Deponent at the time of the Matter Deposed to.
Summary of this Deposition:
The Deponent is taken from its preschool class in 1955-56 "by mistake," when three men ask the teacher in charge to see the son of a test pilot at a local airbase who is enrolled in the class.
The Deponent is restrained by one of the men, and injected with an unknown solution over its objections by a man called in this Deposition, the Experimenter.
The Deponent is removed from school after developing behavioral problems associated with the injection, as well as with the continuing interest of the Experimenter and his assistants or accomplices.
An assistant of the Experimenter invades the Deponent’s house, rapes its mother, and is only finally thwarted from kidnapping the Deponent when its mother intervenes as the Assistant prepares to leave the house with the Deponent in its hands.
The Deponent and its family move away from Palo Alto and the Deponent is lost to the experiment. Before this time, the Experimenter’s assistant is suspected by the Deponent to have taken another child or children in place of the Deponent in the continuance of the experiment.
The Deponent states its suspicions and beliefs concerning the experiment, its causes and consequences.
End of Summary
Deposition regarding possible child-experimentation in Palo Alto, California, 1955-56
The Deponents name is John Sebastian DeGrazia, and he is the son of Jill DeGrazia, nee Bertha Oppenheim/Lauterbach of New York City He was born on June 29, 1951 and she was born in 1918.
1. John Sebastian DeGrazia, hereafter called the Deponent, was a preschool, or kindergarten pupil at Portola Elementary School in Palo Alto California in the year 1955-56. He was four years old at the time.
2. On a date now unknown to the Deponent, but in the same year, while the Deponent was in its fourth year, the following event transpired.
The Deponent was sitting in class with the other preschool pupils, when the Teacher was summoned to the classroom door. A deep, male voice was heard saying, "Do you have so-and-so in your class? His father has given us permission..." Immediately a child about three desks away from the Deponent dived under his desk and hid, as if on cue. The other children, especially the girls, giggled and laughed at the site of the boy, whose rear protruded from the small desk like that of an ostrich who was covering its head in a hole. As the Teacher re-entered the classroom, the three men continued to talk, carrying on a conversation outside the door that went something like this. "Why won't he come? His father must have told him." "Will this affect him at all?" "It might interfere with his sexual development." "Oh…ha, ha." One of them queried to an unknown party, "Who's the SS killer?" The Deponent cringed a little, because the question might have arisen as a result of it's being it's father's son. The Deponent was to learn much later (age 27, or thereabouts) that its father had been one of the "liberators" of the Concentration Camp known as Buchenwald, where several of the most brutal guards were summarily executed in the presence of inmates they had tortured and otherwise brutalized. At that age, the sound of a deep male voice making reference to what is even to adults a grave matter complicated by war, ethics and law was cause for great confusion. The other children noted the Deponent’s demeanor, and one girl swiveled in her seat, and held out her pointer finger, mouthing the words, "That's you." They had figured out who the man was referring to.
Our Teacher returned to the class, and called out the name of the test pilot's son. He didn't respond but remained hidden. In the confusion, a group of the girl children conferred, and led by the largest and most authoritative of them, turned in their seats to the Deponent and suggested to him, "You go (to meet with the men). You're new (in town)." The Deponent had moved to Palo Alto in the preceding eighteen months when its father, Alfred Joseph deGrazia, took a job teaching government at nearby Stanford University However this was not a university preschool, but rather the public school open to the children of the townspeople of Palo Alto, the "Townies," many of who were actually antipathetically inclined to the elite, private institution in their midst.
The girls then pointed to the Deponent as the Teacher waded into the group of children seated at their desks, and she, not knowing the pupils well by their faces or names, took the Deponent by the hand, and led him to the classroom doorway and into the hall. On the way she asked the Deponent its name, and it responded, "John." Both the Deponent and the test pilot's son, the boy who had dived under his desk, were blonde, but the similarity ended there. The test pilot’s son was much heavier and larger, and had his hair "crew cut," as did four or five of the other boys who he was close to. The Teacher said, "Oh, well," and ordered the Deponent to stand. She then took the Deponent by the hand, and led him out of the classroom and into the hallway, where the three men waited.
Once outside the classroom door, the Deponent was greeted by the sight of the three intruders, two clad in the uniform/suit sometimes called "Government Green," and one dressed in the white shirt and black pants that might appear to some to be the usual dress of a lab technician or experimenter. He stood back and to the rear of the other two, and was smiling, or rather smirking. The Deponent believes the three looked authoritative, even to the Teacher, a young woman in her twenties. One, the person who was to hold the Deponent by the wrist, was considerably taller than the Deponent's father, which made him over six feet tall. The "Experimenter" was shorter, about the same height as the Deponent's father, or five feet, ten inches tall, but stouter and of a light, or white complexion, while the third man, the one who was to engage the Teacher's attention while the Experimenter administered the injection, was of intermediate height, about six feet tall or taller. The Deponent could not see the faces of these men, only the mouth and chin of the man who held its arm, as described below.
When the group first set eyes on the Deponent, one of them said, "That doesn't look like the son of test pilot." He's kind of sickly and underfed." The men all snickered, and the Teacher kind of blushed and apologized, and said something inaudible while pointing back to the room. The man, looked where she had pointed, seeing the mob of children and hearing the general confusion, despaired of retrieving the boy whose father had "given permission." He said, "Oh well, he'll do," in an exasperated tone.
After the Teacher had introduced the Deponent, and told the men its name, the "leader" of the group, the tallest man, the one who was to hold the Deponent’s arm while the Experimenter administered the injection, asked the Deponent, "John, who's that?" It was the same deep, "basso" voice that the Deponent had heard posing the question, "Who’s the SS killer," but now it was being used in a "teacherly" manner, calculated to cause the boy in front of him to be cooperative, and the impression the Deponent received, even at that young age, was that the speaker was referring to and invoking the person of the President of the United States.
