at the hands of her husband’s ex-wife, a woman with a British Intelligence background). The “voice" went on to lead her to found the Scottish New Age community of Findhorn while in the company a second woman with a British Intelligence background -- a purported spiritual “disciple" of the ex-wife. Both had worked together in British Intelligence during the previous decade. The two women were accompanied by Eileen’s new husband, Peter Caddy, who himself had been reputedly spiritually “trained" by his ex-wife.

They located Findhorn adjacent to a Royal Air Force base. Their specialty, besides producing giantism in some vegetables (such as occurred naturally in the area around Chernobyl after the nuclear accident there), was passing off what appear to be nothing other than drug induced, hypnotically assisted hallucinations as spiritual contacts. Apparently they were field-testing the mind control drugs and techniques which MKULTRA was simultaneously developing. Eileen’s “voice" continued to instruct the community through her for years.

[NOTE: Peter Caddy claimed that before he met Eileen he had, like Koresh, heard voices in his head in Israel -- in this case, Jerusalem. This may have been during the British Occupation, but probably occurred afterward, thus again implicating the Mossad. After having studied and thought about Findhorn for over a decade, it is still unclear to me whether Peter Caddy was witting or unwitting at the start. Whichever it was, he threw himself wholeheartedly to the task at hand, apparently questioning nothing. Most of the above can be discerned by reading between the lines of Paul Hawken’s book, The Magic of Findhorn.]

ACIM: A Course In Miracles MKULTRA

The hypno-patsy/synthetic-telepathy list should include Helen Schucman as well. Briefly: after she became employed at the Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons Psychology Department as a psychologist under Dr. William Thetford (who had been hired only months before) Schucman began to have strange, waking dreams and visions which culminated in her hearing of a “Voice" which explained their meaning to her. She went on to channel (her word, “scribe") -- purportedly from Jesus -- A Course in Miracles (ACIM), writing down everything the “Voice" told her, exactly as Eileen Caddy did and Vern Grimsley would do.

[NOTE: The difference between the three channelers was that Grimsley’s messages were obviously never intended to be preserved. From the start he simply jotted down what he heard on whatever scrap might be handy, whereas Caddy and Schucman were directed to use bound notebooks. If my own intuition is of value, it appears that the preservation of the “voice’s" messages is necessary due to the effects of short-term memory loss. Coming from the same area of the brain as do dreams (having earlier been programmed or transmitted directly into the subconscious mind), it is likely to -- as do many dreams -- quickly dissipate. Today’s Teaching Mission channelers use tape recorders instead of notebooks.]

It is important for readers of The URANTIA Book to understand what happened with ACIM (and Findhorn, as well) because first, it provides a context for viewing similar events in the Urantia movement. Secondly, the intelligence agencies were just plain sloppier in handling their earliest religious, synthetic telepathy operations and did not cover their tracks as well as they did in their later ones. Although admittedly circumstantial, the evidence pointing to the involvement of the CIA’s infamous mind-control program, MKULTRA, in the so-called “scribing" of ACIM is so powerful that it should leave little doubt in the mind of anyone but true believers. While there is at least some plausible denial in the ostensible reasons for Neal Waldrop’s and General Faw’s presence in the upper echelons of the Urantia movement organizational structure, the traces of MKULTRA in ACIM (and British Intelligence in Findhorn) are much harder to explain away. Viewed together with the earlier instances it becomes easier to guess at exactly what Faw and Waldrop were up to, although similar proof is lacking.

Another reason readers should be concerned is that ACIM is presently making headway in the Urantia movement in spite of the fact that it is overall contradictory to the teachings in The URANTIA Book. This is true even though there are admittedly some areas of concordance between the two.

It appears that originally ACIM was aimed to piggy-back on the Edgar Cayce movement, but that went virtually nowhere. In 1972 Edgar Cayce’s son, Hugh Lynn Cayce -- then president of the Association for Research and Enlightenment (ARE) -- was before publication given the second re-typed text of ACIM. He read it and decided that it had more than one author, based on what he discerned as discrepant writing styles. This would most likely be the case if it had been created by MKULTRA using synthetic telepathy on Schucman, and not by Jesus, as was being claimed. Interestingly in this context, current lawsuits to control the copyright hinge on this very issue of actual authorship.

