Rest In Peace, Jeremy Crandall This is the strangest piece this (or likely any other major newspaper) has ever published. It breaks all the journalistic rules in that none of the information contained herein can be verified. I know - I’ve tried. All of the sources mentioned here seem to not exist. Therefore, this may be a work of fiction. As the editor of this publication I am firmly committed to maintaining the journalistic integrity of the work. However, if any of this is true, my life is in danger for simply knowing it. By putting it before the public, and shedding the light of day upon it, hopefully I have ensured that there will be enough scrutiny should anything happen to me to make my murder inconvenient for those attempting to stop this leak of information. Therefore, please consider this at worst, a personal indulgence by a man fearful for his own safety and that of his family. If the knowledge presented here is true it may be far more important than that.
This morning I received a large box by special delivery. The box contained a letter (included at the end of this introduction), a lengthy article (presented after the letter), and a number of documents that appear to be official. I say, “appear” because again, I have been able to find any verification of the existence of any of these documents. The contact information for the writer is a non-existent telephone number. I attempted to reach him by going to the physical address given, but the apartment is empty and available for rent. The building has a new manager who has no information on the previous tenant. The newspaper that this person claims to have worked for has no record of his employment. When I ran a background check on the name provided, it showed him as never having existed. As I say, every avenue of being able to verify this information has shown to be a dead end. So, now that I have given you the background, I will present the information for you, the reader to judge the validity or fiction of this work. The following is the cover letter that accompanied the information: “To whom it may concern: I am submitting these facts to a number of publications in the hopes that one will publish it in the event of my demise. I have stumbled onto a conspiracy of worldwide significance and scope. As I have been researching this story all of my contacts have simply “disappeared”. People whom I spoke to in person and via telephone over the last few days now simply seem to not exist. No one knows of them. Their homes are empty, and any public records of them are gone. They have been “erased”. I believe that the same fate will soon befall me, and I am doing my best to get this story out before that happens. I have included here a synopsis of all my research in the form of a story that you can run in your publication. I have also included copies of every significant document I have obtained in this research. Please consider the possibilities in your decision of whether or not to publish this story. Thank you for your assistance, and accept my apologies for bringing you into this mess. I would not have involved any others in my fate if I did not believe that the significance for mankind was worth the risk. I understand as a fellow journalist that this may be a difficult story to run with for a myriad of reasons, but it is imperative that you read it and consider the possible consequences of inaction. Sincerely Jeremy Crandall Staff Writer Los Angeles Tribune” The following is the article presented in its entirety. It all started innocently enough. I had been assigned to write a story on the effects of greenhouse gases on the environment. As this was ground that had been covered in a large number of stories over the past years, I chalked it up to a “slow news” day and got on with the work. I have to say I had no visions of a Pulitzer Prize on this one. Why I was able to find information that others hadn’t, I don’t know. Admittedly, I did have some fairly well connected sources, and that fact may have been part of it. I say that in the past tense as none of these people, some of whom I have known for years, seem now to exist. Perhaps this story in different forms had been found in the past, but never seen print. I have no way to prove or disprove that one. The sad truth is that in trying to come up with a new angle on a tragedy that I had attributed to shortsighted progress, I found something far more tactical and sinister. What I uncovered amounts to a global conspiracy that dates back over sixty years. It involves the governments of many major nations. Multiple large corporations are also tied into it. It represents a decision made in a time of global crisis that has produced a newer and more formidable threat to the human race than even the horrific original enemy. Our planet is under siege by a foreign power who is running a virtual puppet army of our own to gain its own ends while it hides in the shadows biding its time. My first stop on beginning the article was at AtmosResearch, Inc.. I had a friend who had been with that company for quite a few years. He was at a high enough level to have access to any of their data. The company has been tracking various chemical levels in the atmosphere for many years (longer than John had been there) as an independent monitoring organization. Their clients included numerous energy and bio-chemical industries and governmental agencies. It seemed a good first stop to get scientific numbers. Finding the facts regarding the changes seemed to be a solid way to begin such an article. So, I made arrangements to meet with John at the company’s main office. John Sterling was a bio-chemist. He had worked his way through school the hard way, work-study. He had always had an aptitude for mathematics and physical sciences and in high school he found