However, it had only been cautiously following the Teacher’s instructions in this, its first month or two at school, and now was actively seeking to reject the newcomers, the intended object of whom (the test pilot’s son) had seemed so fearful. So it intentionally erred, and pretended to infer the questioner was referring to its father, a U.S. Army Captain of Intelligence turned college professor. It responded to the man’s question by saying, "That's Dad!" Then it quickly added, "If you do this, he'll leave us." Of course, it did not know this with any certainty at the time, even though it was to come true, but it was the worst thing it could imagine, and the Deponent said it to deter the three from carrying out their mission. The man’s shoulder’s slumped with frustration, and he responded, "I have my orders," and prepared to take hold of the Deponent’s arm, by pulling up his pants’ legs, and squatting.
As this matter was unfolding, the Teacher seemed to realize or pretended to realize that something was wrong, as well as remember her duty to protect the welfare of the children in her charge (her legal exposure), and seemed to grow increasingly excited and questioning as to the intent of the men, possibly in a ploy to elicit the "cover up" story. The suited man who was about to grab the Deponent, told what even then was to it, the Teacher and the kids who were "listening in," a transparent lie in explanation of what he was to do next. He said, "His father is going away, and he has to get inoculations." The other suited man nodded his head in an over-zealous affirmation of the lie. The Deponent thinks she may have responded by whispering incredulously, "Here?" and looking doubtful, however it was seeking other ways out, and had ceased depending on the Teacher for protection.
The man who "was following orders," the taller of the two suited men, squatted so that his face was about a foot higher then the Deponent’s. That is when it saw his mouth and chin. The Deponent continued to look to its own defense, though it was waging a hopeless battle. The Deponent said with upturned face in the direction of the Experimenter in hopes of gaining sympathy in another quarter, or saying something that would deter the three, "I'm Jewish." Its mother was Jewish, (converted to Roman Catholicism when married to its father), and the Deponent was attempting to invoke her people’s authority and influence, as its mention of its father had failed to stop them.
Perhaps it was the way it said it, or perhaps it was the worst thing it could have said in its effort to stop them, but this caused all three to smile cruelly. The Deponent now fears that the revelation that it was of part-Jewish ancestry actually enabled the Experimenter to continue, and increased his chances of "success," given the man’s background. Where he might have been deterred, or had doubts about injecting the son of an American pilot, a member of the group that had done so much damage to his previous employer, whom the Deponent now imagines was the Nazi Government of Germany, he had no such qualms about demonstrating his horrible talents on a Jewish-American child.
When that did nothing to soften the apparent resolve of the men, the Deponent tried one last tack. Addressing the third man, who stood with his back against the wall, it said, "No one will like me anymore." He responded by smiling and brushing this comment off, as if unheard. As this man (who much later the Deponent would characterize as a "Lothario") engaged the Teacher to prevent her from interfering, the man who had squatted down to its height, pushed its right shoulder, so as to send its left arm up to maintain its balance, then seized and gripped its left wrist with both hands, and pulled its left arm downwards and towards him, until the Deponent winced in pain. He had hyper-extended the Deponent's arm.
Then he slackened up a little bit, and twisted his head up and around to the side, and addressed the Experimenter, asking, "Can you get him?" The Experimenter grunted an affirmative, and then swooped or bent downwards and forwards with a hypodermic in his hand, and in that single motion injected the Deponent. As the needle struck bone, the Deponent winced in pain, and pulled away slightly. The needle was still halfway in, and the Deponent stared at what was truly a huge amount of injectable fluid relative to its tiny arm, and low body weight. So, with another relatively huge and painful twist, the Deponent managed to twist its arm to the point where the needle came out when half the contents of the hypodermic was injected. The Experimenter cursed under his breath, but then, when asked by the man holding the Deponent, "Is that enough?" responded, "Yes." The Experimenter did not swab the Deponent’s skin with disinfectant prior to injecting it, as was to be done many times in the future when it received inoculations or medicine by hypodermic injection. The injection stung, and then began to burn, and the Deponent tasted chemicals.
Then, the Teacher jolted upright, and verbally leaped at the man she had previously been "flirting" with. "What did you inject him with?" she snapped at him. In response he just smiled contemptuously. She looked down, beaten because the act had already been done in her presence, while the Deponent was in her custody. This was to be the case again and again, as each person who heard the matter was, it seemed to the Deponent, beaten at its outset, something that it now attributes to the men having been associated with the nearby Moffett Federal Airbase, and possibly the Department of Defense. Then, she changed her tack to that of a co-conspirator, the maker of a cover-up, and wheedled, "What do I tell him?" she said, possibly meaning its father, but also the policeman who was "on the way." "Tell him it was a tetanus shot," the man retorted glibly, and with a harsh and unsympathetic edge to his voice.
Meanwhile, the man released the Deponent in a way it still remembers. He pulled his hands apart, but they remained in a kind of circle made with both forefingers and both thumbs, so that the Deponent had to pull its arm out like it had been in a hoop. The Deponent couldn't control its left arm, so that it dangled uselessly. Then, the Deponent looked up at the Teacher for instruction. She tried to look back, but her eyes were teary, and she just shook her head once, to send the tears flying, and clear her eyes, and perhaps to indicate to the Deponent to go back to the class on its own. Her hands were clasped around her shoulders, and she didn't offer to help the Deponent, even though it tried to say, "I need help." So the Deponent turned on its own, and staggered back into the classroom alone. The Deponent heard some more words being exchanged behind it, angry words, but it couldn't hear them to remember them, as it was fast getting dizzy and nauseous from the injection, as well as the fast unfolding consequences.