Unable to coattail it at ARE, a substantial following had to be created from the ground up. Likely MKULTRA’s pseudo-celestials learned from that lesson that they needed to put a supporter in place next time around. And that appears to be what General Faw’s role has been in relation to the Teaching Mission vis a vis the Urantia Brotherhood. Of course by then MKULTRA itself was out of business, but evidence indicates that the NSA was getting involved.

Helen Suchucman’s “friend" and boss, Bill Thetford, actually during the last few of the seven years of ACIM channeling -- which he actively encouraged and helped -- teamed with a professional colleague and co-author of his and Schucman’s, a Dr. David Saunders, to secretly contract to do a psychological study for MKULTRA. Their Subproject 130 was only discovered after MKULTRA had been exposed to the world by a Senate investigation and by boxes of fiscal records overlooked by its threatened Director, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, and his covert-operations chief, spymaster Richard Helms, in their 1973 file-burning spree. Thus, Thetford was actually being paid by the CIA during the time that the ACIM “Manual" was being “scribed". Very seldom in this investigation of religious, channeled “voices" has evidence of this nature surfaced. Usually those involved are “ex-agents", and as such maintain at least a relatively plausible deniability.

One of Schucman and Thetford’s early student-colleagues, Father Benedict Groeshel (also called “Father Michael"), reported that Thetford had admitted to having worked as an agent for one of the U.S. intelligence agencies very early in his career, before he became associated with Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons. This information was once posted on an ACIM website but can no longer be found (it was apparently removed about the time when ACIM copyright lawsuit filings referring to Thetford’s work with MKULTRA was put on-line). Most likely (and if memory serves) Thetford was connected to the CIA during the following period listed on his vita:

“1951 - 1954 U.S. Government psychologist, Washington D.C., One year (1953) as consultant to Foreign Service Institute, Beirut, Lebanon."

Doctors Saunders, Thetford, and Schucman variously, both singly and in combination, authored a number of scientific papers on J.W. Gittinger’s “Personality Assessment System" (PAS) during the period 1962 through 1970. Some of Thetford and Schucman’s papers were published by the CIA-front, the Human Ecology Fund (see below). Saunders also collaborated on some papers with Gittinger himself around this period. J.W. Gittinger was MKULTRA’s chief psychologist, who found out what made people tick and how to twist it to the uses of the agency. There is, obviously, nothing wrong with authoring scientific papers, but this goes to show the close relationship between these people -- hence with MKULTRA -- during the ACIM “scribing". If the question of who actually originated ACIM were a Sherlock Holmes murder mystery, these publications would represent fingerprints all over the corpse viewed through the magnifying glass of the super-sleuth. Thetford’s Subproject 130 would be the smoking gun still dangling from MKULTRA’s hand!

[NOTE: A Bibliography of PAS publications, including those referenced above, may be viewed at pasf.org. And a list of MKULTRA documents including Thetford and Saunders’ Subproject 130 may be viewed at http://www.nemasys.com/rahome/library/programming/mkultra.shtml]

Saunders is mentioned in John Marks’ book, The Search for a Manchurian Candidate at druglibrary.org Chapter 10, as having carried out personality assessment work for the CIA front, Human Ecology Fund, which paid him $140,000. It is possible (but I have not absolutely confirmed this) that he is also the same D.R. Saunders, who was the chief investigator for the Condon Report, an early government UFO study which is considered by many ufologists to be essentially CIA disinformation. At that time the Condon Report’s Saunders was a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado and assistant director of its Department of Testing and Counseling.

