- Interview with Ben Cullen by John Hubbard Abridged, edited,
and annotated by Shawn Montgomery
-
- From a transcript of a talk with Ben Cullen recorded
sometime in the 1950's in which Cullen describes how he befriended Rife:
-
- "...Rife liked to come down to my garage and play
his French horn, play his guitar and mandolin and cello. Believe me, he
sent the visitors into seventh heaven. Rife started one day playing his
French horn. He played operas like Rigoletto and Il Trovatore perfectly.
All of the people on the block came down to hear Rife's music in the garage.
There must have been 100 people there before he quit. Rife's eyes were
just running water because he put his whole heart and soul into his playing.
From that time on we became very fast friends.
-
- I followed Rife every night. I went out to work with
Rife. There was so much we could talk about in each other's language that
we communicated well. I was a journeyman and tool and die maker from England
and Rife was 100% Scotch. I made a steady pilgrimage to Rife's garage where
we set up a shop with machinery to build his microscopes. Rife began to
become deeply involved in bacteriology. We would discuss microorganisms.
We began to install (in his workshop) equipment tools and machines. I bought
a pretty nice little centrifuge.
-
- In 1933, we began to build Rife's third microscope, the
big Universal Microscope. Rife also developed the Rife Ray Machine. He
had purchased many electronic instruments and was in close contact with
Coolidge and Steinmetz of General Electric Co. They shipped Rife thousands
of big x-ray tubes, radio tubes, and parts for his instruments. Dr. Lee
DeForrest, inventor of the radio tube worked with us weekends to help put
the circuits together..."
-
- From a letter dated May 16, 1977 to journalist Christopher
Bird from John Hubbard reporting on his just completed research trip to
California:
-
- "...Of course the high points of my trip were the
personal visits with Benjamin Cullen, and Henry Siner, and Bernard Gross...
what I did first was to go visit with Benjamin Cullen. He is indeed a most
remarkable man to me. I taped nearly two hours of an interview with him
and I believe he is the most vigorous octogenarian I have ever known. His
speech was swift, although the voice was not a strong one. He is incisive
and could make recollections stretching back into the distant past or into
the very near recent past with equal facility, almost. He was quite busy
also. He talked with me for over two hours at his home, and the next morning
was flying to meet one of NASA's physicists in the south-west for some
discussions on parapsychological phenomena. The following week, when he
came back to town he drove in to meet Henry Siner and myself at the Imperial
Bank. I have never known a man in his late 80's to drive an automobile.
Then again I have never known an 86 year old man to have a 35 year old
wife, which Cullen does..."
-
- The following interview was recorded in April 1977 at
Ben Cullen's home in Spring Valley, California.
-
- Hubbard: Do you remember that picture of the spore? [The
tetanus spore in the Smithsonian Institute report - Ed] That is the one
which is particularly important. And you were telling me the last time
we talked (on the phone) that Rife had split a baby's hair in four parts
- did he try to put the spore - the tetanus organism - in like THIS in
the four parts? [making clasping motion with three fingers and thumb simulating
baby hairs]
-
- Cullen: You see what happened was this: first he took
the hair and mounted it into a matrix - erect, to hold it straight. Then
he mounted in a micro-dissector with a very fine, sharply honed blade.
And he used a portion of a safety razor blade with which he had cut and
honed it down very, very thin. To look at a razor blade ordinarily, it
looks like this, [tracing jagged line in the air with finger] even though
it is a good edge to shave by. He had to have it so thin that it was almost
so thin that he had to be careful not to move it either this way or that
way or it would bend. Blown up on a microscope - that is, one of these
reflectometers or something like that - it was a very, very rugged edge,
but nevertheless, by moving it back and forth it cut down through (the
hair).
-
- First, he removed all the outside excess mounting wax
that he had. And of course, you can call it a matrix if you wish, holding
the hair - it was held in a special vice, a small vice - and he came on
down through, and sawed down until he got down to 1/4 of an inch of the
hair cut down. And then he cut this through and removed that half, which
then you have a half round condition for 1/4 of an inch. And then he turned
that sideways and split that right down from the top to the area where
it was cut away to make a half of a hair. Then he fared that off very carefully
so as to have no sharp edges, and also, you know, in any machined condition,
whether its a hair or a piece of steel or anything else, you have to have
a radius.
-
- And how he put that radius in was very, very interesting
indeed. He contrived a very, very fine hair with some very extremely fine
dust, which he called, let's see... it was something like "rouge,"
and he held this half-hair in the matrix. He worked this back and forth
with a little reciprocating frame, like this, so that the hair with the
impregnated - something like diamond, only he said it was a type of "rouge"
- gradually he was able to produce a radius right in at the cut of the
hair.
-
- Then he feathered the entire balance of the hair off
to a point so that there would not be a sharp sudden break-off. Then he
turned the hair over, after of course he recovered it from the wax, and
turned it over, and with some very fine pairs of tweezers. He used about
a 12-power glass. He mounted that in a very small chuck - the type of chuck
that you can twist to collapse the interior three gripping surfaces so
he could get it into a center, something like the old-fashion carpenter's
brace or any other type of drill-holding chuck - but it was very, very
small. He did a splendid job on that.
-
- I think he first tried Tobin bronze and he found it was
too porous so he went to... he couldn't use titanium because he didn't
have then the tools to work titanium. I think he was able to get, at that
time, some annealed chrome molybdenum and he was able to use it so that
he could make up a very fine chuck... and so he turned it up in the lathe.
He had a jeweller's lathe. In fact he had several lathes. And that little
chuck was made up so that the hair could be entered in that chuck and closed
up so as to hold it.
-
- Now the trick, of course, was to hold it so that the
two pieces of the hair, as it was spread... as it was pushed down it would
spread... and of course this is the top side, the rounded side, this is
the flat side under here [motioning]. And as it was pressed down, like
this, it would open. Now the reason was because the hair naturally has
some spring-back like any material, and he found that they were sufficient
to bring about a gripping of these tetanus bacilli. He tried it with a
hookworm bacillus first, and the hookworm, I know he laid a dozen of them
in a row, and it was quite interesting, and then after that of course he
was working with the tetanus bacillus.
-
- So that's what he did. In picking it up after he had
put this down, first he had the thing mounted in a very fine multiple-leverage
manipulator - in other words, by moving his main lever, it would be like
a very, very fine vernier, he could move it with say a 1/2 inch and get
just a couple of thousandths, or 1/2 a thousandths of movement on this
little chuck here.
