Earth (49 page)

“Our unit's four-man night patrols were tasked with our usual role of observation and reconnaissance, but we were given free rein to harass the ‘enemy' whenever targets of opportunity arose. The weather was splendid, and to tell the truth it never really got properly dark…. On the night of the incident, which we think was a Thursday/Friday, our own patrol had split into two pairs as we approached our designated target. My partner, a man who I will refer to as ‘Lange Jan' [named after a church steeple on the island of Walcheren, one of the highest points in Holland], was very popular with the Dutch Kriegsmarine Kommando who we trained with, and they had bestowed that nickname on him.

“As we approached our target area, a very bright light appeared on the horizon.

“It looked at first like huge car headlights, but this was very unusual as, apart from the odd tracers and flares, the battlefield was almost always in darkness. Then suddenly, and I do mean instantaneously, the light was immediately to our front, probably some three miles away. The only way I can describe this light is to call it ‘blue-white,' rather like that given off by the new LED bulbs—only very much brighter. Then we realized a peculiar thing: the light did not radiate, it simply seemed to be self-contained [and] appeared to either be hovering over, or in, a wooded area in our target zone. We decided to take a closer look.

“Lange Jan, originally out of 1 PARA [1st Battalion of the Parachute Regiment], was the best field soldier I ever knew, and he had the ability to almost merge with any terrain, but nevertheless after a stealthy thousand yards or so we were bumped by an American patrol who told us that this area was now out of bounds. Undeterred, we tried again, but when we were stopped a second time by a very jumpy officer, extremely nervous, and told in no uncertain terms that we had to leave, we decided to let it go.

“As it was already becoming daylight in the east, we started to head back to our lines when instantly the light went out, just as if someone had thrown a switch. But we could clearly see fires burning in the wooded area
and what looked like considerable damage to the trees and undergrowth, although there was no sign of debris.

“At the next morning's ‘O' Group debriefing session, we learned that only two of our patrols had seen the strange light, but when we brought it up an intel [intelligence] officer said that a Phantom [jet] had crashed and the area was now off-limits for the rest of the exercise. The Phantoms, operating out of Lakenheath, had indeed been taking part in the scheme, doing low-level mock strafing and bombing runs (and terrifying they were too). But I had previously served in the Royal Air Force in Air/Surface Movements (what would now be called a ‘dispatcher') and had seen first-hand some plane crashes, and the incident in the woods did not resemble in any way a ‘normal' air crash. But that was the end of the matter: it never came up again.

“Generous as ever, the Americans allowed us the use of the facilities at [RAF] Alconbury: the PX stores (hypermarkets where one could purchase an almost unbelievable range of goods at very competitive prices) and the Rod and Gun Club lounge, when we were on stand-down. In the club the following day, we brought up the subject of the downed plane, but no one seemed to know anything about it, or if they did, they were playing tight-lipped.

“After de-briefing and release on the Saturday, we decided once more to take a look for ourselves at the site. At the time, Lange Jan had a long-wheel-base Land Rover, [and] so six of us got aboard and we headed for the crash site. But this time it was heavily cordoned off and we could not get really close, but we did have field glasses and we could clearly see the scorched area of the wood, which looked as though a road had been carved through it, maybe some seventy or eighty yards wide. Since we were attracting unwarranted attention, we decided to scoot. Since that day, I had never really thought about it. Only some local interest in a UFO incident brought back the memories of that night in Norfolk….”
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On the night of May 23/24, 1974, men of the U.S. Army's 4th Platoon, Bravo Company, B Battalion, 2nd Regiment of the 32nd Air Defense Command were deployed in a mountain pass northeast of Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany. First Lieutenant Robert Cardeni was the 4th Platoon leader and Captain Michael J. Shestak was commanding Bravo Company.
The soldiers had been told they were on special duty owing to Russian and/or Warsaw Pact forces testing American radar defenses. The men were surprised that live ammunition for the Vulcan 20mm cannons and live Chaparral antiaircraft missiles were to be utilized. Lt. Cardeni gave orders to the crews of the cannons to load canisters of live high-explosive phosphorus rounds and to maintain high alert.