[NOTE: It is true that Dr. Saunders rebelled against Condon’s conclusion that UFOs do not exist, but duplicity is the name of the game for the CIA. A current hypothesis for which there is growing evidence is that many (not necessarily all) UFO abductions were in reality being carried out by MKULTRA mind-controllers in vans and secret hideaways using innocent people as experimental subjects for the induction of false memories of an abduction experience or to provide the same as cover for other experiments, possibly including genetics. This, too, was sometimes detectable -- in one instance even while in progress -- because of the sloppiness of the MKULTRA agent/contractors. Condon’s anti-UFO disinformation would have been to prevent future government investigations which might have uncovered these operations. And Saunder’s pro-UFO rebellion in that case would have been for the purpose of keeping the idea of UFOs alive, thereby continuing the rationale behind the induced memories.]

Even if Schucman had learned about MKULTRA, as she likely did before her death in 1981, it is possible that she remained unaware of Gittinger and Saunder’s connection with it. She likewise might have attached little personal meaning to Thetford’s and Saunder’s work for MKULTRA -- assuming that they made her privy to their dirty little secret -- not herself realizing how immersed in it all she had unwittingly become!

One other interesting person found in the roundup of ACIM’s “usual suspects" is Schucman and Thetford’s colleague, Dr. Herbert Spiegel, then as today a recognized expert in hypnotism and brainwashing. Spiegel around the time of the ACIM “scribing" was at the College of Physicians and Surgeons Psychology Department teaching hypnosis. A decade earlier he first became involved in mind-control when he investigated the brainwashed Korean War POWs for the U.S. Army and learned the Chinese techniques used upon them (and later, apparently, upon Eileen Caddy). Spiegal was perfectly capable of making Schucman -- or anyone else among the personality types he deemed most hypnotizable -- have “visions" and/or channel materials from an intra-cerebral “voice" claiming to be that of Jesus. (For more details see urantiagate.com).

Reasons?

Why would the intelligence communities of America and other nations want to control religionists? One writer, Michael Meiers, in his book, Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment? A Review of the Evidence after an exhaustive study concluded Jonestown was being used as a field laboratory to test mind control drugs on African Americans and Native Americans--a good portion of Jones’ followers.

The David Koresh, Waco incident coincided with a vote in Congress on the Brady Bill, which passed. If nothing else the Koresh Affair provided a propaganda victory for domestic arms control. We can only guess at how the Branch Davidian pawns might have been deployed if this need had not arisen. (At least one theory claims that they had been programmed as terrorist “sleepers", Manchurian Candidates put on hold until needed.)

And the Vern Grimsley Affair drove a wedge into the Urantia movement, reconstructing the Board of Trustees (thereby making room for Waldrop), disenfranchising the URANTIA Brotherhood, and isolating the all-important Foundation, which controls the copyright of The URANTIA Book. By dividing the movement and conquering the Foundation, the intelligence community would be in the driver’s seat for legally curtailing competing translations, ensuring that only those translations of the revelation -- made by people whom it approved -- containing nationalistically-biased (or possibly “New World Order") political spin get spread around the world. This, however, can remain only in the area of speculation until actual competent bilingual analyses of the various translations are done, comparing them to the 1955 text of the first printing.

One reader writes of “those who were (and are) determined to suppress the Urantia Papers, destabilize, manipulate, and harass Urantia activists, and co-opt and marginalize Urantia community organizations."

Also a divided, weakened Urantia movement helped assure the growth of the Teaching Mission which was planted then, and which -- virus-like -- immediately invaded the Urantia movement’s study group and web forum “cells" wherein it replicated more and more of its kind until it now grows like a cancer in the body it was vectored to inhabit.

