Just about everyone has heard of Area 51, the famous "secret base" that might or might not be holding aliens - and that may be alive or not. There is, however, something strange about Area 51 - and at other top secret facilities, too. As you'll see now. From 2003 to 2009 I lectured at Ryan Wood's annual UFO Crash-Retrieval Conference, which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada. As is so often the case at such conferences, an attendee came up to me at the 2008 event with a very strange story to tell. Aged around thirty he said that his now-retired father had worked out at Area 51 in the early 1980s, specifically in the development of Stealth technology for military aircraft. The guy said that on several occasions, in the 1990s, he had asked his father about the rumors of crashed UFOs and dead aliens held at the secret base. His father said that the only thing he knew about aliens at Area 51 came from watching TV shows. Indeed, he told his son that he had never seen any evidence at all of alien-related activity at Area 51. But, there was one strange event that the man was willing to share with his son - and which was then shared with me. The story told to me was that on one occasion in January 1981, a pedal bike was found deep in a remote part of the vast amount of land that is collectively known as Area 51. Yes, a bicycle. The highly-sophisticated sensors that are carefully placed all around the facility had picked up the sudden presence of something not far from one such sensor. So, a security team was quickly sent out to investigate. It was that team, I was told, which found the bike. But, there was something very strange about the bicycle: it was extensively damaged - as if it had plummeted to the ground from a great height.

Had it fallen from an aircraft? Probably not! It's a fact that unauthorized flights over Area 51, and in the immediate vicinity, are treated very seriously. Any such event over the base would have resulted in drastic (maybe even deadly...) action. And, of course, the base would likely have gone on lock-down. Even NASA's astronauts have almost found themselves in trouble for photographing the facility from space. The guy who shared the story with me said that the finding of the bike was a matter of deep concern: how had it got there? Where was the rider? Who was the rider? Why did the bike look like it had fallen from a great height? There were no answers. As a result, the investigation was finally closed down. Quiet and concerned discussion of the weird affair apparently continued for quite some time though, among those who had heard of it. The whole thing, the man told me, became a bit "of a legend." No doubt!

Now, let's move onto the U.K.'s Porton Down facility. It's located in the English county of Wiltshire. Its overwhelmingly-classified work focuses to a very significant degree on exotic viruses, chemical-warfare and biological-warfare. Although work at Porton Down originally, and secretly, began at the height of the tumultuous First World War, it was not until the dawning of the 1940s that the installation became the central hub for British interest in, and concerns relative to, the expanding realms of chemical- and biological-warfare. From 1946 onward, one year after the successful defeat of Nazi Germany, Porton Down’s work began to focus more on the defensive – rather than chiefly offensive – aspects of such issues, and in 1957 the installation was duly christened the Microbiological Research Establishment. By the late-1970s, a decision was made to place the MRE under the control of a civil body. As a result, significant reorganization duly occurred: on April 1, 1979, the MRE became the Center for Applied Microbiology and Research. Then, in 1995, it was absorbed into the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. Six years later, there was yet another change: DERA split into two organizations, a private body called QinetiQ, and the Defense Science and Technology Laboratory, a body steeped in official secrecy, as a result of the fact that it is an arm of the Ministry of Defense. After that, the facility became known as DSTL, Porton Down.

All of which brings us to a very strange story. Jonathan Downes is the director of the U.K.-base Center for Fortean Zoology. But, it's not just strange creatures like Bigfoot, Nessie, and Mothman that have attracted Downes' attention. It's the issue of Crop Circles too. For years, there have been rumors of classified, military/government investigations into the Crop Circle phenomenon in the U.K. Downes publicly stated something that may have had a bearing on those same rumors. He said, in 2000: "I am aware that midway through 1996 on land adjacent to the Government’s chemical and biological research establishment at Porton Down, Wiltshire, a Crop Circle was found. When it was first seen, the circle was still in the process of being formed and had actually been surrounded by both troops and police who had cordoned off the area." I have heard variations on this very odd story over the years, suggesting that an intricate formation was indeed found within the grounds of Porton Down in the mid-90s. Whether it was the work of fence-jumping circle-makers of a very human mind, or the work of something much stranger, is very much still open to debate. Of course, if the formation really was forming as the police and the military watched on, then that effectively rules out a human connection.

It’s a fact that most people who have studied the claims of Bob Lazar focus their attentions on what he had to say about the UFOs allegedly held at S-4, as well as his statements concerning Element 115. There is one issue which doesn’t get the attention that it really should. It’s a part of Lazar’s story which takes things down a path that is filled with disturbing revelations involving the afterlife. One of the many briefing papers that Lazar said he read at S-4 stated that the aliens refer to us, the human race, as what we would call “Containers.” But, containers of what? Well, that’s where things get really controversial. Lazar told KLAS-TV’s George Knapp “religion was created so we have some rules and regulations for the sole purpose of not damaging the containers.” 

