Date:Sun, 7 Sep 2003 04:03:18 -0700 (PDT)

From:"Lisa DeWitt"

Subject:O'Leary

To: David

Sai Ram David, My name is Lisa DeWitt. I have been researching the allegations against Sai Baba for nine months. I have quite a bit of information I'm getting ready to release which will show the connections between many of these people (Tal Brooke, etc.). I'm hoping you can clarify for me whether or not Brian O'Leary has denounced Sai Baba or not. There seems to be a lot of contrdictory information regarding this. The biggest smoking gun seems to be an email O'Leary allegedly sent to Andries (exbaba.com) distancing himself from Sai Baba.
http://home.hetnet.nl/~ex-baba/engels/shortnews/astronaut.html

Blessings of Love and Peace,

Lisa DeWitt

*************************

From:"David Williams"

To:"Lisa DeWitt"

CC: "Dr. Brian O'Leary"

Subject:What is Brian O'Leary's official position statement about Sathya Sai Baba, to quell rumors

Date:Sun, 7 Sep 2003 05:47:26 -0700

Sai Ram, Lisa,

Thanks for sending to me. I know Brian O'Leary very well and I can assure you with full faith that he is not in any way against or disparaging of Sai Baba, rather thinks of Baba as a good friend and colleague. Perhaps whatever rumor or post(s) that you are referring to were misinterpretations of misunderstandings of my emails summarizing why his mission to India was curtailed in January due to the sentiments he expressed to me several times by email earlier this year when he went to India to teach his scientific yoga teaching class at the Sivananda Ashram outside Madras with their sponsorship and the intent of afterwards visiting Sai Baba on that trip afterwards and bringing with him P. Tewari, India's leading new energy technology scientist, www.tewari.org, to go with him to see Baba. He got ill at that ashram and had to come home afterwards instead of completing that itinerary, likely due to stress over my overly enthusiastic promotion of his visit and the added burden I gave him of trying to connect Dr. Tewari with the President of India to bring out this new technology to replace nuclear and fossil fuel power.

The opposite impression your email conveys is quite surprising to me, ie, not in character with O'Leary who I met in 1995 and have worked with trying to help him as an American scientific leader since then on many occasions. You will note his website in all my emails in signature lines, as well as Baba's and Tewari's. What happened was that my advance news releases and an article that they got in an India paper were overly depicting Brian as some kind of devotee of Baba which is an incorrect impression, rather as a scientist Brian feels as I say, from their several previous meetings, that Baba is his good friend. I am absolutely sure that this has not changed due to any errors that I made on that matter and I spoke with Dr. O'Leary about three weeks ago on the phone before he went to Peru for a couple weeks, and he did not seem in the least upset with me either. It was just an unfortunate misunderstanding where lots of people complained to the Sivananda ashram folks due to my email rhetoric which had too much of my own spirit in the words as someone who has followed Baba's career since the 1960's and thinks of him as not only a friend but the leading spiritual teacher of the world in our times.

I am not at all aware of this until you sent this email and not sure even about what you are writing, ie, what do you mean specifically by, "allegations against Sai Baba"? My late father all his life since the 70's alleged that "Sai Baba is God" What are you talking about here? I am cc'ing this to Dr. O'Leary and if he is back from Peru and not overwhelmed as sometimes is the case with email, he may respond directly to you. Also if you want, I will send you copies of his emails to me about above incident and the articles, etc., that I have, his press release on arrival in India, etc., that you may cite portions if my hunch is right and that matter is the source of this confusion, pending Dr. O'Leary's advice. For my story about my meeting with Baba in 1996 see http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/india96.html and my overall background story at http://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/history.html

Om Sai Ram

**********************

From:"David Williams"

To: Lisa DeWitt

Subject:response from Brian O'Leary, Fw: What is Brian O'Leary's official position statement about Sathya Sai Baba, to quell rumors

Date:Sun, 7 Sep 2003 12:35:51-0700

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian O'Leary

To: David Williams

Sent: Sunday, September 07, 2003 9:29 AM

Subject: Re: What is Brian O'Leary's official position statement about Sathya Sai Baba, to quell rumors

Hi David,

I think your characterization of my relationship with Sai Baba in your letter is basically correct, although "colleague" might be the best word, "good friend" being an exaggeration. Ever since I landed in India last January, two unfortunate things happened: first, I got caught in a cross- current between Sai Baba devotees and ex-devotees in which both sides characterized me as being on the other side, where in fact I am neutral.