When we reentered the room, first the Deponent and then the Teacher, the class, already chaotic from having been abandoned, began to dissolve into noisy disorder when the other children saw the state the Deponent was in. The Deponent found its way back to its seat with the help of the other four-year olds who showed the way, and the Teacher began restoring order. Then, a few minutes after seating itself, the Deponent began to claw at the site of the injection, as it continued to hurt and burn. The Teacher saw the Deponent scratching at the spot, and ordered it to stop. The Deponent cried out, "It hurts!" but stopped anyway. A few seconds later, the Deponent passed out cold, falling to the floor as it lost consciousness and went stiff. The Deponent knows this because while it was "out," a group of about four or six boys gathered around it, and looked into its face, so that they were the first thing it saw when it opened its eyes, and it could not move a muscle in response to their wide-eyed gawking and grinning. Before the Deponent fully regained consciousness, as it was awakening and reopening its eyes, it heard one of the boys say, "He died!" The Teacher, who before this point in time had been using her greatest efforts to calm the class, while listening to what the children were trying to tell her, then rushed towards where the Deponent lay, and chased the boys back to their seats, saying, "Children, give him air."
The commotion and possibly the presence of the strangers in the school brought a male employee, possibly another teacher, into the classroom. Our Teacher stood over the Deponent, and talked with him, explaining what had happened. Then she looked down on it, and said in utter seriousness, "It looks like they killed him." She kind of sniffled, and may have dropped a tear as she spoke these words, but basically, she remained aloof. Then, the male employee of the school responded, saying, "Yes, I’ll take him to the Nurse."
He stooped, and picked the Deponent up while it remained stiff, even with its legs pointed straight out, as he carried it to the school nurse’s office. On the way, he tried to sooth the Deponent with calming words, and got its legs to drop, and it to relax somewhat. Then, he explained to the Nurse what had happened, and she went into a panic. The Deponent is not sure whom she was talking to, but she loudly announced in a panicky voice, and it may have been over an intercom to the Principal's office, "There are men in the building, and they're after the children." Then she turned, took one look at the Deponent, and turning away again, said, "He's no good anymore."
Then the Teacher arrived to tell her version of what happened, and seeing the Deponent's face, asked the Nurse what she had said. The Nurse then realized the Deponent had heard her comment, and was slightly embarrassed, but brushed it off, and asked, "Is the other boy all right? He's the one they are after. His father is at the airbase, and they may be agents who are after him," or words to this effect. She seemed to be a local woman, perhaps with contacts or connections with other locals, such as the police, airbase workers or others acting in similar workaday and semi-official capacities. Perhaps she had remained in Palo Alto during the War.
The Deponent thinks it remembers the Teacher asking the Nurse, "Why did I take him?" The Nurse answered, "They're from Chicago.. I don't know..." and then talked quickly and inaudibly for a little longer. In a few more moments, the Principal was in the office, questioning the Nurse, the Deponent's Teacher, and the male school employee who had brought the Deponent to the Nurse's office. The Deponent did not hear or understand anything of this conversation, only the seriousness of the matter it now found itself involved in. The Deponent just remembers the Principal's last words to its Teacher before he turned and probably went looking for the Experimenter and his two companions, which were, "So, you're not going to tell me what happened?" The Deponent looked over just as she had lowered her eyes, and then she shook her head once, the same way she had when the Experimenter had finished injecting the Deponent, and it had looked up at her.
The Deponent’s mother was then called, and the Nurse gave her a no-information story, and then she prepared to take the Deponent home. As she was gathering the Deponent up to leave, a police officer entered the office, and talked to the Nurse, as well as to the Deponent’s Teacher and mother. He only heard the Teacher say, "tetanus," probably in answer to the police officer’s question of what did they say they injected him with? He then said, in a melodramatic way and with a wave of his hand in its direction, "This is not "Tetanus," Ma’am." Then, he finished with her, and addressing the Deponent’s mother, he asked, "Does your husband have any enemies?" Those were the only two things said by the police officer that the Deponent heard or remembers hearing.
After that, the children treated the Deponent differently. One, a young girl, said the Deponent had been injected with "Spaceman blood," since the child for whom the injection was intended was the son of a test pilot, and rumors constantly circulated during those years of flying saucer landings, and of extra-terrestrial beings being found in crashed saucers. This was a favorite rumor, and thereafter some called the Deponent "freak," or "monster."
After that, the Deponent began to engage in an uncontrollable and habitual behavior, which may have interfered with the Teacher's attempts to gain the cooperation of at least part of the class. When she would call for our cooperation for anything, she would almost always use the same or similar tone she had used the day she called for the Deponent to accompany her to meet the Experimenter. Hearing it, the Deponent would darken, curl up and nurse its arm, the one which had received the injection, and which had been slightly disabled by the treatment it had received. Most of the girls, still following their "class leader," showed their clear disapproval of the Deponent's behavior when it was brought to their attention by the Teacher, but the boys hesitated and perhaps questioned the Teacher's intent more than they might.
The Teacher would say on two different occasions, "I can't teach him anymore," and "I don't want him in my class." The other children, especially the lead girl and her followers, heard both these comments, which may have been for their benefit. They also conferred with the test pilot’s son and his group of followers, and together they decided that if I resisted, I could be labeled anti-authoritarian, anti-government, or similar such things. This frightened me, but not as much as it might have if my mother had been less liberal in her upbringing, outlook and politics.