that he had a natural gift for chemistry. The other talent he had was in translating that information into terms that even someone like myself who had flunked out of bio-chem could grasp. That made him a great source of information for me. Our shared love of the Lakers had been the glue that made us friends. We had been getting together to shoot hoops and talk basketball over beers for a long time. Our official meetings were a lot less frequent, but usually very helpful for me. This particular meeting was to be the most informative of all. I arrived at the office at noon, and since John had worked his way from staff chemist to chief of sciences and all the way up to VP of Research, he pretty much set his own schedule. We went for lunch at the Chinese place around the corner before we decided to set to it. Over lunch, after the obligatory discussions about Kobe Bryant and Karl Malone, the topic turned to our agenda for the day. I started out, “What I’m looking for, John are numbers, year by year, of the chemical composition of the atmosphere, and how that has changed from what we are releasing into the atmosphere. Do you think we can find that in your database? I’m guessing you can help me with translating that into something that even I can understand, right?” “Sure, we can do that, but you know, there might be even more. There’s a storeroom in the back office. See, we have data in our computers for the last ten years, but there is hard copy that didn’t transfer over to the new system that goes back much further. I cleared my schedule for the afternoon, so if you want, you and I can dig through boxes. I might be able to give you hard data going back a lot further than most other reporters have been able to find.” This sounded like it might be a fresh angle to the story. Well, at least a more in-depth view. Now, this felt like a story that might actually have some meat to it. I was intrigued and very excited to get to work. So, I picked up the check – even if it hadn’t been my turn to buy, the fact that John was helping me with this one had earned him lunch, and we walked back to the office. He told his secretary to hold his calls for the day, and we set out on our investigation. His instructions to me were very clear. Go through any box I wanted, but make sure to keep all the files in order, and give him anything that I thought might be relevant, marking the spot where it need to be put back. We worked like this for an hour and a half or so, setting aside a good-sized stack (some that I found, and some from the boxes he opened). He was going to provide copies and an explanation for me. Then I opened a box from the back. All the other cartons we had found were labeled with the dates of the data and the date it was filed away. This one was obviously older than those were because it had no dating on it at all. Then I noticed the really odd thing. Instead of the familiar AtmosResearch, Inc. letterhead, this one bore the name “Air Level Monitoring Agency”. I asked John if the company had had a different moniker at one time, and he looked puzzled. “Not that I know of…”, was his reply as he reached out his hand to take the paper from me. Giving it to him I noticed two other things, the date on the document and the title. It was called, “Atmospheric Transformation Projections” and it was dated June 5, 1954. That date made this by far the oldest paper we had found. At first John looked somewhat amused at the logo on the letterhead, then as his eyes scanned the paper I noticed a change in his expression. I knew that look by heart. It was the same one he showed every time a ref made a call that he thought didn’t make sense. It was obvious that something didn’t seem right to him. “This can’t be right,” he started, at first to himself, until he saw my questioning gaze. “No, see, this date, 1954, no one even knew about the effects of these chemicals in the atmosphere then, so why would they be monitoring it? I’ve never seen data like this from that far back. And this is weird, too. These are projections. See, look…” he said, thumbing at a section of the chart, “this shows projected amounts of chemicals like methane in the air with target and actual, leading up to the date of the report. Then, it shows projections going all the way to 2075. I don’t understand why anyone would have created something like this, let alone how they knew to measure these things back then.” We started digging further through that box. Many of the papers in there were personnel files, business statistics, supply inventories and requisitions, but we also found more of these reports. There was one from every month of that year. And we found as we dug back through the papers that there were similar reports for every month going back all the way to 1946. One other odd thing we noticed was that all of the reports had been sent to a governmental agency – one of which neither of us had ever heard. The agency was ‘Transmigration Relations Project Administration”. Its address would have put it right on Capital Hill in Washington, DC. This really surprised both of us. We gathered all of these papers and the others we had found. John made copies of them for me, and I told him that I would hold off on having him explain this stuff until I had checked out a few things. I asked him to give my love to his wife Lori and their kids, and made my way back to my office. That would be the last time I would ever see my friend. By the time I got back to my office it was nearly 4:00, that would have made it 7:00 on the East Coast. I knew that no one I wanted to talk with would be there. So, I decided to call it a night. I made a few notes and headed home. As I was getting up to leave, I glanced at the stack of papers from AtmosResearch on my desk, and something told me that I shouldn’t leave