(SCI-FI) Bell Labs in New Providence, NJ, has a storied history of cutting-edge discoveries, Patents and Nobel Prizes for physics. It also has a history of secret alliances with the US Military, who literally built a Nike Missile Base in its back yard to protect it. There’s a path leading from Bell Lab’s back door to a decommissioned Nike Missile base in the Watchung Reservation. Why? Because there’s always been something weird about Bell Labs and who comes and goes there.
PART 2.
“Didn’t have to bring no bottle.” Shocklee said, obviously grateful. “But it’s real appreciated….I do like a taste now and agin'”. In the sunlight I could count the lines around his saddened eyes and kindly, weathered forehead. He was was a good-natured roadmap of knowing creases and whisker-stubbled jowls.
Shocklee wore a stoic face despite his grief. His generation didn’t paint their emotions on their sleeves. And growing up black in Decatur, Georgia back in the day must’ve taught him plenty lessons about dealing with life’s pain. In old age, he was a rock.
“How’s your daughter?” I asked as gently as I could.
“Awww. Hell….she’s not as strong as her ol’ man…..” He said, looking distant. He had that worried look all parents get when something beyound their control impacts their little ones.
“Come on in, Son….”
I entered the house and didn’t exactly beat around the bush. I guess the bottle was as much a bribe as a token of gratitude.
“Mr. Shocklee – can I show you something?” I asked, already tugging the necklace I wore over my head and dangling it before his bespectacled eyes.
“Did those chicken-feet symbols you saw in all those military letters you received years ago by mistake – instead of Dr. Shockley – resemble the markings on my necklace here?”
The old man reached into his pocket to retrieve his battered black-framed eye glasses and grasped the necklace. He gently took hold of the shiney metal object and turned it over in his gnarled hand, studying its surface and carefully rubbing it between his fingers. Shocklee looked like a shrewd pawn shop broker appraising somebody’s wedding ring for a quick deal.
“Welllll now……” He said, whistling air through his dentures the way old timers do to emphasize their surprise.
“This does look powerful like what I saw back then in those papers to Shockley….only the papers I’m talkin’ ’bout from Los Alamos and Wright Field showed a lot more symbols – rows and rows of ’em. And there was arrows drawn all over the place with numbers and science equations written in by whoever was giving Shockley the messages…..It looked to me like they was givin’ him instructions……. and they was writin’ in some code or old language from Bible times…..”
Mr. Shocklee handed the necklace back to me – but his brief, almost childish burst of excitement had passed. He now looked pensive and a bit more restrained. Almost apologetic for having revealed so much to me.
“Wasn’t a time for no black man to be askin’ questions ’bout nothin’ back then….I needed my job. Twasn’t any of my business, unnerstand?”
“Sure do” I responded, reaching out to shake his hand farewell. “But one last thing…” I couldn’t resist.
“You said something about all the rumors and gossip you heard up at Bell Labs…anything about that stands out in your mind as you think back today?”
Oh, Jeezz” Shockley said. A hint of a smile was returning as he reached up to rub his chin stubble.
“Jus’ stuff ’bout that big project they was all workin’ on…I remember once askin’ ‘ole Doc Bardeen – he was the nicest egghead of the bunch, a real regular guy you could joke around with, see – I asked him how ya doin, Doc? Gonna’ save the world today? He just shook his head No – all tuckered out lookin’..and muttered, real quiet like under his breath, somethin’ I never understood….was the damndest thing…”
Shocklee paused to collect his thoughts and looked straight at me.
“Doc Bardeen said – We’re just a bunch of idiots working backwards…” Can you believe that? I still don’t get what he was sayin’…..but that’s what he said!”
Shocklee scratched his chin and continued.
“Rumor has it they was all upset ’bout how the military was pushin’ them all around, givin’ them directions all the time – more like they was givin’ Orders…..and the scientists had enough of it all.
Shockley was even complainin’ outright that it was a military project – not Bell Labs at all – and that he expected the Army to pay him his due….
He got his wish, alright! After that Nobel Prize theys all got their paydays! After Shockley left Bell Labs he started his own company – an’ made hisself a boatload of cash out in California….Yesssserrrreeee Bob! That Transistor sure changed the world, didn’t it, Son?”
