…the chuckling man on the other end of the phone line is happily claiming the theme tune for British TV game show Going for Gold, during an interview wind-down conversation about British TV prompted by his (British) colleague Russell Emanuel.

“Going for Gold? I’m not ashamed of it! It paid the rent and opened up all sorts of doors. I will admit to it: we all have to have our guilty little somethings!” says Zimmer, in a conversation that also includes the unexpected phrase: “I know Les Dawson. Come on, I’m not completely ignorant.”

Later in the interview, Ben talked about Bob’s famous secret source, whom he claimed to have met in an underground garage in rendezvous arranged via signals involving flowerpots and newspapers. “You know I have a little problem with Deep Throat,” Ben told Barbara.

“Did that potted [plant] incident ever happen? … and meeting in some garage. One meeting in the garage? Fifty meetings in the garage? I don’t know how many meetings in the garage … There’s a residual fear in my soul that that isn’t quite straight.”

I read it over a few times to make sure. Did Ben really have doubts about the Deep Throat story, as it had been passed down from newsroom to book to film to history? And if he did, what did that mean?’

In a way, he says, ordinary Afghans are far more powerful than British citizens, because at least they feel they can have a role in one of the country’s 20,000 villages. “But in our situation we’re all powerless. I mean, we pretend we’re run by people. We’re not run by anybody. The secret of modern Britain is there is no power anywhere.” Some commentators, he says, think we’re run by an oligarchy. “But we’re not. I mean, nobody can see power in Britain. The politicians think journalists have power. The journalists know they don’t have any. Then they think the bankers have power. The bankers know they don’t have any. None of them have any power.”

And this from a man who only two years ago attended the Bilderberg conference, a highly exclusive and secretive gathering of the world’s most powerful bankers, politicians and businesspeople?

“Well there we are, you see,” he smiles. “I can tell you, there is nothing there. It’s like the wizard of Oz. This is the age of the wizard of Oz, you know. In the end you get behind the curtain and you finally meet the wizard – and there’s this tiny, frightened figure. I think every prime minister has sort of said this since Blair. You get there and you pull the lever, and nothing happens.”

What could she be trying to communicate through all that stuff about being from the future? I asked. What about the flour she poured everywhere?

“A person in a psychotic state is trying to push their reality back into the environment,” the psychologist said, describing a theory from psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion. “In a sense, you’re holding it because she pushed it back out of herself. She put it back into your environment—whatever she was trying to express. So you’re left with it as a mystery. Everybody in proximity is left with it. Everybody who witnessed it is holding it. So the cop has to hold it. You have to hold it. Your boyfriend is trying to hold it. And it’s her trauma. It’s her experience of trying to communicate a trauma, while not necessarily being able to process it herself. So when you work with people who are psychotic, the challenging thing is you’re dealing with unspoken, often preverbal trauma that they’re not emotionally processing, so you end up holding it for them. It’s almost like they scattershot their reality at everyone. You’re left with the mystery, right? What was the powder? Why’d she go out the window like that? What’s with the white cat? We’re still in her dream with her. So in a sense”—the psychologist stopped for a moment, watching me take notes—”so in a sense, you’re writing about this because in a way she left you with all these mysteries. She left you with an unfinished dream and you’re trying to finish it for her.”

It’s impossible to know what was happening in her mind, but it’s also impossible not to wonder…

The photos were stored with remarkably high fidelity on the tapes, but at the time had to be copied from projection screens onto paper, sometimes at sizes so large that warehouses and even old churches were rented out to hang them up. The results were pretty grainy, but clear enough to identify landing sites and potential hazards. After the low-fi printing, the tapes were shoved into boxes and forgotten.

They changed hands several times over the years, almost getting tossed out before landing in storage in Moorpark, California. Several abortive attempts were made to recover data from the tapes, which were well kept, but it wasn’t until 2005 that NASA engineer Keith Cowing and space entrepreneur Dennis Wingo were able to bring the materials and the technical know how together.

When they learned through a Usenet group that former NASA employee Nancy Evans might have both the tapes and the super-rare Ampex FR-900 drives needed to read them, they jumped into action.