-
- Hubbard: (Laughs) Yes, OK.
-
- Cullen: And then he laid it down like this and opened
it. And then he had a means of moving the whole framework like that to
the bacillus, and then as he raised it up the two ends of the hair closed
on the bacillus but there was insufficient power to crush it. It picked
it up but it didn't crush it. Then of course by manipulating the whole
thing it laid on a slide until he had enough of them on a slide, and then
of course put it on the microscope and took his photographs.
-
- Hubbard: How much time was he working on this project?
-
- Cullen: You mean the entire project? He started when
first I met him in 1913...
-
- Hubbard: No, just on this bacillus.
-
- Cullen: Oh the bacillus... oh, it took him a full ten
days, because, for a long time he would say, "I've got to see the
entire project in my mind first." So he would go to bed and leave
a pad and pencil by his bed. He had an ability, which, you might understand,
to call on the same as Beethoven did to get his music - from the other
side.
-
- At eleven, twelve or one o'clock, he would wake up with
some information and put it down. And by the end of about two or three
days, he'd called me up and say, "Ben, I got a lot of information.
Come over and see it." Of course, I always spent more time than I
should have, because I always had to get up at six a.m. in the morning.
I never got to bed here until about twelve or one a.m. in the morning.
I lost a lot of sleep on that deal. You see he was on Point Loma and I
live right out here. I've been out here for 46, 47 years now. Then so,
I would go over and it mechanically looked very good.
-
- So then he started, and after he had it all fixed up,
first there was a micro-dissector. He did another little trick too - he
dissected... in fact he took a very small (human) embryo that had been
a miscarriage, and he cut it in very fine slices and was able to study
so much, and that is another project. (Returning to the tetanus bacillus)...
-
- After he had them all laid out, there wasn't one of them
that was mashed in any way, shape or form. Of course, at first, he tried
different types of hairs and some of them were too powerful. Two quarters
as they came together would take and squash the bacillus. Finally, he said,
"I think if I can find a young lady, or a baby that had golden brown
hair, I am told that that hair is quite tough and yet very springy and
yet very fine." So it happened that my daughter Sylvia had that kind
of hair. So I took some of it over to him and he used that.
-
- So after that of course, he was wrapped up more, not
so much in his micro-manipulator as he was in the development of the microscope
and also development of some type of ray of very high frequency current
which would annihilate any types of cancer virus in his work. And so, he
worked a great deal on that.
-
- Hubbard: Did he every make any other very thin sections
like this section of the tetanus bacillus?
-
- Cullen: The hookworm and the embryo are the only other
two that I remember.
-
- Hubbard: Do you recall how big this embryo was?
-
- Cullen: It was, I would say about 5 mm long and stretched
out by 2 1/2mm, including the overall size of the body, 5 1/2 to 6 mm long.
It was very small, in fact, he was so astounded that such a small embryo
would be so perfect. The fingers were formed, and the whole thing. Quite
often you find, in an embryo that's aborted, it would be Mongoloid for
some little time. But this was perfectly formed. In fact there were stools
in the bowels and food in the intestinal tract and the stomach.
-
- Hubbard: At 5 mm or 5 cm?
-
- Cullen: I guess I 'm talking centimetres right now, yes,
because it had to be big enough of course, to handle.
-
- Hubbard: [gesturing] This is 5 cm right here.
-
- Cullen: It would be about double that size. That 5 cm
would be double the size of the baby.
-
- Hubbard: 2 1/2 cm.
-
- Cullen: Yes, I know because I saw it laying out there.
My remembrance of measurements was not too bad. I used to have a great
deal of work in fine-menturation in the factories.
-
- Hubbard: Do you remember what year, approximately it
was that Rife cut the section of this tetanus spore? [Recall here that
Hubbard is referring to the Typhoid Bacillus photos published in the 1944
Smithsonian and Franklin Institute articles -Ed]
-
- Cullen: It was 1928 and '29, somewhere in that area.
-
- Hubbard: 1928 or 1929. He made this picture then, not
with his big Universal microscope but with one of his earlier microscopes,
didn't he?
-
- Cullen: Yes he did.
-
- Hubbard: Oh, well.
-
- Cullen: It was because that Universal microscope was
magnified too large for anything like that. You see, he worked in an area
the size of a pinhead, and that was large enough to have to play with when
it came to the filterable forms. He used one of his earlier microscopes,
he had several microscopes. He had one of course that magnified 5000 times
and one that magnified 10,000 times. In fact he made several 10,000-magnification
microscopes and one went to Dr. Patterson. I think it was in England through
the help of Henry Siner.
-
- Hubbard: Was it Patterson or...?
-
- Cullen: I may be wrong. It was a Dr. Gonin, who was the
physician to the Queen at that time, and Dr. Patterson was in that deal,
and I can't recall other names too well [Cullen is mis-remembering the
name. It is not Dr. Patterson but a Dr. Parsons to whom he is referring
- Ed]
-
- Hubbard: I see.
-
- Cullen: The difficulty is that they have all passed on
in one way or another.
-
- Hubbard: Has Mr. Siner been out to see you recently?
-
- [Henry Siner was another assistant to Rife who worked
primarily with the microscope. Siner ventured to England in 1938 to assist
a British Group of doctors (mentioned above by Cullen) in establishing
overseas a laboratory using Rife microscopes and beam ray machines - Ed]
-
- Cullen: I haven' t seen Henry for quite a long time.
He has been more wrapped up in high finance. He has been Chairman of the
Board of the Siner Paint and Glass Co. and a couple of other activities.
We have more or less separated because I remained, in his idea, just a
little bit too much of a church-mouse to be bothered with.
-
- Hubbard: Well, they may not be quite accurate.
-
- Cullen: It may not. Henry is a very fine fellow. I liked
Henry very much. I have known him of course for many years and during the
last World War it was possible for me to turn a great deal of business
to him through what we call outside production or outside order - materials
for Convair. You see we had cost plus ten, which was of course was a very,
very easy way to do anything. We had lots of money. And I could suggest
that much of the work that we were scrambling to get together could be
produced outside. And Henry got many, many orders for all sorts of chromes
and paints of every conceivable description. And as a consequence, Henry
made quite a bit of money. And of course their glass company built rapidly
after that and then he seemed to be spreading out, and of course had a
large number of agencies established in the county and other counties.