While I am not a devotee (and never was a devotee) of Sai Baba, I have visited him on three occasions during the early 1990s, when I was studying the Siddha powers of various mystics and psychics for my book "The Second Coming of Science". The recent accusations against him do concern me, but who am I to know what is true if I have not taken on the task to investigate? This is not my job to find out. I can only hope the matter is eventually resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

The cross-current necessitated lots of damage control by me on the email circuit, some embarrassment in my professional activities, which persists, but mercifully not as intensely.

The second obstacle was the realization I would have to spend 2 1/2 days traveling from Trivandrum first by train then by car to get to Puttaparti, an unexpectedly stressful itinerary given the limited time I had in India. Add to that a fever I had contracted, and not going to Puttaparti on that occasion was a no-brainer.

I think all this points to the obvious fact that people emotionally involved in both sides of a controversy will tend to distort or exaggerate what is actually going on, and I respectfully ask to be left out of it. There are too many important issues I need to deal with amongst the flood of unsolicited and distracting information and disinformation coming my way.

To those who would like me to be on their side of the Sai Baba controversy: let me be, let me do my work for peace and sustainability.

Thank you!

Brian O'Leary
www.brianoleary.com

**********************

Date:Sun, 7 Sep 2003 15:49:06 -0700 (PDT)

From:"Lisa DeWitt"

Subject:The O'Leary Mystery

To:David

Dear David,

Thank you for your help. Well, we do seem to have some mysteries going on here regarding O'Leary. I'm wondering WHY O'Leary is actively emailing the anti-Sai camp with these types of statements (see below) if he is "neutral". Perhaps you will understand now why I am concerned about what is going on. Obviously, somebody here is not on the up and up.

Blessings of Love and Peace,

Lisa DeWitt

Click Here: Reference For The Following Post:
Friday, February 07, 2003 ::

Astronaut did not land in Baba ashram

NASA astronaut and scientist Brian O'Leary reportedly stopped in at the ashram of Sai Baba, a controversial Indian guru with a history of sex abuse allegations, to learn about peace, reported the Hindustan Times. Subsequently, CultNews reported about the connection between O'Leary and Sai Baba, January 20, 2003.

Never mind. O'Leary sent the following statement to CultNews via email: "I am in India now, with absolutely no intention to visit Sai Baba. The newspaper article in the Hindu[stan] Times was planted by a devotee who had no idea as to my intentions in my trip. It is total disinformation. I have never been, and am not, a devotee of Sai Baba. About ten years ago, I visited him to observe his Siddha powers from the point of view of a scientist." OK. The astronaut will actually lecture at the Neyyar Dam Sivananda yoga ashram. It seems that some people once interested in Sai Baba have lost their interest. Maybe that's because where there is so much smoke, a fire might be burning? Sai Baba's supposed "Siddha powers" seem to have consumed him. [Posted by Rick Ross at 2:05 PM]

Click Here: Reference For The Following Letters
EXCHANGE OF LETTERS

(Barry Pittard) Pointing out a number of the basic reasons for the exposure of Sathya Sai Baba by an impressively wide range of many reputable former devotees, I emailed Brian O'Leary (who, it turns out, was one the astronauts merely trained for the Apollo mission to Mars) on Tuesday, 04, February 04, 2003 4:51 PM. Dr O'Leary replied on Wednesday, February 05, 2003 2:06 PM. (See my orginal letter below).

Dear Barry,
Many thanks for your beautiful and thoughtful letter. My fever is subsiding, and my decision is made: we are not going to see Sai Baba, and the damage to me in all this is dissipating. Back to my peace-and-sustainability mission; we're doing a Sivananda-sanctioned press conference here today, all very liberating. As time is short on the email here, I'll have to wait til my return to stateside to study your piece--sometime in March. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't do the Chennai press conference ...(B.P. edits here to say: there follows a line that Mr O'Leary has, for a thoughtful and sensitive reason he gives privately, subsequently asked be omitted) ... the newspaper article (ed. i.e. in the Hindustan Times) was full of disinformation about me that was never authorized.
Om shanti, Brian O'Leary

To a further email of mine to him, of Thursday, February 06, 2003 11:58 AM., Dr O'Leary replied on Thursday, February 06, 2003 1:09 PM. He said it might help to mention that the story in the Hindustan Times was the result of a "misunderstanding which led to disinformation regarding the purpose of my trip, which was to teach and to spread the word of peace and sustainability, networking with the people of India in common cause."

On Saturday, February 08, 2003 5:24 PM, Brian O'Leary emailed me again, and I quote from his letter:

... I hope the words I have already written and the praise for your letter will stand on their own and the hype will dissipate. It is all so crazy! I cannot get in the middle of this rip tide of controversy at this time, but will examine it further after this hectic trip, which includes a lot of teaching, some illness and some traveling...

