I heard back from Brian. While it appears that the text above from NASA is technically accurate, there was a movement years ago, led by Wally Schirra, to have people like Brian declared non-astronauts, and NASA eventually drank the Kool-Aid and used to tell people that Brian was never an astronaut. The term I saw many years ago was something like “astronaut candidate,” or some such.
From Brian’s interview here:
projectcamelot.org/brian_o_leary_interview_transcript.html“BO’L: Yes, Kerry. Well, I was appointed to the astronaut program in 1967, and my title then was astronaut. I even have hanging on the wall here… I don’t have the accurate date, but I’d say roughly around 1990 it came to my attention…
“Well, I’ll backtrack a little bit. A reporter from the
San Diego Union Tribune interviewed me after I gave a talk in San Diego. Part of my credentials said “ex-astronaut. And one of the people on the board of the
San Diego Union Tribune was Wally Schirra, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts who, unbeknownst to me, formed what was called The Society for Space Explorers, in which the term astronaut was redefined to “anybody that went 50 miles above the Earth’s surface.”
“So in a way I was defrocked when Schirra hit the ceiling, and apparently the reporter lost his position… just like the first reporter that covered the first Wright brothers’ flight was fired from his position by his editor for not believing that heavier-than-air flight was possible. So this is just, once again, a reporter was fired for using the “wrong” credential. Well, I found that out.
“And then shortly after that, an organization with which I worked some, MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network in the US, also it came to their attention that maybe in fact I was not an astronaut. [Kerry laughs] So they wrote to NASA, and NASA said:
Well in fact he wasn’t.“
"KC: They said you were NOT.
"BO’L: I was not.
"KC: They actually wrote to NASA?
"BO’L: Well, I think so. I’m not absolutely sure of the details, but I can tell you who would know is Bob Bletchman, who was the lawyer for MUFON at the time.
"KC: Uh huh.
"BO’L: Anyway, Bob Bletchman wrote me, and it was kind of a challenging letter that basically said: Many of us feel that you misrepresented your credentials. So I presented my credentials to Bob Bletchman and he became convinced that, indeed, that was my title at the time, and that indeed it was appropriate to use that in my credentials.
"KC: Incredible.
"BO’L: Not that I used it all the time because, actually, I wouldn’t, because I was trying to get away from that controversy. And, you know, there’s much more about me besides being an ex-astronaut that’s kind of interesting anyway. [laughter]
"So it didn’t matter to me too much one way or the other. But I got vindicated because MUFON challenged me in public and then later vindicated me, that indeed I was an astronaut. So that was cleared up.
"Now, on another occasion: For a year I had a visiting faculty appointment at Caltech during the Mariner 10 mission in which I was deputy team leader of the Television Imaging Science Team for Mariner 10 that went by Venus and Mercury during the 1970s.
"Professor Bruce Murray, who later became the director of JPL, appointed me deputy team leader during that time. I was at Caltech and worked on the mission with him and some of the other scientists.
"So, fast-forward to the year 2000 and a very bright senior honors physics student who knew that I was researching solution energies such as cold fusion and so forth said: Gee, you ought to come to Caltech. Would you like to speak at our Commencement as a speaker for Alternative Future Science such as cold fusion? And I said I would be happy to.
"So they scheduled it. They started posting things and advertising the event. Then this one professor that I had worked for, who later became director of JPL, apparently actively tried to suppress the entire gig.
"And then it turned out that there was no record that I was even at… Caltech denied that I was deputy team leader, denied that I was even at Caltech. [Kerry laughs] But it was so simple because I’d published papers, well, in
Science and other journals, and Caltech was the affiliation that was under my name.
"KC: And not only that, you had to have colleagues who remember you, you know, who are still there even, I’m sure.
"BO’L: Exactly. Yes, absolutely.
"KC: So it’s an amazing thing.
"BO’L: Amazing thing. They tried to erase it and I thought:
Gee, maybe I could find some paycheck stubs or something like that. Because apparently I was wiped off the Caltech records that I was even there -- even in their Administration -- because I tried to follow that one up.
"KC: So if somebody was doing an article on you and wanted to investigate and called Caltech today, they will say that you never worked there.
"BO’L: Exactly.
"KC: Amazing.
"BO’L: Yes. [laughs]
"KC: It just shows you how the machine works. And I think that this is very instructive to many people who challenge a lot of whistleblowers on the fact that their credentials have disappeared, you know?
"BO’L: Yes. Yes."
So, it looks like Brian was defrocked by NASA long ago, and I may stand corrected: the lack of a bio may not be a direct result of being erased, but apparently there is some unseen bureaucracy at work here, too, and I doubt that Brian wants to fight that battle. For one, I would like to see NASA post Brian’s bio. It would help make amends for when they told people that Brian was not an astronaut. I am going to see what I can do.