There followed an awkward conversation which saw Knapp pressing for answers, and Lazar almost squirming because of the nightmarish nature of the story. That’s hardly surprising, because the claimed big secret is that the aliens have an interest in the human soul. Worse, though, they allegedly use the human soul in a way that the U.S. Government doesn’t fully understand. Or, that the government does know, but does not know how to tell the world the awful truth. One of the theories is truly terrifying: that the aliens “feed” on the human soul, on our life-force.  In this scenario, the earth is a farm and we are the cattle. On our deaths our souls are reaped and the life-energy sustains the aliens. Far out? Definitely. But, Lazar stands by what he read in those briefing papers. The soul angle has led some UFO researchers to believe that the aliens are actually nothing of the sort. Rather, the theory is that they are high-tech demons! What a story! And, what about the alien that Lazar saw at the S-4 base. Or didn't.

One of the lesser known aspects of the Bob Lazar controversy is that which suggests he just might have seen an alien entity at Area 51 – a live one, no less. The story gets very little publicity, but it’s fascinating in the extreme. The issue of aliens – alive, dead or both at Area 51 -first surfaced from Lazar in early 1989. When asked about that specific matter by George Knapp, Lazar quickly shot down the question in an awkward fashion and changed the subject. Later, though, in what was a private, rather than public, interview, Lazar opened up a bit more. What he had to say was brief but amazing – if true, of course. According to Lazar, “I walked down the hallway at one time I was working down there, and there were these doors – the doors that go to the hangar are smaller than the doors in the corridors and have a 9-inch or 12-inch square window with little wires running through it, just about head level. And as I was walking by, I just glanced in and I noticed – at a quick glance – there were two guys in white lab coats, facing me towards the door.”

Lazar then got to the heart of the matter: the two men were looking down at a small, humanoid figure with long arms, seemingly talking to it. Although Lazar only saw the entity for a second or so, he was in no doubt about what it appeared to be. I say “appeared” because Lazar himself wondered if this was some kind of set-up. He said of this possibility: “Maybe they stuck a doll in front of these guys and made me walk by it and look at it, just to see what my reaction would be.” Such a thing is not at all impossible, as the following brief, but notable, comment from Lazar makes clear: “They play so many mind games there [italics mine].” While enthusiastic UFO researchers may dearly want to believe that living aliens are at Area 51, Lazar’s carefully worded statement suggests we should exercise restraint on this issue – at least until, or if, further vindication comes along. 

How about a strange story that came out of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, USA? History is made in many and varied ways. For “Harry Palmer” it occurred deep below Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio in the 1980s. I know this, as Palmer contacted me on a dark September 2014 night to share a very strange story – and after reading my 2012 book, The Real Men in Black. As Palmer revealed, he had debated for weeks as to whether or not he should take the plunge and speak to me. On the one hand, he wanted to get my opinions on what it was that he encountered. But, on the other hand, he was somewhat concerned about the possibility of his revelations causing “troubles” – specifically with Uncle Sam. It was around 11:00 p.m. when we started chatting and it was well into the early hours when we finally wrapped things up. I spent the entire time on my back, stretched out on the couch and listening carefully. Although Palmer was somewhat hesitant at first, he soon gained his wits and opened up. What follows is a summary of the strange and sinister experience found himself in, more than a quarter of a century earlier.

Wright-Patterson AFB is a highly secure military installation that has a reputation for allegedly being the home of a number of well-preserved – and some not so well-preserved – corpses of dead aliens, presumably recovered from more than a few UFO crashes. Many UFO skeptics ignore or write-off such claims. Harry Palmer knows better. It was a winter’s night in 1988 when Palmer was ordered to report to one particular building on the base that he had never previously been in, one which was connected to a certain weapons-storage area. On doing so, he was met by three very pale men dressed in dark suits; they directed him to a door which, when opened, revealed a large elevator on the other side. Silently, the black-clad trio motioned him into the elevator. He quickly realized he was descending – and to a fairly deep degree. He was then ushered into a corridor, which had a large vault-like door at its end. One of the three men opened it, and in a strange high-pitched voice, ordered him into the vault. The same man pointed at a large container – perhaps nine feet in length and five feet in width – and ordered Palmer to take a look inside. He did as he was told and was shocked – to the point of feeling nauseous and clammy – by the sight of a badly damaged body of what he, Palmer, could only guess was an extraterrestrial: the head was large, the eyes were huge and black, and the severed torso was skinny. 

