While some of the encounters have been reported publicly before, the Navy records are an official accounting of the incidents, including descriptions from the pilots of what they saw.

By Ralph Blumenthal and Leslie Kean

Navy fighter pilots reported close encounters with unidentified aerial vehicles, including several dangerously close, in eight incidents between June 27, 2013, and Feb. 13, 2019, according to documents recently released by the Navy.

Two happened on one day, according to one of eight unclassified Navy safety reports released in response to requests filed under the Freedom of Information Act by news outlets, including The New York Times.

Last month the Defense Department authenticated three videos of aerial encounters previously published by The Times, accompanying accounts of Navy pilots who reported such close encounters.

The incidents in the videos were investigated by a little-known Pentagon program that for years looked into reports of unidentified flying objects, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. The existence of the office was first reported by The Times in December 2017.

While some of the encounters have been reported publicly before, the Freedom of Information Act releases include the Navy’s official records documenting the incidents, including descriptions from the pilots of what they saw.

The Navy records, known as “hazard reports,” describe both visual and radar sightings, including close calls with the aerial vehicles, or “unmanned aircraft systems.”

One incident, on March 26, 2014, over the Atlantic Ocean off Virginia Beach, involved a silver object “approximately the size of a suitcase” that was tracked on radar passing within 1,000 feet of one of the jets, according to the report.

Some of the incidents involved fighter squadrons aboard the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt. One of the former F/A-18 Super Hornet pilots, Lt. Ryan Graves, last year described a close encounter off Virginia Beach with what looked like a flying sphere encasing a cube, as recounted by a fellow pilot and later reported to the squadron safety officer.

The incident was documented in a report with few details on June 27, 2013, which stated that the Navy jet crew saw something pass about 200 feet away on the right side. With a visible smoke plume emitting from the rear section, “the aircraft was white in color and approximately the size and shape of a drone or missile,” according to the report.

No other agencies were conducting drone flights or missile launches in the area at that time, the report said. “Unmanned aerial vehicles represent a significant midair collision threat,” the commanding officer reported.

The incidents included more than just that squadron, the VFA-11 “Red Rippers” out of Naval Air Station Oceana, Va. The documents show that the commanders took the incidents seriously, warning of the likelihood of a midair collision.

Defense Department officials do not describe the objects as extraterrestrial, and experts emphasize that earthly explanations can generally be found for such incidents. Even lacking a plausible terrestrial explanation does not make an extraterrestrial one likely, astrophysicists say.

In interviews, five of the pilots involved avoided speculating on the source of the objects. The Navy, in its reports, also avoided any such conjecture.

Three incidents occurred within exclusive use airspace, meaning no other aircraft were authorized to fly in that area.

Another report on an incident on Nov. 18, 2013, expressed alarm. “Due to their small size, many U.A.S.’s are less visually significant and radar apparent and therefore pose a significant risk for midair collision,” the report said, using an abbreviation for unmanned aircraft systems.

Less than a month later, a pilot who had been assured there was no traffic in his area detected a radar track at an altitude of 12,000 feet and less than a mile away. “He was able to identify a small white visual return at the location of the radar track,” the report said.

A “near midair” collision report from March 26, 2014, also in exclusive use airspace, involved two F/A-18E Super Hornet aircraft from squadron VFA-106. One pilot closed in and reported seeing a small, silver metallic object the size of a suitcase. “Pilot passed within 1,000 feet of the object. Could not identify it,” the report says.

The pilot passed the information to the local Fleet Area Control and Surveillance Facility, which had received multiple sighting reports in recent months. “This presents a significant safety concern, given that this unknown aircraft was detected in an exclusive use area,” the commanding officer stated. “I feel it may only be a matter of time before one of our F/A-18 aircraft has a midair collision with an unidentified U.A.S.”

On April 23, 2014, two objects were tracked on radar, not communicating, and two other relatively small objects were observed at the same time flying at high speed off the coast of Virginia, another report states. The events were said to pose “a severe threat to naval aviation.”

“It is only a matter of time before this results in a midair in W-72,” the report said, using the airspace designation. “This was the squadron’s second occurrence in the last 10 months.”

The most recent incident included in the Freedom of Information Act documents did not appear to be related to an unidentified flying object. On Feb. 13, 2019, a red weather balloon was spotted at 27,000 feet by four aircraft, when none were supposed to be in the area. The report concluded “weather balloon released without notifying the appropriate channels.”

The Military Encounters Unexplained Flying Objects

• Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program / Dec. 16, 2017

• On the Trail of a Secret Pentagon U.F.O. Program / Dec. 18, 2017

• ‘Wow, What Is That?’ Navy Pilots Report Unexplained Flying Objects / May 26, 2019

{ https://www.nytimes.com/ }

15-05-2020 om 23:58 geschreven door peter  

Some UFO encounters are not only seen by multiple witnesses, but also by very traditionally reliable ones. On the evening of April 17, 1966, sheriff deputies Dale Spaur and Wilbur Neff were out on patrol in Portage County, Ohio, in the United States when something would happen that would forever change their lives. It had so far been an uneventful night, and when at 5 AM they came across an abandoned car on the side of the rural road State Route 224, near the town of Atwater, it was seen as something to break the monotony. Spaur got out of his vehicle to go investigate the car, not expecting to find much, and that is when he reportedly felt a sensation like vibrating and humming reverberate through his skull. When he looked around trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, he saw rising above the nearby trees something beyond his wildest imaginings. This would culminate into one of the strangest police chases on record.

Ascending out of the wooded are near the road was what looked to be a large, glowing disc, estimated as being about 40 feet across and issuing that odd humming noise. As the object slowly moved over the treetops, Spaur called out to his partner and was relieved that Neff was seeing the same thing and that he wasn’t losing his mind. That enigmatic disc then moved out across the landscape until it was hovering directly above them, bathing the area in light to create a sort of artificial daytime. They could see that it actually looked like “an ice cream cone tipped on its side,” and both men could hear that sound, which was later described as being like that of “an over-loaded transformer.” Although it was approximately 150 feet above them, they would both report that they could feel waves of heat emanating from it.

It then began a slow, inexorable crawl down the road, and Spaur was able to snap out of his awe and call it in. At first dispatch seemed skeptical and thought it might be a joke, but when they figured out that Spaur was genuinely in a state of duress they told him to fire on the object. Perhaps luckily for them, this order was almost immediately overridden by their sergeant and they were told instead to pursue it. As this was going on the police lines were being inundated with panicked callers reporting the same thing, and Spaur and Neff got into their vehicle to engage.

The two took off in hot pursuit, that strange craft oddly choosing to follow the road they were on. It picked up its pace considerably, at some points forcing the police cruiser to gun it up to around 103 miles per hour as they tore after it, and during this chase other law enforcement officers would become involved as well. One of these was police officer, Wayne Huston, who joined in the chase, and police Chief Gerald Buchert was actually able to snap three photographs of the object. During the chase the strange craft displayed evidence of intelligent control, maneuvering carefully and even slowing down when the road got too difficult for its pursuers or if they hit traffic, only to speed up again as if it were playing a game. All of this was witnessed by amazed locals, who were still inundating the Sheriff’s office with reports of what was going on. The patrol cars would screech and tear after this thing for a full 86 miles, often reaching over 100 miles per hour, until they began to run out of gas in the vicinity of Conway, Pennsylvania. As the cops stopped at a service station to fill up on gas the UFO dutifully stopped as well, as if waiting for them, but it must have gotten bored because it then made that humming sound again and allegedly shot up straight into the sky to disappear.

All of this was far from the imaginings of the officers, as the object had been clearly seen by hundreds of people over the course of the chase, and the very next day the media went nuts with it. “THEY TAILED A SAUCER 86 MILES!” one headline read, and before long it was nationwide news, the thought of these brave law enforcement officers chasing an alien spaceship across the state capturing the imagination. It was such big news, in fact, that it soon drew the attention of the U.S. Air Force UFO investigation, Project Blue Book. Maj. Hector Quintanilla, who was actually director of Project Blue Book at the time, personally went to Ohio to interview the men, although it seems more like he was there to explain it all away. During the time he spent talking to witnesses, Quintanilla’s story would change several times. He went from thinking it was a satellite to the explanation that it was a weather balloon, before going to the old standby that it was Venus they had been chasing, refracted through fog, basically a stationary celestial object they had mistaken for a flying saucer. Not only them, apparently, but the dozens upon dozens of others who had seen them chasing it. They had all seen Venus, according to the official statement.