Thus, there came a day before the Deponent was removed from the class, when the girls gathered with their backs to it, and began to discuss the ongoing matter of the experiment and how to bring about its successful conclusion. The Deponent listened in, as the talk concerned him, the experimental subject. One girl said, "He can be somebody." The lead girl answered, "John can and will be some nobody." Then, she turned on the Deponent and, after making a gesture in imitation of the swooping way the Experimenter had struck home with his hypodermic needle, said, "It's time, John." She clearly meant that it was time for the "follow-up" to "the experiment." The Deponent didn't know what that entailed, but protested bitterly, finally saying, perhaps in imitation of its father who had fought the Nazis, "I'll make you surrender!" The lead girl answered, "We're the United States" At that, the Deponent grew confused, laughed hysterically, and then went into a long silence
Some time after this confrontation, the Deponent found itself in the pick-up area of the Portola Elementary School parking lot, without a ride. It thought it saw its mother picking up its older brother and sisters about fifty yards away, but then they pulled away without him. It saw his sister, Victoria, give a goodbye wave as she got in the car, a green station wagon. As the other cars assembled to pick up the children departed, one remained, and the driver opened the passenger-side car for the Deponent. However, as the Deponent attempted to mount the car-step, it realized the occupants of the vehicle were the same men who had administered the injection. It thought hopefully that perhaps its father might be among the men, but it was one of the men, who the Deponent could now identify as the injector of the substance, or Experimenter, who said in a cooing tone, "We’re your father." Since neither of the two occupants of the vehicle that the Deponent could make out even knew its name, the Deponent backed out of the vehicle and began to wander out into the parking lot in front of the departing cars. One mother looked shocked, and said, "They’re abducting that child!" Another, a male voice said, "It can’t be. They’re government men!" The Deponent distinctly heard these two comments. It also heard one of the men say, "Let him go, I’ll get him at home" after the Deponent continued to show defiance and resistance.
Then, the Deponent’s Teacher drove up, and beckoned the Deponent to enter her vehicle by opening the door, and motioning for it to get in. After the Deponent was seated, it began to suspect that the Teacher was actually in collusion, after she turned the car, came alongside the men, and exchanged some words, including a whispered conversation with the Experimenter in an unknown tongue. However, the men declined to take the Deponent into their custody at that time, and she drove the Deponent home, and spoke to its mother. Its mother responded that there had been some confusion, some mix-up, that she couldn’t find the Deponent, and thought that "Al," which was its father’s nickname, had picked it up. She also seemed confused, because of the impression the Teacher had given of being cooperative with the men. The reason that the Deponent was allowed to return to its home will be seen.
In the weeks that followed the Teacher would call its mother, and after saying that the Deponent was "too young (for school)," asked her to take the Deponent home. The Deponent then found itself alone at home, with its baby brother, Carl, for company. At one point, a neighbor asked the Deponent’s older sisters, what had happened to make it such a problem child when before it seemed as outgoing and bright as the others, who would all be high achievers. They sent it to explain what had happened, and it tried to tell the story of the injection, saying in conclusion, “…and now I can’t become anything!”

Other members of the family, including the Deponent’s mother's brother, sister and aunt became concerned, especially when it had gotten around that the Deponent had said, "I'll make you surrender" with reference to the "United States," clearly a statement to be included in rumors spread to apportion the guilt for its failure at its first year of school to the Deponent, and however out of context and erroneous that interpretation of that statement was.
The Deponent was taken to visit its uncle, Paul Oppenheim, an architect in San Francisco, and from there on a tour of Alcatraz, where it was advised never to say that again, as the consequences of fighting the United States were imprisonment in that place. Its father's family was equally serious where crime and punishment were concerned, and the portent of this ongoing event was just as the Deponent had predicted. Its father and mother would split, and its father would de facto abandon us, though not at all once. Its paternal grandmother was the only one to stick with the Deponent into adulthood, as the Deponent pursued a modest living as a builder and manager of low-income rentals in Princeton New Jersey a not un-typical occupation of persons from her background, the lower-middle class in Chicago
As indicated above, the incident affected the Deponent’s family extremely adversely, especially its younger brothers. Some time after the date of the injection, when the Deponent was home with its mother and baby brother, one of the men visited our house trying to find it, to continue or "finish" the experiment by abducting the Deponent. It was during ordinary working hours, and finding the house empty, apart from its Mother, the Deponent and the Deponent’s baby brother, Carl, he sexually assaulted the Deponent’s mother in its parents' bedroom. After he had finished with the Deponent’s mother, he exited its parent's bedroom. The Deponent had come out of its "hiding place" upon hearing the distress of its mother through being forcibly raped. It entered the room, clutching a tiny toy phone, and said, “It’s Dad,” while proffering the phone towards its mother who lay under the rapist. Its mother responded by struggling free enough to turn her head towards the Deponent, and, as if talking into the phone, said loudly, “I’m being raped.” The man paused in what he was doing, and noticing the Deponent, waved his arm and said, “Get out, go away!” As he regained control of its mother (her head was buried beneath his chest, she said, “Call the police.” The Deponent retreated to the hallway where it tried to “call the police” on its toy phone. When it looked again, the man was rising from his position on top of its mother who lay prostrate on her bed. Then, as the rapist began to exit the room, the Deponent heard its mother asking, "John, is that the man?" The rapist, hearing the Deponent’s mother’s voice, and sensing its presence, paused outside the bedroom door. However, not seeing anyone, and perhaps in anticipation of a police response, he said in a threatening manner, "Never say FBI…” This fragment may have been completed by “was here, did this,” or something similar. Then, his eyes fell upon the Deponent who stood at his feet as it tried to look up at his face to see if it was one of the man who had participated in the attack at Portola Elementary School (while getting no further than his pant legs), and he exclaimed, "There he is!" and picked the Deponent up to examine it to make sure he had the right child. The Deponent will never forget the man’s face, red-flushed from excitement, and crossed by a leering grin. He squinted and closed one eye, and looked into the Deponent’s face, presumably to make certain that he had the right child, and then said, "That’s a face that won’t be missed." Later the Deponent would repeat those words to its father in its attempts to tell him what had happened, and remembers being rewarded with a laugh. The Deponent’s mother, hearing this, came out of the room, and asked, "What are you doing?" The man answered in a kind of hoity-toity way, "I am using your son is in my experiment.” She began to berate him. When that didn't seem to affect him, she said, "I’ll have your child," and he put the Deponent down.
The Deponent remembers him saying, "Oh, we'll find someone else." Then, the Deponent's mother told it to go into its parent’s bedroom, which it did, where it collapsed on the floor by the side of the bed. After that it awoke to the sound and sight of its mother quietly weeping, as she sat on the edge of the bed with her head in her hand. Seeing the Deponent awake, she picked it up, and carried it to its own bed. When its brother and sisters came home from school, and got a sense of what had happened, the Deponent’s oldest sister said, "Dad's going to be very angry when he finds out." So, the Deponent tried to pretend that the whole thing was a drama on TV, then a new device that its parents had just acquired, and which they kept in their bedroom.
