Preamble Note, July 2020

Had the self-aggrandizer Jim Kornberg come through with his promises, maybe Bill Zebuhr might have done all the right things he equally promised and failed to deliver. That would have been to the benefit of all: IE/NEF, the Mallove family, the development of alternative energy-capture technologies, and the survival of a number of laboratories - not just ours, but as well those we sought to include in the planned event in Colorado (Schwartz', Graneau's, Aspden's, etc). For us, it was, at the time, simply critical, even as we were ready to throw in the hat. It is true, we did continue, and between 2004 and 2012 published more research work than any other laboratory we know of. Much of it could have seen the pages of IE, but IE simply did not deserve it.

One wonders why so much treachery and forked-tongueness inhabited the characters that populated the epoch described here (in the following pages and the website) by its events. They most definitely evoke Reich's concept of emotional plague, rather than being the fruit of a conspiracy or conspiracies. Not that these did not occur - we recall the shameful day after Gene's funeral, with small-minded groups already jockeying for position in their attempts to control IE, as we gathered in Gene's home. And we remember a time when Zebuhr told us about his connections with a third generation Rockefeller, then in politics; maybe we should have paid closer attention to that revelation made after a night of drinking. Not being conspirationalist-minded, we didn't. We wanted to believe that despite all the frictions and half-truths, something constructive for IE and the NEF, and for the Mallove family, could have come out of this maelstrom of misguided and malevolent passions caused by the brutal murder of Gene. We were wrong.

One can see what IE has become today [in 2020] - not just irrelevant, but a third-rate magazine that peddles hopes and hoaxes conjured up by retards. Its spirit died with Gene. Yet, the whole series of events following his murder serves as some kind of a microcosmos of what the USA and the world have become in the past 16 years since. The false science of cold fusion or LENR became a kind of prototype for the false science of global warming and so-called climate change, just as the matrist maneuvers of a Christy Frazier or the deceptive manipulations of a Bill Zebuhr became a kind of prototype for modern Antifas and alarmist hysterias (Russian conspiracy hoax, widespread-racism hoax, Covid-epidemic hoax, and so on). We can also see what came out of the corporate organizations into which investment flowed - nothing. Nothing came out of the Rossi cold-fusion reactor, any more than it did out of BlackLight, the Pappian delusions and crookeries of the Sabori brothers, or the paranoid promises of Steven Greer and his Disclosure Project. If some (e.g. BlackLight) were misguided by wrong theories, others were nothing other than... well, simple hoaxes. The hoax is now a commodity that can be invested in. It is a narrative. There is no science, only narratives. Hoaxes are polled and certified by polls and pollsters. The media ministers hoaxes as so many narratives - complete with their associated cults. The App world has made sure there is no shortage of fools who will part with their money, no shortage of believers who will feel rewarded by polls. All now passes through a Grand Casino - this has replaced thought and knowledge, even in the natural sciences. At last, the absurd owns a probability - "the horse might talk".

The social world of human beings as we now know it has lost much of its interest and brightness, losing it at the very pace that civil liberties disappeared and scientific endeavours became less and less creative and inventive. It grew stale and dull; filled with death and the deadliness of recycled sameness. The ultimate product of all hoaxes is fear, the certainty of fear in a parano-hysterical mode. One rushes from one alarm to the next, in a spiral of fear and phobias. A cult of the irrational goes with every grand play at the casino. And mad fear breathes not just hatred and phobia, but self-hatred and self-destruction - a passion to end all others.

In effect, what these past decades have eroded is trust between human beings. No citizen can now trust another. Science itself lost not just the trust that society placed on it, but the trust of true scientists. Those who claim to fight against fascism are now the harbingers of a worse fascism still. Those who speak in the name of science, call it magic and are not even scientists. Where does all the money come from that funds the survival of these sowers of lies and discord? They are in governments, in the media, in the corporate world, in the academia. They are everywhere, not just as AI bots, but as flesh and bone zombies, wooden heads. Even if they live day by day, hat in hand and hood pulled over their wide open eyes, as exemplary members of the modern urban plantations, why have they found shelter and encouragement in what passes today for the culture of an epoch? How did the looting eco-zombie become normative?

In the wake of Gene's murder we also learned a lot more than we already knew about the so-called system of justice. How corrupt the investigation of this murder was in its early days. How it led to uncovering a jungle of drug-dealing groups in Connecticut with their corrupt connections to local police. How much mishandling of police evidence took place. In effect, the investigation would have never fingered the official culprits had it not been for a second-hand denunciation... Further, we still have that question - what is behind the barbaric actions of these culprits - did someone put them up to it? We will probably never find out the answer to this question. The USA is not alone in being in the midst of judicial chaos and disorder - but it constitutes a particularly poignant exhibit of the present state of the human world: there is no rule of Law, because the State is immobilized from within; fractured, at war with itself. There are laws on the books, but whether they are poorly written or simply not applied, everybody does as it pleases. Judges, no less than politicians, celebrities, journalists or executives, do whatever they feel like doing because there is - or may be - a pay-off in it. They virtue-signal whenever possible; they openly denounce one another and even themselves. Arrested rioters who destroyed property or assaulted people are freed and encouraged to continue, such is their virtue. It is not a matter of there being two laws, one for the so-called elites, another for the incorrigibles, the rest of the citizens. It is the rule of Law itself that has ceased to exist. Defunding the police is a mere consequence of it. Corrupt politicians, another.

But all this cannot simply be blamed on the elites - the Soroses, the Gateses, and their minions, countless foundations and NGOs that work as veritable RICO entreprises. No Rockefeller controlled Zebuhr, any more than an Entenmann controlled Christy, and so on. It is difficult, indeed, to find the People - that People that Lincoln claimed the American Constitutional State was made by and for. It seems to have died out and been replaced by a multitude of Manchurian candidates, a diversity of abortive beings, as though a multifarious parasite had taken over the People, grown out of it, replaced it everywhere. Gene would have been apalled, just as we are. If, to be heard, one has to be on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and so on, there is hardly a point in trying to convey thought, ideas or the fruits of scientific effort. Autism has become generalized. Asphyxia everywhere. The "People" has given everything away, not just one's identity and privacy, not just one's freedom of expression or self-defence, but the very freedom to chart one's life, to become a sovereign individual. One does, at last, run out of words - and has nothing else to say. From east to west, north to south, it is the social that suicides itself. Requiescat in Inferno

1. The unreality of reality

Sharon Weinberger, a reporter from the Washington Post, contacted Dr. Correa in 2004, and had a long conversation with him about Dr. Eugene Mallove (Gene). She was going to write an article about Gene - a real article about the real Eugene Mallove and his interests in alternative physics, and not just one more sensationalistic piece about "Cold Fusion". Was. Because, as she herself said several weeks later, all that her editors wanted was a feature on Eugene Mallove's involvement with Cold Fusion and the indefinitely upcoming DOE review. So they nixed everything Dr. Correa had given Sharon during their hour-long conversation and during their subsequent email exchange. This, she said, led her to think she should be writing a book on alternative energy and Gene's real involvement with that field... As if her book publisher, too, would not demand a predetermined spin.

Sharon Weinberger's case is another example of what Gene unceasingly fought against, and did so even more poignantly in the past four years with respect to the publicization of our work - on the PAGD and in Aetherometry.

Instead of investigating who the real Eugene Mallove was, image makers peddle, again and again, the same pre-packaged image of an advocate obsessed with Cold Fusion. If the public ever wondered how a Stephen Glass arose in The New Republic, they only have to consider the information detrita they consume. And if editors would ever be compelled to consider what makes a Stephen Glass necessary and desirable, they only have to look as far as their own desks - where field-investigations are regularly replaced by lawyering, and facts by slants, spins and outright fabrications demanded by the Administration. Consider Jim Wilson and Popular Mechanics. As soon as Gene was dead and buried, it became fair game to attribute to him false, sensationalistic and erroneous statements. No one complained. Scott Chubb was quoted in New Energy Times as calling Wilson's fabrications an exaggeration. The new IE, in turn, quoted New Energy Times quoting Chubb, and reminded its readers that any press is good press.

This brings us to the end, or the death, of Infinite Energy. For what Gene had built there was a novel synthesis of science journalism and scientific research. It was not so much a journal or a magazine as it was a product, tool and reflection of Gene's own process of open scientific inquiry. So open that, when Gene concluded that the field of Cold Fusion was trapped in a scientific cul-de-sac - unable to yield a reproducible and controllable excess heat cell, unable to progress in its understanding of a growing plethora of phenomena, and incapable of delivering even a consistent reaction model of the fusion processes - he began charting a new course for IE. It is this new course which was abrogated, not just by the murder of Gene, but by what those who were in charge of IE and NEF chose to do with Gene's legacy.

IE was a rare publication - one that, even if it lapsed here and there into publicity of the wrong and the false, nevertheless did not stray from its open program, and refused to subordinate itself to the fashions of image-makers. So it is with great sadness that we write this document tracing how Gene's legacy and his spirit have been betrayed by those in control of NEF/IE. It was never our intention to engage in writing an exposé, but the sad facts of Gene's death and its aftermath oblige us to do what Gene would have done - to blow the whistle.

Not that we expect it to change anything, since all parties involved have now accepted the status quo, and - in hindsight - we are happy that Gene did not burden us with any of the powers and responsibilities pertaining to IE or the NEF. With respect to the former, it was our pleasure to write for Gene, but we thought that being members of the Scientific Advisory Board would not ethically permit us, at the same time, to send our experimental or theoretical papers to IE. Consequently, we refused his entreaties to sit on the board. With respect to the Foundation, we could not very well continue to apply for its grants were we involved in its Board or management. We had discussed this matter with Gene on and off over the past two years, and had told him also that we did not feel comfortable being involved in an operation which is essentially sponsored by a single benefactor, C. Entenmann (S. O'Donnell and one other fellow had ceased sponsoring Gene's work upon receipt of the most calumnious and judeophobic letters we ever read, penned by Kooistra and other members of Gene's organization). We note for the record, that Entenmann had been our guest on March 30, 2001, for a special PAGD and Aether Motor demonstrations, but chose to never once fund their commercialization or our research.

The unforgivable event of Gene's death changed both IE and the NEF - completely, and often in unexpected ways. During the period preceeding his murder, Gene had been going through a number of profound changes in his life. He had had no time to make appropriate provisions for NEF or for IE. We had exchanged many emails and phone calls abut this, and more intensely so since November of 2003. NEF only acquired its legal status in 2004, and the whole process had been initiated by Gene so that he would be able to (1) acquire contributors beyond his single benefactor, by widening the optics of the Foundation's interest in New Energy Technology; (2) create a non-profit structure where charitable donations could be solicited and applied to the most promising developments in the new energy field as grants to inventors so desperately in need of funding; and (3) rid himself of the dead weight of his previous partner, Jed Rothwell, and of certain associates, such as E. Storms, whom he deemed simply incapable of stepping beyond their own narrow prejudices, whether personal or professional.

Gene was tired of having to deliver enthusiastic reviews on old work that had failed to go anywhere, whether it was the old sing-a-song of the cold-fusioneers or the million and one theories of a dysfunctional electromagnetic, luminiferous Aether or its reincarnation as an equally dysfunctional ZPE. And he was deeply disappointed - along with Dr. J. (Alf) Thompson - that Entenmann never offered to support the work that Gene had become truly impassioned with - Aetherometry. As he wrote on March 2004: "I really desire a change to a mode in which I am concentrating on Aetherometry and becoming more intimately involved with it. I would find some way to keep NEF alive, with much less involvement by me."

Elsewhere, we will discuss the full extent of Gene's involvement with Aetherometry. But here, what is at stake is what became of IE and NEF in the wake of Gene's murder - and specifically, the nonsense being perpetrated in his name, and in a spirit that was most certainly not his. Such are the self-told lies of entire epochs...

In the days immediately following Gene's death, our sole intent was to try, along with other friends, to help the Mallove family and the Foundation to set all the surviving interests together on a harmonious course, in a manner which we thought Gene would have chosen. We offered all the help we could, but with growing sorrow saw ourselves progressively cut out of every loop, not through our own actions, but through the actions or inactions of the others involved. And so this document tells the story of how, after Gene's murder, our work and friendship effectively came to mean nothing at all to those who took over control of IE and NEF. But it is also, and above all, the story of how those who were left by Gene in charge of NEF/IE lied to us and misled us - and, what's much worse, lied to Gene's family, taking advantage of their distress and grief. But it would be, perhaps, too easy to blame just those in charge. As with all the opportunisms that have spread throughout this planet, it is never only those in charge who are responsible. Those who simply follow orders - in particular, bad and egregious orders - bear just as much responsibility for their consequences as those who issue them. Further, as in this case, those who give the orders are always part of a much wider movement (a mass movement which is variously called the market, market forces, the smart move, the public, etc) that sustains them, eggs them on, pushes them forward and sings their praises. This is much more than silent consent - it's a militancy of the false affecting an entire social grouping. Ah, of course, there is always at least one financier, one source of cacao that sends forth and blesses those in charge and the bourgeoning mass beneath them. And then there is the fear - the fear experienced by those on the bottom of the feeding chain - the silent consent.

Let us first consider the silent consent - a disease endemic to our social being. The consent amounts to a general unspoken agreement that no state of affairs is ever 'bad', in or of itself. Above all, it must be agreed that people are generally good. This is even the reason why (we are told) Humanity must be held as a value - and indeed, this value is held in general by the worst and most self-serving human beings, those who stop at nothing to execute the designs of Power. They are addicted to Power. But as a matter of fact, people are not 'good'; moreover, they are becoming worse and worse, and the same is true of those who lead them. Nowadays, leaders hardly even bother to make the effort to appear to be good- and silence is, in general, the utmost extent to which they, too, would care to go in order not to appear to be bad. So their rackets, their grime, their designs are all enveloped in silence.

Anyone who breaks this silence is viewd as the irritating child who cannot stop itself from exclaiming that "the King is naked". Around the exposed fact, a multitude gathers like a menacing storm - to cover the nudity of the compromised King and stop up the mouth of the offending child. The fact is, the victims are willing - they'd much rather look away and imagine their King to be finely dressed. Those who confront reality and seek to alter it - those who escape being part of the silent consent - must always meet the simple and commonplace truth of being wrong. Wrong for having violated the silence. Wrong for not consenting to the imaginary. Wrong for not willing to be accomplices. Wrong for not playing along. Wrong for violating the consensus of the group. And stupid for having dared to combat those in Power. Truth is what an epoch deems it to be. If the epoch wants the naked King to be finely dressed, the King is finely dressed, and that is its truth. Those who then claim the King is naked cannot be telling the truth - they are, by definition, lying, proclaiming an outrage that no majority would ever dream of entertaining.

