(Brief opening remarks)
I’d like to begin by saying that my academic background is in the arts and I make no claim to any formal scientific background or credentials. But many years of study and much practical experience have led me to conclude that the most important single body of scientific knowledge codified in the Twentieth Century remains it’s most ignored, distorted, and confounded. In short, it’s most controversial.
The late author, educator and ufologist Jerome Eden used to refer to UFOs as the idiot child of the media. I respectfully suggest that the truth about Wilhelm Reich and UFOs is an, if not the idiot child of ufology. My intention here is to familiarize you with the specifics of this remarkable episode in Post War History.
To best appreciate this account it’s important that we view it in some scientific and political context. Time constraints necessitate my keeping this talk to under an hour, and I hope the companion paper that appears in your proceedings will help to answer some of the questions left unaddressed here. It also lists all of my information sources.
Photo 1 – Portrait of Reich (May 1946)
The common functioning principle unifying this science, named orgonomy by its discoverer, is the study of how energy functions in the living and the non-living realms of nature. Orgonomy offers ground-breaking applications in fields as diverse as biology, psychology, meteorology, sociology, cancer research, human sexuality, child rearing, political science, and UFO studies. But some of its key findings challenge accepted physical laws, and by extension, some of society’s most significant social and moral underpinnings, and for many, that was, and remains unforgivable.
During his lifetime Wilhelm Reich was the target of attacks from both the left and the right, but his work and findings were especially reviled by uncomprehending liberals, communists and active Soviet agents who more than understood the danger his work represented to their cause, especially as articulated in such books as The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Reich’s attacks on Soviet-style communism were, and continue to be dismissed as the paranoid delusions of a formerly brilliant mind, but we can confirm that many of his related observations proved to be hyper accurate, and in some cases even prophetic.
But it was Reich’s acceptance of UFOs as a physical reality that dealt his professional reputation its most stunning blow. When you study the progression of his scientific investigations and discoveries, his 1953 entry into UFO studies was clearly the next logical step along a scientific path he had been following for almost forty years. In fact, the development of one of his most important scientific apparatus’s both preceded and predicated his interest in UFOs.
Photo 2 – Dr. Richard Blasband operating a cloudbuster in Bucks County (I think) PA in the 1970s
The cloudbuster is made up of a series of long metal pipes grounded in deep or running water by attached lengths of hollow industrial bx cable. When properly employed, it is capable of altering weather patterns in the surrounding atmosphere. The principle it operates under is deceptively simple. The elevated pipes create atmospheric movement by ‘drawing down’ atmospheric energy and harmlessly grounded it in the deep or moving water its cables are submerged in. This movement is capable of breaking up a stagnant weather front by attracting moisture-rich air into the area, and to the locations in route of the direction one is drawing from. I know how this may sound to many of you, and if it strains my credibility with you, so be it. I can only say that I’ve studies the reports of responsible cloudbusting operations for several decades and have watched as a cloudbuster dramatically changed the complexion of the sky over southern New Jersey in the course of about twenty minutes, so ‘belief’ in the reality of this technology doesn’t really enter into the equation for me. But there was a complication. Some of these weather modification operations attracted UFOs – first over southern Maine in 1953, then above Arizona in 1954, where weeks of cloudbusting culminated in what can only be characterized as a ‘battle’ in the skies over Tucson. Wild as these allegations may sound, they were well-documented and multiply witnessed. But I’m getting ahead of myself..
Photo 3 – Reich at age 3
Wilhelm Reich was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1897. His father was a stern government bureaucrat, his artistic mother, a piano teacher. ‘Willi’ and his brother Robert grew up on the family’s rural estate observing nature and natural functioning first hand on a daily basis. Both were educated by private tutors. Though half Christian and half Jewish by birth, Reich never practiced either religion, and grew to observe that all organized religions tend to be the source of considerably more ignorance and suffering than enlightenment or happiness. In 1914 the Balkans erupted into flames, and over the next four years World War One swept the empire and the family estate into oblivion.
Photo 4 – Training in trench warfare, 1916
Reich served with distinction as an artillery officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army until war’s end. With all of the family’s holdings now vaporized, he made his way to Vienna where he enrolled in medical school, supporting himself as a tutor for the duration of his studies.
Photo 5 - Reich following WWI
He was drawn to Vienna in part because of his intense interest in the pioneering work of Dr. Sigmund Freud. After graduating medical school he became a pupil of Freud’s, then went on to work as a psychoanalyst and as Freud’s assistant for the next six years.
Photo 6 – Members of the Psychoanalytic Polyclinic, Vienna, 1922
(Reich is seated forth from left, first row)
The two parted ways in 1929 when Reich, after much clinical work and observation in the early psychoanalytic tradition, presented case findings to Freud supporting his view that literally all human neurosis were, at their deepest levels, rooted in some form of sexual dysfunction. Freud and his followers subscribed to the theory that many neurosis had a sexual basis, but all of them? Well, this was more than Victorian Vienna or the mental health professionals of the 1920s were able to accept. Reich’s departure from the Freudian ranks created a backlash of resentment among many of his colleagues and resulted in the origin of the myth of his mental instability. It was something that would follow him for the rest of his life.
