ROBERT MARTIN OLMSTEAD (b. 1906 d. 1930?)

Robert Martin Olmstead was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1906 and led a conventional life until the age of 21. He attended Oberlin College and spent the summer of his third year break researching his family genealogy in New England, where he had relatives in Arkham, Boston, and Newburyport.

In JUL 1927, after visiting a cousin in Newburyport and attempting to travel to Arkham via train, Olmstead stumbled upon the strange, secluded town of Innsmouth. Innsmouth was notorious in the region for its intricate jewelry and the "Innsmouth Look," a condition afflicting the locals with bulging eyes, broad necks, and peculiar skin conditions.

At the Newburyport Historical Society, Olmstead saw a beautiful and bizarre tiara reputedly from Innsmouth and was intrigued to see more. He set off for Innsmouth the same day. In the dilapidated town, he encountered Zadok Allen, a 96-year-old drunk, who revealed the horrifying truth about Innsmouth to the youth.

Olmstead was questioned, pursued, and ultimately hounded by the Innsmouth locals. He managed to escape and reported his story to the authorities, later triggering the Innsmouth raid the following winter.

However, it wasn't until much later that authorities discovered Olmstead's great-great-grandfather was Obed Marsh, the architect of Innsmouth's pact with the Deep Ones. Olmstead had been allowed entry to the town because the locals could sense his lineage and was only chased off when they realized he hadn't come to "return to the sea."

After the raid, Olmstead tried to resume his normal life in Ohio, but disturbing dreams and physical changes gradually overtook him. In 1930, after several failed attempts to share his story with people who deemed him insane, Olmstead, armed with a revolver, freed his cousin Lawrence Olmstead from the Canton sanitarium. The two fled cross-country on a crime spree, pursued by police, and were last seen in Ipswich, Massachusetts. They confided in a gas station attendant at gunpoint that they were "going to see their grandmother out on the reef."

They were never seen again and are presumed dead by conventional authorities; though Delta Green holds other suspicions.

DISINFORMATION: TIMELINE OF THE INNSMOUTH RAID

The Navy’s intelligence on the Deep Ones developed in the following manner:

• ROBERT OLMSTEAD’S VISIT TO INNSMOUTH (15 JUL 1927): A young college student on vacation from Ohio is drawn to strange jewelry from Innsmouth on display in Newburyport. He travels to Innsmouth and checks into the Gilman hotel. After a brief stay, he flees in the night, terrorized by Innsmouth's inhuman residents.

• OLMSTEAD'S COMPLAINT TO THE ARKHAM POLICE (17 JUL 1927): Olmstead reports what he saw and learned of Innsmouth to police in Arkham. The police humor him. Olmstead, shaken and frustrated, returns to Boston.

• OLMSTEAD'S COMPLAINT TO A NAVY FRIEND (17 JUL 1927): Olmstead stays with a family friend in Boston, USN Lieutenant Commander Leonard Steign, and tells his tale. Steign gives the story little credence. Olmstead goes home to Ohio.

• OLMSTEAD’S TALE REACHES NAVAL INTELLIGENCE (26 JUL 1927): Lieutenant Commander Steign off-handedly recounts Olmstead’s story in a letter to a friend in Washington, D.C., Lieutenant Commander Albert Yates III of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Yates, no stranger to weird stories from Navy reports and newspapers around the world, begins a cursory investigation that quickly deepens.

• OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE REPORT ON INNSMOUTH (29 AUG 1927): Lieutenant Commander Yates correlates documents, police reports and photos of the Innsmouth area in an intelligence profile. He summarizes the Esoteric Order of Dagon and the weird religion of Innsmouth. In order to provoke a response, he asserts suspicions of foreign subversive activity in the town. The Director of Naval Intelligence, already working closely with the FBI and Army intelligence to track internal threats to the country, arranges further surveillance.

• OVERFLIGHTS OF INNSMOUTH AND DEVIL REEF (14–19 SEP 1927): Naval aeroplane overflights and photographs of Innsmouth and Devil Reef capture images of huge, inexplicable shapes in the sea, as well as large numbers of swimmers moving in and out of town.

• YATES TAKES ACTION (20 SEP 1927): Director of Naval Intelligence Arthur Hepburn is promoted and reassigned to the Pacific fleet, leaving Lt. Commander Albert Yates III as acting director until Captain Alfred Johnson takes command in December. Yates, risking his career, orders even more aggressive investigation of Innsmouth.

• INFILTRATION AND FILMING IN INNSMOUTH (27 SEP – 3 OCT 1927): ONI officers enter Innsmouth and use cameras hidden in briefcases to photograph and film its residents. They capture horrific deformities and some residents’ inhuman nature. They film inexplicable things.

• BRIEFING THE CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS (17 OCT 1927): Lieutenant Commander Yates, as acting Director of Naval Intelligence, briefs the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Charles F. Hughes, on the situation at Innsmouth. Deeply disturbed, Hughes schedules a meeting with President Coolidge for 6 NOV 1927, which is cancelled due to an emergency briefing on the Italian army's success as the first mass drop of paratroopers near Milan.

• BRIEFING THE PRESIDENT (13 NOV 1927): President Coolidge, appalled by what sees in the ONI report and photographs, directs the Chief of Naval Operations to stop the horrors of Innsmouth, using the power of the Navy under the cover of civilian enforcement of federal laws. They agree to keep the Army out of the loop.

• BRIEFING JUSTICE (14 NOV 1927): At the Department of Justice, Lieutenant Commander Yates briefs Bureau of Investigation Director J. Edgar Hoover. As the operation develops, Hoover continuously jockeys for more control until he seems to sense a looming disaster. Only three of Hoover’s men participate in the raid itself.

• BRIEFING THE TREASURY (15 NOV 1927): At the Treasury Department, Lieutenant Commander Yates briefs Elmer Irey, chief of the Internal Revenue Service Intelligence Unit. Irey agrees to absorb the action under the cloak of an "illicit liquor raid" in exchange for expanded resources and funding for his "T-Men" and his pursuit of Al Capone. Only four T-Men participate in the raid.

• 42ND MARINE BATTALION EMBARKS (28 NOV 1927): A thousand combat veterans from the 42nd Marine Battalion leave Punta Gorda, Nicaragua, for Boston. They are to be the backbone of the Innsmouth raid.

• INFILTRATING ROWLEY AND FALCON POINT (9 DEC 1927): Bureau of Investigation agents set up a listening station in the small town of Rowley and a censoring station at the mail office and Falcon Point to monitor telephone lines and mail in and out of Innsmouth. They generate a list of residents more accurate than the 1920 census and share it with the Navy.

• STANDING NAVAL ORDERS (1 FEB 1928): A secret standing order is issued to all U.S. Navy ships in Naval District 1 to monitor and report anything odd seen between Gloucester and Portland. This order stands until 1 MAR 1928.

• THE INNSMOUTH RAID (23 FEB 1928): The entirety of the 42nd Marine Battalion descends on Innsmouth in the middle of the night. An attempt to "round up" the townsfolk turns into a street-by-street battle that lasts until early the next morning. Days of cleanup remain. The action results in the capture of 209 prisoners and the loss of 351 Marines killed in action, wounded, or driven insane.
  
  [More excerpts from DELTA GREEN: OPERATIONAL HISTORY.]