And again, controlling a widespread, disparate group like the Teaching Mission could create a number of intelligence assets: First, it might, like Jones’ cult, provide a ready-made pool of human guinea pigs for testing “non-lethal weaponry". Next, those individual members most susceptible to doing so could be programmed like Manchurian Candidates (or more appropriately, like fanatic suicide bombers) to carry out various intelligence tasks. An early example of what might have been the testing of such a possibility took place at the same time as the Vern Grimsley Affair:

Then, a part-time volunteer staff employee at the Foundation/Brotherhood headquarters in Chicago also received intra-cerebral “instructions" which she was assured would help prevent the Third World War (she had been told that Grimsley’s voices were both genuine and correct). Accordingly she was assigned to carry out some apparently simple tasks which she maintains were completely mundane in character with no obvious connection to the purported goal. She did exactly as she was told and still believes that she had been contacted by supernals. The woman even moved to another part of the country and started a small, New Age-oriented business at the voice’s behest. Although she posted this information on a then-public internet forum I hesitate to supply her name, since I know that she would in no way approve of my doing so -- and she is, after all, not a principal in this investigation. Presently, however, she is one of the staunchest opponents to the idea of a conspiracy in the Urantia movement whom I have encountered. I do not know if “voices" are directing her in this attitude or not. She refuses to be forthcoming to me about her experience.

Far from lastly, the possibility is not to be overlooked that the Teaching Mission, as it grows worldwide in scope on the coattails of the Urantia Movement, could provide cover for actual agents in the field. This may be an important consideration now that their international cover connections with various mainstream denomination missionary groups has been blown. In the end, the uses to which such pawns could be put is only limited by the secret needs of the intelligence/security agency “game players" themselves. It might well be pointed out here that Teaching Mission adherents hail from all walks of life, and represent a number of professions, including more than a scattering of psychologists.

The likely motives for ACIM are less easily discovered. I must admit that I have not studied Schucman’s “channeled" material, but a superficial look at it suggests that its denigration of “normal reality" or normal consciousness seems to be bent on creating some kind of mental dissociation and disconnectedness in those who practice its methods. If its present permeation is indeed only “make do" resulting from the failed attempt to infect the Edgar Casey movement, then the actual motive may have been specific to that group alone and hence has disappeared in its present context.

After the Vern Grimsley Affair the climate at Foundation headquarters continued to deteriorate, until in 1989 three Trustees and several staff members resigned in reaction to Martin Myers’ actions and policies.

The Chicago Führer

Martin Myers was apparently so convinced that he was right that he tolerated absolutely no opposition. His co- Trustees and staffers claimed he exhibited a “chosen person" attitude and that he alluded to the idea that the revelation was his. When he didn’t get his way he was said to actually throw “temper tantrums". We have seen that Christy felt that she needed help in dealing with him, and there are rumors that he even physically abused her -- actually hit her.

Myers’ primary focus was said to be “the exercise of control through threats or application of legal authority and power". He apparently made arbitrary policy decisions, and cut the other Trustees out of the loop. In one letter he seems to be comparing those who disagree with him to “wolves in sheep’s clothing" who tear at the flesh of The URANTIA Book with their teeth. He is said to have kept an enemies list -- if not on paper, then in his head -- and it was apparently the URANTIA Brotherhood which he distrusted above all other foes, according to one ex-Trustee who also accused the Myers-dominated Foundation of  “deceiving thousands of readers".

The Myers-run Foundation -- with the help of the Brotherhood -- did everything in its power to keep the lid on the Vern Grimsley Affair, hiding the truth from the readership and the general public. Only at the time of the split when having believed in Vern became ammunition which could be used against the Brotherhood were the heavily slanted “facts" given wide distribution within the movement!

In 1989 one of the staff people put his view of what was going on in the Chicago headquarters this way: “For some time now, for a period of eight or nine years, I have become increasingly concerned and uneasy about the course the Foundation is following … ” That would have begun around the time Christy received her, possibly, audible message circa 1980, which apparently was believed in much of the inner circle to be valid in spite of a c.1954 “instruction" telling her and the movement that it was time to publish, and that from then on they would be on their own -- which has usually been taken to mean that there would be no further overt supernal guidance. Long time friend of Christy, Meredith Sprunger, told me that he feels that if she had received any aural messages she would have told him, but that she never explicitly mentioned having heard voices. That, of course does not rule it out. Others apparently maintain that she told them she did, at least circa 1980.

