From the Editor's Desk

posted by George-Luis Dewey

Challenger Was No Accident - I Believe It Was Murder
June 28, 2003

I worked at General Dynamics Convair and Space Systems Divisions in San Diego California in the 80's. When Challenger blew up it was more than just a media event for me. It was one of the most powerful psychic experiences I ever had in my life. I worked on the Challenger and many other Shuttle Missions, although it was not my primary work flow assignment. My Bible reading friend Tim Saye used to do that part. He was assigned to Jack Stringfield, a very level headed man of keen insight with whom I was blessed to have worked with as the need arose. On the day Challenger was destroyed Tim and I had been assigned to go in early in the morning.

It had been a very strange series of weeks in the time leading up to the event for all of us in the mold loft. I had recently returned from an assignment at Space Systems Division where things were going awry in a big way. General Dynamics had just installed a new Computer drafting system and an even newer version of the software shortly thereafter to make it a fully 3 dimensional drafting system. At the same time the head of Space System’s lofting or modeling function had convinced the company it would be a good idea to institute an “off-board” modeling system, whereby the company would forgo building a test model prototype and go right into the production process by making its prototype the first flyable production article. This was supposed to streamline and integrate the modeling system and the actual production tooling into one fully functional computerized production system. Eventually all lines would be in virtual form rather than the traditional “plaster master” mold where loftsmen could go an physically derive their basic lines off the model itself. At the top of this push to aggrandize himself in the eyes of his peer -bosses was an overly confident computer group leader and a management enthralled with a technology it really did not fully understand. Mysteriously, his nemesis, the head of the tooling department, who had never liked this fellow for his sloppy and presumptively aggressive management style, got blown up and badly burned when he went home one day and opened his garage door. Scuttle-butt had it that it was no accident. By the convenient hand of fate the fellow he disagreed with was now basically running his department too.

Those events weren’t by themselves the most unsettling to me personally since I never knew the man, but the events I was witnessing in the mold loft and in the work we were doing revealed to me what he might have been upset about. At the top of all this new computer razzle dazzle was their hot-shot R and D CADDs operator from Argentina who was real fast on the machine and sniffing a lot of nose candy to get those 70 hour weeks and the paychecks to go with them. He must have been sniffing something because one day I had to call the boss over to the Galileo Project blueprints and show him discrepancies I was lofting based on the data the Argentine had given us. They didn’t match and this boss of mine went ballistic. We called him the Tarantula , short for Terror. Very quickly everybody realized that we had produced a whole bunch of flawed articles, but we were all advised to clam up and I was transferred back to Convair. Truth be told, they wanted me out of there as I might catch on to what was really going on.

When I got my company newspaper a couple of weeks later I was surprised to know that six or seven articles to the Navy, Army and Air Force were mysteriously and instantly “fixed”, because they paraded them out in front of the Generals, brass band and the whole bit and symbolically touted their production prowess. When I poked around and asked my sources they rolled their eyes and said that they pushed them right back into the shop and started tearing them apart to fix them.

And then the unthinkable happened.

I have always had this bit of a problem with psychic stuff - some of it not easy to understand. My grandmother gave it to me I guess - she was flawless at predicting earthquakes and she had a way of knowing when her kin was coming to visit even when they didn’t tell her in advance. She would have my grandfather waiting to greet my father at the Lima Airport when he would fly in unannounced from Colombia. So try not to be confused by what I tell you next, because the story is true and my friend Tim Saye knows it, as I told it to him BEFORE the Challenger crashed. You see my mind knew what this other stuff meant that I was in touch with in my dealings with my job and the company, although my conscious mind hadn’t tied all the data together. It’s rather like looking at the toe of a giant - you know there’s more up there, but it takes time, healing, inner calm and clarity to come to the understanding of what the total picture is.

Actually I had two very vivid psychic experiences within a forty-eight hour period, but the second one was entirely separated from the first and had absolutely no relation to the other event, so we won’t get into that here. You see I had a vision of what was to come, only my mind or my ancestors and their ultimate guiding metaphysical wisdom created the symbols I needed to see in action. Who knows where our dreams are spawned really. Do they spring from our consciousness and it’s subconscious or is it part of a collective mind we all relate to differently? I only know that I saw the events to come in person - I was actually there with them and especially Christy Macaullife - the teacher. I felt her terror as if she herself meant for me to know what had really happened. I know how crackers this sounds, but I’m not done yet.

The night before the morning of the crash I saw them die. I guess it was a dream state or a vision, but I was in her school house looking out through the white painted windows and I saw her running across the street in a Red Dress and with her long flowing red hair trailing in the wind of her panic. I heard several retorts, like gunshots and I saw a man with a gun running after her firing as he went. I felt the children’s panic and looked past their faces in the school room and back out into the street where I saw her run across again, the man following firing. The explosions were all around me - I was simultaneously in the school room with the children and in the spacecraft with the astronauts and my exact words as if they were not only my own were: “We’ve got to get out , we’ve got to get out …” Then I was in the pink cloud and awoke sweating and cold at the same time - shaken to the core I knew they would die that morning. I got up early as it wasn’t quite 3 AM and made coffee shaken up very badly , going a little crazy not knowing what I could do.