Of course, Spaur and the other witnesses insisted on what they had seen, but they were starting to draw their fair share of ridicule. In the face of increasing jabs at their credibility and accusations that they were making it all up, numerous witnesses even retracted their original statements in order to avoid the negative publicity, but Spaul stood behind his testimony, even as the whole experience began to take its toll on him. Not only did Spaul lose 20 pounds due to the sheer stress of it all, but by all accounts, he suffered a bit of a mental breakdown as well. He would end up losing his job, his wife would leave him and take their two kids way, and he would end up broke working in a coal mine in West Virginia. He would once lament to a reporter:

Thirty-four years old and what do I have? Nothing. Who knows me? To everyone, I’m Dale Spaur, the nut who chased a flying saucer. If I could change all that I have done in my life, I would change just one thing. And that would be the night we chased that damn thing. That saucer.

Impressively, despite all of this, he never deviated from his story, even as others who had been with him at the time backed away from it all. He would eventually remarry and move to Cleveland, where he would open a bar and try to lay low. He would even act as a consultant on the Stephen Spielberg film Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which is in part based on his amazing account. Sadly, Dale Spaur died of pneumonia on April 4th, 1983, having never backed down from his version of events even though it had effectively altered the entire course of his life. Many of his friends and family still believe him to this day, and his son, James Spaur, has said of his father’s encounter:

He believed what he saw was extra-terrestrial. I believe him. Nothing we made could fly like that. In Pennsylvania, it hovered over his car. He could feel the heat coming off it. Then it went straight up and disappeared. Poof. Gone! And remember, my father served in the Air Force. You couldn’t put a bird up there he doesn’t recognize.

What happened on that evening with these men? One idea had been that it was an experimental aircraft of some sort, another is that it was a weather balloon, and then we have the official explanation of our old friend, Venus. Yet, many witnesses saw this bizarre chase and reported the same thing, saying that it was a hovering glowing UFO that was very obviously under intelligent control. Or was it perhaps aliens? Although the other officers involved backed away from it all, they would still admit that they had seen something odd, and Spaur himself never faltered on his report, managing to remain mostly consistent even through continued questioning. Why would he do that when it was obviously ruining his life if it wasn’t true? This doesn’t seem to be a case of someone just trying to get a little fame. It all remains sort of an obscure account that has faded into the background, but it has all of the hallmarks of a great case, including multiple witnesses, intriguing details, and some very reliable observers. Whatever happened here, the bizarre UFO chase of 1966 is a pretty cool little case that we may never fully solve.

VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

15-05-2020 om 18:20 geschreven door peter  

Famous UFO cases: TR-3B

“A friend said, he would never forget the sight of the alien looking TR-3B based at Papoose. The pitch black, triangular shaped TR-3B was rarely mentioned–and then, only in hushed whispers–at the Groom Lake facility where he worked. The craft had flown over the Groom Lake runway in complete silence and magically stopped above Area S-4. It hovered silently in the same position, for some 10 minutes, before gently settling vertically to the tarmac. At times a corona of silver blue light glowed around the circumference of the massive TR-3B. The operational model is 600 feet across.”

The TR-3B is Code named Astra. The tactical reconnaissance TR-3B first operational flight was in the early 90s. The triangular shaped nuclear powered aerospace platform was developed under the Top Secret, Aurora Program with SDI and black budget monies. At least 3 of the billion dollar plus TR-3Bs were flying by 1994. The Aurora is the most classified aerospace development program in existence. The TR-3B is the most exotic vehicle created by the Aurora Program. It is funded and operationally tasked by the National Reconnaissance Office, the NSA, and the CIA. The TR-3B flying triangle is not fiction and was built with technology available in the mid 80s. Not every UFO spotted is one of theirs.

The TR-3B vehicles outer coating is reactive to electrical Radar stimulation and can change reflectiveness, radar absorptiveness, and color. This polymer skin, when used in conjunction with the TR-3Bs Electronic Counter Measures and, ECCM, can make the vehicle look like a small aircraft, or a flying cylinder–or even trick radar receivers into falsely detecting a variety of aircraft, no aircraft, or several aircraft at various locations. A circular, plasma filled accelerator ring called the Magnetic Field Disrupter, surrounds the rotatable crew compartment and is far ahead of any imaginable technology.

Sandia and Livermore laboratories developed the reverse engineered MFD technology. The government will go to any lengths to protect this technology. The plasma, mercury based, is pressurized at 250,000 atmospheres at a temperature of 150 degrees Kelvin and accelerated to 50,000 rpm to create a super-conductive plasma with the resulting gravity disruption. The MFD generates a magnetic vortex field, which disrupts or neutralizes the effects of gravity on mass within proximity, by 89 percent. Do not misunderstand. This is not antigravity. Anti-gravity provides a repulsive force that can be used for propulsion. The MFD creates a disruption of the Earth’s gravitational field upon the mass within the circular accelerator. The mass of the circular accelerator and all mass within the accelerator, such as the crew capsule, avionics, MFD systems, fuels, crew environmental systems, and the nuclear reactor, are reduced by 89%. This causes the effect of making the vehicle extremely light and able to outperform and outmaneuver any craft yet constructed–except, of course, those UFOs we did not build.

The TR-3B is a high altitude, stealth, reconnaissance platform with an indefinite loiter time. Once you get it up there at speed, it doesnt take much propulsion to maintain altitude. At Groom Lake their have been whispered rumours of a new element that acts as a catalyst to the plasma. With the vehicle mass reduced by 89%, the craft can travel at Mach 9, vertically or horizontally. My sources say the performance is limited only the stresses that the human pilots can endure. Which is a lot, really, considering along with the 89% reduction in mass, the G forces are also reduced by 89%.

The TR-3Bs propulsion is provided by 3 multimode thrusters mounted at each bottom corner of the triangular platform. The TR-3 is a sub-Mach 9 vehicle until it reaches altitudes above l20,000 feet–then God knows how fast it can go! The 3 multimode rocket engines mounted under each corner of the craft use hydrogen or methane and oxygen as a propellent. In a liquid oxygen/hydrogen rocket system, 85% of the propellent mass is oxygen. The nuclear thermal rocket engine uses a hydrogen propellent, augmented with oxygen for additional thrust. The reactor heats the liquid hydrogen and injects liquid oxygen in the supersonic nozzle, so that the hydrogen burns concurrently in the liquid oxygen afterburner. The multimode propulsion system can; operate in the atmosphere, with thrust provided by the nuclear reactor, in the upper atmosphere, with hydrogen propulsion, and in orbit, with the combined hydrogen oxygen propulsion.

What you have to remember is, that the 3 rocket engines only have to propel 11 percent of the mass of the Top Secret TR-3B. The engines are reportedly built by Rockwell. Many sightings of triangular UFOs are not alien vehicles but the top secret TR-3B. The NSA, NRO, CIA, and USAF have been playing a shell game with aircraft nomenclature – creating the TR-3, modified to the TR-3A, the TR-3B, and the Teir 2, 3, and 4, with suffixes like Plus or Minus added on to confuse further the fact that each of these designators is a different aircraft and not the same aerospace vehicle. A TR-3B is as different from a TR-3A as a banana is from a grape. Some of these vehicles are manned and others are unmanned.

Their has been a lot of interest in this Military aircraft known as the TR3B. The TR3B is a triangular shaped Nuclear powered aerospace craft. Many, like myself wounder what the propulsion is, that makes it possible. Here how Mr. Edgar Fouche (on the right photo) a physics expert. A circular,plasma filled accelerator ring, called the Magnetic Field Disruptor surrounds the rotatable crew compartment and is far ahead of any imaginable technology. The plasma, mercury based, is pressurized at 250,000 atmospheres, at a temperature of 150 degrees kelvin and accelerated to 50,000 RPM to create a super conducted plasma, resulting in gravity disruption. The MFD generates a magnetic vortex field, which neutralizes the effects of gravity by up to 89%.
He goes on to say some of his soures said the performance is only limited only to the stresses to the human pilots can endure. With 89% reduction in G’s what would have been 4.2g limit is now a 40G limit. The TR3B’s main propulsion i.s by three multi-mode thrusters mounted at each corner of the triangle. The craft is a sub mach 9 craft, at 120,000 feet,and below.Its never been tested any higher, so who know its limits. The first pictures ever taken of the TR3B were in Belgium March 31 1990 (LINK), it was again sighted in Idaho in 2000 when it flew within 200 feet of some people camping. The one thing that makes it stick out is the three lights,one on each corner, and one main light in the center.