Photo 7 – Reich, third from left, with a group of communist sympathizers, Vienna, 1927
The young doctor and veteran became involved with the Austrian Communist Party in 1927, his intention being to marry the revolutionary mission of their already-existing mental health clinics to the restoration of healthy sexual functioning in workers. Responsible sex education and contraceptives were freely disseminated at these so-called ‘Sexpol’ (sex/politics) Clinics, and their popularity extended from Austria into Germany, until the collapse of the Vimar Republic, and into the Soviet Union, where for a time they were allowed to thrive. Much to the upset of the communists however, sexually healthy workers, be they party members or not, tended to put their own personal happiness and goals above those of the party, a travesty that could not be allowed to stand. By 1934 Reich had been expelled from the Communist Party, their rationale being that the once-brilliant young scientist was now manifesting symptoms of insanity. The essence of his alleged mental illness is reflected in this obviously unhinged statement, “This is what I am fighting for: the prevention of emotional human misery by the establishment of a normal and natural – that is, orgastically satisfying – human life in the masses of people.” To any group or individual intent on controlling the lives and thoughts of others, these are the words of a truly dangerous man. The party never forgave him for this and efforts to damage his reputation and impugn his work became commonplace from 1934 on. Reich remained an avowed anticommunist for the rest of his life.
Photo 8 – Reich in Berlin, 1932
Driven from Austria, then from Germany, he immigrated to Norway. Here he continued with his experiments and therapeutic practice aided by a core group of colleagues, and devoting much of his experimental work and study to the dynamics of cancer formation. His outstanding books The Impulsive Character, Character Analysis, People In Trouble, The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Cancer Biopathy were all written during this period. He immigrated to the United States in 1939 and was invited to join the faculty of New York City’s New School for Social Research the following year. He settled in Forest Hills, Queens, a then-quiet district of the borough where he established a private practice, continued his writing, and refined his character analytic therapy, or medical orgone therapy as it became known. Energetic functioning in people was now his primary interest and his key efforts were directed toward dissolving the chronic muscular contractions of his patients, the ‘armoring’ which served to block natural feeling and hold neurotic behavior in place.
Photo 9 – “The Orgone Energy Accumulator – Its Scientific and Medical Use”
It was during this time that Reich discovered the specifically biological energy which he called orgone, and a simple therapeutic and experimental device that could concentrate the energy and allow it to be measured in a laboratory setting. He named the apparatus the orgone energy accumulator, or ORAC. The size of the accumulators Reich and his associates constructed over the years varied, from that of a small box, up to that of a large room. A properly constructed accumulator is made up of alternating layers of organic and inorganic material; steel wool and fiberboard were found to be ideal for the purpose. The non-metallic (organic) material tends to attract and hold the atmospheric energy, while the metal (inorganic) also attracted the energy, but, unable to absorb it, rapidly reflected it. As such, the exterior of an ORAC is always constructed of an organic layer, while the interior surface must be metallic. The accumulator works on the basis of what Reich termed the orgonomic potential. That is, unlike the conventional energy systems we are accustomed to thinking in terms of in which the energetic potential moves from the stronger system (the source), to the weaker one, orgone energy flows from the weaker system to the stronger.
Photo 10 – orgone accumulator schematic
Reich persevered with experiments designed to isolate and confirm the reality of this energy, but aware of the controversy an announcement of such a discovery might create, he continued to verify his findings without seeking either public acknowledgement or official scientific verification. One of the experiments he developed was calculated to measure the heat inside of an accumulator and compare it with the temperature inside an identical sized control box. The experiment was named To-T (T oh minus T). Reich and his colleagues observed that a change in the atmosphere would alter the temperature differential, and To-T established itself to be a reliable predictor of changes in the weather. If there is a conventional explanation for this temperature differential, one that can be demonstrated under laboratory conditions, I’m not aware of it.
Photo 11 – Cover sheet of “The Einstein Affair”
In late December 1940, Reich sent a carefully worded letter about his work to Albert Einstein. The letter, written in German, said, in part, “Several years ago I discovered a specific biological energy which in many ways behaves differently from anything that is known about electromagnetic energy. The matter is too complicated and sounds too improbable to be explained clearly in a brief letter. I can only indicate that I have evidence that the energy, which I have called orgone, exists not only in living organisms, but also in the soil and in the atmosphere; it is visible and can be concentrated and measured {emphasis his}, and I am using it with some success in research on cancer therapy.” The physicist responded by letter six days later, apparently intrigued enough to invite Reich to demonstrate this claim in person. The meeting was arranged through Einstein’s secretary-assistant, Helen Dukas, and set for January 13, 1941.
Photo 11 – January 9, 1941 letter from WR to Dukas
That afternoon the two men met for more than four hours. Reich had brought along several experimental devices to demonstrate his findings and Einstein observed the glowing orgone energy for himself through a laboratory apparatus designed for that purpose. Seemingly unwilling to believe his own eyes, the great physicist acknowledged the decided glow, but refused to rule out what he described as “the subjective element.” It was toward the end of their meeting that Reich told Einstein of the measurable heat created inside the accumulator and their conversation then shifted to the implications of such a discovery. Reich noted in his diary that Einstein’s response had been, “That is impossible. Should this be true, it would be a great bomb {to physics}.” An understandable reaction given that the heat differential repeatedly observed in this experiment violated the Second Law of Thermodynamics – that is, that equal volumes tend to equalize in temperature. In anticipation of the meeting Reich wrote, “Orgone constitutes the ‘field’ that Einstein is searching for. Electricity, magnetism, gravitation, etc., depend on its functions.” Following their discussion, Einstein stated that he wanted to verify this temperature differential for himself and Reich agreed to return to Princeton the following week with the necessary lab equipment.