The man would return one more time, but it was, as its mother had promised, to make his child with her, and the Deponent was left unmolested. However, after the "Assistant" had completed the sexual act, the Deponent, who again came out of hiding as it had the first time, heard its mother say, "Ouch! That hurt! Why did you do that?" The Experimenter's Assistant answered, "I want you to be with your son." The Deponent now suspects that its mother also carried the burden of having been injected with non-human DNA for the rest of her life as a result of that injection. However, before the Assistant had reached the door leading into the hallway, the Deponent retreated into hiding, remembering what had happened when it was caught after the first time its mother was raped.
After that incident, the Deponent was returned to school, and this was acceptable to the Teacher. The school year that remained passed without any more "violence," however; the Deponent does remember an incident where it was prompted by the Teacher to tell the story of what happened to its mother (when she was raped in its family’s house) in small-child language, perhaps so that the other children would understand the consequences of resisting the men. Though the Deponent faltered and gagged during his speech, and never used the word “rape” in the narration, knowing it to be a shameful thing, another boy called the word out in a voice much older than his four years would ordinarily warrant so that everybody heard, and the class let out a collective gasp. The Teacher repeated the word, saying, “He’s raping her,” in a reflective manner calculated to be “above” the level of the children. However, I heard it and felt ashamed.

The boy seated next to the Deponent commented, saying, "I’d go with her (the Teacher). If that happened to Mom and me, Dad would kill us." This boy was the same one who had said, "My father was at Normandy (the Normandy Invasion)” when the Teacher approached him with the intent seating me in the seat next to his. She may have provoked this comment by implying through words and gestures that the Deponent was cooperating, and responded to his defensive assertion by saying, "John’s father was with Patton." Our father’s wartime experience in Europe was where the similarity between us ended, and the Deponent was surprised to see that she had seated it next to this young man upon its return to class, as he was of full height or taller, dark-haired, and promised to be very good-looking in a manly way when he grew older. It is now apparent that the Deponent was being used as a “tame horse,” such as when these are led in front to calm and lead newly caught wild ones.

As this boy was brought around to see what his role in the experiment would be (as a “superman” operator of relativity weapons?) as part of the effort to convince him to be cooperative, it became increasingly clear to all of the children in the class that this was not an innocent endeavor. Some of the other kids even indicated a willingness to side with the Deponent, even though it had offered so much resistance before and after the initial injection, enough resistance to warrant removal from school. At one point the Deponent asked to speak, and then given the Teacher’s permission, announced, “It’s the end of the human empire.” It made this statement with reference to what would be the outcome of the experiment that it and the other children were discussing in our childish ways, and it was greeted with sideways glances and aghast looks by the other children. After a child, a strong-voiced boy, volunteered, “(He means) civilization, the Teacher, having heard the comment and the other child’s explanation, said inquisitively, “You mean civilization?”  The Deponent nodded its head and tried to repeat the word, but failed as it was too much for it to handle with the verbal skills it had obtained in just under five years and thereby elicited a laugh from the others. The Teacher then, rather than appear troubled, seemed pleased, and the Deponent believes it remembers her saying, quite pointedly to it, and with her fists balled and pressed against her hips for emphasis, “Good.” When the Deponent responded with a look, “Why?” she answered, “Because that’s what you did to us.” The other kids mumbled while giving the Deponent blaming looks, and Patton’s name was mentioned by one or some.

The last time the Deponent spoke to the dark-haired boy that the Teacher had seated it next to was when, speaking with reference to what the other boy was being prepared and preparing to do, the Deponent said, “I’ll catch you.” Then, caught off guard by his betrayed look, the Deponent softened and explained, “My father will like me then.”

My father, a staunch anti-Nazi and teacher of American government, even to the FBI at Newark during the Sixties, really didn’t have much use for male sons, and was very happy with his three daughters before even the first boy, my elder brother, Paul, was born. It was my mother who wanted the male children, and who would use us throughout much of our lives, and I needed to find a way to make my father want me around. He just looked at the Deponent, kind of smiled, but didn’t say anything. The Teacher asked him what the Deponent had said to change his demeanor, and then separated us upon hearing his response. The Deponent listened from afar (about half-way back in the classroom) while they talked, and it remembers the Teacher saying, “Let him catch you, then attack.” These words meant nothing at the time.
Then, one day in spring after school, when the Deponent was walking on the sidewalk where the parents ordinarily picked up their children after school to meet its mother, it came across the same car that had held the men when they tried to abduct it months before. It was occupied on the passenger side by the man who spoke so authoritatively, and who had held the Deponent’s arm when it was injected. The Deponent could see this man quite clearly through the open window as it walked passed. It immediately thought that he was there to pick up another child, perhaps even the boy who it had been seated next to, however in consideration of what had already happened, it did not feel confident enough to simply walk on by with face averted. So, it asked the man, "What should I do?" in as resigned and obedient-sounding tone of voice as it could possibly manage. The man responded, "You’re on your own." The Deponent’s heart leapt for joy. It was no longer part of the experiment. The men had decided to use others to complete their assignment.
While attending school, the Deponent noticed that another boy had a birthday party, and it got the idea that it could do the same. It reasoned that even though the kids didn’t particularly have any use for him anymore, if he could get just a few to attend, they would tell its father what had happened, and why all the trouble, and it wouldn't be blamed for all the trouble attending the experimental injection. When the Deponent had its fifth birthday in June of 1956 in Palo Alto some of its former classmates from Portola were invited to attend a birthday party in the garden of the Deponent's family's home. The invitation was extended in class, and the Deponent remembers one girl announcing it to the others by saying, "Do you want to go to an alligator's birthday party?" The way the question was phrased became a clue to the nature of the injection in later years, and the Deponent made a mental note to remember the queer way the girl asked the others from then on. The response, though not overwhelming was affirmative, and the date of the party was set.