And though today we are no longer ruled by Kings, inside that envelope of silence that vacuolizes all real questions and challenges, one finds the militancy and dominion of the false and thousands of volunteers only too eager to uphold it. Truths have found their consensual equivalence through a principle of exchange, and the Kings that remain are merely imaginary. If, before, we had a naked King, we now have no King at all, but an objectively true image of a finely dressed King that comes to occupy his place. Images don't lie - one is still told. All the assemblies of people can freely raise their heads to behold a finely dressed King. No one can yell anymore - the King is naked! - for there is no King, and the image that glitters is not naked, but splendiferously dressed. The truth of perception can no longer be reached by simply raising one's eyes from the ground.

It might be thought, therefore, that it is image-makers, not Kings, who now rule, but even that is not true. For image-makers receive wages to have their images rule.

Which brings us to IE and what Gene had tried to make of it - for it was a constant combat to free it from the clutches of image-makers and their lobbies. From a certain perspective, Gene was hemmed in. IE had originally been solely dedicated to developments in the field of Cold Fusion. This was its stated mission, and it was predominantly amongst cold-fusioneers and those interested in the field that it found its audience. But there were two events which, over time, inexorably propelled both Gene and IE to move beyond this restrictive founding impetus and initial preoccupation: the slow death of the Cold Fusion field, made inevitable by the inability of its thousand researchers to come up with a single, reproducible demonstration of the effect, and the emergence of Aetherometry - with its various working, stand-alone technologies - with no institutional support and no cadres of image-makers.

Where was the excess heat of the Ohmori-Mizuno glow-discharge water cell? Where was Les Case's catalytic fusion? What happened to the Patterson cell? What happened to Hagelstein's theories? Cold Fusion had become a fad for image-makers of the alternative energy markets, a circus for promoters and corporate sideshows.

Increasingly, Gene wanted to broaden the scope of IE's interests - but this would prove to be problematic on several accounts. First there was the organized resistance of the cold-fusioneers who did everything in their power to undermine this effort, and who had found their vociferous banner-carrier in the person of Jed Rothwell. So Gene had first to pry IE loose from the Rothwell-Storms cabal and its silent acolytes, of whom, at times, there seemed to be no end. Then, there were the people Gene had at hand, people mindful of vacuous notions of marketability - not truth, thought or innovation. From M. Carrell to Christy Frazier, these were small-minded individuals who spent most of their time thwarting Gene with their 2 cents' worth or their marketable allegiances. And there was that immense field of half-illiterates, half-mongrels and totally retarded opportunists that have never stopped speaking of an "Ether", even if they understood literally nothing about it.

How to avoid the two pitfalls and still have an audience for a better IE? That was Gene's problem, and no mean feat to try to accomplish. His delicate balancing act was to free IE from the yoke of the cold-fusioneers and from the highly destructive antics of the Rothwell faction, but without falling into the bankrupt rut of the mystical Ether believers. Siding with the latter would be an even worse mistake than siding with the former. Even a cursory glance at the field reveals the complete idiocy of these Etherians. Most remain attached to simplistic 19th century conceptions of the Ether - the electromagnetic Ether of Maxwell, the luminiferous Ether, or still more degraded versions of this junk science, embellished with mystical and obscurantist marvels. A few still endlessly pursue the residuals of the Michelson-Morley and Miller experiments in an attempt to vindicate some abstruse notion of an Ether Drag - or even to, somehow, marry it to their belief in some nebulous orgone. While others still, more sophisticated, find in the mCBR their New Ether and, rechristening it as ZPE, sail off to seas of impossible mathematics and cheap psychologism. You will notice that it is always the same, tired, old version of the Ether that they propose, no matter what the packaging: an electromagnetic Ether, a photonic heat bath, an adulation of Light as if Light were a first principle of everything.

Oh, yes, lately there are also those who no longer speak of Dark Mass but now speak of Dark Energy (copycats of our work...) -but still have not found the courage to say that Dark Energy is Massfree - which it is. We suppose they'll eventually get there when the grants from the Canadian and British governments finally permit such avowal, though they'll probably opt for the term "massless", on grounds of marketability. After all, something that lacks is always better than something that is free and plentiful.

Gene did not want IE to fall to the level of KeelyNet, or to the level of James DeMeo's anorgonomism, or to the level of Puthof's and Haisch's fictional mathematical physics - or even worse, Sarffatti's and Shoulders' abstruse confusionism.

If the centers of Cold Fusion were rotten and had little to offer, the margins occupied by the Ether believers were still more decomposed and insufferably inane.

Gene had become convinced that unless he dedicated IE to the science of the only Aether there ever was, Massfree Energy in all its manifestations, unless scientists came to understand that this Aether is not Light, is not electromagnetic, is not what is dragged but what impels, is not stationary but that which moves, IE would be doomed to become another image-maker magazine, another purveyor of fashionably empty sensationalist hype.

Gene did not have much choice. He would either raise the standard of IE, and publish only the serious writings of workers like Tesla, Reich, Aspden, Hotson, ourselves, and others genuinely attempting to break open the gates to the new Physics of energy, or IE would become a forum for all and any idiocy pretending to be scientific. For such fora already exist in the vanity-publication industry that took over peer-reviewing in all branches of science.

The very logic of marketing dictated, through publicity and networking, an eclectic approach, but such an approach had become more and more difficult to conciliate with the aetherometric work Gene was increasingly engaged in. So, he would leave, at times, the fate of IE in the balance, and allow deadlines to run up to the last minute - a sure sign that he was losing interest in it. When he sent us, for our evaluation, material submitted for possible publication, we so often had to reject it, that he finally began to joke about a new scheme he had devised - to, instead, inform us that he was going to publish the objectionable article, thus obliging us to criticize or rebuke it, so that he could publish our response side-by-side with it. Using this technique, he planned to contrast the power of aetherometric thought with the prevailing idiocies in the field, hoping that this would permit him to find a balance for the eclectic approach he favoured. We, on the other hand, were not so enamored with the game - all the less so as we felt it would only dignify confusionistic junk by providing it with an undeserved forum, while demanding substantial work on our part on top of our already overburdened schedules - work that, though unremunerated, would still have to fall within the constraints placed upon IE by the single sponsor. But on several occasions, Gene nevertheless went ahead and published some articles of that base order, in the hope of provoking us to contribute counter-articles or letters to the Editor. It was his occasionally bombastic way of both filling IE with content and shaking the fatigue he was experiencing with running it. He had, over the years, placed many hopes in inventors whose technologies never never lived up to their initial claims, and now that he had taken up the serious study of Aetherometry, he was growing increasingly tired of having to generate fad after fad from the same magnetic overunity motors, the same fruitless cold-fusion claims, the same tired old models of Ether as mCBR, of Ether as Light, with their characteristically poor or undecipherable mathematics.

As a result of this hiatus, Christy began to take over more of the routine selection of candidate papers. Gene ceded to her more and more of the daily business of running IE, and the ramifications of this did not become apparent to us until a few weeks before his death, when during a conversation between Paulo and Gene about Gene's intention to reject a ridiculous rant, devoid of any factual accuracy, submitted by DeMeo - Gene chuckled and said: "Christy is not going to be happy; she wanted to have it published".

Tired of the image-making impositions placed upon him by IE, Gene was caught in a conflict between the truth of science and the truth of the image-makers - in the midst of only too many anglers, busily spicing up their cold fusion salads and brewing their Ether stews. The ethos imposed by the eclectic approach, where all ideas reduce to the same indifferent exchange value, was the opposite of what science and Aetherometry demanded of him. The degradation to a new-age-magazine-fighting-for-survival had threatened IE since its inception - and (as is even more obvious to us now), amongst those most closely involved with IE, it was only Gene who ever fought against this.

2. The first three weeks after Gene's murder

As we were returning from the Concord cemetery after Gene was buried, Bill Zebuhr turned to Paulo and said - "Now, naturally, I think that you should become the Editor-in-Chief of Infinite Energy". We were both taken by surprise. Clearly, Bill did not know why Paulo had refused to be more deeply involved with IE nor why such a move would meet with resistance from every direction, from the Cold Fusion factions to Christy, to - as we then believed (an erroneous impression which was subsequently dissipated by Alf) - the NEF's sponsor, C. Entenmann. So, we explained to Bill why, even if we could take sufficient time away from our own work, this would not be a good idea - or even a feasible one.

As if signalling future developments, the pathological Jed Rothwell made a point of inflicting his presence both at the Beth Shalom temple and, later, at the Mallove residence, where Gene's widow and family were receiving condolences following the burial. Throughout the funeral service , Rothwell, Scott Chubb, and Mitchell Swartz sat together, with Rothwell incessantly guffawing and preening himself as though he were attending just one more cold-fusion conference, one more software self-marketing blitz. Added to the fact that we still had fresh in our minds the gratuitous, malignant and incessant attacks Rothwell had, both publicly and behind closed doors, launched against Gene while Gene was still alive, this was offensive beyond words.

Having gone back to Gene's home ahead of us, Chubb and Rothwell were just leaving together when we arrived with Bill - our paths crossing on the driveway. Like us, Bill was quite upset with Rothwell's presence, and as they walked towards us, Bill commented - "He doesn't even have courage to look you in the eyes". To which Paulo retorted - "No he doesn't. He's a coward."

On the same day - the very day of Gene's funeral and burial - as we returned, together with Bill Zebuhr, from the cemetery to Gene's home, we discovered, to our profound disgust, that two lists of candidates for Gene's position of Editor-In-Chief of IE were already being circulated there, on two separate pieces of paper. Ken Rauen, as we would come to discover, was the promoter of one of these lists. A total of five candidates figured on these lists: Steve Krivit, Jed Rothwell, Sterling Allan, Tom Valone and Scott Chubb. Krivit, Rothwell, Chubb and Rauen had all been in attendance. When Bill Zebuhr discovered that Ken Rauen was circulating one of the lists (presumably, the one which proposed Allan and Valone), he cornered Ken and in forceful terms, almost trembling with anger, told Ken to put an end to it - that it was neither the time nor the place for such antics. The next day (May 18th), when we met with Christy, she began the conversation by complaining about Krivit who, she said, had phoned the IE line "more than 40 times" to repeatedly tell her that he was the ideal person "to step into Gene's shoes". Then there was Hal Fox and his Mormon backers. He had, on the Saturday or Sunday following Gene's murder, told Christy that his organization was the natural choice to take over IE, since they had a pot of some $30 or $40 million to operate it (!).

When we saw Christy at the IE offices on May 18th, she was devastated but very amicable. We sat down with her, and later with Bill when he came in, and discussed a number of matters regarding Aethera Co. and Gene's dispositions - which were very few indeed. The conversation then turned to the projected next issue of IE which would be, of course, an homage to Gene. While still grappling with the horror of Gene's brutal murder, having no indication of how it had come about, but remarking the unmistakable circlings of the opportunistic vultures seeking to profit in one way or another from the events, we now found ourselves faced with having to think about the best manner in which to honour him in a memorial IE issue. It was with mounting disbelief that we listened to what Christy, with a sudden belligerent assertiveness, put forth as her positions with respect to anticipated submissions from Jed Rothwell and Mike Carrell. Though she expressly declared she disliked both individuals, she stated that, whereas IE would not publish a submission from Carrell, she had already decided that a contribution from Rothwell would be published To our astonishment, Christy proceeded to claim that, in her view, when Rothwell was part of IE and regularly wrote for the magazine, sales were higher; and that his columns were quite popular. She knew this - she said - because initially she had been the person in charge of subscriptions. Besides, she said, she felt that Rothwell, having been a former partner and a 'friend' of Gene's, deserved to be published in IE. We were completely aghast at hearing all this. After everything that Rothwell had done and said and written about Gene and about us, after all the pains Gene had undegone to finally definitively remove him from IE - here was Christy, appearing to make his re-admission one of her first priorites, and in a tribute issue to Gene, no less. We were horrified. Paulo, of course, took immediate issue with Christy - but because Bill chose to intervene, stating that he would not oppose an article from Rothwell, providing it was pre-purged of any offensive content, we relented. It was, after all, Bill's decision to make, no matter how deeply we disagreed with it; but we were, at least, promised that nothing would be printed without Gene's family first having the opportunity to review it. Bill - in keeping with an earlier discussion we had with him (on the way back from the cemetery) regarding our willingness to take up an informal advisory role with respect to future IE content - promised to send us copies of any dubious submissions, including Rothwell's. This was a promise that he repeated a number of times afterwards, including the time we saw him again in Portsmouth, in August (ie, after the IE tribute issue came out) but which he never acted upon (and not for lack of dubious submissions).

Christy was evidently on the move, and IE was on its way towards becoming the domain of Marketeering Matrism.

On the night after Gene's funeral, Gene's old friend Jim Kornberg, his wife, Bill and we had dinner together at the Common Man, in Concord, where Bill and we had last had dinner together with Gene and Joanne, a year before. Weighed down by the sorrowful emotions of the day, and following a comment made by Jim - that, though we had all lost a great friend, perhaps we had now also made a few new friends because of it - Paulo suggested a way to transform this hideous event into a constructive, positive process. The idea was to organize a conference in Gene's memory that would be jointly presented by NEF, Gene's family, us and Jim. We exchanged some first thoughts about searching for potential sponsors, scientists and select media people to cover the event. We also discussed the future relationship between Gene's family and NEF. Bill stated that NEF would see to the provision of a severance pay for Gene that would be paid to Joanne, and the Mallove family would be given a position on the NEF Board. Paulo also made the suggestion that Gene's son, Ethan, might like to write either occasionally, or on a regular basis, for IE. We were all buoyed by this idea, and preliminary planning as to how all this could be brought about occupied the remainder of the evening's conversation. We left rather buoyed as we parted company late that night.

On Wednesday we saw the Zebuhrs for dinner in Nashua. Here we had our second shock - after the one Christy had given us in the matter of Rothwell. Bill's wife, Christina, became rather vociferous at dinner about what she thought Bill should do about NEF and Joanne Mallove. She did not want Bill involved in NEF because she felt he needed to focus all his attention on Ovation, Bill's company specializing in processing human fecal waste, which, at the time, had a deadline of June 30th to obtain some $500K in order to continue. She was in panic mode and, to our astonishment, threatened, right there and then, to divorce Bill, should he insist on taking up, in any meaningful way, the position left to him by Gene. This was a bit much - and who knows if it wasn't, for some reason, done expressly for our benefit. When it came down to the question of hunting for sponsors, Christina thought that Bill should be exclusively looking for sponsors for Ovation, and not wasting precious time on NEF. And on the matter of Joanne, she was even more wounding: she thought that Joanne should receive no compensation but, quite simply, 'get her ass out and find some work'. She gave the example of a blind woman, also named Joanne, the widow of an Ovation employee who had died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition; this woman was now surviving on her own - having found a job to which she could commute by way of public transportation. Such a hard and drastic reaction seemed to us overblown, cruel and uncalled for. And we also thought Christina hypocritical, since she herself had speedily taken the opportunity, on the day after Gene's murder, to put together for Ovation's visitors a flyer that read: "Dr. Eugene Mallove - an enthusiastic Ovation supporter and special friend to Bill Zebuhr became the victim of a brutal attack causing his death, Friday May 14th. Gene has visited onsite several times and introduced many potential investors to the Ovation opportunity. He used his influence and contacts to arrange for our coverage in business Week, September 2002. In addition to being missed by his family and many friends, our company has experienced a significant loss. Z is of course stunned as well as devastated personally by his loss of a brilliant and creative resource for exploring many yet undefined opportunities and intellectual uncertainties yet to be understood in our universe." The gall!

