It’s hardly surprising that 1997 was the year in which the Roswell “UFO” affair reached its pinnacle. It was, after all, the 50^th anniversary of the mysterious event. Just about everyone who was anyone in Ufology was commenting on, or writing about, the case. And, unsurprisingly, mostly from the perspective of promoting and championing the alien angle. That was not the case for exactly everyone, however. In 1997 – three years after the U.S. Air Force championed its 1994 “Mogul Balloon Report” on Roswell was published – the Air Force made a surprising acknowledgement that the reported sightings of strange bodies at Roswell did have a basis in fact. Not only that: so compelled by then was the Air Force to address the bodies issue that it authorized the release of yet another report on Roswell. The last word, lo and behold, was not the last word. The last word was not even anywhere in sight. Entitled The Roswell Report: Case Closed, it did very little – if anything at all – to dampen the notoriety surrounding the case, however. In fact, the question of why the Air Force had concluded there was a pressing need on its part to explain the reports of unusual bodies found in New Mexico (when it could quite easily have summarily dismissed them as hoaxes or modern-day folklore), only heightened the interest in what did or did not occur in early July 1947.

The Air Force report focused practically all of its 231 pages on the alleged recovery of the strange bodies and asserted that: “‘Aliens’ observed in the New Mexico desert were probably anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research. The ‘unusual’ military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. The reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and ‘crew,’ were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.”

(Nick Redfern)

Aliens, human guinea-pigs, or dummies?

There is no doubt (it is, actually, a matter of historical record) that the Air Force conducted a wide array of tests using crash test dummies in New Mexico and that at least some of these tests did occur in the vicinity of both the White Sands Proving Ground and the town of Roswell. But were those same tests responsible – either in part or in whole – for the stories concerning highly unusual-looking bodies recovered by the military during the summer of 1947? At the time of its release, the conclusions of the Air Force’s latest (final…?) report provoked a furor of controversy. While there is absolutely no doubt that tests utilizing anthropomorphic dummies were widespread in New Mexico, the Air Force’s report largely and very carefully glosses over the fact that these particular tests did not even commence until the early 1950s.

(Nick Redfern)

Driving by the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico

This was an issue not lost on the mainstream media during the Air Force’s press conference at the Pentagon, which accompanied the release of the report in July 1997. A reporter asked, “How do you square the UFO enthusiasts saying that they’re talking about 1947, and you’re talking about dummies used in the 50’s, almost a decade later?”” Air Force spokesman, Colonel John Haynes replied, slightly and noticeably awkwardly: “Well, I’m afraid that’s a problem that we have with time compression. I don’t know what they saw in ‘47, but I’m quite sure it probably was Project Mogul. But I think if you find that people talk about things over a period of time, they begin to lose exactly when the date was.”

It should be said that the Air Force still stands by its Mogul balloon and crash-test dummy scenario. And, it’s unlikely that those two scenarios will go away. Unlike so many people in Ufology, however, I don’t think that the Air Force of today knows what happened way back in 1947. And that also goes for the Air Force of 1997, when the 50th anniversary of the near-legendary affair came around. My tentative view is that someone knows what happened back in 1947 on the Foster Ranch, and someone knows where the old files are still kept. Or, rather a select group knows the truth. But, the numbers of people who are “in the know” are small. Indeed, small enough to make sure that the truth doesn’t leak out. And, finally, both Ufologists and the Air Force have one thing in common: they have both been denied the real story of Roswell.

Bring up the matter of cattle mutilations and, in all likelihood, it will lead into a UFO connection to the disturbing, grisly phenomenon. The fact is, though, there are good reasons to believe that the mutilations have absolutely nothing to do with aliens and UFOs. The truth is worse. Much worse. Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – slaughtered in bizarre fashion. Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone. While the answers to the puzzle remain frustratingly outside of the public arena, theories abound. They include extraterrestrials, engaged in nightmarish experimentation of the genetic kind; military programs involving the testing of new bio-warfare weapons; occult-based groups that sacrifice the cattle in ritualistic fashion; and government agencies secretly monitoring the food chain, fearful that something worse than “Mad Cow Disease” may have infected portions of the U.S. cattle herd – and, possibly, as a result, the human population, too. Not only that, the notorious black helicopters are often seen at mutilation sites.