And then I lost contact with him.
-
- Hubbard: Well, coming back to the microscopes... this
picture here is unusual in that now we have confirmation from the electron
microscope. This picture here [gesturing to the Smithsonian typhoid bacillus
photograph]... the dimensions - you see the spacing between these lines
here - this corresponds with our so-called "unit membrane." And
there is space out here - this is the "nuclear membrane." Well
the distances between these three components here, the distance between
these, corresponds exactly with what we know since about 1950-60.
-
- Cullen: Between the lines?
-
- Hubbard: Yes, between the lines, you see.
-
- Cullen: What significance do you attach to that?
-
- Hubbard: Well, you see, the significance is that the
methods - the instrument that produced this - was able to produce a resolution
which we were not able to obtain except with an electron microscope many
years later. Now then, I would like to see this microscope re-constructed,
recovered, the principles of it determined - because we would probably
be able to work with material that is still has water in it. We could work
with living material.
-
- Now we would still have problems of sectioning. Notice
that this typhoid bacillus here, this is complete, this is not sectioned.
You cannot see as much detail in this as you can in this because this is
a thin section. [Hubbard is referring again to two of the photos from the
Smithsonian article comparing the Typhoid bacillus organism photo to the
sectioned Tetanus spore photo - Ed] But this has resolution down in the
neighbourhood of about 20 angstroms, at least, and nobody had ever been
able to do that until the electron microscope came along and until they
had methods for making thin sections.
-
- Now this, Ben, is the Xeroxed copy of the article in
the Smithsonian Institute Report. I had our photographer make a smooth
glossy copy of (the photomicrographs) and this merely will show you what
the legend was in the original and you can compare it. Well you see, all
you have to do is a little arithmetic - the object size, or, the size of
the specimen, times the magnification, is equal to the image size. So if
we have the image size we can do the arithmetic and we can go back and
figure out what the object size was. Now then, independently, we know what
the diameter of tetanus spores are, from both the light microscope (the
conventional light microscope), and from the electron microscope.
-
- So by going back and checking the arithmetic from that
source, we can confirm that this is the correct dimension. We also have
- that is, we now know independently - the thickness of the spore wall
here and the interior of the spore. We can compare this distance with this
distance and we get a ratio, which is exactly comparable to what we know
from modern electron microscopy.
-
- I know that this microscope - even though I've got only
three pictures to look at, and only this one can I make correct measurements
from - I know that this was an extraordinary microscope and I want to get
it rebuilt. I have known about this microscope since 1947. I found this
report in the Smithsonian Institute report and I wrote to Rife back in
1949 but he never answered me. I kept asking and sending letters and so
forth...
-
- Cullen: At that time, it was just exactly ten years from
the time he started drinking and he was mentally pretty well in shock.
I couldn't get him to do hardly anything. I tried to get him to provide
us with closed-circuit television in Lion Aeronautical. I tried to get
him to provide us with information and help in our laboratories over at
Convair in regard to metallic crystallography and stuff of that sort. And
he could have made a lot of money that way. But every time I got him closeted
with a group of engineers and he would start to outline his thoughts and
what he could do and they were all sitting on tender hooks - he would excuse
himself and go outside.
-
- By the time he got back he would be waddling. He had
to have that liquor - which of course was the fault of the advice and council
he received in 1939 during the final windup of our case where we were accused
by the AMA of doing something they did not like in regard to the application
of the Rife ray for cancer and so forth. And of course that was all a mistake.
Of course they had the right kind of help, medical men of repute. But by
that time when Rife came on the stage and on the witness stand to testify
he went all to pieces.
-
- Hubbard: And this was in 1939?
-
- Cullen: Yes.
-
- Hubbard: Now, I went down to the courthouse and copied
all of the records on that trial and I read them on the projection machine,
they have them on microfilm down there, and I was just surprised. There
would be times when they would want Rife to come to court and from the
record there - he wouldn't show up.
-
- Cullen: No he wouldn't.
-
- Hubbard: Was that because he would be drunk, or what?
-
- Cullen: No it wasn't. Rife was a tremendously capable
man as long as he could manipulate what he was working with. When it came
to being in a court of law, where you're right down to dog-eat-dog, why,
that just unnerved him and he couldn't stand it.
-
- Hubbard: What kind of questions would they ask him that
would unnerve him?
-
- Cullen: It wasn't that any questions would be asked to
unnerve him - but here he was a man who had spent his lifetime in doing
things that others had told him were wonderful - just simply marvellous
- his lenses and stethoscope, and his guns, so many, many things that he
did. All this he was told by many men from England and from Germany and
other places that he was an excellent man in his field. Possibly I am not
using the correct nomenclature and verbiage that I should use, but nevertheless,
he absolutely felt on top. And when he got into court he became a simple,
plain human being. And anything he might say he was afraid might incriminate
him - although there was nothing at all that the trial could find that
he would be at any time considered culpable in any mistake at all or anything
that might have been done. It was all done of course through our corporation:
The Beam Rays Corporation.
-
- Now, Rife felt completely frustrated because he could
not do anything in court except say "yes" or "no" -
and he knew what to say and he was not allowed to say it. If he was allowed
to enlarge the least little bit, why, the Prosecution would cut him right
off and there would be a fight as to whether it should be entered in the
record or stricken from the record or what. It so unnerved him that he
was just simply scared to death. He was not at all conversant with law.
The only law he knew was the law of research and investigation.
-
- Hubbard: Was there a transcript of this trial ever made,
a typed transcript of the testimony in the Judge's chamber?
-
- Cullen: I wouldn't be able to tell you that. Bert Comparet
would be the man to tell you that. Do you know who he is? He was our attorney
at that time. Let me see if I can get his telephone number.
-
- Hubbard: All right, thank you.
-
- Cullen: His telephone number is 284-2666, and the address
is 4930 Mansfield, and his name is spelled C-o-m-p-a-r-e-t, B-e-r-t-r-a-n-d.
He is of French extraction.
-
- Hubbard: He was the attorney for Rife?
-
- Cullen: Yep, and for all of us. Actually we hired him.
Rife you see wasn't accused of anything. He wasn't indicted. He wasn't
anything. He simply was a witness and in spite of the fact that they had
nothing against him and never did find anything against him, he simply
went to pieces.