And now, some five days after this fit of inspiration, Christina was paying back for the enthusiastic support that this dear friend Gene had given Bill, with as heavy a stick as she could find. Now we could gauge just how significant the loss of Gene had been to her. Even Bill seemed shocked that Christina would go on and on about this - lecturing us as if we should be the ones conveying to both Joanne and Bill her message. We stood by apalled, but admired Bill's fortitutde in dealing with his wife and taking the side of his promise to Gene as well as our common agreement. More than ever, it was now necessary to give definitive body to that agreement. So, as soon as we arrived back in Toronto, we set to work on producing a written proposal, which we sent to the Mallove family, to Bill and to Jim, on Saturday, the 22nd of May.

However, on the night before we finished it - or exactly 1 week after the murder of Gene, and 1 day after we left NH - a meeting took place between the Mallove family and Bill Zebuhr, which Jim Kornberg 'crashed', and which - in our opinion, unnecessarily - went sour. The complaints that, on the next day (Saturday), Paulo heard specifically from Jim and Bill, were unbelievable. Jim was afraid that the NEF would leave the Mallove family in the lurch, with no financial support, while using the Mallove name and Gene's work to its own advantage. Bill, on the other hand, was upset that Jim interfered in the settlement that the NEF was proposing to provide for Gene's family and, in response, tried to impose his authority, repeatedly stating to those present that there was only one person in charge at NEF, and that was him, and that the Malloves and Jim had to understand that. None of this boded well. Of course, we were quite concerned and upset with this unexpected development.

Given that Bill had been Gene's choice to head the NEF and that Bill had always acted properly and correctly with us and anyone else we knew of up until then, we supported Bill. Paulo tried to convince Jim, through several phone calls on May 22nd, how important it was for the Mallove family and Jim to attempt to settle things amicably with Bill. Based on the apparent good-will of all parties to come to an agreement, we sent out the proposal we had been working on, which was designed to take into account what had been previously agreed upon, as well as put forth some further suggestions intended to bring about a conjunction of all interests. We felt that Bill, the Mallove family and Jim had, in attempting to keep the work and spirit of Gene alive, no alternative other than to iron out any differences that might have arisen among them and to remain true to both their words and each other. Our proposal read:

Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 19:33:23 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Jim Kornberg, Bill Zebuhr
CC: Ethan Mallove, Kim Woodard
Subject: Our proposal

Dear Jim and Bill -

After much thought on all of this, we are going to try to conciliate all these different desires that are tearing us all apart.

We would like to keep this communication open between all of us, on the matters affecting NEF/IE. This is a method that for the past four years we employed with Gene, Malgosia and Uri on all matters between us - since we have no secrets from one another, and it keeps all matters transparent to everybody.

Here is the proposal that we think has the greatest chances of meeting most of the objectives. We view the strategical objectives as follows: 1. Help solve Joanne's financial problem by creating an immediate source of funds; 2. Get significant contributions to NEF happening right away; 3. Get a substantial investment in Bill's Ovation asap. As we all know, all these three are inextricably linked at present: if we do not try to help Bill, he is at risk not only of losing his tremendous company and his work of nearly two decades, but we will lose also the only person at NEF that can make it succeed in Gene's spirit and protect Joanne from that side of things. We believe, like Gene did, in the total integrity of Bill. And without an independent funding mechanism, NEF could also slip from Bill's control. So, these objectives must be solved with synergy.

The solution we propose also has the capacity to prevent this entire domino effect from happening. We propose a one-day seminar for Investors on Forefront Ecological Technologies in the memory of Gene and to the benefit of his family and NEF, that would be billed as such in channels of our choice (IE is the perfect vehicle for this, but the memorial issue that Christy is preparing will not come out until July 7th or so). A Committee should be formed for these purposes by both of you, and we think that Ethan and/or Kim should be included. If the location is Colorado, at Jim's place - and we have to make sure that the logistics there would be satisfactory before a final decision - then, let us say, as Jim put it, that we set a maximum of 50 attendees. We will send some invitations out - with a response request - to targeted sponsors/investors. We suggest a list composed by the following (...) Out of these 12 we may be able to count on 6. More suggestions are needed, and if we half their number we should have, say, 15 expected guests. (...) From these guests we ask a donation for either the family or NEF or both (originally we thought it should be billed as a support for the family, and the family could then turn around and make a partial donation to NEF in turn). To fill the other 35 positions we place an ad or ads, that indicate that the number of participants is limited and put a price of say 5K for attendance. With careful timing this could permit us to actually select those applicants that would be of interest and exclude those we already know have nothing to offer.

The monies will go to the family and NEF according to a formula we should agree upon, that discounts the airfare only of some of the invited speakers (and of Ethan, of course, and Kim and Joanne if they will attend, which we believe is their present desire after talking to Ethan about this), and Jim's expenses for putting it up at the ranch.

Now for the rostrum. Ethan could open the session with a tribute to Gene. This could be followed by three business presentations - first by Bill, in his quality of NEF Chairman, with a pitch to help the NEF. Then, we suggest, by someone from Ovation, and Christina would be our choice if she would agree and Bill concurred. Then we could have Uri Soudak discuss business models and our proposal (we have already talked to Uri, and in principle he agrees). Similarly, if any of the invited speakers would want to present their own proposal we would make time for them to do so. This should be an opportunity they would welcome. And Jim could end that session. A second session would have Bill present his work at Ovation (would it be possible to demonstrate a prototype?), us present our work, and to be true to Gene's spirit and true to the only devices which he tested or judged that worked, we would invite Harold Aspden and Mitch Swartz, and we could also do so with Peter or Neil Graneau. Harold could introduce his new patent and method described in the last IE issue, and Mitch would be likely happy to find an outlet for his current cold fusion kit. This way we would have a blend of all the technologies that Gene thought should be pursued. We would have to stay away from Ken Rauen, given his present connection with the conspiratorialist and anti-Semitic Sterling Allan.

We should also invite two or three maximum selected media people (Gene left us and Uri the names of those he would have contacted; so we should discuss them and other suggestions between us). The science and technology presentations should be simple and accessible and short (we suggest 15 minutes each). We could think about presenting any of the videos we have of Gene at our Lab as a separate feature.

Now, as to problems with timing. Bill's deadline is a problem (...) We do not see how the proposal can be made to happen in the short time needed by Bill not to loose Ovation. However, after talking to Bill this afternoon, he is hopeful that by this week he may well have a solution to his problem. If all else fails, Uri has our request to contact Sragovich and pitch Bill's technology, if Bill will so desire.

Uri feels strongly that this proposal can only happen if the event is promoted as a chance to see our Aether Motor in "a shocking demonstration". He may well be right, but this entails substantial costs in transporting the equipment down to Colorado, and makes the logistics of the entire affair much more complicated. We feel that it might not be necessary, but will consider it if all of us arrive at the conclusion that to raise the monies intended right upfront with the seminar, this is a must. We thought that a video presentation of our work would suffice. Moreover, we would not want this celebration of Gene's lifelong quest for having different alternative technologies funded to become, instead, a showcase for our work. We feel that this may well not be the right occasion and that it would detract from our objectives of helping the family, NEF/IE and Ovation. This is also why it is so important to know whether we can count on Jim's contacts. If (...) give us permission to use their names, we could use them to promote the conference and the anticipation of meeting other potential sponsors interested in alternative technologies that Gene promoted. Please let us know your thoughts. We would like to copy Uri on this matter, since we and Gene never had any secrets from Uri - and he has offered to help. Ethan and the family have given us permission to do so, but we shall not send this to Uri until both of you, Bill and Jim, also give us that permission.

We are also suggesting that Ethan and/or Kim should have a prominent role in NEF/IE. Specifically that, with our help, (1) Ethan could actually write the main editorials and derive the legitimate income that was Gene's without rocking the legal framework, and (2) that Ethan or Kim should take Gene's position on the Board or at the very least become members of the Board. It is our understanding that Bill has agreed to this - though he noted that some income adjustment might have to occur. Well, let us see if our effort can help close that gap.

(...)

We would like to find constructive solutions to our problems together. We believe that only this fits the impeccable spirit which was Gene's own and which he would like us to share if we chose to do combat together. Unfortunately for all of us, we do not see any other way to protect Joanne and prevent the murder of Gene's spirit which his false allies or enemies are already attempting to do, but to go forward with this plan.

Please let us know asap about your thoughts on this. If at all possible, tonight.

Paulo

NB - Since we are sending this, in essence, with the consent of Joanne, Kim and Ethan, we felt we should cc them on this. If they disagree with any of this, we obviously would like them to tell us so that we can think about changes that may need to be made.

We believed that given the good will summoned on all sides, we could pull off the proposed conference both transparently and constructively. This belief was also shared by Kim, Joanne and Ethan. Only later would we come to discover that neither Jim Kornberg, who had adamantly pushed for the event, nor Bill Zebuhr, who had also appeared to be completely enthused about it, were the least bit interested in actually bringing it about. Each on his own act of deception.

Moreover, we note that we would not have written this proposal if we did not agree with Bill on the importance of helping Ovation to find funding as soon as possible, any more than we would have written it if we felt that the question of securing a proper financial settlement for Joanne not been satisfactorily dealt with.

On that very same Saturday, not having a phone number for Charles Entenmann, Paulo spoke with Alf, and asked him to ask Charles to do three things - one, to secure some form of financial compensation for Joanne, by either gifting a sum to her, or providing for her something equivalent to severance pay, since Bill had effectively promised something he didn't have the means to deliver; two, to give a guarantee that Charles would continue to sponsor Gene's work - IE and the Foundation; and three, to put Charles and Bill in contact with each other. Alf assured Paulo he would do his best to talk to Charles about both matters. And he also assured Paulo that, in the event of the planned conference, he and Charles would attend. Paulo immediately phoned Bill, but could not reach him:

Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 22:43:43 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Important

Dear Bill -

I just tried you but you have the fax machine on. I just spoke with Alf and I need to talk to you about Charles. Please give me a ring when you get in.

Paulo

Eventually, on that same Saturday, Paulo and Bill made contact. Bill declared himself perfectly willing to put the double request to Charles, as soon as Alf was able to arrange for them to speak together. He promised to let Paulo know the results of his conversation with Charles, so that we could rest assured that the other two concerns would be dealt with. Next day, having heard neither from Alf nor from Bill, Paulo wrote to Bill:

Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 13:22:26 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
CC: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Important address

Dear Bill -

I have not yet heard from Alf. Just in case he does not get a hold of Charlie today (I always try to be at least a step ahead), here follow Alf's current contact numbers:

(...)

Alf made clear to me that his own actual interest is in vacuum energy, not cold fusion. I know that I told you yesterday about my conversation with Alf - but here is what I wrote to Ethan late last night, and it can serve as a summary/reminder of the conversation I had:

"I do have what appear to be very good news. I just spoke with Alf by phone, and he promised to talk to Charles tomorrow and to ask for support for this initiative. He said that he and Charles would attend the event, even though he was quite depressed about the lack of financial support which this field has encountered. He stressed how unique Charles' devotion to Gene has been, and promised to ask Charles for a pledge to continue supporting NEF/IE and help Joanne (his words were: "for all that I know Charles will immediately write a cheque to Joanne"). He also cleared all misunderstandings that he was afraid might have occurred in the past between Charles and I. He promised to propose to Charles that Ethan or Kim should have a position on the Board and that Ethan should be involved with the magazine. He was very happy that I have offered to assist Ethan in this endeavor. He promised further that he would phone me tomorrow after speaking with Charles so that a call can then be made between Charles and Bill, at the earliest convenience and hopefully tomorrow (Bill will be in New York Monday). If I do not hear from Alf by 18:00, I think you should speak with Alf directly. He should give you Charles' numbers, if he has spoken with him. I believe Christy also has some of them. But Alf should first have a chance to speak to Charles, of course."

I have not heard from Jim. He and Sally were stuck in Atlanta overnight in quite a mess of re-routed flights. I had a fax delivered to his room in a sealed envelope, he promised to read it in the morning and get back to me - or leave me a message on the answering machine. I hope he is alright.

Paulo

The fax in question, sent to Jim, contained our proposal. But a month and a half would go by before we heard from Jim again, and he would never again either comment on the proposal or express any interest in helping to organize the conference. Meanwhile, the consensus that included Alf and Bill was that Joanne would indeed receive a decent compensation and that Ethan and/or Kim would be given a position on the board of NEF. These two stipulations had been the core points of our proposal and the object of our dilligences. On that very Sunday, and in this context, Bill committed this consensus to writing:

Subject: concenses [sic]
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 18:14:50 EDT
From: Bill Zebuhr
To: P&A Correa, Jim Kornberg
CC: Ethan Mallove, Kim Woodard

Paulo, Alex, Jim, kim, Ethan,

This is to let you know, that after extensive communication with Paulo in the last two days and our meeting last Friday, I believe we have agreement regarding plans to move ahead. The plan will be modified to fit future events but the basic philosophy is to keep the NEF going and to help Gene's family to the maximum extent we can without jeopardizing NEF.

Bill Z

To which we responded:

Subject: Re: concenses
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 18:25:18 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
CC: Jim Kornberg, Ethan Mallove, Kim Woodard

Thank you, Bill.

Paulo & Alex

On that same day, Bill would also send us another email, wishing us well for the trip we were about to embark upon, in search of a new location in which to reside:

Subject: Re: Statutes
Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 18:34:26 EDT
From: Bill Zebuhr
To: P&A Correa

Dear Paulo,

No need to fax the nef material, I have it. Thank you very much for all your help. I hope you and Alex have a great vacation and that you come back to good news that can help all of our projects. We will talk in the next few days.

Bill

On the morning of our departure, Paulo sent Bill one last message from Toronto:

Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 02:55:31 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: Statutes

Dear Bill -

I left you a message with the Nassau cell and home numbers of Alf reconfirmed. The former is the one I most often luck out in getting him. It is a complex system of intercessions...but if you keep after Alf, you will eventually get to Charles. I also suspect that Charles will call the office on Monday, no matter what. No word from Jim at all, and that does not look good. He may also have not taken kindly to my defense of you. I hope I am wrong in this fear.

Please let us know of major decisions by email. If need be leave us a message on the numbers we sent you, and we will return the call asap. We will let you know our room numbers once down there. We need to think very hard about what we will do next, and determine whether it is feasible to move down there to live. But we will take a rest, and for the first three days or so plan on doing nothing, or rather, not doing.