As I said above, it was 1967 when reports began. At least, that’s what numerous Ufologists will assure you. The fact, though, is that government agencies have been carefully and quietly watching the United States’ cattle since the 1940s. And I’m not talking about alien agencies. I’m talking of human agencies. By stating that the phenomenon kicked-off in the Sixties made it sound like the mystery suddenly surfaced out of nowhere. The mystery – for the farmers, at least – was around for decades earlier. J.R. Ruggle, the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge at the Savannah, Georgia office of the Bureau in the early-to-mid 1940s, wrote thus to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on February 3, 1943: “This office has received a copy of a communication from John T. Bissel, Colonel, General Staff, Assistant Executive Officer, Military Intelligence Service, Washington, D.C., dated December 29, 1942, to directors of intelligence in all Service commands…”

Colonel Bissel’s communication read as follows: “It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.” Evidently, such matters were of keen concern to U.S. Intelligence. And that concern did not go away any time soon. In 1944, the FBI prepared a document that dealt with the scenario of a widespread attack on the U.S. cattle herd via unconventional, bacteriological warfare. The document states:

(Nick Redfern)

Helicopters but no UFOs

“A review of the book entitled ‘Sabotage’ by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, which was published in September of 1942, discloses the following data: The complete record of sabotage carried out by Chernov, supposedly of the German Intelligence service in Russia during 1930 to 1936 is too long to put into the book according to the authors, but includes – killing off pedigree breed-stock and raising cattle mortality by artificially infecting cattle with various kinds of bacteria – effecting a shortage of serum to counteract epidemics of anthrax so that, in one instance, 25,000 horses perished as a result of Chernov’s sabotage – infecting tens of thousands of pigs with erysipelas and with certain plagues by having virulent bacteria placed in medicinal sera.”

What this tells us is that government agencies have been secretly watching America’s cattle herds since the Second World War. None of the data above has a proven a UFO connection. And, based on the timeline from the 1940s, there’s no reason why that should be the same for the 1960s-1980s cases: zero aliens. Now, let’s bring matters to more recent times. Colm Kelleher is an investigative writer who has diligently pursued the cattle mutilation issue. Indeed, his book Brain Trust has the subtitle of  “The Hidden Connection Between Mad Cow and Misdiagnosed Alzheimer’s Disease.” A bone-chilling connection between Alzheimer’s, cattle mutilations and the cattle herd: wouldn’t it be very easy to hide the truth behind an “it’s all aliens” angle? Yes, it most definitely would be very easy. Why? Because the UFO angle provides a convenient cover. Cattle mutilations: forget creatures from outer-space. Look right here on Earth for the answer to the mutilations.

You may have seen my recent article on a UFO incident that occurred on November 8, 1966 – near Shrewsbury, England – and that involved a young woman named Diane Foulkes. Diane had a classic case of UFO-driven “Missing Time.” Notably, U.K. military police descended onto Diane’s home, created a file on the incident, and interviewed her and her parents about the encounter and her lost time. The incident makes for fascinating reading. There’s a reason why I mention this: it’s because I find it very strange that so many people laugh at the idea of government agencies quietly interviewing alien abductees and those with erased minds. Or, rather, briefly erased minds. The fact is, though, this has been going on for a long time. Let’s have a look at some cases. Evidence of serious, government concerns about the real alien abduction phenomenon continued into the 1950s, specifically in 1959. That was the year in which a young American soldier found himself caught up in a very strange saga that, to a degree, still disturbs him to this very day. It all went down on a chilly night in Utah’s expansive desert. Private Bernard Gerry Irwin was the man whose life took a turn of the decidedly unforeseen type. February 20, 1959 began as a regular day for Irwin, but, it most definitely didn’t end that way. At the time, Irwin was driving to Fort Bliss, Texas, from Idaho – the former being the facility at which Irwin was stationed, and the latter his home state. As night set in, something completely unforeseen and paradigm-shifting happened to Irwin. He was about to be confronted by the UFO phenomenon in spectacular and mysterious fashion.

(Nick Redfern)

The night was dark, silent and all but empty of vehicles. As desert highways so often are well after sunset. But, for Irwin this was a night he would never forget – which is somewhat ironic, as a result of the fact that certain portions of his memory were forever erased from his mind. As he drove along the winding, curving road, Irwin was suddenly distracted by a bright light in the night sky – but at a distinctly low level – which descended below a looming ridge. A meteorite? No. A flare, perhaps? Wrong again. Maybe an aircraft in trouble? That was Irwin’s first thought and, with that in mind, he brought his car to a stop at the side of the road, and turned on the blinkers. He quickly got out, and left a note for passing drivers. It read: Have gone to investigate what looks like a plane crash about one-quarter mile to my right. Notify state police immediately. Wearing his Army coat and armed with a flashlight, Irwin headed off into the unknown. Irwin headed for what he suspected – and feared – just might be the site of a plane crash, only to find himself in an even greater nightmare.  The next thing Irwin remembered was waking up in a hospital bed in Cedar City. Where and why, he didn’t know.

