{"id":15626,"date":"2017-03-22T20:51:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T20:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/?p=15626"},"modified":"2017-03-22T20:52:25","modified_gmt":"2017-03-22T20:52:25","slug":"the-medium-is-the-message-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/the-medium-is-the-message-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Medium is the Message"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: We know, we know, the Staff of the Daily Socotra has not gone into summer re-runs, though it did turn out this way with the Medium series. I had to go back and put it all back together as the single story that it really is. I also wanted to get Karen a copy for her reference, and there are several bombshells being hurled around downtown that are both too fascinating for words and too ugly to think through fully. So this is what happened today. We will not be posting it as The Daily- rather it will go in the Novellas tab as a complete article. There is the matter of the Mac Showers book to wrap up, and another tantalizing tale about the Brotherhood, which will have to be written as fantasy, since it could not possibly be real, right? Anyway, this is part of that, and must stand as the creative effort for the day.
\n-The Daily Staff.
\n22 March 2017<\/p>\n

The Medium is the Message<\/p>\n

A Guided Tour Through the Veil With Evidential Medium Karen Anderson<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Remember those words? The phrase was introduced in Marshall McLuhan’s book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in the dim and distant days of 1964. I was a young teen at the time, basking in the bourgeoisie pleasures of suburban Detroit. We had some problems at the time- perhaps you have heard of them? But on the whole, life was pretty good. We got up to change the channels on the television, sought out pay-phones to make emergency calls or have affairs- which I was sadly not doing at the time- and otherwise were tied to our landlines in our homes.<\/p>\n

Telephone answering machines were cutting edge technology. The first ARPANet message was still five years away.<\/p>\n

It was the way things had been, essentially since the days Alexander Graham Bell. When I think of the transformative nature of technology, and what we have seen since 1970, I have to guess that I will be able to hire a robot to generate content from AI for the site so I can retire, and even have The Daily go on into the distant future in a sort of digital perpetual motion.<\/p>\n

McLuhan was on to something way back then, though he couldn\u2019t know the immensity of the phenomenon he was attempting to describe. In his view, a \u2018medium,\u2019 not solely by the content it carries, and that was what needed to be studied. He included every means of communication, from phones to TV, radio and all the means by which advertising is inflicted on us. He said that a medium affects society not just by what content was transmitted, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself.<\/p>\n

For McLuhan, it was the medium itself that shaped and controlled “the scale and form of human association and action.” The concept even included the wildly non-traditional definition of what communication really was. For example, he identified the light bulb as a clear demonstration of his concept. A light bulb has a social effect, he argued, reasoning that light enables people to create spaces during nighttime that would otherwise be enveloped by darkness, which actually describes our current watering hole pretty well. Some mediums have no recognizable content, and yet have profound social effects.<\/p>\n

McLuhan describes the “content” of a medium as a juicy piece of meat carried by the burglar to distract the watchdog of the mind. OK, OK, I am not going to continue down that road. Go back and look at the book, and consider the electronic swirling circus of messaging we have to process from every direction. Consider it in the context of the long national nightmare we have endured since the last campaign began. It boggles the mind.<\/p>\n

Some of you might have expected more from Marlow this morning, since his musings on motorcycles and the Motherland have been highly entertaining over the past few weeks. (We plan on packaging the series as something that might be called \u201cMarlow\u2019s Four Corners: A Ride on the Edge of America.\u201d Stay tuned.<\/p>\n

Others may have expected another plunge into the comfortable dimness of the Willow Bar to explore the remarkable career of Admiral Mac Showers. I think we are beginning to see the completion of that project- \u201cCocktails with the Admiral: Hot and Cold Wars in the American Century.\u201d So, rest assured, there is a bit more of Mac\u2019s life to be inflicted on you.<\/p>\n

And in fact, that is where all these strands begin to come together. There are a couple mysteries that remain in Mac\u2019s career, and they are tantalizing ones. Marlow knows some fundamental truths about human on two wheels and filled with adventure and wanderlust. McLuhan was right about content and about mediums, though I have discovered he wasn\u2019t covering enough ground.<\/p>\n

