TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS - DIVISION CHIEF'S VISIT
TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGS
FACILITY
VISIT OF THE DIVISION CHIEF, WESTERN EUROPE
30 JUNE 1955, COMMENCING 1422 HOURS
PERSONNEL PRESENT:
W. Seaton, Division Chief, Western Europe Dr. , principal technical officer Dr. , instrumentation Dr. , materials , senior technical assistant Professor , historical consultant (arrived 1422; departed 1518) of this Agency, recording
The following transcript is prepared from the contemporaneous shorthand notes of the undersigned and from the wire recording made at the principal chamber. Mr. Seaton arrived at the facility at 1422 hours, unannounced, in the company of Professor . He requested that the technical group be assembled in the principal chamber and that the wire recording be commenced. The undersigned was summoned from the adjacent office and the recording commenced at 1428 hours. Conversation prior to 1428 was reconstructed from the notes of the undersigned and is so indicated.
1422 to 1428. Mr. Seaton and Professor arrive at the gatehouse. Mr. Seaton is observed by the duty officer to be carrying a clothbound volume in his right hand and a manila folder in his left. He is observed to be in a state which the duty officer describes in his subsequent report as one of unusual animation. Professor is observed to be silent. Mr. Seaton requests the immediate assembly of the technical group and the commencement of the wire recording. The duty officer summons the undersigned. Mr. Seaton, Professor , and the undersigned proceed to the principal chamber, where the technical group has been assembled in the interval.
- The wire recording commences. MR. SEATON: Gentlemen, I am obliged to you for assembling at short notice. I wish this discussion recorded, with taking notes as well. We may have occasion to refer to precisely what was said here today, by whom, and at what hour.
DR. (presiding): We are at your disposal, Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: Professor has brought something to my attention while preparing the historical appreciation for the second trial. I have asked him to present it to you. Professor.
PROF. : Gentlemen, I should first counsel some reserve. The significance of this passage is not yet established. I have here an anthology published by the Columbia University Press in 1951, entitled “Roman Civilization: Selected Readings.” It is a standard undergraduate text; I have used it in my own teaching. Copies are in every college library of any consequence.
In preparing the historical appreciation, I have had occasion to consult the volume upon the matter of the prodigies recorded by Livy at the outset of the Second Punic War. The relevant passage is at page of the anthology, in the standard translation. I shall read it. Mr. Seaton has marked the place.
[Professor reads the passage aloud. The text of the passage is appended to the present minutes as Annex A and is not reproduced here.]
PROF. : The passage stands in Livy’s first book of the third decade, and is part of his account of the prodigies of the year 218 B.C., immediately preceding the campaigns of Hannibal in Italy. The passage has been transmitted in the manuscript tradition without notable variant and has been printed in every edition of Livy from the editio princeps of 1469. It appears in the Columbia anthology in the standard translation, which has been in print since 1919. The anthology of 1951 is the third revised edition.
A silence in the chamber. The recording officer notes the interval at approximately twelve seconds.
DR. (presiding): Professor, I should be grateful if you would read the passage again.
[Professor reads the passage a second time.]
DR. (presiding): I see. Mr. Seaton, the passage is in the anthology.
MR. SEATON: Yes, Doctor. The translation has been in print since 1919, and the passage itself dates to antiquity. At my request, Professor examined the manuscript tradition this morning at the library of . It is not a recent addition.
DR. (instrumentation): May I ask. The phantom ships. They are described in the passage as ships of what kind?
PROF. : Livy does not describe them in any particular. He uses the word “naves,” which is the general word for ships, and the adjective which I have rendered as “phantom” — the Latin is “species” — which is a word that in this context implies an appearance without substance. He says they were seen gleaming in the sky.
DR. (instrumentation): In the sky.
PROF. : In the sky. The Latin is “in caelo.”
DR. (materials): Herr Doktor.
DR. (presiding): Yes.
DR. (materials): If the vessel reached the coordinates we set but did not return, the inhabitants of the period might have seen a modern vessel in the sky above the Tyrrhenian.
DR. (presiding): Yes.
DR. (materials): In the sky.
DR. (presiding): Yes, . I take your meaning.
DR. (materials): Gleaming.
DR. (presiding): Yes.
A silence in the chamber. The recording officer notes the interval at approximately twenty seconds.