-
- Hubbard: That is very, very strange. How old was Rife
when his father died?
-
- Cullen: Strange as it may seem I have no knowledge of
that.
-
- Hubbard: Did he ever speak of his father?
-
- Cullen: He never spoke of his father in the whole time
I had known him from 1913 until 1950.
-
- Hubbard: That's very strange. But he did speak of his
mother quite a bit didn't he?
-
- Cullen: Not to me. You see he was married to a very lovely
Chinese woman, her name was Mamie. She was a member of the Ah Quin family
here. She was a very splendid person and of course I am rather partial
to Chinese. At one time I must have been Chinese. Perhaps you don't believe
in reincarnation, I don't know what your ideas are.
-
- [Rife's father in-law was the wealthy and famous Ah Quin,
the "unofficial mayor of San Diego's China Town." His daughter
Mamie was one of twelve children who were born and raised in Canton, Ohio
and San Diego - Ed]
-
- Hubbard: I don't have any really. But go ahead.
-
- Cullen: And so Mamie was a very fine person and everybody
just loved her and he always spoke very highly of her. But I never heard
him talk of his mother or father in the whole time. And we were together
an awful lot, goodness, we were together often times week after week. Every
night after I would get away from my work here at the house - first I would
come in from factory and then after I did what I could do around the house
I always slipped in to do what could be done at the lab. In fact my wife
often claimed that she was more a widow than she was married. We were together
so much and in that whole time I don' t recall that he ever once mentioned
his father or mother.
-
- Hubbard: Did you ever hear him speak anything about his
boyhood? Did he ever talk about any of the friends that he had or any fights
or any athletics or anything like that?
-
- Cullen: Very little. He was so much more interested in
optics and also to get all he could in optics he studied all he could from
the Chinese development in optics, plus Zeiss in Westlar, Germany and others.
Carl Zeiss.
-
- Hubbard: But Carl Zeiss was not at Westlar, that was
Ernst Leitz at Westlar, Carl Zeiss was at Jenna.
-
- Cullen: That is strange because all was referred to Zeiss
as being in Westlar. However, I saw much information, much correspondence
from both places.
-
- Hubbard: From both places. Did he ever mention the name
Hans Lukal to you?
-
- Cullen: Yes he did.
-
- Hubbard: And this was one of the people that he studied
with?
-
- Cullen: Yes.
-
- Hubbard: Do you remember if this man was at Zeiss or
was at Leitz?
-
- Cullen: I understood he was at Leitz.
-
- Hubbard: Do you remember the optics which the microscope
objectives which Rife used? Did he use both Leitz optics and Zeiss optics?
Or did he only Leitz optics?
-
- Cullen: As far as I could find, he used only Zeiss in
this Universal Microscope. Now I'm not going to say he used only Zeiss
completely because he ground many of his own lenses. He developed a system
of grinding his own lenses and I watched him do it. He mounted them, of
course, in this 21-bend microscope, which is his Universal. I was hoping
to work with John Crane who has the microscope skeleton now, and have him
let me have it.
-
- Hubbard: Have you talked with him?
-
- Cullen: I have talked with him a great deal.
-
- Hubbard: What does he say?
-
- Cullen: Well at first about a few weeks ago he said he
would let me have it and I would polish it up and get it in shape. And
then I said, "I would like to have you plan to have it exhibited in
the Hall of Sciences." He said he thought of that too. Then he casually
mentioned that he was going over to Japan... and today is the 20th... and
I expect he has been over there now for about ten days.
-
- Hubbard: Oh, he did go to Japan then?
-
- Cullen: Yep, and I haven't tried to find out whether
he is home or not to check up on it. I could, of course.
-
- Hubbard: Well I'll call him Ben, that's all right, just
go ahead... but he was going to Japan?
-
- Cullen: Yes to finance one or two of his items. He (Crane)
has a type of microscope that he invented himself. It's a rough and ready
looking thing to me. But he can throw, of course, on to a screen, a magnification
of up to over 400,000 times. But then the resolution is not good. And he
says he is going to improve it. Now, he is quite jealous. When I went over
the last time, he said, "Yes, I will let you have it."
-
- Now, I called him on the phone and I told him I was about
to have our biggest car - which is an lmpala - overhauled, and it would
be tied up for some time. But before I did, I could come over and pick
it up because it had ample room in the trunk to bring it over here. He
said, "I'm not going to let you have it, I won't be doing anything
about it until I get back from Japan." I said, "When do you expect
to get back?" He said, "I don't know."
-
- So that was the way we left it. I just simply felt, well,
there is nothing that I could help anybody with as long as I can't get
the microscope because I could help whoever was still in optics. I could
outline the types of lenses and prisms and the way that whole thing was
worked out through magnification and through interposition of lenses between
prisms so as to prevent any spherical aberration at high magnification
- or to prevent the crossing of the light rays, which of course they'll
do when you get to around 120mm of focal length. And so I've had so much
else to do in other ways so I began to think, "Well, what's the use."
I just didn't feel that I wanted to continue.
-
- Hubbard: Well, now Ben I know that there are problems
here. I came out here a year ago to see John Crane. I'm just being very
patient with him and I am going to try to do one step at a time. I am going
to try to be here through next Wednesday. I have to go back to New York
on Thursday. I am hoping that I will be able to contact John before I leave.
But let's not be discouraged now if this thing doesn't get firmed up immediately.
John has had these microscopes now for about twenty years and he hasn't
done anything with them really.
-
- Cullen: He has a mind that is very fertile but doesn't
complete anything he starts. He has a very fine system of monorail high-speed
transportation but he simply doesn't push one particular thing long enough
to realise its value or to get it into operation. He just scatters his
fire and so he has so many things that are going up at the same time. Now
with Rife, he would concentrate on a microscope and bacteriology, but to
rest his mind he would pick up his French horn and play the most wonderful
music - or he would just go out in his racing shell and go out and ride
and row rapidly - or his fast bicycle and do six miles or ten miles on
his bicycle, something like that - or he would study this multiple engine
that he developed which was able to take wonderful photographs at 10,000
feet after sundown. And many things like that that he did. But he always
came back to his one love and he completed that to the best of his ability.
-
- Hubbard: Now, Ben do you know of the whereabouts of any
laboratory notebooks or any records that Rife made of the work that he
was doing?
-
- Cullen: John Crane had them all.