Synthetic Telepathy

The question must be asked: was that the time (c.1980) when synthetic telepathy was first used on someone in the Urantia movement? And not on Vern Grimsley, but on Christy?

In Scotland, the New Age community of Findhorn’s eventual founder, Eileen Caddy, had been following similar aural instructions (no doubt purveyed by British Intelligence) purportedly spoken to her by God for several years even prior to the time of Christy’s c.1954 message from “unseen friends”. And, of course, Schucman’s (most likely MKULTRA- produced) channeling took place between 1965 and 1972. So the technology assuredly did exist in 1980. (For more detail click the In-Depth Timeline link near the top of the page).

But around 1954 MKULTRA was just beginning to get interested in spiritualists -- infiltrating seances and taking down names. Also most assuredly MKULTRA’s director, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, had ordered a review of the literature, where Sadler’s name would have had prominence as a spiritualist debunker. And Dr. Sadler had written that an unnamed person who was undoubtedly the contact personality (the man whose mind was involved with the transmission of the Urantia Papers) represented one of only two “spiritualist"-type phenomena which he had investigated but could not debunk … that would have been to Gottlieb like a steak tidbit offered to a slavering mutt! But it was not until 1958 that Captain Al (“Cappy") Hubbard, whose contacts include the OSS, CIA, and, as evidence would indicate, MKULTRA, wrote to Urantia movement leader, Meredith Sprunger, asking for information about The URANTIA Book (see letter at, urantiabook.org and more about Hubbard at, maps.org. Scroll down 10 paragraphs). And that likely represents the first actual probing of the Urantia movement by MKULTRA. (For more detail click the Related Timeline link near the top of the page).

It goes against both logic and intuition to believe that Gottlieb would have counterfeited a supernal message announcing the cessation of all further such help if it was his hope to mislead the movement by way of future ersatz spiritual communications. One must therefore ask why the supernal revelators, who took such great care to ensure that the transmission of the text was neither confused with, nor contaminated by the then-current spiritualism, would twenty years later allow similar confusion and contamination of their message to publish the book by giving it aurally in spite of then-existing means for evil-doing mortals to employ synthetic telepathy? The best conclusion is that most likely the 1954 “mandate" was not aural but had been physically materialized in the same manner as was the text itself and as likewise had been the earlier mandates and instructions to William Sadler and the Contact Commission -- that this was true concerning the text was both sworn to in a legal deposition by Meredith Sprunger and is revealed in The URANTIA Book (ref., 1258 A, 114:7:6).

[NOTE: This same reasoning concerning confusion of spiritual communication with technological humbuggery equally applies to TeaM’s purported celestials -- the answer there, of course, is that they are NOT celestials, but are fakes.]

But this c.1980 apparently aural message and/or the widely held belief in its genuineness acted to set Vern Grimsley up, so that when he began to hear the “voices" in 1982 he would believe in them. If the supernals had indeed acknowledged that he was a “Reservist", what could he NOT expect to transpire? A personal “contact"? Why not? The fact that it was nothing like the supernals’ contact with their human contact personality was completely ignored until afterwards.

The differences were like night and day. Concerning the “channeling" which preceded the later, physically materialized writings, the contact personality was always unconscious (asleep) and unaware of everything which transpired. The sessions were attended by Sadler and his wife -- herself a physician -- along with the wife of the sleeper. All of the supernal information was presented to a group, never to single individuals. Not only that but controls were later instituted to help prevent any type of deception which might have been involved. Unlike Sadler, both Vern and TeaM have accepted everything at face value, questioning nothing. Their sessions vary in the other aspects as well, except where TeaM is channeled to a listening group (but by a conscious, aware channeler).

[NOTE: The possibility cannot be ignored that Christy, not Vern, was actually the intended victim since women were used in both the ACIM and Findhorn operations. In that case, Martin Myers (or even up-and-coming Neal Waldrop) might have been slated to act as her own Peter Caddy/Bill Thetford, offering encouragement and support -- or if necessary, brainwashing! Inconveniently, however, she died the following year.]

