<Begin Segment 2>

TI: Well, actually, this is a good place. Why don't, why don't we get into -- where we ended up the last interview was where you ended up with the, your military service. And so why don't we pick it up there?

HM: Okay.

TI: Because we'll start getting into the engineering a little bit later. So why don't we start there? So why don't you tell me, after you were discharged...

HM: Well, let me tell you, right at the end of the, of the, my military service, couple things happened that really turned a lot of things around. And right before my separation the adjutant calls me up and he says, "Hey, you better show up here. We got a serious matter that we, gotta discuss with you." So I went up to the guy's place, and he says, "Okay, we've negotiated a whole bunch of deals, and this is the package deal. You either take it all or you reject the whole thing." So I says, "What is it?" He says, "Well, the good part, they're gonna forget about your court-martial. We're gonna purge it from your file and all this kinda stuff. Bad thing is, we're gonna bust your rank, bust you down to nothin', and we're gonna have you available within thirty days for recall."

TI: What does that mean, within thirty days of recall being --

HM: Well, in other words, they could -- even if I get separated they could call me back in thirty days' notice.

TI: Okay.

HM: But anyway, though, the, I thought the war in Korea was winding down, so I thought that's a very remote possibility. Anyway, here's all these different things they laid in front of me. And they said, "The other thing is, formally, we're gonna have you discharged at Fort Meade." I said, "What are you sending me down to Fort Meade for?" "You gotta be down there at 10 o'clock tomorrow morning, if you wanna do this thing properly." So I says, about Riggins, he's the guy that got me into all this trouble. He says, "Well, we had him transferred to a military intelligence, and he's headed for Korea." And they got him outta CIC.

TI: And Riggins, again, was the, was the one that you had the shouting match with?

HM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: Okay.

HM: And he's the one that filed the court-martial charges against me.

TI: Right.

HM: So in order to get him off the record, off the record books, they had him transferred to MI, destined for the, Korea.

TI: I'm sorry. MI or the CIC?

HM: No, MI.

TI: MI.

HM: Military Intelligence.

TI: Okay, he went to Military...

HM: So they, they took him out of the Counterintelligence Corps and throw him into MI.

TI: And this was all done for your benefit?

HM: Well, there was a couple things in the back of the, the situation that I didn't realize at that time. They said, "Okay, the other thing is, we're setting up this research group in Holabird for counterintelligence equipment, and you have to convey all rights to Captain Jenkins." So I says, "Yeah, okay. Fine." I didn't see anything coming out of it, no monetary --

TI: These were the, the patents...

HM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: That you had been working on?

HM: Yeah. The two of 'em. And then we filed another one later on about ultrasonic equipment used for interrogation purposes, but I shouldn't really be talking about that one. But anyway, you see you got to relegate this to the, the research group that we're setting up. And Jenkins is gonna get promoted, and he's gonna be in charge of this area. So you will turn it all over to him. Sign the thing off.

TI: Now, I'm a little confused. Why would that be important to the army since, you know, they owned the rights anyway as a, as a --

HM: Well, the thing that, my name appears on that thing. So if there's any further work to be done, usually the person's name on it is consulted on the progress of it, see.

TI: Okay, got it.

HM: And in this case I'm just turning everything over to them. And the army at that time, they had no provisions for giving us any remuneration or credits or anything else relative to patent applications. So -- and then, and Jenkins wanted to get up higher in the, in the system anyway. And since he was in charge of the research group, or was gonna be placed in charge of the research group, that would give some credence as to the justification for having that department. And they were gonna come under the separate budget. So he was going to have his own staff. So I didn't have any problem with that. I signed it off. So anyway, that, that was the package that they had for me. And they, they did purge all my court-martial stuff out of my 201 file.

TI: But they also purged your name from all the patents?

HM: Yeah. Well, that, that was no problem to me, yeah. But as it turned out, when I went down to Meade, Colonel Grimes was the commanding officer there. And he says, I want you to do me a couple of favors because I'm kind of committed to this thing. And he says, "Well, we have six guys going down to Langley tomorrow. Can you go with them?" So I said, "What is this for?" And he says, "Well, you'll find out when you get there." All this kind of crap. So anyway, we go through this ceremony in the morning, and then we get into this van, and they bring us down to Langley. And this was an interview with the CIA.

In the first place I didn't want to have anything to do with the CIA. And then the second thing was I knew what kind of job they were going to offer me, and I, I had no interest whatsoever in the kind of job that they were going to offer. And I guessed pretty right because they said, "We want you in telecommunications work. We want you in Japan, and you're going to have undercover job." And I said, "No, no thank you." It was a very quick interview.

But they loaded us back into the van. And one of the six guys had accepted the job with them because we're all, all being prepared to be separated from the army, and the CIA wanted to have a chance to recruit the people. So that was the commitment that Grimes had, see. Well, Grimes later on became CIA after his retirement from the army. So he was trying to help himself because he was trying to get people to...

TI: Right.

HM: ...be working in the departments he was interested in. So anyway, that, that was the end of that situation. But Westinghouse, who became the development organization for these Mark torpedoes for the navy --

TI: And the Mark torpedoes were the, sort of the sound-sensing, or they would zero in...

HM: Yeah, yeah.

TI: ...on the propeller sound?

HM: Yeah. And couple of the features in the patent were very unique because it related to the harmonics of the propeller system. And the Russian propellers were kind of crude. And they weren't contour-milled in a manner like the US propellers, so they made quite a bit more noise and they're less efficient. And one of the features of the patent was that we would relate to the Russian propeller noise spectrum. Anyway, Westinghouse liked some of these parts of the patent.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.