-
- Hubbard: The story that he (Crane) has given to me is
that the Food and Drug people removed those records from his home there
at the time he was involved in some court actions.
-
- Cullen: Well, I have very little here, I thought I could
find some considerable information, but I have very little here. What I
do have originated from Crane. I did have a lot of information but after
I married Jeanne we were quite busy taking care of this other place and
doing many things that ties up my activities now and as a consequence whatever
became of the stuff I don't know. I may come across it sometime because
I have a lot of storage outside, but I simply have to make a living. My
living comes from counselling and so forth. And I have developed a capacity
- that is, scientific hand analysis and graphology, scientific handwriting
analysis also - and all the means wherein I can advise and counsel people.
-
- And I always put everything on tape and that becomes
a permanent record for that person for the rest of their life. It is a
very important record and a document they should always take of and if
possible transcribe it from tape to typewritten form. And of course I have
been doing this now for the last 25 years. And this of course happened
to be something that provides me with a little additional remuneration.
Social Security couldn't take care of my expenses, not by 1/4. Of course
I am 86 years of age and I have been retired quite a little while.
-
- Hubbard: Well, my father...you're are just about almost
as old as my father. My father will be 89 in this November. He is still
working.
-
- Cullen: What day in November?
-
- Hubbard: 5th of November.
-
- Cullen: I was born the 2nd.
-
- Hubbard: Well we have got the same birthday then. I was
born on the 2nd of November 1922.
-
- Cullen: I wondered why you were so persistent. I said
you couldn't be a Cancer, you couldn't be Gemini. You could be a Leo, but
then I was wondering.
-
- Hubbard: Well this is very interesting. Let me switch...
I am not going about this in the order that I should but... you would of
course recognise Rife's handwriting, wouldn't you? And any laboratory notebooks
that he had? Do you remember Alice Kendall or Mrs. Alice Callaway, Dr.
Kendall's daughter?
-
- Cullen: I remember the name, yes, I remember Alice Kendall.
But I didn't know her very well. I knew Dr. Kendall, he had a Chair in
Northwestern.
-
- Hubbard: Yes he was Dean of the Medical School there
for a while and Chairman of their microbiology department.
-
- Cullen: Yes, he certainly was well up on microbiology
and bacteriology. Also I met Dr. Rosenow too. He came up here. But Kendall
was a splendid man because he knew so much, And he used of course, Kendall
Medium, K media, to maintain comparative tissue life and for anything we
were doing with lung tissue section and any kind of excise material from
animals like rats or guinea pigs.
-
- Hubbard: Where is Rife buried. Do you know?
-
- Cullen: I guess Bob Beck could tell you that.
-
- Hubbard: Bob Beck could tell me?
-
- Cullen: You know Bob Beck don't you.
-
- Hubbard: No, I don't, but I'll find out.
-
- Cullen: Well, his wife is the one that has the telephone
number and I don't happen to possess that right now. I know just where
he lives and that is something I can't give you right now. Bob is a very
bright man in many respects but he is a man that indulges himself terribly
with smoke in his lungs. He likes to keep his lungs loaded with tobacco
smoke. And I have given him about just about another five years before
he will pass on of emphysema or lung cancer. I've seen quite a bit of lung
cancer working with Rife you know.
-
- Rife did quite a little job for the Cancer Institute
at one time, and took two years analysing a massive lung tissue section
and that's where I learned all about lungs and stopped smoking. Of course
I never did inhale, in the olden days you didn't inhale you just puffed,
you got some of the smoke in your lungs, but not too much. It was more
or less you lived with the atmosphere pretty well, but when you take it
in from the cigarette or cigar or that sort, why its pretty rich.
-
- Hubbard: Let me ask you some questions. If I were to
show you some drawings, whether you could give me any clues as to a parabolic
surface on any of these prisms. When we first talked over the telephone,
you indicated that some of these prisms... that Rife had made some parabolic
curves on them.
-
- Cullen: I know what I said, yes, he actually had figured
out the parabolas and then ground the lenses to those parabolas. I would
have wracked my brain considerably to be able to guarantee what I would
see because at that time of course I studied them - but you know several
things have happened since.
-
- Hubbard: I thought I had brought my drawings, copies
of drawings John Crane gave me when I was here a year ago and these might
possibly help you recall. Now this is not Rife's own drawings, but it is
a drawing which Crane signed Rife's name to, and his name to, and there
was a Carl R. Brown attorney. Crane tried to patent this later. He told
me that they were not successful in getting a patent but he had amended
it and he has a patent pending. Now then, this is one of the drawings he
gave me. Now, do these prisms bring anything back to your mind? Do you
recall if there was a parabolic surface cut on this area here?
-
- Cullen: This is not for the Universal Microscope, it
doesn't look to me like it's for the Universal Microscope because he had
prisms located at each corner of the bend from one side to the other and
they interposed between these lenses, because the prisms themselves, as
I recall it, did not magnify.
-
- Hubbard: The prisms themselves did not magnify?
-
- Cullen: Did not magnify, simply they carried the image
through from one magnification to another on up through from the objective
lens to the oculars.
-
- Hubbard: Now this does not then look like any of the
prisms systems in his early microscopes either does it?
-
- Cullen: It doesn't. There are lenses here that indicate
certain types of magnification, but he always interposed a lens between
two prisms at each end and the... I can 't tell you right now for absent
father as to what each lens... whether it was a convex or concave lens
and what the parabolas were of each lens. Actually I was more taken up
with the mechanical side. I did what I could to help in doing machine work
on any parts that he needed. He had a very nice little machine shop there
which I loved very much and I helped of course to do all I could there.
-
- When it came to preparing, for instance, for the tube,
which was used to propel the Rife ray and to do any therapeutic work, then
I of course was quite interested. I made up all that sort of stuff. And
the basis for the tubesS analysed the types of gases that we should use
to exhaust the atmosphere and interpose the inert gases, and so forth.
That was my side, so actually I can't say that I would recognise that lay-up
at all.
-
- Hubbard: Well now Ben, let me ask you, as soon as your
hand is good enough that you can draw again, I would very much like to
have from you a sketch giving your recollection of what the prism system
and the lens system was that Rife had in his Universal microscope as best
as you can recall. And then I'd also... I'd like to have your sketches
on that section of what you did with tetanus bacillus. Now they don't have
to be artistic, but if you could make approximations going step by step.