The Rewritten “Law"

Those who try to explain away Grimsley’s experience as having resulted from neurosis or strain (Vern was apparently a workaholic), calling Occam’s razor -- the Law of Parsimony -- to their aid, close their eyes to the whole picture, leaving the overall context wherein this event took place unexplained. Neither do they factor in Neal Waldrop’s NSA background and General Faw’s bizarre-for-a-Marine purported belief in channeling. Their version of the Vern Grimsley Affair might as well, for all the facts it explains, have taken place in an isolated habitant-chamber on the moon or at the bottom of the ocean, rather than in the United States of America where syphilis is allowed to go untreated for testing purposes and where unwitting people are fed radioactive material just to see what it will do! MKULTRA -- if these shallow explainers are to be believed -- must have existed with Darth Vader in a galaxy far away, if at all. Caston, although he compares Vern to Jim Jones, never even mentions the infamous mind control program which had been exposed less than a decade earlier. He obviously never thought to make the connection!

They also distort the Law of Parsimony as representing a kind of proof, which it definitely does not! For instance, according to Caston’s report, Doctor Paul D. Knott, who came up with the stress theory, presents Occam’s razor as a law recommending “that simpler, more basic explanations of phenomena be utilized in place of more fanciful explanations that require considerable leaps of assumption beyond the known facts” (my emphasis). But the Law of Parsimony only establishes priorities among several competing explanations for further investigation, i.e., check out the least complex and most believable ones first. That’s all! It would be totally illogical -- if not stupid -- to believe that the simplest explanation is always the correct one. Meredith Sprunger also uses it like Knott does, basically to blow off those who offer more complicated explanations: “Don’t bother us with facts," they are saying.

Dr. Knott, a clinical psychologist, met with Grimsley, in the company of others, for an evening and expressly states that his theory (“personal opinion") about stress being the causative factor does NOT rise to the level of a professional diagnosis. However Vern afterward did seek counseling with a practicing psychiatrist. Dr. Carter Newsom apparently found no indication of mental illness or that the voices were aural hallucinations, and he gave Vern a clean bill of health. Caston, not liking this actual psychiatric diagnosis, suggests that Newsom was less than objective. Of course he has to assume in doing so that Newsom would have been willing to trash his own professional ethics and reputation in order to shield Vern.

Presently the general Urantia movement opinion about the Vern Grimsley Affair is divided between those who buy Knott and his distortion of the use of the Law of Parsimony on the one hand; and those, such as Teaching Mission adherents and the Chicago headquarters office worker whose experience I related earlier, on the other. These last still believe that Vern was in actual contact with supernals. Each opinion seems to prefer mind candy which allows one to ignore unpleasant facts which are not by them to be believed. And both sets of people appear to need to do little more than to recite a few times as a mantra the words “conspiracy theory" and “conspiracy theorist" to convince themselves that the facts which I have marshaled have no value. This absolves them of the need of making a genuine assessment of the evidence. However, The URANTIA Book presents the following thought for our consideration:

“The great mistake is that, when life problems excite our profound fears, we refuse to recognize them … the average person prefers to cling to the old illusions of safety and to the long-cherished false feelings of security. Only a brave person is willing honestly to admit, and fearlessly to face, what a sincere and logical mind discovers." (1773 C, 160:1:7)

Martin and the “Midwayers"

Besides Vern and Christy, it must be asked if Martin Myers also began to hear “voices” at this time as well. Clyde Bedell wrote during the next year that the revelation was being “subordinated to some words from beings unknown”. Was it the fact that Martin was being positioned by instructions from “unseen friends” which provided the justification allowing one of his supporters to state that Martin “is the only Foundation or Brotherhood leader who had the perception and courage [read: “instruction or mandate"] to openly declare his opposition to Vern’s ‘voices’”?