In seconds, Palmer was forcibly taken from the room, then taken to yet another room, and then ordered to sign a document that effectively said that if he ever spoke of what he saw he would be prosecuted to the extent of the law for violating U.S. national security. After signing the document, a deeply worried Palmer was taken back up the elevator and unceremoniously left there to make his way back to his normal place of work. Clearly, this affair makes no sense at all – unless someone was playing weird mind-games with Palmer, although for what bizarre reason one can scarcely guess. After all, why even show him the body in the first place? His work at the base had zero to do with UFOs. The whole thing, I told Palmer, seemed like some bizarre theatrical event, but for whatever purpose was anyone’s guess. Palmer agreed. There was a curious afterword to this particular story: the very day after Palmer contacted me, he received four hang-up phone calls in the early hours of the morning. It was something which led him to regret sharing his experience with me, as he admitted, when he called me back the following night. That I told him hang-up calls in the dead of night – and specifically in relation to UFO issues - were typically attributed to the Men in Black, didn’t really help him to relax. How could it?

“Don’t use my real name if you publish this,” a worried Palmer said, before hanging up with not even a solitary “goodbye.” Yep, another weird night in almost a lifetime of them. After speaking with Palmer for the second and final time, I had to wonder what, exactly, a group of clearly non-human MIB were doing in the depths of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base on that mystery-filled night in 1988. Were they working alongside the military? Have the MIB infiltrated the U.S. Government? If so, which side is in control? Is anyone in control? It was questions like these that made me wonder just how weird the MIB issue really was – and still is. And how weird those bases are, too!

The ways and means by which we are currently being controlled are many and varied. We have seen how information has been hidden – even denied access to via the Freedom of Information Act. Entire aspects of history are being denied to us. There is, however, yet another way in which we are being controlled: it involves not so much the denial of information, but the destruction of it. There are numerous examples which show the controllers have successfully destroyed certain data that, had it not been relegated to the shredder and the furnace, could have answered key questions about some of the world’s mysteries and conspiracies. Moreover, this has been going on not just in the United States, but all across the planet – which suggests a combined effort on the part of several nations to, essentially, not only hide history but to wipe it off the face of the Earth. Let’s now take a look at a number of perfect examples of this widespread activity of making the past disappear – as a means to prevent us knowing certain things that it should be our right to know about. We’ll begin with UFOs and the most famous case of all: Roswell.

It was in the summer of 1947 that somethings crashed on the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico. Whatever it was, it left huge amounts of strange debris across the ranch. There was talk of strange bodies also having been found in the area, thrown out of the craft that exploded on impact. Within no time at all, personnel from the Roswell Army Air Field were on the scene, preventing anyone outside of the military from getting anywhere near the crash site.  Cordons were created and people were warned never to talk about what they had seen. The problem for the military, though, is that the rancher who found the materials, William Brazel, had told fellow ranchers in the area, and friends, about his find before the military was informed – which meant that at least parts of the story were out there before the military’s cover-up began. 

There was even confusion at the Roswell Army Air Field: before orders were put into place to prevent anyone talking, the press-office at the base issued a statement saying that a flying disc (as UFOs were known back then) had been recovered and was due to be inspected. One such statement, from the media of the time read as follows: ““The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff’s office of Chavez County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff’s office, who in turn notified Major Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher’s home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters.” 

The military quickly knocked that statement down, claiming that what had been recovered was nothing stranger than a weather-balloon. As for the bodies, the Air Force would not even address that matter until 1997, when they claimed that the bodies were, in fact, crash-test dummies used in high-altitude parachute experiments. It was also in the nineties that the Air Force changed its mind again on what came down on William Braazel’s ranch. It was no longer a weather-balloon, but a Mogul balloon, designed to monitor for Soviet atomic bomb tests. In 1993, all of this chopping and changing caught the attention of Steven Schiff, at the time the Congressman of New Mexico – the state in which the Roswell event occurred. Far from happy by what he saw as some kind of cover-up, Schiff approached the Government Accountability Office (at the time, it was known as the General Accounting Office) and asked them to look into the Roswell affair and see what might be found. The GAO was enthused about the idea of looking into Roswell. It was, however, not so much what the GAO found that intrigued them, but what they couldn’t find. As the GAO dug deeper and deeper, they learned to their amazement and concern that every single outgoing message from the old Roswell Army Air Field, from 1945 to 1951, could not be located. The files were gone. All of them. The GAO approached the Air Force and the National Archives for answers. There were no answers. Only puzzles. The National Archives checked their files: no luck. The Air Force came up blank, too. 

Rumors began to surface that when Steven Schiff approached the GAO in 1993, someone who was sitting on the Roswell story quickly realized that the truth of the 1947 incident was now in danger of being compromised, so a decision was quickly taken to have the original papers – wherever they were stored – destroyed. There is a very good reason for that: the GAO is an extremely powerful office of the U.S. Government and certainly had the power and ability to demand access to just about anything it wanted access to. Shredding the old Roswell Army Air Field papers may have been the only way to have ensured that the GAO didn’t get what it and Congressman Schiff wanted. It was just another layer of conspiracy in the quest to understand what really happened at Roswell. The outcome: the GAO concluded the files had been destroyed. Congressman Schiff was irate. The cover-up remained in place.