Because, you see, it is not only important that this microscope is an unusual
thing, but his making the sections, there was nothing like this to come
along for at least thirty years more.
-
- Cullen: Well, I can't promise you when I can do this.
-
- (Summary of abridged passage): A long talk by Cullen
about his (Cullen's) religious beliefs. Then...
-
- Hubbard: (continuing)...Was Rife very religious?
-
- Cullen: Not too much, no. He was very psychic. He could
draw from the ocean of mind - which I call it, another side - information
about many things he couldn't have in his conscious state. As I told you,
when he wanted an answer he would put his pad and pencil by his bedside
and between 11 and 2 o'clock he always got his answer.
-
- (Summary of abridged passage): A long talk by Cullen
about his (Cullen's) family history. Then...
-
-
- Hubbard: (continuing)... All right, well let me ask you
a few more questions. What motivated Philip Hoyland to bring that suit
back there that destroyed that company and destroyed everything? What was
Philip Hoyland like and where is he now?
-
- Cullen: Philip Hoyland was an English Jew. Now, I am
very fond of Jewish people, but Philip was definitely the very grasping
type - and very cunning. I noticed his cunning when he was working with
me. I was turning out all the stuff and of course was also Executive Vice-President
(of Beam Rays Corporation) for quite a while, and Philip had some sneaky
ways about him.
-
- When the Khan Realty Company brothers came down here
from Los Angeles at the behest of the head of the AMA - his name was Morris
Fishbein - when they came down here to see if they could find out something
about us at the direct request of the head of the AMA they found quite
a good deal with Dr. James B. Couche, who was a very fine physician and
surgeon and had been a Fellow of the College of Surgeons for twenty years...
and Philip was in the office with us, and when they had found what we were
doing they said, "Well we would like to buy into this corporation."
Well I said, "This happens to be a closed corporation, we haven't
requested the Commissioner of Corporations for the privilege to issue stock.
That would take a long time if we did. At the present time we are not in
a position to actually do that."
-
- So one of the brothers acted a little bit belligerent,
and he said, "Well you ought to do something about it." And I
said, "Why?" And he said "It would be good for you, it might
be healthy for you." So I thought, "That is strange." And
so they left finally.
-
- Hubbard: These two brothers?
-
- Cullen: These two bothers of the Khan Realty Company.
-
- Hubbard: The Khan Realty Company was in Los Angeles?
-
- Cullen: Yes, Los Angeles. They were a German Jewish Realty
Company, their name was German-Jewish. And they met Philip Hoyland. I noticed
that Philip was showing considerable appearance of friendliness toward
them and I didn't think much about it until later I had found out that
they had gotten hold of him and bribed him with a $10,000 check.
-
- Hubbard: Did you ever see the check? How did you find
out about the $10,000 check.
-
- Cullen: I didn't see the check but I do know this...
that it came from many sources and from his own lips later that they paid
him $10,000 and he had wished to God that he hadn't ever accepted it. But
just like Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus, as soon as he got that $10,000
check then he kicked us into the courts on... not on bankruptcy but something
similar to that.
-
- Hubbard: He wanted to get the directors changed.
-
- Cullen: Yes, he wanted to get the whole thing changed.
But what happened was this Aaron Sapiro came out from Chicago, the Prosecuting
Attorney - paid by the AMA.
-
- Hubbard: How do you know that Sapiro was paid by the
AMA?
-
- Cullen: Because he made that statement to Bert Comparet
and to others, and of course I was often times in the group and I heard
what was said.
-
- Hubbard: This would be interesting to go to Comparet.
Comparet could probably tell me a lot about this, couldn't he?
-
- Cullen: Yes he could. But there is an Irish Judge in
that picture. If I recall right it was Judge Rodebaugh. I knew Judge Rodebaugh
quite well from another connection. The case ran a year and three days
in court.
-
- Hubbard: I have seen at least two different Judge's names
down there in the courthouse. The last Judge was a man by the name of Kelly.
-
- Cullen: Yes, Judge Kelly came out here suffering from
tuberculosis and moved to Ramona. Judge Kelly I think was the one who issued
the final judgement.
-
- Hubbard: Then there was a Mundo, a Judge Mundo.
-
- Cullen: Yes Judge Mundo did sit in sometimes, but it
was mostly Judge Kelly. Kelly was also a pretty fond of "John Barleycorn."
I found that sometimes Judge Kelly was under the influence. Of course,
I met him up there in Ramona but he came out here with tuberculosis before
I even got acquainted with Rife. In fact, when I was living in Ramona and
just doing mechanical work to kind of keep myself going... the story is
too long to go ahead and tell you why I came out here... except I was hired
to go down to Mexico to run a gold stamp mill for a gold mining company.
But, so I met him up there and got acquainted with him and he knew me of
course quite well. The same as Rodebaugh did. But I smelt liquor on him
so many times, and I hesitated sometimes to know what to say to him. I
didn't know whether he was under the influence of liquor when he was on
the bench. So that is the situation there about that. Now, Sapiro was a
very cunning man. In fact I think he did what's his name... Belliwell,
this wonderful criminal attorney.
-
- Hubbard: I don't know anything about criminal attorneys.
-
- Cullen: That guy is known quite well in the west here...
but he (Sapiro) was giving him quite a run for his money. [Presumably Cullen
means in a trial previous to the Beam Ray trial - Ed] However, (in the
Beam Ray trial) Judge Kelly saw that Fishbein was trying to cause trouble
when there was really no trouble there - because, actually, all the information
that was brought out in the case was pretty well corroborated by the various
doctors: Dr. Johnson, Dr. Rosenow, Dr. Gruner, Dr. Arthur Kendall, and
Dr. Couche... and so the case simply fell by the wayside. And I praise
God it did because they would have given me about ten years for being the
one who was doing all of the organisational work and so forth. It was my
corporation to start with.
-
- [Here Cullen is either exaggerating or he is simply paranoid.
At no time was he or anybody looking at serving any prison time due to
the Beam Rays trial - much less "ten years." Their business manager
C.R. Hutchinson, was found at the trial to be a dishonest businessman that
had engaged in illegal stock transfers within Beam Ray Inc. It was suggested
that the Corporate Securities Commissioner had a case to against Hutchinson
and if pursued (in a new and different court case) he might be successfully
prosecuted. These charges against Hutchinson were never pursued. Ben Cullen
was involved with Hutchinson in some of these questionable activities.