Certainly, one of the most notable pieces of evidence that has surfaced via the Freedom of Information Act is a document prepared by a Captain Valentine, who was Irwin’s psychiatrist while he was undergoing treatment for his strange condition. On March 27, 1959, Irwin was injected with sodium amytal. It provoked a strange response from Irwin, which caught Captain Valentine’s deep attention. In his official report on this particular drug-induced session, the captain wrote: “[Irwin] stated there was a ‘special intelligence’ that he couldn’t explain to me, since it would be incomprehensible to me, which has directed him not to remember or not to tell me about any of the events in Utah. He says that if he tells what was behind the incidents in Utah there will be a ‘big investigation’ that he does not want to be bothered with and also because it will harm many people and he doesn’t want that to happen. He states ‘it’ all began at the age of three years,’ although he will not reveal how or what began, stating that it would provide a clue to me as to what is behind all this. Also, he informed me that he could leave this hospital any time if he wanted to by invoking a special force. Following this interview the patient stated he could remember nothing of what he said during it.”

Now, onto another case: Just five months after Betty and Barney Hill’s late night encounter, a similar incident occurred in the U.K. In this case, the witness was a man named Ronald Wildman. It was in the early hours of February 9, 1962 that Wildman had an extraordinary experience, one which led him to fully believe he had seen a UFO at very close quarters: an egg-like thing that put Wildman in a state of amzement. So amazed, and even slightly unsettled, by what occurred, Wildman contacted the local police. It was via the police that the U.K.’s Air Ministry (today, called the Ministry of Defense) came to hear about the story. It turns out that the military learned Wildman had lost a period of missing time. A file, of course, was opened.

The night of October 10, 1973 was one that Calvin Parker and Charles Hickson would not forget. And it all began in a perfectly normal, relaxed fashion. Forty-two-year-old Hickson and Parker – who was nineteen – worked together and often spent time fishing on Mississippi’s Pascagoula River. It was around 9:00 p.m. on a dark and fateful night when their world came tumbling down around them. For a while the fish were biting. It would, however, not be long before the two men would find themselves reeled in. “Hauled in” might be a better piece of terminology. As they sat on the banks of the river, the two could not fail to see that there was an odd, blue, flickering light in the distance – odd in the sense that it seemed to be following the contours of the river, but slightly above it. Both Hickson and Parker stared at it, trying to figure out what on Earth it was. Earth may very well have had nothing to do with it. They wondered: helicopter? But, there was no noise. An aircraft? Way too low and slow. Someone’s idea of a joke? If only. When the strange whatever-it-was got closer, a stark realization quickly hit both men: this was like nothing they had ever seen before. It was a fairly small craft, oval in design, and illuminated – almost glowing. And a vomit-inducing, deep droning sound suddenly enveloped them. Things seemed strange, unreal, dream-like, as the pair tried to scramble away. No such luck: in seconds both Parker and Hickson were rendered almost unable to move.

In no time at all after contacting the police, Parker and Hickson were whisked off to Keesler Air Force Base, which is in Biloxi, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. They were driven there by a local police-officer: Deputy Tom Huntley, who later made an intriguing statement: “We were in an unmarked car but the guards were expecting us and waved us through the moment I said who I was. I looked back through my rear-view mirror, and damn if two cars full of air police hadn’t fallen in behind us. They had more air police stationed at each crossing all along the road.” Officer Huntley eventually revealed much more, too: on being directed to one particular building, a team of medical personnel were already there, waiting for the arrival of Hickson and Parker. Huntley said that after he and Parker and Hickson were directed into the building, a series of tests quickly began. Of the doctors, Huntley added that they “looked like space creatures – all wrapped in white and masked and gloved.” Both men had a Geiger-counter ran over them. Their fingers and shoes were swabbed – with each swab carefully placed into separate bottles.

All of this tells us that, yes, government agencies do take an interest in “missing time” cases and alien abductions. The events above are just the start of things.

It’s most intriguing to note that in the United States the black helicopter phenomenon began in 1973 – the very same year in which the U.K. was also hit by a wave of helicopter-based incidents, and that prompted the British Police Force’s Special Branch to launch an investigation. In the U.S., things started in the Hawkeye State: Iowa. For the first three months of the year, outraged farmers contacted local law enforcement officers with strange and unsettling stories: they would wake up in the morning, head to their fields and find several of their cattle dead. These were no normal deaths though. The genitals were gone, as were the eyeballs. Skin appeared to have been opened with the use of some kind of device employing incredible temperatures; maybe even a laser-based device. Organs were not savagely torn out – as they might have been if coyotes were the culprits. Instead, they were carefully cut out. Under cover of darkness, an unstoppable force was causing mayhem throughout the rural parts of Iowa. It wasn’t long before those same ranchers had something else to deal with. You have probably already guessed what that was. That’s right: black and unmarked helicopters.

