EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH AMERICAN COMPUTER PRESIDENT JACK SHULMAN ON THE
ROSWELL/BELL LABS CONTROVERSY

[Since mid-August, a controversy has raged on the internet concerning highly
provocative information posted on the web site of American Computer Company
(see CNI News of September 16, 1997; and visit ACC's web site:
http://www.american-computer.com). In brief, ACC has suggested that the
historic invention of the transistor at Bell Laboratories in December, 1947
might have been aided by covert transfer of technology from an alien
spacecraft recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. This suggestion directly
parallels similar claims made by Lt. Col. Philip Corso in his recent book,
"The Day After Roswell." However, ACC personnel state they had no knowledge
of Corso or his book, but relied instead on information provided by a
"consultant" who remains nameless.

American Computer's president and chief technical officer is Jack Shulman. In
recent weeks, Shulman himself has come under scrutiny by UFO researchers, as
have several other people who have  presumed to speak in a seemingly
authoritative way on behalf of American Computer. Chief among these "others"
are one Ed Wang and one Bob Wolf. Pronouncements attributed to these two
persons have raised suspicions that Shulman himself may have been writing
under one or several pseudonyms.

CNI News, working in cooperation with radio host Jeff Rense of the popular
syndicated program "Sightings on the Radio," [see Jeff's web site at
http://www.sightings.com], is seeking to verify or dispel the various rumors
swirling around ACC and the person of Jack Shulman, so that public attention
can be refocused to the significant issues raised on the American Computer
web site. This special supplement to the October 1 edition of CNI News is
directed to that goal.

The following is an edited transcript of a telephone interview between Jeff
Rense and Jack Shulman which took place on September 29. Jeff Rense and CNI
News editor Michael Lindemann consulted together on the questions to be asked
prior to the call.

CNI News recognizes that the statements made by Shulman in this interview by
no means satisfy all the questions we would like to have answered. However,
we hope that this information represents a contribution to the ongoing
investigation of this unusual case.

Thanks to Jeff Rense for sharing the complete contents of this interview with
CNI News.]


JEFF RENSE: It's September 29, and we're talking with American Computer
Company president Jack Shulman. To begin with, are you, Jack Shulman, writing
under the pseudonym "Ed Wang"?

JACK SHULMAN: No

RENSE: Have you ever met Ed Wang?

SHULMAN: No.

RENSE: Have you ever talked to anyone calling himself Ed Wang?

SHULMAN:: Yes, he's called here a couple of times. At one time he had asked
us if he could use an account at one of the computer science associations
nearby to access the internet for the purpose of investigative reporting.
That predated this whole controversy. We did in fact give him an account to
use, back about eleven months ago. I don't remember what he was investigating
at that time. Then somebody raised his name, in about the early part of
August, asking us if we could verify something that he had paraphrased from
one of the stories on our web site. Since he had paraphrased, and it was all
quoted and everything, it would have been just as easy for that party to just
look at our web page. So we said, "If you'll look at our web page, you'll see
that whatever he's paraphrased here does appear to resemble exactly the words
that are on the web page." To my knowledge, the only other contact we've had
with Ed Wang is an occasional call from him, much as you've called me today,
and others such as Stig Agermose, who have contacted us to ask questions.

RENSE: Who is Bob Wolf? Does he mean anything to American Computer?

SHULMAN: Again, he's one of the people, like Jared Anderson, Ed Wang, Linda
Moulton Howe, yourself and others, who've written us. There have been dozens
of people who have either written us or called us for information. I have
spoken to Bob Wolf at length by phone. I have not personally met the guy. He
does appear to be a very nice fellow. He's given me some very interesting
information. I don't know if I'd take all of it without the proverbial grain
of salt, because he has told me some things that led me to believe there are
parts of his background that he doesn't want to disclose to me. Apparently he
worked for the U.S. Navy as a Seal, but I can't verify that. I can't call the
Seals organization and ask if this guy was a Seal. They won't respond to
that.

RENSE: What is your purpose in exposing the Roswell/Bell Labs allegations on
the ACC web site, thereby attaching your credibility, for better or worse,
not only to Roswell, but to claims concerning Bell Labs' access to alien
technology -- claims which either must be substantiated, or which could make
you look like a nut, or a disinformer?