them in the office. So, I put them back into my brief case and went home. I slept pretty well that night. I was more enthusiastic about the fact that the story might be becoming that Pulitzer Prize, but not coming anywhere close to grasping what we had stumbled upon. Once I had done that, I wouldn’t have a good night’s sleep would be out of the question. The next morning I was on the phone to several people I knew in D.C.. I had them looking for information on this “Transmigration Relations Project Administration”. I also checked in at the department of public records here in LA looking for company records on Air Level Monitoring Agency. That part was fairly easy. The company had been formed in 1945, right after the end of World War II. It had been based in the industrial part of the city, but had offices all over the globe. The board of directors included several former military leaders from all of the countries that had been the allied forces in the war. They had been active until 1974 when they ceased operations, and all of their assets were acquired by AtmosResearch. I decided to try to get in touch with some of the people who had been on the board. I was curious as to how they had the foresight to monitor this activity. The government information was a bit more difficult to come across. Several of my people came up empty handed and the two that found anything wound up with info that was sketchy at best. The first was Rhonda Gibbs. I had known Rhonda for quite a while. She was married to a friend of mine from high school, Tony Gibbs. Rhonda works as a high-level office administrator in the House of Representatives. She returned my call on my cell around 11:30 that morning. She seemed a bit bewildered by what she had found, or rather what she hadn’t. “Jeremy, I don’t know what you’ve gotten onto here, but something doesn’t seem right. See, this agency is a weird one. They came into being during World War II. It looks like they had extensive ties to the Defense Department, but yet they don’t show up on any official government agency listing. They had a huge infusion of resources in 1942, via executive order under World War II Defense spending. They aren’t listed under the executive branch, though. In fact, they aren’t listed at all. There were additional expenditures sent to the group each year for the remainder of the war. Then no funding or references show up again until the time of the Korean War. Again, each year, they received large amounts of money, this time funneled through the funds allotted for that war effort. Then, at the end of that conflict the group just seems to disappear. At least I can’t find any record of it anymore.” I thanked her for her help, and we made some small talk and ended the call. The next lead on that end came from Bill Grainger, an aide to one of the Congressman. It seems he found much of the same information that Rhonda had, but he was able to track things down after that point. He told me, “During Vietnam the group became the Defense Provisions Agency, but still didn’t show up on any official governmental listings. Every year since then a portion of the defense budget has gone to funding the group. It’s just strange. This is an agency that exists, but yet they don’t seem to fall under the scrutiny of any of the other branches of the government. It’s like they are independent of the government, yet get their funding through it. There is no official source of the funding, but rather a line item that shows up on every Defense Department spending bill. I don’t know what to tell you beyond that, but I’m going to do some more research. You have my interest piqued.” He did give me a name of one of the former directors, and I added him to my contact list. While I had had less luck finding official information on the governmental ties than the corporate ones, I struck a dead end trying to get in touch with board members of Air Level Monitoring Agency. It seemed that every one of them had passed away years ago. I hit the jackpot, though, with the lead that Grainger had provided me. It seems that James Tilman, the man who had been one of the directors of the group was still alive, and as luck would have it, living right here in LA. Granted, when I found out his location I thought that he might not be a lot of help, but I had to check it out. So, I made my way to The Everett Center For Mental Health to see what I could find out. I met with one of his Doctors and he warned me not to expect too much from the meeting. “Old Jimmy is a sad case. He was a very bright man, well-respected in the community. He was a veteran of World War II and served in the government. Then in the 1960’s he had an event. Now, all he ever talks about are his delusional stories of alien invaders. No one listens to him. Even his family stopped visiting in the 1970’s. It’s a shame. He’s a nice man, but I think you are his first visitor in at least ten years.” Dr. Tander led me to a private room where an elderly man sat alone in a chair. My first impressions were greatly different than what the Dr. had lead me to believe. It was obvious that Mr. Tilman was heavily medicated, but yet his eyes still seemed to shine brightly. There was no question that this was a man in his twilight years, and his health was letting him down. Still, he didn’t look to me like anyone who was delusional. I introduced myself, and he seemed to understand me well, although his responses were a bit slow, probably due to the sedation. He seemed excited to have someone who was interested in his story as apparently no one even gave him the chance to speak anymore. His story and the events that followed would change my entire world vision and my sense of well being. Frankly, after what I had seen in those papers, his story didn’t seem like the ramblings of a madman, but