But, were the pilots of the craft performing the mutilations? Or, were they monitoring the activities of the mutilators, who may not even have been human? These were the questions being asked seriously – and particularly so after sunset, when farmers wondered and dreaded what they might find when a new day dawned. Even local law enforcement were open to the idea that something from another realm of existence just might have been behind the mutilation wave. When the Iowa cases were at their height, local police authorities called in the FBI. Despite the large amount of testimony, photographs, necropsy reports, and extensive police files, the FBI stayed curiously out of the controversy. They maintained that since the events didn’t amount to “interstate transportation of the maimed animals,” they were powerless to get involved. The FBI, then, didn’t deny the reality of the grisly killings, but kept their distance because of bureaucratic reasons.

(Nick Redfern)

Where there were cattle mutilations there were black helicopters

When, in the fall of 1974, Nebraska was next on the hit-list, Senator Carl T. Curtis, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1955 to 1979, wanted answers – and he wanted those answers quickly. Such was Curtis’ level of concern, he went right to the Director of the FBI, Clarence M. Kelley, who, in 1973, took on the position of Director after the death of J. Edgar Hoover. Once again, though, the FBI took the stance that this was an area outside of their jurisdiction. Rumors abounded that the FBI had been warned to keep away from the subject. But, who would have the power and influence to ensure the FBI would stay away? It was a notable question. By 1975, things had gotten to the point where the FBI could not ignore what was going on – and in not just Iowa and Nebraska. Exasperated by a wave of mutes in his state of Colorado in seventy-five, Senator Floyd K. Haskell sent the following letter to FBI Director Kelley: “For several months my office has been receiving reports of cattle mutilations throughout Colorado and other western states. At least 130 cases in Colorado alone have been reported to local officials and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI); the CBI has verified that the incidents have occurred for the last two years in nine states. The ranchers and rural residents of Colorado are concerned and frightened by these incidents. The bizarre mutilations are frightening in themselves: in virtually all the cases, the left ear, rectum and sex organ of each animal has been cut away and the blood drained from the carcass, but with no traces of blood left on the ground and no footprints.”

(Nick Redfern)

Surveillance of the strange kind (over my old home and super-low)

If one hundred and thirty-plus incidents were not nearly enough to get the FBI involved, there was the matter of the black helicopters, which had also caught the attention of Senator Haskell. He added to Director Kelley: “In Colorado’s Morgan County area there has also been reports that a helicopter was used by those who mutilated the carcasses of the cattle, and several persons have reported being chased by a similar helicopter [italics mine]. Because I am gravely concerned by this situation, I am asking that the Federal Bureau of Investigation enter the case.”  The senator signed off: “Although the CBI has been investigating the incidents, and local officials also have been involved, the lack of a central unified direction has frustrated the investigation. It seems to have progressed little, except for the recognition at long last that the incidents must be taken seriously. Now it appears that ranchers are arming themselves to protect their livestock, as well as their families and themselves, because they are frustrated by the unsuccessful investigation. Clearly something must be done before someone gets hurt.”

Since then, various others agencies and bodies- not only the FBI – have got involved. The list includes the Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Atomic Energy. The mystery of the cattle mutilations still continues. The same goes for those strange helicopters, too.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

The late Leonard Stringfield, who passed away in 1994, was a UFO researcher who firmly believed that, since the 1940s, the U.S. Government had secretly recovered a number of crashed UFOs and dead aliens, and which were stored and preserved a variety of military bases across the country – many at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Stringfield, too, however, was given a number of accounts relative to the issue of secret and shocking human experimentation on handicapped people; experimentation that was tied in with the Roswell affair. One of those stories came to Stringfield from a highly controversial figure in Ufology. His name: Timothy Cooper, a resident of Big Bear Lake, California and someone who exited the field of UFO research years ago. Far more than a few people in Ufology have very little time for Cooper, suspecting that many of the documents he supplied to the UFO community in the mid-1990s were bogus, rather than the highly classified papers that they were purported to be. They were bogus; there is no doubt about that. But, Cooper himself was not the forger. It’s the “pre-documents” era we have to take a look at, however. It paints a very different picture of Cooper to that which many ufologists have accepted.

(Nick Redfern)

Big Bear Lake, California

Tim Cooper claimed to Stringfield in 1990 that he had numerous sources of the old-timer kind – some of who assured Cooper that, yes, aliens really did crash outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Others, however, quietly hinted to Cooper that the truth was far more controversial: a scenario involving human guinea-pigs – Japanese and handicapped individuals – and the creation of UFO-themed disinformation programs and faked, pro-UFO documents to hide the down-to-earth truth of the Roswell enigma. Also in 1990, Cooper supplied Stringfield one specific story which Stringfield decided to firmly keep under wraps until the following year, 1991, when he published it in a lengthy report on tales of crashed and secretly retrieved alien spacecraft. The story concerned a woman who Cooper first crossed paths with in 1989. He described her only as a nurse, and gave her the pseudonym of “Mary.” That alias was not too far off from the real name of another nurse linked to the story. Decades ago, Cooper’s informant allegedly worked at what is, today, the New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory.