The following is my email, referred to above, of Tuesday, 04, February 04, 2003 4:51 PM

Brian,

Sorry to hear about the fever, although - way back - my hatha yoga teachers saw fevers in a useful light, as a cleanser, and encouraged us to let them run their course without the pampering. As in other contested areas, the Sathya Sai Baba issue is not without confusions contributed from all sides. Certainly, quite a number of us, who were former devotees (in my own case twenty-five years), are as determined as we ever were in our professional lives to exercise the utmost scrupulousness in handling of the truth, as well as maintaining a loving heart that overflows the walls of division. I shall copy below an article (Sathya Sai Baba: Grace Disgraced, approx. 18.000 words) I have written which is very much short of being finished. I send it to you in absolute trust that you keep it for your private study. I do not want it to get out yet, because it still needs real work. I just noticed in some emails that cross the divide how some of the Sai devotees are leaping for joy as they await your arrival in Chennai. I do not have all the facts, but I have some pretty good sources, and see this and other evidence as a concerted propaganda pitch by the Sai apex leadership machine to offset a lot of damage occasioned by the strong organised former devotee efforts to expose Sai Baba and his accomplices in places such as UNESCO, UNICEF, major world media, Interpol, foreign ministries ... I think, for example, of the pro Sai Baba articles (coming three days apart!) by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, and Shashi Tharoor, International Herald Tribune (both of them exceptionally accomplished in their professions); the courting of high dignitaries, e.g., of a German politician considered a strong contender for the next Chancellorship; the pro Sai Baba representation of the Indian Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee to British Prime Minister Tony Blair; putting it out in the Sai Centres that Sai Baba is a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prize; attempting to arrange meetings with very eminent persons such as Tony Blair; and other, often recent and sudden upsurges of high level pro Sai Baba propagandistic activity. My old bones rather feel that there will be, or perhaps already has been, the effort by Sai Baba people to court you into service as an icon of respectability, just as has been done with other individuals, not excluding, if we may smile for a moment, Steven Segal the martial arts Hollywood film star, who was widely pictured sitting on a fine chair next to an enthroned Sai Baba. I deeply trust that in no way will you let yourself, as an ex U.S. astronaut be thus used. I may tell you that - just in regard to the U.S.A. alone - our former devotee representations got all the way to the most senior officials in the State Department, not to mention other countries. Also, that we have the services of a number of highly trained and qualified sexual abuse therapists in the U.S.A. and elsewhere.

They are giving their selfless, loving and dedicated services to the many young men who, they are totally convinced, have been very badly sexually abused by Sathya Sai Baba. One outstanding U.S.journalist who has carefully researched the allegations and found them justified, as have so many other independent researchers, is Michelle Goldberg. Like Mick Brown of the Daily Telegraph in the U.K., she flew vast distances in her researches on Sai Baba; in her case, including a trip to Puttaparthi. Her resulting series of articles appear on www.salon.com, Bill Gates's e-zine. You mention witnessing Sai Baba's performance of miracles. I can tell you that I and others have witnessed hundreds - and ones of the most profoundly beautiful sort - both mediated in his own person and in places far from him but in their style connected with him. My own view is this: that they are happening on a tremendously wide scale; that they cannot all be explained away as faked; that they are phenomena not at present rationally understood but different from Sai Baba's view of them; and that there is nonetheless the utmost moral and ethical requirement for us to view any dark side fearlessly, and without going into psychological denial. It is hard, but, as ever in the case of spiritual development, the hard way can often be the good way, because it relentlessly blows away the stereotypical roadblocks of the ever encumbering mind. Unlike Rick Ross's, my reading of your interview is that you very honestly face questions about our destiny as human beings in a time of greatest change, as well as honoring the satchidananda essence, as it were.

Best wishes, as all of us come out of our fever,

Barry Pittard, Australia.

Email: bpittard@beachaccess.com.au

************************

From:"David Williams"

To:"Lisa DeWitt"

CC: "Dr. Brian O'Leary", "Alden Bryant"

Subject:Re: The O'Leary Mystery, unravelling the truth of the matter, Brian has some explaining to do to me on this matter before this goes any further to our mutual networks and friends

Date:Sun, 7 Sep 2003 17:43:11 -0700

Re: The O'Leary Mystery, unravelling the truth of the matter, Brian has some explaining to do to me on this matter before this goes any further to our mutual networks and friends.

