part0013

T he public clamor over “flying saucers” that began in 1947 was paralleled by growing concern in U.S. military circles. Within two years after the end of World War II, a controversy had developed within the newly formed U.S. Air Force on whether or not UFOs constituted a threat to national security. According to Edward Condon, opinions were sharply polarized:

Within the Air Force there were those who emphatically believed that the subject was absurd and that the Air Force should devote no attention to it whatsoever. Other Air Force officials regarded UFOs with the utmost seriousness and believed that it was quite likely that American airspace was being invaded by secret weapons of foreign powers or possibly by visitors from outer space. 1

In this chapter, I will briefly summarize the history of the involvement of the U.S. Government and its military forces with the UFO issue. I will begin with the official story, as presented by Edward Condon in the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects .

One of the earliest official efforts to deal with flying saucer reports was initiated on September 23, 1947, by Lt. General Nathan Twining, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army and the Commanding General of the Army Air Force. Twining wrote a letter recommending the formation of a study group to investigate the problem of the “Flying Discs.” In this letter, he ventured the opinion that:

4. The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly air craft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely. 2

Twining went on to say that piloted aircraft of the reported type might be constructed on the basis of current U.S. technology, but an effort along these lines would be extremely time-consuming and expensive. He allowed the possibility that the unknown objects might be products of a secret American project not known to his command, and he considered that they might also be produced by some foreign nation.

The study group recommended by General Twining was designated as Project Sign, and it continued to operate until February of 1949. The project’s work was carried out by the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio.

Future activity on this project should be carried on at the minimum level necessary to record, summarize and evaluate the data received on future reports and to complete the specialized investigations now in progress. When and if a sufficient number of incidents are solved to indicate that these sightings do not represent a threat to the security of the nation, the assignment of special project status to the activity could be terminated. 3

This mood of doubt also came across in two appendices to the report, written by Prof. George Valley of M.I.T. and Dr. James Lipp of the Rand Corporation. These scientists argued that the existence of the flying discs was unlikely from a theoretical point of view, and suggested that psychological explanations should be seriously considered.

Both commented that the behavior of the flying objects seemed senseless, and Valley suggested that they might be some kind of animal, even though he humorously admitted that “there are few reliable reports on extra-terrestrial animals.” 4 Both men also pointed out that UFOs might possibly be piloted by extraterrestrials who were alarmed by our testing of atomic bombs. Valley then echoed another common UFO theme by saying, “In view of the past history of mankind, they should be alarmed. We should, therefore, expect at this time above all to behold such visitations.” 5

After February 11, 1949, the work at ATIC on UFOs was called Project Grudge. Apparently, this version of the UFO study created some grudges among participating personnel. For example, the astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who did a great deal of case analysis for the project, later said:

The change to Project Grudge signaled the adoption of the strict brush-off attitude to the UFO problem. Now the public relations statements on specific UFO cases bore little resemblance to the facts of the case. If a case contained some of the elements possibly attributable to aircraft, a balloon, etc., it automatically became that object in the press release. 6

There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no direct threat to the national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in scope. Headquarters AMC will continue to investigate reports in which realistic technical applications are clearly indicated.

NOTE: It is apparent that further study along present lines would only confirm the findings presented herein. 8

The report further concluded that all UFO reports are due to (1) misinterpretation of conventional objects, (2) mild mass hysteria and war nerves, (3) fabrications, and (4) psychopathological persons. Furthermore, it stated that the Psychological Warfare Division should be informed of the results of the study, since it indicated that systematic planting of UFO hoaxes and false UFO stories could cause mass hysteria. 9 A press release announcing the closure of Project Grudge was published on December 27, 1949.

Regarding point (4), Condon himself stated that “only a very small proportion of sighters can be categorized as exhibiting psychopathology.” 10 As I pointed out in connection with the Gary Wilcox case ( pages 61–63 ), many thoroughly “far out” UFO encounter stories are told by completely sane and levelheaded people. I will discuss this point in greater detail in Chapter 4 ( pages 153–157 ).

One would think this report might mark the end of UFO study within the Air Force. But according to Condon, on September 10, 1951, a mistake was made at the Army Signal Corps radar center at Fort Monmouth, N.J. An object was clocked on radar at a speed much faster than any existing jet plane. The object later turned out to be a conventional jet, but before this was discovered, General C. B. Cabell, the director of Air Force Intelligence, responded to the incident by reactivating Project Grudge in a new and expanded form. 11

For a project that was seemingly resurrected by a fluke, this version of Grudge showed remarkable longevity. It was initially headed by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, and it was renamed Project Blue Book in March of 1952. Under this name, it continued until the publication of the Condon Report in 1969, at which point the Air Force finally terminated its official involvement with UFO investigations.

At a certain level of the government, it seems that reports of UFOs, rather than the UFOs themselves, were regarded as a threat to national security. Thus on September 24, 1952, the Assistant Director for Scientific Intelligence, H. Marshall Chadwell, wrote a memo to CIA Director Walter Smith. The memo indicated that apart from a huge volume of letters, phone calls, and press releases, ATIC had received about 1,500 official UFO reports since 1947 and 250 official reports in July of 1952 alone.

1. The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic.

2. The U.S.S.R. is credited with the present capability of delivering an air attack against the United States, yet at any given moment now, there may be current a dozen official unidentified sightings plus many unofficial ones. At any moment of attack, we are now in a position where we cannot, on an instant basis, distinguish hardware from phantom, and as the tension mounts we will run the increasing risk of false alerts and the even greater danger of falsely identifying the real as phantom.

3. A study should be instituted to determine what, if any, utilization could be made of these phenomena by United States psychological warfare planners and what, if any, defenses should be planned in anticipation of Soviet attempts to utilize them. 12

What could be done? Some method had to be devised to get people to stop reporting UFOs, and it is perhaps for this reason that the CIA convened a special panel of eminent scientists, who met to discuss the UFO issue during January 14–17, 1953.

The panel was named after its chairman, Dr. H. P. Robertson, director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in the office of the Secretary of Defense. It included Dr. Luis Alvarez, a physicist who worked on the atomic bomb project and later received the Nobel Prize in physics; Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratories; Dr. Thornton Page, former professor of astronomy at the University of Chicago and deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office; and Dr. Lloyd Berkner, a physicist and a director of Brookhaven National Laboratories.

We firmly believe that there is no residuum of cases which indicates phenomena which are attributable to foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts, and that there is no evidence that the phenomena indicate a need for the revision of current scientific concepts.

This threat was thought to involve the clogging of communication channels by UFO reports, the ignoring of real signs of hostile action, and the “cultivation of a morbid national psychology in which skillful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority.” As a consequence, the Panel recommended that “the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired.” 14 The method prescribed by the Panel for eradicating this aura of mystery was “debunking,” a term defined by Condon as “to take the bunk out of a subject.” Here is the Panel’s debunking strategy:

The “debunking” aim would result in reduction in public interest in “flying saucers” which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the “secret” is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. 15

Robertson and his colleagues seemed confident that since the extraordinary flying discs are plainly impossible, reports of such things must reflect irrational thought processes. They instinctively associated UFO reports with conjuring tricks, much as Hudson Hoagland did years later when he associated UFOs with bogus spirit mediums in the pages of Science (Chapter 1 ). The underlying conviction here is that science knows the truth, and people make statements contrary to that truth only because they are gullible, easily manipulated fools. They are not necessarily crazy, but in their normal, sane state they are prone to believing pseudoscientific nonsense.

There is no reason to think that the panelists were cynical manipulators. It is quite possible that they were fully sincere in their conclusions and were simply trying to carry out their patriotic duty to protect the United States by adjusting the volatile consciousness of the masses.