What I propose to do over the next couple days is tell you a story about a medium that just crossed my path.<\/p>\n


\nHer name is Karen Anderson, and this is what manifestation the former Colorado Deputy Sheriff presents to the world these days.<\/p>\n

Karen is a very nice and personable person. She also talks to spirits.<\/p>\n

The Haunted Bunkroom<\/p>\n


\nOK- you are just going to have to bear with me on this one. It requires a bit of a deft touch, since there are two clear paths by which I might spin this memory. I could be my usual snarky self and play it for laughs, mocking a profession of seers and mystics that is as old as the race itself.<\/p>\n

Given the increasingly coarse nature of public discourse, that would naturally fit better, but this is an experience that I went through two weeks ago, and doubt if I ever will. Let me give you some background.<\/p>\n

A mutual friend of Mac Showers is working on a book about what really happened at Pearl Harbor immediately before and continuing long after the morning of the attack. She takes it all personally- she had family who were key actors in the events surrounding one of America\u2019s biggest military disasters. In the course of her research, she came upon Mac, and as part of an effort to contact as many Pearl Harbor survivors as she could before they departed, called Mac at his apartment at The Madison and would talk for hours about the people with whom he served.<\/p>\n

That is how I met The Macaroon Lady, a title she earned through her love for the Willow\u2019s delightful airy dessert. Mac would mail her a dozen periodically when they showed up from Kate Jansen\u2019s pastry kitchen. I have talked to TML frequently since Mac crossed the Styx, with me serving as a knock-off version of him for matters concerning naval intelligence jargon and procedures.<\/p>\n

As you are by now painfully aware, I am working on Mac\u2019s long biography, and frequently I find myself kicking the lower drawer on the desk about some simple yet important bit of information that I should have asked him about when I could. During a call shortly after New Years, I think I said so. \u201cDammit, I wish I could just ask him. He made himself available fifty or sixty times, and I didn’t know what I didn\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if I could find a way to let you ask those questions?\u201d she said. And that is where this story really begins, and where I ask you to suspend disbelief. In this age of politics, that should not be a leap of faith.<\/p>\n

Lest you think I am just another devotee of the Ouija Board, I will put this out there for consideration, and why I do not dismiss notions about paranormal stuff out of hand. In addition to dozens of sort of strange things I have run across, there are three vivid instances containing facts that do not fit my normal world-view, the one I normally attempt to subjugate at Happy Hour.<\/p>\n


\nThe first of those, of course, is the near simultaneous passing of Raven and Big Mama, my wonderful parents. Dad died in the nursing home around lunchtime. Mom was seen active and alert when she was down in the lunchroom at Potemkin Village. She returned to her room and was seen by staff watching the Turner Classic Movie Channel. At the next visit around three that afternoon, she was found collapsed on the floor of her closet. The folks at the Village said it looked liked she was changing clothes to go out.<\/p>\n

Two points about that. She was not told that Dad had died. She did not go out on her own since we took the car keys. Simple, really. I am left with the conclusion that 63 years of marriage had built a communications path so strong that the end of the life we know could not terminate it. Obviously it took Dad a little while to shake off the fog of dementia that took him and go get His Sweetie.<\/p>\n

The second personal event is not circumstantial, if a bit stranger.<\/p>\n

When I was assigned to the THIRD Fleet Staff in the mid-1980s, the command was located on Ford Island in the middle of Pearl Harbor. As the Pacific Anti-Submarine Warfare commander, it was deemed necessary to have an officer on the island on call, 24×7, and accordingly we established one of the Navy\u2019s traditional all-purpose remedies: a watch bill. We would have a periodic requirement to stay on the island overnight, since it was (in those days) served only by the redoubtable Ford Island Ferry, and it did not run after taps.<\/p>\n

To accommodate our requirement, a bunkroom on the second deck of the island Dispensary was assigned for our use. It was historic for several reasons. The courtyard of the building had been struck by a Japanese aerial bomb in the attack, and afterward, the building was used for triage of the wounded and as a morgue for the dead.<\/p>\n


