This week, the Tip Sheet kicks off a new feature, where we look at one of the many, many publishing houses toiling outside the mainstream. Our inagural subject is TrineDay, an Oregon publisher covering subject matter too taboo for the Big Six, including investigations into 9/11, the JFK assassination, and elite secret societies like Skull & Bones.
Who it is: TrineDay was established in 2002 by Kris Millegan, an academic-minded (and self-described) “conspiracy theorist” whose father was deeply involved with the U.S. intelligence community his entire career, beginning a decade before the formation of the OSS.
In 1969, Millegan’s father began filling Millegan in on the operations he had been a part of in Vietnam, the Phillipines, and here in the U.S., involving (among other revelations) secret CIA drug experiments and cloistered societies pulling strings at the highest levels of government. That revelation led Millegan to study conspiracy theory as an academic discipline for some ten years. He started writing about the CIA, drugs, and secret societies, but couldn’t find a publisher for his work. “I sent off work to Feral House,” he told PW from TrineDay’s Walterville, Ore. office. “I figured they did some pretty wild stuff, but I got a note back saying they did not want to take on Skull & Bones.”
What it does: Millegan established TrineDay as a home for “interesting, well-researched and well-written books with but one key ‘defect’: a challenge to official history that would tend to rock the boat of America’s corporate ‘culture.’” With a catalog of more than 40 books (plus 10 out-of-print titles), TrineDay is releasing a dozen new titles in 2012—most recently A Whig Manifesto: A Short History of the Whig Movement with Modern Party Perspectives on Current Political and Social Controversies by Chuck Morse, just released on April 15.
After the internet came along, Millegan began running an email list called CIA Drugs, through which he found his first project, a book by Daniel Hopsicker that had been languishing at a New York agency. On a whim—“silly me, I thought ‘there’s the Constitution and stuff, this guy has been seen internationally on NBC and elsewhere, he has quite a book,’ and I said I have a computer on my desk and they tell me it can make a book.” In 2000, they published Barry and the “Boys”: The CIA, the Mob, and America’s Secret History under the name MadCowPress. Less then two years later, TrineDay’s first act was to rescue the first volume to take on the shadowy Skull & Bones society from going out of print: thanks to Millegan, Anthony Sutton’s America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones is still available in paperback.
How it gets by: TrineDay is a four-and-a-half man operation consisting of two editors, a “computer graphics guy,” a part-time office manager, and publisher Millegan (“I do the typesetting and stuff like that”). Their biggest seller is The True Story of the Bilderberg Group by Daniel Estulin, a “fascinating account of the annual meetings of the world’s most powerful people,” a collection of “Europeon prime ministers, American presidents, and the wealthiest CEOs of the world” which, since its 1954 inception, has never released any statements or allowed press coverage. TrineDay currently has a staggering 70,000 copies of Bilderberg in print: “We’re not even a small publisher—we’re a micro-publisher. That book sold over 2 million copies in Europe before we got it, and this guy’s agent was the agent for Dean Koontz, he had access to everyone in American publishing.” Despite its success, no one on this side of the pond would publish it, until, “finally, the author contacted me directly, and we got it going for him. It’s been translated into Chinese and Russian, sold over 4 million copies worldwide—you’d think someone in New York would see it and think, ‘maybe I can make a shekel or two on this one.”
What’s next: Millegan also remarks that “there’s a lot of history out there we haven’t been told. As one of my authors says, ‘Sometimes you aren’t in a position to tell history and all you can do is take notes.’ We’ve been presenting thenotes of a lot of people. These stories have to be discussed, even if it’s only to say ‘this is crazy and completely wrong.’”
Some upcoming releases Millegan is especially excited for:
From an Office Building with a High-Powered Rifle: One FBI Agent’s View of the JFK Assassination by Don Adams, out on May 22. “This is from an 82-year-old former FBI agent who was used by people in the FBI to help set up part of the Kennedy Assassination. It was not as simple as Oswald shooting three shots, they had to lay a bunch of groundwork. This agent was transferred to the Dallas office in June of ’64, was involved with the investigation, it’s a very direct personal viewpoint of the assassination and the investigation that show the manipulation and fraud that went on.
A Secret Order: Investigating the High Strangeness and Synchronicity in the JFK Assassination by H.P. Albarelli Jr, out on June 21. “Albarelli is a very thorough investigator, an attorney. This is going to bring out some of the nuances of the Kennedy assassination.”
Bonds of Secrecy: The True Story of CIA Spy and Watergate Conspirator E. Howard Hunt by Saint John Hunt, out on August 22. “Another one we have is on E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate burgler, who was also a peripheral player in the JFK assassination, from his son. Before his death, Howard confided some things and passed on some documents to his son, which continue to confirm what my dad started talking about to me in 1969.”
Black 9/11: How Cutting-Edge Technology Was Used Against the American People on September 11, 2001 by Mark H. Gaffney, out on Sept. 11. “It was supposed to be out last September, but Gaffney really uncovered soemt hings, goes into the Black Budget, Black Technology, and the Black Motive behind 9/11. It’s very well done, puts together a bunch of things that haven’t been put together before.”
Where to buy: Millegan suggests looking “anyplace find books are sold.” He reports that Barnes & Noble has carried “quite a few of our books,” but readers can also check online at TrineDay.com and Amazon, or call TrineDay direct at 1-800-556-2012.