It’s much the same in the U.K., with the nation’s most famous UFO incident: the landing of an extraterrestrial spacecraft at Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England in December 1980 – an incident which involved numerous military personnel from the nearby Royal Air Force Bentwaters facility. Witnesses saw a strange, roughly triangular-shaped object come down. Strange lights filled the skies over the base, and a huge cover-up was put into place. Attempts to try and understand what happened in Rendlesham Forest have been thwarted by the fact that a sizeable number of official files on the case have been destroyed. Or, rather, that’s the story told to us. It wasn’t long after the events occurred that rumors began to circulate that on the second night of what were three nights of encounters, the U.K. planned to evacuate a very nearby prison HM Prison Highpoint North. Other stories surfaced, suggesting that Blundeston Prison and Hollesley Bay Youth Correctional Center were also primed for evacuation. Clearly, something of a deeply serious nature was going on at the height of the encounters.

One of those who took a deep interest in the Rendlesham Forest events was Lord Hill-Norton, who, from 1971 to 1973 was the Chief of the U.K.’s Defense Staff. He pressed for answers – not just on the case itself but on those evacuation orders too. Just like Roswell, the paperwork was gone. It was on January 23, 2001 that Lord Hill-Norton raised the evacuation issue with the Government’s House of Lords. Hill-Norton wanted answers to what he said were “instructions to prepare for a possible evacuation at some time between 25 and 30 December 1980.” It didn’t take long for the government to get back to the by-then-retired Lord Hill-Norton. Available records from Blundeston Prison and Hollesley Bay Youth Correctional Center didn’t reveal anything odd at all. HM Prison Highpoint North, however, was quite another story. It turned out the December 1980 log-book from the base could not be found. Log-books for the other months were intact. When pushed for further information, the only thing that was offered by the government was the notion that the log-book had been mistakenly destroyed. Right. 

Lord Hill-Norton didn’t stop there: he demanded access to the radar tapes of various military bases in the area, on the nights in question. Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean responded that all of the tapes had been routinely wiped clean: there was nothing to see. A trend was clearly developing. What was certainly the most amazing – and suspicious - aspect of all this reared its head in May 2011. Freedom of Information Act documents on the Rendlesham Forest case surfaced that caught the attention of not just UFO researchers, by the U.K.’s media, too. The files were notable because of what they said about the case specifically. Rather, they were files which revealed that there was a massive gap in the Defense Intelligence papers where the Rendlesham papers should have been kept. Internal memos released via FOIA legislation showed that the Ministry of Defense suspected that “a deliberate attempt had been made to eradicate the records covering this incident.” Precisely who had done the eradicating was never proved. Like the Roswell files, though, the papers were gone and no-one had any kind of solid answer. 

Further files were found to have been destroyed too: not just on Rendlesham but on other cases too. Film-footage of a UFO taken by a military pilot, in U.K. airspace, in 1956, was said by the government to have been destroyed. In 1999, the crew of a military vessel, the HMS Manchester, encountered a UFO during a naval operation in the North Sea. All aboard were unanimous that they had seen a large, circular-shaped craft flying in close proximity to the ship. I am not exaggerating when I say that the U.K. government failed to respond properly for data on the case because “an unusually strong gust of wind” below the ship’s log-book overboard! Can you believe that crap?

Moving onto Australia, in the summer of 2011, the Australian Department of Defense admitted to having, ahem, misplaced, a UFO file that should have been packed with reports. Natalie Carpenter, of the nation’s Freedom of Information Office, responded to media inquiries by stating that, “The files could not be located and Headquarters Air Command formally advised that this file is deemed lost.”    UFO researcher-author Whitley Strieber made a very good observation, on June 6, 2011: “Last week, the Australian government announced that it has ‘lost’ its UFO files. Thus it joins the United States, which ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Roswell AFB dating from 1947 through 1952, and the United Kingdom, which recently announced that it has ‘lost’ all the files relating to the Rendlesham Forest UFO Case. Rendlesham and Roswell are the two most important UFO cases ever to have taken place. Australia is a UFO hotspot, and sightings are frequent in the area of the US’s Pine Gap signals intelligence facility.”

Strieber later said: “Recently, many of the Rendlesham witnesses have spoken frankly about their experiences, and there is no longer any question but that an encounter between base personnel and an unknown presence took place there. Congressman Steven Schiff, who initiated the General Accounting Office's investigation of the Roswell Incident said to me that the files were illegally destroyed – ‘if they were destroyed.’ I asked him, ‘Do you think they might not have been destroyed?’ He said, ‘We are being told that they were destroyed.’ So the investigation came to an end.”