While these activities were going on within the Air Force and the government, UFO sightings and encounters continued to be reported by military personnel. In 1964, the National Investigating Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) published a compilation of information on UFOs entitled the The UFO Evidence. This document included a table of 92 UFO sightings by U.S. Air Force personnel dating from 1944 to 1961, with a heavy concentration in 1952 and 1953. 16

The 92 cases in this table include 24 in which an Air Force plane chased a UFO or was chased or repeatedly buzzed by one. In an additional 20 cases, a UFO seemed to deliberately follow an Air Force plane (but not chase it) or fly at low altitude over a military base. These statistics are hard to reconcile with the official Air Force conclusion that UFOs have never been seen to pose a military threat. If this is true, we must suppose that Air Force pilots have repeatedly thought they were being chased by weather balloons, meteors, or the planet Venus, and they have repeatedly gone scrambling after such objects with afterburners blazing.

Richard Hall, the editor of the The UFO Evidence, noted that after the passage of Air Force Regulation 200-2 on August 6, 1953, the number of sighting reports emanating from the Air Force greatly decreased. This regulation established Air Force procedures for handling evidence on unidentified flying objects. An important feature of the regulation was its rule for disclosure of UFO reports to the public:

9. Exceptions. In response to local inquiries resulting from any UFO reported in the vicinity of an Air Force base, information regarding a sighting may be released to the press or the general public by the commander of the Air Force base concerned only if it has been positively identified as a familiar or known object . . . . If the sighting is unexplainable or difficult to identify, because of insufficient information or inconsistencies, the only statement to be released is the fact that the sighting is being investigated and information regarding it will be released at a later date. 17

This could be interpreted as a sound procedure for preventing the release to the public of misleading, half-baked stories. Certainly if unknown flying machines do not actually exist, then one should not release UFO reports until conventional explanations can be found. But if they do exist, then this regulation has the effect of suppressing important evidence that could help people properly understand them.

Many accounts are available of UFO activity that was regarded as threatening by military pilots. For example, on February 10, 1950, one Lt. Smith, a U.S. Navy patrol plane commander, was conducting a routine security patrol near Kodiak, Alaska. He saw an object off his starboard bow that had a radar range of five miles. Within ten seconds the object was directly overhead, which indicates a speed of approximately 1,800 miles per hour. To Smith and his crew, the object appeared as two orange lights slowly rotating around a common center. Here is a description of Smith’s interactions with this object:

Lt. SMITH climbed to intercept and attempted to circle to keep the object in sight. He was unable to do this, as the object was too highly maneuverable. Subsequently the object appeared to be opening the range, and SMITH attempted to close the range. The object was observed to open out somewhat, then to turn to the left and come up on SMITH’s quarter. SMITH considered this to be a highly threatening gesture, and turned out all lights in the aircraft. Four minutes later the object disappeared from view in a southeasterly direction. 18

This is one of a series of UFO encounters described in a U.S. Navy report that was obtained from FBI files using the Freedom of Information Act. A comment appended to the end of the document says that the objects sighted could not have been balloons, since no weather balloons were known to have been released within a reasonable time before the sightings. One commentator suggested that they were “phenomena (possibly meteorites), the exact nature of which could not be determined by this office.” 19 Another commentator said that they might be jet aircraft.

On March 8, 1950, Capt. W. H. Kerr, a Trans World Airways pilot, and two other TWA pilots reported that they had seen a UFO near Dayton, Ohio. At that time there were over 20 other reports from the area, which was near Wright-Patterson AFB. Control tower operators and personnel of the Air Technical Intelligence Center on the base also sighted the UFO in the same position, and four interceptors were sent up. Two F-51 pilots saw the UFO and described it as being round in shape, huge, and metallic. When clouds moved in, the pilots had to turn away. The Master Sergeant who tracked the object on radar said, “The target was a good solid return . . . caused by a good solid target.” Witnesses said that the UFO departed by flying vertically into the sky at great speed. 20

Another case involving a UFO chase took place in Japan. On October 15, 1948, a UFO traveling at about 200 mph between 5,000 and 6,000 feet was detected on radar by an F-61 “Black Widow” night fighter. Each time the F-61 tried to close in on the object, it would accelerate to approximately 1,200 mph., outdistancing the aircraft interceptor before slowing down. In one of their six chase attempts, the crew got close enough to the object to see its silhouette. They described the object as being about 20–30 feet long and shaped “like a rifle bullet.” 21 This case was reported to the original Project Sign.

The lack of purpose apparent in the various episodes is also puzzling. Only one motive can be assigned: that the space men are “feeling out” our defenses without wanting to be belligerent. If so, they must have been satisfied long ago that we can’t catch them. It seems fruitless for them to keep repeating the same experiment. 22

We can gather from this that Dr. Lipp must have examined quite a number of UFO chase reports. His remarks are intended to cast doubt on the reality of the reported events. However, his argument that the “space men” could have only one possible motive is not correct. One can think of many other possible motives. For example, the motive might be to repeatedly drive home the message that beings exist with technology superior to our own.

It is significant that many military UFO encounters involve the observation of UFOs using radar. The Air Force apparently took these cases seriously, at least in the 1950s, since Air Force Regulation 200-2 contained instructions for handling radarscope photos of UFOs:

(5) Radar. Forward two copies of each still-camera photographic print. Title radarscope photographic prints in accordance with AFR 95-7. Classify radarscope photographs in accordance with section XII, AFR 205-1, 1 April 1959. 23

The Condon Report contains a section on radar cases written by Gordon Thayer of the U.S. Environmental Science Services Administration. There we find a typical ambivalent statement, which tries to explain the unexplainable and then admits the inadmissible:

(5) There are apparently some very unusual propagation effects, rarely encountered or reported, that occur under atmospheric conditions so rare that they may constitute unknown phenomena; if so, they deserve study. This seems to be the only conclusion one can reasonably reach from examination of some of the strangest cases. . . .

(6) There is a small, but significant, residue of cases from the radar-visual files (i.e., 1482-N, Case 2) that have no plausible explanation as propagation phenomena and/or misinterpreted manmade objects. 24

The subject of radar is extremely technical, and I won’t be able to discuss it in detail here. Radar operates by reflecting high-frequency radio waves off objects, and this process can be affected by many different atmospheric conditions that cause the waves to refract or reflect in unusual ways. These are known as anomalous propagation effects. However, Thayer’s analysis does indicate that in a significant number of cases, radar sightings of UFOs cannot be explained by such effects.

The unknown phenomena that he mentions are worth noting. These include atmospheric temperature gradients in the order of 10°C to 15°C in one centimeter. 25 Such unheard of gradients are needed to explain some UFOs in terms of mirages and anomalous radar propagation.

An example of a UFO sighting limited strictly to radar occurred off the shores of Korea in the fall of 1951. Lt. Cmdr. M. C. Davies had an encounter with a UFO while deployed with an Anti-Submarine Squadron aboard a CVE class carrier. The incident occurred while he was flying at night at 5,000 feet.

He picked up a target, which had been circling the fleet, on his radar scope. Upon leaving the fleet, it took up a position behind his wingman, flying about 3 miles astern, and held about the same position relative to Davies’s plane as the wingman. The ship also reported the target on their radars. After approximately 5 minutes, the target left at a speed of over 1,000 mph and was observed on the radar scope by Davies out to 200 miles, the maximum range of his radar. After his flight, Davies learned that the target had been held for about 7 hours on the ship’s radars. 26 Here it seems strange that an anomalous propagation effect would first appear to circle the fleet for hours, then trail a plane for 5 minutes, and then fly off at a high speed.

