Book Review

The Hunt For Zero Point:
Inside the Classified World of Antigravity Technology
by Nick Cook, Broadway Books

Review by Kathy Kasten

One just never knows what can happen when you step away from your office desk to trot down the hallway to get a cup of coffee. Nick Cook, investigative reporter for Jane's Defense, returned to his desk one day, coffee cup filled, to find a package. Picking up the package, Cook scanned the open office area searching for who may have put the package on his desk. Not seeing anything suspicious, he opened the package. After reading a bit of the contents, he made a decision. We all know that it is never about who you are, but the decisions you make. So thanks to Nick Cook's decision, the reader is taken on the equivalent of a magical mystery tour, in the finest sense of that term.

For the next three years of his life, Cook spends his spare time hunting down the source and reality of zero energy. All because of a copy of an article he found in the package on his desk. The article was titled "The G-Engines Are Coming" by Michael Gladych. Here's the kicker, the article was published in 1956 and talked about anti-gravity engines as if they were a very near future reality. The article named Martin Aircraft Company, Bell Aircraft, Lear and "several other American manufacturers" who would not spend millions of dollars on science fiction. Lawrence Bell, maker of the planes first to break the sound barrier, was quoted sounding as if his company was in the middle of developing equipment to cancel gravity. William Lear, long before he designed business jets, was thinking of how an anti-gravitational system would affect the pilot.

You want adventure? You want secret meetings with insiders? You want late night/early morning telephone conversations with knowledgeable sources unwilling to allow Cook to give their real identity? Journeys between England, United States and Eastern and Western Europe? Long bumpy rides to visit the ruins of Nazi/SS research facilities in Poland, Austria and the Fatherland? Cook has written a first rate true life detective novel. He knows very well how to report the story, even if it is his own story. It is apparent that Cook loved immersing himself in this tale of a real life adventure.

Cook researched whether the article had any basis in fact. The first thing he needed to do was to find the engineers quoted in the article and talk to them. Before interviewing one of the people that was still alive, George S. Trimble - head of Advanced Programs and Vice President of the "G-Project" at Martin Aircraft - Cook decided to do a search of Jane's library. Jane's All The World's Aircraft yearbook did not have any listings mentioning antigravity experiments. However, in the Jane's company library were copies of Interavia Aerospace Review. Being the astute thorough researcher that Cook is, he lists the issue (May 1956), the page number (373) and the exact name of the citation header (Intel, Washington D.C.) of a solid lead. This lead hinted at a very real possibly of pursuit by people seriously interested in anti-gravitational technology. The article called the methodology "electro-gravitics" research, seeking the source of gravity "and its control."

When I read what Cook had written, my own reaction was "wow"! High level U.S. government people were committing money to various electro-gravitational projects but the public would need to dig very deep into obscure journals to discover that this research was taking place.

Cook had read what George Trimble had stated in Gladych's article, that a breakthrough in electro-gravitics would take about the same amount of time to develop as the atomic bomb. Remember, this was in 1956. And, the time frame implied was 5 years. If the reader was alive in 1961 you might remember hearing nothing about antigravity engineering. Readers who have followed the tidbits of information that have surfaced regarding anti-gravity research will point to T. Townsend Brown and remind everyone that Brown's work was highly classified. However, looking at the type of aircraft in use in the 60s, there was no hint of anything other than jet propulsion systems.

What had happened? Where were the aircraft using anti-gravity? Cook decided he needed to talk to the people quoted in Gladych's article. He knew Lawrence Bell and Bill Lear were dead. That left only Trimble. Because Cook works for Jane's Defense, he had the right contacts within the field of aviation. He called a contact at Lockheed Martin trying to find out if Trimble was alive. Knowing exactly how to "stroke" this particular contact without alarming her, he received a telephone call back. His contact found out that Trimble was alive and enjoying retirement in Arizona. The contact had smoothed the way for Cook to interview Trimble. Trimble was important to Cook's investigation because he had run the Glenn L. Martin's equivalent of Lockheed's "Skunk Works" back in 1956.

The difference between the open discussion in 1956 of anti-gravity and the evaporation of any and all references a year later was astonishing. The third phone call from his Lockheed contact was to establish a pattern of insiders shutting down days after agreeing to talk to Cook. Trimble had told the Lockheed contact he didn't want to talk to her; he didn't want to talk to Cook. Trimble didn't want to talk - period. Cook's contact rang off with the following advice: "Stick to what you know about, stick to the damned present. It's better that way for all of us."

Good thing Cook decided not to take this well-meaning advice!

One of Cook's most reliable insider sources suggested that he talk with Dr. Paul LaViolette. LaViolette knew about a paper titled "Electrogravitics Systems - An Examination of Electrostatic Motion, Dynamics Counterbary and Barycentrice Control" and knew it was something to do with antigravity. Something traditional psychics said couldn't be done. LaViolette had tracked down one of the few copies of this paper to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. The paper was dated 1956. This particular paper started LaViolette on his life long quest to develop anti-gravity systems. Through LaViolette, Cook met Tom Valone, a colleague of LaViolette. Valone forwarded a copy of the original paper LaViolette had read. One person leads to another, one paper leads to another, on the trail of antigravity propulsion systems. And the reader is at the elbow of Cook wondering about it all.