Einstein spent a week conducting and studying To-T, and on February 7 wrote to Reich that he had confirmed (and reconfirmed) the scientist’s findings: the accumulator had registered an average 0.3-0.4 degree (centigrade) higher than in the control box. But then one of Einstein’s assistants offered a simple explanation: the differential had been caused by “convection:” that is the difference between the air temperatures under and above the table the accumulator had been placed on – Einstein had set it on a table top and suspended the control box in the air. He closed his letter to Reich, “I hope this {explanation} will awaken your sense of skepticism, so that you will not allow yourself to be deceived by an illusion that can be easily explained. Please have someone pick up your instruments, since they are of some value. They are undamaged.
With friendly greetings, A. Einstein.”
Stung, Reich wrote back imploring Einstein to re-conduct the experiment, but this time following the strict protocols he’d devised to eliminate such a false explanation. In his letter Reich even describes his having repeatedly and successfully conducting To-T with both boxes buried underground, thus eliminating any possibility of “convection,” but Einstein seemed to have lost all interest. Reich thought it memorable that the physicist had been so willing to accept the first rationale that had come along, and at his refusal to re-conduct the experiment under properly controlled conditions. The letter ended with a moving plea for some respect and consideration, but none was forthcoming. We do not know if Einstein even saw this letter. At the time all of his mail would have been screened by Helen Dukas, who may have had her own reasons for not wanting her employer to confirm Reich’s findings. Both Ms. Dukas and Dr. Einstein were put under fairly close observation by the FBI from the time they first entered this country in 1933, and while the FBI was aware of the physicist’s left-leaning sympathies, they strongly suspected Ms. Dukas of being an active asset of Soviet intelligence since at least 1929. There is credible evidence to support their belief, some of which is included in the proceedings. Letters from Reich and his colleagues and from Einstein and his assistants continued to change hands over the next few years, but without resolve.
Photo 13 – Mildred Edie Brady
The Federal Drug Administration began to build its case against Wilhelm Reich in 1947. The red flag that had alerted them to the danger he and his work posed to the American public was an extraordinarily vicious and inaccurate article written by a journalist named Mildred Edie Brady. “The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich” appeared in the May 26, 1947 issue of The New Republic; other biased and distorted articles followed. Time Magazine’s offering was entitled “The Marvelous Sex Box.” Brady’s article was a masterpiece of distortion and attacked Reich’s “sex racket” while trumpeting an out-and-out lie; namely, that he had stated the orgone accumulator was a cure-all. Mrs. Brady was not your routine freelancer. She had a history of involvement with far left causes and was, among other things, a respected member of the drug regulation elite who actively helped to create FDA legislation as early as 1938. She was also a founder of Consumers Union, which at the time was a communist-dominated organization that had broken away from Consumers Research, Inc. Brady was also professionally associated with one of Reich’s lawyers: Arthur Garfield Hays, who was a sponsor of Consumers Union.
There is no question that The New Republic article was clearly libelous, and Hays’ client instructed him to initiate an appropriate libel action against Mrs. Brady and the magazine; Reich’s medical colleagues agreed. Incredibly, Hays talked his client out of pressing the action, and the scientist, unfortunately, took his counselor’s advice. This proved to be a crucial misstep. Other scurrilous articles followed, similarly devoid of responsive legal action. Hays never informed his client that he knew and worked with Brady, and if that were not enough, one of Reich’s other attorneys, Peter Mills, would go on to become the prosecuting attorney when the case against him finally came to trial. But there was another significant factor at play here as well, one that would have exploded on the international stage if it had become known.
Photo 14 – Michael Straight
Jim Martin’s tenacious investigative scholarship in Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War has established that Michael Whitney Straight, a wealthy and powerful American whose parents founded The New Republic magazine, had attended Cambridge University in the nineteen thirties and was deeply connected to and involved with the members of the legendary Cambridge Four Soviet spy ring. As the then-owner of The New Republic and publisher of Brady’s scurrilous article, any legal action taken against her and his publication could have easily put him under oath and on the stand. In an interview Jim Martin conducted with Straight not long before his death, he made it clear that he had suffered from ongoing guilt relating to his long-time involvement with Soviet intelligence and might well have come clean about his double life if anyone in officialdom had only asked him about it; no one ever did. As such, Hays success in convincing Reich to waive legal action against Brady and The New Republic destroyed any trial-based possibility of revealing the degree to which Soviet intelligence had already penetrated British intelligence in the nineteen forties.
Photo 15 – Reich’s home and laboratory in Rangeley, Maine
In the early nineteen fifties Reich moved from New York to a rural property just outside of the town of Rangeley in southern Maine. Here he built a new home and laboratory designed to integrate both structures into a single, brilliantly practical building, now the home of the Wilhelm Reich Museum. A student lab was added soon after. This structure was the setting for the so-called Oranur Experiment, a chilling example of the accumulator’s undeniable ability to concentrate energy. The experiment called for the placing of a very small amount of radium in an accumulator, the unexpected results of which were to make a number of those participating extremely ill, and to toxify a surprisingly large part of southern Maine, one that took several months to dissipate. And so the stage was set for what came next.
Reich’s interest in UFOs dates from 1953. There is no written or anecdotal indication that he had paid any attention to all the publicity surrounding “flying saucers” previous to this, even when in 1952, some visitors to his home and laboratory reported seeing shining objects in the sky that were decidedly not stars. In November 1953 though, he read one of the best books available on the subject at the time.
