Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries (59 page)

"FLYING SAUCERS" AND THE CIA

Ever since 1948 the CIA has maintained an interest in UFOs and remains tight-lipped to this very day on the subject, keeping evidence and documents on the phenomena many levels above Top Secret.

A memo sent on January 29, 1952 to the CIA's deputy director of Intelligence from Ralph Clark of the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) states: "In the past several weeks numerous UFOs have been sighted visually and on special UFO group radar. This office has maintained a continuing review of reputed sightings for the past three years and a special group has been formed to review the sightings to date."

Many researchers believe that from the very beginning the CIA was quite certain UFOs were not j us t Soviet technology. In fact, as evidence accumulated pointing to the possible extraterrestrial origin of UFOs, the CIA became increasingly nervous that other U.S. government agencies might launch their own inquiries into the matter. Secrecy would be an impossibility if everyone investigated UFOs, and in a matter of time, details would leak to the media and the public.

In response to these concerns, the CIA began a process of maintaining a tight rein over the investigations to ensure no public inquiries would ever take place. To discredit the phenomenon, the CIA set up a panel of experts whose job was to explain away UFOs.

The CIA convened on 14 January, 1953, a confab that became known as the Robertson Panel, after its Chairman Dr. H. P. Robertson, then director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and also a CIA employee.

The sequence of events leading directly to the Robertson Panel involved a series of UFO sightings over the nation's capital in the summer of 1952, sightings confirmed by military personnel, including radar operators and scrambled interceptor pilots, and which themselves resulted in the largest post-WWII military press conference to date. At the press conference itself, the repeated radar sightings were put down to "temperature inversions," and the attending Air Force officers made no mention of the scrambled jet fighters.

Besides the esteemed Dr. Robertson, the Panel also included as members physicist Dr. Luis Alvarez, later a Nobel Laureate, Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, another physicist from Brookhaven National Laboratories who was an associate of Einstein's and had discovered electron spin, a former University of Chicago astronomer and then deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research office, Dr. Thornton Page, and finally Dr. Lloyd Berkner, yet another physicist and one of Brookhaven's directors.

The Panel was addressed by a variety of CIA and Air Force personnel who reviewed some twenty of the better UFO cases and showed two film strips of alleged flying saucers, one of which purportedly portrayed objects characterized as "self-luminous" by no less an authoritative source than the Navy's Photograph Interpretation Laboratory which had spent over 1,000 hours analyzing the particular movie film in question.

Although impressive evidence was presented by the panel, highlighted by detailed reports documented by the Air Force, its recommendations read like they were formulated before the panel even convened. The CIA had already developed a cover story to cloak the real story: UFOs were to be dismissed as just another scientific enigma, a Cold War datum, one that might be cleverly manipulated by the enemy.

In short, the Robertson Panel ruled "that the evidence presented on Unidentified Flying Objects shows no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security." While this ruling is considered contentious by many UFO researchers, it was the panel's second conclusion that really shocked. The panel decreed there was no national security threat from UFOs, however, its members did see a real and distinct danger posed by UFO reports!

In the panel's own words, it concluded "that the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena, in these perilous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic."

"We cite as an example [of such danger]," the Panel continued, "the clogging of channels of communication by irrelevant reports, the danger of being led by continued false alarms to ignore real indications 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." In other words, UFO reports might induce national psychosis that could be subject to manipulation by the Soviets.

In the final list of recommendations, the panel calls for "national security agencies to take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given. . . ."

The CIA had effectively halted any serious research into the phenomena, and now controlled all ongoing U.S. military investigations. RUPPELT VS. THE CIA

The public became aware of the panel a few years later with the publication of "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former commander of Project Blue Book. Both Ruppelt and his Intelligence Liaison Officer, Major Dewey J. Fournet, gave evidence to the Robertson Panel.

Although the panel relegated UFOs to the dustbin of history, Walter Smith, then director of the CIA, saw fit to keep all evidence classified. The CIA's decision shocked Captain Ruppelt and Major Fournet. Both were part of the minority of intelligence officials that believed the evidence for UFOs was incontrovertible. They also believed the possibility of hysteria would be reduced if the public were told the truth.

Ruppelt had fought hard to keep the Air Force investigations afloat, after joining the Project Grudge team in January 1951, but soon found the CIA constantly interfering and withholding valuable information. Project Grudge evolved into the now famous Project Blue Book in March 1952 with Captain Ruppelt appointed as its chief. All this came in response to a spate of UFO sightings, beginning with the 25 August, 1951 famous sightings at Lubbock, Texas, which caused an enormous stir with the American public. And soon after, on 12 September, 1951, a major UFO sighting above the skies of Fort Monmouth [New Jersey] in clear view of visiting military brass, contributed to the Air Force's new found enthusiasm.

Ruppelt first became aware of the CIA's unwanted presence after the Washington UFO "invasion" of July 1952, when he was hampered from doing his job, and witnesses to the sightings were intimidated into changing their reports or simply remaining silent.

The person who most worried Ruppelt was Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. It was Vandenberg who had buried Project Sign's official UFO "Estimate" report, caused its incineration, and had the project renamed Project Grudge. It is not clear just how much Vandenberg was influencing top military officials responsible for implementing the Air Force's UFO projects. Vandenberg had been head of the Central Intelligence Group (later the CIA) from June 1946 to May 1947, and his uncle was once chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, then the most powerful committee in the U.S. Senate. Clearly, Vandenberg still had great influence in those areas— and according to Ruppelt, pressure was always coming from them to suppress the results of official UFO investigations.

Thus, Ruppelt was not surprised when the CIA and other high-ranking officers including General Vandenberg convened a panel of scientists to "analyze" all the Blue Book data. Nor was he too surprised when the Robertson Panel found that no further study was necessary.