Unfortunately, what all of this tells us is that it's very difficult for us to find amazing UFO data, but it's very easy for government agencies to shred, burn, or deny the existence of important data. Of course, governments are human, just like us. That means, the day may come when we'll stumble on something that was thought by governments to be hidden away, but that will blow open the doors to more than a few top secrets of the UFO type. Such a thing is not impossible. And, when one door opens, it makes another one easier to open. And so on...And so on...

Over the last couple of days I've written on two intriguing characters: one was the Indiana Jones-type, Tom Slick. And, the other one was Albert Bender, the guy who began the Men in Black mystery in the early 1950s. So, I thought I would turn this into a trilogy and finalize it with a man named Sheridan Cavitt. You may not know about him, but, if you're into the UFO phenomenon, you really should. Let's see what we know about the man (who is now deceased). He proved to be one of the trickiest players in the entire Roswell story. He revealed very little of substance. On occasion, he even denied having ever been at Roswell or at the crash site. Cavitt may even have withheld what he knew of the incident when, in 1994, the Air Force came knocking on his front-door, wanting answers. But, let's go back a bit. The story of Roswell was quickly picked up not just across the United States, but across the planet, too. In barely no time at all, however, the flying disc angle was blown out of the sky: the whole thing was nothing but a huge, embarrassing mistake. The materials found on the massive ranch – by rancher William Ware “Mack” Brazel – were not the remains of a disc, after all. What had really been found, and subsequently collected and brought to the Roswell Army Air Field, was weather-balloon debris. Or, so the military was careful to try and assure everyone. The truth was much more. And much more disturbing.

(Nick Redfern)

At the site of what really came down at Roswell

With Brazel at the time of the discovery – which had actually occurred days earlier – was a young boy named Dee Proctor. He would go on to be one of the most important people in the Roswell story. We also know for sure that three, key military men, all of whom were destined to become part and parcel of the Roswell affair, were also present at the ranch – and specifically before a veritable battalion was on-site and ordered to recover the massive amount of whatever-it-was. They were Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence-office of the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell; Captain Sheridan Cavitt, of the Counter-Intelligence Corps; and CIC Master Sergeant Lewis S. “Bill” Rickett. All three were at ground-zero. They all saw the wreckage. Years later Marcel would open up wide on the matter of the debris he saw and collected. Cavitt and Rickett may have seen more than debris. Way more. Possibly bodies, strange bodies. Brazel and little Dee may have seen one or more of those bodies, too. One of the primary reasons why the Air Force felt that the Mogul balloon scenario worked so well was because of the sheer scale of the arrays. They were gigantic clusters of balloons. In that sense, the Project Mogul balloons could, theoretically, have explained the presence of the huge debris field on the Foster Ranch – a field of debris that clearly could not have been caused by anything as insignificant as a small, solitary weather-balloon. 

It’s ironic, however, that one of the primary Roswell players – and who the U.S. Air Force spoke with, hoping he would add weight to their Project Mogul argument – completely failed to take the bait. On the matter of the nature of the debris, he would have nothing at all to do with the Mogul program. That man was one of the very few people that just about everyone who has studied the Roswell controversy agrees was definitely on-site when the materials were found and recovered: Sheridan Cavitt, formerly of the Counter-Intelligence Corps.   On May 24, 1994, Colonel Richard L. Weaver, USAF – who, at the time, was the Air Force’s Director of Security and Special Program Oversight – interviewed Cavitt at his, Cavitt’s, home. Mary, Cavitt’s wife, was also present throughout the interview. In its published report, the Air Force had some intriguing things to say about Cavitt and his comments on the Roswell event. There is an important reason why I have reproduced, below, a specific section of the Cavitt interview. That reason will become apparent imminently. The USAF said, in its 1994 report and prefacing the interview:

“Cavitt is credited in all claims of having accompanied Major Marcel to the ranch to recover the debris, sometimes along with his Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) subordinate, William Rickett, who, like Marcel, is deceased. Although there does not appear to be much dispute that Cavitt was involved in the material recovery, other claims about him prevail in the popular literature. He is sometimes portrayed as a closed-mouth (or sometimes even sinister) conspirator who was one of the early individuals who kept the ‘secret of Roswell’ from getting out. Other things about him have been alleged, including the claim that he wrote a report of the incident at the time that has never surfaced.” In view of the above, it’s not at all surprising that the Air Force wanted to speak with Cavitt. The USAF report continues: “Since Lt. Col. Cavitt, who had first-hand knowledge, was still alive, a decision was made to interview him and get a signed sworn statement from him about his version of the events. Prior to the interview, the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken. Subsequently, Cavitt was interviewed on May 24, 1994, at his home. Cavitt provided a signed, sworn statement of his recollections in this matter. He also consented to having the interview tape-recorded.