The campers said it was noiseless except for a small huming,when it moved. Rumors that the pending official disclosure of the existence of the TB3R a been around for a while now. Most want to know how it works, but I’m sure its going to be a while before it becomes public.

links:

• Famous UFO cases: Belgian UFO wave

sources: 

• www.darkgovernment.com
• hubpages.com
• www.youtube.com

Interview Edgar Fouche: Area 51 Aurora and Alien UFO tech

TR-3B Black Triangle | Code Name: ASTRA

How Anti-Gravity Work? Nuclear Powered UFO TR-3B

Alien Technology – The TR-3B, How it Work?

Black projects: Does the Aurora exist?

UFO Researchers Discuss Project Aurora

USAF Top Secret TR-3B Aurora Project

Inside The TR-3B Astra

Triangle UFO Top Secret TR 3B Astra

{ https://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/ }

15-05-2020 om 15:50 geschreven door peter  

Luis Elizondo helped release Navy videos of unidentified aerial phenomena. Last month, the Pentagon confirmed they were real.

 Max Ufberg

{ https://gen.medium.com/ }

13-05-2020 om 00:00 geschreven door peter  

Football, or soccer to most North Americans, is perhaps to the surprise of many in the United States one of the most beloved and popular sports in the world. It is a game that has attracted much fanfare, heated rivalries, and is rabidly followed by millions of people from all corners of the globe. It is a very big sport, but is it possible that it is loved just as much by forces from beyond our understanding? Here we will look at the time a group of UFOs showed up at a game and caused quite a stir.

It was October 27, 1954, and an excited crowd of approximately 10,000 people was gathered at the famed Stadio Artemio Franchi stadium in Florence, Italy. Since opening in 1931, the stadium had been host to many momentous events throughout its history, including such historic football games as the World Cup quarter-final in 1934, the Spaghetti Bowl during World War II, and the football preliminaries for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, and on this day it was the venue for an important match between the Fiorentina club and its neighborhood rivals, the Pistoiese club. It was a characteristically heated match, and the fans were going nuts, roaring in support of their respective teams, but then something very strange happened, indeed.

Stadio Artemio Franchi

Just after halftime, with the home team ahead 6-2, the teams began playing again, but all at once the crowd went eerily quiet, the cheers and shouts dying down as the players paused and the ball rolled to a stop. All eyes were on the sky above, where a large, cigar shaped shaped object was flying about before stopping to hover there above the stadium, where by some accounts it was joined by several others. The objects moved fast and then just stopped there overhead with inscrutable purpose as the normally noisy stadium was enveloped in complete silence, the puzzled audience and players staring upward in awe. One of the witnesses would later say of the spectacle:

I remember clearly seeing this incredible sight. We were astonished we had never seen anything like it before. We were absolutely shocked. They were moving very fast and then they just stopped. It all lasted a couple of minutes. I would like to describe them as being like Cuban cigars. They just reminded me of Cuban cigars, in the way they looked. I think they were extra-terrestrial. That’s what I believe, and there’s no other explanation I can give myself.

The UFOs allegedly eerily hovered there for around 10 minutes, before suddenly ejecting some sort of silky, glittery substance into the air and then speeding off at high speeds. This gossamer substance then slowly drifted down over the stadium and covered the area. Oddly, whatever the material was, it then reportedly proceeded to sort of just evaporate and totally disintegrate upon contact, leaving behind no trace. Roberto Pinotti, the president of Italy’s National UFO Centre, would explain that this was what is often called “Angel Hair” in UFO circles, and is a type of cobweb-like substance that is sometimes reported in conjunction with UFO sightings. He explains of this:

At the time the newspapers spoke of aliens from Mars. Of course, now we know that is not so – but we may conclude that it was an intelligent phenomenon, a technological phenomenon and a phenomenon that cannot be linked with anything we know on Earth. It is a fact that at the same time the UFOs were seen over Florence there was a strange, sticky substance falling from above. In English we call this ‘angel hair’. The only problem is after a short period of time it disintegrates. No-one knows what this strange substance has to do with UFOs.

One journalist by the name of Giorgio Batini, with the Florentine newspaper La Nazione, was determined to get a sample of whatever this strange material was, and he was apparently successful when he found some trees near the stadium covered with the stuff. He was carefully able to collect some specimens and had them sent to the Institute of Chemical Analysis at the University of Florence. It was found that the substance contained boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium, but this was about all that could be discerned as the substance ended up just sort of evaporating away in short order. Some skeptics have pointed out that perhaps this is not a spider-web like material, but actual literal spider webs, spun by large gatherings of spiders. One astronomer James McGaha has said of this:

When I looked at this case originally, I thought perhaps it was a fireball, a very bright meteor breaking up in the atmosphere. They can be cigar-shaped with pieces breaking off. But it became fairly apparent that this was actually caused by young spiders spinning webs, very, very thin webs. The spiders use these webs as sails and they link together and you get a big glob of this stuff in the sky and the spiders ride on this to move between locations. They just fly on the wind and these things have been recorded at 14,000 feet above the ground. So, when the sunlight glistens off this, you get all kinds of visual effects. As some of this stuff breaks off and falls to the ground, this all seems magical of course. But I’m fairly confident that’s what happened that day.

Of course, the spider theory has its problems. For instance, how does that explain the giant, cigar shaped UFOs that thousands of people witnessed over the stadium and also in the surrounding countryside? Then there is the chemical composition that was found in the samples that were brought in, which contained elements not found in spider silk, such as boron and silicon. Many of the witnesses also insist that it could not have been spiders and that the fluffy material was disgorged by those fast flying craft. Some things with the spider idea just don’t seem to fit, and the UFOlogist, Pinotti, does not mince words when he says, “Of course I know about the migrating spiders hypothesis – it’s pure nonsense. It’s an old story and also a stupid story.” Whatever was going on here, the people who were there insist that this was UFOs, and it makes one wonder why they were there and what that material could have possibly been. Were they here to watch humanity and study a large group setting? Were they attracted by the noise? Or do they, like many around the world, just like a good old football match?

VIDEOS, selected by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

12-05-2020 om 23:49 geschreven door peter  

UFO was seen on Italian TV News during a broadcast coming from Rome

{  http://ufothetruthisoutthere.blogspot.com/ }

12-05-2020 om 01:48 geschreven door peter  

Recent Mufon Cases

1. The Mass Fleet Encounter of UFOs over Washington D.C. Capital (1952)

2.  Mufon Case: 108659 In the sky above Everett,Washington 5/7/2020

Long Description of Sighting Report

Myself and several others were enjoying the beach when these unknown objects kept appearing and reappearing with no sound, almost as if fading in and out from another dimension or cloaking or optical illusions. Not sure if it was military or not. It did not appear to be any aircraft I am familiar with but who knows. I just know I am unable to define what we all saw. We are near the Snohomish County/Paine Field airport and near Everett navy base.
https://mufoncms.com/cgi-bin/report_h...

3. MUFON Report Case Number 104601

A California witness at Menlo Park On Nov 20, 2019 spotted Blimp/ oval-like lights.
“I spotted a bright large blimp/oval like UFO. It was moving interestingly slow for a large object the Witness stated. The features were described as being strong white lights with a hint of yellow lights and a red blinking light at the bottom center of the craft. It appeared to have had a bulge on the top center. The front of the craft had a more rounded curve while the back had a sharper and smaller curve, almost egg-shaped. It took about 8 minutes to move NE to South. and was observed for 40 mins,

4. MUFON Report Case 103929 -

An Iowa witness at Cedar Rapids reported seeing a white light with rapidly flashing red and green lights on October 8,2019 at 9:58 pm. according to testimony. The witness stated “Out of our front window I saw a white light with rapidly flashing red and green lights all around it. It was moving slowly from the East and then seemed to pause. Here is the video we have on this.

{ Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)}

11-05-2020 om 23:10 geschreven door peter  

There have been countless UFO sightings and encounters over the decades, which have taken all shapes and sizes. There seems to be no agreed upon norm for how a UFO should look, and while saucer-shaped or spherical are the most common, they really do run the range of appearances. And then you have the sizes reported, from tiny to very large. How big would you say a UFO would have to be before it would be considered truly imposing? As big as a bus? An airliner? How about larger still? What would you think of a UFO the size of a football field or even beyond? While rare, there have been some reports of UFOs of these sorts of dimensions, and here we will look at some of the biggest ever reported.

The earliest case we will look at here comes to us from 1956, an era during which the UFO and flying saucer craze was in full swing. It was originally related by a Major Donald E. Keyhoe, who at the time was first heard the story in 1959, during which time he had been serving as Director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena. Keyhoe was approached by a Navy Captain James Taylor, who had a remarkable story to tell, one which he had long sought to keep out of the public eye. According to Taylor, in 1956 he had been aboard a Navy R7V-2 transport piloted by a Commander George Benton and co-piloted by Lieutenant Peter W. Mooney, on a flight across the Atlantic towards Naval Air Station, Patuxent, Maryland, in the United States, along with several other Navy men returning from duty abroad, several dozen crew members, and 30 airmen-pilots, navigators and flight engineers. On this evening they were approaching a stop at Gander, Newfoundland, under reportedly clear and calm conditions with excellent visibility when a series of bizarre events would play out.