In another case involving combined visual and radar observation, the Ground Observer Force spotted a UFO hovering in the eastern skies near Rapid City, South Dakota, on August 12, 1953. Ground radar began tracking the object, along with the F-84 that was vectored upon it. The F-84 chased the UFO for 120 miles. As the pilot abandoned the chase, heading back toward the base, the UFO followed him. When another F-84 was scrambled on the object, chasing it for 160 miles, it obtained a radar lock-on (automatically guiding the plane toward the UFO). However, the pilot became frightened and asked to break the intercept when a red light began blinking on his radar-ranging gunsight, indicating that a solid object was ahead of him. The climax of the sighting came when both the UFO and the F-84 were clearly seen on the GCI radar screen, and the pilot saw a white, unidentified light speeding in front of him. In this case, gun camera photographs supplemented the pilot’s testimony as to what he saw. 27

In yet another case, a U.S. Navy plane had taken off from an aircraft carrier off Korea in September of 1950 and was headed for an attack on an enemy truck convoy about a hundred miles from the Yalu River. The radar operator on the plane made the following report:

I was watching the ground below for the convoy, reported . . . and was startled to see two large circular shadows coming along the ground from the Northwest at a high rate of speed. . . . When I saw the shadows I looked up and saw the objects which were causing them. They were huge. I knew that as soon as I looked at my radar screen. They were also going at a good clip—about 1,000 or 1,200 miles per hour. My radar display indicated one and a half miles between the objects and our planes when the objects suddenly seemed to halt, back up and begin a jittering, or fibrillating motion. My first reaction, of course, was to shoot. I readied my guns, which automatically readied the gun cameras. When I readied the guns, however, the radar went haywire. The screen bloomed and became very bright. . . . I realized my radar had been jammed and was useless. I then called the carrier, using the code name. I said the code name twice, and my receiver was out— blocked by a strange buzzing noise. I tried two other frequencies, but I couldn’t get through. Each time I switched frequencies the band was clear for a moment, then the buzzing began. 28

The witness described the objects as having a silvered mirror appearance and a surrounding red glow. They were shaped like coolie hats, and had oblong, glowing ports. They had a shiny red ring encircling the top portion, and when they maneuvered over the plane, a coal black, circular area was said to be visible.

One very curious feature of this report is that the UFO supposedly jammed the plane’s radar just when the witness readied his guns. Now, how could the UFO pilots know when the guns were readied? This feature might seem to detract from the credibility of the report. However, it turns out that many UFO reports seem to involve apparent direct responses of the UFO to the thoughts of the observer. For another military example, see the Iran UFO case below ( pages 100–1 ).

A radar target was initially observed traveling at 4,000 mph by air traffic control radar at the USAF-RAF stations near Lakenheath, and it was also reportedly seen as a blurry light by control tower personnel and a C-47 airplane flying over the base. Subsequently, a radar target was observed that would remain stationary for some time and then move at a constant speed of about 600 mph to another point, where it would again remain stationary. Its speed was described as constant from the moment it would start to the moment it would stop.

Shortly after we told the interceptor aircraft he was one-half mile from the UFO and it was twelve-o’clock from his position, he said, “Roger, . . . I’ve got my guns locked on him.” Then he paused and said, “Where did he go? Do you still have him?” We replied, “Roger, it appeared he got behind you and he’s still there. . . .” The pilot of the interceptor told us he would try to shake the UFO and would try it again. He tried everything— he climbed, dived, circled, etc., but the UFO acted like it was glued right behind him, always the same distance, very close, but we always had two distinct targets. 29

The conclusion of the Condon Report on this case was that “although conventional or natural explanations certainly cannot be ruled out, the probability of such seems low in this case and the probability that at least one genuine UFO was involved appears to be fairly high.” 30 The Condon Report also cites the conclusion of the Project Blue Book report on this case:

The maneuvers of the object were extraordinary; however, the fact that radar and ground visual observations were made on its rapid acceleration and abrupt stops certainly lend credence to the report. It is not believed these sightings were of any meteorological or astronomical origin. 31

As a final point, in the Congressional hearing on UFOs held in April, 1966, Major Hector Quintanilla, the director of Project Blue Book, was asked if the project had any reports of objects seen on radar that could not be conventionally explained. Quintanilla replied, “We have no radar cases which are unexplained.” 32 But Dr. J. Allen Hynek wrote that there are unidentified radar cases in Blue Book files. 33

After the formation of Project Blue Book and the deliberations of the Robertson Panel in the early 1950s, UFO sightings and encounters continued to occur. For over a decade, government and military authorities took no new public action on the UFO issue. Then, in 1965, Maj. Gen. E. B. LeBailly, the head of the Office of Information of the Secretary of the Air Force, proposed that a panel of physical and social scientists should be organized to review Project Blue Book. His reasoning was that out of 9,265 UFO reports processed by Blue Book, 663 could not be explained. But many of these “have come from intelligent and well qualified individuals whose integrity cannot be doubted. In addition the reports received officially by the Air Force include only a fraction of the spectacular reports which are publicized by many private UFO organizations.” 34

This formal request resulted in the formation of the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Project Blue Book, consisting of physicist Brian O’Brian, psychologists Launor F. Carter and Jesse Orlansky, electrical engineers Richard Porter and Willis H. Ware, and astronomer and space scientist Carl Sagan. In their conclusions, the committee members emphasized that there is no evidence that UFOs pose a threat to national security, and there are no cases that are clearly outside the framework of presently known science and technology. Also, most unidentified UFO sightings are “simply those in which the information available does not provide an adequate basis for analysis.” 35

But they also pointed out that many sightings were listed as identified without adequate justification. They therefore recommended that Blue Book should be strengthened by negotiating contracts for scientific UFO research with a number of universities. This research would require perhaps 1,000 man days per year for about 100 selected sightings. It would be coordinated by one university or nonprofit organization, which would keep in close touch with Project Blue Book. The research would be published in improved Blue Book reports, and the Committee recommended (for unstated reasons) that “anything which might suggest that information is being withheld . . . be deleted” from these reports. 36 They maintained that such scientific reports would help strengthen the public position of the Air Force on UFOs.

Shortly after the Ad Hoc Committee issued its report, a highly publicized series of UFO sightings took place near Dexter, Michigan, and they were explained by Dr. J. Allen Hynek with his famous swamp gas theory. Congressman Gerald Ford objected to the notoriety that Michigan was getting as the “swamp gas state” and pressed for a congressional investigation. This culminated in a one-day hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on the UFO issue on April 5, 1966.

In this hearing, Secretary Harold Brown of the Air Force recommended that a scientific study of UFOs be set up along the lines of the Ad Hoc Committee report, and he was supported in this by J. Allen Hynek. Hynek expressed the urgency of the problem by saying:

During this entire period of nearly 20 years I have attempted to remain as openminded on this subject as circumstances permitted, this despite the fact that the whole subject seemed utterly ridiculous, and many of us firmly believed that, like some fad or craze, it would subside in a matter of months. Yet in the last 5 years, more reports were submitted to the Air Force than in the first 5 years.

Despite the seeming inanity of the subject, I felt that I would be derelict in my scientific responsibility to the Air Force if I did not point out that the whole UFO phenomenon might have aspects to it worthy of scientific attention. 37

The engineer Raymond Fowler presented testimony on the Exeter sighting at the hearings (pages 57–59 ). He stated, “After years of study, I am certain that there is more than ample high-quality observational evidence from highly trained and reliable witnesses to indicate that there are machinelike solid objects under intelligent control operating in our atmosphere.” He also suggested that the Air Force must be withholding important information supporting his conclusion about these objects: “I am reasonably sure that if qualified civilian scientists and investigators are able to come to this conclusion, that the USAF, supported by the tremendous facilities at its disposal, [must] have come to the same conclusion long ago.” 38

After the congressional hearing, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) was given the responsibility of implementing the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee. They decided that a UFO study should be undertaken by one university, rather than several. In the summer of 1966, AFOSR asked the University of Colorado to undertake the study, and they asked the eminent physicist Dr. Edward U. Condon to head it up.

