From: Timothy Conway~
To: Joe [Joe Moreno,
vishvarupa108@yahoo.com]
Date: Wednesday 11-28-2007
Subject: Re: Happy Reading
[Some material deleted here on other
issues raised by Joe Moreno in his 11-26-2007 email to me entitled “Happy
Reading.”]
Joe, some time back I heard from Barry Pittard and others (with whom i am
hardly ever in contact anymore, since i have largely put this matter of SSB
[Sathya Sai Baba] and his movement behind me), that
you have spent a lot of words and energy on trying to debunk the
famous Hislop memos.
In that long webpage of yours that you sent me the other day, you
again raised the Q of the veracity of the Hislop memos of Jan.-March 1981
about a possible scandal involving Sathya Sai over molestation of a male
minor from the USA, and
you also expressly wonder why i waited so long to bring these
memos to light. That's a rather long story: i had largely forgotten
these memos when i first began to seriously read the internet reports in
Feb. 2001 about SSB's behavior (e.g., Bailey's document "The Findings,"
along with the many letters of concern from ex-devotees, etc.). When it
dawned on my overburdened memory that Hislop had written something back in
the early 1980s, i looked for the memos but initially could not find them.
Finally i did find them [in the latter part of year 2001] in some old files
in an out-of-the-way place in my garage. And
there in those memos was Jack Hislop himself clearly stating that,
if any reports of Sathya Sai molesting male minors were factually true, then
people would feel justified in calling SSB "a hypocrite, a liar, and a
criminal,"
and Hislop went on to explain why
SSB would be a hypocrite, liar, and criminal if these charges were
true.
It was at this point in time that i shared copies of the Hislop memos
with the late Glen Meloy, who had my permission to share them with others.
Please be aware that when i first read these memos way back in
1983 or 1984 [or later], i was not aware of any larger context, i.e., any
other allegations, for evaluating Sathya Sai in this light. When i
did read Tal Brooke's book (variously named) about SSB, Tal's own
megalomania and newly-converted "fundamentalist Christian" identification
made him a highly "suspicious source", and so the entire matter of Sathya
Sai's sexual behavior toward male youth could only be put into my mental
category of "Sathya Sai's enigmatic, not-well-understood behavior."
Now, I have sworn in a notarized document (written on
August 18, 2005, notarized on Aug. 19, 2005) that
these Hislop memos are exactly as they were given to me by the
previous president of the SSB Center of San Francisco circa 1983-4. Both
Robert Priddy (formerly from 1983 to 2000 a 'pro' SSB author and academic"
SSB author and academic) and Barry Pittard have copies of this notarized
document. Upon request from David Savill of the BBC, I furnished my
original copies of the Hislop
memos to the BBC
(i still have the Fedex "International Air Waybill," dated
4-19-2004, with my note that the mailing contains a 3-page document [the
Hislop memos]), for the
research phase of their BBC television documentary, "Secret
Swami."
The BBC has unfortunately never returned these originals,
finally claiming to have lost them after a few repeated requests from Glen,
Barry, and myself. Thank God i made xerox copies of what i sent to the BBC.
Joe, i swear to you now, on everything sacred, that these Hislop
memos have
not in any way been created,
concocted or altered by myself.
Note that my "original copies" from 1983-4 were at some point
much later in time (circa 2001) underlined by me in pen, along with a
few margin marks/notes. These marked copies of the Hislop memos that were
then put up onto the internet a few years ago by critics of Sathya Sai were
first "cleaned up" by someone (i don't know who) to remove my underlinings
and other pen-marks, but
in terms of the content, these memos have
not
been altered.
I also affirm and believe as utterly true the report by the prior
president of the San Francisco SSB Center that these Hislop memos were in
fact sent directly by Jack Hislop to this center president in question, who
specifically had asked Hislop about circulating "rumors" concerning SSB's
sexual activities with a certain male youth.
From the salutation line ("Dear Directors:"), it is to be simply
assumed that these Hislop memos were also sent, as per his usual policy, by
Hislop to all the Directors of the SSB movement in the USA and perhaps
abroad, as well.
Joe, i hope what i have directly written to you this morning
addresses your concerns about these memos and certain other matters.
Wishing you all the very best,
=====================
From: Timothy Conway
Date: Thursday
11-29-2007
Subject: PS—About the Hislop memos
Hi Joe
I just took a moment out of this ridiculously busy schedule to look up
your long webpage analysis of the authenticity of the Hislop memos at
(hyperlink deleted by admin Exbaba.com).