: Herr Doktor, may I speak.
DR. (presiding): Speak.
: If this is what we have done, then the men aboard the ship — they were seen. They were seen by the Romans. They are in the book.
DR. (presiding): They are not in the book, . The book records the ship.
: But they were seen.
DR. (presiding): Perhaps they were seen. We do not know.
: Then they are in the book, Herr Doktor. A book printed before we sent them.
A further silence. The recording officer notes the interval at approximately fifteen seconds.
MR. SEATON: , the man speaks well. Doctor, I should be grateful if you would tell me, as the principal technical officer of this program, what you understand the passage to signify.
DR. (presiding): I am not prepared to make a formal statement, Mr. Seaton. I need time to consider the passage.
MR. SEATON: An informal indication, then. You have heard the passage and ‘s observation. You agree that the account is consistent with the trial?
DR. (presiding): In the particulars it describes, yes. I am not prepared to draw the conclusion you appear to wish me to draw.
MR. SEATON: In what other manner is it to be understood, Doctor?
DR. (presiding): That is the question I shall require a period to consider.
MR. SEATON: Doctor, with the greatest respect. We dispatched a vessel to that year and to that sea. It did not return. Livy describes phantom ships gleaming over Italy. Are you proposing that the correspondence is coincidental?
DR. (presiding): I am asking for time to consider other explanations before I commit myself to yours.
MR. SEATON: Very well. For the record — , note this particularly — we have established, in the presence of the senior technical officer and the historical consultant, that a book printed before this trial was authorized describes an event consistent in every particular with its conduct. The technical officer declines to call that correspondence coincidental. If it is not, the implications extend beyond anything this program has yet considered.
DR. (presiding): The observations are entered upon the record, Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: I am obliged to you, Doctor. , are you noting this?
(recording officer): I am noting it, sir.
MR. SEATON: Note it carefully. I shall wish in due course to refer to it.
A pause upon the wire.
DR. (presiding): Mr. Seaton, may I ask. What disposition do you propose to make of the matter?
MR. SEATON: The technical implications are for your group. I shall consult with the Office. For my own part — for five weeks I have understood this program to have suffered a grave loss. What we have heard today obliges me to reconsider. On the twenty-third of May, I thought we had failed. Perhaps we did not.
DR. (presiding): That is not the same as having succeeded, Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: No. But it is closer than I had reason to hope. I shall not detain you further. Have the technical group examine the matter over the coming days and prepare a statement of its findings. I shall consult with you upon its form.
DR. (presiding): We shall undertake the work.
MR. SEATON: I am obliged to you. Professor.
PROF. : Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: I should be grateful if you would accompany me to the gatehouse.
PROF. : Of course.
- Mr. Seaton and Professor depart the principal chamber. The recording is continued briefly, the recording officer being uncertain whether to discontinue it. The exchange between the members of the technical group during the interval is set forth below. DR. (materials): Herr Doktor.
DR. (presiding): Yes.
DR. (materials): The men. was right. The men are in the book.
DR. (presiding): was right.
DR. (instrumentation): What does Mr. Seaton intend, Herr Doktor.
DR. (presiding): I do not know. But he arrived with the page marked and the Professor at his side. He insisted on the wire and the notes before any of us saw the passage. Then he asked me three times to state that the correspondence was not coincidental. You heard my answers.
DR. (instrumentation): He intends to use the matter.
DR. (presiding): Yes. The question is to what purpose.
: Herr Doktor. The men in the book. We do not know what became of them.
DR. (presiding): We do not, .
: They were sailors of the United States Navy, and they have been in a Roman book since before any of us was born.
DR. (presiding): That also is true.
A silence upon the wire.
DR. (presiding): , you may discontinue the recording.
- The recording is discontinued upon the instruction of the principal technical officer. These minutes have been prepared from the contemporaneous shorthand notes of the undersigned and from the wire recording made at the principal chamber, excepting as noted above. They have been reviewed by the principal technical officer prior to circulation. Any correction or addition is to be addressed to the undersigned within ten days of the date of the present document.
Recording Officer
Office of Scientific Intelligence
Annex A: Text of the Passage from Livy, in the Translation Appearing in Columbia University Press, “Roman Civilization: Selected Readings,” 3rd revised edition, 1951 (under separate cover, )