As Benton looked out over the tranquil sea, he noticed that rather than within the dark expanse that spread out to the horizon unmarred before, there was now a “cluster of lights, like a village” out in the distance ahead. It turned out that the co-pilot could clearly see it too, and they both agreed it looked like a small town just sitting out there in the middle of nowhere. The problem was, there should have been nothing out there but open water. At first, they thought they must be off course and that they were approaching land, but a check of their instruments showed that they were right on course as planned. It was then speculated that they were seeing ships, but attempts to radio the vessels were met with silence, and a check with his radio man turned up no records of any groups of ships scheduled to be out there. It didn’t help that these didn’t look like any ships they had seen before. It was weird enough that they woke some of the other crew members, most of who had been asleep, and several other men crowded into the cockpit to see the strange sight for themselves. They were now practically right on top of the enigmatic lights, and began to circle around them in order to try and figure out what was going on. That was when the cluster of lights suddenly dimmed, and Keyhoe would write of it:

As the transport began to circle, the strange lights abruptly dimmed. Then several colored rings appeared, began to spread out. One, Benton noticed, seemed to be growing in size. Behind him, someone gave an exclamation. Benton took another look. That luminous ring wasn’t on the surface – it was something rushing up toward the transport.

“What the devil is it?” said Mooney. “Don’t know,” muttered Benton. He rolled the Constellation out of its turn to start a full-power climb. Then he saw it was useless. The luminous ring could catch them in seconds. The glow, he now saw, came from the rim of some large, round object. It reached their altitude, swiftly took shape as a giant disc-shaped machine.

Whatever it was, it was enormous. The plane they were on is called a Super-Constellation, an enormous four-engine aircraft more like a flying fortress than a plane, 116 feet long and with a 117-foot wingspan, and this mystery object reportedly absolutely dwarfed it, by Benton’s estimation clocking in around 400 feet in diameter. It was coming up fast, and the plane banked in an evasive maneuver, but right when collision seemed inevitable, the object swung around to the side of their aircraft and began pacing them on the port side. It was then that they could see the true enormity of it, and Keyhoe says:

Its sheer bulk was amazing; its diameter was three to four times the Constellation’s wing span. At least thirty feet thick at the center, it was like a gigantic dish inverted on top of another. Seen at this distance, the glow along the rim was blurred and uneven. Whether it was an electrical effect, a series of jet exhausts or lights from opening in the rim, Benton could not tell. But the glow was bright enough to show the disc’s curving surface, giving a hint of dully reflecting metal. Though Benton saw no signs of life, he had a feeling they were being observed. Fighting an impulse to dive away, he held to a straight course. Gradually, the strange machine pulled ahead. Tilting its massive shape upward, it quickly accelerated and was lost against the stars.

After this harrowing experience, Benton immediately called the tower on the ground and asked if they had picked up anything strange, and they confirmed that the object had been picked up on their radar, but things got very odd when they landed at Granger. According to Taylor, they were met by Air Force intelligence officers who gave them lengthy interrogations about what they had seen and seemed to believe that is was all fact, never questioning what the men saw, but rather wanting details. After that the mysterious officers refused to answer any questions about what they themselves thought was going on, and told the crew who had witnessed the phenomena to keep quiet about it. Benton would claim to be approached by an unnamed scientist several days later, who showed him photographs of the object they had seen but refused to divulge any more information on it. The report would be drawn out of obscurity in the Flying Saucer Review, Volume 49/2, Summer 2004, pp. 21-23, and we are left to wonder just what those men saw out there.

More recently there was a rather bizarre report from 1996, in the area of Pelotas, Brazil. On November 5 of that year, Brazilian pilot Haroldo Westendorf was out for a private flight in his single engine Embraer EMB-712 aircraft. Haroldo was an avid private pilot and flight acrobat, and this was purely a recreational flight, yet it would become quite a harrowing experience after just 12 minutes in the air. At around 10:30 AM, the pilot was making his way across a nearby lake, when he noticed before him a gigantic object hovering in the air. After checking with ground control that they saw it too, Haroldo then made the perhaps foolish decision to approach for a closer look. It would turn out to be far more bizarre than he had ever expected.

Upon closing the distance, he could see that it was some sort of immense 8-sided pyramid-shaped object, estimated as being about 70 meters (225 feet) high and about 100 meters (325 feet) in diameter, and Haroldo would report that he got a good look at it, circling it several times at a distance of only 40 meters. He claimed that each side of the pyramid had upon it a series of opaque triangular bay windows, and that the object was seemingly metallic and brown in color. The massive structure also seemed to be spinning very slowly, and inexorably inching towards the nearby coast at an estimated speed of about 60 nautical miles per hour. As the pilot stared at this massive object in awe, it then purportedly disgorged a smaller, disc-shaped craft from an opening in its top, which completely ignored the plane and sped off at incredible speed.

Sketch of the object

Haroldo then gained altitude in order to get a look at the top of the monolithic object, but as he did so it allegedly began spinning more rapidly as it shot off ominous beams of red light. After several moments of this, this enormous pyramid then purportedly shot straight up into the sky at a very rapid pace, which was quite alarming as the pilot fully expected a possibly catastrophic shockwave of turbulence. He even began evasive maneuvers for the expected incoming wall of turbulence, but he claims it never came, as if the craft had defied the laws of physics. The story gained quite a bit of media attention in Brazil at the time, but although Haroldo would claim that it had been witnessed by at least two air traffic control installations, they denied seeing anything. Despite this, several witnesses would step forward to say that they had seen it as well, and we are left to wonder if he saw anything at all or if there was some sort of cover-up.

Even more recently still is a report from April of 2007, and is the possibly the biggest UFO of all of these. Experienced pilot Captain Ray Bowyer was flying off the coast of Alderney, of the Channel Islands, when he spotted a bright yellow light about to the west of the island. It was hard to tell what it was, but it was clear that it was absolutely gigantic. Bowyer would say of the strange object:

It was a very sharp, thin yellow object with a green area. It was 2,000ft up and stationary. I thought it was about 10 miles away, although I later realized it was approximately 40 miles from us. At first, I thought it was the size of a 737. But it must have been much bigger because of how far away it was. It could have been as much as a mile wide. I can’t explain it. At first, I thought it might have been a reflection from a vinery in Guernsey, but that would have disappeared quickly. This was clearly visual for about nine minutes. As I got closer to it, it became clear to me that it was tangible. I was in two minds about going towards it to have a closer look but decided against it because of the size of it. I had to think of the safety of the passengers first.

He would later spot an identical object in another area, and it would also become clear that at least one of the objects had been spotted by another pilot, although ground control radar did not detect them. Interestingly, several years earlier, on January 28, 1994, a similar object had been seen in roughly the same general vicinity, and had been estimated as being over 1,000 feet in diameter. What are these craft and why are they so impossibly huge? Besides the obvious technological marvels that must be in place to allow them to operate, what is their purpose? Are these perhaps motherships holding the smaller craft that are more commonly seen? Or are they something else? Size may not matter, but whatever they are, they add another layer to the strangeness of the UFO phenomenon as a whole.

Videos, selected by peter2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

11-05-2020 om 13:25 geschreven door peter  

CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - PART I

An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists–a neologism for UFO buffs–and private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)

In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency’s efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena.