Gosh, Joe, i wish you had contacted me directly a few years ago, we could
have saved you and other people a lot of time, energy and "concern" about
the truth of these things. Please be aware that back in Spring 2002 my
father was diagnosed with lung cancer (yes, it runs in the family from all
those old smokers) and he passed on in 2003. So by 2002 my life had grown
even more busy and complicated, and, except for that brief time of
interacting with the Glen, David Savill and the BBC in 2004, i was largely
out of any further involvement with Glen and the others in the movement to
"expose Sathya Sai."
Again, i sure don't have any time these days to be involved [I
had previously informed Joe that my mother is recuperating from lung cancer
surgery and I have already for the last few years been working 80-90 hours
weekly in teaching/researching, etc. , but i did wish to pass along to you,
Joe,
a few clarifications to help you out and everyone else on this
matter of the Hislop memos:
The copy of the Hislop memos that i faxed to Alexandra Nagel
(and, for further clarification, there's the date of the faxing:
Oct. 20, 2001) is more accurate in each of the three points of divergence
from the
ExBaba.com copies that you found on the Internet. And know
that,
at this point in time (Oct. 2001), these Hislop memos i faxed to A.
Nagel are my "original copies", for i had not yet sent them off to the BBC
in 2004 (never to see them again, due to the BBC's misplacing or losing
them, leaving me with my additional xerox copies of these "original
copies").
That is to say, my copies of the Hislop memos clearly show that the "Jan.
18" date is in fact followed by a
comma, not a period. Concerning the second point in question, the
sentence in that same Hislop memo reading "As far as he is
concerned, such stories did not exist with the college students."
is in fact followed by a period in my copy, as per the Nagel fax-copy. And
third, the sentence reading
"then the question arises as to what moves so many people to say
these false stories."
does in fact contain in my copy the very important word "so."
Please be aware, Joe, that scanning technology often makes these
kinds of mistakes, mis-recognizing punctuation, garbling or knocking out
entire words when there is penned-in underlining or "bracketing" marks
around these words--since i bought a scanner a year ago and started
scanning things, i find this happening quite frequently! You made
reference somewhere that the scanned copies of the Hislop memos show no
signs of age, folds, creases, etc. Again, the xerox machines will often, as
we all know, sometimes recognize and sometimes
not recognize or at least not reproduce these folds,
creases, etc., and the same is certainly with modern scanners, all depending
on the original settings. In fact, i can set my low-end scanner to recognize
or not recognize these kinds of superfluous, non-textual marks on a page.
Thus, when you wrote: "it is to be concluded that one (or both) of the
letters was forged." I can only reply that
neither is the case. The Nagel faxcopy that you
show is the more accurate copy from my original copy of the Hislop memos,
but the second one at ExBaba.com is certainly not "forged"--it simply
contains a few digital scanning errors.
I would also mention that the underlinings, bracket marks and all other
inserted pen marks are by myself, made sometime in 2001. I might have even
made a few marks back in the 1980s when i first received these letters from
the prior S.F. SSB Center president.
[Note from Timothy: this email was inadvertently sent off by mistaken
keystroke to Joe before it could be finished.]
======================
Hi Joe,
That last "P.S." email
accidentally got sent by a mistaken key-entry before i could finish drafting
it.
I also wanted to clarify that my original copy of the Hislop memos does
contain, on the memo dated
2-21-81 and addressed to Terry and Mrs. Payne (this is
not
the separate memo by Hislop to "Dear Director," also bearing the same
date), an
inexplicably faint Hislop signature. It could simply be
that Jack, in contrast to his two memos dated Jan. 18 and 3.25.81 used
a pen of a certain color ink that did not reproduce well on the xerox
machine
(or was that a mimeograph!) that he used to make copies of his
memos to people. Or perhaps (less likely) he used the
same pen he was using in those early months of 1981, but on the day
he xeroxed the 2-21-81 memo, he used a different xerox machine than he
customarily used, and it didn't recognize nearly as well the ink from his
penned signature.