For Condon, this was a difficult assignment. He was accustomed to the enlightened, rational world of physics, where subatomic particles dance elegantly in obedience to rigorous equations. But in the UFO field he was bombarded by bizarre, unscientific nonsense. The wilder aspects of the UFO phenomenon seemed to both repel and fascinate him, and to color his attitude toward UFOs in general.

For example, Condon devoted a full page of his final report to a discussion of the Cisco Grove Robot. On Labor Day weekend in 1964, three men went bow hunting near Cisco Grove, California. One man, called “Mr. S” to protect his identity, got stranded in the wilderness at dusk and built signal fires to attract rangers to show him the way out. Then he noticed a moving light that seemed unusual, and, frightened, he climbed a tree.

He noticed a “dome-shaped affair” about 400–500 yards away, and then two strange figures came toward the tree and appeared to look up at him. These were about 5 feet 5 inches tall, clothed in silvery-gray material, and they had no visible neck or facial features. They were shortly joined by another more ominous figure that seemed to lurch through the bushes, rather than go around them:

The third “entity” was grey, dark grey, or black. It, too, had no discernible neck, but two reddish-orange “eyes” glowed and flickered where the “head” would be. It had a “mouth” which, when it opened, seemed to “drop” open, making a rectangular hole in the “face.” 39

This apparition, by issuing “smoke” from its “mouth,” tried to “gas” the witness, who had belted himself to the upper branches of the tree. This smoke would make the man temporarily unconscious, after which he would awaken, sick and retching, only to meet another blast of “smoke.” After a final gas attack, he awakened tired, cold, and sick, to find that the entities had gone.

With some dismay, Condon noted that this information had been gathered by a professional man, Dr. James A. Harder, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. 40 However, stories of this kind were too much for Condon, and he was therefore inclined to reject the stories and the UFO phenomenon in general.

The meteorologist James McDonald criticized Condon for this, saying, “I fail to understand how Dr. Condon’s repeated allusion to crackpot cases he has examined can be justified in the face of his seemingly scant interest in energetically digging into the serious aspects of the problem.” 41

However, Condon’s approach brings out a serious problem affecting the scientific study of UFOs. The story of UFOs begins with accounts of unknown flying machines that seem able to outperform military aircraft. Such reports might seem outlandish to a scientist, but what does he find if he seeks further information about these strange machines? He finds that they are piloted by weird humanlike beings. This is even worse, but if he inquires into the nature of these beings, he finds that they are endowed with mysterious powers reminiscent of the superstitions rejected long ago by science. The further one pursues the investigation, the deeper one enters into scientifically forbidden territory.

So one way to look at Condon’s position is that he recognized that the UFO phenomenon threatened his scientific belief system and he chose instinctively to do what was logically required to keep that system intact. In any event, in 1969 Condon submitted the Final Report of the Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects . His conclusions were as follows:

1. Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in the expectation that science will be advanced thereby. 42

2. The question remains as to what, if anything, the federal government should do about the UFO reports it receives from the general public. We are inclined to think that nothing should be done with them in the expectation that they are going to contribute to the advance of science. 43

4. Therefore we strongly recommend that teachers refrain from giving students credit for school work based on their reading of the presently available UFO books and magazine articles. Teachers who find their students strongly motivated in this direction should attempt to channel their interests in the direction of serious study of astronomy and meteorology, and in the direction of critical analysis of arguments of fantastic propositions that are being supported by appeals to fallacious reasoning or false data. 45

I have cited the Condon Report on a number of occasions, and on examining these citations it should be clear that there is a substantial difference between the main body of the report, which is mainly authored by members of Condon’s staff, and Condon’s own conclusions. This has been observed by a number of people. For example, a UFO subcommittee set up by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) said the following about the Condon Report:

There are differences in the opinions and conclusions drawn by the authors of the various chapters, and there are the differences between these and Condon’s summary. Not all the conclusions contained in the report itself are fully reflected in Condon’s summary. 46

Likewise, Dr. Claude Poher, a French UFO researcher and one of the directors of the French Space Committee, told J. Allen Hynek that he got interested in UFOs because of the Condon Report. Hynek replied that most people had the opposite response to it. Poher responded, “Well, if you really read the report from cover to cover, and don’t just stop with Condon’s summary, you will realize that there is a problem there.” 47

Although some scientists have seen a real phenomenon in the UFO data, the prevailing scientific opinion has always been that if this data cannot be explained in orthodox scientific terms, then it is simply unexplained. In some cases, this is because adequate evidence is lacking. In many others, it is because the evidence disagrees with the accepted scientific view of what is possible and is therefore set aside.

On the night of the 22nd, Nancy Modugno, age 11, saw a bright blinking light through her window shortly after 9 p.m. On looking out, she saw a flying football-shaped object the size of an automobile that made a whizzing, ricocheting sound and carried flashing colored lights. This object was headed toward a large field behind nearby Beverly High School. The girl alerted her mother, Claire, who was visiting her friends Barbara Smith and Brenda Maria in an adjoining apartment. The three women could see a flashing light near the school, and they went to the edge of the high school field about 300 yards from the school building to check things out. There they saw three brilliantly lighted flying objects that were circling, halting, and again circling over the school building and other nearby buildings.

Still thinking they might be planes or helicopters, one of the women beckoned the nearest light with an arm motion, whereupon it came directly toward her. She said that as it approached nearly overhead, she could see that it was a metal disc, about the size of a large automobile, with glowing lights around its top. She described the object as flat-bottomed and solid, with a round outline and a surface appearance like dull aluminum. The other two women ran. Looking back, they saw their friend directly beneath the object, which was only 20–30 ft. above her head. She had her hands clamped over her head in a self-protective manner and later reported that she thought the object was going to crush her. The object tilted on edge and returned to a position about 50 ft. over the high school as the women ran home to call more neighbors. 48

Later on, two policemen arrived and observed the UFOs. One officer said in an interview that what he saw was “neither an airplane nor helicopter, but he did not know what it was. The object seemed to the officer to be shaped like a half dollar, with three lights of different colors in indentations at the “tail end,’ something like back-up lights.” 49

On the next page of the Condon Report, the investigators Roy Craig and Norman Levine gave the following explanation for these events: First, “Review of all reports indicated that all observers other than the young girl and the group of three women had seen something that looked like a star.” 50 This contradicts their statement about the policeman’s observations on the previous page of the report, but they did not mention that. They said that the changing colors of the “objects” could have been due to ordinary twinkling of starlight. Their apparent motions could have been due to autokinesis, in which movements of the eye create the illusion of movement in a stationary light source. The star could have been the planet Jupiter, since this planet was visible in the sky at that time and was situated in the right direction to be seen over the school by the witnesses.