Background

The emergence in 1947 of the Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union also saw the first wave of UFO sightings. The first report of a “flying saucer” over the United States came on 24 June 1947, when Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot and reputable businessman, while looking for a downed plane sighted nine disk-shaped objects near Mt. Rainier, Washington, traveling at an estimated speed of over 1,000 mph. Arnold’s report was followed by a flood of additional sightings, including reports from military and civilian pilots and air traffic controllers all over the United States. (4) In 1948, Air Force Gen. Nathan Twining, head of the Air Technical Service Command, established Project SIGN (initially named Project SAUCER) to collect, collate, evaluate, and distribute within the government all information relating to such sightings, on the premise that UFOs might be real and of national security concern. (5)

The Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field (later Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Dayton, Ohio, assumed control of Project SIGN and began its work on 23 January 1948. Although at first fearful that the objects might be Soviet secret weapons, the Air Force soon concluded that UFOs were real but easily explained and not extraordinary. The Air Force report found that almost all sightings stemmed from one or more of three causes: mass hysteria and hallucination, hoax, or misinterpretation of known objects. Nevertheless, the report recommended continued military intelligence control over the investigation of all sightings and did not rule out the possibility of extraterrestrial phenomena. (6)

Amid mounting UFO sightings, the Air Force continued to collect and evaluate UFO data in the late 1940s under a new project, GRUDGE, which tried to alleviate public anxiety over UFOs via a public relations campaign designed to persuade the public that UFOs constituted nothing unusual or extraordinary. UFO sightings were explained as balloons, conventional aircraft, planets, meteors, optical illusions, solar reflections, or even “large hailstones.” GRUDGE officials found no evidence in UFO sightings of advanced foreign weapons design or development, and they concluded that UFOs did not threaten US security. They recommended that the project be reduced in scope because the very existence of Air Force official interest encouraged people to believe in UFOs and contributed to a “war hysteria” atmosphere. On 27 December 1949, the Air Force announced the project’s termination. (7)

With increased Cold War tensions, the Korean war, and continued UFO sightings, USAF Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. Charles P. Cabell ordered a new UFO project in 1952. Project BLUE BOOK became the major Air Force effort to study the UFO phenomenon throughout the 1950s and 1960s. (8) The task of identifying and explaining UFOs continued to fall on the Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson. With a small staff, the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) tried to persuade the public that UFOs were not extraordinary. (9) Projects SIGN, GRUDGE, and BLUE BOOK set the tone for the official US Government position regarding UFOs for the next 30 years.

Early CIA Concerns, 1947-52

CIA closely monitored the Air Force effort, aware of the mounting number of sightings and increasingly concerned that UFOs might pose a potential security threat. (10) Given the distribution of the sightings, CIA officials in 1952 questioned whether they might reflect “midsummer madness.” (11) Agency officials accepted the Air Force’s conclusions about UFO reports, although they concluded that “since there is a remote possibility that they may be interplanetary aircraft, it is necessary to investigate each sighting.” (12)

A massive buildup of sightings over the United States in 1952, especially in July, alarmed the Truman administration. On 19 and 20 July, radar scopes at Washington National Airport and Andrews Air Force Base tracked mysterious blips. On 27 July, the blips reappeared. The Air Force scrambled interceptor aircraft to investigate, but they found nothing. The incidents, however, caused headlines across the country. The White House wanted to know what was happening, and the Air Force quickly offered the explanation that the radar blips might be the result of “temperature inversions.” Later, a Civil Aeronautics Administration investigation confirmed that such radar blips were quite common and were caused by temperature inversions. (13)

Although it had monitored UFO reports for at least three years, CIA reacted to the new rash of sightings by forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to review the situation. (14) Edward Tauss, acting chief of OSI’s Weapons and Equipment Division, reported for the group that most UFO sightings could be easily explained. Nevertheless, he recommended that the Agency continue monitoring the problem, in coordination with ATIC. He also urged that CIA conceal its interest from the media and the public, “in view of their probable alarmist tendencies” to accept such interest as confirming the existence of UFOs. (15)

Upon receiving the report, Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) Robert Amory, Jr. assigned responsibility for the UFO investigations to OSI’s Physics and Electronics Division, with A. Ray Gordon as the officer in charge. (16) Each branch in the division was to contribute to the investigation, and Gordon was to coordinate closely with ATIC. Amory, who asked the group to focus on the national security implications of UFOs, was relaying DCI Walter Bedell Smith’s concerns. (17) Smith wanted to know whether or not the Air Force investigation of flying saucers was sufficiently objective and how much more money and manpower would be necessary to determine the cause of the small percentage of unexplained flying saucers. Smith believed “there was only one chance in 10,000 that the phenomenon posed a threat to the security of the country, but even that chance could not be taken.” According to Smith, it was CIA’s responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts. (18)

Led by Gordon, the CIA Study Group met with Air Force officials at Wright-Patterson and reviewed their data and findings. The Air Force claimed that 90 percent of the reported sightings were easily accounted for. The other 10 percent were characterized as “a number of incredible reports from credible observers.” The Air Force rejected the theories that the sightings involved US or Soviet secret weapons development or that they involved “men from Mars”; there was no evidence to support these concepts. The Air Force briefers sought to explain these UFO reports as the misinterpretation of known objects or little understood natural phenomena. (19) Air Force and CIA officials agreed that outside knowledge of Agency interest in UFOs would make the problem more serious. (20) This concealment of CIA interest contributed greatly to later charges of a CIA conspiracy and coverup.

Amateur photographs of alleged UFOs

Passoria, New Jersey, 31 July 1952

The CIA Study Group also searched the Soviet press for UFO reports, but found none, causing the group to conclude that the absence of reports had to have been the result of deliberate Soviet Government policy. The group also envisioned the USSR’s possible use of UFOs as a psychological warfare tool. In addition, they worried that, if the US air warning system should be deliberately overloaded by UFO sightings, the Soviets might gain a surprise advantage in any nuclear attack. (21)

Because of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet capabilities, the CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns in the flying saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States. The group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO sightings to overload the US air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, added that he considered the problem of such importance “that it should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort towards it solution may be initiated.” (22)

Chadwell briefed DCI Smith on the subject of UFOs in December 1952. He urged action because he was convinced that “something was going on that must have immediate attention” and that “sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.” He drafted a memorandum from the DCI to the National Security Council (NSC) and a proposed NSC Directive establishing the investigation of UFOs as a priority project throughout the intelligence and the defense research and development community. (23) Chadwell also urged Smith to establish an external research project of top-level scientists to study the problem of UFOs. (24) After this briefing, Smith directed DDI Amory to prepare a NSC Intelligence Directive (NSCID) for submission to the NSC on the need to continue the investigation of UFOs and to coordinate such investigations with the Air Force. (25)

The Robertson Panel, 1952-53

On 4 December 1952, the Intelligence Advisory Committee (IAC) took up the issue of UFOs. (26) Amory, as acting chairman, presented DCI Smith’s request to the committee that it informally discuss the subject of UFOs. Chadwell then briefly reviewed the situation and the active program of the ATIC relating to UFOs. The committee agreed that the DCI should “enlist the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories” and draft an NSCID on the subject. (27) Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, Director of Air Force Intelligence, offered full cooperation. (28)

At the same time, Chadwell looked into British efforts in this area. He learned the British also were active in studying the UFO phenomena. An eminent British scientist, R. V. Jones, headed a standing committee created in June 1951 on flying saucers. Jones’ and his committee’s conclusions on UFOs were similar to those of Agency officials: the sightings were not enemy aircraft but misrepresentations of natural phenomena. The British noted, however, that during a recent air show RAF pilots and senior military officials had observed a “perfect flying saucer.” Given the press response, according to the officer, Jones was having a most difficult time trying to correct public opinion regarding UFOs. The public was convinced they were real. (29)

In January 1953, Chadwell and H. P. Robertson, a noted physicist from the California Institute of Technology, put together a distinguished panel of nonmilitary scientists to study the UFO issue. It included Robertson as chairman; Samuel A. Goudsmit, a nuclear physicist from the Brookhaven National Laboratories; Luis Alvarez, a high-energy physicist; Thornton Page, the deputy director of the Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office and an expert on radar and electronics; and Lloyd Berkner, a director of the Brookhaven National Laboratories and a specialist in geophysics. (30)

The charge to the panel was to review the available evidence on UFOs and to consider the possible dangers of the phenomena to US national security. The panel met from 14 to 17 January 1953. It reviewed Air Force data on UFO case histories and, after spending 12 hours studying the phenomena, declared that reasonable explanations could be suggested for most, if not all, sightings. For example, after reviewing motion-picture film taken of a UFO sighting near Tremonton, Utah, on 2 July 1952 and one near Great Falls, Montana, on 15 August 1950, the panel concluded that the images on the Tremonton film were caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls and that the images at Great Falls were sunlight reflecting off the surface of two Air Force interceptors. (31)

The panel concluded unanimously that there was no evidence of a direct threat to national security in the UFO sightings. Nor could the panel find any evidence that the objects sighted might be extraterrestrials. It did find that continued emphasis on UFO reporting might threaten “the orderly functioning” of the government by clogging the channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing “hysterical mass behavior” harmful to constituted authority. The panel also worried that potential enemies contemplating an attack on the United States might exploit the UFO phenomena and use them to disrupt US air defenses. (32)

To meet these problems, the panel recommended that the National Security Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media, advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the message across. Reporting at the height of McCarthyism, the panel also recommended that such private UFO groups as the Civilian Flying Saucer Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities. (33)

The Robertson panel’s conclusions were strikingly similar to those of the earlier Air Force project reports on SIGN and GRUDGE and to those of the CIA’s own OSI Study Group. All investigative groups found that UFO reports indicated no direct threat to national security and no evidence of visits by extraterrestrials.