\nIn the film \u201cIn Harm\u2019s Way,\u201d our bunkroom was the place they filmed young Patricia Neal sitting behind a desk as The Duke boldly strode into room, her silhouette profiled against our now-shabby room. Painting for the movie was the last maintenance the place had seen in years.<\/p>\n

Anyway, with nothing else to do, I read messages at the HQ until nine one night, got my book and walked down the darkened street to the Dispensary, climbed the ladder to the second deck, slid the key into the solid old wooden door and enter my sanctuary. To say that the place was eerie would be an understatement, and I took off my uniform to sleep in the single bed in my skivvies.<\/p>\n

Sometime in the deepest part of the night I was dreaming. It wasn\u2019t one of the usual nightmares- the running dream or the falling dream- this one was just images, none of which made any particular sense until I realized I was looking down at a figure under thin Navy sheets on a single bed in a darkened room, moonlight flooding in Patricia Neal\u2019s office window.<\/p>\n

I watched myself stir, and then sit up, looking directly at me in the upper corner of the room by the door.<\/p>\n

And then I was integrated in my body again, on a lumpy mattress in an old dark room that smelled vaguely of disinfectant and mold.<\/p>\n

So, take that as a contribution to my personal ambiguity about the spirit world. There are components of it, and of the human brain, that I do not understand. If there is anyone out there that does, please do not hesitate to drop me a line.<\/p>\n

Of course I recognize that these are suggestive rather than conclusive events. But there was a later time in my military career where I discovered to my considerable bemusement, that our program had been funding a paranormal unit for several years.<\/p>\n

I will tell you this: if you can get the most hidebound organization in the US Government to fund telepaths for nearly ten years, there is something there. The unit was only called on for missions for which all other conventional approaches had been exhausted.<\/p>\n

The demonstration that convinced me was the after-action report regarding the kidnap of a one-star American general in Northern Italy by one of the acolyte groups of the Red Brigades. After all other leads had gone cold, the Unit was tasked to do their best to find him. The reports the Talent produced were ambiguous in nature. Some of them were like: \u201csubject is cold and it is dark where he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not much in the way of actionable intelligence, and of course the hope had been that \u2018remote viewers\u2019 could glance up at street signs on demand and perform real-time targeting. Apparently that is not how it works. But against all hope, the General was released and extensively debriefed. When they laid down the time line against some of the Unit reports, they matched up nicely. Of course it had been cold and dark. It was the European winter. The general had been locked in the trunk of a car.<\/p>\n


\nI understand you cannot see much from there.<\/p>\n

This was not the unalloyed success that supporters wanted, and in the nature of Washington projects with a significant giggle factor, it was transferred out of DoD and to the CIA for management. The folks at Langley did a blue ribbon review and announced that they could find no application of remote viewing to produce \u201cactionable intelligence,\u201d and they killed it.<\/p>\n

Of course, they didn\u2019t say there was nothing there. The report just concluded that it could not be relied on for military or covert action purposes. End of story.<\/p>\n

Which it is for the Unit, but the story goes on. The Macaroon Lady had gained her trust and confidence after years of experience with mountebanks and frauds in one of the oldest cons in the book. She told me she had gifted me a reading with a medium who she could trust. I was informed that I would be speaking to Karen Anderson, Medium, at her office in Seattle in a couple weeks.<\/p>\n

Naturally, I did my homework. Here is what I know about all this. The paranormal has been exploited by charlatans for thousands of years. If there is something there, it is not an on-demand capability. It can not be weaponized, per se, nor can it provide information that is not inherently ambiguous. The capability flits and it wanders, if real, like a ghost through the human mind itself.<\/p>\n

But those are the conclusions of the Central Intelligence Agency. I know that Mom and Dad could communicate outside the normal means, and I know that I have seen my own sleeping body. But I will have to get to that tomorrow, when you will meet my medium, Karen Anderson. She is a remarkable lady. But I never for a moment would have thought that a reading with her would get to the very heart of one of the things I had been meaning to ask Mac about.<\/p>\n