Photo 16 – Flying Saucers from Outer Space
Flying Saucers from Outer Space had been written by a highly respected and decorated World War II fighter pilot named Donald Keyhoe, a name well known to most of us in this room. This retired Marine Corps Major pioneered much of the basis for modern scientific UFO studies and Reich’s writings, as well as hand-written notations that appear in his copy of the book, indicate he was intrigued by Keyhoe’s observation that the maneuverability, speed and silence of the unknowns repeatedly defied conventional laws of mechanical flight. At the time, Reich wrote, “I had not studied anything on the subject: I knew practically nothing about it. But my mind, used to expecting surprises in natural research, was open to anything that seemed real.”
Photo 17 - E. J. Ruppelt’s Report on UFOs
Keyhoe’s book was followed by E. J. Ruppelt’s Report on UFOs. Ruppelt was a retired Air Force’s Captain who had headed the Air Force’s UFO record-keeping and public relations program, Project Blue Book. This book prompted Reich to note, “The Ruppelt Report on UFOs clearly reveals the helplessness of mechanistic method in coming to grips with the problems posed by the spacemen. The cosmic orgone energy which these living beings are using in their technology is beyond the grasp of mechanistic science since cosmic laws of functioning are not mechanical but what I term “functional.” The helplessness of mechanical thinking appears in the tragic shortcoming of our fastest fighter jets to make and hold contact with UFOs. Being unavoidably outdistanced is not a flattering situation for military pride. The conclusion seems correct: Mechanistic methods of locomotion must be counted out in coping with the spaceship problem.”
One night as he sat on the steps outside his home in Maine, something flashed by at great speed, its behavior not suggestive of a comet, meteorite, or shooting star. Reich reported the sighting to the Air Force Base at Presque Island, Maine; it was the first of many sighting reports he would forward to them. In March, 1954, he sent a copy of his survey on UFOs to the Air Force; it was actually a manuscript detailing his theoretical conclusions of them as spacecraft.
Photo 18 – “The Oranur Experiment”
Basic to this scientist’s understanding of the universe was the pervasive presence of energy, implying the possibility of life in space. At this time Reich’s questioning encompassed the galactic currents, the formation and destruction of star systems, and the origin of the universe itself. Along with his deepening involvement in cloudbusting, he now began a careful examination of the stars and set about to prove that some ‘stars’ did not behave like others. The method he used was nocturnal, time-lapse photography. In this investigative technique, a thirty five millimeter camera was carefully set to face the night sky with its shutter open: the experiment proceeded with unexpected results. Some of the stars did not produce the white lines caused by the Earth’s rotation. These ‘stars’ simply vanished indicating that they were something else. He now began to wonder in earnest what they might be, and specifically what they were doing in the skies over Maine.
On October 5 and 6, three large, yellow UFOs hung low over the southern horizon with another hovering over the observatory on Reich’s property. Reich saw the Oranur Experiment, with its massive pollution of the Maine area, as the cause of the unknowns immediate interest in the region at this time. And if these craft had harnessed the sea of energy pervading the universe, what might be the effect of training a cloudbuster on one of them?
On October 10, a large reddish UFO appeared just to the south of the property. The cloudbuster was trained on it and it moved. The unknown became less red as the device kept its aim, then moved higher, and later sank down below the horizon. Shortly thereafter, a second light appeared to the west. After two minutes of direct drawing, it too faded, came back, flashed, pulsated, and wobbled while moving irregularly from south to north. There was for Reich the distinct, subjective impression of a struggle. It came back again shortly after, and again, became fainter and smaller after drawing on it. The remaining four unknowns then removed themselves, disappearing from sight.
Photo 19 – Reich with cloudbuster
The results of this action were both profound and disturbing. He writes in his last book, Contact With Space:
I hesitated for weeks to turn my cloudbuster pipes toward a “star” as if I had known that some of the blinking lights hanging in the sky were not planets or stars but space machines. … When I saw the “star” to the west fade out four times in succession, what had been left of the old world of human knowledge … tumbled beyond retrieve. From now on everything, anything, was possible. … There was no mistake about it. Three more people had seen it. There was only one conclusion: The thing we had drawn from was not a star. It was something else – a UFO … The shock of this experience was great enough not to repeat such an action until 10 October 1954.”
While it might seem naive to some, Reich choose to address his written concerns about UFOs directly to President Eisenhower. The White House responded by asking him to send such future communications to the Air Force, and to the CIA. As a result, a letter articulating his observations, concerns and conclusions about UFOs was sent to the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a career Naval Intelligence officer named Roscoe H. Hillenkotter.
Photo 20 – Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkotter
The scientist would have had no way of knowing it, but in more rarefied circles the Director was sometimes referred to by another title – MJ-1. Not only had Reich inadvertently made contact with a member of the President’s Ultra Secret UFO working group, he had reached out to its top man. Was the information he supplied to the CIA a contributing factor in Hillenkoetter’s becoming such a vocal opponent of UFO secrecy following his stepping down as Director, or was this simply part of a plan to allow an extremely highly placed operative to insinuate himself smack in the center of civilian UFO counterculture? I cannot say, but I am convinced that if the members of MJ-12 were not aware of Wilhelm Reich’s UFO-related activities prior to October 1954, they were from that time on, and would have identified him as a man whose actions bore monitoring, and possibly worse.
In Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War, Jim Martin identifies one other plausible link between Reich and MJ-12. His name was Lewis W. Douglas.