We trusted that Bill would do the right thing and inform Charles of what was required for Joanne, as well as request Charles' continued support. We also expected Alf to prepare the ground. As soon as we landed, we emailed Ethan:

Subject: Brief note - August, board meeting, Jim
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 16:58:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove

Dear Ethan,

Web access down here is just exorbitant, so our messages will be unusually punctual.(...)

On NEF: There is a Board meeting tomorrow at 8pm. We strongly think that you should attend and become part of the Board. We have said this to Bill and to Alf as well.

On the matter of Jim: Have you heard from him at all? We find it strange he never responded to our proposal - or to our faxes, emails or phone messages, especially when he was so adamant that he would.

We had hoped that Ethan would keep his eye on the ball - the simple truth being that, unless the Malloves had a position on the Board, nothing really could be de facto assured - neither the compensation for Joanne, nor the firm establishment of a process to ensure that the management and content of IE would remain true to Gene's spirit and work. On the same day, we also asked Bill for some feedback:

Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 17:00:25 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Touching base
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr

Dear Bill,

Have you heard from Jim? What about from Alf/Charlie? And the Ovation funding prospects?

By the way, if you need to speak with us, we're in room 206. Let us know,

Paulo

Shortly thereafter, we received a message that Bill was intending to phone us on Thursday, and we let Ethan know that we hoped to have some news for him at that time. Moreover, we were perplexed about Jim's silence, and felt it was high time that Ethan contacted him to see if he couldn't find out what had happened to him and encourage him to act. We should note that, aside from claiming the oldest friendship with Gene, this Jim Kornberg primadona posed openly as someone who would bring all sorts of financial support to IE and the Foundation.

Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 23:23:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Brief note - August, board meeting, Jim
From:P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove

Dear Ethan -

(...)

>> On NEF: There is a Board meeting tomorrow at 8pm. We think strongly that you should attend and become part of the Board. We have said this to Bill and to Alf as well.

Bill will speak with us tomorrow about the outcome of this. We suppose you did not attend (?).

>>On the matter of Jim: Have you heard from him at all? We find it strange he never responded to our proposal - or to our faxes, emails or phone messages, especially when he was so adamant that he would.

> [Ethan:] I haven't heard from Jim and I did email him. This might be more than he can bear right now, and I respect that - as much as I want his participation. I certainly hope he doesn't feel ignored by the compromise we've arrived at.

You should know that we would not have made our proposal if Jim had not agreed to it beforehand, at a dinner with us and Bill on the day of Gene's funeral. In fact, he suggested it - that's why we tried to concretize it. I know there was an unfortunate falling-out between Jim and Bill at that Friday meeting you alluded to - I heard the complaints from both sides. I had hoped the proposal would bring them together, and I think that Bill surmounted it; that's why I am worried about Jim's reaction - since I had a long conversation with him on the following day (Saturday) to coax him to proceed. I am sorry if he feels dejected by the compromises that were arrived at. The fact is that, without him, the part of our proposal relating to the planned event will not work out. We can think about alternatives - either in NH or in Toronto, but it will not be the same, since we were counting on him to make certain critical connections.

Thursday came, and, as promised, Bill called. He confirmed that the Board had agreed to give Joanne a real compensation package and had accepted that Ethan or Kim (Bill's preference was Kim) would have a seat as an observer at the next meeting, in June, and a permanent place on the Board one or two more meetings after that. We were relieved and grateful for Bill's fairness and honesty in attending to what we knew Gene would have wanted. Bill also assured us that he would take the initiative to speak directly to the Malloves about this. However, he still had not managed to make contact with either Alf or Charles Entenmann. In hindsight, it became clear that his promises were deceptive - the fact is that he had no actual means to bring them about. On Friday, Paulo asked Ethan whether Bill had in fact made the promised contact:

Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 23:37:09 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Bill, NEF board meeting
From: P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove

Dear Ethan -

Bill phoned yesterday evening with an update of the NEF Board meeting. He promised to talk to you and Joanne, and said he'd try yesterday or today. Has he? If he hasn't, let me know and I will summarize what he told me.

To which Ethan promptly responded:

Date: Fri, 28 May 2004 22:36:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: Bill, NEF board meeting
To: P&A Correa

Haven't heard from Bill. Do you recommend I try him?

We had ascribed Bill's support of Christy's decision to publish submissions from Rothwell to his not wishing to immediately rock the precarious boat that Christy appeared so adamant to steer. He had stipulated that any submissions would be closely scrutinized, and we expected it would undoubtedly take him some time to find his footing. We knew Bill had little knowledge of the incessant malignant, libelous onslaughts that Gene and we had to endure from the Rothwell camp, most of which occurred before he had even met Gene. And we had put down Bill's confrontation with Jim to Jim's almost overwhelming emotions in the wake of Gene's murder, his impulse to defend the family, and his failure to grasp the wider picture - the necessity of also securing a good working relationship between Gene's family and Gene's IE/NEF. But from that time on, we began to note that Bill increasingly failed in his agreements with us and with the Malloves, ever more systematically and overtly.

On Saturday, May 29th, Paulo wrote to Ethan -

From: A&P Correa
To: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: Bill, NEF board meeting
Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 22:53:25 -0400

>Haven't heard from Bill. Do you recommend I try him?

Yes, Ethan, you really should. I'm surprised that Bill has not done so. I can fill you in on what happened, if you wish, but it really should be Bill doing so - since he will have much more detail than I. Besides, it would be very good if you and he begin to talk. Has Bill talked to Joanne - do you know??

That same day, Ethan responded:

Date: Sat, 29 May 2004 21:33:14 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: Bill, NEF board meeting
To: A&P Correa

As far as I know, Bill hasn't contacted my mom. I'll try him tomorrow or the next day.

But the failure to make contact would continue:

From: A&P Correa
To: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: Bill, NEF board meeting
Date: Sun, 30 May 2004 23:19:13 -0400

>As far as I know, Bill hasn't contacted my mom. I'll try him tomorrow or the next day.

I am really surprised by this, on both counts. Please contact him asap. Let me know what happens. I know that Bill still had not succeeded in contacting Alf or Charles. That too surprised me, on both sides. My faith in human beings is at an all time low, yet I cannot believe that Bill will fail to do what he told me.

On June 2nd, Paulo sent another email to Bill from abroad:

From: A&P Correa
To:Bill Zebuhr
Subject: From Paulo
Date: Wed, 2 Jun 2004 18:42:55 -0400

Dear Bill -

I hope (...) that Ovation is well on its way to get the required funding. Please let us know. I also hope you will have had a chance to talk to Ethan and to Joanne, and let them know what you told me last Thursday - so that my anxieties on this matter can be put to rest. I have not heard from Jim and, I suppose, neither have you. If we shall go ahead with the planned event, we will have to think over the matter from scratch. Very depressing how he just dropped the ball entirely.

Have you been able to make contact with Alf or Charles? I continue to think that this is of paramount importance for the future of NEF. Alf should be in Florida as of this week. Please let me know how this goes. All I want to know is that Charles will have made to you the same assurances that I requested from Alf, and the latter consented to ask from Charles.

Finally, on June 7th, more than ten days after his phone call to us, we learned that Bill had at last talked to Kim about the Board's decision, so we wrote to Ethan:

"We know that Bill talked with Kim and by now you should know what was decided by the NEF Board meeting. Any thoughts on it? We only wished that you and Kim would take up a position on the Board, and that you would contemplate trying to make an editorial contribution to IE."

To which Ethan responded:

Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 06:46:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: investigation, NEF meeting, ...
To: A&P Correa

It looks like I will be taking a symbolic position on the board. This is a big honor for me. (...) I want so much to take part in the continuation of IE. I'd like to go into it full-throttle. (...)

Thank you for your encouragement.

Thus, by June 8th, some of our fears were put to rest- Bill had talked to Kim, and Ethan seemed committed to push for his own involvement in IE - to learn the Board ropes, as it were, and possibly try his hand in helping out with editorial material, even if one wondered what he meant by symbolic.

3. The Christy factor: an elephant in the room

We had, of course, underestimated the full impact of the Christy factor. This factor alone would have been sufficient to torpedo much of this arrangement, even if Bill had been determined to come through with his promises to Gene's family and to all of us.

No one could criticize Christy for having made herself indispensable to Gene's family and to NEF. While her contributions to the management of IE had become somewhat indispensable - as she did a lot of work that nobody else was doing, and did it reasonably well - with the loss of Gene, her job was on the line, and making herself indispensable to the family and NEF was the only way to protect it. However, already during our meeting with Christy and Bill on May 19th, Christy's pronouncements on the Rothwell matter had started to make clear that she had her own agenda - not only for what the new IE should become, but also for acquiring still more power within the NEF. She rationalized her agenda by the perceived threat from quarters such as those represented by Steve Krivit, who, as we had seen, had his own designs on becoming IE's Editor-in-Chief. And to the extent that this threat was real, Christy had both our sympathy and our support. But in the weeks that followed, it became apparent that she was aspiring to take over all final decision-making concerning the scientific content of IE - and in this she was, in our view, clearly overstepping both her functions and her abilities.

And indeed, though her title remained, as it had been in Gene's time, Managing Editor, in the weeks after Gene's death she began acting as if she was Editor-in-Chief. It seemed clear to us now that, had Paulo agreed to Bill's invitation to fill this role, Christy would have actively opposed it. For she had decided that the person who should become Editor-in-Chief was Bill Cantrell, arguing, in direct contradiction to our own communications with Gene, that this had been his wish. Whatever supposed proof there was to confirm her contention, remains unseen to this day. Christy had already made this suggestion - though somewhat less aggressively - to us and to Bill on the day after the funeral. But now it was matrism in the fast lane.

Christy also declared, during that May 19th meeting, that the content for the next three issues of IE had already been laid out by Gene - almost making it sound as if Gene had fixed these issues in stone, knowing that he would die... We found this posture grossly abusive.

In late May, while we were still abroad, we had an email exchange with Christy on the Cantrell matter - an exchange that shocked us at the time, but demonstrates well the tenuous ground on which Christy was making her peremptory determinations. The relevant exchange is here reproduced in toto, for it illustrates clearly how Christy's arguments, when questioned, would become stridently irrational and despotically final.

Date: Mon, 24 May 2004 10:49:17 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: Paulo and Alexandra Correa
Subject: hoagland

[Snip re. her complaints about Hoagland]

Wanted to mention that Krivit is asking many, many questions still. I have stopped answering since now they are not specific to Gene's life for any "tribute" he was doing. I have spoken with Bill briefly and will more in depth. They are wanting to know who our board is, since that has never been public info. It is for public info of course but I have avoided the question by telling them that I am overloaded and woudl like them to send me one email (not 20 or 30) asking all questions but to wait until next week. I will make sure that each Board member has a list of names to be wary of because given what is happening just today I suspect that some of these people will attempt to contact Board members.

I also hope to "streamline" our Sci. Adv. Board and maybe even get a few of them doing actual work. I know it is probably best that you not be on that list, but Bill and I are in agreement that we will confer with you when needed on scientific issues especially. Kornberg was someone Gene wanted on the adv. board but he told Jim that it might not be a good idea for his career, ha ha. Jim might want to be now, have to ask him formally after speaking with Bill further.

I think we have some good game plans in mind...Board meeting Wed at 6 p.m. Everyone agrees this has to continue. Bill just has to raise some money but hopefully CE will come through in a bigger way, etc.

So now Christy had made the decision that Paulo would also not be on the Scientific Advisory Board, though he had given his consent to Bill to fill this role when and where required. Somehow she arrived at that on her own. Not surprisingly, the intention to draw on our expertise with regard to scientific matters which Christy and Bill had declared so firmly in the immediate aftermath of Gene's murder, would also never be followed up, save for a few vague questions about this or that contributor that Bill broached with Paulo.

We answered Christy's overtures with our best recollection of a long exchange between Gene and Paulo about the scientific Advisory Board in the first week of February 2004:

Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 18:37:07 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: hoagland
From: P&A Correa
To: Christy Frazier

Dear Christy,

(...) Web access down here is very expensive, so our messages will be quite short (telegram type).

On the Scientific Advisory Board matter: Gene had asked us some three months back about suggestions and we had a few emails exchanged on this.

Our recollection of our suggestions is:

1)  Keep:
        Harold Aspden
        Robert Bass

2)  Add:
        either Peter or Neal Graneau
        Tom Phipps, Jr.
        Donald Hotson
        Mitch Swartz

3)  Drop:
        John Bockris
        Srinivasan

Since we're now clear with Alf/Charles, you and Bill and the Board are free to include us, if you see fit. Bill could also serve as advisor (thermodynamics, engineering, water systems, etc.)

On the Hoagland matter: many of his interventions seem to be on closed groups which may make monitoring difficult. He was in no way a friend of Gene's. When a few years back (3, we think) Gene approached him to help us, he wanted free access to our monographs. We gave him free access to the first 7, and asked him for feedback before going any further. We never heard from him again! Just as we had suspected would happen. If he now involves us or our name on anything, we're bound to react rather strongly and publicly - or sue him, if need be. We are in no mood for opportunists.

Though we were troubled by a number of Christy's positions and actions - her stance on Rothwell, her claims with respect to Cantrell, her surprisig sudden curtailment of our possible advisory role in IE, her apparent manipulation of Board rearrangements - we still did not want to assume she had a defined hidden agenda. And Christy's next message still gave us no clue about her intentions:

Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 10:32:50 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: P&A Correa
Subject: Re: hoagland

Gene and I had also had discussions about the Scientific Advisory Board. Phipps had already agreed to be added, just two weeks ago. Bockris could be removed for various reasons but it seems unnecessary UNLESS the board decides to reorganize the Sci Adv Board so that it has a "real" purpose. Removing someone without any real reason would seem offensive. I do believe that Bill intends to recommend that the Sci Adv Board be broadened a bit and perhaps have a more formal purpose. For instance, some of the main reviewers we use should probably be listed. We plan to work on this in the coming month.

We were well aware that Gene had desired a new beginning for the Scientific Advisory Board upon creation of NEF. Moreover, in 2003, Paulo had suggested to Gene that this Scientific Board should function as a Board of Reviewers, and Gene had held firm to that idea. Consequently, we answered Christy in no uncertain terms:

Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 23:28:54 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: hoagland
From: P&A Correa
To: Christy Frazier

> Gene and I had also had discussions about the Scientific Advisory Board. Phipps had already agreed to be added, just two weeks ago. Bockris could be removed for various reasons but it seems unnecessary UNLESS the board decides to reorganize the Sci Adv Board so that it has a "real" purpose.

Well, Christy, we have no real input on this, as you know, but Gene was definitely of a mind to drop a number of the names altogether. If Bockris is a racist, as you told us he is, he should not be there - but that is just our opinion, for all it is worth, based on what you told us. Gene was definitely intent on dropping Srinivasan because of something that happened between him, Gene and us, which - amongst other things - we believe led to an internal revenue investigation of our affairs. We do not suppose you would know anything about it, but there it is.