When the day rolled around, it was a sad fact that the party was also visited or attended by an uninvited "man from the base." The Deponent knows this, because its mother announced, "John, the man from the base is here," in tones audible to the Deponent, who was actually some distance away in the yard, trying to avoid or retreat from the man. At that time, this interloper had the opportunity to familiarize himself with other small children from its Portola preschool class. His presence, however, evoked the matter of the injection, and the Deponent was saddened by it, as it was becoming increasingly convinced that the Experimenter and his assistants were determined to conclude their experiment with a fatal dissection, despite the one Assistant’s affirmation that it was free to go.

As the Deponent retreated to the bottom of the garden, it stopped, turned and saw the man talking with its father and mother. It couldn't hear what they were saying, until its father repeated in a low voice, "You want my son." The Deponent’s mother cringed, bent her shoulders, and turned her hands upward in a kind of claw or beggar's gesture, and the Deponent thought that all was lost, that its strategy, at first successful, had now backfired.

After the man and the party invitees had left and the party was over, its father came to it at the bottom of the garden where it remained in retreat, refusing to return to the house. With a weird light in his eyes, he said, "I'll catch you," and began to chase the Deponent who ran in tight circles around a tiny pond or bird bath in the garden, and the Deponent’s father ran after it until he was winded. Then the Deponent’s father remarked, possibly to the Deponent’s sisters, "You're right, he is hard to catch." After that, the Deponent’s mother warned it to stay away from its father, and it was probably its mother who persuaded its father to move us to a town near to where his father had found work in New York teaching, and near New York and Connecticut where its mother’s sister and aunt lived.
So, despite all the "birthday party" strategy was a success, and the Deponent's father heard from the children's lips the confirmation of the Deponent's story, and so before anything more could happen, the Deponent joined his family in moving away, as that was its father’s and mother’s decision.
The Deponent’s older brother by eighteen months seemed to be of the opinion that the Experiment would entail fatal consequences to the Deponent, that it would be cut up or dissected, and explained this to it, using the German-English children's book, "Cruel Paul," a book which contains a picture of a little boy with his fingers cut off while blood spews from the severed appendages. It was this picture that the Deponent’s brother pointed to when he tried to tell it what was to be the end result of whatever was going on. Of course, like the others, he only had rumors and imaginative stories to go on, but the picture caused the Deponent to burst into tears, and brought its mother running.
As stated above, the Deponent and its family moved into a house in Princeton New Jersey and its father took a job teaching at NYU in New York not far from where its mother's sister and aunt both lived. The Deponent reentered the kindergarten in the Princeton Public School system, and the following year entered the first grade The occasion and year that followed was uneventful, except that the Deponent won praise as an artist, and an older boy (third-grader?), a bully by the name of Charles Madden gained some knowledge of the rumors that had been spread in Palo Alto He and his brothers were “students’ servants” at heart, and they took the side of the Experimenter and his assistants, thus becoming "enforcers," whose duty it was to watch the Deponent constantly from then on, and forever prevent the Deponent from telling its story, perhaps to inspire the other children with doubt concerning the experiment. In this he was successful, and he continued in that role all his life. He and his brothers kept jobs with both the University and the local government of Princeton Borough for the entire time. They ultimately victimized small children, themselves, through organizing the distribution of crack cocaine at a local park and elementary-middle school through his young daughter, who vanished after she was questioned by the police.
The Deponent believes: a) The Experimenter had what the Deponent came to know as a "foreign accent," possibly a German accent, though he seemed to affect a Polish or Russian accent when approaching the Deponent, possibly as a result of having been used to "working on" children of Polish- or Russian-Jewish nationality, and the Deponent suspects he was a "refugee" from the collapsed Nazi Reich, and was possibly recruited by the American government and associated with the then infant Space program, or on the development of high-altitude jet aircraft as a bio-technologist. The Deponent suspects he was a veteran experimenter, trained and encouraged to experiment on children by the Nazis. His manner with the Deponent and with the children as a group was practiced and sophisticated, and suggested that he was used to doing such experiments. He "shushed" the children authoritatively and effectively, even more so than our Teacher, and located the Deponent and stooped to its level easily, especially after he discovered the Deponent was "Jewish." It is also possible that the Experimenter had spent some time working in the former German East Africa colonies area, especially the area of Lake Tanganyika This theme (that of the culture of Lake Tanganyika and what is now known as Tanzania ) has been a recurring one in the Deponent's and its mother’s lives, and it believes the Experimenter, who said, "We're your father," is the source of this bias. More concerning the nature of the experiment may be gleaned from the Experiment Page.
The Deponent also believes: b) the boy who was intended to be used as the experimental subject had been tipped off by his father, a test-pilot at the Moffett Federal Airbase who, for whatever reasons, had given his permission to the authorities at the base to use his son in the experiment. He may also have advised his son, "Just hide, and they'll take some other kid," since the Deponent doesn’t think the boy would have disobeyed his father at the time the Experimenter appeared at the door of its preschool class if he had been told by his father to be cooperative. The Deponent suspects that this man was the same test pilot that then suffered death and dismemberment when his test plane went down in an "accident" in the weeks or months following the date of the Deponent's injection, and that accident may have been precipitated by a grave disagreement he had with his wife following the narration of the matter by their son to her. If the injection involved living cells, this would have been hugely problematical in the Religious and Political environment of the place and time.