“In this interview, Cavitt related that he had been contacted on numerous occasions by UFO researchers and had willingly talked with many of them; however, he felt that he had oftentimes been misrepresented or had his comments taken out of context so that their true meaning was changed. He stated unequivocally, however, that the material he recovered consisted of a reflective sort of material like aluminum foil, and some thin, bamboo-like sticks. He thought at the time, and continued to do so today, that what he found was a weather balloon and has told other private researchers that. “He also remembered finding a small ‘black box’ type of instrument, which he thought at the time was probably a radiosonde. Lt. Col. Cavitt also reviewed the famous Ramey/Marcel photographs of the wreckage taken to Ft. Worth and he identified the materials depicted in those photos as consistent with the materials that he recovered from the ranch. Lt. Col. Cavitt also stated that he had never taken any oath or signed any agreement not to talk about this incident and had never been threatened by anyone in the government because of it. He did not even know the incident was claimed to be anything unusual until he was interviewed in the early 1980’s.”

Cavitt told Colonel Weaver:  “…I couldn’t swear to the dates, but in that time, which must have been July, we heard that someone had found some debris out not to far from Roswell and it looked suspicious; it was unidentified. So, I went out and I do not recall whether Marcel went with Rickett and me; I had Rickett with me. We went out to his site. There were no, as I understand, checkpoints or anything like that (going through guards and that sort of garbage) we went out there and we found it. It was a small amount of, as I recall, bamboo sticks, reflective sort of material that would, well at first glance, you would probably think it was aluminum foil, something of that type. And we gathered up some of it.” Cavitt had more to say: “I don’t know where we even tried to get all of it. It wasn’t scattered, well, what I would call, you know, extensively. Like it didn’t go along the ground and splatter off some here and some there. We gathered up some of it and took it back to the base and I remember I had turned it over to Marcel. As I say, I do not remember whether Marcel was there or not on the site. He could have been. We took it back to the intelligence room in the CIC office.”

The Air Force’s statement is notable for not just what it says, but also for what it specifically does not say. The USAF report makes it clear that in Cavitt’s opinion, what he saw and picked up was weather-balloon debris. From one, single balloon. Not more than one balloon. And definitely not an array of balloons. Given that the materials used in both weather-balloons and Mogul balloons were essentially one and the same, that meant the ball was still just about in the Air Force’s court: the Mogul theory still held water, and one of the last-surviving people who were at the crash-site was endorsing it. Well, no, he wasn’t. The exact opposite, actually. The most important document in this aspect of the Roswell puzzle is not the Air Force’s 1994 report, but its massive 1995 publication / behemoth, The Roswell Report: Fact Vs Fiction in the New Mexico Desert, a copy of which was mailed to me by Colonel Weaver when it was published, and which runs to more than 1,000 pages. Unlike the far slimmer 1994 report, the huge 1995 USAF document contains a full transcript of the interview between Colonel Weaver and Cavitt. 

The report shows that Colonel Weaver asked Cavitt: “…when you went out and saw this material, there was no doubt in your mind that it was some sort of man-made material? And, you thought at the time was a weather balloon, some sort of balloon?” Cavitt replied: “When I first saw it,” implying to the colonel that he knew immediately it was balloon debris. Now we get to the important part. Colonel Weaver continued with his questioning and asked Cavitt how big the debris field was. Cavitt’s response: “Maybe as long as this room is wide.” The colonel asked for clarification on Cavitt’s words : “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt said, as he pointed around the room: “Some here, some here, some here. No concentration of it.” That all brings us to the biggest problem in this aspect of the overall Roswell debate: almost no-one of significance in the Roswell story disputes that the debris field on the ranch was expansive. Even the Air Force believed that. It still does, if asked. And, the fact that the field was so huge, and packed with debris, allowed the USAF to make a somewhat plausible case that it came from one of the military’s goliath-sized Mogul arrays. But, when talking to Colonel Weaver in 1994, Cavitt outright disputed the size of the field. It was, he said, just about “as long as this room is wide.”

Cavitt’s testimony was potentially extremely important to the Air Force, as it could have helped bolster the idea that the materials came from Project Mogul. But, Cavitt’s words on the size of the area in which the material was found, were wholly inconsistent with what one would expect to see if Mogul was the culprit. Instead, what Cavitt described was consistent with just a small weather-balloon: not much wreckage and a very small area in which the materials were strewn about. On top of that, when Colonel Weaver brought up the matter of Project Mogul, Cavitt shot back: “Never heard of it.” Perplexing is the fact that the USAF never addressed that one, notable inconsistency: how could Project Mogul have been the culprit when, according to Cavitt – who even the Air Force accepts was at the ranch in July 1947 with Bill Rickett - the amount of material found would have fitted comfortably in his and Mary’s living-room? Does that sound, to you, like something which could have comfortably fitted inside one room of the Cavitt home? Remember, the Cavitt’s living-room was not large. When asked about the size of the debris field, Cavitt told Colonel Weaver it was no longer than the width of the room in which the interview was then taking place. To which Weaver asked: “So, twenty feet maybe?” Cavitt made not a single attempt to dispute Colonel Weaver’s math.Good luck trying to shovel 600-feet of Mogul-based balloon materials into a twenty-foot-wide room. 