In 1989 the entire Executive Committee of the URANTIA Brotherhood were signatories to a letter to the Foundation Trustees referring to “Martin’s questionable and secretive use of ‘instructions’ or ‘mandates’ supposedly given [by supernal beings] in confidence to our predecessors". If Myers was also receiving his own personal “instructions” he wasn’t saying. But his behavior leaves the indelible impression that he was doing exactly that. How else can one explain Trustee Helena Sprague’s 1990 written statement that “Martin has been heard, with several present, to bestow approval of the midwayers on one individual and to tell another, ‘The midwayers are not pleased with you … you are in league with Lucifer.’ ”?

It cannot be ruled out, either, that the Trustees and staff who resigned, citing their strong disagreement with Myers’ tactics and policies, may have been helped along the way by hypnotic “voices" whispering in their ears or invading their dreams at night. After all, one of The URANTIA Book’s highest virtues is to be like Van and stand fast in the midst of adversity -- not to flee! To leave evil free to gain its ends is completely foreign to the book’s teachings.

In any event, the new Myers-dominated Board of Trustees was free to do whatever it, or Martin’s “unseen friends" wanted. Besides Myers there were on it two of his old college fraternity brothers, Hoite Caston and Richard Keeler (Keeler, when he eventually replaced Myers would be accused of threatening the life and livelihood of a reader who opposed his policies). And Neal Waldrop, all the way up his ladder now, got one of the seats. The fifth member, Patricia Sadler Mundelius (Doctor William Sadler’s granddaughter), was probably brought in for whatever dignity the Sadler name could bring to the kangaroo proceedings, and she would be in for a wild, wild ride.

Do the Kangaroo Hop!

The first thing on the agenda was to disenfranchise the URANTIA Brotherhood. Next the Foundation initiated a lawsuit over the copyright against sister reader, Kristen Maaherra, denying again, via lawyer-mouthpiece -- this time on record in a court of law -- the Book’s supernal origins. The book was (according to the now-current spin) actually authored by way of the questions asked of the supernal Revelatory Commission by the human Forum, a group whose main purpose was to study the proto-Urantia Papers which were received, that is, physically materialized prior to 1934. As a result of the perversion of fact, the denials, and the lawsuits against fellow readers a large segment of the Urantia movement now considers the Foundation to be in default of its spiritual mission.

In 1992, after much of this URANTIAGATE “conspiracy factor" information was sent to all of the Foundation Trustees and other movement leaders, Neal Waldrop resigned and Martin Myers was dismissed from the Board of Trustees. Then Myers was later successfully sued to relinquish his directorship of the Foundation

[NOTE: While I would dearly like to be able to take credit for these changes, no direct cause/effect relationship has yet been established to my knowledge. The Trustees are traditionally secretive about the reasons for their activities.]

“As The World Turns" and Other URANTIA® Soap Opera Sagas

One of the present Trustees, Mo Seigel, had in 1991 voiced the charge of lying against the Foundation, but after being elected to serve on the Board, he apparently began to justify its “middle of the road” misrepresentations. The URANTIA Foundation spent, ironically, the identical amount in legal fees that Vern paid for his F.O.G. headquarters (reputedly $4 million) to keep Maaherra from giving away her digital index of The URANTIA® Book (the activity which the Foundation held violated their copyright).

Maaherra accuses the Foundation and Seigel -- who originally supported her position before he was made a Trustee -- of “sophistry” and worse. My guess is that since becoming a Trustee, Mo himself has been turned into a “hypno-patsy" or his former disagreements with Foundation policies have been “healed" with “acoustic psycho-correction".

Other than financially breaking Maaherra with the legal fees necessary to her defense, one can find no actual accomplishments of the Foundation’s action against her. Now several such searchable URANTIA Books which do exactly the same thing as hers -- but possibly more efficiently -- can currently be accessed on the internet employing as justification the “Fair Use" clause of the copyright law. Her “sin" was merely in being the first! Most people who have held on to her 5" floppy disks cannot even use them in their current computers!