Photo 21 – Lewis W. Douglas
Reich refers to Douglas briefly in Contact With Space as the Director of the Tucson Savings and Loan, and writes that “his banking institution helped along during the entire expedition in a most friendly and cooperative fashion.” Douglas was also as a close associate of President Eisenhower, and the Director of Research for the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) in Tucson. Their first contact dates from 1954 when Reich’s assistant, William Moise, attempted to contact Douglas and arrange a meeting with him. As a point of interest, it had not been Reich who suggested to Moise that he get in touch with Douglas, but Charles Gardner, Jr., Executive Secretary of the Advisory Committee on Weather Control for the United States government. He was also the National Weather Bureau’s liaison with the Institute of Atmospheric Physics. Gardner had actually written to Moise on March 21, 1955 saying, “… we appreciate being informed of your activities.” Douglas’s secretary wrote up Moise’s calls in the form of memos. The first one read, in part, “…He {Moise} had just come from Washington and had spoken to people in the Dept. of Agriculture, Weather Bureau and in Mr. Gardner’s office about weather control. They suggested that Mr. D {Douglas} might be interested in information he had.” But no answer was forthcoming until July 27 when Douglas cabled Moise and Reich and Douglas began to correspond. They likely would have met in Tucson later that year, but Douglas had to be hospitalized for cancer surgery during the time of Reich’s visit to Arizona.
Jim Martin and author and publisher Kenn Thomas have engaged in some educated speculation on the possibility of a link between Lew Douglas
and MJ-12 and it is worth relating here. Douglas was known to be very close to Eisenhower and had a pronounced interest in weather control. The ‘Douglas-Moise Memo’ is dated July 14, 1954, only ten days prior to the seminal National Archives’ MJ-12 document, the Cutler-Twining Memo. Thomas reminds us that Robert Cutler had been with the CIA as a psyops (psychological operations) expert and was certainly acquainted with Hillenkotter (MJ-1). Cutler was also instrumental in bringing Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program to completion. In his memo, Cutler informs Air Force General Nathan Twining (MJ-4) that a scheduled meeting is being changed, and that the “Special Studies Project” would now meet during the already scheduled White House meeting of July 16 rather than following it as previously intended. Whatever the actual reason for this change, it insured that President Eisenhower would be in attendance. Quoting Jim Martin:
Thomas suggests that the timing of this sequence of events might indicate that Douglas, as a member of Eisenhower’s “kitchen cabinet,” may have been privy to or associated with the MJ-12 group. I agree that Douglas, one of the most powerful men in American politics at the time, would have known about MJ-12 if it existed. Thomas argues that Douglas, having been briefed about the meeting of MJ-12 members on July 16 at the White House, likely developed a more serious interest in Reich’s planned operations in Tucson on the basis of Reich’s observations of UFOs. This would have explained the sudden change in attitude on July 27, 1955, when Douglas sent a telegram to Moise inviting further correspondence. After all, Douglas had hired Dr. James E. McDonald, the father of scientific ufology, to head the IAP in 1954.”
Conspiratorial musings or grounded, informed speculation? Personally, I subscribe to the latter. As an aside, Martin definitely establishes that Reich drove through Roswell on his way to Tucson, and there is some intriguing anecdotal evidence that he returned there, but it remains inconclusive.
Photo 22 – “Contact With Space” title page
The following day, October 11, Reich authorized William Moise to call the Air Technical Intelligence Command (ATIC) in Dayton, Ohio, and make an appointment to discuss the seeming disabling of UFOs the previous day; Moise was in Ohio on his way to Arizona at the time. A meeting with a General Watson was agreed upon on for October 14. Over the phone Watson asked Moise, if necessary, could their conference be continued into the evening, and how did Reich know that the UFOs had been disabled? Reich’s assistant arrived at the facility early on the 14th where he was met by a Dr. Byers, a physicist employed by the command. Byers escorted Moise to the conference, also attended by a USAF Captain Hill and a civilian named Harry Haberer. Asking where General Watson was, Moise was told that he was unable to attend. Angered, he left and returned to his Dayton motel. The next day he received a call from Captain Hill conveying Watson’s apologies and was asked if the report could be made to ATIC Deputy Commander Colonel Wertenbaker. Moise agreed and they met later that day. Reich’s assistant gave an oral presentation and all took notes except the Colonel. Feeling that this had been a significant meeting and that at least some breakthrough had been made in interesting a branch of the government in Reich’s UFO work, Moise wrote to Reich that “The contact with Col. Wertenbaker was excellent throughout the conference. He was serious, intent and looked at me while I talked. He was the only one who did. His excitement increased as the report progressed.”
Dr. Byers, the physicist, told Moise that he was familiar with Reich’s work. Harry Haberer, the civilian in attendance, was described as someone working on the history of UFOs with the Air Force. Moise continued on to Arizona after leaving Ohio. Meanwhile, Reich, his son Peter, and several other colleagues were driving west as well. Each vehicle carried an appropriate assortment of laboratory equipment and each had a cloudbuster in tow. Traveling cross-country to Arizona offered a unique opportunity to observe the sky and the land they passed through. In author David Boadella’s words:
Reich’s account of the 3200-mile journey is a masterpiece of reportage on subtle nuances that he noticed in the atmosphere, in vegetation, and in the soil on the journey. To read it is to learn how much we all walk about with our eyes shut and how insensitive we tend to be towards the emotional feel of the environment.