Following the Robertson panel findings, the Agency abandoned efforts to draft an NSCID on UFOs. (34) The Scientific Advisory Panel on UFOs (the Robertson panel) submitted its report to the IAC, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of the Federal Civil Defense Administration, and the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board. CIA officials said no further consideration of the subject appeared warranted, although they continued to monitor sightings in the interest of national security. Philip Strong and Fred Durant from OSI also briefed the Office of National Estimates on the findings. (35) CIA officials wanted knowledge of any Agency interest in the subject of flying saucers carefully restricted, noting not only that the Robertson panel report was classified but also that any mention of CIA sponsorship of the panel was forbidden. This attitude would later cause the Agency major problems relating to its credibility. (36)

The 1950s: Fading CIA Interest in UFOs

After the report of the Robertson panel, Agency officials put the entire issue of UFOs on the back burner. In May 1953, Chadwell transferred chief responsibility for keeping abreast of UFOs to OSI’s Physics and Electronic Division, while the Applied Science Division continued to provide any necessary support. (37) Todos M. Odarenko, chief of the Physics and Electronics Division, did not want to take on the problem, contending that it would require too much of his division’s analytic and clerical time. Given the findings of the Robertson panel, he proposed to consider the project “inactive” and to devote only one analyst part-time and a file clerk to maintain a reference file of the activities of the Air Force and other agencies on UFOs. Neither the Navy nor the Army showed much interest in UFOs, according to Odarenko. (38)

A nonbeliever in UFOs, Odarenko sought to have his division relieved of the responsibility for monitoring UFO reports. In 1955, for example, he recommended that the entire project be terminated because no new information concerning UFOs had surfaced. Besides, he argued, his division was facing a serious budget reduction and could not spare the resources. (39) Chadwell and other Agency officials, however, continued to worry about UFOs. Of special concern were overseas reports of UFO sightings and claims that German engineers held by the Soviets were developing a “flying saucer” as a future weapon of war. (40)

To most US political and military leaders, the Soviet Union by the mid-1950s had become a dangerous opponent. Soviet progress in nuclear weapons and guided missiles was particularly alarming. In the summer of 1949, the USSR had detonated an atomic bomb. In August 1953, only nine months after the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, the Soviets detonated one. In the spring of 1953, a top secret RAND Corporation study also pointed out the vulnerability of SAC bases to a surprise attack by Soviet long-range bombers. Concern over the danger of a Soviet attack on the United States continued to grow, and UFO sightings added to the uneasiness of US policymakers.

Mounting reports of UFOs over eastern Europe and Afghanistan also prompted concern that the Soviets were making rapid progress in this area. CIA officials knew that the British and Canadians were already experimenting with “flying saucers.” Project Y was a Canadian-British-US developmental operation to produce a nonconventional flying-saucer-type aircraft, and Agency officials feared the Soviets were testing similar devices. (41)

Adding to the concern was a flying saucer sighting by US Senator Richard Russell and his party while traveling on a train in the USSR in October 1955. After extensive interviews of Russell and his group, however, CIA officials concluded that Russell’s sighting did not support the theory that the Soviets had developed saucerlike or unconventional aircraft. Herbert Scoville, Jr., the Assistant Director of OSI, wrote that the objects observed probably were normal jet aircraft in a steep climb. (42)

Wilton E. Lexow, head of the CIA’s Applied Sciences Division, was also skeptical. He questioned why the Soviets were continuing to develop conventional-type aircraft if they had a “flying saucer.” (43) Scoville asked Lexow to assume responsibility for fully assessing the capabilities and limitations of nonconventional aircraft and to maintain the OSI central file on the subject of UFOs.

CIA’s U-2 and OXCART as UFOs

In November 1954, CIA had entered into the world of high technology with its U-2 overhead reconnaissance project. Working with Lockheed’s Advanced Development facility in Burbank, California, known as the Skunk Works, and Kelly Johnson, an eminent aeronautical engineer, the Agency by August 1955 was testing a high-altitude experimental aircraft–the U-2. It could fly at 60,000 feet; in the mid-1950s, most commercial airliners flew between 10,000 feet and 20,000 feet. Consequently, once the U-2 started test flights, commercial pilots and air traffic controllers began reporting a large increase in UFO sightings. (44) (U)

The early U-2s were silver (they were later painted black) and reflected the rays from the sun, especially at sunrise and sunset. They often appeared as fiery objects to observers below. Air Force BLUE BOOK investigators aware of the secret U-2 flights tried to explain away such sightings by linking them to natural phenomena such as ice crystals and temperature inversions. By checking with the Agency’s U-2 Project Staff in Washington, BLUE BOOK investigators were able to attribute many UFO sightings to U-2 flights. They were careful, however, not to reveal the true cause of the sighting to the public.

According to later estimates from CIA officials who worked on the U-2 project and the OXCART (SR-71, or Blackbird) project, over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were accounted for by manned reconnaissance flights (namely the U-2) over the United States. (45) This led the Air Force to make misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project. While perhaps justified, this deception added fuel to the later conspiracy theories and the coverup controversy of the 1970s. The percentage of what the Air Force considered unexplained UFO sightings fell to 5.9 percent in 1955 and to 4 percent in 1956. (46)

At the same time, pressure was building for the release of the Robertson panel report on UFOs. In 1956, Edward Ruppelt, former head of the Air Force BLUE BOOK project, publicly revealed the existence of the panel. A best-selling book by UFOlogist Donald Keyhoe, a retired Marine Corps major, advocated release of all government information relating to UFOs. Civilian UFO groups such as the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) immediately pushed for release of the Robertson panel report. (47) Under pressure, the Air Force approached CIA for permission to declassify and release the report. Despite such pressure, Philip Strong, Deputy Assistant Director of OSI, refused to declassify the report and declined to disclose CIA sponsorship of the panel. As an alternative, the Agency prepared a sanitized version of the report which deleted any reference to CIA and avoided mention of any psychological warfare potential in the UFO controversy. (48)

The demands, however, for more government information about UFOs did not let up. On 8 March 1958, Keyhoe, in an interview with Mike Wallace of CBS, claimed deep CIA involvement with UFOs and Agency sponsorship of the Robertson panel. This prompted a series of letters to the Agency from Keyhoe and Dr. Leon Davidson, a chemical engineer and UFOlogist. They demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and confirmation of CIA involvement in the UFO issue. Davidson had convinced himself that the Agency, not the Air Force, carried most of the responsibility for UFO analysis and that “the activities of the US Government are responsible for the flying saucer sightings of the last decade.” Indeed, because of the undisclosed U-2 and OXCART flights, Davidson was closer to the truth than he suspected. CI, nevertheless held firm to its policy of not revealing its role in UFO investigations and refused to declassify the full Robertson panel report. (49)

In a meeting with Air Force representatives to discuss how to handle future inquires such as Keyhoe’s and Davidson’s, Agency officials confirmed their opposition to the declassification of the full report and worried that Keyhoe had the ear of former DCI VAdm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, who served on the board of governors of NICAP. They debated whether to have CIA General Counsel Lawrence R. Houston show Hillenkoetter the report as a possible way to defuse the situation. CIA officer Frank Chapin also hinted that Davidson might have ulterior motives, “some of them perhaps not in the best interest of this country,” and suggested bringing in the FBI to investigate. (50) Although the record is unclear whether the FBI ever instituted an investigation of Davidson or Keyhoe, or whether Houston ever saw Hillenkoetter about the Robertson report, Hillenkoetter did resign from the NICAP in 1962. (51)

The Agency was also involved with Davidson and Keyhoe in two rather famous UFO cases in the 1950s, which helped contribute to a growing sense of public distrust of CIA with regard to UFOs. One focused on what was reported to have been a tape recording of a radio signal from a flying saucer; the other on reported photographs of a flying saucer. The “radio code” incident began innocently enough in 1955, when two elderly sisters in Chicago, Mildred and Marie Maier, reported in the Journal of Space Flight their experiences with UFOs, including the recording of a radio program in which an unidentified code was reportedly heard. The sisters taped the program and other ham radio operators also claimed to have heard the “space message.” OSI became interested and asked the Scientific Contact Branch to obtain a copy of the recording. (52)

Field officers from the Contact Division (CD), one of whom was Dewelt Walker, made contact with the Maier sisters, who were “thrilled that the government was interested,” and set up a time to meet with them. (53) In trying to secure the tape recording, the Agency officers reported that they had stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace. “The only thing lacking was the elderberry wine,” Walker cabled Headquarters. After reviewing the sisters’ scrapbook of clippings from their days on the stage, the officers secured a copy of the recording. (54) OSI analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station.