There is something else, too: if Cavitt knew all along that what he, Marcel and Rickett saw and collected came from a weather-balloon, why then did Cavitt – or all three of them – not nip things in the bud and lay matters to rest before the “flying disc” statement was released to the media? The Air Force’s only theory on this issue goes as follows: “…it seems that that there was overreaction by Colonel Blanchard and Major Marcel in originally reporting that a ‘flying disc’ had been recovered when, at that time, nobody knew for sure what that term meant, since it had only been in use for a couple of weeks.” That statement does make some sense – after all, flying saucer hysteria was definitely growing, as it was only two weeks earlier that pilot Kenneth Arnold launched the era of UFOs. But, that Cavitt was so adamant that he immediately knew the material was from a weather-balloon still means he could have quashed everything before it erupted. Also, Colonel Weaver’s report makes it clear he was familiar with the testimony of the RAAF’s Provost Marshal, Major Edwin Easley, who had told Kevin Randle that, with respect to Roswell, he was sworn to secrecy. Easley died in 1992, but no attempt was ever made by the USAF to address his revelations. 

Recall that the Air Force stated: “Prior to the interview [with Cavitt], the Secretary of the Air Force provided him with a written authorization and waiver to discuss classified information with the interviewer and release him from any security oath he may have taken.” Cavitt was not too bothered by this, as he made it clear to Colonel Weaver that he “was not sworn into secrecy ever about any of this stuff.” That, unlike Cavitt, Easley was adamant he had signed a secrecy oath is surely something that should have caught the attention of the USAF. And, more importantly, the Air Force knew Easley had made such a statement. That this important matter was not chased down can only be described as troubling. My view on all this? I believe that, just like John Keel, the Air Force was absolutely right to go looking for a balloon-driven program. As I see it, that is where all of the evidence points. But, also like Keel, the USAF got the wrong kind of balloon. It wasn’t a weather-balloon. It wasn’t a Fugo balloon. It wasn’t even one of the gargantuan Mogul affairs. As one of my original sources told me years ago: there is no better way to hide a classified balloon-based operation than by hiding it behind another classified balloon-based operation. Mogul, then, may have been the convenient fall-guy for a project that was far more controversial in nature; a project of sinister proportions and which was also inextricably linked to new and novel balloons flown in the skies of New Mexico in 1947. 

Was the Air Force of 1994 hiding the history of a series of post-war human experiments behind something else, such as Mogul? Or, incredibly, was the truth hidden from the Air Force, too? Do I think the Air Force engaged in chicanery, lying and obfuscation? Did the Air Force make a legitimate search, only to find little at all? These are all important questions. Personally, I think the USAF legitimately went looking, but in doing so found nothing of a smoking-gun nature in the slightest. So, its investigators continued to search, finally focusing on Mogul, and coming to accept that without definitive documentation to make a cast-iron case, the whole thing was destined to remain a ufological equivalent of Jack the Ripper. Namely, an old mystery, one that was filled with intrigue, but which was lacking in a definitive answer. Perceiving quite correctly and astutely that coming up with no answer, at all, was unacceptable, the Air Force went with the only candidate that it thought made at least some degree of sense: Project Mogul. Based on the words of my sources, I am as certain as I can be that either (a) the relevant files were destroyed decades ago (which would explain why the Air Force of 1994 came up with nothing solid), or (b) the documentation was locked away – also decades ago – to prevent a dirty secret from ever leaking out and embarrassing not just the Air Force, but the entire U.S. Government, and even the President. 

If the former is the correct scenario, we may forever be reliant on nothing more than the old memories of equally old people who are now nearly all gone. If the latter proves to be accurate, however, there is still a chance we might one day get our hands on the elusive proof: documents, photos, autopsy reports, and so on. If that happens, I predict the Air Force of 1994 will be shown to have been out of the loop, but not sinister conspirators. As for Cavitt, was he carrying out some kind of secret duty right up until the very end? Was he – even as late as the 1990s – still answerable to someone else? Was it the same person, or agency, Bill Rickett was still so concerned about crossing? Someone above the Air Force and the GAO? Someone concerned that, if the USAF kept pushing for answers, the hidden truth might still surface? Was Cavitt, by maintaining the weather-balloon scenario, even determined to keep the hidden facts out of the hands of Colonel Weaver? Quite possibly. In other words, Cavitt was the guy who knew the full story, but chose not to reveal it. Now? The whole thing is long gone. Unless, that is, there are still some old, faded files that might blow the whole thing wide open. I'm not giving up on it. Ever.