The Tucson area had been chosen for several reasons: it was one of the world’s hottest and oldest desert regions, no prairie grass grew in the area, it had not rained a drop over the preceding five years, and the riverbeds had all been dry for almost half a century. The team arrived at the property Reich had leased ten miles outside of Tucson on October 19, 1954. Once settled in, they commenced drawing operations, regularly observing the atmosphere with their meteorological instruments. Records were kept in accordance with strict scientific method and individual journals were also maintained.
Robert McCulloch, another trained cloudbuster operator, also assisted with the operation. Reich’s daughter, Dr. Eva Reich, acted as the group’s physician. Work began at the end of October and many UFOs were observed over the area during the nights of October 31 and November 1. By November 7, moisture in the atmosphere had risen from the usual 15% to 65%, an unheard of relative humidity for the Tucson area. Drawing continued from the southwest direction. On November 7, the first clouds were forming thickly and soon covered the sky indicating rain. Then, without apparent explanation, the clouds began to decompose. That evening, a large, bright UFO was seen coming up from the north. It moved slowly southwest until it stopped and hovered for several hours above the southern horizon. A connection between the dissipation of clouds and the presence of UFOs in the skies seemed unavoidable after this sequence of events continued to repeat itself.
Photo 23 – Eisenhower & Douglas
Weather modification was also a subject of genuine interest to President Eisenhower, and to a number of military and civilian offices within his Administration. The Tucson-based Institute of Atmospheric Physics had been founded in 1953 as a direct result of the formation of the President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control earlier that year. An atmospheric physicist with a background in naval intelligence was appointed to the committee as Associate Director, and at some point in November or December of 1954 may have met with Reich.
Photo 24 – Cover of Ann Druffel’s “Firestorm”
His name was Dr. James E. McDonald, and we know him to be another scientist of great intelligence, courage and passion, who, like Reich, had the temerity to attempt bringing the subject of UFOs to the serious attention of the American public, much to the detriment of both their careers. Dr. Eva Reich recalled that McDonald had visited the cloudbusting site when a TV crew came to film their operations, and that both he and her father had been interviewed for the report. But the interviews never aired. While it is highly probable that Dr. McDonald would have had a genuine interest in Reich’s work, we do not know for sure if the two actually met and possibly talked.
Photo 25 – page 165 of “Contact With Space”
By November 13, the cloudbusting operation was showing marked results. The relative humidity had risen to 67% and foliage on observable mountain ranges had now turned green. Prairie grass was growing for acres around the leased site, as was the moisture level in the surrounding area. Rain now seemed imminent in a location which had seen none for five years. But by that evening the humidity had dropped twenty points to 47%. The next day, two bright, pulsating, flashing UFOs were seen low in the eastern sky. Upon direct draw, the first dimmed after an initial stronger blinking, then remained dim. The second wobbled, then it too, dimmed markedly. Suddenly a third came up in the east. Early the morning of November 18 yet another UFO was observed on the horizon; within two hours an Air Force aircraft was seen circling the area. More UFOs continued to be observed in direct relationship to the destruction of the relative humidity. The team’s operations continued to draw a moist current from the west; it had now rained in Los Angeles, Nevada and Utah, but not in Tucson.
On the morning of November 29, Reich, looking at the eastern sky through a three-and-a-half inch refracting telescope, observed a fully articulated cigar-shaped craft. He writes that his first reaction was to reject what he was seeing, but windows were clearly observed on the object and recorded in his drawings. The ship was observed on and off between December 1 and December 17 by Reich and by others as cloud cover allowed, and charts of its movements were carefully kept.
Photo 26 – CORE Journal, March 1955
By December 14, the atmosphere in the area of the base camp and in Tucson itself was oppressive and deadening. Just prior to this his associate, Dr. Michael Silvert, had transported a small amount of accumulator-aggravated uranium from Maine to the Tucson site. The material had to be towed on a cable one hundred feet behind a hired plane as its lead shielding was unable to contain its altered reaction. At about 4:30 PM, a huge black cloud formed over the Tucson area, gradually turning deep purple with a somewhat reddish glow. The background radiation count in the area jumped to an alarming one hundred thousand counts per minute. The usual background count had been holding at six to eight hundred counts per minute. Both the atmospheric and Geiger counter reactions were likely the result of the accumulator-exposed radioactive material now in the vicinity. Twelve Air Force planes soon over flew the base camp and their contrails (made of water vapor) quickly dissolved. Twenty minutes after both cloudbusters began drawing, the skies cleared. At 5:30 that afternoon four B-56 bombers flew in low over the site. Reich’s subjective feeling was that this incident could properly be categorized as a battle. He had also come to feel that the ‘exhaust’ these craft gave off attacked the relative destroyed humidity in the surrounding atmosphere.
UFOs continued to be observed over Tucson throughout the rest of December and footage of the weather modification operations was televised on the twentieth. The accumulator-exposed radium had now been incorporated in the cloudbuster apparatus and the extra excitation it caused in the atmosphere seems to have been the deciding factor in their successful results. January 3, 6 and 7 saw abundant and repeated rain in Arizona, particularly in the vicinity of Tucson. The streets of the city were now full of puddles, the soil was saturated, snow had accumulated on Mount Catalina and two thousand families had to be evacuated from their perennially dry river bed homes. The rain then moved on to Texas and New Mexico while the Phoenix valley experienced a rare fog. The real cause of these anomalous weather conditions was not lost on a growing segment of Tucson residents and “A conference with local farmers, business representatives, and banking officials was scheduled for January 28 to discuss the problem of how to continue with the desert work after our departure.” But a severe drop in humidity followed, as did the appearance of more UFOs and the operation continued with rain again soaking the area on February 17. The following week, The Tucson Daily Citizen reported that “Good winter storms promise better range prospects than have been forecasted recently.” Cloudbusting continued into March, as did the accompanying rainfall. Operations concluded late that month with the team and equipment returning east in April.