While the current cases investigated did not yield impressive residual evidence, even in the narrative content, to support an hypothesis that an alien vehicle was physically present, narratives of past events, such as the 1966 incident at Beverly, Mass., (Case 6), would fit no other explanation if the testimony of witnesses is taken at full face value. 51

But one can always choose to disregard such testimony if one desires. In this case, Craig did this by labeling the evidence “anecdotal” and saying that it was too late to subject the witnesses to significant psychological testing. In a letter to Raymond Fowler, one of the original investigators of the Beverly case, Craig also commented that “I will not speculate, here or elsewhere, as to what the women saw.” 52

A review board organized by the prestigious National Academy of Sciences evidently felt satisfied with this approach to the UFO evidence. In its Annual Report for the Fiscal Year 1968–69, the NAS gave the following endorsement of the Condon Report:

We are unanimous in the opinion that this has been a very creditable effort to apply objectively the relevant techniques of science to the solution of the UFO problem. The Report recognizes that there remain UFO sightings that are not easily explained. The Report does suggest, however, so many reasonable and possible directions in which an explanation may eventually be found, that there seems to be no reason to attribute them to an extraterrestrial source without evidence that is much more convincing. 53

Shortly after the publication of the Condon Report, the Air Force officially divorced itself from the study of UFOs. But military UFO encounters continued to take place. In later years, civilian UFO research groups made efforts to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to demonstrate that the military and various intelligence agencies were covertly continuing to document UFO cases. These efforts resulted in the release of large amounts of UFO-related material from government files, and this has been discussed extensively in books such as Above Top Secret, by Timothy Good, 54 and The UFO Cover-up, by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood. 55

A great deal of material is also available on UFO sightings and encounters in China and the former U.S.S.R. Some of this can be found in Above Top Secret, along with UFO material from Canada, Australia, and various Western European countries. UFO material from the former Soviet Union can be found in A Study Guide to UFOs, Psychic and Paranormal Phenomena in the U.S.S.R. by Antonio Huneeus. 56 This book includes Soviet military encounters with UFOs, as well as civilian close encounters with UFOs and associated humanoid entities. Jacques Vallee’s UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union 57 and Bryan Gresh’s “Soviet UFO Secrets,” 58 also contain information indicating that Soviet scientists and military personnel have been involved in extensive studies of the UFO phenomenon.

An extensive collection of sighting accounts from Communist China can be found in UFOs over Modern China, by Wendelle Stevens and Paul Dong. 59 Among other things, this book includes stories of a serious border dispute between China and the Soviet Union in 1970 that was allegedly precipitated by massive UFO sightings over the northern Mongolian frontier. Supposedly, the Russians interpreted the UFOs as weapons deployed by the Chinese, and the Chinese thought they were Russian weapons. 60 If this story is true, it is a practical realization of some of the fears of the early 1950s, when U.S. military planners worried that wars might be started by misinterpreted UFO sightings.

Turning to the UFO information obtained through FOIA, here is an example provided by Raymond Fowler. Fowler stated that during October and November 1975, several major Air Force bases experienced UFO visitations, and it proved possible to use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain edited government documents describing these incursions. The following incidents are exerpted from the 24th NORAD Region senior director’s log (Malmstrom AFB, Montana):

07 November / 1035Z (5:35 A.M.): Received a call from the 341st Strategic Air Command Post (SAC CP) saying that the following missile locations reported seeing a large red to orange to yellow object: M1, L-3, LIMA and L-6. The general object location would be 10 miles south of Moore, Montana, and 20 miles east of Buffalo, Montana. Commander and Deputy for Operations (DO) informed.

08 November / 0915Z (4:15 A.M.): From SAC Command Post: From four different points: Observed objects and fighters; when fighters arrived in the area, the lights went out; when fighters departed, the lights came back on. . . . 61

It is important to note that intercontinental nuclear missiles are deployed at these Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases. Through his position as a project administrator for the Minuteman Project, Fowler claims to have received information from acquaintances assigned to Minuteman bases indicating that at Malmstrom AFB, during the week of March 20, 1967, a full flight of ten nuclear missiles became inoperative. Radar confirmed the coincidental presence of a UFO, and jet fighters attempted to intercept it. An incident of the same kind occurred in the early spring of 1966. Again ten missiles were simultaneously inoperative due to a fault in their guidance and control systems, and UFOs were reported by above-ground personnel at the time of the failures. 62

Last August [1973], the Air Force launched a Minuteman ICBM from Vandenberg AFB . . . targeted for a point near . . . Kwajalein Missile Range. . . . The nosecone had separated from the third stage of the missile and it was coming in at about 22,000 feet-per-second. . . . At about 400,000 feet, radar picked up an inverted saucer-shaped object to the right and above the descending nosecone. . . . The object was described as being 10 feet high and about 40 feet long. 63

According to Casebolt, Army missile experts, who asked not to be identified, assured him that the UFO had been tracked independently by two radar systems, that it was not a product of natural phenomena (such as temperature inversions), and that it was not pieces of the missile’s stages.

Another incident occurred in Iran in 1976 during the reign of the Shah and involved an encounter between a UFO and jet fighters of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. This is an example of a report in which a pilot chasing a UFO claimed that his weapons control systems were jammed at the precise moment he tried to use them against the UFO. I have already given an example of this involving a pilot flying over Korea in the Korean War (see pages 89–90 ).

The incident was described in a Defense Intelligence Agency report that is reproduced in Above Top Secret. 64 Here is a partial transcription of that report, beginning at the point when an F-4 jet fighter was scrambled from Shahrokhi AFB near Tehran to investigate the reported UFO:

B. At 0130 hrs on the 19th [of September, 1976], the F-4 took off and proceeded to a point about 40 NM [nautical miles] north of Tehran. Due to its brilliance, the object was easily visible from 70 miles away. As the F-4 approached a range of 25 NM he lost all instrumentation and communications (UHF and Intercom). He broke off the intercept and headed back to Shahrokhi. When the F-4 turned away from the object and apparently was no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all instrumentation and communications. At 0140 hrs, a second F-4 was launched. The backseater [radar operator] acquired a radar lock on at 27 NM, 12 o’clock high position, with the VC (rate of closure) at 150 NMPH [nautical miles per hour]. As the range decreased to 25 NM, the object moved away at a speed that was visible on the radar scope and stayed at 25 NM.

C. The size of the radar return was comparable to that of a 707 tanker. The visual size of the object was difficult to discern because of its intense brilliance. The light that it gave off was that of flashing strobe lights arranged in a rectangular pattern and alternating blue, green, red and orange in color. The sequence of the lights was so fast that all the colors could be seen at once. The object and the pursuing F-4 continued on a course to the south of Tehran when another brightly lighted object, estimated to be one half to one third the apparent size of the moon, came out of the original object. This second object headed straight toward the F-4 at a very fast rate of speed. The pilot attempted to fire an AIM-9 Missile at the object but at that instant his weapons control panel went off and he lost all communications (UHF and Interphone). At this point the pilot initiated a turn and negative G dive to get away. As he turned, the object fell in trail at what appeared to be about 3–4 NM. As he continued in his turn away from the primary object, the second object went to the inside of his turn and then returned to the primary object for a perfect rejoin. 65

On the night of March 30th, one of the callers reporting a UFO was a Captain of the national police at Pinson, and [Belgian Air Force] Headquarters decided to make a serious effort to verify the reports. In addition to the visual sightings, two radar installations also saw the UFO. One radar is at Glons, southeast of Brussels, which is part of the NATO defense group, and one at Semmerzake, west of the Capitol, which controls the military and civilian traffic of the entire Belgian territory. . . . Headquarters determined to do some very precise studies during the next 55 minutes to eliminate the possibility of prosaic explanations for the radar images. Excellent atmospheric conditions prevailed, and there was no possibility of false echoes due to temperature inversions.

Suddenly the two fighters spotted the intruder on their radar screens, appearing like a little bee dancing on the scope. Using their joy sticks like a video game, the pilots ordered the onboard computers to pursue the target. As soon as lock-on was achieved, the target appeared on the screen as a diamond shape, telling the pilots that from that moment on, the F-16s would remain tracking the object automatically.

[Before the radar had locked on for six seconds] the object had speeded up from an initial velocity of 280 kph to 1,800 kph, while descending from 3,000 meters to 1,700 meters . . . in one second! This fantastic acceleration corresponds to 40 Gs. It would cause immediate death to a human on board. The limit of what a pilot can take is about 8 Gs. The trajectory of the object was extremely disconcerting. It arrived at 1,700 meters altitude, then it dove rapidly toward the ground at an altitude under 200 meters, and in so doing escaped from the radars of the fighters and the ground units at Glons and Semmerzake. This maneuver took place over the suburbs of Brussels, which are so full of manmade lights that the pilots lost sight of the object beneath them. . . .

