A note from our newest Conclave member:

I was introduced to Richard O’Neill (as Dick O’Neill) at an after meeting gathering in the lounge area of the hotel most of us were staying at during the initial congressional testimonies where I gave my account of the LEGG incident that occurred at the end of September 1982 in December 1982. O’Neill’s interest was primarily what the three of us did to survive the incident. Nothing about what could be done to prevent it in the future, just how we survived.  I thought his question was rather crass at the time, and left the gathering shortly after this exchange occurred. Chandler was at this gathering as well, however I don’t recall seeing him in the testimony. I was not introduced to Chandler but you can’t forget those teeth nor the non-emotional expression on his face. Yoda was at my testimony, but he did not attend the gathering afterwards.

In 1984, while working on the shuttle program at Vandenberg AFB, the team I was working with identified an issue with the Sensor monitoring screens in which during the monitoring cycle (every 2 minutes the screen would transition to the next screen (there were 16 screens in all).  The issue was that it would take a total of 32 minutes for the initial cycle to complete and start over leaving the status of a particular screen unknown for a full 32 minutes.

Our team developed a short-term fix in which we added coding to the software so that a ribbon menu was placed at the bottom of the screen that would flash if something was identified on a screen that had already cycled past the status viewer, and allowed human intervention to select the flashing menu ribbon identifier which would bring that monitoring screen up immediately.

Our team also identified a long term fix that would automatically bring up the status screen if an issue was identified without the need of human intervention. As was the requirement at the time, all safety hazard analysis reports had to be provided to the Cape Safety department for approval to implement. It was rejected by this organization stating that they didn’t feel it was critical to the operation.

When the Challenger blew up in January 1986, I was called back to DC to give testimony as to my teams findings at Vandenberg, and the details of our suggested fix to the issue, as well as the response by the review board from the Cape. During this testimony all three of the men were there, and Chandler was taking copious notes.

I did not see any of these men again until I was invited to attend a special meeting while supporting a classified “Black” program, of which I am still constrained by NDA to reveal anything about the program, however this meeting was not about this black program, but about the utilization of third-party software on classified programs and what we thought the security impacts would be.  Yoda was there but did not speak. O’Neill was there and was just introduced to the attendees, he did not participate in the conversation.

Chandler on the other hand, made his impressions known on everything that was discussed even to the point that several of the other government contractors did not return after the short lunch break. There were roughly 45 people that were in attendance in the morning, and only 23 of us returned after lunch.

Other than the arguing that was going on this meeting did not seem to accomplish anything to the best of my knowledge, unless the propose was to disrupt the meeting so it did not come to any solutions.

During my time working on the DARPA Responsive Access, Small Cargo, Affordable Launch (RASCAL) program, for Space Launch Corporation out of Irvine, CA, I saw Yoda in a requirements meeting wit the DARPA program manager. He never said a word the entire day, and left without as much as a thank you. The program manager for DARPA gave us a ration about not being able to preform and that the contract should have been awarded to a larger contractor company.

Three months later after we had bench tested the head-end module (HEM), which was the patented positioning module for positioning the small payloads into the correct orbital rotation, the DARPA program manager called and said that our Preliminary Design Review (PDR) had been re-scheduled for the second week in October 2004 which was 8 months before it was originally scheduled. When the day came for the PDR, we found out that the DARPA Program Manager was relieved of his position and Tony Tether, the director of DARPA, would be acting as the Program Manager for the review.

After we spent all day presenting our designs and test results of the head-end module, we were told by Tony Tether that the program was being cancelled immediately, and that the company had one month to provide all their analysis work, and all design work paid for by DARPA (Note this did not include the head-end module as it was designed and patented before the company was awarded the contract).

This caused Space Launch Corporation to close it doors and everyone was laid off. I was fortunately able to get a new position with SAIC before the lay offs began.

However, six months after Space launch closed their doors, Northrup-Grumman announced that they had been awarded a new program which other than the program name was exactly the same as the RASCAL program and they even included Space Launches head-end module design, which the CEO of Space Launch who held the patent, sued DARPA and Northrup-Grumman because the DARPA program Manager that was released prior to the PDR meeting had gone to work with Northrup-Grumman and taken all the research, analysis and engineering drawings for everything from the RASCAL program to Northrup-Grumman and apparently did not tell Northrup-Grumman exactly what was going on.

So if you were not aware of Tony Tether’s involvement in the stealing of the design for the head-end module as well as all the research and analysis that was done by the Space Launch team, he should be a part of your list of corrupted officials.

I again saw Chandler and O’Neill at meetings that I attended in association with the transitioning from Internet Protocol version 4 ((IPv4)-Digital) to IPv6 (Hexadecimal) in conjunction with the Future Combat System program in December of 2004 and January 2005. Again they were interested in what security concerns there were between the two protocols as well as the length of time to implement the migration efforts.

It wasn’t until I was giving a brown bag briefing of a convention I attended concerning IPv6 implementation and time lines for implementation in which there were Army personnel in this lunch-time briefing that I was not aware of, who upon my finishing my presentation asked why they had not been made aware of these time lines and requirements before then. I apologized for this but said I was just made aware myself.  By the end of the same day, I was escorted out of the Boeing facilities in which I had been working and the company I worked for at the time SIAC, placed me on another program supporting the Space and Missile Center at LA Air Force base in El Segundo, CA.

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