All of the aforementioned events were officially ignored by the Institute for Atmospheric Physics. Quoting Reich, “They were busy with a new project, counting the droplets condensing around dust particles per volume of air,” this courtesy of a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. Another IAP project of the period involved the time-lapse photography of jet planes’ contrails. Reich had seen and reported aircraft contrails during various cloudbusting operations, and had observed their disintegration during operations in Arizona. He even wondered “Whether the Air Force had actually such problems in mind.” They likely had. Color movie film from the mid fifties located in the University of Arizona’s Physics and Atmospheric Science Building show Air Force jets being utilized in weather modification experiments. These and the other findings I’ve related lead me to believe that our government had a very real interest in Dr. Reich’s UFO observations and findings, as well as in his weather modification work – from the President on down. And while it may have been a coincidence, in late November 1955, President Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace.” proposal – a plan for the peaceful use of atomic energy - was accepted by the United Nations. Some months prior to this, Reich had sent Eisenhower a copy of his paper documenting the Oranur Experiment, and the operations and experiments that had sprung from it. The paper was titled “Atoms for Peace.”
Photo 27 – 1954 and 1955 Orgone Institute publications on the FDA injunction
Reich’s contempt trial could easily be made the subject of a longer talk than this one, but here are the basics of what transpired. The FDA as you’ll recall began to build its case shortly after Mildred Brady’s article appeared in 1947, but making the case was not proving easy. None of Reich’s past or current patients, or any of those seeing the other physicians he’d trained in medical orgone therapy had registered a complaint with the FDA, or with any other agency for that matter. Neither had Reich or his associates broken any laws, but the FDA remained undeterred in their efforts. After all, they knew he was a fraud and saw their responsibility as bringing this sex obsessed medical menace to justice.
So it was that the Federal Drug Administration went to Federal Court and brought a complaint against the interstate shipment of orgone energy accumulators, or any other related therapeutic materials. Their big break came in 1955 when one of Reich’s physicians, Dr. Michael Silvert, carelessly shipped accumulators to New York from Maine without his mentor’s knowledge or permission. Upon consideration, Reich decided to take personal responsibility for the injunction’s violation. He then wrote to the judge explaining his decision, noting he was aware that his argument might be rejected. It was, and the violation stood.
Photo 28 – Reich student Lois Wyvell’s September 1956 trial protest pamphlet
FDA agents began appearing on Reich’s Maine property shortly thereafter, but he refused to allow them any access to his scientific equipment or written materials and continued on with his experiments. This resulted in a contempt of court citation, and while their original legal parry had been a civil matter, it now graduated to a criminal action and a court date was set. Given the betrayals of both his lawyers, Reich decided to represent himself in court, against the advice of some of his closest colleagues. He also chose to make the trial a forum for the validity of his research and findings. Eloquent though he was, the judge would have none of it. Wilhelm Reich was convicted of contempt of court and sentenced to two years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania. He was fifty nine years old. Beginning that year, 1956, and continuing into the final months of the Eisenhower Administration, the FDA confiscated and burned more than eight tons of his hardcover books, scientific monographs and other original writings, in government incinerators – to the best of our knowledge without ever once having attempted to replicate any of his published experiments.
Once incarcerated, prison authorities determined that the new inmate should undergo a psychiatric evaluation. Staff psychiatrists noted that he “gave no concrete evidence of being mentally incompetent,” but officially diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, this while admitting their finding was “not based on physical evaluation.” Early release was denied him and the Supreme Court chose not to comment on his final writ. Wilhelm Reich was found dead in his cell at Lewisburg on November 3, 1957, just seven days before his scheduled release date. The account I’ve related to you represents only the briefest sketch of the events and actions discussed.
Repeat photo 1 – 1946 portrait of Reich
Since his death, most accounts of Dr. Wilhelm Reich’s life and work, be they supportive or otherwise, follow a similar logic: that the level of importance which he ascribed to his UFO observations were, in themselves, a means of “proving,” or at least suggesting that he had gone quite mad during his last years. But with no real interest in honest scientific inquiry or method, and little if any appreciation of serious UFO studies or orgonomy, his detractors tend to write in angry displays of public-spirited concern, warning the reader away, like police at the scene of an accident.
In Contact With Space, Reich dares, as a scientist, to exercise a most precious right: the right to challenge an established and accepted belief, the right to think a thought, no matter how others might perceive it, recording that thought for publication and standing by it in the face of almost universal criticism. Apparently the very act of claiming to have observed UFOs, and, over time, their behavior, interacting with them via the cloudbuster, ascribing to them intelligence and intention, keeping the Air Force, the CIA, the National Weather Bureau and the office of the President appraised of his activities, and finally, the posthumous publishing of Contact With Space, proved intolerable to all by a few. It was simply preferable to dismiss his UFO work as bearing witness to a great mind finally derailed, rather than give it the consideration it deserves. All the more reason it is important to recall that many of history’s most brilliant and influential scientists and social thinkers were declared out of touch with reality or insane during their time, only to be vindicated by a future that was better equipped to accept their revolutionary leaps in thinking or discoveries.