Perhaps his statement (with its evident paranoia) is founded upon this.
Cullen, who was not a Director at the time of the lawsuit, was not a defendant
and did not appear as a witness at the Beam Rays trial (though he did provide
a deposition and was the topic of much of the testimony of others) - Ed]
-
- Hubbard: So Philip Hoyland really was the tool, in your
opinion, he was an agent of other people who were trying to get in and
make some money?
-
- Cullen: To get control of the corporation at the request
of Morris Fishbein. Yes. You see, Dr. Hamer was another doctor. We supplied
him with two instruments, down at National City. He passed a large number
of cancer cases through that office with two operatives, each was using
an instrument, and they simply recovered from cancerous conditions. And
of course, what precipitated the whole thing was this old gentleman. I
wish I could remember his name: 82 years old, he had a "butterfly."
You know what they are, it is a superficial cancer, nothing but a malignant
cancer of a papilloma-type and it looked like a piece of gory red liver.
-
- He was in a terrible mess. Dr. Hamer treated him, and
when I saw him before he went back to Chicago there was just a little scab
on this side (of his face) over here, which eventually Dr. Hamer said would
fall off. When the AMA sued us - Dr. Hamer was one of our best surgeons
in the Paradise Valley Sanatorium at that time - he closed his office and
moved up to the Mill Valley up in Upper California. And when anybody asked
him about the Rife Ray he didn't know anything about it. He didn't know
anything about bacteriology at all. He wasn't a microbiologist, he didn't
know anything.
-
- Hubbard: Well now, this is not the trial of 1939? This
is later, wasn't it?
-
- Cullen: No this is the trial of 1939. Yes, Dr. Hamer
had two of the instruments that we built.
-
- Hubbard: Originally?
-
- Cullen: Absolutely, the original.
-
- Hubbard: Ones that Rife himself had built?
-
- Cullen: Had helped to design and we had them rebuild
them.
-
- Hubbard: Do you know where any of those original instruments
are of Rife's?
-
- Cullen: I wouldn't know doctor.
-
- Hubbard: There would be no way for us to get a hold of
the original records or anything?
-
- Cullen: I have no idea what John Crane would have now.
-
- Hubbard: Here is the thing Ben: Just in the same way
that I found that this photomicrograph of this tetanus spore corresponded
with what we learned thirty years later - in the same way, some of this
material on the treatment of tumours and bacterial diseases may... now
I don't say that I know it yet, I don't, I do not know it - but I suspect
that there were some genuine cures in this that we could recognise today
and I would like to be able, not now, but in a couple, two or three years,
I would like to follow through on this. I would like to see what the records
show because if there were biopsies... you see I am a pathologist and I
can take a look at some human tissues and very, very frequently I can tell
whether it is really cancer, or what kind of cancer it is, or if it isn't
a cancer. If it is a benign tumour I can tell what type it is. I can tell
a lot of things... if I can just get the evidence. But getting the evidence
is going to be rather difficult.
-
- Cullen: That is a problem because, you see, that work
was done so long ago. When Benjamin Henderson brought his wife to Dr. Couche
to treat. She had one of the worst cases of breast carcinoma I have ever
seen. In fact her breast was almost all sloughed off. It looked terrible.
But Dr. Couche, with the original laboratory instrument, cleared it up.
-
- Hubbard: The original laboratory instrument? The one
Rife himself had built?
-
- Cullen: Yes.
-
- Hubbard: All right.
-
- Cullen: Then he had a number of cures, oh, a large number.
-
- Hubbard: What was the name of that doctor now?
-
- Cullen: Dr. James B. Couche. I think he died when he
was 84.
-
- Hubbard: You see it makes a great deal of difference
to me, Ben, as to whether Rife himself built a radiation device and a doctor
used it, or whether it was one that Hoyland built.
-
- Cullen: You see, everything that Hoyland did was also
being done by all of us at the request and under the supervision of Rife.
You see, we simply transferred from the laboratory instrument to the instruments
that could be made up into one cabinet. And we had to have Rife's OK with
everything we did. Roy worked with us all the time.
-
- Hubbard: But after Hoyland came in there he didn't work
with you all the time, did he?
-
- Cullen: Not all the time no. Philip Hoyland was given
the responsibility of calibrating every instrument, of the oscilloscope
and oscillograph. The instruments were calibrated but when we shipped two
instruments over to Great Britain, and Henry Siner went over to demonstrate
the instrument, Hoyland by that time had simply scuttled the very valuable
calibrations and they didn't do any good.
-
- Hubbard: Yeah! Well, I saw Gonin's letter, I saw the
original, and Gonin complained that the instruments were not even wired
up properly.
-
- Cullen: Now, that was all Philip Hoyland's fault.
-
- Hubbard: All right.
-
- Cullen: Gonin came over you know, I got acquainted with
him. He pronounced his name Gonin. Yeah, in some languages you have a long
i in the pronunciation. The laboratory instrument, I had it here one time.
My first wife had a growth on her back right down the spine and it was
then considered a superficial cancer that was spreading and so I treated
it and it dried up and fell off. Now she was in Judge Kenny's Court at
the time that John Crane and John Marsh were there as criminals (1962),
as the case was being heard, she was put on the witness stand and Bert
Comparet asked her... at that time also he was again the attorney for the
defence... he asked her, "I understand you had a growth on your spine?"
She said. "Yes." He said, "What was it?" She said,
"The Doctor called it a superficial cancer." He said, "What
was done with it?' She said, "My husband used the Rife ray laboratory
instrument and treated it and it dried up and fell off." And the Judge
struck that out, wouldn't allow that to be shown in the testimony. That
was when Crane was in for the criminal trial.
-
- Hubbard: Did you go to Crane's trial any Ben?
-
- Cullen: Yes, I was there several times.
-
- Hubbard: What do you think was really the cause? Why
did Crane really go to jail?
-
- Cullen: Because first he had started to build small,
what they call, little black boxes: two little grips to be held in the
hands and treat conditions... to change the condition of the bloodstream
so that if a person had cancerous virus in the bloodstream, why, it would
tend to clear up that condition in the person suffering from that type
of cancer. It would be cleared up. Now, he (Crane) got into a very ridiculous
situation. He decided to go ahead and demonstrate and lease and sell these
boxes without benefit of medical council. He organised a group and started
selling them. He would sell them to different people. Supposedly he was
only leasing them, which of course, is what we did with the earlier instruments.