The matter rested there until UFOlogist Leon Davidson talked with the Maier sisters in 1957. The sisters remembered they had talked with a Mr. Walker who said he was from the US Air Force. Davidson then wrote to a Mr. Walker, believing him to be a US Air Force Intelligence Officer from Wright-Patterson, to ask if the tape had been analyzed at ATIC. Dewelt Walker replied to Davidson that the tape had been forwarded to proper authorities for evaluation, and no information was available concerning the results. Not satisfied, and suspecting that Walker was really a CIA officer, Davidson next wrote DCI Allen Dulles demanding to learn what the coded message revealed and who Mr. Walker was. (55) The Agency, wanting to keep Walker’s identity as a CIA employee secret, replied that another agency of the government had analyzed the tape in question and that Davidson would be hearing from the Air Force. (56) On 5 August, the Air Force wrote Davidson saying that Walker “was and is an Air Force Officer” and that the tape “was analyzed by another government organization.” The Air Force letter confirmed that the recording contained only identifiable Morse code which came from a known US-licensed radio station. (57)

Davidson wrote Dulles again. This time he wanted to know the identity of the Morse operator and of the agency that had conducted the analysis. CIA and the Air Force were now in a quandary. The Agency had previously denied that it had actually analyzed the tape. The Air Force had also denied analyzing the tape and claimed that Walker was an Air Force officer. CIA officers, under cover, contacted Davidson in Chicago and promised to get the code translation and the identification of the transmitter, if possible. (58)

In another attempt to pacify Davidson, a CIA officer, again under cover and wearing his Air Force uniform, contacted Davidson in New York City. The CIA officer explained that there was no super agency involved and that Air Force policy was not to disclose who was doing what. While seeming to accept this argument, Davidson nevertheless pressed for disclosure of the recording message and the source. The officer agreed to see what he could do. (59) After checking with Headquarters, the CIA officer phoned Davidson to report that a thorough check had been made and, because the signal was of known US origin, the tape and the notes made at the time had been destroyed to conserve file space. (60)

Incensed over what he perceived was a runaround, Davidson told the CIA officer that “he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them.” (61) Believing that any more contact with Davidson would only encourage more speculation, the Contact Division washed its hands of the issue by reporting to the DCI and to ATIC that it would not respond to or try to contact Davidson again. (62) Thus, a minor, rather bizarre incident, handled poorly by both CIA and the Air Force, turned into a major flap that added fuel to the growing mystery surrounding UFOs and CIA’s role in their investigation.

Another minor flap a few months later added to the growing questions surrounding the Agency’s true role with regard to flying saucers. CIA’s concern over secrecy again made matters worse. In 1958, Major Keyhoe charged that the Agency was deliberately asking eyewitnesses of UFOs not to make their sightings public. (63)

The incident stemmed from a November 1957 request from OSI to the CD to obtain from Ralph C. Mayher, a photographer for KYW-TV in Cleveland, Ohio, certain photographs he took in 1952 of an unidentified flying object. Harry Real, a CD officer, contacted Mayher and obtained copies of the photographs for analysis. On 12 December 1957, John Hazen, another CD officer, returned the five photographs of the alleged UFO to Mayher without comment. Mayher asked Hazen for the Agency’s evaluation of the photos, explaining that he was trying to organize a TV program to brief the public on UFOs. He wanted to mention on the show that a US intelligence organization had viewed the photographs and thought them of interest. Although he advised Mayher not to take this approach, Hazen stated that Mayher was a US citizen and would have to make his own decision as to what to do. (64)

Keyhoe later contacted Mayher, who told him his story of CIA and the photographs. Keyhoe then asked the Agency to confirm Hazen’s employment in writing, in an effort to expose CIA’s role in UFO investigations. The Agency refused, despite the fact that CD field representatives were normally overt and carried credentials identifying their Agency association. DCI Dulles’s aide, John S. Earman, merely sent Keyhoe a noncommittal letter noting that, because UFOs were of primary concern to the Department of the Air Force, the Agency had referred his letter to the Air Force for an appropriate response. Like the response to Davidson, the Agency reply to Keyhoe only fueled the speculation that the Agency was deeply involved in UFO sightings. Pressure for release of CIA information on UFOs continued to grow. (65)

Although CIA had a declining interest in UFO cases, it continued to monitor UFO sightings. Agency officials felt the need to keep informed on UFOs if only to alert the DCI to the more sensational UFO reports and flaps. (66)

The 1960s: Declining CIA Involvement and Mounting Controversy

In the early 1960s, Keyhoe, Davidson, and other UFOlogists maintained their assault on the Agency for release of UFO information. Davidson now claimed that CIA “was solely responsible for creating the Flying Saucer furor as a tool for cold war psychological warfare since 1951.” Despite calls for Congressional hearings and the release of all materials relating to UFOs, little changed. (67)

In 1964, however, following high-level White House discussions on what to do if an alien intelligence was discovered in space and a new outbreak of UFO reports and sightings, DCI John McCone asked for an updated CIA evaluation of UFOs. Responding to McCone’s request, OSI asked the CD to obtain various recent samples and reports of UFO sightings from NICAP. With Keyhoe, one of the founders, no longer active in the organization, CIA officers met with Richard H. Hall, the acting director. Hall gave the officers samples from the NICAP database on the most recent sightings. (68)

After OSI officers had reviewed the material, Donald F. Chamberlain, OSI Assistant Director, assured McCone that little had changed since the early 1950s. There was still no evidence that UFOs were a threat to the security of the United States or that they were of “foreign origin.” Chamberlain told McCone that OSI still monitored UFO reports, including the official Air Force investigation, Project BLUE BOOK. (69)

At the same time that CIA was conducting this latest internal review of UFOs, public pressure forced the Air Force to establish a special ad hoc committee to review BLUE BOOK. Chaired by Dr. Brian O’Brien, a member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the panel included Carl Sagan, the famous astronomer from Cornell University. Its report offered nothing new. It declared that UFOs did not threaten the national security and that it could find “no UFO case which represented technological or scientific advances outside of a terrestrial framework.” The committee did recommend that UFOs be studied intensively, with a leading university acting as a coordinator for the project, to settle the issue conclusively. (70)

The House Armed Services Committee also held brief hearings on UFOs in 1966 that produced similar results. Secretary of the Air Force Harold Brown assured the committee that most sightings were easily explained and that there was no evidence that “strangers from outer space” had been visiting Earth. He told the committee members, however, that the Air Force would keep an open mind and continue to investigate all UFO reports. (71)

Following the report of its O’Brien Committee, the House hearings on UFOs, and Dr. Robertson’s disclosure on a CBS Reports program that CIA indeed had been involved in UFO analysis, the Air Force in July 1966 again approached the Agency for declassification of the entire Robertson panel report of 1953 and the full Durant report on the Robertson panel deliberations and findings. The Agency again refused to budge. Karl H. Weber, Deputy Director of OSI, wrote the Air Force that “We are most anxious that further publicity not be given to the information that the panel was sponsored by the CIA.” Weber noted that there was already a sanitized version available to the public. (72) Weber’s response was rather shortsighted and ill considered. It only drew more attention to the 13-year-old Robertson panel report and CIA’s role in the investigation of UFOs. The science editor of The Saturday Review drew nationwide attention to the CIA’s role in investigating UFOs when he published an article criticizing the “sanitized version” of the 1953 Robertson panel report and called for release of the entire document. (73)

Unknown to CIA officials, Dr. James E. McDonald, a noted atmospheric physicist from the University of Arizona, had already seen the Durant report on the Robertson panel proceedings at Wright-Patterson on 6 June 1966. When McDonald returned to Wright-Patterson on 30 June to copy the report, however, the Air Force refused to let him see it again, stating that it was a CIA classified document. Emerging as a UFO authority, McDonald publicly claimed that the CIA was behind the Air Force secrecy policies and coverup. He demanded the release of the full Robertson panel report and the Durant report. (74)

Bowing to public pressure and the recommendation of its own O’Brien Committee, the Air Force announced in August 1966 that it was seeking a contract with a leading university to undertake a program of intensive investigations of UFO sightings. The new program was designed to blunt continuing charges that the US Government had concealed what it knew about UFOs. On 7 October, the University of Colorado accepted a $325,000 contract with the Air Force for an 18-month study of flying saucers. Dr. Edward U. Condon, a physicist at Colorado and a former Director of the National Bureau of Standards, agreed to head the program. Pronouncing himself an “agnostic” on the subject of UFOs, Condon observed that he had an open mind on the question and thought that possible extraterritorial origins were “improbable but not impossible.” (75) Brig. Gen. Edward Giller, USAF, and Dr. Thomas Ratchford from the Air Force Research and Development Office became the Air Force coordinators for the project.