This fantastic game of hide and seek was observed from the ground by a great number of witnesses, among them 20 national policemen who saw both the object and the F-16s. The encounter lasted 75 minutes, but nobody heard the supersonic boom which should have been present when the object flew through the sound barrier. . . . Given the low altitude and the speed of the object, many windows should have been broken. 66

These events were part of a UFO wave in Belgium that involved hundreds of well-attested sightings. At the International Symposium on UFO Research held in Denver, Colorado, in May, 1992, a report on this wave was presented by Patrick Ferryn, a documentary videographer who heads the Belgian UFO organization called SOBEPS. 67 He discussed many close-range UFO sightings by gendarmes (the Belgian police), and he showed a videotape of the F-16-to-UFO radar lock-on mentioned above. He said the tape was made available by the Belgian Air Force, which is openly cooperating with civilian Belgian UFO researchers.

It is noteworthy that no sonic boom was reported when the UFO dove out of range of the F-16s. In the Condon Report, it was pointed out that there are many cases where a UFO was reported to move at supersonic speeds without producing a sonic boom. In a chapter devoted to this topic, William Blumen observed:

Some meteorological factors occasionally could reduce sonic boom intensities or, even more rarely, prevent sonic booms from reaching the ground at all. However, the reported total absence of sonic booms from UFOs in supersonic flight and undergoing rapid accelerations or intricate maneuvers, particularly near the earth’s surface, cannot be explained on the basis of current knowledge. On the contrary, intense sonic booms are expected under such conditions. 68

Blumen also noted that efforts were being made at the Northrop Corporation to avoid sonic booms by modifying the airstream around the plane by means of an electromagnetic field. Conceivably, UFOs might use some kind of field effect to gently divert air around the body of the craft.

It is often charged that the U.S. Government is engaged in a massive and unjustifiable cover-up of UFO information. This accusation has often been made regarding the UFO material processed by Project Blue Book, but J. Allen Hynek and James McDonald have both suggested that mishandling of this material is due to a grand foul-up rather than a cover-up (pages 35–37 ). The charge of cover-up has been made in connection with UFO records released from government agencies through use of the Freedom of Information Act. But it can be argued that this information, intriguing though it may be, reflects run-of-the-mill bureaucratic secrecy rather than a grand conspiracy. Likewise, it can be argued that military secrecy in connection with UFOs might simply reflect standard military procedures, and it might also be justified by quite ordinary defense considerations. For example, a movie of a UFO zapping a missile may reveal secrets regarding the missile.

But there are deeper undercurrents in the UFO controversy. Since the early 1950s, there have been claims that UFOs have crashed and that the U.S. Government has retrieved the downed vehicles along with the bodies of their alien pilots, both dead and alive. Going further, there are stories of research projects to learn the operating principles of captured UFOs and stories about covert government organizations that direct this research and keep it strictly secret. Going still further, there are even stories of clandestine deals between alien forces and the U.S. Government.

These stories are often quite wild, and some tend toward extreme paranoia. Many are probably false, and they constitute pitfalls of which we should be aware. But some may be true, and it is a curious fact that some crashed-disc accounts do seem to be backed up by respectable evidence. My own position is that none of this material is essential to the thesis that I will develop in the second part of this book. But I think that it should be mentioned since it plays such a prominent role in the current literature on UFOs.

To my knowledge, the most substantial crashed-disc story is the well-known case in which anomalous wreckage was reportedly recovered by U.S. military personnel on a ranch near Roswell, New Mexico, in early July of 1947. I will first summarize this story and then discuss some of the evidence connected with it.

The story began when ranch manager William “Mac” Brazel found metallic debris strewn over a wide area near Corona, about 75 miles northwest of Roswell. This was on the day after townspeople reportedly saw a bright, disc-shaped object flying northwest over Roswell. Military authorities were eventually alerted, and some of the wreckage was recovered by Major Jesse Marcel, a staff intelligence officer of the 509 th Bomb Group Intelligence Office at Roswell Field. This wreckage included small beams that were very light, like balsa wood, but extremely tough and nonflammable. Some of these were said to bear strange hieroglyphic writing consisting of geometric symbols. There were also sheets of thin, light metal that looked like tinfoil but couldn’t be dented with a sledgehammer.

A press statement reporting recovery of a crashed flying disc was issued by Roswell base commander Colonel William Blanchard, and the debris was loaded onto a B-29 to fly it to Wright Field in Ohio for examination. Later, however, a second press statement was released on the orders of General Roger Ramey, the commander of the 8 th Air Force. This stated that the wreckage was from a crashed weather balloon with an attached radar reflector, and photographs of USAF officers looking at balloon fragments were published along with the story. This remains the official story to this day.

The Roswell case was first written up in The Roswell Incident by Charles Berlitz and William Moore in 1980. 69 Additional discussions of the Roswell evidence can be found in articles by Stanton Friedman and William Moore in 1981 70 and William Moore in 1985. 71 A book discussing extensive research on the case was published by Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt in 1991 under the title UFO Crash at Roswell . 72

The most striking feature of the Roswell case is that a number of eyewitnesses and secondhand witnesses have allowed their testimony about the case to be videotaped and publicly distributed. In a popular videotape, “UFO’s Are Real,” there is a section of monologue by Jesse Marcel lasting about two minutes. Marcel testified that he observed very unusual wreckage at the Roswell crash site, and he said that he was ordered to conceal this by his commanding officer. He spoke about the thin metal that couldn’t be burned or dented with a 16-pound sledgehammer and the beams marked with hieroglyphics. Referring to his position as an intelligence officer, he also said, “One thing I was certain of, being familiar with all our activities, is that it was not a weather balloon, nor an aircraft, nor a missile.”

The advantage of videotaped testimony is that it provides direct evidence that the people involved are voluntarily making public statements. The only plausible alternative is that hired actors are being videotaped, and such a fraud could easily be exposed.

Another videotape containing Roswell testimony is “Recollections of Roswell,” sponsored by The Fund for UFO Research of Washington, D.C. 73 The table on page 107 lists some of the persons who testified on this tape, accompanied by brief summaries of what they said. Additional witnesses gave testimony supporting the general story told by the persons listed in the table.

“Mac” Brazel’s son reportedly told Randle and Schmitt that he found a few small scraps of crash debris himself and mentioned them in the pool hall in the nearby town of Corona. He said that as soon he did this, “lo and behold, here comes the military,” and he was asked to surrender the material. He also said that the crash left a track that took a year or two to “grass back over and heal up.” 74 Randle and Schmitt also said that, according to Major Marcel, the wreckage covered an area about three-quarters of a mile long and 200–300 feet wide. This area was littered with metallic fragments, and there was also a gouged area of ground about 500 feet long and 10 feet wide. 75

Randle and Schmitt introduced some testimony from an Air Force brigadier general named Arthur E. Exon. In 1947, Exon was a lieutenant colonel and was assigned to Wright Field. He testified that he was present at Wright Field when the wreckage from Roswell came in, and he said that he also flew over the Roswell crash site. He said that he heard about the analysis of the crash debris: “The metal and material was unknown to anyone I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from outer space.” 76

All in all, this testimony conveys the impression that something unusual crashed to the earth near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. It does seem odd that debris from a crashed balloon, a missile, or an airplane would seem so strange to people, including Jesse Marcel, a military intelligence officer. But what was it? Some have suggested that it might have been an advanced, manmade experimental device. Regarding the unusual metal, Jacques Vallee stated:

The material recovered in the crash itself, while it remains fascinating, was not necessarily beyond human technology in the late Forties. Aluminized Saran, also known as Silvered Saran, came from the technology already available for laboratory-scale work in 1948. It was paper-thin, was not dented by a hammer blow, and was restored to a smooth finish after crushing. 77

However, Jesse Marcel swore that the thin material could not be burned and could not be dented by a 16-pound sledge hammer. This doesn’t sound like Aluminized Saran, which should be a composite of aluminum and a kind of plastic. (The term Saran refers to any of a number of thermoplastic resins used to make fabrics, acid-resistant pipes, and transparent wrapping material.) It is just possible that the Roswell wreckage did come from some aerial device of nonhuman origin.