(Nick Redfern)

Not an alien in sight. Only a terrible, secret experiment

In Cooper’s own words of 1990, and which Stringfield published: “She casually mentioned to me over coffee that ‘bodies’ were being flown to Los Alamos periodically from late 1945 to sometime in 1947. I asked her if she had seen these ‘bodies’ and she said no, but others had. I asked her where these ‘bodies’ were coming from. She said she did not know but it was rumored that they were human experiments for biological and nuclear medicine research. She thought they may have come from Japan after the war [italics mine]. I asked her why she thought that. She said that they were small bodies with deformed heads and limbs. The eyes were abnormally big, she was told. She did have some view of them in the morgue very briefly for a few minutes at some distance. I asked her why she was allowed to be present at the autopsies. She told me that she was asked to assist in the preparation and cleanup. I asked her again about the bodies. She said they were being flown in on special transport planes equipped with refrigerator units to keep the bodies from decomposing. The flesh was badly burned and charred. There was no hair on the heads and had a grayish-yellow color. That’s all she knew.”

What all of this demonstrates is that the Roswell story gets more and more sinister when we begin to look at the “human angle” of what happened at Roswell in July 1947, and when we dismiss the “extraterrestrial angle.”

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

If, as my Body Snatchers in the Desert book and my The Roswell UFO Conspiracy book suggested, certain key events in the summer of 1947 – of a perceived flying saucer nature – had far less to do with the actions of aliens and far more to do with matters of a classified, military nature, then it would be most reasonable to assume that (a) discussions of such a possibility would have been flying around Washington, D.C., and (b) the government, and people in the military, would have been secretly digging deep to try and determine if this was indeed the case. Guess what? That is exactly what happened. Although many UFO investigators have said that the government’s worries and concerns about UFOs in ’47 were provoked by fear of them having definitive alien or Soviet origins, we have prime evidence in our hands that demonstrates the domestic “secret weapon” angle was one most definitely discussed – and even accepted – at an official level, as we shall now see. It is a crucial part of the argument that at least some UFOs are not from faraway worlds, but from right here. In early July 1947, Brigadier General George F. Schulgen, who was the Chief of the Requirements Intelligence Branch of Army Air Corps Intelligence, met with Special Agent S.W. Reynolds of the FBI. The purpose: to determine if the Army Air Force could solicit the assistance of the Bureau on a regular basis in its investigation of the growing flying saucer controversy. General Schulgen advised Reynolds that, “every effort must be undertaken in order to run down and ascertain whether or not the flying discs are a fact and, if so, to learn all about them.”

(Nick Redfern)

Welcome to Roswell!

The foremost thought on General Schulgen’s mind, at the time, was that the saucers were probably man-made in origin. He had another theory, too, and confided in Special Agent Reynolds that, “the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret weapon.” It was for this reason that the Army Air Force sought the FBI’s assistance. General Schulgen pledged to the FBI “all the facilities of [my] office as to results obtained.” He outlined a plan that would involve the FBI in both locating and questioning witnesses to UFO sightings to ascertain whether they were sincere in their statements that they had seen flying saucers, or whether their statements were prompted by personal desire for publicity or subversive reasons. According to declassified FBI files, Schulgen was careful to advise Reynolds too that: “It has been established that the flying discs are not the result of any Army or Navy experiment.” But, was that statement the literal truth? Was someone keeping the FBI in the dark?

Following the meeting between Schulgen and Reynolds, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover instructed his agents to begin investigations into flying saucer sightings, specifically in the manner suggested by General Schulgen. As a result of these investigations, on August 15, 1947 the FBI learned of the distinct possibility that the military’s involvement in the flying saucer subject extended beyond that of mere observer. In a memorandum to Edward A. Tamm, the FBI Assistant Director, D.M. Ladd of the Bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division wrote the following: “The Director advised on August 14, 1947, that the Los Angeles papers were carrying headlines indicating that Soviet espionage agents had been instructed to determine the facts relative to the flying discs. The article carried a Washington date line and indicated that Red espionage agents had been ordered to solve the question of the flying discs, the Russians being of the opinion that this might be some new form of defense perfected by the American military [italics mine]. The article further recalled that during the recent war pieces of tin foil had been dropped in the air for the purpose of off-setting the value of radar being used by the enemy forces and that these aluminum discs might be a new development along this line. The Director inquired as to whether the Bureau had any such information.”