SHULMAN: I don't think there was any purpose -- either to look like nut, a
disinformer, a credible source or anything -- taken into consideration at
first. We had a consultant come to me and tell me this story. At first, I was
quite skeptical about it. I knew a lot of the facts, because they are pretty
much matters of record, but had always thought that the reason there was a
cloud of -- shall we say -- controversy about the exact origins of William
Shockley's transistor was that it stemmed perhaps from a prehistory that AT&T
didn't care to disclose. I didn't have any idea, up until the time that the
consultant came to me and raised these issues, that it might in fact be
related to the Roswell incident. I originally thought [the origin] was
something like German rocket scientists....

RENSE: How did this consultant come to you?

SHULMAN: I had known the consultant years ago. We had met each other in the
hinterlands of AT&T. I've worked on and off in AT&T contracts over the course
of a couple of decades. And about a year ago, in my capacity as the
chairperson of the American Computer Science Foundation, I was asked to
review materials that pertained to an ongoing investigation of telephone
company practices that were pertinent to the success of the computer
industry, during the course of which I happened to come across some fairly
strong allegations that were made by the consultant in the dominion of that
specific investigation. I was not at that time informed of the possibility of
an alien technology transfer. It was not until he came to me personally and
suggested it that I said to him, "Well, you're going to have to show me some
bonafide evidence before I even consider this." About six months later he
came back to me with what appeared to me to be... some evidence that might
suggest in fact that the transistor came from some kind of a project
involving investigation into an alien technology of some kind.

RENSE: Can you elaborate on that evidence at all?

SHULMAN: I can tell you that I have seen what appears to be some notes from
someone. However, I cannot verify their authenticity, so I'd really not like
to describe them in any detail. Frankly, Jeff, I grow concerned about leading
people in the wrong direction. They did give me the appearance of a lab
notebook, of a lab-keeper's notebook. In fact, they did appear to describe or
have an actual memorandum referring to a disinformation campaign in late 1947
at AT&T. But again, they could have been a complete forgery. They could have
been anything. They might have been legitimate too. At that particular
juncture, I said to him, "OK, this now looks like it's fairly conceivable it
might have happened, if in fact this is bonafide." So he suggested to me, Why
don't we at the American Computer Science Foundation post some kind of white
paper on the subject? I said we really can't do that. He asked me why, and I
said to him that it was because American Computer Science Foundation carries
the weight of its membership companies, etc., all of which might lend a
greater weight, in essence underwriting the credibility of this story in a
way that I would not intend it to. I would prefer that the information
somehow stand on its own. Well, he pestered me for a couple of months. We
were talking over coffee, reviewing the whole thing, and he suggested, "Why
don't you put it on your American Computer Company web site?" I said I can't
do that, because it might [reflect badly on ACC]. So he said -- and I'll be
blunt with you here -- "Why don't you make it look humorous? That way, you
have a plausibly deniable excuse." I said, "It IS humorous, in a way, because
if you look at it, you have a company -- if in fact they did obtain
technology from a technology transfer source -- that's been running around
for fifty years trying to hide that fact." That's funny. Why would anybody do
that? It struck me at that particular moment that AT&T would have been better
off admitting it. So I said, "OK, why don't we make it appear in its proper
light -- as outrageous and/or funny -- and put it on the ACC web site and see
if we get any reaction at all from anybody who reads it. Perhaps if it
strikes a chord, somebody will contact us and tell us whether this is
ridiculous or not." Initially, we did not expect anyone from your
investigative arena to even notice the story. At least I didn't. The
consultant may have, but I did not. I initially thought that people would see
it in passing and would say, hmm, how interesting, how humorous, or whatever.

RENSE: You had no idea of the potential scope of this?

SHULMAN: Well, interestingly, exactly what I thought might happen did happen
-- that is, it struck a chord with somebody and they wrote us. Sure enough,
the first week someone wrote us and said, "Yes, my father worked for
AT&T/Bell Labs in 1947, and in the early '60s took me to see a UFO." I was
flabbergasted, absolutely floored. You could have knocked me over with a
feather at that moment. Not because I was skeptical, but in the context of
how ridiculous it makes AT&T look, I found it to be humorous. What, are they
crazy? Why didn't they come out with it in 1947? The world would have been in
their debt. AT&T would have been the greatest company that ever lived. Why
would they hide it?

It was then that the full import of the suggestion of profiteering began to
occur to me. If in fact this were true, the profiteering aspect was something
that none of us considered. If people were ready to make billions and
billions of dollars for 200 years on this kind of technology, and it came
from an "alien source," they would keep it a secret -- because if it came
from outside of AT&T, it wouldn't belong to AT&T. It hadn't even dawned on
us, because we were looking at it from the perspective of how amazing the
story is, how earthshaking, and how silly it would be to keep it a secret --
until we began to realize who was in the business of profiting from this kind
of technology.