“It certainly did, Mr. Shocklee…” I said, turning to go.
“Hold up there…they’s one mo’ thing…..” Shocklee grabbed my elbow.
“Round time I was retiring…oh, must’ve been round the seventies, maybe….there was a murder. All Bell Labs was in an uproar. That big-deal Doctor on the Transistor project who was the Custodian In Charge – that was his official title – of the Laboratory Shopkeeper’s Notebook, the Official Bell Labs Transistor Notebook – was murdered in a bar……”
Granpa Shocklee tared straight into my eyes and wagged his finger at me like a High School teacher.
“Now, Mr. Vaalchuck, that Notebook is the most important book for every discovery at Bell Labs……. because that’s what they use to justify their Patent Applications with the government. It’s their proof, like a daily diary and official log where scientists record every development and experiment that adds up to their discovery. Step by step they show how they discovered what it is they say they discovered….
Without it they can’t prove they’re entitled to a Patent. It’s the Official record, what the Patent Office in Washington, DC, requires.
It’s countersigned by all the project scientists and supposed to be locked in a safe every day. Well, turns out the Transistor’s Lab Shopkeeper’s Notebook was missing!!! Bell Labs didn’t have it! What the Hell was his name…..that Custodian guy…o’….that……Transistor logbook…….?”
William Shocklee was now furiously scratching on his chin trying recall the name.
“Ahah!!! Merton! – Jock Merton was his name! Yeah!!! We all called him “Doctor Jock”…… He was killed – murdered – in some bar in Neshanic Station, NJ, the town where he lived. He was killed and set fire to in his car. I knew that car – I’d see him drivin’ it every day – it was a dark blue Volvo!”
I momentarily just stared at him, trying to figure how this tied in to what I was looking for.
“And know what?! Damndest thing!!!” Shocklee was on a roll now.
“Burnt up pieces of that Transistor Lab Shopkeepers’ Notebook Log was found inside that burned up Volvo with Jock Merton’s corpse…..Hellluva thing, right?
Now why would Doc Merton been carryin’ that valuable notebook ’round with him after all those years??? That was Bell Labs property……That’s the official book that showed, under oath and seal, all the daily sweat and tears that led to their discoverin’ that Transistor thing! It’s the roadmap to prove how they did it! It’s the legal record why they – and nobody else – deserved a Patent!” Ole’ Doc Merton must’ve stole it……..
My head was swimming and I had my foot already outside his door when he spoke up yet again. This guy was a treasure trove…and here came a parting treat.
“One last thing, Detective….rumor had it Doctor Shockley wasn’t the big He-Bull on that Transistor project at all. Seems it was some guy named VanBush in Washington, DC, that was callin’ all the shots.
A man named “Dr. VanBush” supposedly personally filed the patent application papers for the Transisitor instead of Bell’s lawyers and got ’em approved by the US Government…..this “Van Bush” was US Government – not Bell Labs”…
Bell Labs wasn’t involved like with their other inventions – they just signed off on the transistor paperwork. The Transistor was real special. Bell Labs took all the credit – but that was jus’ window dressing. That’s why people couldn’t stomach Shockley struttin’ about, all full of hisself, like he owned the joint! He was just another errand boy for the higher-ups.”
“Thanks” I said heading down the walkway. “I really appreciate what you’ve told me…..you take good care, now, Mister Shocklee, Ok?”
Any cop will tell you that it’s amazing what you learn through casual conversation – and how leads jump right out at you if you just keep focused. Sometimes they waited for decades to emerge, coaxed out into the sunshine by unrelated tragedies and circumstances that are little more than oblique – sometime faded and shopworn – threads in the tapestries of our life.
Shocklee’s reference to “VanBush” piqued my curiousity immediately. I had a friend of mine down at the FBI Archives in Washington run down about a dozen license plates in the old man’s personal diary-log book recorded for July, August and September of 1948.
US Government plate “C112-4002” stood out no fewer than ten times. It apparently was a Plymouth sedan registered to the Department of Defense in Washington, DC.