The Deponent suspects: c) The injection was a solution containing living cells, and perhaps an immune system disabling agent, similar to those used today for organ transplant operations. The most probable reason a very small child would be used in a scientific experiment of any sort in those days is because of the undeveloped state of its immune system, and that the experiment was either to culture cells, such as those taken from a ductless gland or "body," or to grow an internal organ. This was the kind of experimentation that the Nazis encouraged, since replacing the lost limbs and organs of wounded veterans was of prime consideration to them. It might also have been related to some "superman" or experimentation, where non-human DNA was spliced with human DNA to create soldiers with bestial courage and strength, or other "superpowers." Another possibility is that, unknowing to the Experimenter's "handlers," the experiment was based on a Nazi plan to create a "biological terror-weapon," genetic "monsters" that might invade and populate parts of the United States, and wreak terror among its inhabitants.

At any rate, as stated above, incidence and coincidence point to a place of origin for the experimentation, and that is the former German colonies in East Africa, especially the area around Lake Tanganyika and Lake Nyasa Not only would the area be ideal in terms of its seclusion from prying eyes and foreign agents, but human material might be readily available on a willing basis from tribesmen in the area. If the experiment were presented as either a way to imbue humans with the qualities of crocodiles, or make them immune to crocodile attacks, the local people would have been accepting of it. Further, Voodoo, an animist native religion, encourages such mixing of animal and human qualities, as its practitioners hold that certain animals have great and supernatural powers, greater than any that humans possess. That may be a reason that many people, especially black people, having gotten a whiff of the crocodile pheromone present in my blood and body, assume that I am somehow “black.”
The Deponent subsequently became very ill, contracting by the second grade two years later, almost all of the childhood diseases, some of which had been eradicated and unseen in Princeton for five decades or more, including Scarlet Fever, and double-pneumonia. This predisposition to illness would be typical of a disabled immune system, and lessened as the Deponent grew older. The Deponent also developed stomach ulcers attributed to stress, the first time at the age of seven. These reoccurred at the age of twelve.
The Deponent suspects: d) The experiment, as originally conceived, to be carried out on the son of test pilot stationed at Moffett Federal Airbase who had given his permission, had gained approvals at the highest levels of government, even in the White House. It's simply the fact that eighty to two hundred million people had died of warfare-related causes in the preceding decades, and the defense of the country over-shadowed any and all scruples that anyone, inside and outside of government might have concerning the use of small children for experimental purposes, even if their sacrifice was necessary to complete the experiment. Even its father probably would not convincingly or wholly have been an objector to the idea of using the Deponent as an experimental subject, had he known or been asked to give his permission, even though it subsequently made the Deponent worth less in his eyes. Dr. Alfred deGrazia was a five-year veteran of the war in Europe an eyewitness to the atrocities at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, and later to become a war-crimes witness. Though Nazis familiar with the devastation wrought by Patton's troops (its father was an intelligence officer at their head in Italy and France) might hate him, and wish his son the victim of a scientific experiment, he also would not have been totally adverse to the sacrifice and idea, such was his devotion to the Army and his patriotic fervor. However, the Deponent does remember him muttering, "They're after my children," before its family moved away from Palo Alto and the Deponent came to believe that he was referring to the Nazis in the years that followed. The Deponent believes that its mother and her family were instrumental in saving it from the consequences of the experiment, which to this day the Deponent believes were fatal to at least one other little boy who they decided on after its mother became pregnant with the Assistant's child, and possibly several more in the years thereafter.
While the Deponent was hospitalized with double pneumonia and other diseases traceable to a diminished immune system function at Princeton Hospital its father came to the hospital and talked with the doctor in charge outside the door of the Deponent’s hospital room. He asked the Doctor in charge of the Deponent's case what he had done, and the MD responded that he had treated the Deponent with antibiotics. Then the Deponent's father asked, "Did that kill the implanted tissue?" or words to that effect. Very little was known about the kind of experiment that is described in this deposition in those days, only that something had been tried. The Doctor replied, "No." Its father asked "Why?" and the Doctor responded that it was "too much like the Deponent’s tissue," or something similar. Then, after the Deponent had been released, and all the news of the Deponent’s hospital stay had been passed to its sisters, who were considerably older than the Deponent's seven years, and versed in High School science, they told the Deponent that its mother had a miscarriage at the Palo Alto General Hospital in the years before the experiment. It is conceivable but not highly probable that the miscarried fetal tissue was passed to the Experimenter at the Moffett Federal Airbase, and used as the basis for creating tissue suitable for implanting a gene splice, or creating some other mask for foreign tissue that would be unrejectable by the Deponent. If this was the case, then the Deponent was not the wrong choice for the experiment, but rather the story of the test pilot's son and the permission asked for and obtained from the test pilot was made up, another falsification created to undertake the experiment or demonstration of experimental results obtained in Nazi-occupied Europe
The Deponent believes that these men took another victim, another small, blonde boy from its class (Timmy?), and tried to finish the experiment with him after the Deponent was lost to it by having moved away. This boy may have been supplied to the Experimenter as the same one (the Deponent) who had been given the injection. This was one of the children who had attended the Deponent’s birthday party. The Deponent suspects that this child may have been abducted and experimented on as described below (4., Line 952).
Concerning the aftermath of the matters here described, the Deponent deposes and says:
1. The rapist/failed abductor was seen twice more by the Deponent in Princeton New Jersey After the Deponent's mother moved out of the house obtained by the Deponent's father in Princeton for the purpose of leaving the Deponent and his family so as to be better able to start a new family and life, the Deponent stayed on with intent of obtaining an education and then fixing up the property so that it could be sold. The house, known as 16 Linden Lane was thoroughly dilapidated when it was first occupied by the Deponent, its brothers and mother in 1965, or thereabouts. During the Seventies, the Deponent answered the door to find the rapist/abductor standing silent on the doorstep. He appeared to be crying, and then said inaudibly, "I love your mother." This behavior was inexplicable to the Deponent at the time, since it had blocked all memories of the matter of the Portola experiment from its mind, and was trying simply to enter adulthood as a productive individual. It closed the door in the rapist/failed abductor's face.
