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 have a matter to lay before you which I should wish to lay before you with the recording running and with taking his notes, for reason that I shall wish in due course to have an authoritative record of what was said in this chamber today, and by whom, and at what hour.
DR. (presiding): We are at your disposal, Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: Doctor, I shall come to the point. Professor has, in the course of his preparation of the historical appreciation for the second trial, brought to my attention a matter which I should now wish him to lay before you. Professor.
PROF. : Gentlemen, I shall present the matter as I presented it to Mr. Seaton this morning. It is, I should say at the outset, a matter of which the significance is not yet established and as to which I should counsel some reserve. I have here a copy of an anthology published by the Columbia University Press in the year 1951, entitled “Roman Civilization: Selected Readings.” The anthology is of a standard kind used in undergraduate instruction in the universities of this country. I have used it in my own teaching. It is not a rare book; 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: It is in the anthology, Doctor. It has been in the anthology since 1919. It has been in the manuscript tradition of Livy since antiquity. Professor has, at my request, examined the manuscript tradition this morning at the library of and has confirmed that the passage 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 did not return to the point of initiation, but was displaced to the coordinates set, and then was at those coordinates, and was observed at those coordinates by the inhabitants of the period, the inhabitants would have seen a vessel of the modern kind 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.
: They were seen, and then they were not seen, and the book records the seeing. They are in the book, Herr Doktor. They are in the book that was 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): Mr. Seaton, I am not prepared at the present moment to make a formal statement of what I understand the passage to signify. I shall require a period to consider the matter.
MR. SEATON: I shall not press you for a formal statement, Doctor. I should be grateful, however, for an informal indication. You have heard the passage. You have heard ‘s observation, which I take to be of the same character as your own. You are content, are you not, that the passage is consistent with the trial?
DR. (presiding): I am content, Mr. Seaton, that the passage is consistent with the trial in the particulars that it describes. I am not yet content, and shall not be content for some time, that the consistency is to be understood as you appear to wish me to understand it.
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. The passage describes phantom ships seen gleaming in the sky over Italy in the year of the trial. The passage has stood in the manuscript tradition since antiquity. We dispatched a vessel to that year and to that sea. The vessel did not return. The passage is in the anthology. Are you proposing that the consistency is coincidental?
DR. (presiding): I am not proposing that the consistency is coincidental, Mr. Seaton. I am proposing that I require a period to consider what other propositions are consistent with the evidence before us, before I commit myself to the proposition you appear to wish me to adopt.
MR. SEATON: I shall not press you. But I observe, Doctor, for the record, and I shall wish to note this particularly — I observe that we have, in this chamber, in the company of the senior technical officer of the program, in the presence of the historical consultant attached to the Division, established that there exists in a printed book in this country, printed before the trial was authorized, a description of an event consistent in every particular with the trial that was subsequently conducted. I observe further that the principal technical officer is not prepared at the present moment to characterize the consistency as coincidental. I observe further that the implications of the consistency, if it is not coincidental, are of a character that this program has not previously had occasion to consider.
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: Doctor, the question is properly yours, not mine. The technical implications are for the technical group. I shall consult with the Office in due course. For my own part — for my own part, Doctor, I should say only that the program has, in the past five weeks, been understood by this Division to have suffered a loss of consequence, and that the matter now before us is of a character that obliges me to revise that understanding. I had thought, on the twenty-third of May, that we had failed. I should now wish to entertain the proposition that we did not fail.
DR. (presiding): The proposition is not equivalent to the proposition that we succeeded, Mr. Seaton.
MR. SEATON: It is not. But it is closer to the latter than I had any reason to think we should approach. Doctor, I shall not detain you further this afternoon. I should be grateful if the technical group would, in the days following, undertake the work of considering the matter and of preparing such a statement as the technical group is in due course able to make. I shall consult with you upon the form of the statement.
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 what Mr. Seaton intends. I observe that he came here this afternoon with the volume already marked at the relevant page, and that he had Professor with him at the gatehouse rather than letting the Professor come to us in the ordinary way. I observe that he was at pains to have the wire running and taking notes before any of us was permitted to see the passage. I observe that he requested me three times, in different forms, to state for the record that the consistency was not coincidental, and that I declined three times to state it.
DR. (instrumentation): He intends to use the matter.
DR. (presiding): He intends to use the matter. To what purpose he intends to use it, I do not at the present moment know.
: 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, )