(Nick Redfern)

When there were concerns about UFOs and the Russians

Suspecting that, if the Russians were snooping around, the saucers just had to be American in origin, Special Agent Reynolds of the FBI’s Liaison Section was directed by J. Edgar Hoover to make further inquiries with the Air Force. Answers were sorely needed. Answers came, too. But, they weren’t the ones you might expect them to have been. On August 19, 1947, Reynolds met with a Lieutenant Colonel George D. Garrett and the entire secret weapon issue was discussed frankly and openly, as were the potential consequences should the Bureau uncover details of a top-secret, domestic research-and-development program. Following their very candid exchange, a remarkable memorandum captioned “Flying Discs” was prepared by Reynolds for the attention of Hoover. It is this document, perhaps, more than any other, which indicates that the American military was testing flying saucer-type aircraft in the summer of 1947. Or, craft that were not circular-shaped but which still came under the UFO banner, such as massive balloon arrays. The document reads as follows: “Special Agent S. W. Reynolds of the Liaison Section, while discussing the above captioned phenomena with Lieutenant Colonel Garrett of the Air Forces Intelligence, expressed the possibility that flying discs were, in fact, a very highly classified experiment of the Army or Navy. Mr. Reynolds was very much surprised when Colonel Garrett not only agreed that this was a possibility, but confidentially stated it was his personal opinion that such was a probability. Colonel Garrett indicated that a Mr. [Deleted], who is a scientist attached to the Air Forces Intelligence, was of the same opinion.”

“Colonel Garrett stated that he based his assumption on the following: He pointed out that when flying objects were reported seen over Sweden, the ‘high brass’ of the War Department extended tremendous pressure on the Air Forces Intelligence to conduct research and collect information in an effort to identify these sightings. Colonel Garrett stated that, in contrast to this, we have reported sightings of unknown objects over the United States, and the ‘high brass’ appeared to be totally unconcerned. He indicated this led him to believe that they knew enough about these objects to express no concern. Colonel Garrett pointed out further that the objects in question have been seen by many individuals who are what he terms ‘trained observers’ such as airline pilots. He indicated also that several of the individuals are reliable members of the community. He stated that these individuals saw something. He stated the above has led him to the conclusion that there were objects seen which somebody in the Government knows all about [italics mine].”

Special Agent Reynolds then pointed out to the colonel that if flying saucers really did originate within the heart of a highly classified domestic project of the military, it was wholly unreasonable for the FBI to be expected to “spend money and precious time conducting inquiries with respect to this matter.” The colonel duly concurred with Reynolds; he indicated that it would have been extremely embarrassing to Air Force Intelligence if the saucers proved to be American in origin. Perhaps sensing that he was now getting very close to uncovering the truth behind the UFO puzzle, Reynolds then made inquiries with the Intelligence Division of the War Department. He wanted their opinion on the theory that something akin to a shadow government operation was responsible for the many flying saucer-type objects seen over North America. The War Department, however, issued a flat denial that it was in any way implicated in the UFO issue. In a report written up later, Reynolds noted that he was given “the assurance of General Chamberlain and General Todd that the Army is conducting no experiments with anything which could possibly be mistaken for a flying disc.”

(Nick Redfern)

Secret U.S. devices? Soviets? Aliens?

Nevertheless, the FBI continued to view the subject of flying saucers and the military’s involvement in the subject with profoundly suspicious eyes. Rumors continued to circulate within the higher echelons of the FBI that it was being denied access to the full and unexpurgated facts – facts suggesting UFOs were home-grown and not Russian or alien in origin. None of this, of course, proves that the flying saucer wave of the summer of 1947 was provoked by a highly classified military program – rather than one of E.T. origin – but the behind-the-scenes discussions between the likes of Reynolds and Garrett on just such this very possibility most definitely pushed things in that direction.

Dulce is a pleasant and inviting town that is situated in New Mexico’s Rio Arriba County. It’s a small town of less than 3,000 people and which is around thirteen square miles in size. It was founded in the latter part of the 19^th century and, today, is the home of the Jicarilla Apache Nation. There is nothing particularly unusual or out of the ordinary about Dulce – at least, not at first glance. Look a little bit closer, though, and you’ll find yourself in a world filled with dark secrets and terrifying tales of the cosmic and conspiratorial kind. And, “by closer,” I mean below your feet. Way below your feet; maybe even miles down. Since the late 1970s, rumors have swirled to the effect that deep within the massive Archuleta Mesa, which dominates the town, there is a secret and futuristic facility that has been out of bounds to the U.S. Government since 1979. Today, it’s said that the installation is under the complete control of hostile and deadly extraterrestrials – the so-called “Greys” of UFO lore, those dwarfish, black-eyed, large-headed entities that are practically part of popular culture. So the story goes, it was in seventy-nine that a violent confrontation between military personnel and the aliens broke out – and we were the losers. The base, which was once a hub of human / alien interaction, is now theirs – and theirs alone. Witnesses talk of people going missing, and of vast, cavern-like rooms in which people are devoured by voraciously hungry aliens. Are the tales true? How did the rumors begin? Let’s take a trip back in time to the mid-to-late1970s. Paul Bennewitz was a scientist who, at the time, ran a company in Albuquerque called Thunder Scientific – a company that quite literally backed onto the well-guarded fences of Kirtland Air Force Base. It was around 1978 that Bennewitz – who had a preexisting interest in UFOs – began to hear of more and more so-called alien abduction events in and around Albuquerque and further up into northern New Mexico.