> Removing someone without any real reason would seem offensive. I do believe that Bill intends to recommend that the Sci Adv Board be broadened a bit and perhaps have a more formal purpose. For instance, some of the main reviewers we use should probably be listed. We plan to work on this in the coming month.

The Sci Adv Board should really function as a Board of reviewers, at the very least - and all the more so now that Gene no longer can decide what is or is not to be published. Again, this is just our opinion, which was also Gene's last time we discussed this by email.

We hope his can be of some help to you and the governing Board.

All this seemed to be allright, part of the setting up of new relationships amongst all of us. Soon, it seemed, Ethan and Kim would be involved. After a bit of searching through Gene's emails to us, we found the message that we had recalled, in which Gene had made it clear that Cantrell was a candidate to replace Storms on the Scientific Advisory Board, not a candidate for the position of IE's Editor-in-Chief. So, we wrote to Christy:

From:A&P Correa
To: Christy Frazier
Cc: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: Sci Adv Board
Date: Sun, 6 Jun 2004 23:14:36 -0400

Dear Christy -

After some searching, we came across what Gene told us about Dr. Cantrell last fall (see below). He did not mention his name as a possible Associate Editor (or even a potential replacement), but as a replacement for Ed Storms on the Sc. Adv. Board. We doubt whether Gene would want anyone associated with a manifestly large corporation such as Motorola to fill a more central role than this in IE. Please let us know whether Malgosia sent you our short email exchange from last Feb. on the topic of the Sc. Adv. Board, since we have also located this and can now forward it to you.

Hope this helps. Take good care of yourself -

A&P

"There will be something done with Storms, perhaps next spring, or even sooner. I have a replacement in mind -- Dr. Bill Cantrell of Motorola (he wrote one of the Einstein review pieces). Right now during a critical attempt to broaden our funding base beyond CE, I am reluctant to move Storms out. If he leaves himself -- always a possibility -- so much the better." 10/10/03

To our surprise, the simple act of forwarding this email from Gene threw Christy into an indignant fit. She flipped the wig. The only explanation that seemed to account for such an unbalanced, irrational response to a straightforward sharing of information was that she suddenly felt unmasked in the midst of her abusive program to dictate IE policy on the basis of unsubstantiated claims of what Gene would or would not have wanted. The tone and the spirit of her response only provided us with one more reason to feel that Bill should rein her in:

Date: Mon, 07 Jun 2004 09:27:15 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: A&P Correa
CC: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: Sci Adv Board

Please know that Gene and I had ABSOLUTE discussions about Cantrell being our editor-in-chief if Gene ever "left" to get a full-time job that would pay more. The discussions were quite real and I actually resent that you seem to think I would mislead anyone on this subject. There is no evidence that Cantrell will be the one to become our editor, he is just the ONLY name that Gene and I discussed as someone who would be worthy of the title, trustworthy, etc. Yes, he did talk to me about having Cantrell on the Sci. Adv. Board as well. The understanding I have is that if Cantrell became involved as editor, Gene would still be "on the side" and the idea he would ever not be our editor was sort of unthinkable to me anyway. But we had real, definitive conversations about why Cantrell was suitable. Further, Cantrell is already writing a series of editorial essays, a column tentatively titled "Dissident Trajectories." Gene had encouraged Cantrell to take the time to look at your work as well. . .

Yes, I got the email about the Sci Adv Board. I must say that Gene never told me we should remove Chino Srinivasan. And it is very unusual for him not to immediately tell me that he is thinking of removing someone from the Board. Perhaps he made some emotional statements to you about that matter, but then did not decide to pursue it. As you can tell from removals of Rothwell and Storms, these things were often done quickly and the moment he had intentions of removing them he did tell me. We had one conversation about Chino and the situation you mentioned but he never said anything about removing him from the Board. The NEF Board may restructure that list anyway, to have people who can do "real" work for us. Phipps had just agreed two weeks before Gene's death to be added to the Sci Adv Board; they had mutually agreed prior to that that it was in Phipps' best interests not to officially work for the magazine. But Phipps is one of our primary reviewers and it is fitting that he be on the list.

If you have suggestions for an editor-in-chief, it's not as though we have made any decisions at this point.

This belligerently categorical response - which was so far from the clear positions expressed by Gene in his mails to us - now really got our backs up. And it would now be used by Christy to make sure that we would have no formal advisory position inside NEF/IE. On the same day she wrote this email, Bill finally contacted Kim to communicate to her the Board's decision with respect to the Mallove family. And so we determined that what Christy was doing should not be left unaddressed - that Bill should immediately be made aware of it, and act accordingly to put her in her proper place.

From: A&P Correa
To: Christy Frazier
Cc: Bill Zebuh
Subject: Re: Sci Adv Board
Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 08:46:17 -0400

Dear Christy -

>Please know that Gene and I had ABSOLUTE discussions about Cantrell being our editor-in-chief if Gene ever "left" to get a full-time job that would pay more. The discussions were quite real and I actually resent that you seem to think I would mislead anyone on this subject.

We think you are over-reacting and there is no need to resent us for sending you the only note in which Gene mentioned Cantrell to us. We did not suggest or imply you were misleading anyone, but our recollection of our conversation at the IE office was that you were not so sure about this matter, anyway - and so we sent this along for our mutual information. We have no intention of disputing your certainty. As late as March, when Gene visited us, he did not mention anything of the sort, nor did he even raise Cantrell as a name for the Sc. Adv. Board, as he had last fall, even though he was indeed contemplating having to take up another job - in real estate. It is obvious to us that your professional relation with Gene would expose you to his ideas on this subject more frequently than our friendship and scientific relationship with him. As you know, Gene did consider us his best friends (and he ours) and we did know him for many years and in many ways of which you still have little idea. It is equally obvious that we have no real power in IE/NEF, and whatever input we might have had in the past was solely due to an intimate personal relationship with him. It is based on this and on what he told us that we do have our doubts whether he would have really wanted someone connected with a corporation like Motorola to fill his shoes, independently of whether he told you he might be contemplating Cantrell or someone else. It is equally obvious that, independently of what we think, the Board and you will make whatever decision is appropriate. Our role has limited itself to providing you and Bill with whatever markers Gene left us that might be of use, if you chose to avail yourself of them. That's all.

>There is no evidence that Cantrell will be the one to become our editor, he is just the ONLY name that Gene and I discussed as someone who would be worthy of the title, trustworthy, etc.

May we inquire when these discussions took place?

>Yes, he did talk to me about having Cantrell on the Sci. Adv. Board as well. The understanding I have is that if Cantrell became involved as editor, Gene would still be "on the side" and the idea he would ever not be our editor was sort of unthinkable to me anyway.

Indeed - when we last spoke with him about his taking up the real estate job, just before he went to Florida, what he told us was that he felt he could both jobs.

>But we had real, definitive conversations about why Cantrell was suitable.

We are not, and have not been, disputing this.

>Further, Cantrell is already writing a series of editorial essays, a column tentatively titled "Dissident Trajectories." Gene had encouraged Cantrell to take the time to look at your work as well. . .

That may well be the case, even if he never did take the time to look into our work... Anyway, our work, no matter how high it figured in Gene's mind, should not be any sort of a guide to select any future editor-in-chief.

>Yes, I got the email about the Sci Adv Board. I must say that Gene never told me we should remove Chino Srinivasan. And it is very unusual for him not to immediately tell me that he is thinking of removing someone from the Board.

Here we do have to take exception from your notion. Gene was thinking indeed of restructuring the entire Sc. Adv. Board - and only too often did he mention this to us over the last two years, reaching a crescendo last February when we were abroad and had frequent phone calls with him.

>Perhaps he made some emotional statements to you about that matter, but then did not decide to pursue it. As you can tell from removals of Rothwell and Storms, these things were often done quickly and the moment he had intentions of removing them he did tell me.

We're sorry to have to take an even stronger exception to your statement: Rothwell and Storms are precisely examples of decisions that Gene cooked for two years, much of it with us, through correspondence that we can provide. He was most careful to ask us to delay some publications on the Rothwell matter until he had gotten Rothwell out of the way, and he was of a mind to remove Storms two years back when Storms had the now public confrontation with us. So, things of this nature came, in fact, RATHER SLOWLY. Maybe they seemed quick to you because he only informed you when the decision had reached its final point - and it appeared, naturally, as a quick one to you.

>We had one conversation about Chino and the situation you mentioned but he never said anything about removing him from the Board.

Again, may we ask when that took place? You see, Chino went behind Gene's back to drop uninvited - with great rush and many demands - on our laboratory in Toronto, three years back, under the excuse he was visiting his daughter there. When we received him and declined to give him any demo of any kind (the time factor alone would have precluded such a possibility) upon his silly demands to be shown something, he STILL failed to inform Gene of his actions and the entire event. Chino, as you may well know, worked most of his life for the Tata family and their now nationalized nuclear complex. He has all sorts of contacts in the Canadian nuclear establishment and much more. Four days after our refusal, Revenue Canada began a three year investigation of our finances. This investigation was led by a fellow who was for ten years one of the major accountants of the Tata family, and who obtained Canadian citizenship in two years, after being in the USA for another two. For your information, Canadian citizenship requires a mandatory five years of residence. One of the major outlandish questions of this highly irregular investigation was how much money we had paid under the table to Gene for his unconditional support for our work! We and Gene hardly considered this a minor matter - and if he never mentioned it to you, it was simply because it did not concern you directly and was a very sensitive matter. Please keep in mind that Gene never discussed our confidential business with him with anyone else - you included. Gene was DEFINITELY of a mind to drop Chino as soon as the occasion would present itself, and this was, in his own mind, precisely when he would restructure the said Board.

>The NEF Board may restructure that list anyway, to have people who can do "real" work for us. Phipps had just agreed two weeks before ene's death to be added to the Sci Adv Board; they had mutually agreed prior to that that it was in Phipps' best interests not to officially work for the magazine. But Phipps is one of our primary reviewers and it is fitting that he be on the list.

Yes, indeed, and we ourselves often suggested that Phipps be there.

>If you have suggestions for an editor-in-chief, it's not as though we ave made any decisions at this point.

The two suggestions we had, we have already made them - one was to have Ethan do it with some tutoring from Bill and Paulo until he got it under his belt, and the other was to have some form of rotation without a designated editor-in-chief. Bill, of course, could well fill that role.

We hope this helps you in clarifying this matter. After talking to Malgosia, it appears that the email we refer to (from late Feb. or early March, 2004) was never sent to you due to a misunderstanding on our part. So you could not have known about it. We will fish it out again, and send it to you and Bill. It was written from abroad, following Gene's request that we make suggestions to restructure the Sc. Adv. Board. We do not believe you have seen it.

Stay well,

A&P

But Christy was not about to discuss the matter. Instead, she became positively incensed:

Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 09:40:13 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: A&P Correa
CC: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: Sci Adv Board

The discussions we had had nothing whatsoever to do with his real estate endeavors. These were discussions that we began having the first time we lost funding and had serious financial problems, which was in the O'Donnell/Entenmann transfer. We discussed this, not always in detail, probably five other times over the last three to four years. It had nothing to do with his newest ventures. It was a result of the possibility that we had little money and he might need to get another job. I'm not sure if Gene ever told you, but we had a contigency plan if we lost Entenmann's money. There was much discussion about whether I could do this magazine out of my own house with him working part-time in the evenings. We had a barebones expense sheet to see how much it actually costs to run the magazine without any extras and without his income!

I WAS NOT unsure or unclear when I sat down with you and Bill. I told you then, as I am now, that Gene and I had definitive conversations about Cantrell.

I do have much knowledge of your relationship with Gene. I did not have just a professional relationship with him either.

I was quite aware that the Rothwell and Storms issues percolated over a few years. I again resent your assumption that he waited until the last minute to tell me important matters about the organization of our foundation or magazine. I was privy to many emails over that time regarding this situation and he and I did speak about Rothwell in particular for many months. BUT I do feel that the Storms decision was made too quickly. I was copied on those emails when the decision was made, and I did see many of the prior discussions as well.

I do not wish to maintain this sort of dialogue with you. It has been hurtful to me that you presume that I know less than you about the operation of this organization, and that you presume that Gene did not share very much of what he was involved in with you and about his relationship with you. I have nothing but the best of intentions in making sure that the foundation and the magazine continue and hopefully grow and I have been working my butt off the last three weeks, and I have to say that it saddens me that you are the only ones who are somehow calling into question my judgment, my memory of events and my ability to manage things. You can call me over-emotional if that is what you choose, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a very level-headed, rational person.

You two are important to our future and we will need your expertise in many ways. Bill intends to keep you posted about some major decisions the Board makes and I know that he is communicating with you as well.

From: A&P Correa
To: Christy Frazier
Cc: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: Sci Adv Board
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 11:44:47 -0400

>The discussions we had had nothing whatsoever to do with his real estate endeavors. These were discussions that we began having the first time we lost funding and had serious financial problems, which was in he O'Donnell/Entenmann transfer.

Undoubtedly they began back then, but our query was specific to Cantrell, and unless we are mistaken, Gene did not even know him back then. So you have not answered our question.

>We discussed this, not always in detail, probably five other times over the last three to four years. It had nothing to do with his newest ventures. It was a result of the possibility that we had little money and he might need to get another job. I'm not sure if Gene ever told you, but we had a contigency plan if we lost Entenmann's money.

Yes, Gene mentioned the notion of such a plan, but to us he only mentioned he would do it out of his own basement. He even and often toyed with the idea it could become a simple sheet rather than a magazine. All of this, however, is not helping our discussion - since we hardly see how it is relevant to the issues we raised in the email that so offended you.

>There was much discussion about whether I could do this magazine out of my own house with him working part-time in the evenings. We had a barebones expense sheet to see how much it actually costs to run the magazine without any extras and without his income!

I WAS NOT unsure or unclear when I sat down with you and Bill. I told you then, as I am now, that Gene and I had definitive conversations about Cantrell.

Like so many projects Gene had, you had conversations about this. We do DOUBT indeed whether they were DEFINITIVE about the role of Cantrell in any way, shape or form. Nothing of this sort was ever definitive with Gene, anyway, for those who knew him well. Moreover, what we sent you was Gene's thought LAST FALL - nowhere does he mention such a role for Cantrell. And this is a fact, not a recollection of yours or ours.

>I do have much knowledge of your relationship with Gene.

We're sure you do and you so you should. We are equally SURE that matters that concern us and not IE or NEF, however, never went beyond Gene himself. Not only was he under NDA with us, but he only too often reminded us of the care he took about keeping such issues confidential. Moreover, if you are implying you knew about the Chino matter, then you were disingenuous when you insisted Gene would have not ditched him from the Sc. Adv. Board. We do not believe Gene would have told you about it in any detail - and that is why we chose to reveal it to you in our last email. And if Gene had revealed it to you, WHY then would you have wanted to keep Chino on the Board???

>I did not have just a professional relationship with him either.