Here's a further clarification: all those quirky, differently
formatted dates (e.g., hyphens, periods) are exactly as they appear
on my original copies of the Hislop memos:
Jan. 18,
1981 -
2-21-81 (this same 2-21-81 format is used for both memos,
the one to Terry and Mrs. Payne, the other addressed "Dear Director")
3.25.81
Go figure! I wish i still had my big file of Hislop memos from
the 1980s when i was a center president at the San Francisco SSB Center and
then a "Northern California regional liason" for the SSB Council of America.
I was
obliged to give that file to the incoming SSB Center president who
succeeded me. (I saved only a very few things, including those
"confidential" Hislop memos from early 1981 that the previous president had
given me. I was willing to give those to anyone who had asked me about the
Sathya Sai "rumors," but no one ever did until the time of Glen Meloy
discussing the Scott/Payne case with me in 2001 and i mentioned that i
vaguely recalled Hislop sending out some memos about that).
My point here, Joe, is that there were all sorts of quirky
changes of format by Hislop in the many, many things he sent out to us.
It's a
big mistake to think that Hislop had some rigid, slavish formatting
system
for what he typed up and sent out to those of us who were the
recipients of his many memos and directives.
Joe, you have jumped on these idiosyncrasies to charge that these Hislop
memos
must be forgeries. But you are simply mistaken. We all make
mistakes.
By the Grace of God may we all be awake to Divine Truth, beyond
all delusion, idolatry and insanity.
Best wishes to you, Joe
Timothy
=============================
From: Timothy Conway
Date:
11-29-2007
Subject: Further clarifications and a final message
Hi Joe,
As i look further, i see the need to make yet more clarifications
on this matter of the Hislop memos and your various comments posted at your
relevant webpages.
I do hope, Joe, that you will have the decency and integrity to
publicly, on the Internet, in a prominent "Update" notice or something
equivalent, openly
abandon or correct or recant (pick your preferred
vocabulary term) your various mistaken conclusions heretofore stated about
the Hislop memos. I am happy to put all three of my emails to you
of today, and the relevant part about the Hislop memos i sent in an email to
you yesterday, into
one easily uploadable document for you to share with your
readers (i include it with this email as
an attachment file). I will also be sending just such a
composite document to Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard and anyone else who
requests it. (In fact, when i get the time [ha!] i will create at my own
website page on Sathya Sai a separate "appendix page" on the
authenticity of these Hislop memos.)
So, here are the further clarifications supplemental to what i've
already sent you today:
1) The Alexandra Nagel version of the Jan. 18, 1981 Hislop memo has the
top line missing. The ExBaba version supplies the missing
line, but omits the one word "also" that is clearly
displayed in my original copy: "P.S. We are
also contacting people we know who lived and worked in the"
(end of topmost line written by Hislop). This word "also"
does correctly appear in some internet versions of these memos,
such as in the "sunrise/HislopLetters.htm" URL below.
2) You have wondered about the fact that at
http://web.archive.org/web/20040315210354/users.snowcrest.net/sunrise/HislopLetters.htm only
3 memos, and not 4 memos or letters are displayed. The missing memo or
letter (what you call
Letter 4) is one of two written items dated "2-21-81" by
Hislop, yet this particular item is addressed by him,
not to the Directors, but to "Dear Terry and Mrs. Payne," and
it was probably deleted for reasons that it was
not addressed openly to
the Directors
(of the SSB Council of America) but
privately to the Payne family. So when you write at
your website
"Letter 4 surfaced only recently (April 24th 2005) when there was
no mention made to it prior to February 2005, is very
suspicious in itself. One can only assume that the letter was
forged or purposely suppressed."
--here, Joe, you overstep yourself with more misleading
assumptions and conclusions. This missing Letter 4 from 2-21-81,
the only item
not addressed to the Directors, was no doubt the last one
to come into more public exposure because of this privacy issue AND ALSO
because it was not addressed to those RELEVANT persons (i.e., the Directors)
who bore the
legal responsibility and power of access to further investigate and
expose these matters of sexual impropriety by Sathya Sai Baba toward the
male youth looking up to him.
3) You have also raised the question, Joe, of just
who sent the faxed copy of the Hislop memo
to Alexandra. In my first email to you this morning, i stated: "The
copy of the Hislop memos that
i faxed [emphasis here added] to Alexandra Nagel
(and, for further clarification, there's the date of the faxing: Oct.
20, 2001) [...]"