Greg Bishop at the grave of Paul Bennewitz

(photo courtesy of Nick Redfern)

On top of that, strange signals were picked up by Bennewitz on his radio equipment. He saw weird-looking aircraft soaring silently across the skies over Kirtland late at night and in the early hours of the morning. He was given accounts of abductees being secretly taken to Kirtland and grilled by U.S. intelligence agents, who were deeply concerned about the growing number of people seemingly being kidnapped from their homes and subjected to terrifying and bizarre experiments of a genetic nature. As the weeks and months progressed Bennewitz came to believe something incredible: that deadly ETs were secretly getting ready to take over the planet. They were planning on doing so from their command post deep below the town of Dulce. Worldwide invasion and the enslavement of the human race were lurking just around the corner – as Bennewitz saw it, at least. Suspecting that the end really was possibly getting nearer and nearer, Bennewitz prepared a dossier on his findings and theories. He called it Project Beta. Bennewitz mailed copies of the controversial report to the FBI, to the CIA, to the NSA, to every branch of the military, and even to the White House. People had to be warned – and warned now, Bennewitz wrote.

Notably, Bennewitz was not written off as a crank, as many might expect him to have been. In fact, quite the opposite was the case: intelligence agents at Kirtland Air Force Base quickly established a secret liaison with Bennewitz. They warned him about digging any further into things that could be dangerous – even to Bennewitz’s life, no less. But, those same agents also confided in Bennewitz something incredible: that he was on the right track. They did all they could to keep Bennewitz quiet, almost to the point of begging him to keep his mouth shut on what he knew. For Bennewitz, though, this was like a red rag to a bull: the somewhat veiled threats to keep his nose out of things only served Bennewitz to push further for answers. As a result, U.S. intelligence fed Bennewitz more and more horror stories of what was supposedly going on several miles below Dulce, including tales of the aliens using captured people – in their thousands – as food. It’s no wonder – given the nature of the stories and that they were coming directly from the military – that Bennewitz became more and more paranoid. Eventually, he became completely unhinged, and to the point where he ended up spending time in a local medical facility, where he was treated for stress, anxiety, and, finally, what practically amounted to a complete mental collapse. Thankfully, he recovered, but was careful kept his distance from Ufology.

(Nick Redfern)

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, black helicopters were often seen at Dulce

Today, some UFO researchers dismiss Bennewitz’s theories and conclusions – preferring, instead, to suspect that Bennewitz had stumbled on not alien activity but top secret programs of the U.S. military and intelligence community. By steering Bennewitz down a path filled with fictitious tales of dangerous aliens, the government would be able to divert him away from the far more down to earth truth, so the theory goes. On the other hand, Bennewitz, who died in 2003, still has a huge following of UFO sleuths who are absolutely certain that below Dulce something abominable is going on – and has been for years. Maybe even for centuries. While Bennewitz’s Project Beta report does read like something straight out of the early years of The X-Files, there is absolutely no doubt that Dulce itself is a very weird place, one where strange activity has been reported for years. For example, in the 1960s the area around Dulce became the site of a classified U.S. Atomic Energy Commission program called Gasbuggy. It was part of a larger operation code-named Plowshare. The plan was to explode a significantly-sized atomic device, underground, deep below the Carson National Forest, which just happens to be only a few miles from Dulce. The reason was to try and access massive and precious supplies of natural gas. The bomb was detonated on December 10, 1967 – more than four thousand feet below the surface. Although the Plowshare program continued in the area until the late 1970s, even today digging underground in the area is strictly forbidden.

In light of all of Bennewitz’s findings, it’s not at all surprising that there are those in the UFO community who believe that the Plowshare program was actually a cover story – one created to mask the fact that the U.S. Government had tried to destroy the alien base under Dulce with a nuclear weapon. That just such a weapon really was exploded, underground, and only a few minutes’ drive from Dulce, only ensures that the rumors of an alien presence in the area continue to thrive. And, that people are warned not to dig underground in the area only adds to the suspicions that there is something very sinister going on below Dulce. Not only that, in 1989, and thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI declassified into the public domain its extensive files on so-called “cattle mutilations” in the Dulce area, all of which occurred in the 1970s. Such mutilations have been reported all across the county and since 1967, but Dulce is renowned for the huge number of cases in its midst, as the FBI learned. Cattle are found lacking major organs. Blood is removed from the bodies in astonishingly quick time. And, black and unmarked helicopters are seen in the areas of mutilation – as are strange lights in the sky, and UFOs too.