Mediums<\/p>\n


\n(Former Deputy Sheriff, author and evidential medium Karen Anderson).<\/p>\n

After yesterday\u2019s outing- the independent account of strange happenings in the Ford Island Dispensary- I am going to reiterate the obvious: There is stuff out here in the world that I do not either understand, or for which I have no plausible explanation.<\/p>\n

The Macaroon Lady (TML) knows this stuff pretty well. She is based in Malibu, in the heart of Southern California\u2019s lotus la-la land. I don’t look down on the people who live and work out there. World\u2019s best climate, spectacular ocean views can make you a little spoiled, I know, and the nature of the ephemeral entertainment business can lead people to believe the most extraordinary things.<\/p>\n

I tend to believe only in what I can see with my eyes, and in the course of an active life, TML has seen it all: the stars, the star-wannabees, and people who are desperate to know their future. There are people who prey on them. No big news flash there, and the desire to know what the portents of life means thus accounts for the number of frauds, flim-flammers and mountebanks in the medium business.<\/p>\n

TML has been through them all in her quest to find a reliable and honest medium. She is sensitive herself, but unease about the implications (and consequences) of her talent made her suppress it for years, and she finds the assistance of professionals to hone the truth in the visions that come.<\/p>\n

We can have a long chat about that concept some time, but she eventually found Karen Anderson, a world-class psychic, former cop and fugitive from Southern California. Since I still have so many questions for Mac about things I was either too drunk or distracted to hear from him in life, plus that lingering mystery from the War in Southeast Asia.<\/p>\n

So, she made an appointment with Karen to give me a reading, and it was how I found myself at Happy Hour Time, not at the beveled corner of the bar at The Front Page, but seated before my iMac with a battery of phones and a long legal pad with two pens. But we will get to that in a moment.<\/p>\n

I am stuck with being what I am: a crasher through truth, fiction and history. Accordingly I looked up Karen on the web, and liked what I saw. In addition to being a very attractive lady, Karen has had some remarkable life experience as she came to full awareness of her talents.<\/p>\n

Born and raised in Southern California (like TML), she found she had an innate ability to relate to the many animals that surrounded her over the years, Doctor Doolittle-like. She says she learned how to understand their thoughts and feelings.<\/p>\n

She also thought that this unique talent could be harnessed for good- the sort of path that induces positive Karma, unlike the Carlos Castenada dark wizard school of spiritual energy. TML tells me that is a path down which you do not want to walk. Karen\u2019s sort of talent cannot hurt or be used for evil.<\/p>\n

Karen decided that a career in law enforcement might be a means to bring her talents to bear. Her career path took her into the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, she found herself in the little hamlet of Baily, a very small town nestled in the Front Range. She applied for a position as a Deputy Sheriff and she was accepted. She pinned on her badge, strapped on a service pistol and shrugged on the heavy-duty jacket and got to work.<\/p>\n


\n(Karen\u2019s beat in downtown Baily, CO).<\/p>\n

As she gained direct interpersonal experience with people in a variety of states of mind, she discovered that her psychic skills enabled her to read the energy of the suspects and criminals with whom she dealt on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

That can be a bit much, especially considering that people carry a lot of angry baggage around with them, the equivalent, I imagine, of attempting to have a conversation with someone screaming at you. She decided to strike out on a new path.<\/p>\n

Fifteen years ago, she resigned from the Sheriff\u2019s office in Baily and became a full-time Animal Communicator. Since that decision, Karen has logged well over 12,000 sessions with clients seeking knowledge of their departed companions. TML assured me that Karen, working from her office in Seattle, \u201cprovides incredibly detailed private consultations and refers to her style of readings as being that of an ‘Evidential Medium.’ As a former cop, she strives to provide actionable fact-based information evidence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cKaren is known widely in the community, and I can tell you for a fact that she has an easy-going sense of humor, down to earth manner and amazing accuracy. She has proven it to me. She is writing best selling books about her experiences. And she has won multiple awards as best Animal Communicator.\u201d<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t completely sure I needed to talk to the former marital Dog, and I mumbled something noncommittal but supportive into the phone. I was willing to have a reading for the experience. If I wound up learning anything interesting, it could be useful to the biography of Mac Showers. And as a veteran scribbler, I know that any experience can be spun into a story that says something about life, and maybe more.<\/p>\n