rather the confessions of someone who couldn’t live with his involvement in something that no one else would ever believe. After I told him why I was there, there was no stopping him. It was like a dam that had been holding years' worth of information suddenly burst out. “It all started right after Pearl Harbor. We found out that Hitler had a lot of new technology and our best analysis showed that there was no way that we could ever win the war. The Nazi’s would have the nuke and missiles to hit the US, and then it would be all over. Those of us left were going to be speaking German and goose-stepping just like the rest of those bastards. Then the opportunity came. Apparently someone visited the president. Not a person like you or me, you know, but some kind of being from another planet. He offered to provide us with help against the Nazi’s. Some intelligence here, breaking a code there, some tweaks on our technology. They helped us increase our production methods. They sabotaged a lot of Nazi projects. Without them we would have lost the war. You have to understand, we were protecting our country – our freedom. We were desperate to stop them, and would have done just about anything to accomplish that.” He paused for a moment, then gestured widely around the room, as if to point out the people outside his private dwekking area. “They all think I’m crazy, but I’m not. I’m the only one who knows the truth. Well, at least the only one who’s talking. You gotta understand, I just couldn’t live with it anymore. I mean, we did what we did to keep those bastards from taking over the world, but damn it, we’re giving that world away. We didn’t think about the price we’d have to pay. We meant well, we really did. We just didn’t think about what we’d have to do to repay them.” He seemed to be looking to me for something – understanding, forgiveness, some intangible thing that his eyes seemed to be reaching out toward me to receive. I could offer him understanding, but it was obvious the forgiveness would have to come from within himself, and I doubted he had the capacity to grant that one gift. As he continued on with the story, I really got the feeling of a broken man. This was a man who had fought for his country, and now found himself unable to save his world. “See, after the war was over, they started to call the shots. They had made the President set the agency up under their control, a separate section of the government. They had even started influencing leaders of companies, and then they made deals with other governments – well at least other people within those governments. They have deals with the Japanese, the Brits, the Russians, the Chinese, they even started working with the Germans after the war. See, they had a goal – one that we didn’t know. Their world is dying. They have to find a new place to live. So, they started working with various people to make changes to our Earth. They need to make it so they can live here. They plan to move here in the year 2075. Now, mind you, we’ll still be able to breathe the air and to live – they said it was all a part of our adaptability as a race. They want us here. They are going to use us as slave labor. We’ll build their cities, work in their factories, do all that they need done, while they rule over us. “Now, see, the way they get people on board now – ever since the war, is by telling ‘em what they’re doing – only the ones they need, mind you. They tell ‘em, look we’re here, this is what we’re doing and there isn’t anything you can do you about that. If you help us, though, do what we say, you can have a place of power. See, they know that humans will respond better to their own kind telling ‘em what to do than some alien race – and they are alien. I saw a couple of ‘em once. Kind of like a cross between a giant bug and some kind of squid – ugly things. See, they’re pumping our air full of chemicals. Well, actually we're doing it. They’re just telling us what to do - change the atmosphere, the temperature, the whole damn environment. They don’t do it all out in the open, though because they don’t want a full-scale rebellion on their hands. No, they do it by giving us technology that will cause the changes. They tell us how to build factories and cars that will pump the air full of the stuff they need to change the planet. Some of our scientists call this ‘terraforming’ when it applies to other planets. I don’t know what the name is when it’s all about altering the Earth. “So many things I’ve seen in the news while I’ve been locked up in here is stuff that gets called accidents, but I know what’s going on. It’s all part of their plan. That Chernobyl thing in Russia, that was them. A way to release radiation that they need into the air. Oil tanker spills – them again. All of it, just the way that they are changing Earth from our home to theirs. I don’t know if we can stop ‘em, but I know that I just couldn’t deal with it anymore. The thought of my childrens’ children serving those monsters wasn’t something I could handle. So, I decided to take the truth to the public. I took all the files from my office. Then I was going to go to the press. The only thing was, word got out. They coulda just gotten rid of me, but I had already talked to enough people that it would have been too obvious. So, they decided that no one was going to believe me anyway. They got me committed here – ‘crazy’ they said. The thing is, even the doctors here think I am, but I’m not. You don’t think I’m crazy do you?” Again, he reached out to me with his words for some kind of affirmation. I shook my head and told him that I believed him. I wasn’t quite sure if I did, really, but here was an old man who needed some encouragement. Besides, as insane as it seemed, his story did provide answers to a lot of questions that