RENSE: Do you have any relationship with Bell Labs now, Jack?

SHULMAN: Not really. They call us every once in a while to look at buying
equipment, but I am no longer personally doing any consulting for Bell Labs.

RENSE: Does the consultant?

SHULMAN: Occasionally. He or she does communications-related consulting in
the defense industries, and very specifically his or her identity is being
withheld for security reasons.

RENSE: Has the consultant expressed to you any surprise at the amount of
internet interest in this story?

SHULMAN: He and several of our public relations consultant clients said that,
frankly, it will do quite well as a story on the internet because it will
serve to brighten up the interest of some very frustrated people. This
information will give people in your investigative field some leverage in
dealing with the whole subject. Even if the entire story might not be 100
percent accurate for whatever reason, the facts described in our story are
materially largely true. For instance -- and it's been interesting to see how
many people have reacted adversely to this suggestion -- if you take a look
at the part about the Nike-Ajax missile bases, and the anti-aircraft guns
that preceded them, in and around AT&T down in Red Bank, outside of
Crawford's Corners, up in Murray Hill and over in Holmdel, it's almost
shocking to discover that, while New York City and New Jersey sat undefended,
AT&T had both anti-aircraft and then anti-missile batteries constructed
around them in the 1940s and 1950s. This is painfully humorous. It actually
hurts to consider that AT&T and Bell Labs are more important than the
citizens of our country. So I'm thinking, wow, there must be more than just
the labs there. Because I know something about the research community, and I
don't know that there is anything at AT&T from 1947 to 1997 that was
irreplaceable. Whereas, when I think of places like the Applied Physics
Laboratory, Cold Springs Harbor, Lawrence Livermore -- there are projects
going on there that are not reproducible, and I'm not sure they all have
Nike-Ajax missile bases around them.

RENSE: Concerning the allegations about Bell Labs, then, would you say that
you are a conduit for someone else's information?

SHULMAN: Yes, we are providing a forum. To date, only Motorola from the AT&T
arena has tried to dispute it. AT&T appears to be remaining mute on the
subject. And Lucent has remained mute, although I must tell you that our
relationship with Lucent on the technical support side -- because we support
some of Lucent's products on the AT&T phone systems -- has been less than
warm since August 15. We've actually been hung up on a few times.

RENSE: But have you had anyone call up and tell you, Jack, you've really
stepped across the boundary here?

SHULMAN: No, not thus far. We've gotten a couple of nasty letters from people
who didn't provide a return email address. But we're just trying to provide a
forum for people to hear these facts and either disprove them or prove them.
There's nothing worse, in my view, than something like this that's left open
to conjecture indefinitely, because it does nothing but hurt the people who
try to consider it, and I think it hurts the country to some degree. I think
it weakens our country. The fact that people will continuously arrive at the
conclusion, for instance, that either the DoD, or the president, or someone
like that is not disclosing facts to them that they ought to disclose, leads
to the kind of thinking that undermines our democratic system. It tends to
erode our confidence in government, and I think our confidence in government
really needs to be reinforced.

RENSE: Is American Computer consciously part of a larger coordinated campaign
of public disclosure or education aimed at revealing things about the alleged
alien presence on earth?

SHULMAN: No. Not unless you call ACC's own campaign that broader one. Nobody
came to us other than this consultant.

RENSE: So would you say that Jack Shulman, as a matter of conscience and
patriotism, independently decided to put this on his web site?

SHULMAN: Conscience, yes, simply because I thought that the facts deserved
disclosure and consideration. The public should know. Even if they're not
true, the fact is they appear to have some degree of plausibility, so they
should be considered on their own weight.

By the way, I was caught completely off guard by Colonel Corso's book. I did
not know the book existed until Jared Anderson called here and spoke to John
Schwartz, one of my VPs, who got me on the phone immediately and said, "Did
you know there's a book that describes transfers of technology from either
Roswell or some other crash to AT&T?" That was the first I heard of it.