Undoubtedly not - Gene had the greatest respect and admiration for you and your work, and he was truly your friend. BUT we do not believe for a moment that you were privy to certain matters that only concerned us and Gene.

>I was quite aware that the Rothwell and Storms issues percolated over a few years. I again resent your assumption that he waited until the last minute to tell me important matters about the organization of our foundation or magazine.

Look Christy - we have all gone through a terrible trauma, but we are trying hard not to get emotional with you here. Maybe you should try a little harder, also. We can disagree on the emphasis we each put on our recollections and yet still conduct a positive, rational dialogue, no? At least we should all seek to try. There is little reason to generalize about things the way you are doing with these emails. It was you who stated Gene made these decisions quickly. Now you contradict yourself. This is nonsensical, and so we called it into question.

>I was privy to many emails over that time regarding this situation and he and I did speak about Rothwell in particular for many months.

Well, we're sorry to have to bring this up again, and certainly the last decision is Bill's on this matter - as it was on the day we met [ie May 19th]. BUT we feel STRONGLY that after Gene wrote what he did to us about Rothwell, after the grossly indecent behaviour of the latter - conducted in public towards Gene (forget about us!) - after what he did on the day of the funeral, that it was a bit much to have you want to convince us why he should have a go at writing a tribute to Gene, let alone at making future contributions to IE!! We certainly would not want a psychopathic sycophant of that nature to turn around and say 'good' things about us once we were dead and buried - and we are pretty sure that Gene wouldn't either! If you want, we can quote you chapter and verse from the emails Gene sent to us in the past years, and in particular in the past year, about just what he thought about this ignorant prick Rothwell.

>BUT I do feel that the Storms decision was made too quickly.

Yes, YOU FEEL and likely FELT, but that is not HOW THINGS HAPPENED, and your feelings on this matter were and are grossly inaccurate. Again the record shows clearly how the decision was made, and you yourself admit you were not privy to all of it when you say:

>I was copied on those emails when the decision was made, and I did see many of the prior discussions as well.

We hardly know what you might have seen or not - but it seems to us that either you saw what Gene wrote to us for two years prior to the decision or, if you didn't, then your perception of 'how quickly it came about' is erroneous but understandable.

>I do not wish to maintain this sort of dialogue with you. It has been hurtful to me that you presume that I know less than you about the operation of this organization,

We have made no such presumption Christy, and up until now, we have had nothing but the highest regard for you, your performance of your duties, for your friendship and your honesty. You have, however, repeatedly ascribed wrong views to us in this discussion and we do not see the merit of continuing, either. We feel that the only explanation for your reactions is the stress you have been under. It has not been our intention to hurt you, and we think that if it were not for the stress and the trauma we have all been under, you would not have over-reacted the way you have. However, you are now in a greater position of power and responsibility and you need to act accordingly.

>and that you presume that Gene did not share very much of what he was involved in with you and about his relationship with you.

Here, once more, you have gone well overboard. We are sure Gene told you much about our relationship, but we are just as sure that he did not share with you or anyone else for that matter, save Joanne, matters - like that of Chino - which concerned us, and us alone, and were of a very sensitive nature. Gene never lied to us once about this, or anything else. Your presumption, in this respect (as it concerns our matters with Gene), really does not sit well with us.

>I have nothing but the best of intentions in making sure that the oundation and the magazine continue and hopefully grow and I have been working my butt off the last three weeks,

On this, rest assured Christy, we have no doubts - and anyone who knows us can openly vouch for it - no doubts about your intentions, your honesty or your dedication, and we have spoken well of you and your virtues.

>and I have to say that it saddens me that you are the only ones who are somehow calling into question my judgment, my memory of events and my ability to manage things.

We have not called into question your ability to manage things. Please note this is another unfair accusation. We have not called into question your memory of events - only your knowledge of our private communications in our relationship with Gene, and the specifics of the political and scientific considerations as they concern Cantrell (who, we're sure, is a good person), Rothwell, Storms and now Chino. Reread our emails and you will see how you have over-reacted to these specifics. We can now only hope this is due to the sorrow and stress you're under.

>You can call me over-emotional if that is what you choose, but anyone who knows me will tell you that I am a very level-headed, rational person.

Then, please, hard as it may be, do rise to the occasion. You are absolutely needed to make IE work. But you are neither a scientist nor privy to what was confidential between us and Gene. Your new responsibilities demand that you be better aware of your own limitations and lean on those who may and are ready to lend you guidance.

>You two are important to our future and we will need your expertise in many ways.

We have offered all the help we could muster. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have no power or responsibility in the decisions of IE or NEF. We have offered to help in whichever way Bill, the Board, the family and you chose to ask. We like to keep dialogues open but do ask that those we speak with do not throw around generalities and emotional reactions just because we have disagreements or do not share the same views. This dialogue may be more productive after you come back from holidays. Meanwhile, we shall keep to Bill our impressions, notes and the sharing of emails and letters we exchanged with Gene. Please remember that our door is always open.

>Bill intends to keep you posted about some major decisions the Board makes and I know that he is communicating with you as well.

You should note we have made all possible efforts not to benefit from Gene's death, in any way, shape or form. We may well bury our own work, for all we care right now. The only thing we cannot bear are muddled records of facts or useless dialogues.

Best wishes and a good holiday. We remain, if you so want, your friends,

A&P

Believing that Bill would keep true to his promise to Kim and to us, and believing that he would want to keep Christy on the right path, we not only copied Bill on our response to Christy, but also warned him of the danger of letting Christy proceed as if she alone were now in control at NEF/IE:

From: A&P Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Christy & etc
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 11:53:30 -0400

Dear Bill -

It is with sadness we realize that there is little point in trying to conduct an objective dialogue with Christy on these matters. We're afraid you will have your work cut out with her - and we hope her new powers will be met with responsibility, not emotion and blind willfulness. The latter would be a veritable disaster. We will send you other pertinent emails on these subjects soon, as soon as we get back to Toronto. Meanwhile, we're attaching part of a recent letter to Ethan where we expressed our thoughts (we might well have copied you on this, but can only be sure when we get back home). We really would not like to see IE become a vacuous, popular magazine with papers on feminism and New Energy, and the likes of such pseudo-sociological claptrap. We would like to see it remain a Journal with accessability to a larger, informed public.

(...)

A&P

Attachment:

"On the magazine side of things, if Bill Cantrell can fill in on the other matters as Associate Editor, then aside from the main Editorial, you would want to make sure you review Cantrell's contributions and make your own suggestions on this. Christy receives papers regularly, and Alex and I will contribute as we have in the past. Now that things are clear with Charles, Alf and me, Alex and I will be very happy to do so. Christy says that Gene had a list of reviewers for submitted papers - you should ask Christy for this. You should not be expected to review papers - but you could do a preliminary selection (throw out the obvious garbage - and there will be plenty!), send the rest for review, ask reviewers to write their opinion on a single page, and then make up your mind. If you need any second opinion, I will be here for you. Gene often sent papers that related to Reich or to vacuum energy to us for review. Sometimes he didn't, when he wanted us to write something in response and he thought we would shoot the given paper down if we read it beforehand and not bother to write anything :). You can send papers on electrodynamics to Harold Aspden, or to Neil or Peter Graneau. You can talk to Mitch and engage him as a reviewer for papers on cold fusion or 'low-energy nuclear reactions'. Gene often sent papers on magnetic motors, magnetism and electromagnetism to Thomas Phipps Jr, as well as book reviews. He is an excellent person, a scientist with total integrity, but has a very frail health. Gene was thinking of naming him to the Scientific Advisory Board - and I strongly suggest this (Gene was indeed thinking of radically changing this Board, and we had exchanged some emails recently with him on this subject). And you can ask Donald Hotson for reviews on theory papers. Stay away from Jed Rothwell and Ed Storms, and their Vortex crowd (Krivit, Beene and the rest of the gang). Be wary of Scott Chubb, and be very, very careful handling Hagelstein and McKubre. You could also take a role in organizing Gene's papers (his library, as Jim put it), and you could regularly write about this in a separate column dedicated to Gene's memory. Many people would like to hear about Gene and what you find as you go along."

Meanwhile, still unbeknownst to us, Christy was planning on following her own program for the tribute issue of IE . She had no intention of consulting us - or any of the other scientists on the Scientific Advisory Board, for that matter - about the submitted tributes or scientific papers; and she was determined to go ahead not just with Rothwell's contribution, but also - contrary to her initial assertions - with a purged version of a tribute submitted by Carrell.

In other words, Christy was now, de facto, dictating IE policy alone and outside anyone's control, since Bill - as we were discovering - was deferring to her on everything and anything, including letting her be the channel to contact Entenmann (Bill seemed intimidated by the latter, and hemmed in by Christy on one side, and Christina on the other...). We gathered that no one wished to oppose Christy - and that Christy did not suffer any opposition without resorting to the kinds of extreme emotional tactics we had seen in her emails. And, since she had her hands on all the IE levers, having to replace her would have been highly inconvenient. She had become indispensable even for Joanne. And Christy was clearly intent on exploiting to her fullest advantage all aspects of this multi-pronged situation.

For a time, we had no notion of these developments - having been effectively cut out of the loop, just at the moment when the path had been cleared for having us fully included in the loop. It was curious. As soon as we got back to Toronto, not having heard anything further from Bill, we wrote to him:

Subject: Renewing contact
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 13:54:09 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr

Dear Bill -

We're back and just had a most hectic week to get a handle on all that has been happening since our departure. (...)

On a more pressing note, we are wondering whether you will be able to meet your end of the month deadline - how far away are you from the needed capital? Can we help you in any way?

This brings us back to the question of the planned conference. We have not heard anything at all, not just about this, from Jim. We wonder whether you think it is time to renew contact with him and at least secure an honest "no". (...) So, we need to think then, what happens to the event? Do we go ahead with it in NH, in Toronto, somewhere else, and when - this Summer still, which looks so cluttered, or next year on the anniversary of his death? This is a bad timing blow - that Jim is not up to the challenge - because we do not know how much longer we can keep even our residual laboratory, where we will be located in 1 year, and what we are going to do with our lives, publications and work. Harold has already written his contribution to such a conference, and yet nothing is happening. Fortunately, we did not contact any other contributors.

Uri is now in Israel, and will not be back until mid-July. His efforts with [Sydney] Kimmel and Sragovich went absolutely nowhere. He could not even get Sragovich to donate the 10K that Gene asked for NEF on the day before his murder - through the letter we showed you! (...)

We have sent to Christy our hommage to Gene. Did you have a chance to read it? Or do you want us to forward you a copy?

We also wanted to know what you thought about our unfortunate exchange with Christy about the editor-in-chief problem. Are you writing the editorial for the upcoming issue?

(...)

As usual, Bill did not reply in writing, but with a phone call. Rothwell's contribution to the tribute issue was discussed, and Bill wanted more information about what Gene thought about Rothwell. We already knew from Ethan that Rothwell had written something predictably self-serving and malevolent in his ostensive 'tribute' to Gene. But we had not asked Gene's family for a copy since Bill had promised to send us one for our review (a promise on which he would never deliver) and we did not feel that it was the Malloves' job to do this instead. In the meantime, as we had promised Bill, we put together and sent to him a non-exhaustive but representative selection of the most recent emails that Gene had sent us on Rothwell.

Subject: Selections - What Gene thought of Rothwell
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 20:17:34 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr

Dear Bill -

Follow some hours of grim amusement, if you care to read it all - on selected items (there's much more where it came from). To re-iterate what we said to Christy, now on two occasions, orally and by email: we have great difficulty with the decision to publish what Rothwell has to say about Gene, let alone with letting him contribute anything else to IE. Gene thought this guy was 'disgusting', a "fulminating ignorant", a "pernicious villain", "a supreme asshole", "a psychopath" (precisely the same words employed by Joanne on the day of Gene's funeral), "Frothwell" and so on. We put in a spam joke that Gene sent us also (Rothwell takes valium...:)). We are naturally worried about - not just figuring along with Rothwell in the same critical issue dedicated to Gene, but are also worried about the semblance of legitimacy that this will confer to him. We have not yet read what he said about Gene's funeral, but have been warned that it is some form of falsification. We will not be astonished, but might well like to respond. We will see. The gratuitously vicious and malignant damage that this creep has already inflicted not only on Gene's reputation but on ours, and on numerous other serious researchers in the field (like M. Swartz), is incalculable.

(...) Also note that the selection we had previously sent on Cantrell can be found in its actual email context.

To read our response to six years of unending slander by Rothwell use this URL -

http://www.aetherometry.com/serpent_index.html

Storms and Mizuno were all along the mentors of Rothwell. To access our diatribe with Storms, go to:

http://www.aetherometry.com/storms_correspondence.html

Gene had a whole other confrontation with Storms recently - about Gene's notice of the DOE review and about the Reiffenschweiller articles. These would form another rubric that is not included in the present selection. Give us your feedback. We will also send you more selections on other characters (...) if you so wish.

We will write more on other matters later.

We still believed that Bill would do the right and honorable thing: reverse his decision to support Christy - and keep Rothwell out of IE. It was pretty obvious to us what he had to do, regardless of the friendship between Rothwell and Scott Chubb, and the influence of the latter upon Christy.

Meanwhile, we received mail from Christy telling us that our own tribute to Gene required some purges. She first legislated that we could not mention the name of Gene's benefactor to whom we gave, at Gene's request, a demonstration of the Aether Motor. Later, she would insist upon the removal of a passage having to do with Gene's relationship to Aetherometry. Here is her mail concerning the first purge:

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 11:42:44 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: P&A Correa
Subject: Re: Homage to Gene - First TIF

(...) Your homage: one item has to be removed from that. We cannot name our benefactors. I will remove their names.

Thanks.....more later I'm sure....

When we queried her:

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:27:22 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Christy Frazier
Subject: Re: Homage to Gene - First TIF

Dear Christy -

(...) It's alright if you have to remove the names. For our edification, why is it that you cannot name them? Is it the statute of a nonprofit that prevents this?

Pleae let us know how the sentence will read after the removal of the names.

Christy answered -

Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:53:10 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: P&A Correa
Subject: Re: Homage to Gene - First TIF

We can't name benefactors per our agreements with them. Has nothing to do with non-profit status. CE never liked his name bandied about, his name only given to people who needed to know it really. SO was very specific about not using his name.....

The sentence would just be taken out altogether. It sort of leaves the prior sentence hanging where you say somethign to the effect that he even invited his funders...so worded it as such below so that the info about the funders is still there, without the names though.

"This prompted him to learn about W. Reich and N. Tesla, and his enthusiasm was so contagious, and his indebtedness to his benefactors so deep, that he asked us whether he could invite his main sponsors to witness it---one who could not attend apparently for health reasons and another who, along with a colleague, witnessed it some time later."

Let me know if this is okay. Or you can send your own rewrite of that paragraph perhaps...???