At about 00:45, Lt. Cardeni gave orders that something hostile was incoming and that the gunners were to shoot down anything coming though the pass, stating that since “no friendlies” would be flying below 2,700 feet, anything else was to be shot down. At around 01:00, a Sergeant Yonts noticed a fast-approaching, zigzagging, flattened ellipsoid-shaped craft with rounded edges, about thirty feet long and glowing with a silvery iridescence. “It took a few seconds for Sgt. Yonts's cannon's computer and Doppler radar to calculate a precise speed, range, and direction of travel and to achieve a lock-on,” reports Ed Komarek, an American researcher who received the report anonymously, via mail. “When the cannon locked on to the object through the [reticulated] gunsights, he began firing, first a few rounds for effect and then three four-second bursts of 110 rounds each into the side of the object….”

“Sgt. Yonts was almost at eye level with the object as he watched his rounds pouring into its sides. He was expecting to see the ‘blooming flower' effect of the phosphorus rounds exploding, but he did not…. ‘It was as if the shells were being absorbed or being vaporized by some sort of ‘force field,' Yonts said, [which] was quite a remarkable containment of shells having a 35-meter kill radius.”

Meanwhile, on the mountainside, Sgt. William McCracken, inside the launch-control console of a Chaparral battery, locked on to a target and fired a missile, which climbed to about nine hundred feet, located the object, moved close ahead of the target, and detonated. Gunners and observers watched as the target started wobbling, “then stop[ped] forward motion and finally wobble[d] downward to the valley floor in what the observers believed was a controlled descent.”

U.S. Air Force personnel later secured this crash/landing site. According to Komarek's source, various Air Force personnel, including a Major Mike Andrews (pseudonym?) and three Army officers from the Army Vulner
ability Assessment Laboratory in Alamogordo, New Mexico, were flown in a C-141 Starlifter transport to Ramstein. “The soldiers who had had a direct active part in the mission less than twelve hours earlier met individually with the debriefers,” Komarek's report continues. The three Army officers handled the first debriefing, followed by groups of Air Force officers, who warned the men that “if they ever told anyone about what they had imagined had happened, they would never work for the government [and] warned of unspecified dire things that would happen to them should they ever talk … the men were required to sign a security oath to never divulge the details of that night [and] if questioned in the future, to deny that it ever happened.”

On the afternoon of May 25, Major Andrews and his crew were told to report to their aircraft, parked at a remote location on the Ramstein air base, and he was shocked to note that a set of metal supports had been constructed on the wings and fuselage of his C-141, attached to which was “something large and ellipsoid,” covered with olive drab green canvas tarpaulins. During preparations for takeoff, Andrews noted the minimal fuel load, due to the weight of the additional craft. On reaching its cruise altitude, the C-141 was refuelled by a KC-135 tanker.

“Major Andrews's orders were that he was not to land until he reached Wright-Patterson AFB, and that he would be met by refuelling tankers at strategic points across the Atlantic,” Ed Komarek learned. “It was dark in Ohio when Major Andrews landed to disembark the airmen—all but four who were to remain aboard and who then were carrying M16 rifles in addition to their sidearms. The pilots and crew of the C-141 were not allowed out of the plane and they did not refuel.

“Taking off again with a minimal fuel load, they were once again met at altitude by another KC-135 tanker and flew on direct to Nellis AFB, Nevada, where the crew was once again not allowed outside the aircraft as their wing-top cargo was offloaded and taken away, again covered completely.” On returning to McGuire AFB, New Jersey, Andrews and his crew were debriefed by an Air Force colonel who warned them never to discuss the mission with anyone.

