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"The Hunt for Zero Point" by Nick Cook
An editor for the esteemed Jane's Defense Weekly says the U.S. government has
been working on Nazi anti-gravity technology in secret for 50 years.
By Kurt Kleiner

Aug. 5, 2002 The U.S. government confiscated secret Nazi anti-gravity
technology at the end of World War II, and later may have tested it in aircraft
that account for the rash of post-War UFO sightings. Some of that technology has
probably made its way into the B2 stealth bomber. Some of it is probably so
dangerous that it's buried away in secret government vaults.

In the post-X-Files age, this sort of conspiracy theory won't raise any
eyebrows. What makes the allegations interesting is that they appear in "The
Hunt for Zero Point," which is written by Nick Cook, for 10 years the aviation
editor at Jane's Defense Weekly. Jane's is the bible of the defense
establishment, known for its no-nonsense, nuts-and-bolts reporting. A former
Jane's editor tackling this topic is enough to make you take a second look.


Although anti-gravity research ranks right up there with perpetual motion on the
crank-o-meter, the idea of anti-gravity can't be completely dismissed. As
recently as 1996 a Finnish scientist announced he could partially "shield"
objects from gravity using spinning superconductors. Although most scientists
are skeptical, NASA is interested enough that it's trying to replicate the
results.

And certainly Nazi Germany was working on a lot of advanced technology by the
end of the war, including rockets, jet fighters and nuclear power. The U.S.
recruited some German scientists to continue their work in the U.S., most
notably Wernher von Braun, the V-2 rocket scientist who later helped make the
moon landings possible.


The Hunt for Zero Point: Inside the Classified World of Anti-Gravity Technology

By Nick Cook

Broadway Books
256 pages
Nonfiction

It's also clear that the U.S. military works on secret technology all the time
-- about $11 billion worth every year in "deep black" programs that aren't even
acknowledged to exist. The stealth fighter and B2 bomber were black programs for
years.

So even if Nazi flying saucers sound nutty on the face of it, there's nothing
crazy about Cook asking the questions he does. You might even call it
courageous. It's the conclusions he reaches that are the problem.

Cook's search begins one day when a photocopy of a 1956 magazine article
mysteriously lands on his desk. It's called "The G-Engines Are Coming!" and is
illustrated with a drawing of a U.S. airman descending the steps of a floating,
wingless aircraft. Cook thinks it's a joke, but gets interested when he sees
aerospace industry leaders of the day quoted as saying anti-gravity could be the
next big breakthrough.

He decides to call one of them, a now-retired engineer named George S. Trimble.
A Lockheed Martin P.R. person, "Daniella Abelman," sets up an interview, then
calls back and says Trimble has cancelled.

"I don't mind telling you that he sounded scared and I don't like to hear old
men scared. It makes me scared," she tells Cook. "Let me give you some advice.
Stick to what you know about; stick to the damned present. It's better that way
for all of us.'" (Cook has changed "Abelman's" name, so there's no way to call
her and see if she really talks like a character in a Tom Clancy novel.)

Of course Cook's curiosity is inflamed, and he tracks down Trimble in a
retirement community in Arizona and -- oh, wait a minute. That's what you expect
him to do. But here's what he says. "My great regret was that I couldn't contact
George S. Trimble directly. Had I done so, I knew that Abelman would have gone
ballistic. She'd told me to stay away from him and she had the power to ensure
that I became an outcast if I didn't."

Unwilling to face the wrath of the flack, he retreats to the Internet where "in
the silence of the night, I could roam ... and remain anonymous." He finds the
story of Thomas Townsend Brown, a former Navy engineer who believed he could
negate gravity using electricity and who by 1956 was demonstrating small,
electrically charged flying disks. The military was briefly interested, but in
the end issued a report that said there was no usable technology there.

But Cook notices something in a 1947 Army Air Force memo (famous among UFO
buffs), in which Lt. Gen. Nathan Twining concludes that UFOs are real. Twining
adds that it is "within the present U.S. knowledge" to construct similar
aircraft, given enough money.

Cook concludes that by 1947 the U.S. must already have had a key component of
UFO technology -- anti-gravity. That's why they weren't interested in Brown's
technology years later. He suspects the technology came from Nazi Germany, and
recounts allegations of German flying saucer programs from a few dubious books,
as well as information he admits seems to have "magically appeared out of thin
air ... passed down from one researcher to the next, without attribution."

He gets off of the Internet and starts searching through military archives for
clues. He finds a few hints in old Army Air Force records on Luftwaffe
technology, but nothing substantial. Then he reads that the SS was in charge of
the most secret German technology. "I felt a constriction in my throat. I was so
keyed, my breath was coming in short, sharp gasps." Don't worry, he's not having
a heart attack. He just realizes he's been looking in the wrong place. He starts
reading about the SS.

Soon we're off to Poland. A "researcher" named Igor Witkowski shows Cook an old
mine, where he claims SS scientists worked on a machine called the Bell, a
glowing, rotating contraption that used up a lot of electricity. "Word had it
that the tests sought to investigate some kind of antigravitational effect,
Witkowski said." Somebody else thinks it might have been a time machine. Then
Cook finds yet another SS anti-gravity program, a flying saucer called the
"Repulsine."

Cook concludes that an SS official named Hans Kammler had all of this technology
boxed up and flown to a safe place, later trading it to the U.S. military for
his freedom.

2/

The U.S. government kept it all under wraps for years, but probably implemented
some of it in the B2 bomber. Why didn't the U.S. make more widespread use of
this technology? Partly because it would have disrupted the existing aerospace
industry, with its expertise in winged aircraft. Partly because anti-gravity
might tap into energies just too destructive to tamper with. And "... in the
1940s and 1950s, it wasn't as if the world really needed it."

It's a story that strains credulity. But unless we're after cheap laughs, our
hope when we pick up a book like this is that the author will, against the odds,
build a careful, reasonable and convincing case. Cook isn't that author.



http://www.salon.com/books/review/2002/08/05/zero_gravity/