Upon leaving the Foundation, Foreign Service Officer Waldrop was transferred to the New Zealand area, where a large NSA facility is located. New Zealand is also the place in which the Teaching Mission had been hatched!

More recently Harry McMullan -- the former F.O.G. member who in 1971 (according to one F.O.G. document reputedly seen by Hoite Caston) actually set up the contact between Vern’s group and the CIA proprietary, Radio Free Europe (see In-Depth Timeline link) -- successfully defended his right to publish part of the Urantia Papers as a separate volume: Jesus: A New Revelation, or JANR. A U.S. District Court agreed with McMullan that the copyright renewal held by URANTIA Foundation was invalid. An appeal by the Foundation is pending.

Currently Dr. E. Kwan Choi, a Professor of Economics at Iowa State University who was elected to URANTIA Foundation Board of Trustees in March, 1997, sued the other four Trustees after they attempted to remove him from the board. His side of the picture can be viewed on the website which he set up for that purpose at SoldiersoftheCircles.org.

It might be realized that South Korea, from which Choi -- now a U.S. citizen -- originally hails, likely hosts one of the highest concentration of CIA personnel in all Asia. Its own intelligence agency (the KCIA) was set up with the help of the CIA. And KCIA interest in at least one Korean/American religious cult (the Sun Myung Moon Organization) has been exposed by U.S. Congressional investigations. Moon, as might be guessed, along with his wife, left Korea for America in 1971 because a “voice of God" told him to do so!

It should not go without consideration that it was “Korean-Kwan’s” translation onto his native tongue, rather than “NSA-Neal’s” never-completed translation of The URANTIA Book into ostensibly State Department-learned Chinese, which was used by the Foundation to first present the revelation to Asia. (It would, of course, have been the height of insanity to have so-used a translation with direct open ties to the NSA and U.S. State Department). I have not been able to ferret out anything about Choi’s past, and web search fails to turn up any obvious link between Choi and the KCIA or any other intelligence agency (this actually worked with ACIM’s William Thetford! Twice!) A more thorough investigation needs to be made.

[NOTE: Other than the fact that Kwan’s translation was the one used (and my assumption that NSA did not throw in the towel with Waldrop’s resignation) I do not even have just cause for speculation that Kwan Choi is anything other than what he says he is and what he appears to be.]

Kwan Choi’s lawsuit has stirred up and rekindled the relatively cooled ashes of the fiery division caused by the Vern Grimsley Affair and the copyright lawsuits. The alignment of supporters and detractors is virtually unchanged. Kwan is viewed as an anti-hero on the lines of Maaherra and McMullan (or David against Goliath in the Bible) by one faction, and as a paranoid and traitor by the other. And the Foundation is either a devil or an angel … or being led by one or the other -- seriously! But Kwan’s current maul stroke has driven the wedge that much deeper into the split in the Urantia movement which began to appear just about the time Vern Grimsley heard a disembodied voice telling him “We won!"

We can only imagine what the Urantia movement’s future will bring. To some extent whatever current Trustees’ “unseen friends” decide, I suppose (as moderated, of course, by the will of God!)

The war on terror, however, with its drain on budgetary and personnel resources may likely cause a cutback in nonessential programs, and especially those which are likely to blow up in the faces of the intelligence/security community, which needs public trust and support like never before. Perhaps the days of such wildcat, rogue, unconstitutional, and illegal operations against American citizens (and hopefully against all other innocent people) will be soon behind us. We can at least pray together that if the allegations on this site are true, that the Father cause them to be put to a speedy end, if it accords with his will. For:

“While you may not meddle with the divine decrees concerning eternal life, you shall determine the issues of conduct as they concern the temporal welfare of the brotherhood on earth … where two or three of you agree concerning any of these things, it shall be done for you if your petition is not inconsistent with the will of my Father in heaven." (1763 B, 159:1:3)

“You should not fear these unbelieving enemies. I declare to you that there is nothing covered up that is not going to be revealed; there is nothing hidden that shall not be known." (1681 D, 150:4:2)

God’s will be done!