So now Christy took it upon herself to speak for Charles Entenmann, though Charles himself had never made any such request of us and had quite willingly signed our NDA which permits us, amongst other things, to name him if we so wish. This seemed to us a strange concern on Christy's part, for we had invited Charles and Alf to witness our demonstrations only because Gene had asked for this as a special favour, to help IE and, back then, CFTI. The fact of the matter is that Charles was not only the benefactor of IE, but also the provider for the ICCF events, the donor of multiple research grants to Miley, Storms, and so many others, and was constantly besieged by everyone, from Shoulders to [Hawkins] Kirk (the impostor that Kooistra brought into Gene's laboratory). The demo we are speaking about, however, was the only time that Gene took Charles anywhere to witness, not one, but several overunity energy systems that actually worked. And so it seemed doubly strange that the mere factual recounting of this event - which, as a matter of historical record, involved Gene, Charles and us - qualified for Christy, out of the blue, as 'bandying about' Charles' name.

But not content to stifle the record here, Christy now insisted, in a message copied to Bill, on a further last-minute alteration to our text. This time she represented her editorial intervention as a 'preference of the Board:'

Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 12:13:42 +0000
From: Christy Frazier
To: Paulo and Alexandra Correa
CC: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: PDF of article

Attached is a PDF of the layout of your tribute. The photos will print slightly better than the quality the PDF will show.

One sentence our Board would prefer to change or remove is on page two, right column, second paragraph beginning "Rumors have always, it seems, circulated. . .":

The sentence in question reads: "Only too often he put the former ahead of the latter, against our own advice."

You are referring to your prior statement "if only he could continue to search for sponsors for our work and for his newly-formed NEF."

The reason we prefer that this be removed or changed is that it would be bad business to suggest that Gene put your needs ahead of those of the magazine or foundation. We need to promote donor confidence, and a statement such as that (regardless of whether it is your opinion and that Gene is no longer with the foundation--though he always will be in spirit!) might not settle well with some.

Let me know ASAP whether I can just remove that line (removing the line would not significantly alter the thrust of the paragraph) or what you want it changed to. I need to hear from you no later than Thursday, July 8 at 9:00 a.m.

The leftover space on the last page is for ads. Would you be okay with me putting your ad in that space? One other would also go there.

Thanks!

Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 22:14:26 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Christy Frazier
CC: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Re: PDF of article

We understand it is the Board's preference to change or remove the sentence:

"Only too often he put the former ahead of the latter, against our own advice."

And we understand that the sentence is being suggested as, somehow, bad for the business of the magazine or the foundation.

The problems we have [with] this are as follows - first, that the statement in question is not an opinion, it is a fact, and facts are not something one should tinker with because of business advantages or disadvantages. Gene did put our interests, time and again, ahead of any other ones. Even when we did not want that to be the case. He stated it to us, he wrote it, and he did it. The entire four months of negotiation before his death, that he and Uri conducted with the last set of potential sponsors is one more classical case of him putting the interests of financing Aetherometry ahead of everything else. And that was the very reason why he wrote the letters he did on the day before he was murdered.

Secondly, neither one of us believes that the statement in question is bad for anyone's business. Gene wore several hats, one of which was the magazine/foundation (which he almost came close to drastically reducing and terminating) and another of which was his life as an aetherometrist - where he organized and ran Aethera and its activities, was a founding member of ISFA, was part of our negotiating team for both Labofex and ABRI, was our collaborator and co-worker, and would have had a preponderant role in any of the proposed business arrangements had they succeeded.

Moreover, our own advice to Gene was always to minimize his time and effort on some of these tasks, to keep IE going and sustain the foundation. So, the sentence in question means that Gene made more than extraordinary efforts on everything he pursued - his interest in cold fusion, the magazine/foundation, Aetherometry, etc. But, if anything, put a tremendous effort into becoming an aetherometrist.

We submit to the Board that the sentence should stay.

We should also like to add, for the Board's benefit, that we do not recall Gene ever having suggested changes of this nature in anything we submitted to him for publication. We have already agreed to remove the identity of the two main sponsors of Gene's work. We understood the business strategy behind that - even though one of them is mentioned, and has been for some time now, in that very same context on our website. But the present suggestion is a form of suppression of facts - not a strategic withdrawing of names.

As for the ad placement, that's fine, as long as it is not a James DeMeo or a Rothwell ad that figures side by side with it.

Alexandra Correa
Paulo Correa

And so we submitted to the Board our refusal to permit any further censoring of our texts. How darkly amusing this all was. Christy was behaving exactly like the censors in the fascist regime that Paulo fought against in his young days as a journalist - only now the regime was Matrist Lordship. To clinch the analogy, Christy performed still another 'adjustment': she entirely removed, without even letting us know, the last segment of the sentence that referred to the demonstration we had given to Gene's sponsors. So much for editorial respect for the author's text! For us, these were all clear signs of exactly what was coming down the pipeline for IE! So, on July 7th, upon reviewing our galley-proofs, Alexandra fired back:

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 16:00:24 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Christy Frazier
Subject: PDF error - please fix

Dear Christy,

In reviewing our pdf, I note that the following text seems to have been dropped from our article:

"---one who could not attend apparently for health reasons and another who, along with a colleague, witnessed it some time later."

Your previous indication was that the text would read -

> > The sentence would just be taken out altogether. It sort of leaves the prior sentence hanging where you say somethign to the effect that he even invited his funders...so worded it as such below so that the info about the funders is still there, without the names though.

"This prompted him to learn about W. Reich and N. Tesla, and his enthusiasm was so contagious, and his indebtedness to his benefactors so deep, that he asked us whether he could invite his main sponsors to witness it---one who could not attend apparently for health reasons and another who, along with a colleague, witnessed it some time later."

Could you kindly reinsert this back? Please let me know asap.

Paulo and I will get back to you and the Board later on today on the other item.

In hindsight, this is all the more curious as we now know that Christy, at the same time as she was trying to suppress certain aspects of our article, was simultaneously lobbying Gene's family to accept Rothwell's "tribute" - supposedly with her own modifications - and had already accepted a contribution from Carrell, despite her fervent avowals, right after the funeral, that she would never do so. She had also accepted a number of other embarrassingly shoddy and inappropriate submissions - without letting us review or comment on a single one of them. All these goings-on, despite the transparency so ardently promised by both Christy and Bill when we met with them in New Hampshire, were entirely opaque to us at the time, even if they're shamefully transparent in hindsight. In any case, we were in no mood to let our contribution be censored at will, to the tune of Christy's peculiar whims. In an attempt to try, once again, to set things straight, Alexandra decided to bypass Christy's shenanigans and to write directly to Bill - with a strong caution in the closing paragraph:

Date: Wed, 07 Jul 2004 15:35:35 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Remedy

Dear Bill

It was a pleasure talking to you. In the spirit you suggest, I have written what I think is a good replacement for that sentence in question. Paulo will be out most of the day (...) - but I read him this passage by telephone and he says that, for him, it will be an acceptable replacement (...). Before sending it to Christy, I thought I would let you read it first. It does not do what we meant to have said, only the core of it. But we can live with this compromise.

So, we replace:

"Only too often he put the former ahead of the latter, against our own advice"

with:

"Gene's overriding scientific interest is only too often subsumed under the rubric of cold fusion, or grossly reduced to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. He had concluded, in fact, that a solution to the energy problem could only come from an understanding of Aether science and technology, such as we have proposed; that this alone could shed light on the problem of 'cold fusion' and lead not just to a resolution of the impasse the latter is in, but well beyond it, to other power technologies that did not employ nuclear processes, such as he witnessed time and again in our laboratories."

Now, in context, it should read:

"...He took upon himself to learn the new physics of the massfree Aether, became a member of ISFA and moved on to study our unpublished work in nanobiology and oncology. He never asked a penny in return, never hesitated to spend his own funds in his search, no matter how difficult it was at times for him. And it was. He was willing to contemplate taking up the selling of real estate, or teaching as he had once done, or even serving tables - as he sometimes threatened - if only he could continue to search for sponsors for our work and for his newly formed NEF. Gene's overriding scientific interest is only too often subsumed under the rubric of cold fusion, or grossly reduced to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. He had concluded, in fact, that a solution to the energy problem could only come from an understanding of Aether science and technology, such as we have proposed; that this alone could shed light on the problem of 'cold fusion' and lead not just to a resolution of the impasse the latter is in, but well beyond it, to other power technologies that did not employ nuclear processes, such as he witnessed time and again in our laboratories. Thanks to Gene's determination, we are proud ..."

I have to tell you that Paulo and I are placing a lot of trust in you - on what you are allowing to be published in this issue, and probably not just Rothwell's piece - since we have seen only what Ethan, Kim and Jim have sent us. You know us enough to realize that, I hope.

Let me know your thoughts on this as soon as possible, so that I can email Christy.

Alex

It was only thanks to Kim's intuition and the categorical refusal, on the part of Gene's family, to allow Rothwell's 'contribution' to be printed, that Christy's determination to usher Rothwell into the Tribute issue was foiled. To this day, having never read this infamous item, we can only imagine what it contained. And shame on Christy and Bill for trying, as we later came to learn, to blame us for suposedly having influenced the Malloves' decision (we didn't). A request by the family to review Carrell's contribution was also never fulfilled.

Christy was now, effectively, in control of IE.

4. The end of our memorial conference proposal. The brief resurfacing of O'Donnell and ICCF-11

Irony of ironies, we also raised with Bill, around the same time, the issue of presenting at ICCF-11 (then to be chaired by that same Scott Chubb) either the results of our work on remediation of beta emitters, or a seminal paper on the aetherometric theory of nuclear fusion which Gene had been preparing to present at the time of his murder. Since we knew that we could not attend, we hoped that either Bill would attend and deliver that address, or that the NEF might assist us by sponsoring a representative of our choice (Ethan had been our first choice, but he, too, was unable to go) to attend and deliver the address. The deadline for submissions was September 30, so there were still 3 months in which to prepare:

Subject: Re: ICCF-11
Date: Wed, 30 Jun 2004 23:09:43 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr

Dear Bill -

We will try to break down the subjects between us in different emails - for both sake of ease of future reference and brevity.

This one concerns the following: we would like to present our work that NEF gave us a grant for at the upcoming ICCF-11, and it was Gene who was going to give the 20 minute address. He wanted to do so himself - to show that Aetherometry holds critical keys to the understanding of nuclear processes (as you may have read in one of the last-emails that he sent us and which we previously forwarded to you). And we cannot attend (...).

(...)We had thought about [asking] you, but desiring not to impose any more burdens upon you, had put aside that thought. Unfortunately, we come to the realization that you would be just the choice person to do so, and could easily justify the use of funds for this purpose. Moreover, if you do not do it, we are at a loss to find someone who will. Could you help us out with this dilemma?

A&P

On that same day (June 30), before this email was sent to Bill, he had phoned to tell us the shocking news that Steve O'Donnell had died - the apparent victim of an automobile accident. Bill had taken the initiative to phone O'Donnell on May 18th, to tell him of Gene's death. O'Donnell apparently expressed a feeling of guilt for having stopped, in the wake of the cowardly, judeophobic and underhanded actions of what Gene referred to as 'the cabal' (M. Carrell, J. Kooistra, Hawkins Kirk and J. Wall), the financial support he had previously been giving Gene. Bill asked him to help NEF, but O'Donnell, on his own, offered to write two cheques, one to help NEF and the other for Joanne Mallove. He told Bill that he would sell some stock on the following Monday, May 21st, and would then write and mail out the two cheques. He also told Bill that he would phone him on that Monday. But Monday came and went, and Bill did not hear from O'Donnell. On Tuesday morning, naturally worried, Bill phoned O'Donnell, but instead reached his wife, who had just been informed by the local State-troopers that her husband had died in a car accident. Her intimation to Bill was that he had been subject to violent depressions and that she feared he might have committed suicide. We have no idea whether his death has been investigated.

As it happened, some days later a letter from O'Donnell did arrive at the NEF office, but it contained only one cheque (apparently for $20K) and was addressed to Joanne. All this was related to Paulo by Bill in that phone call of June 30th. But then Bill seemed intent on wanting Paulo to know that, in his mind, these monies, in fact, belonged to the Foundation, and that Joanne should transfer her cheque to the NEF, and then receive from the Foundation a partial compensation! Without directly asking, Bill intimated that Paulo should help NEF out in this matter. Instead, Paulo thanked Bill for having taken the initiative in speaking with O'Donnell and having been the direct cause of O'Donnell's writing that cheque to Joanne, but did not offer any help of the sort Bill had sought. In fact, we both felt that this was obviously Joanne's money, not NEF's - and that Bill should have used the occasion of having received Joanne's check in the mail to personally take it over to her and at the same time mend the fences that were still in disrepair from the unpleasant meeting between the Malloves, Bill, and Jim Kornberg - a gentlemanly act, incumbent on him, which he cowardly replaced with dispatching Christy to bring the check over to Joanne.

On July 6th, Jim Kornberg finally phoned us. He had been incommunicado in Alaska, but had now returned home and was soon to be a guest on the G. Noory talk show. Paulo reported to Ethan:

Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 00:45:26 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Jim, Bill and the Noory show

Dear Ethan -

I spoke with Jim today - he phoned at last. He really did not want to discuss the proposal - arguing that it was difficult to get to the potential candidate sponsors (...) in this part of the year. I tried to press him on this, but could not get any form of commitment - the conversation slipping away, in essence. He actually had phoned to let me now he is going to be on the Noory show tomorrow and he wanted some lights about (...) Gene's latest technology and science interests and what NEF was up to. I must tell you how sorry I am that he and Bill do not talk directly, specifically, about the last matter. Jim knows very little about what Gene had been up to in the past decade, and virtually nothing about the last years. Fortunately, the show is going to be on himself and his own work on environmentally-induced immune-suppression. Succinctly, I told him (...) to direct inquiries about NEF and its activities to Bill, and any NEF donations to the NEF postal box, and all inquiries about Gene's deep involvement with us to our website (which brings me to the issue below).

I also spoke with Bill later in the day. His effort to contact O'Donnell, and his conversation with him, actually bore fruit - as you probably already know, before his death (suicide?), O'Donnell and his wife (an important detail) did write a 20K cheque to Joanne - as O'Donnell actually promised Bill a mere four days before!

On that same day, following our inquiry as to whether or not Joanne was being properly taken care of financially, Ethan put our minds at rest:

Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 19:47:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: safe, finanances, ...
To: P&A Correa

> How is Joanne being taken care of financially - is she very tight or have the latest decisions of NEF and O'Donnell given her some room? Is the family in control of any donations fund? Is she actively making plans to move?

The O'Donnell and NEF donations were a blessed relief for her psychologically. She was in panic mode for awhile there.

Of course, we were not privy to any settlement that might have been reached - and, contrary to our advice to all parties, nothing wound up being written down. It is when people are most vulnerable and must trust the most in others - and should be able to trust the most in them - that written agreements should be made and records kept.