I was prepared when I sat down at the computer and called up the \u201cmeeting invite\u201d when the appointed day arrived. Scheduling meant that my six o\u2019clock on the eastern seaboard was three in the afternoon Seattle time. I had reviewed her website and a sampling of her testimonials, most of which were glowing. Karen\u2019s web site states that her experience has earned her a reputation as \u201can expert in behavior resolution, discovering health problems and end of life issues for all living creatures. Her highly attuned intuitive abilities allow her to read the energy of all animals, living or deceased and also departed humans (Mediumship) bringing forth their messages of healing and much needed peace of mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

The instructions had been laid out with precision in the invitation. I was to dial a number and enter an access code, which was provided. I was five minutes early, and not completely surprised that I was now on a conferencing system provided by the same company that serves my company day-job. And like the weekly Business Development and Operations meeting at the office, the entire conversation could be recorded.<\/p>\n

So I listened to the same Muzak waiting noise for a couple minutes and took a sip of a glass of Willow Happy Hour White, one of the last bottles I was able to purchase from Heather before the place closed. It was nicely chilled, and my first one of the day. I wanted to be sharp, and I wanted my notes to make sense.<\/p>\n

Then the music stopped and there was a beep on the speaker-phone. \u201cGood afternoon,\u201d said a clear soprano voice. \u201cThis is Karen Anderson.\u201d<\/p>\n

And with that we commenced a journey to a place I had apparently once visited as if in a dream, but a place where Karen actually lives.<\/p>\n

My Name is Not Jack<\/p>\n


\nI topped up the tulip glass- close to the last glass- of the bottle of Willow Happy Hour White and walked back to the scene of the s\u00e9ance. I was dialed in, and a pleasant soprano voice came on the line: Karen Anderson, Evidentiary Medium.<\/p>\n

In my mind I had an image of how this was supposed to be. I had been featuring a small round table with an exotic cloth and candle, the shadows deep all around. The medium,, in my imagination anyway, would have been a woman of raven hair and indeterminate age. Her eyes would have glittered darkly as her hands made curious gestures, summoning the spirits from beyond the veil to answer the heartfelt questions that death left unanswered.<\/p>\n

It was not that at all, of course. The wine was chilled and the computer\u2019s screen was bright and cheery, and the desk was bathed in warm yellow-orange light from the incandescent bulbs I refuse to stop using.<\/p>\n

Karen is, of course, the antithesis of what you might expect if you were thinking of a Romani soothsayer. She is pert, athletic and blonde. I cannot testify to the depth and texture of her eyes, since she was in her office in Seattle, but everyone must adapt to the times, you know?<\/p>\n

The Macaroon Lady had coached me on what to do to prepare. \u201cTake good notes. She will record the session for your use later, but take good notes. Some of this will come back to you days from now and will make sense only then.\u201d Accordingly, I had a legal pad and two Pilot P-700 fine-point pens at the ready.<\/p>\n

Karen and I got as acquainted as one could hope over a long-distance Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) connection, and she told me what to expect.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst off, I want you to open your heart to the voices of your loved ones,\u201d she said. I had not considered trying to talk to anyone in my family, though I had been signed up for the human version of the reading. That is a different process from the one she uses to contact deceased pets. \u201cI felt some distinct Mom and Dad energy. They were here about 45 minutes ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

I winced. I had not even thought about talking to my folks, but I was glad they were on the ball. Comforting, in a way. Karen kindly records the sessions through the magic of the conference call system, and she had to ask my formal permission to be recorded, which of course I granted. And then we were off to the races.<\/p>\n