As for what you call patriotism: We are our government, Jeff. The government
is us. We have this perception of a dyspeptic, detached entity with X-Files
guys running around in it, Men-in-Black running around in it, abusive IRS
guys running around in it -- all those reasons are used by people who are
insurrectional in their thinking. I don't happen to share those views. I
happen to love this country and the people who live here, and I think that if
they have a gripe or a beef, it deserves to be aired. And this is one of
those that appears to deserve to be aired.... I raised that very issue in a
letter to, dare I say, Secretary of Defense William Cohen. I stated my
concern that -- what do they say, "Sooth the savage beast"? -- I'm concerned
that a "savage beast" will emerge eventually from the disinformation, lack of
information, strangely conflicting or compelling stories, and the lack of a
basic kind of town-hall sit-down to discuss these matters. I mean, how
expensive is it for the government to respond to a million FOIA requests a
year, compared with one concerted effort to gather all the information, keep
it pure, break down a few barriers that might be left over from some nameless
classified project....?

RENSE: It sounds like you don't subscribe to the idea of a fifty-year,
coordinated cover-up of the UFO subject.

SHULMAN: I think I would have to see actual evidence of a coordinated
cover-up. It's not that I don't subscribe to it. It's that I don't as yet see
evidence of anything other than bureaucracy, technical deficiencies in
requests [for information], a disinclination on the part of the government to
discuss the matter. I think, if anything, I'd call it a fifty-year
disinclination, rather than cover-up.

RENSE: But the reasons for that "disinclination" are the key...

SHULMAN: That's correct. That's one of the things we raised in the Shadowlake
Invitation page on our web site [an open letter to the Secretary of Defense,
Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top officials to participate in an open forum
on the subject of UFOs.]

RENSE: That letter has caused a lot of reaction. Who wrote that?

SHULMAN: It was written by American Computer Company. You have people working
here, including myself, who are less than inclined to seek the public
spotlight on this issue. We are not what you'd call publicity hounds.

RENSE: I understand. What is your personal opinion about the ET issue, vis a
vis our military and our government?

SHULMAN: My personal opinion is a very troubled one. I have a degree of
personal integrity that forbids my [drawing conclusions] until I've seen the
absolute facts. I have not concluded one way or the other. But I am inclined
to believe that it is more likely that there is some shred of truth to
visitation than that there is no shred of truth.

RENSE: Do you expect any more information from your consultant to come
through ACC's web site?

SHULMAN: I can't say at this moment. We have a plan in place, that we're
considering, to raise the ante a little bit to try to generate some kind of
reaction out of the Department of Defense that might lean toward the
town-hall, public-forum type of meeting. But I really don't want to reveal
any more about this now.

RENSE: Is the consultant's agenda, in your opinion, personal, or is he or she
being directed by any agency?

SHULMAN: The consultant does not work, to my knowledge, on this particular
story for any agency, because that would probably violate the consultant's
security oath. The consultant has been advised, and has advised us, that the
information that he or she has given us is "allowed" to be given to us by
whatever agency he or she consults to, because the information was obtained
other than through their employment by the U.S. government. Meaning, the guy
worked at AT&T, came across this information, and was not working for the
federal government at the time, so the federal government cannot prevent him
or her from releasing it to us. But to be very distinct here... the federal
government is not particularly happy that the information is being given out.

RENSE: How do you know that?

SHULMAN: That's a comment from the consultant. He said, "I don't think
they're happy that I'm talking. I don't think they're upset, but I don't
think they're happy."

RENSE: To summarize: Would you say that you think the information given by
the consultant is credible and believable? This seems to go without saying,
or you wouldn't have put it on your web site.

SHULMAN: "The information" is rather broad. There are a lot of different
parts to this, and some feel more accurate to me than others.

RENSE: On balance, would you say that ACC's web postings on this subject are
important?

SHULMAN: That's been said to me. Again, we did not do it to attract this kind
of publicity. We did it because we thought we would attract some interest
from someone, somewhere, who might know whether it's true or not -- meaning
other than from sources that the consultant has, such as past contacts with
John Morton [formerly of Bell Labs], William Shockley, others at AT&T and
Defense who were involved with him at the time. The problem is, too many
people are trying to read into it, Jeff. If it's true, it's true -- if it's
not, it's not. I was not there in 1947. I cannot swear if it is or isn't. A
complete charade could be presented to me, and I could be fooled if it were
presented properly. It could be suggested that the consultant is a bold-faced
liar, or that he has had information given to him that is untrue but looks
very plausible and believable at the level of detail that we presently know.

RENSE: Thanks very much for your time.

[Jeff Rense has invited Jack Shulman to be a live guest on "Sightings on the
Radio," where many of the foregoing issues might be explored in greater
depth. No date for that interview has yet been announced. Meanwhile, CNI News
will continue to pursue the ACC/Bell Labs/Roswell story.]