A sample clue is the following: a paper describing the counterbary as "a synthesis of electrostatic energy used for propulsion which also sets up a local gravitation force independent of the earth." In other words, antigravity. Most the companies involved with counterbary devices were major players in the defense industry. Even today, the general public has yet to see any antigravity craft flying - anything at all to show for their tax dollars spent. Or, maybe they have. In at least one radio interview with Cook, he claimed he is always interested to hear about UFOs (unidentified flying objects, unknown to the observer).

Cook provides historic photos, newly taken photos and historic drawings of various antigravity/zero point energy devices, some of which were designed by German engineers towards the end of World War II. He also includes Brown's drawings of the Avro disc with a photo of Townsend Brown. A couple of these photos of designs look very much like aircraft designated by the general public as UFOs or photos of aircraft designed and flown at the Skunk Works. There is one unique photo of what looks like the same test rig shown at Avro but this one is at the Nazi's Wenceslas mine. These photos give one pause to ask a very basic question: how much of the Nazi's aeronautics program did the Americans steal? It would appear almost all of it. Simply usurped it for its own aeronautics industry.

How do we know this? Cook reports that, in 1945, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff established a Technical Industrial Intelligence Committee. Their job was to use 380 specially trained civilians, representing 17 U.S. companies, to get into Germany before any other allied governments and gather up all of the German innovations. Items like vacuum tubes, much, much smaller than anything the U.S. had produced, and tiny condensers, etc. Nothing was over looked. Secret formulas for over 50,000 dyes. Synthetic plasma.

The year after the U.S. Office of Technical Services was set up, German technology was transferred to American companies. People who have read Lt. Philip Corso's Book, "The Day After Roswell" know that he claims to have been intimately involved with the transfer of this technology. However, Corso asserts that "alien technology," meant otherworldly.

One of the most interesting parts of the book is the review of the technical papers by the military stashed at Bolling Air Force Base. For example, Army Air Forces Brigadier General George C. McDonald, head of USAAF Intelligence, review of "remote interference with aircraft, or "balls of fire." He found no basis to support that this was a real phenomenon. However, Windhund was different. It was a "sniffer" device that could detect whether aircraft was around by measuring differences in the polarity of the surrounding air. It then automatically directed its parent aircraft to follow the trail until it reached the bomber stream itself.

Now, what does that sound like? A system/device that is used in today's combat situations? There's more. The Windhund could be hard-wired with autopilot creating a pilotless aircraft - like the Fireball - that could be controlled automatically. To the astute reader, such as Cook, it was obvious where all that UAV technology now being used lately by the U.S. came from. Apparently, not really good old U.S. know how, but stealthily removed from war torn Germany before anybody else could get it. Although the U.S. was not a major player at the beginning of that war (Germany attacked England and the U.S. came in later to help in the allied effort), it claimed to have won the war. As explained by physicist Michu Kaku, neither country who is involved at the start of the war usually wins it, or reaps any rewards from it. The U.S. won entire new industries after World War II.

Another example of German technology was the research of Daimler Benz. He created a weapon to stop ignition of a gas engine, and began work on devices to stop aircraft in flights. The U.S. military that reviewed the report containing the above information stated: "the subject may be closed with negative result." Really? Then, there is no connection to modern aviation technology and research that was developed by German scientists. Once again, readers of Jane's Defense know that this type of technology is available today.

What would an mysterious adventure be with a super villain? A ruthlessly, super cool, intelligent heavy? To meet that requirement, the reader is introduced to Dr. Ing. (Engineer) Hans Kammler who had been head of the SS's Building and Works Division. He single handedly designed and built anything assigned to him. He created and built the Nazi system of concentration camps, airplane hangers, barracks, administrative office, etc., etc. The camps were created to meet the Rich's manufacturing needs. Partnering with Albert Speer, Kammler designed and built Mittelwerk GmBH (Central Works Ltd) underground in the Harz Mountains. They had utilized 10,000 Buchenwald prisoners to start the tunneling.

A year later the facility was finished with 20,000 prisoners dying in the process. Kammler was Himmler and Hitler's "right hand man" along with Speer throughout the Nazi regime, directing most of the research and development projects. Only to completely disappear into the ethers just before the Allied Forces overtook his safe house. However, before disappearing, Kammler made sure that at least 60 German scientists would not be capture by the Allies. He had them taken from their "hermetically sealed" house and shot on the spot. With Kammler went all the designs, prototypes of antigravity devices and forward looking technology. Or, did it really disappear. Where did Kammler find a "safe haven"?

All we know is that in 1956 antigravity technology surfaces, only to disappear once again. We are left with tantalizing statements about Boeing's recent research on antigravity - statements which Boeing then backs away from. One chapter near the end of the book discusses Cook's interview with Dr. Evgeny Podkletnov, including the possible implications if other laboratories are able to replicate Podkletnov's antigravity experiments. The book ends with mention of Dr. Thomas Bearden's recent patent for a device called the "Motionless Magnetic Generator," or MEG. It is stated that this is the world's first "commercially available free-energy home generator."

Will the world clamber to own such a device? We are left to wonder.