Karen started off with a non-denominational prayer that asked for goodwill and harmony.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you have someone in your life- living or dead- that has a name that starts with a \u2018C\u2019 or a \u2018K\u2019?\u201d she asked. That was almost a sucker punch, since two of the most influential figures in my adult life had those initials.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. But as far as I know they are both alive and healthy. I have not talked to them in a long while.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAre there sisters involved? I see the feminine aura of two sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMom had two sisters- Laura Rose and Hazel. Very smart and pretty ladies, all three of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am getting a sharp pain in my leg,\u201d she said. \u201cIt hurts and I don\u2019t like it. Do you know anyone who had a leg injury? Sometimes they send me physical signs that are quite acute. This one hurts like heck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo doubt. That would be me. I ruptured my left quad a couple years ago and the knees are both gone due to arthritis. I apologize if you have the pain I did. It sucked.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen was settling in, getting on the beam that connected us, trying to unscramble the messages and images that were swirling around her. Mom was speaking directly into her ear, which she said was quite distracting. I thought Mom might have got a little more assertive in the afterlife, and I was sorry that none of the questions I had written down seemed to deal with my actual family. I was hoping that Mac Showers might appear, and I wanted to ask him about the one mystery we never managed to solve with Willow Happy Hour White or a cold Anchor Steam beer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see images of police or law enforcement,\u201d said Karen.<\/p>\n

\u201cCan\u2019t help. Plenty of uniforms in the family, but no police. Well, except for that son-of-a-bitch in Aurora, Colorado in 1977. I only think about him when he shows up in my background investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am getting images of an athlete. A man built like a middle-linebacker. Did you know someone like that in College?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe hung around with a bunch of guys from the Michigan Football team at the house on John Street back in college,\u201d I said. \u201cBut as far as I know, most of them are still alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am getting a name coming through. A \u2018J\u2019 name, perhaps?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, there are a bunch of \u2018Jims\u2019 in the family- my great-great grandfather, grandfather, uncle and cousin. They are all on the other side. But I can\u2019t imagine they need to talk to me about anything vital.\u201d I thought about it for a while- this was not what I expected. I suppose I thought the Spirit World knew I was looking for material on the Vietnam chapters in the Mac Shower book I am still writing and would line up the appropriate figures for me to quiz: Mac himself, perhaps, or Admiral Rex, who certainly knew more about the mystery than anyone else, living or dead.<\/p>\n

Then it hit me. There was someone who knew exactly what happened. \u201cIs it \u2018Jack\u2019 that you are hearing? I asked, little goose bumps starting to form on my forearms. I took a sip of happy Hour White to slow down a little.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says that is not his name.\u201d<\/p>\n


\n\u201cIf he is who I am thinking, that is true. His real given names were John George, but they all knew him as Jack,\u201d I said, a little rattled. \u201cJack Graf.\u201d That was exactly the man about whom I had the question: where did he die?<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says they took him down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did indeed. He was posted to Vung Tau in the Third Coastal Zone of South Vietnam. They shot him down over the northern Delta in 1969 when he was flying as an observer in an OV-1 Mohawk. He was the only Naval Intelligence officer captured in the war, and the only one still listed as Missing in Action. The Vietnamese said he was shot while trying to escape, and they buried him on a riverbank that was washed away. Body was never recovered. It was Admiral Rex\u2019s last big crusade to publicize his story and keep his memory alive.\u201d In fact, it was at the heart of the mystery that could not now be unraveled, except by the dead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have his energy. He is saying he was never released. I am seeing him on a sandy beach- the images are flashing. He is telling me he was never freed. He was held in some sort of asylum. He is with others. There are heavy doors- hard doors with hard sounds.\u201d<\/p>\n

I shivered. That sounded exactly like Lubyanka Prison in Moscow.<\/p>\n

Karen continued, a little breathless. \u201cThere were repeated attempts at assassination. Someone wanted to obtain intelligence- he was set up for murder- there were dual agencies involved- more than one.\u201d Karen was rushing through this as I tried to process what she was telling me.<\/p>\n

Jack\u2019s disappearance after his capture was the mystery. It was entirely possible that he died the way his captors told us, and the relentless floods of the monsoon years were certainly capable of washing away all in the path of a storm-enraged river. It all could have happened just the way they said it did. But the fit was too good for the other facts that were never mentioned.<\/p>\n