Now, upon reflection, i'm not sure whether, in fact, it was i or
Glen Meloy who actually faxed the Hislop memos to her. I was
assuming today, because i saw the name of our small family press, The Wake
Up Press, atop the copy that it came directly from me. But at this later
point in time six years later, i cannot be so sure. Perhaps i faxed it to
Glen Meloy and he faxed it to Alexandra, and her copy displays that fax
registry line at the top which might have shown up on the fax printout off
Glen's fax machine. It's a trivial point (or maybe you've found some angle
to make it sound more profound than it is!).
The larger point is that Hislop wrote these memos and sent them
to the Directors, and sent one additional copy to the prior S.F. SSB Center
president
upon hearing the latter express concerns about Sathya Sai and
sexual activity with male youth, and this former center president then
passed along copies of the Hislop memos at some point in time to me. How
Alexandra got her faxed copy, whether directly from me or from me via Glen,
is
irrelevant.
4) A very relevant point in all of this matter of
the Hislop memos/letters is that, by the point in time when i received these
Hislop documents from this former Sai center president, i.e., in 1983 or
1984 (and that is a "guestimate"; it
might even be a few years later, say 1985 or 1986),
this former Sai center president was still quite fond of Sathya
Sai, and, being a very close friend of mine, i was in a
position to see whether he held any animosity or heavy suspicion toward
Sathya Sai. Back in the 1980s, both of us were staunchly into
Advaita Vedanta, and this former president was deeply
studying, as i had been doing since the 1970s, the teachings of Sri Ramana
Maharshi, Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, et al.
Both of us appreciated the nondual advaita teachings of Sathya Sai at
that time and for many years afterwards, even when my friend had largely
stopped attending SSB Center functions (my friend had begun to spend more of
his free time with a particular Advaita sage living in California).
The closely-related point here is that the former S.F. SSB Center
president in question (he has always asked that his name be
kept out of this matter and i do hope, Joe, that you will do the ethical
thing and RESPECT HIS REQUEST FOR PRIVACY) was known to me
to be eminently trustworthy, reliable, professional, ethically impeccable,
and a very beautiful, loving human being. I just saw him recently again and
i hold this exact same regard for his utmost integrity.
I have never in the least suspected him of being a
"concocter" or "forger" of these Hislop memos.
Frankly, back then the digital technology was not easily or
inexpensively available for folks like us to forge anything like this. And
neither he nor i certainly ever had the motive
to come up with the contents of these memos that
Hislop wrote and sent out.
5) You have written, >"Timothy Conway admitted that the scans were
"cleaned up". Not even one Anti-Sai Activist had
the honesty or decency to come forward and admit to
"cleaning up" (i.e., tampering with) the scans."
As per one of my earlier emails to you this morning, the only
"cleaning up" that was done by someone
(i know not who) was to remove all my penned in
underlinings, bracket or parentheses marks, margin notes
(including rhetorical question marks, etc.). In no way was
the meaning or wording changed or altered --except for
those two cases of the words "so" and "also", already clarified by me, and
these two word-deletions most likely occurred due to digital scanning
errors, not deliberate human "tampering."
6) You also write:
>The general public is perfectly entitled to
view the original xeroxed copies along with the information that was erased
from them.
The Alexandra Nagel copies are certainly "nearly perfect" enough (except
for that disappeared top line in the Jan. 18 memo) to serve us all. If we
add the words "also" and "so" as previously indicated to the ExBaba.com
copies, we have, word for word, everything in my xeroxes of my original
copies (again,
the BBC lost my "original copies" of the Hislop memos).
Please don't make me take even further time out of my ridiculously busy and
burdened schedule to scan all 5 pages of the 4 memos and send them to you as
very large jpg files.
7) You wrote toward the end of your webpage:
>Timothy Conway does
not posses the original hard-copies to the alleged Hislop letters. He
only has xeroxed copies.
Since the BBC lost my "original copies" sent by me to them in
2004, these xerox copies,
after the original copies as scanned to Alexandra Nagel
(already viewable at your website), are the very best copies of the Hislop
memos that we have. One day other Directors (or their more honest
descendants) may come forth with other copies of these memos.
8) Along this line, Joe, why don't you put just a fraction of the
energy you've already put in on this matter and
go after all those Directors (people like Richard
Bayer, Bob Bozzani, Michael Goldstein and others) and make them find and
publicly reveal their copies of the Hislop memos,
if they haven't already surreptitiously destroyed
them??
9) You reach this erroneous conclusion at your webpage:
>these letters have the critical problems of tampering, forgery
and/or suppression that undermine their basic premise.