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The 1990s can be considered to be a period of renaissance of interest in all things paranormal with the debut and popularity of the television series “X-Files” and the rise and nationwide expansion of Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast AM” late night radio show. As many have found since then, those two shows were – and continue to be – hard acts to follow. One TV series that gave it a try was “Dark Skies,” which aired NBC from 1996 to 1997 and was later rerun by the Sci-Fi Channel. With the slogan, “History as we know it is a lie,” “Dark Skies” focused primarily on fictional UFO conspiracy theories about aliens living among humans, the government cover-ups hiding the fact from the public, and the attempts by the aliens to expand their influence. The alleged secret government group Majestic 12 played a prominent role in the short-lived series. While some real people were depicted on the show (Robert F. Kennedy, Jim Morrison, and J. Edgar Hoover to name a few), the plots were fictional.

Or were they?

“He said he was from the Office of Naval Intelligence and he wanted to help us.”

President Ronald Reagan once warned the American public that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.” Bryce Zabel -- a television producer, director, writer, and occasional actor – had undoubtedly heard this quote, but he probably never thought he would hear it in real life as the showrunner (developer/producer/writer) for “Dark Skies.” A new article in The Daily Star seems to confirm a story that has been hinted at before – the tale of what Zabel claims happened in 1996 at the show’s launch party.

“I didn’t know this guy.”

Zabel claims a person he had never seen before came up to him at the party and introduced himself as “JC.” Trailers and information about the show were already being spread by the network – the premier would introduce Congressional Aide John Loengard, who is investigating Project Blue Book, the real but secret Air Force study of UFOs, when he is contacted and finds himself being contacted by members of the Majestic 12. Is Zabel about to experience a case of his own life imitating his own art?

“They were looking at a disclosure scenario, so ‘How ultimately does this secret become known to the public?’.”

Yes, 25 years ago at a TV show premier party, showrunner Bryce Zabel claims he was confronted by a mysterious man named JC who told him that the government was planning to disclose to the public information about UFOs and extraterrestrials, and JC wanted “Dark Skies” to help by being a realistic precursor that could ‘condition’ the public to be ready to accept these revelations when the government decided to release them. Zabel already knows that upcoming episodes will depict such revelations – one of them has John Loengard testifying to the Warren Commission (The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, established by President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy) about Majestic 12’s involvement in the JFK assassination. Apparently, JC wanted fictional accounts such as these to play out as closely as possible to how the real government wants them to happen when the time comes for similar real revelations – again, to condition the public to be less shocked and more receptive to the ideas.

“The President just can’t come out and say, ‘Here’s everything’ all at once’. So they wanted to see more of the truth through fiction.”

For example, JC wanted Zabel to write situations that would – for lack of a better overused word – leak some truths about UFOs and aliens via the fictional scenes in “Dark Skies.” Yes, this premier party encounter was itself starting to sound like an episode of the show – something that was not lost on Brent V. Friedman, Zabel’s co-creator and co-producer.

“I can’t tell you how surreal this was. They wanted to help us come up with some story ideas.”

Friedman, also at the premier party, said JC and his ‘associates’ in the government knew they had not yet filmed the rest of the season or even written the rest of the episodes, so there was the perfect opportunity to intervene and direct the directors in their preferred direction. Friedman sensed that they were looking for nothing too big or too obvious in the script changes.

“JC said to me, ‘It’s a drip system… get the truth out there in small ways.”

JC was obviously aware of how hot the paranormal/UFO interest was among television viewers in the 1990s after the surprise and long-lasting success of “The X-Files,” whose initial run went from September 1993 to May 2002, and spawned a couple of later seasons, movies, books, video games and graphic novels. He gave Friedman and Zabel some advice:

“You have a television show that millions of people are watching right now… if we start lacing it with bits of the truth we’re preparing everybody’.”

Was someone or something really behind the scenes trying to leak information to the public?

Everybody? That is is quite possibly the point where the mysterious JC and his equally mysterious cohorts “from the Office of Naval Intelligence” may have given away that they were not as sharp as they hoped Zabel and Friedman would think them to be. This was obviously the kickoff to the first season of “Dark Skies” but JC did not do his research -- the series was cancelled before the end of that initial season of 18 episodes due to low ratings. According to Zabel and Freidman’s five-year plan, the first season would cover the period from 1961 to 1969, the second from 1970 to 1976, the third from 1977 to 1986, the fourth from 1987 to 1999, and the fifth and final season would cover the final conflict between humans and aliens taking place from 2000 to 2001. Did JC miscalculate the potential popularity of “Dark Skies”? It’s possible – we’ve seen that the government isn’t too good at collecting accurate polling data in other fields. Or did they decide the American public wasn’t ready for trickle-down UFO disclosure or conditioning to accept real truths about extraterrestrials?

In any event, Zabel and Friedman said they never heard from “JC” again.

If he was a real Man in Black, they’d better keep watching their backs.