See, Jack was a mustang- a sailor who rose to Chief Petty Officer before being commissioned as a Limited Duty Officer (Intelligence). As a sailor, he had been a photo interpreter, and when I was working on his case, a former shipmate of his told me he had been to the special Kodak School in Rochester. Kodak had designed a reconnaissance system that was one of the most closely guarded secrets in the entire Government: High quality digital pictures transmitted directly from space to the ground station in near-real time<\/p>\n

It was so sensitive that people who knew the specific capabilities of the system were not permitted out of Saigon for fear that something just like this might happen. The Russians would have given their left nut to have a prize like Jack, and that is when my suspicions began to rise that the story had been deliberately covered up to keep anyone from discovering how Jack, with his enlisted background, had somehow slipped through the cracks to be permitted to engage in combat operations in the field.<\/p>\n

Some say there were no Russians down in the Delta, but my Left Coast Attorney was the intelligence liaison officer at Ha Tien on the Cambodian Border, and he saw what had been a Soviet SIGINT site on an island just offshore. Tactical un-encrypted radio traffic at the time of the shoot-down identified who had been in the aircraft, and just who the new prisoner actually was would not be a secret to anyone in the region.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says he endured. Not proud. They put a blanket on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAsk him if the asylum was in Russia,\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is standing very tall. He says they did not break him. And he says that there is no mystery. You know exactly what happened to him. He was transported with others. There is no mystery about what happened, where he was taken, and what ultimately was his fate.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stared at the telephone. My theory was one that I had discussed with Mac many times. I knew about the Sweetheart List, the names of pilots who had been shot down d=over denied territory. They were known to be alive in captivity but were not freed with their comrades in Operation Homecoming in 1973. They remained the MIAs, and the families are fighting with the government to this very day. When the list was analyzed after the debriefings of the returned POWs, there were some curious coincidences, odd ones. Like compete crews for most of the tactical aviation we employed in the war. They were not necessarily from the same shoot-down, but completed all the positions in the aircraft. And men who had been sent from sensitive jobs in advanced technology like ballistic missiles who had to get their combat tickets punched in the war for promotion purposes.<\/p>\n

And maybe intelligence specialists who held the keys to the digital kingdom locked between their ears.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe says all you have to do is get people to believe it,\u201d Karen said, her voice sounding far away. \u201cThe squeaky wheel gets the grease. He wants people to know what really happened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to tell his story before. I will have to do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe knows. He is using an odd word- \u201cSongbird\u201d is what he calls you. He is at peace, and that a huge burden has been lifted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTell him we will not forget,\u201d I said,<\/p>\n

\u201cI am getting a gesture from him- a thumbs up?\u201d<\/p>\n

I could only nod. The network time on the computer told me that our forty-five minutes was up, and I could sense that Karen was exhausted by the session, and that our time was done. There was silence for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice was more relaxed in tone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the reading gave you some closure,\u201d She said. \u201cThe advantage of recording it is that you can download it and listen for things that may not have occurred to you during the session, and will only become clear over the next few days.\u201d She told me how to download the audio file from the teleconferencing system, but that I had to act with a sense of urgency since they purged the files periodically, never to be archived.<\/p>\n

I thanked her for her time, and told her I had enjoyed the experience and would comb over my notes and listen to the session again to see what I might have missed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a pleasure working with you,\u201d she said, and echoed her thoughts straight back as the connection was broken. I sat still in front of my computer, stunned. A phone call had unraveled the biggest mystery I had encountered in my professional life, and if anyone asked how I had done it, I could safely say that I talked to a man who had been dead for forty years, and thus had it on the highest authority. *<\/p>\n

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n

* I will try to post a link to the audio file of the session. Make your own opinion, don\u2019t take mine. Or Jack\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor’s note: We know, we know, the Staff of the Daily Socotra has not gone into summer re-runs, though it did turn out this way with the Medium series. I had to go back and put it all back together as the single story that it really is. I also wanted to get Karen a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15626","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15626","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15626"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15626\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15629,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15626\/revisions\/15629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}