They were definitely large instruments and he was advertising it. He got
a group together one day in the Grant Hotel down in the basement assembly
hall... and where he picked up this guy I don't know but he picked up somebody
that tried to make people believe that he had come from Venus.
-
- Hubbard: For heaven's sakes.
-
- Cullen: His name was... it's a peculiar name... Samason
or something like that... and he was trotting around with a regular military
uniform with a Goodwill, well-tailored jacket with a sand brown belt, Stetson
hat, polished brown leggings and knickers, trotting around all over the
place, going to various churches and claiming he was direct from Venus.
Prince Neason his name was. And so I went down to this meeting to see what
was going on at the Grant Hotel. At the time I was working for the outfit
called Norncar Manufacturing, which is now Ritiker Corporation, manufacturing
various types of large receivers, benches, and so forth, or big dishes
like 60-foot dishes and 100-foot dishes, and so forth, for various types
of signalling devices like they used over here at the Naval Air Station
on Point Loma.
-
- And so, I was called up on the stage by John Crane. There
was about 50 people, one man was making same notes and I definitely picked
him out as a deputy District Attorney. And this Prince Neason made the
most outlandish statements I ever heard. He was just simply a charlatan
and simply trading on the gullibility of this fellow John Crane. And so
after I left there, Crane put me on the spot about asking me certain questions
about Rife, which I could say without any more than just simply plain statements
of fact. After I left there and went back to my office in this factory
here in La Mesa, I simply wrote out my resignation and called him up and
told him it was in the mail. And of course, not very much longer before
that happened that the District Attorney's office made a raid on his property
there without a search warrant and took a lot of stuff away.
-
- Hubbard: The District Attorney did? Or was it the Food
and Drug Administration?
-
- Cullen: No it was someone to do with a... who would it
be... a constable or police or who... I can't be certain. [It was the jack-booted-thug
division of the State of California Food and Drug Administration - Ed]
Anyway it had to do with the police authorities and they took a lot of
his equipment away. And I think I will include one more item however, they
did it without benefit of a search warrant. And he tried to sue them but
because Mahity.... definitely Judge Mahity has always been a very, very
poor Judge... always done a great deal of cow-tying to the District Attorney's
office. And whenever he, the District Attorney, or the Prosecuting Attorney
would request the testimony would be stricken from the record, why, he
always upheld the District Attorney. This is a tiresome thing also.
-
- In the last day of the (1962 Crane/Marsh) trial I was
in there at ten a.m. in the morning and it went on through to dinner and
lunch, and after dinner we finished up in the evening. They had in there,
as a witness, a man who was working for the police department as the Chief
Dispatcher and also their electronic engineer. He also had been used by
Dr. Couche to keep the laboratory instrument in calibration. And he knew
all this work because I had met him long before, oh many years before,
up at the laboratory at Point Loma. I wish I could tell you his name. Bert
Comparet could tell you. Now, he went on the witness stand and the prosecution
asked him some questions about this black box. They asked, "Was it
any good?" He said, "No, it was not any good, it was just a fake."
And the whole thing went through that way and this of course is what threw
both of these men into a ten-year sentence at San Quentin. But of course
we got them both out after three years.
-
- Hubbard: John Crane was sentenced to ten years?
-
- Cullen: Yes, ten years, along with John Marsh. And so,
let me see, so this man, as he came off the witness stand, I beckoned him
over to me, I said, "For goodness sakes, now you knew the value of
those little black boxes. They were properly calibrated for certain conditions."
I said, "Why did you lie that way?" He whispered to me, "I
have a job to protect." And I said, "For goodness sakes alive,
you mean to say you would lie and send a man over the road, to protect
your job?" He said, "I have a family." I said, "I don't
wish you any hard luck, but I can't see you living too long. I 'm not threatening
you. I'm saying that I'm afraid that your perfidy and your unfairness will
sneak up on you." And in two years he was dead. A strong, healthy
man. Now ask Bert Comparet what his name was if you can. He was a man who
was a dispatcher, his voice came over the police radio dispatching various
patrolmen and prowl cars and so forth, and also did a lot of electrical
work for the Police Department down at the foot of Market. [This man's
name, which escapes Cullen, is Verne Thompson - Ed]
-
- Hubbard: What about Milbank Johnson? Do you remember
Milbank Johnson very well?
-
- Cullen: Yes, he was a big, tall, handsome gentleman -
very, very knowledgeable and extremely interested in Rife. He wrote a very
fine letter one time after he had seen the work that was done at Miss Helen
Scripps home on the treatment of a boy with papilloma. Around the neck
here a cancer had eaten through so you could see the sinews and see the
neck bones, so much of the flesh had dropped off around here. He had to
be held up on this side all the time and held down so he could move his
neck. Now Milbank Johnson, and Kendall, and Rosenow were there at the time
that this work was done and they saw the tremendous value of the Rife Ray
instrument because it actually cured that boy's papilloma up to a point
where he had some scar tissue for some time but he definitely was saved.
He did not die. He was healthy and able to go back to work.
-
- Hubbard: How old was he?
-
- Cullen: About 21.
-
- Hubbard: When did Milbank Johnson die?
-
- Cullen: I don't know.
-
- Hubbard: He was on the faculty at the University of California
Medical School here in San Diego? Or was it Los Angeles?
-
- Cullen: At the time I knew him he was a head physician
for the Northwestern Insurance Co - or Great Western - I really and truly
am a little bit hazy, but both those names should be considered.
-
- Hubbard: All right, that gives me a lead.
-
- Cullen: Well, Doctor I wish I could stay for a long,
long time.
-
- Hubbard: Well, Ben I'll stop now.
-
- End of Cullen Interview
-
- ____________________
-
- Analysis of many of Cullen's assertions in the above
interview can be found in the linked article entitled "Deconstructing
Beam Rays Incorporated: Searching for the AMA."
-
- Next: The Hubbard Interviews: Part Three - Bertrand Comparet
On the Beam Ray Trial, the John Crane Trial and Things in Between
-
- Copyright 2007 All Rights Reserved
-
- Shawn Montgomery is a freelance writer, researcher and
producer. His video documentary series "The Rise and Fall of a Scientific
Genius: The Forgotten Story of Royal Raymond Rife" can be found at
www.zerozerotwo.org
-
- Requiem For Royal Rife - Part 1
|