A sub-notation indicated that it was assigned to Dr. Vannevar Bush, Head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD), the agency that spearheaded all military research and development. I’d heard of this guy before – he was a confidante of Presidents and a weapons wizard.
Vannevar Bush was known as President Roosevelt’s “Science Czar” and was responsible for wartime adoption of radar, proximity fuses and “Degaussing” of US Naval shipping hulls (changing the polarity of hull steel from positive to negative and back again to confuse torpedos).
“Van” Bush (as Roosevelt called him) convinced the President to embrace the Atomic Bomb project after arranging the White House meeting they had with Dr. Albert Einstein. Bush later started the Ratheon Company, a huge player in the US military-industrial complex to this day. Now they make missiles. He became immensly wealthy.
Another big-ticket visitor was apparently none other than James Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense under Truman. He resigned his office in 1949 after suffering a complete nervous breakdown. Later that year he committed suicide by jumping out of a top-floor window at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
His vehicle, a Chrysler DeSoto, was at Bell Labs in New Providence, NJ three times during the Summer of 1948. His death was never satisfactorily explained to the family. In fact, until Forrestal’s twin brother died, he maintained James’ death was murder, pure and simple. He’d seen his brother the day before and claimed James was excited about being released and was looking forward to retiring to his farm in the Adirondaks in upstate New York.
Forrestal’s brother wrote in a letter to the New York Times that “they wanted to shut him up…” Who “they” was and why they wanted him out of the way was unexplained, launching generations of consiracy theories from communists to UFO space aliens.
My FBI archivist-pal ran down my list of out-of-state plates that were in Bill Shocklee’s log book for the four months before and after the Summer of 1948 and some interesting names came up.
A Buick with Virginia tags was registered to Roscoe A. Hillenkoetter, the first Director of the CIA. A Packard with Massachusetts plates was registered to Dr. Jerome Hunsaker – the ranking postwar aircraft designer in the United States. He headed the Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at MIT and was Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics at the US State Department.
A Chrysler with New York plates belonged to Dr. Dentlev Bronk, a renowned biophysicist, Chairman of The National Research Council and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Energy Commission. Finally, an Oldsmobile registered in Virginia belonged to Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, Secretary of the Joint Research and Development Board at the US State Department.
What did all these noteworthies have in common? First off, the same high level Security Clearances that my Dad had. Secondly, they all had a rather comfy and extremely lucrative association with US Government military research and development projects after the Second World War.
A couple more names jumped out from Shocklee’s worn out ledger book.
One gate entry log-in was as big as life: US General Hoyt Vandenberg, US Air Force Chief of Staff. The Air Force became its own service branch in 1947 (previously it was the US Army Air Corps) – and here was the new top dog making a trip to Bell Labs in New Providence, NJ, in 1948. Around the same time all those other government big-wigs were stopping by there.
Finally, last – but certainly not least – was a Connecticut car plate registered to Gordon Gray of New Haven. I scratched around a bit and found that this big Harvard professor-poo-bah was FDR’s “eyes and ears” on the ground at the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos during World War II, glued to bomb project manager Dr. Robert Oppenheimer’s side like a siamese twin. Gordon Gray was Roosevelt’s man on site at Los Alamos from the beginning, all the way up to the “Trinity” blast (which he immeditely reported to the new President, Harry Truman).
It all begged a question: Just what was the United States Government up to in the Summer of 1948 at Bell Labs in New Providence, NJ – the preemminent electronics and physics research and development facility in the world at that time? Such an incredible assortment of movers and shakers with Washington, DC clout didn’t just randomly pop in to New Jersey suburban research and development labs on a whim.
I needed a well-informed source – a “spook” – who was in the know about defense secrets in the post World War II and early 1950s period. One of my friends in Security at McGuire Air Force Base in South Jersey told me to call his Dad, a retired Air Force Colonel presently living in a retirement community outside Philadelphia. He had prostate cancer and was a bit in the doldrums these days, but – according to my friend – was real connected back in the fifties and a player in the early days of the USA’s National Security apparatus.
The long drive down to Philly proved worth it.
END OF PART 2.
Copyright, 2021 Jon Croft