According to Randle and Schmitt, General Exon also said, “There was another location where . . . apparently the main body of the spacecraft was . . . where they did say there were bodies. . . . They were all found, apparently, outside the craft itself but were in fairly good condition.” 78 This remarkable statement is corroborated by a remark made on the “Recollections of Roswell” videotape by Sappho Henderson, the widow of an Air Force pilot named “Pappy” Henderson. She said that her husband told her, “I’m the pilot who flew the wreckage of the UFO to Dayton, Ohio.” He mentioned dead alien bodies, and described these as being small, as having large heads for their size, and as wearing suits of a strange kind of material.

This brings us to the controversial issue of recovered alien bodies. For years, there have been rumors about crashed UFOs accompanied by dead bodies of aliens. Exon’s testimony is the first example I have seen in which a responsible public figure is said to have openly confirmed such rumors.

One story of alien bodies that may be related to the Roswell affair involves an employee of the U.S. Soil Conservation Service named Grady L. “Barney” Barnett. On July 3, 1947, about 120 miles from the Brazel ranch on the plains of San Agustin, Barnett is said to have stumbled upon another craft that had crashed. 79 This date is close to that of the Roswell crash, which is said to have taken place on the evening of July 2. 80

Mr. Barnett said that while returning from a field trip he came upon a craft which had burst open, and he saw that there were four beings on the ground. As he and a four- or five-member archeology group from the University of Pennsylvania began to investigate further, the military moved in and told them to go away and to be quiet about what they had seen for the sake of national security. Barnett said that he had no doubt that the beings were from outer space. The beings were not exactly like human beings. They were 3½ feet to 4 feet tall. They were slim in stature and hairless, their heads having no eyebrows, no eyelashes, and no hair. Their heads were pear-shaped and the top of the head was larger. Their uncovered hands had four fingers.

This version of the story places the wreckage seen by Barnett quite far from the Roswell crash. However, according to Randle and Schmitt, Barnett was not necessarily 120 miles from the Roswell site. The debris littering the field near Roswell could have come from a disintegrating craft that came to rest at a second site two and a half miles away, and was later seen by Barnett. 81 They cited testimony from an anonymous intelligence operative who had been assigned to Roswell Army Airfield in 1947 and who confirmed the existence of this nearby second site. 82

Randle and Schmitt also presented drawings by Glenn Dennis, who was a mortician in Roswell in 1947. Dennis said they were based on drawings done in his presence by a nurse who participated in the autopsies of the alien bodies at Roswell one day after their recovery. 83 The nurse allegedly told Dennis that the bodies were short and of delicate build, with unusually large heads and four-fingered hands. The eyes were large, and the nose, ears, and eyes were slightly concave. She also said that the bodies were partially decomposed and had been gnawed by predators. They gave off a powerful stench. 84

Barnett’s story of the archeologists was apparently confirmed in October of 1989 by Mary Ann Gardner, a nurse who had worked in a cancer ward in St. Petersburg Hospital in Florida. According to her, a woman patient who was dying of cancer said that when she was in school in the late 1940s she was involved in an archeological site survey in New Mexico. The dying woman then went on to tell of discovering the wreck of an alien ship and the dead bodies of its crew. 85

In recent years there have been many new developments in the Roswell case. The story of five-year-old Gerald Anderson and his family seeing a crashed disk and alien bodies in the New Mexico desert has been repudiated. Anderson’s honesty was cast in doubt when it was found that he had faked a number of documents connected with his case. 86 It is interesting to contrast this case, in which continued investigation showed the witness to be a liar, with other cases in which the witness turns out to have a well deserved reputation for honesty.

Randle and Schmitt have come out with a new book on the Roswell affair that introduces many new witnesses and supports the theory that there were two crash sites in close proximity to one another near Roswell. 87 This book identifies the archeologists mentioned by Barnett and maintains that they did see a crashed craft with alien bodies. But it places the craft a couple of miles away from the debris field near Roswell and not in the plains of San Agustin. The eyewitness testimony is impressive, but the authors do not make clear how one aerial disaster could result in a compact downed vehicle in one place and a broad area of metallic fragments a couple of miles away. In one sense, this book makes the Roswell case more mystifying than ever.

On September 8, 1994, the U.S. Air Force announced the completion of a search for Air Force records that might help explain the Roswell incident. The conclusion of the search effort was that “the material recovered near Roswell was consistent with a balloon device of the type used in a then-classified project. No records indicated or even hinted at the recovery of ‘alien’ bodies or extraterrestrial materials.” 88 In view of the extensive eyewitness testimony that disagrees with the balloon explanation, it would appear that the official Roswell cover-up may be continuing.

Some have claimed that government intelligence agents will spread false UFO stories for purposes of disinformation—a technique whereby people are diverted from fruitful but undesirable lines of research and sent off on the track of false leads. For example, Howard Blum, award-winning journalist and author of Out There, swears that the following story is true: Paul Bennewitz, president of Thunder Scientific Corporation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, had been making films and recording radio transmissions of UFOs that seemed to be flying near the Sandia National Labs complex, a classified Department of Energy facility on Kirtland Air Force Base. Meanwhile, a well-known UFO researcher named William Moore had formed a liaison with certain agents from AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) as part of his effort to gain access to inside UFO information.

According to Blum, the AFOSI agents had been systematically feeding Bennewitz bogus UFO stories in an effort to confuse, discourage, and discredit him. Through a variety of sophisticated covers, they passed on to Bennewitz fake government documents “detailing the secret treaty between the U.S. government and evil aliens, the existence of underground alien bases, the exchanges of technology, the wave of brain implants, and even the tale about the spaceship that had crashed into Archuleta Peak.” 89

Moore was supposedly recruited by the AFOSI agents as part of their disinformation campaign against Bennewitz. This story is confirmed by Jacques Vallee, who pointed out that Moore publicly disclosed it at a MUFON (Mutual UFO Organization) conference in Las Vegas in 1989. 90

Blum said that after making friends with Bennewitz, Moore watched carefully as a steady diet of paranoid fantasy drove him into madness and nervous collapse. Then Moore got his reward. One day in December, 1984, Moore’s friend, Jaime Shandera, received a mysterious roll of unexposed film in the mail. When developed, it revealed the famous MJ-12 document.

This document is ostensibly a briefing paper prepared by Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter for President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower on November 18, 1952. It informs the president of the existence of a secret group of 12 scientists and top government officials involved with the recovery of a crashed vehicle and four alien bodies near Roswell Army Air Base in July, 1947. The document recommended that this group should continue to operate on a top secret basis during the Eisenhower administration. 91

There has been a great deal of controversy about the authenticity of this document. One of the main proponents of authenticity is Stanton Friedman, who argues that extensive research into government records has failed to reveal any information contradicting the document’s statements about persons, times, and places. 92 He also argues that numerous details of style in the document can be confirmed by checking other government documents of the same time period.