Everything i have written you thus far Joe makes it quite clear
that there are no "critical problems" whatsoever with the Hislop memos in
terms of forgery, suppression or tampering (whatever "tampering" was done
was simply to take out my pen-written underlinings and margin marks).
10) You wrote on your webpage:
>Terry [full name omitted for privacy
purposes] made his allegation against Sathya Sai Baba
after being expelled "in disgrace" from the hostel.
You then go on to talk about this "disgraceful" explusion
as if it invalidates the larger point that Sathya Sai Baba may have
been sexually molesting Terry in ways identical or quite similar to those
molestations which so many other male youth have had the courage to openly
discuss with parents, friends, center members, and, via the internet, the
wider public.
And this larger point is NOT in any way invalidated by your
misdirection. After all, one of the ways to engage in
character-assassination of a conscientious whisteblower is to charge that
they were expelled from their job, their membership, or whatever "in
disgrace." We know of many military cases and cases from the corporate world
of business where this was unjustly done
to innocent persons trying to expose corruption, wrong-doing, etc.
11) You write on your webpage about the first letter that was sent
(perhaps in December 1980 or before January 18, 1981?) by Hislop to Mrs.
Payne, and you wonder:
> where is this first letter that was allegedly sent to Diana
Payne? Is it being suppressed as well? Considering that Hislop does not go
into details about Terry Jr.'s disgraceful dismissal from the Hostel,
chances are the details of his expulsion were given in the first letter sent
to Diana Payne. That letter is noticeably
absent. Why? Isn't it strange that no mention was
made to Letter 4 in all these years and now it is being made public?
Again, Joe, you can simply refer to my earlier point #2 herein for the
story on that "Letter 4," addressed to the Paynes, not to the Directors.
12) You also write:
>[Terry] has never spoken out about any
alleged abuse.
Joe, as i heard it directly from Glen Meloy, this "silence" is because he
serves in a sensitive and vulnerable public position and does not want this
fact in his history to be widely known. The overly ardent "defenders" of
Sathya Sai Baba have (as i understand it from Glen) had no qualms about
running roughshod over people’s privacy issues in this
matter, and the fact that Terry's fully name has gone public is an invasion
of his privacy. So your point here is entirely irrelevant. Terry at some
point in the future may in fact publicly speak out his allegations of abuse
by Sathya Sai Baba, but we should NOT pressure him to do so until he is
ready. Shame on anyone who continues to drag his name out in the open and
upbraid him for not speaking out. I STRONGLY REQUEST THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY
REMOVE HIS FULL CURRENT NAME FROM YOUR WEBSITE.
13) Joe, you have much further debased yourself and all of us by writing:
>Therefore, this entire debate about Hislop's alleged letters is
based on
xeroxed copies and not original ones (as claimed by
Anti-Sai Activists). More lies from Anti-Sai's.
Joe, you can thank the BBC for the fact that we no longer have my
"original copies" of the Hislop memos. As for your last line, "more
lies from Anti-Sai's," this is
simply
wrong, a false conclusion, expressed in
really adversarial, insulting language, for there are
no "lies" about these Hislop documents. Your
extensively
erroneous "jumped conclusions" and adversarial attacks
on the character and actions of those laboring to various extents of
activity in the movement to bring truth to light (many of these persons,
like myself, are
clearly NOT "anti-Sai" but PRO-TRUTH, PRO-JUSTICE, PRO-DECENCY,
PRO-DHARMA) are
clearly indicative of your own lack of
character and honest, fair-minded investigative spirit.
I will simply reiterate: the Hislop memos stand as factual
documents indicating that John (Jack) Hislop and all those persons to whom
he sent out these three memos addressed to Directors (dated Jan. 25, 1981,
2-21-81, and 3.25.81)
all clearly knew of at least one case (TP), with additional
mention of "so many people [who] say these false stories,"
involving Sathya Sai Baba and some kind of strange sexual activity with
male youth.
To deny this is to unjustly deny the truth of the situation, an
instance of telling lies about and obfuscating crucially important evidence
in the ongoing movement to expose certain behaviors of Sri Sathya Sai Baba.
Again, i wish you all the very best, dear Joe.
By Divine Grace,
may we all behave ourselves in the spirit of
Satya-Dharma-Shanti-Prema-Ahimsa!
--Timothy