The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle started to fall into place. It was clear to Captain Ruppelt and other members of Project Blue Book, that the purpose of the Robertson Panel was to enable the CIA and Air Force to state in the future that an impartial body had examined the UFO data and found no evidence for anything unusual in the skies. Subsequently, the Air Force embarked upon a public relations campaign to eliminate UFO reports totally. The CIA decided not to declassify the sighting reports and to tighten security even more while continuing to deny "non-military personnel" access to UFO files.

One month later CIA director Walter Smith classified all UFO documentation and all subsequent directors continued to endorse the policy. INITIATION OF A COVER-UP

In August 1953 Ruppelt left the Air Force out of disgust and because of the limitations placed on his work by the CIA. The same month the Pentagon issued the notorious Air Force Regulation 200-2, that prohibited the release of any information about a sighting to the public or media, except when it was positively identified as natural phenomenon. The new regulation also ensured that all sightings would be classified as restricted. In December 1953 the much worse Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146 made the releasing of any information to the public a crime under the Espionage Act. And the most ominous aspect of JANAP 146 was that it applied to anyone who knew it existed, including commercial airline pilots. Any information flow to the public was effectively cut.

By the end of the year Project Blue Book was severely decimated and for all intents and purposes, UFO research plunged into secrecy and under the control of the CIA. In just over six years since Kenneth Arnold's sighting of strange silvery objects, the infamous intelligence agency had secured complete official silence on the subject of UFOs.

The cover-up began and continues today, due to the CIA's indomitable power over all other intelligence groups within the U.S. security establishment. The truth is out there . . . and it just might be somewhere deep inside the secret files of the CIA.

NASA

Timothy Good

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, established in 1958, coordinates and directs the aeronautical and space research programme in the United States. Its budget for space activities alone is larger than the general budgets of a number of the world's important countries.

Although officially a civilian agency, NASA collaborates with the Department of Defense, National Reconnaissance Office, National Security Agency, and other agencies, and many of its personnel have security clearances owing to the sensitive intelligence aspects of its programmes. Research into UFOs is one such programme.

In May 1962 NASA pilot Joseph A. Walker admitted that it was one of his appointed tasks to detect unidentified objects during his flights in the rocket-powered X-15 aircraft, and referred to five or six cylindrical shaped objects that he had filmed during his record-breaking high flight in April that year. He also admitted that it was the second occasion on which he had filmed UFOs in flight. "I don't feel like talking about them," he said during a lecture at the Second National Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Space Research in Seattle, Washington. "All I know is what appeared on the film which was developed after the flight."

Britain's FSR magazine cabled NASA headquarters requesting further information and copies of stills from the film taken by Walker. "Objects reported by NASA pilot Joe Walker have now been identified as ice flaking off the X-15 aircraft," NASA replied. "Analysis of additional cameras mounted on top the X-15 led to identification of the previously unidentifiable objects. . . . No still photos are available." [Emphasis added.] In July 1962 Major Robert White piloted an X-15 to a height of fiftyeight miles at the top of his climb, and on his return reported having seen as strange object. "I have no idea what it could be," he said. "It was grayish in color and about thirty to forty feet away." Then, according to Time magazine, Major White is reported to have said excitedly over his radio: "There are things out there. There absolutely is!"

"Two years ago," a NASA scientist said in 1967, "most of us regarded UFOs as a branch of witchcraft, one of the foibles of modern man. But so many reputable people have expressed interest in confidence to NASA, that I would not be in the least surprised to see the space agency begin work on a UFO study contract within the next twelve months."

One of those who expressed interest was Dr. Allen Hynek, who wanted NASA to use its superlative space-tracking network to monitor and document the entry of unidentified objects into the Earth's atmosphere. The problem then—as now—is that UFO sightings tracked by NASA remain exempt from public disclosure since they are classified top secret. But there have been leaks.

In April 1964 two radar technicians at Cape Kennedy revealed that they had observed UFOs in pursuit of an unmanned Gemini space capsule. And in January 1961 it was reliably reported that the Cape's automatic tracking gear locked on to a mysterious object which was apparently following a Polaris missile over the South Atlantic.

A 1967 NASA Management Instruction established procedures for handling reports of sightings of objects such as "fragments or component parts of space vehicles known or alleged by an observer to have impacted upon the earth's surface as a result of safety destruct action, failure in flight, or re-entry into the earth's atmosphere," and also includes "reports of sightings of objects not related to space vehicles." A rather euphemistic way of putting it, to be sure, but the internal instruction continues: "It is KSC [Kennedy Space Center] policy to respond to reported sightings of space vehicle fragments and unidentified flying objects as promptly as possible. . . . Under no circumstances will the origin of the object be discussed with the observer or person making the call.'' [Emphasis added.]

A 1978 NASA information sheet gives the agency's official policy on the subject:

NASA is the focal point for answering public enquiries to the White House relating to UFOs. NASA is not engaged in a research program involving these phenomena, nor is any other government agency. Reports of unidentified objects entering United States air space are of interest to the military as a regular part of defense surveillance. Beyond that, the U.S. Air Force no longer investigates reports of UFO sightings.

In 1978 CAUS (Citizens Against UFO Secrecy) filed a request for information relating to a NASA report entitled UFO Study Considerations, which had previously been prepared in association with the CIA. In his response, Miles Waggoner of NASA's Public Information Services Branch denied this. "There were no formal meetings or any correspondence with the CIA," he stated. Following another enquiry by CAUS, NASA's Associate Administrator for External Relations, Kenneth Chapman, explained that the NASA report had been prepared solely by NASA employees but that the CIA had been consulted by telephone to determine "whether they were aware of any tangible or physical UFO evidence that could be analyzed; the CIA responded that they were aware of no such evidence, either classified or unclassified."