Suffice it to say that by the 7th of July, the Malloves had not heard anything from Charles (no check that we know of was written by Charles to Joanne), received no financial help from NEF save $3.5K, and the Eugene Mallove Memorial Fund collected not even a few hundred dollars!

Had O'Donnell not written that cheque, Joanne's only financial support would have come from Gene's life insurance policy, which, because Gene's death was ruled a homicide, released only one quarter of its value!

In the period preceding July 11th, Ethan made successive efforts to secure a meeting with Bill, and was ready, with Bill's help, to take up his seat on the Board and to begin learning the ropes:

Date: Sun, 11 Jul 2004 19:11:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: IE #___& Carrell
To: P&A Correa

Dear Paulo -

(...) By the way, I contacted Bill about having me put on the NEF board and didn't hear back. Does he not check [his email account] often?

Bill, this time, gave him a month-long run-around - it lasted all the way up to the time when we again met with him in New Hampshire, on August 12th. Ethan soon figured out what had become rather unmistakable - that Bill was avoiding making contact with him:

Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 21:19:43 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: IE #___& Carrell
To: P&A Correa

Dear Paulo -

(...)

What is the future of IE at this stage? I'd ask Bill but he doesn't respond to my emails! I suppose I could phone him, but to be honest, I don't feel so comfortable with him.

Christy brought up the name of someone who might be able to help edit IE, but the name escapes me - I'll have to ask her again. Do you know of anyone that could do this?

It was too late. Clearly, in hindsight, neither Christy nor Bill intended to fill the family in on any of the ongoing power-jockeying by the New Energy movement members or the Chubb/Storms/Rothwell et al club of cold-fusioneers - let alone give the family the promised NEF Board position. When we warned the family about Christy's involvement in all these shenanigans, their response was very defensive of Christy. By then, taking every advantage of their grief and shock, Christy had made herself indispensible to them. She took over many of the routine day-to-day tasks (even banking) that presented themselves amidst the avalanche of things that needed attending to as a result of Gene's death, and which Gene's family, in their grief, preferred not to be troubled by. But she would then turn around and complain about Gene's family to Bill, in what seemed to us an unspeakably manipulative manner. The family, she told him, was incompetent to run its own affairs, and wanted to be served and treated like kings. And she expressed a particular dislike and disdain for Ethan - in what appeared to us to be nothing more than a concerted program to discredit him, so that Bill would feel more than justified in delaying - if not all together killing - the idea of Ethan, or, for that matter, any member of the Mallove family, having a seat on the NEF Board. Slowly, like the proverbial camel in the tent, Christy not only manufactured a distorted image of Gene's family but also made sure to market her own image of Gene in order to boost sales for a now-degraded magazine where Gene's enemies and detractors - those who had done everything in their power to wound or destroy him while he lived - could be indiscriminately welcomed back to the fold. This realization, which began as a suspicion but was now being confirmed at every turn, was positively sickening.

By mid-July we were already deeply alarmed, as this message to Ethan shows:

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 15:09:27 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: IE #___& Carrell

Dear Ethan -

(...)

> What is the future of IE at this stage?

Grim, in my opinion, even if Bill will be successful at getting substantial financing - and I think he is the only person I know who can. The next three issues were ostensibly already set-up by Gene, according to Christy's interpretation and 'free hand'. But I shudder about this also, especially when Gene had wanted some of our contributions in these issues (such as our commentary and corrections to a paper by Moray King, our comments on a letter of rejection to James Demeo, and so on) and in light of what has already come down the pipeline.

> I'd ask Bill but he doesn't respond to my emails! I suppose I could phone him, but to be honest, I don't feel so comfortable with him.

Bill does not respond to mine either. He neither likes to write, nor does he like to leave a record, by the looks of it. And I am having, in this past week, growing difficulties in getting him on the phone. Here is the thing - you have to feel comfortable with him and bring him down to your speed. You have to phone him, make personal contact, leave messages, talk about these matters with him, confirm what was talked about and keep on his tail. You have to - because if you don't, forget about what Gene fought for, what he knew and discovered, forget about the integrity of NEF/IE, forget about the content of the magazine - the family will be run out of its power of decision-making in preserving Gene's spirit. Gene's death has placed that responsibility on my shoulders, but also and above all on yours and the family's. It is unfair from every angle, yet it is what it is. I fought very hard to have you in the magazine with a stipend. I fought very hard to have you and the family with a position on the Board. I fought very hard to have Bill make the best of contacts with Entenmann. I do not trust Christy, and I'm having reservations now about Bill's capacity to do the right thing and assume responsibility. But I do trust you. If your intent is to reserve for the family the rights that it should have, you cannot afford not to link up with him forcefully. Ask him when you can take up your seat at the table. He has already stated it and promised it. I will support every attempt to do this in any way you ask me.

> Christy brought up the name of someone who might be able to help edit IE, but the name escapes me - I'll have to ask her again. Do you know of anyone that could do this?

This is another one of Christy's manipulations, I'm afraid, and this one is precisely what triggered the beginning of my and Alex's distrust. Up until then we had been wary of Christy - several things had happened this year, before Gene's death, and then what I have already told you about which got my back up (accepting Rothwell's contribution, etc). But we never got upset with her until the email exchange on exactly this topic (I referred to this in email to you at the time). If you want I will send you the emails.

It was around this time - as Bill later told us later, in August, when we saw him in Portsmouth - that Entenmann's monies finally came through for the Foundation. In another message, also dated July 13th, Paulo inquired whether the financial settlement of the Foundation with Joanne had been completed:

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 18:48:05 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Ethan Mallove, P&A Correa
Subject: Re: the future of nef & IE ..

(...)

Please let me understand this - Joanne is still receiving 4 or five more monthly payments of 3.8K, no? Don't let Bill or Christy replace the O'Donnel cheque with those monies.

and Ethan responded:

Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 19:59:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: the future of nef & IE ...
To: P&A Correa

Dear Paulo -

(...) I don't know if the 3.8K is recurring. The O'Donnell cheque comes directly to my mom, I think.

Even though we still had some faith left in Bill, and were well aware of the limitations of the Foundation, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Bill and Christy were maneuvering the family out of the loop in the same way they had maneuvered us out. There was only one difference - we had no legal footing in this matter, whereas the family did.

In Paulo's next phone conversation with Bill about these matters (July 14th), Bill began by hedging - saying that the family would not have a seat on the board in the next meeting (in late July), but only later; that he preferred if it was Kim and not Ethan who took the seat, while making an unending series of deprecatory remarks about Ethan's qualities and his unsuitability to sit on the Board, and citing Christy's now-familiar complaints along the same lines. Then, despite everything that Bill had learned about Rothwell - including the emails from Gene we had copied him on - Bill suddenly decided that it was time to defend some of Rothwell's criticisms of Gene! Now, it is hardly as if our dear friend Gene did not make mistakes. We all do. But having expelled Rothwell from IE was not one of them. And there could hardly have been a more inappropriate time than an IE issue in homage to Gene, in the wake of his brutal murder, for the likes of Rothwell to be permitted back in to empty their bowels. It was, by any standard, neither the TIME nor the OCCASION to even contemplate such an idea.

We decided that it was best for Paulo to follow up this call with a blunt and honest warning, as well as a plea, to Bill, that directly focused on all the problems at once. Bill and Christy had not delivered on their promises of providing a clear, fair and compassionate financial settlement with the family, of giving the family a seat on the Board of the Foundation, or of honoring Gene's stance concerning Rothwell or Carrell. Bill even went as far as arguing that it would be 'democratic' to give Rothwell his say!

Date: Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:28:32 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Requesting your careful thought

Dear Bill -

You probably will not be very happy at first when you will receive this letter, but on a second tempo I think you will come to see what I am saying here, with it, and hopefully appreciate my advice.

You know that I really like you and deeply value your friendship, and that I admire your work, your judgement and determination. But this is one of those times that I feel compelled to write to you because I believe - and I could be wrong - that the decisions you are contemplating have some errors in them. I am writing in the hope you will avoid them.

First off, let me tell you that I disagree with you regarding Ethan vis-a-vis the Board. The Board will do what you will suggest they do, and Ethan, albeit that he is 'green', as you say, in so many things, is a fast and intelligent learner who takes matters seriously. I do not see him as being a load on the Board - he is an asset, if for no other reason than because he carries the Mallove name and the consent of the family. But then, he is much more than a symbol, and quite capable a person to listen, think, make intelligent questions, make his thoughtful contribution, run after potential sponsors, and so on. Moreover, you did promise the family that they would have a role and a position on the Board. You should deliver on this, that is my advice to you as a friend. And you should induct Ethan into that role. You know I would have wanted you two to have struck a relationship, because there is no reason why NEF's interests should be set on a collision course with the interests of the family. (...) You must not alienate the family, Bill.

Secondly, let me tell you what you probably already knew. I accepted your decision to allow Rothwell to publish his contribution, which really was just confirming Christy's own decision. I tried to dissuade you from it, it is true, but I accepted it. And I accepted it even though you know very well that I think that what Rothwell did to Gene was so unforgivable as to preclude him, in my book, from using IE ever again as a forum to exercize his right of 'free' speech, let alone do that because of Gene's death. Publication in IE could be nothing more than a petty vindication for Rothwell. So, I cannot share your feeling that it should have been published, nor do I see that as a reason to be wary of the family's opposition. If what you tell me is true, that it was the family which stopped it, then I have to tell you that they did the right thing. I had no idea. I had hoped it would be you who would have done it (reversing your own decision).

This brings me to a question of trust. I have trusted you with much inside knowledge as to what happened in Gene's past, recent included, with information on a variety of people, interests, etc, including 'lines' that have to do with our own process alone. I am not sure that you have reciprocated as I think you should and could (in the legal sense of could, even). You once suggested that I become the Editor of IE - which I declined - and a member of the Advisory Board. I know full well that you have no obligation to send me anything - but I think that given the gravity of all the situations, the trust you have in me and Alex and our reservations about Christy, you should have trusted us, with or without Christy's knowledge. Gene certainly would have. Don't get me wrong, the contributions, as they stand, may well turn out to be fine (see my note on Carrell below). What I thought was strange was your lack of trust in my opinion; that you could not even send me those contributions by people like Rothwell, Carrell, Chubb and so on. And indeed, everyone kept me, and Alex, in the dark about them - Christy, Kim and Ethan, and you. Of course, I trusted you and still do. But I also think that trust is a two-way street. And that I cannot be of any help to you, when you keep me in the dark.

The Carrell case is one of those things, precisely. What Carrell wrote is quite different from what he published on the web (on Vortex) and in the New Energy Times. The lies and insinuations that I mentioned are not there. Had I known this, I would not even have bothered you today [reference to the phonecall]. But then, had I been told about it, you would have, I trust, formed a second opinion also. This could be a point for trusting Christy, maybe she worked on Carrell like every good editor should. But here is the thing, she had promised that Carrell would not be published, no matter what. And she kept us in the dark about this. And you kept us in the dark about it - since the name Carrell meant nothing to you, anyhow. Now, is it alright, what Carrell wrote? You know, what he wrote is not about Gene, it is about Carrell, if that makes it alright. But again, I must say that a guy like Carrell, whose last contribution to Gene's effort was the letter he wrote to O'Donnell, should never have found a sanctuary in IE to 'make his peace with Gene'. I know how much you dislike hypocrites; so do I.

I do not have suspicions about Christy - and I think she is good at what she knows and does. But I do not think she can be IE's Editor, nor that she can simply argue that these next few issues were already set up by Gene and they are what they are. I suggest to you that, since I am out of this loop, you should consult other people on these papers and be very careful about what you will do. Christy cannot be trusted if she is not supervised and checked. And Gene's plans were in constant flux - please make sure that whatever evidence Christy produces to show they were not is convincing. I fear that with the little time you have you cannot do an adequate job of directing Christy.

I am willing to continue to help you if you think there is merit in what I am saying and in pursuing the course I am advising you to take with respect to the family and the NEF/IE. I am even willing to formalize my contribution in various ways you might suggest, if the course of action that I suggest be taken. However, you will probably disagree, and this will leave me with little recourse but to remain your friend without ever mentioning any of these matters again. I do not see any other way for me to avoid the collisions that I anticipate are coming. I have tried my best to salvage our friendship and the friendship I have for the family, and for Jim and Christy. I feel I have failed in this. Not because I lacked power, but because my arguments did not convince those who had specific powers to act on these matters, on all sides of the fence. This has saddened me much. Because I treasure you and our friendship, I thought I would be honest with you on these matters before I extricate myself from them.

I await your response - you can phone me, but this time I need you to write me; I need to see and chew on your words before going one way or the other.

This alters nothing to our plans to see you on the 12th. At least not from where we stand.

Paulo

Suffice it to say that on the very next day Bill responded with another phone call, this time to thank Paulo for being so straightforward about the problems, and to thank him also for the advice, assuring him that the family would indeed have a position on the Board. Joanne, he said, had been "completely taken care of". Again, we took Bill at his word. There was also the pending issue of retrieving from Gene's safe all the confidential and private documents pertaining to our own work and to collaborative projects we had engaged in together with Gene. We knew that Gene had kept them in a safe which was separate from those of NEF/IE, but they had not been found in the home safe where we had last seen them when we visited Gene. Christy and Bill had still not opened all of the safes which were on NEF premises, and so we strongly encouraged Bill to try to get this done before our August trip to New Hampshire.

Ethan, who had felt powerless and "in the dark in my wish to preserve the integrity of NEF" (July 14th) while waiting for Bill to deliver on the promises he had made, got another infusion of hope as he again tried to renew contact with Bill:

Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2004 19:20:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Ethan Mallove
Subject: Re: News
To: P&A Correa

Dear Paulo -

(...)

>Dear Ethan -

I haven't heard from you - so I suppose nothing has happened with Bill (?).

I called Bill on Sunday and got an email response yesterday. I'm expecting a call from him on this soon.

> Have you heard about this new article by Jim Wilson in Popular Mechanics? Complete sensationalism: enter the scientifically-suppressed 'cold fusion' that was good only for crackpots and exit the 'cold-fusion' for the military that must be suppressed because of terrorists. It even manages to have Gene say something which is a total and crass lie. Alex and I were so irate that we drafted an open letter response.

Ugh! I will have to read this.

To all the other machinations that only multiplied the sadness of Gene's death, now was added the ugly, sensationalist Popular Mechanics feature. Again Paulo spoke with Bill, who had already obtained the issue and made a point of being positively distraught with the sensationalistic cover. Again, believing that Bill had a genuine dislike for the gratuitous militarization and sensationalization of this research, we copied him on our response to Wilson:

Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:51:33 -0400
From: P&A Correa
To: Bill Zebuhr
Subject: Important!

Dear Bill

We are sending the following tomorrow to Jim Wilson, and putting it up on our website. If you want, you have our permission to publish it in Letters to the Editor. The article is every bit as bad as you said it was. Reading it feels like an insidious malignacy, twisting and spinning with what - a sinister intent?