Professor Roger Wescott, an expert in linguistics at Drew University in New Jersey, compared the MJ-12 document with known examples of Admiral Hillenkoetter’s writing and concluded that there is no compelling reason to think the document was written by anyone other than Hillenkoetter himself. 93 However, when I asked Wescott if he would explain his reasons for this conclusion, he replied, “I doubt that either the authenticity or the fraudulence of the document can be conclusively demonstrated.” 94

The alternatives regarding MJ-12 seem to be roughly as follows: (1) The MJ-12 document is genuine, and there is a high-level government cover-up involving crashed UFOs and alien bodies. (2) The MJ-12 document is a fake ordered by high government authorities. This implies that there is a high-level government policy for spreading disinformation about UFOs. (3) The MJ-12 document is a fake produced by a small group of intelligence agents for their own reasons. This group may have been responsible for feeding disinformation to Bennewitz, and it may include the AFOSI agents involved with Moore. (4) The MJ-12 document is a fake perpetrated by people not connected with the government or the armed forces.

Whether the MJ-12 document is genuine or not, there is some evidence suggesting the existence of a high-level government UFO cover-up. An example is the following letter, said to be from Dr. Robert Sarbacher to UFO investigator William Steinman. Sarbacher was Dean of the Georgia Tech Graduate School from 1945 to 1948, and he was a consultant to the U.S. Government’s Research and Development Board. In 1983, he was president and chairman of the board of the Washington Institute of Technology, Oceanographic and Physical Sciences, in Palm Beach, Florida. On November 29th of that year, he wrote the following in response to persistent letters by Steinman inquiring into the matter of crashed and recovered UFOs:

My association with the Research and Development Board under Doctor Compton during the Eisenhower administration was rather limited so that although I had been invited to participate in several discussions associated with the reported recoveries, I could not personally attend the meetings. I am sure that they would have asked Dr. von Braun, and the others that you listed were probably asked and may or may not have attended. This is all I know for sure. . . .

There were reports that instruments or people operating these machines were also of very light weight, sufficient to withstand the tremendous deceleration and acceleration associated with their machinery. I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these “aliens” were constructed like certain insects we have observed on earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in the operation of these instruments would be quite low.

In support of the authenticity of this letter, Steinman cited a UFO newsletter, Just Cause , published by Lawrence Fawcett and Barry Greenwood. In issue 5 of September, 1985, Greenwood wrote that he had reached Sarbacher by phone. Greenwood said, “First, and most importantly, Sarbacher confirmed to me that the information in the Steinman letter was based on his recollection and was not a hoax.” 96 It is no longer possible to obtain direct confirmation from Sarbacher since he died on July 26, 1986. 97

Sarbacher’s remarks indicate that he was not directly involved with crashed UFO recoveries. Stanton Friedman told me that he had personally discussed these matters with Sarbacher, and he thought that Sarbacher was simply relating scuttlebutt that was circulating among government scientific consultants. Still, it is curious that such rumors would be circulating in those circles.

Victor Marchetti provided another example of testimony supporting the scenario of a government UFO cover-up. Marchetti was once the executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, and he coauthored an expose of the CIA entitled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence . In an article entitled “How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon,” in the May, 1979, issue of Second Look, Marchetti said that although he heard rumors “at high levels” about crashed UFOs and alien bodies during his time in the CIA, he had not seen any conclusive evidence for the reality of UFOs. Nonetheless, he felt moved to speculate as follows:

There are UFOs or there have been contacts— if only signals—from outer space, but the evidence reveals the aliens are interested only in observing us. . . . But public knowledge of these facts could become a threat. If the existence of UFOs were to be officially confirmed, a chain reaction could be initiated that would result in the collapse of the Earth’s present power structure. Thus, a secret international understanding—a conspiracy—has been agreed to by the world powers to keep the public ignorant of and confused about contacts or visitations from beyond the Earth. 98

Whatever the status of Marchetti’s speculations, it is clear that the public is now being subjected to a great deal of confusion and ignorance regarding UFOs. Lurid propaganda of the kind supposedly given to Bennewitz is now being spread throughout the United States, and it has a negative effect on both the credibility of UFO research and the credibility of government authorities. Persons such as William Cooper and John Lear (son of the inventor of the Lear jet) are lecturing extensively on the topic of alien deals with the government and other UFO-related conspiracy theories. Flyers are being widely circulated that describe alien underground bases and warn of an alien takeover. Researcher Linda Howe has written that one of the AFOSI agents connected with the Bennewitz story showed her secret documentation detailing contacts between the U.S. Government and aliens. 99

On Oct. 14, 1988, a television documentary entitled “UFO Cover-Up? Live” was broadcast across the United States. This show presented testimony by the Falcon, an alleged intelligence agent involved in the Moore/Bennewitz affair, who spoke with a computer-disguised voice about relations between aliens and the government. 100 In a television program entitled “UFOs: The Best Evidence,” narrated by George Knapp, a physicist named Robert Lazar made extraordinary claims about being employed to reverse-engineer alien technology in U.S. Government hands at a secret base in Nevada. 101 The stories go on and on.

It is not the aim of this book to try to answer the many questions involving the role of secret government agencies in the UFO issue. My purpose is simply to point out that organized disinformation coming from an unknown source may be involved in some UFO reports.

To solidly verify rumors of covert government activities, it would be necessary to undertake a counterespionage effort requiring resources of the kind generally available only to national governments. It is interesting that Edward Condon recognized this problem, and he reacted to it in the following pragmatic way:

We adopted the term “conspiracy hypothesis” for the view that some agency of the Government either within the Air Force, the Central Intelligence Agency, or elsewhere knows all about UFOs and is keeping their knowledge secret. Without denying the possibility that this could be true, we decided very early in the study that we were not likely to succeed in carrying out a form of counter-espionage against our own Government, in the hope of settling this question. We therefore decided not to pay special attention to it, but instead to keep alert to any indications that might lead to any evidence that not all of the essential facts known to the Government were being given to us. 102

Condon did not believe that a secret government UFO project existed, although he admitted that he couldn’t prove this. However, he recognized that the government has cloaked the subject of UFOs in secrecy, and he deplored this, saying, “Official secretiveness also fostered systematic sensationalized exploitation of the idea that a government conspiracy existed to conceal the truth.” 10 3

WITNESS	TESTIMONY
Major Jesse Marcel, the former Army Intelligence Officer who investigated the crash site.	His comments about the debris he saw were similar to his comments in “UFOs are Real.”
Dr. Jesse Marcel (M.D.), the son of Major Jesse Marcel.	He was 11 at the time and saw some of the debris when his father brought it home to show his mother. This included an “I-beam” with writing of a violet hue on it, made of curved, textured geometric shapes unlike any symbols he had ever seen. He said there was “no way” they could have been Russian or Japanese.
Lewis “Bill” Rickett, retired, Army Counter Intelligence Corps.	He accompanied Counter Intelligence Officer Sheridan Cavitt on a visit to the crash site. He testified that the pieces of debris were extremely hard and as light as a feather. William Brazel, “Mac” Brazel’s son.
William Brazel, “Mac” Brazel’s son.	He was 12 years old at the time and was shown some of the debris by his father. He said, “It was something like balsa wood but it wouldn’t burn and I couldn’t cut it with my knife.”
Loretta Proctor, “Mac” Brazel’s neighbor.	Brazel showed her some of the debris. This included something that looked like a piece of tape with printing on it: “It wasn’t writing as we knew it, and it wasn’t Japanese writing.”
Robert Shirkley, former Assistant Base Operations Officer.	He testified that Colonel Blanchard asked him if a B-29 airplane that had been summoned was ready, and he said it was. Five or six people carrying parts what he understood to be a flying saucer quickly boarded the B-29 to fly to Fort Worth, and he saw them as they walked by. He briefly saw the piece of I-beam with the unusual writing on it.