Do Wilhelm Reich’s observations, deductions and conclusions concerning UFOs all conform to the best contemporary knowledge on the subject? The majority of them do, and his sighting reports and accounts are virtually identical to those made by countless other individuals both then and now. Is the power source of UFOs based on their successfully having harnessed the great sea of energy we live in? While the question has never been the subject of a serious ufological investigation, I think Reich makes a respectable case for this possibility, and not just in theoretical terms. Can we say with certainty that his death was the result of a conspiracy, or of foul play tracing back to MJ-12, the Federal Drug Administration, Soviet intelligence, the Communist Party, or those individuals in power who tend to mystify biology, then mechanically attempt to impose their own sex-negative morality on the rest of us? No. And the fact is that at the time of his death, Dr. Reich suffered from high blood pressure, was overweight, and a chronic smoker. But, based on what he and his work represented to such diverse and powerful groups, among others, would any (or all) of the aforementioned have desired his death and possessed the will and means to implement it? Oh yes, without a doubt. And with the official, autopsied cause of death listed as a heart attack, the question of murder is likely to remain an open one.
Irregardless of whether he was murdered or died of natural causes, humanity lost a brilliant and courageous social thinker and man of science forty nine years ago, and one whose UFO-related work deserves serious study by any student of the subject. I hope this paper will encourage some of you to read the available works of Reich, and to seek out the truths he established for yourself. While the most recent of the events I’ve described here today linger in a history nearly fifty years past, they continue to remain as important, shattering and relevant as if they’d occurred last week. Knowledge is often its own reward and anyone who takes the time to educate themselves to Wilhelm Reich’s work will only benefit from it. And, as always seems the case, those who ignore the lessons of history are destined to repeat them.
Thank you for your attention.
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REFERENCES
1.Scharaf, M.: Fury On Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich. New York, St. Martin’s Press/Marek, 1983
2.Reich, W, and edited by Boyd Higgins, M., and Raphael, C.: Passion of Youth: An Autobiography. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1998
3.Reich, W, and edited by Boyd Higgins, M.,: American Odyssey: Letters and Journals, 1940-1947, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1999
4.Martin, J.: Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War. Ft. Bragg, California, Fort Bragg Books, 2000 (Note: Like Reich’s Contact With Space, Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War was published in an edition of 500 copies, with all copies of Martin’s book going to subscribers who underwrote the cost of his research. I am hopeful that we will see another edition of this important book in the not too distant future.)
5.Robbins, P.: Wilhelm Reich and UFOs. The Journal of Orgonomy, Volume 24, Number 2, New York, Orgonomic Publications, Inc, 1990
6.Robbins, P.: Wilhelm Reich and UFOs, Part II: Examining Evidence and Allegations. The Journal of Orgonomy, Volume 25, Number 1, New York, Orgonomic Publications, Inc, 1991
7.Reich, W.: Wilhelm Reich Biographical Material: History of the Discovery of the Life Energy (American Period, 1939-1952) Documentary Volume A – XI – E, The Einstein Affair. Rangeley, Maine: Orgone Institute Press, 1953.
8.Reich, W.: Contact With Space. Rangeley, Maine: Orgone Institute Press, 1957
9.Eden, J.: Planet in Trouble: The UFO Assault on Earth, New York, The Exposition Press, 1973
10. Greenfield, J.: Wilhelm Reich VS. The U.S.A., New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974
11. Westrum, R.: “The Blind Eye of Science,” The Whole Earth Review, No. 52, Fall, 1986
12. Boadella, D.: Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work. London: Vision Press, 1973.
13. Conversations with Dr. Elsworth F. Baker, Reich’s first assistant for the last eleven years of his life*. Personal note: I was in therapy with Dr. Baker for about six years.
14. Conversations with Dr. Myron Sharaf, Reich’s student, patient, coworker and biographer**
15. Conversations with Scientist and author*** Dr. James DeMeo, who continues to demonstrate that Reich’s weather modification apparatus’s and techniques work, and in no uncertain terms.
16. Conversations with investigative writer, author**** and Reich scholar, Jim Martin.
* Man in the Trap, Baker, Elsworth, F., Macmillan, NY, 1967
** Fury On Earth, Sharaf, Myron, St. Martins/Marek, 1983
*** Saharasia: the 4000 bce Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence in the Deserts of the Old World, DeMeo, James, OBRL, OR, 1998
**** Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War, Martin, Jim, Flatland Books, CA, 2000
As of this writing I believe all books written by Wilhelm Reich are currently out of print, but various editions are available from many used book stores and Internet book services. Recommended sources of information on Reich and his work are, The Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory www.orgonelab.org, The Wilhelm Reich Museum www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org, The American College of Orgonomy www.orgonomy.org, and Abe Books www.abebooks.com .
Books by Wilhelm Reich include:
Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939
American Odyssey: Letters and Journals, 1940-1947
The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety
The Bion Experiments
The Cancer Biopathy
Contact With Space
Character Analysis
Children of the Future
Early Writings, Volume One
Ether, God and Devil / Cosmic Superimposition
The Function of the Orgasm
Genitality
The Impulsive Character
The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality
Listen, Little Man!
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
The Murder of Christ
Passion of Youth: An Autobiography
People in Trouble
Record of a Friendship: Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neill
Reich Speaks of Freud
Selected Writings
The Sexual Revolution