4:15 AM - I picked up Tim who lived with his sister and we headed into town - we had a long drive on I-94 and had to clock in early for overtime. I told Tim that I saw the shuttle destroyed in my dream and told him I was tormented that I didn’t know what I could do about it - how could I stop it?

Tim wasn’t much help. He was a born-again Christian and I respected his faith - you respect a man of faith as to me that is the primary ingredient. Anyway, Tim told me that it was the devil that was talking to me and that I shouldn’t listen to him. After several attempts I was admonished to not try and discuss it any further.

I felt like a robot walking into the plant, but I went through the motions knowing in my gut something was dead wrong in this picture, very, very wrong. My boss at Convair assigned us our tasks that day with the lead man logging us in and Tim and I were assigned the next Challenger mission modifications to the Mid Cargo Bay and we went and retrieved the mylar tooling assembly from the storage area and rolled it out for inspection on a large loft table. It was 8:09 Pacific Time on that fateful day and we were still hovering over our mylar when the boss came out of his office white as a sheet and told us : “They are all dead, they just blew up - they are all dead”

“What are you talking about?” someone said from across the room.

“The shuttle - it just blew up - they’re all dead.” Everybody stunned, rushed to try and see the 5 ¼” TV on his desk in the tiny office. There was a long silence until I noticed Jack Stringfield looking back towards me shaking his head, when I said” Well I guess we’ve seen the end of the space race for at least two years Huh Jack?”

“You might be right about that - let’s hope we have a job” someone retorted . It was as if nobody could roust themselves from the shock of that day for those of us in the loft. It was a feeling that hung over the place and it was only years later that I managed to see the big picture of what I believe really happened.

I believe General Dynamics and several other associated entities within the military industrial complex planned and executed the events of that day. I do not believe it was an accident as General Dynamics had barely survived the Veliotis Scandal at Groton Mass where its submarine divisions VP has just absconded to Greece with millions after getting caught installing inferior steel in the hulls of the Nuclear Trident Submarine.

Then there were the $5,000 dollar toilet seats for the Air Force and such overcharging accusations from Congress etc. We were all forced to fill out “work authorization forms” for every job we did in order to curb overcharging, as if the poor grunt at the bottom of the heap has anything to do with the spreadsheet and balance sheet of the internal auditing aspects of the company or how it presents itself on paper.

General Dynamics was in no position to explain several major contracts including MX, Galileo Mission to Jupiter, Air Launched Cruise Missile, GLCM, Tomahawk, Hubble, and numerous other flawed articles produced by a fictitious database and computer problems on top of very bad internal management decisions that could show the company to be the opportunistic slug it really was at the time.

Apparently the Hubble errors were not caught by the contractor that did the lenses , although I do not know if that ties in here. But I do know that General Dynamics had motive, opportunity and access and they are at the top of my list of suspects along with associated functionaries in Morton Thiokol.

General Dynamics had made a serious error in its rush to computerize. They tried to phase the old system out before they had fully integrated the next new system and gone past the implementation phase to a fully functioning accurate modeling system. Furthermore they tried to integrate a merging modeling system with a superhighway of tried and tested production methods fully engaged in active production in order to speed things up. Both were a big mistake they swept under the rug, kept out of the purview of the media and covered up anyway they could, including murder. I have waited a long time to say this, but I am no longer alone in seeing the transparent deceit coming from our current political leaders who will engineer any scenario to get to any level of power and control they desire. The most recent Shuttle tragedy I believe is another example of corporate murder. They knew about the tiles, but they have their agenda and their classified articles that need to be hung in space so they can own the citizenry outright and zap anyone anywhere. NASA is the headless gate-keeper to the Cosmos of the wisdom and the myths of our next generation of understanding about who we are and where we came from. They are as poised as the Catholic Church to place this newfound matrix of self-awareness over our heads as effectively as the church hung the Inquisition on the Middle Ages. They are a toxic agency with a lot of sorry bedfellows, who don’t deserve our trust or our continued patronage. General Dynamics is the largest military industrial contractor in the world - they are in charge of the dismantlement contract for nuclear weapons at Kirtland.

I don’t believe they deserve our trust and I really hope someone out there can tie into this and help expose these men in the shadows of our great country.

Laugh all you want about my dream. I’m sure Christy didn’t laugh, nor her students and I hope when the day of their judgment arrives her killers don’t laugh either. After that day Timmy never put me down again for listening to the devil, frankly I’d spent quite enough time in his company without realizing it. I quit General Dynamics for many more reasons than that and went off to the woods to heal my spirit. I never ever regretted leaving as I was tired of “shadowboxing the apocalypse” and working with “sangrones”, ie, bloodsuckers.

At least the people that care deserve to know the many possibilities, after all this is a post-Arthur Anderson, Enron and Global Crossing world - there is no more innocence here to behold.

George Luis Dewey
editor@libertysteward.com