Another source present during the downing of the craft pointed out to Komarek that, although he had observed the incident, there were no mountains northeast of Ramstein, only hills. However, although this
informant did not witness the May 23/24 attack per se, he believes he did see the crashing object “looking like it was dripping iridescent white fire.” He also claims that a couple of weeks earlier another unknown craft was almost hit by a Nike missile, whereupon it “started flying erratically, then two F-4s [Phantom jets] came and gave chase, disappearing beyond the ridges. Don't know if they got that one, but the base went on full alert. We were anticipating the Russians to be coming, not the spacemen….”
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The Secret Team

In 1994 I had the privilege on two occasions of interviewing L. Fletcher Prouty, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel—cited earlier—in Washington, D.C. A former fighter pilot and professor of air science and tactics at Yale University, he was also directly in charge of the global system designed to provide military support for the clandestine activities of the CIA.

Regarding the UFO subject, Prouty revealed a hitherto Top Secret report he had investigated in 1953–54 relating to the observation of a large unknown craft which paced a C-54 military transport plane over the Pacific Ocean for over an hour, witnessed by the entire crew and passengers. His report appears in two of my books.
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All CIA military activities were channeled through Prouty. Not being a CIA man, per se, he was exempt from taking the oath of secrecy. And being the Focal Point Officer placed him in a very privileged position. “In effect,” states the publisher's blurb to
The Secret Team
, one of two of his books he gave me, “Prouty has far more knowledge of CIA activities than almost all members of that organization.” The subtitle does not mince its words:
The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World
. “Like it or not,” he wrote in a preface to the second edition in 1990, “we now live in a new age of ‘One World.' This is the age of global companies, of global communications and transport, of global finance and—just around the corner—global accommodation of political systems…. It is time to face the fact that true national sovereignty no longer exists. We live in a world of big business, big lawyers, big bankers, even bigger moneymen and big politics. It is the world of ‘The Secret Team.'

“In such a world, the Secret Team is a dominant power. It is neither
military nor police. It is covert, and the best (or worst) of both. It gets the job done whether it has political authorization and direction or not. It is independent. It is lawless. [This book] is based upon personal experience generally derived from work in the Pentagon from 1955 to 1964. At retirement, I was Chief of Special Operations (clandestine activities) with the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. These duties involved the military support of the clandestine activities of the CIA and were performed under the provisions of National Security Council Directive No. 5412/2.”

He continues: “I was the first author to point out that the CIA's most important ‘Cover Story' is that of an ‘Intelligence' agency. Of course the CIA does make use of ‘intelligence' and ‘intelligence gathering,' but that is largely a front for its primary interest, ‘Fun and Games.' The CIA is the center of a vast mechanism that specializes in Covert Operations…. In this sense, the CIA is the willing tool of a higher level Secret Team, or High Cabal, that usually includes representatives of the CIA and other instrumentalities of the government, certain cells of the business and professional world and, almost always, foreign participation. It is this Secret Team….
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“At the heart of the Team, of course, are a handful of top executives of the CIA and of the National Security Council (NSC), most notably the chief White House adviser to the president regarding foreign policy affairs. Around them revolves a sort of inner ring of presidential officials, civilians, and military men from the Pentagon, and career professionals in the intelligence community. It is often quite difficult to tell exactly who many of these men really are, because some may wear a uniform and the rank of general and really be with the CIA and others may be as inconspicuous as the executive assistant to some Cabinet officer's chief deputy.

“Out beyond this ring is an extensive and intricate network of government officials with responsibility for, or expertise in, some specific field that touches on national security or foreign affairs: ‘Think Tank' analysts, businessmen who travel a lot or whose businesses (e.g., import-export or cargo airline operations) are useful, academic experts in this or that technical subject or geographic region, and quite importantly, alumni of the intelligence community—a service from which there are no unconditional resignations….
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“Sponsored by President Truman and established by an act of Congress,”
summarizes the publisher's blurb for
The Secret Team
, “the CIA was initially founded as a data-coordinating, intelligence-gathering agency to help fight the Cold War, [but] its profile today is unrecognizable, and its power is unstoppable…. The President of the United States is impotent against it, Congress cannot legislate it, the military cannot corral it, and the public doesn't even know about it.”