my research had posed. “You know, when they brought me here they took all the files from my house. But, I fooled ‘em. They may be smart, but us people are smart, too. I made copies of it all, locked ‘em up in an old trunk. When my family was still visiting I got them to bring it here. They got the originals, but I still have all the copies.” He must have seen the look in my eyes when he said that. Here was proof if he was telling the truth. He pointed to the corner where a lamp set over top of a doily. “Under that light, there’s the trunk.” Then he looked to me with another question, “Can I trust you to get the word out?” I nodded as I couldn’t take my eyes off of the trunk. Of course I would – this would be the story of a lifetime if it were true. I got the trunk out, and thanked him. After assuring him that I would see that the information became public, I left. I had resolved to take everything to John’s house and see what he made of it. I loaded the trunk into my car, alongside my briefcase that was still there, and drove off my friend’s home. When I got there I expected to see his Mercedes in the driveway, but it wasn’t. That’s not all that unusual, though, as he frequently stays late at the office. Lori’s car, however, was generally there in the early evening, but on that night it wasn’t. It’s strange the things you notice subconsciously. I thought about how I had never seen their house when one of the kids’ bikes weren’t lying on the lawn. Then I noticed that the fern that normally hung above the front porch was gone. I started to feel a sick sinking sensation in my stomach as I saw the windows were bare – no curtains. I rushed into the driveway and leaped from my car. I banged on the door, but the only response was the hollow sound of an empty home. I looked into all the windows, and not a bit of furniture was in the place. Everything was wiped clean. I got back into my car, bewildered and overwhelmed with a feeling that was a cross between sadness and doom. I pulled out my cell and dialed John’s number. The line was disconnected. It came up as an unassigned number. Frantic I dialed directory assistance for a listing for him, and was told that there was none. I called his office. “May I please speak with John Sterling?” “I’m sorry sir, there is no one by that name with the company.” I noticed that this was not the usual receptionist, Kathy. “What are you talking about? He’s a vice president.” “No sir, I don’t have a listing for anyone by that name in the company, and certainly not at the executive level.” “Well, let me speak to Kathy, then.” “Who, sir?” “The other receptionist. The one who’s always there.” I’m sure the frantic desperation was apparent in my voice. “I’m sorry sir, but there is no receptionist here by that name.” “Well, let me talk to Jane, Jane Kline. She’s John’s secretary.” “Sir, there is no one by that name. Are you sure you have the right number? This is AtmosResearch, Inc., Central LA Division.” With resignation in my voice I told her that I had the wrong number and hung up the phone. I didn’t have the wrong number, but there was no sense in continuing the conversation. My mind was racing as I started towards my house. I tried to call Rhonda on her cell. It came up a dead line, also. So, I tried her husband and got the same result. Then it hit me, I couldn’t go home. They’d be coming for me, too. I turned the car around and made my way to the seedier part of town. I checked into a hotel, paying cash – I didn’t want to be tracked by my credit card. When that thought hit, I cancelled the reservation, giving the guy a ten-dollar tip to forget I had been there. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and threw it into the trash. They could probably track me by that. I went to my car and unloaded the brief case and trunk and got a cab – damned GPS in the car. Checking into a different grungy hotel I unloaded my stuff. With a feeling of fear I opened the trunk. I really hoped that there would be nothing but some crazy man’s books in that thing. I wanted to believe that there was a logical explanation for all this - well, at least one that didn’t lead to where that story did. Unfortunately, the trunk contained exactly what he said it did. There were documents dating all the way back to 1942, Everything was documented. There was no way I could ever track this stuff (they’d find me for sure), but it sure looked like this was for real. I closed the trunk and collapsed onto the dirty bed for a time, depressed and exhausted. Eventually I regained my composure and came up with a plan. I probably didn’t have long because they would find me, but if I made copies and sent them to every paper that I could get them to, then maybe one would print it. I don’t know that there is any way we can stop this, but at least if the word gets out, maybe we can try. So, that is the whole story. Our entire world, our entire race is at risk. I hope someone puts enough credence in this account to let it see print. If not, who knows if anyone will ever find out before they come. We don’t have that long. Editor’s Note: The documents accompanying the article seem to be exactly what he said they were. I have put the box of papers into a planter in the lobby of the building where this paper is published. I have also made copies and placed them in office buildings all over the city. If anyone reads this and wants to help get the word out, or just wants to see what is involved, just look for the boxes. They are labeled, “Rest In Peace, Jeremy Crandall”. If I suddenly disappear, my name is Thomas Whitfield and I have been the executive publisher of this newspaper for 12 years. There have to be enough copies of it out there to prove that. I don’t think they can get to all of them.
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