Thanks, Lisa, for this update and "out of the blue to me" information. When Brian advised me not too long before his planned trip to India of his intended plan as I outlined earlier, after we communicated a bit I took the initiative without clearing the wording first of sending an announcement, of what I understood his personal mission to be, along with the early formulations of what I envisioned it would mean if it was successful as he outlined its details to me. That post resulted in an initial short article coming out in an India paper which I sent to him and many others, along with an expansion of my urgently suggested vison of that mission's duty, on the same timetable of his trip to see if his planned meeting with Tewari and Baba could lead to the President of India's being briefed by Tewari and O'Leary about Tewari's developments towards new energy technologies therefrom which have applications to replace nuclear and fossil fuel power.

Brian at the time was a bit perturbed that I took that initiative but seemed to think the wording in that article was, even though not totally accurate, as newspapers rarely are, it was nevertheless a good thing that his visit was getting some press that might help him in his genuine and sincere devoted efforts for many years now towards publicizing his diligent research of the nature and scope of the problems and solutions facing our earth especially with regard to solving critical environmental problems before it is too late.

In the last few days before he left on that trip I sent him some copies of that article on the back of which was identifying info and websites for him, Tewari, and Sai Baba. After he received them I spoke with him on the phone and he said they had been received and that he would take them with him to hand out as needed or useful. In essence I added, as it turned out, an unbearable burden to his originally intended mission, something neither of us fully understood until after he landed in India. Inspired by that article and my expanded vision of a very significant and important additional mission parameter that if successful could change the world on the spot, he composed during last hours before departure a press release designed to correct any misunderstandings in that article and clearly state what it was that HE had in mind to accomplish on that trip, a release that I widely circulated in hopes of getting Sai Baba fans and devotees in India to assist him in this expanded mission.

The problem on my end started quickly with someone sending me a post of a supposed message directly from Baba about the death of the Indian astronaut on the destroyed shuttle, a message that turned out to be bogus in attribution and started a chain reaction of distrust and arguments worldwide over the internet about Brian's visit and intentions due to that message's credibility problem and my haste in forwarding it without proper authentication in the rush of arrangements during a day or two's time of email outreach trying to help the mission be accomplished.

By the time he got to the Sivananda Ashram the intensity of my emailings was such that this mistake compounded and Brian told me to stop shortly afterwards because it was causing too many problems for him there. So I did as best I could to keep the situation on balance while trying to straighten out that mess, etc. but he terminated communications and I had no idea what happened there or when or if he even returned until some long time later.

I have not read all of the below and will not take time to deal with this new problem created by Brian's apparent duplicity in not keeping me in the loop of this unfolding scenario which is all completely off the wall and new information to me. That is his problem to solve now by making the time as he sees fit to preserve his good reputation in the American scientific community we both network widely among in this new energy field. None of these mutual collaborators have mentioned a word of this mess to me either so are also perhaps unaware and so it would be best for him to nip this in the bud by directly sorting all this out with you until he can issue a definitive detailed statement of acknowledgement and correction of what is clearly dishonesty with regard to his communications with me and at minimum spurious and erroneous depiction of my work in this on his behalf as "total disinformation" as though my intent and words were intentionally untruthful and thus clearly an attack on my reputation for honesty.

You should find copious posts documenting this whole scenario at one or more yahoogroups I set up initiated by his trip, more carefully preserved details, electronic paper trail, than anyone will want to read, eg,

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/india-overture

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/whole-truth-campaign

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/american-overture

The problem is that when we are just a teensy weensy bit off of acting in accord with the perfect truth and we try something using the name of someone like Sai Baba which has such intensity of feelings and public attention behind it, the repercussions are not what we want them to be as in this example from which we can only learn, correct our thinking, and move on as always doing the best that we humanly can. I sure learned a lot from the experience but nothing that has changed my lonstanding deep respect, admiration, and commitment to help further the good works of O'Leary, Tewari, and the Baba.

It could take no longer than a moment's clarity of mind for this all to be water under the bridge, depending on who does what next, but I am too consumed with more important things right now and do not feel I can help straighten this mess out any more than offering this guidance and direction. My latest work is related to seeing the mission I gave him fulfilled an to this end have set up another group where folks can get info on it at

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/silk-road-to-peace

Lisa, when the dust settles on this send me a copy of your final report and I will widely circulate it asap. BTW, this "astronaut" title argument is due to public lack of knowledge thinking that this, which is not a "I went into space so now I'm superman" kind of "badge of courage" or something. O'Leary's official job title with NASA was "scientist-astronaut" as are all others in that NASA program whether they go up into space or not. The only ones who get famous are the ones on television it seems, like "boxers" not in big fights, so this is a common misunderstanding that I hope your article can put to rest once and for all. Of course he didn't go into space because he was the first and still only ever NASA scientist-astronaut assigned to initiate and oversee from that position the NASA Mars Mission and they have yet to send a man to Mars, although right about now Brian may wish they had.

:-)

Sai Ram, One David