The second and last time the Deponent saw the rapist/failed abductor was in the Nineties, and he appeared more in character. The Deponent was struggling with the Borough authorities over housing code issues concerning its property, and the struggle had been publicized and was well-known, at least in Central New Jersey, as it had been made front page news in a newspaper (the Princeton Packet) with a distribution encompassing three contiguous counties, Mercer, Somerset and Hunterdon. The rapist/failed abductor drove by the Deponent's house during warm weather, and through an open window gave him the same gleeful, leering look he had when he had attempted to kidnap the Deponent. However, by then, he must have been in his Seventies.
The Experimenter was traced to a vicinity of Hawthorne where it has continued experimenting for the entire period of time since 1955. Many children and older people in the area, as well, have now been injected with variants of the substance with which the Deponent was injected. It appears to be reptilian (Crocodilian or Alligator) DNA, probably a fragment associated with the expression of pheromones. It causes severe behavioral problems, including outright blindness through changing the shape of the pupil.
The Deponent met up with the man in the Hawthorne Ace Hardware, ascertained that he was the "scientist" who had experimented on the children, and this information was passed on to the owner of the store as it left. The Experimenter had merely told the store owner after "smelling" the Deponent, "I worked on him," in a whisper that wasn’t supposed to be heard by me. He was accompanied by a young man, also dressed like a Federal employee or agent, but looked much younger than the "seventy-something" that he should be by this time.
Two other incidents pointing to location of the laboratory where the gene-splicing experiments on humans and animals were undertaken occurred around this time. First, the Deponent, while passing a woman in a pick-up marked "Such-and-such Circus," gave the Indian sign language "question gesture." This was understood, and she responded, "SS." The Deponent believes she was in the area to look at mutants, freaks that the Experimenter was making for sale.
Some weeks or months later, the Deponent was astounded to come across a creature that clearly half-pony and half-cow. Its ears were like a horse’s, only it could not swivel them forward, and hold them erect and attentive. They simply flopped to the side of its head when it tried to direct its attention to the Deponent. Its coat was that of a Holstein cow, while its neck was also short, like that of a cow. Its udder was small like that of a pony, and its legs were long, like a pony’s. Its face was like a pony’s, with delicate nostrils, and when it spooked, it took off in a canter, and leaped over a four foot fence, quite unlike a cow, but very much like a small horse or pony.
The Deponent believes that this creature was one of the Experimenter’s creations.
2. The man with the deep, authoritative voice, the one who had held the Deponent while the Experimenter administered the injection, was never seen again by the Deponent to his knowledge. However, the Deponent believes he could identify the man from a limited number of pictures of persons associated with work being undertaken in connection with Moffett Federal Airbase at the time of the Portola experiment.
3. The Deponent suspects that both men had spent time or originated in Florida or some other part of the Deep South That is because of their gaunt, and generally heat-sapped looks, unusual for someone from the San Francisco region of California or elsewhere across the northern tier.
4. The Deponent states that when it reached the Fourth Grade at Nassau Street elementary school, its preschool teacher decided to visit Princeton about the same time that it was involved in the staging of a play, The Emperor's New Clothes. The Deponent was advised of the impending visit, and its response was indicative of trauma, while Dr. Chester Stroup, the Principal of the school, had already interviewed the Deponent concerning behavioral matters and learning difficulties that stemmed from the matter of the Portola experiment during the Deponent's Third Grade year.
After the play was completed, and the Deponent had done its part which involved acting in the role of one of the Tailors, the one who advised the King that he was quite well-dressed, it found its way in the darkened auditorium to where its preschool teacher from Portola was talking animatedly with Dr. Stroup, its French teacher, Mrs. Loomis, and one or two other teachers or mothers. From about twenty feet away, the Deponent saw its former preschool teacher make a motion which indicates a hypodermic injection, as if describing the incident of the first encounter of the Deponent and the Experimenter, and then heard Dr. Stroup say, "What happened to the other little boy. John talks about another little boy."
The assemblage straightened up when she replied in hushed tones that the Deponent wasn't supposed to hear that he had been abducted. Then, Dr. Stroup said, "What happened to him?" She just shook her head. He persisted and said, "Well, what do they say happened?" She whispered that "they put... attached an alligator to him." Dr. Stroup's eyes rolled up in disbelief, and then someone asked, "Where?" Its former preschool teacher pointed with her right pointer over her left shoulder. Someone then asked "How?" in a whisper. She responded by making sewing motions. Mrs. Loomis, a fifth grade teacher expostulated, "Sutured!" Then, the Deponent's Portola preschool teacher asked to see the Deponent, knowing that it was nearby in the darkened auditorium. Mrs. Loomis said, "No, we protect our children," and motioned to the Deponent to go away. Before the Deponent completed its retreat into the crowd, it heard her say defensively, "I saved him from being abducted." The Deponent never knowingly saw her again. When the Deponent some time later asked Mrs. Loomis why she didn't let it see the teacher (which had saved it from being abducted), she just answered that she knew us (the Deponent's family and itself), which was especially true since her family's old-time house was a neighboring dwelling. The Deponent' believes that meant she knew its best interest, as well.
The Deponent has come to suspect that the Nursery School teacher was in fact in collusion with the Experimenter, who was possibly a former SS concentration camp experimenter, and her "job" with the SS in Occupied Europe was to kidnap children to be used to bolster German population numbers, ultimately as soldiers and "breed stock."
The Deponent suspects: f) That to this day the Deponent carries antibodies or gene-fragments which may be traced to the injection, and perhaps its internal physiognomy reflects changes caused by the injection, such as the presence of genetic or internal (organic) anomalies, abnormal blood composition, a "gland" or body not ordinarily present in humans, perhaps non-human DNA, or other differences traceable to the effects of the experiment.

Oath as to the Veracity of the Matters Above:
I Solemnly Swear that the Above is True Under Penalty of the Laws of the United States and its constituent States Criminalizing False Swearing and Perjury, and Omits Nothing of Importance to the Matter at Hand.
______________________________ John Sebastian deGrazia Princeton New Jersey