Incredibly, all of these issues are discussed at length in the FBI’s official files on the mutilations in and around Dulce, all of which can be read online at the FBI’s website, The Vault. So, yes, there is definitely something strange going on at Dulce – and something which has been going on for an extraordinarily long time. Of course, the big question is this: is all the above true or is it simply a cover to hide top secret experiments of a very home-grown type?

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Paul Bennewitz was a scientist who, in the 1970s, ran a company in Albuquerque called Thunder Scientific – a company that quite literally backed onto the well-guarded fences of Kirtland Air Force Base. It was around 1978 that Bennewitz – who had a pre-existing interest in UFOs – began to hear of more and more so-called alien abduction events in and around Albuquerque and further up into northern New Mexico. On top of that, strange signals were picked up by Bennewitz on his radio equipment. He saw weird-looking aircraft soaring silently across the skies over Kirtland late at night and in the early hours of the morning. He was given accounts of abductees being secretly taken to Kirtland and grilled by U.S. intelligence agents, who were deeply concerned about the growing number of people seemingly being kidnapped from their homes and subjected to terrifying and bizarre experiments of a genetic nature. As the weeks and months progressed Bennewitz came to believe something incredible: that deadly ETs were secretly getting ready to take over the planet. They were planning on doing so from their command post deep below the town of Dulce. Worldwide invasion and the enslavement of the human race were lurking just around the corner – as Bennewitz saw it, at least. Suspecting that the end really was possibly getting nearer and nearer, Bennewitz prepared a dossier on his findings and theories. He called it Project Beta. Bennewitz mailed copies of the controversial report to the FBI, to the CIA, to the NSA, to every branch of the military, and even to the White House. People had to be warned – and warned now, Bennewitz wrote.

Greg Bishop at the grave of Paul Bennewitz

(photo courtesy of Nick Redfern)

Notably, Bennewitz was not written off as a crank, as many might expect him to have been. In fact, quite the opposite was the case: intelligence agents at Kirtland Air Force Base quickly established a secret liaison with Bennewitz. They warned him about digging any further into things that could be dangerous – even to Bennewitz’s life, no less. But, those same agents also confided in Bennewitz something incredible: that he was on the right track. They did all they could to keep Bennewitz quiet, almost to the point of begging him to keep his mouth shut on what he knew. For Bennewitz, though, this was like a red rag to a bull: the somewhat veiled threats to keep his nose out of things only served Bennewitz to push further for answers.

As a result, U.S. intelligence fed Bennewitz more and more horror stories of what was supposedly going on several miles below Dulce, including tales of the aliens using captured people – in their thousands – as food. It’s no wonder – given the nature of the stories and that they were coming directly from the military – that Bennewitz became more and more paranoid. Eventually, he became completely unhinged, and to the point where he ended up spending time in a local medical facility, where he was treated for stress, anxiety, and, finally, what practically amounted to a complete mental collapse. Thankfully, he recovered, but was careful kept his distance from Ufology. Today, some UFO researchers dismiss Bennewitz’s theories and conclusions – preferring, instead, to suspect that Bennewitz had stumbled on not alien activity but top secret programs of the U.S. military and intelligence community. By steering Bennewitz down a path filled with fictitious tales of dangerous aliens, the government would be able to divert him away from the far more down to earth truth, so the theory goes. On the other hand, Bennewitz, who died in 2003, still has a huge following of UFO sleuths who are absolutely certain that below Dulce something abominable is going on – and has been for years. Maybe even for centuries.

While Bennewitz’s Project Beta report does read like something straight out of the early years of The X-Files, there is absolutely no doubt that Dulce itself is a very weird place, one where strange activity has been reported for years. For example, in the 1960s the area around Dulce became the site of a classified U.S. Atomic Energy Commission program called Gasbuggy. It was part of a larger operation code-named Plowshare. The plan was to explode a significantly-sized atomic device, underground, deep below the Carson National Forest, which just happens to be only a few miles from Dulce. The reason was to try and access massive and precious supplies of natural gas. The bomb was detonated on December 10, 1967 – more than four thousand feet below the surface. Although the Plowshare program continued in the area until the late 1970s, even today digging underground in the area is strictly forbidden. In light of all of Bennewitz’s findings, it’s not at all surprising that there are those in the UFO community who believe that the Plowshare program was actually a cover story – one created to mask the fact that the U.S. Government had tried to destroy the alien base under Dulce with a nuclear weapon. That just such a weapon really was exploded, underground, and only a few minutes’ drive from Dulce, only ensures that the rumors of an alien presence in the area continue to thrive. The story is, without doubt, fascinating. Greg Bishop (see the photo above) is the expert in this arena of disinformation. His findings make for incredible reading. Such is the extent to which this bizarre program went on, the whole thing still rumbles along