In February 1967, Giller contacted Arthur C. Lundahl, Director of CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), and proposed an informal liaison through which NPIC could provide the Condon Committee with technical advice and services in examining photographs of alleged UFOs. Lundahl and DDI R. Jack Smith approved the arrangement as a way of “preserving a window” on the new effort. They wanted the CIA and NPIC to maintain a low profile, however, and to take no part in writing any conclusions for the committee. No work done for the committee by NPIC was to be formally acknowledged. (76)

Ratchford next requested that Condon and his committee be allowed to visit NPIC to discuss the technical aspects of the problem and to view the special equipment NPIC had for photoanalysis. On 20 February 1967, Condon and four members of his committee visited NPIC. Lundahl emphasized to the group that any NPIC work to assist the committee must not be identified as CIA work. Moreover, work performed by NPIC would be strictly of a technical nature. After receiving these guidelines, the group heard a series of briefings on the services and equipment not available elsewhere that CIA had used in its analysis of some UFO photography furnished by Ratchford. Condon and his committee were impressed. (77)

Condon and the same group met again in May 1967 at NPIC to hear an analysis of UFO photographs taken at Zanesville, Ohio. The analysis debunked that sighting. The committee was again impressed with the technical work performed, and Condon remarked that for the first time a scientific analysis of a UFO would stand up to investigation. (78) The group also discussed the committee’s plans to call on US citizens for additional photographs and to issue guidelines for taking useful UFO photographs. In addition, CIA officials agreed that the Condon Committee could release the full Durant report with only minor deletions.

In April 1969, Condon and his committee released their report on UFOs. The report concluded that little, if anything, had come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years and that further extensive study of UFO sightings was unwarranted. It also recommended that the Air Force special unit, Project BLUE BOOK, be discontinued. It did not mention CIA participation in the Condon committee’s investigation. (79) A special panel established by the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the Condon report and concurred with its conclusion that “no high priority in UFO investigations is warranted by data of the past two decades.” It concluded its review by declaring, “On the basis of present knowledge, the least likely explanation of UFOs is the hypothesis of extraterrestrial visitations by intelligent beings.” Following the recommendations of the Condon Committee and the National Academy of Sciences, the Secretary of the Air Force, Robert C. Seamans, Jr., announced on 17 December 1969 the termination of BLUE BOOK. (80)

{ https://gaf.news/ }

11-05-2020 om 01:12 geschreven door peter  

CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90 - PART II

An extraordinary 95 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), and 57 percent believe they are real. (1) Former US Presidents Carter and Reagan claim to have seen a UFO. UFOlogists–a neologism for UFO buffs–and private UFO organizations are found throughout the United States. Many are convinced that the US Government, and particularly CIA, are engaged in a massive conspiracy and coverup of the issue. The idea that CIA has secretly concealed its research into UFOs has been a major theme of UFO buffs since the modern UFO phenomena emerged in the late 1940s. (2)

In late 1993, after being pressured by UFOlogists for the release of additional CIA information on UFOs, (3) DCI R. James Woolsey ordered another review of all Agency files on UFOs. Using CIA records compiled from that review, this study traces CIA interest and involvement in the UFO controversy from the late 1940s to 1990. It chronologically examines the Agency’s efforts to solve the mystery of UFOs, its programs that had an impact on UFO sightings, and its attempts to conceal CIA involvement in the entire UFO issue. What emerges from this examination is that, while Agency concern over UFOs was substantial until the early 1950s, CIA has since paid only limited and peripheral attention to the phenomena.

The 1970s and1980s: The UFO Issue Refuses To Die 

The Condon report did not satisfy many UFOlogists, who considered it a coverup for CIA activities in UFO research. Additional sightings in the early 1970s fueled beliefs that the CIA was somehow involved in a vast conspiracy. On 7 June 1975, William Spaulding, head of a small UFO group, Ground Saucer Watch (GSW), wrote to CIA requesting a copy of the Robertson panel report and all records relating to UFOs. (81) Spaulding was convinced that the Agency was withholding major files on UFOs. Agency officials provided Spaulding with a copy of the Robertson panel report and of the Durant report. (82)

On 14 July 1975, Spaulding again wrote the Agency questioning the authenticity of the reports he had received and alleging a CIA coverup of its UFO activities. Gene Wilson, CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, replied in an attempt to satisfy Spaulding, “At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to the issuance of the panel’s report has CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomena.” The Robertson panel report, according to Wilson, was “the summation of Agency interest and involvement in UFOs.” Wilson also inferred that there were no additional documents in CIA’s possession that related to UFOs. Wilson was ill informed. (83)

In September 1977, Spaulding and GSW, unconvinced by Wilson’s response, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Agency that specifically requested all UFO documents in CIA’s possession. Deluged by similar FOIA requests for Agency information on UFOs, CIA officials agreed, after much legal maneuvering, to conduct a “reasonable search” of CIA files for UFO materials. (84) Despite an Agency-wide unsympathetic attitude toward the suit, Agency officials, led by Launie Ziebell from the Office of General Counsel, conducted a thorough search for records pertaining to UFOs. Persistent, demanding, and even threatening at times, Ziebell and his group scoured the Agency. They even turned up an old UFO file under a secretary’s desk. The search finally produced 355 documents totaling approximately 900 pages. On 14 December 1978, the Agency released all but 57 documents of about 100 pages to GSW. It withheld these 57 documents on national security grounds and to protect sources and methods. (85)

Although the released documents produced no smoking gun and revealed only a low-level Agency interest in the UFO phenomena after the Robertson panel report of 1953, the press treated the release in a sensational manner. The New York Times, for example, claimed that the declassified documents confirmed intensive government concern over UFOs and that the Agency was secretly involved in the surveillance of UFOs. (86) GSW then sued for the release of the withheld documents, claiming that the Agency was still holding out key information. (87) It was much like the John F. Kennedy assassination issue. No matter how much material the Agency released and no matter how dull and prosaic the information, people continued to believe in a Agency coverup and conspiracy.

DCI Stansfield Turner was so upset when he read The New York Times article that he asked his senior officers, “Are we in UFOs?” After reviewing the records, Don Wortman, Deputy Director for Administration, reported to Turner that there was “no organized Agency effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena nor has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s.” Wortman assured Turner that the Agency records held only “sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject,” including various kinds of reports of UFO sightings. There was no Agency program to collect actively information on UFOs, and the material released to GSW had few deletions. (88) Thus assured, Turner had the General Counsel press for a summary judgment against the new lawsuit by GSW. In May 1980, the courts dismissed the lawsuit, finding that the Agency had conducted a thorough and adequate search in good faith. (89)

During the late 1970s and 1980s, the Agency continued its low-key interest in UFOs and UFO sightings. While most scientists now dismissed flying saucers reports as a quaint part of the 1950s and 1960s, some in the Agency and in the Intelligence Community shifted their interest to studying parapsychology and psychic phenomena associated with UFO sightings. CIA officials also looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects. Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI and OSWR officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using US citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive US weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the US air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings.

CIA also maintained Intelligence Community coordination with other agencies regarding their work in parapsychology, psychic phenomena, and “remote viewing” experiments. In general, the Agency took a conservative scientific view of these unconventional scientific issues. There was no formal or official UFO project within the Agency in the 1980s, and Agency officials purposely kept files on UFOs to a minimum to avoid creating records that might mislead the public if released. (90)

The 1980s also produced renewed charges that the Agency was still withholding documents relating to the 1947 Roswell incident, in which a flying saucer supposedly crashed in New Mexico, and the surfacing of documents which purportedly revealed the existence of a top secret US research and development intelligence operation responsible only to the President on UFOs in the late 1940s and early 1950s. UFOlogists had long argued that, following a flying saucer crash in New Mexico in 1947, the government not only recovered debris from the crashed saucer but also four or five alien bodies. According to some UFOlogists, the government clamped tight security around the project and has refused to divulge its investigation results and research ever since. (91) In September 1994, the US Air Force released a new report on the Roswell incident that concluded that the debris found in New Mexico in 1947 probably came from a once top secret balloon operation, Project MOGUL, designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. (92)

Circa 1984, a series of documents surfaced which some UFOlogists said proved that President Truman created a top secret committee in 1947, Majestic-12, to secure the recovery of UFO wreckage from Roswell and any other UFO crash sight for scientific study and to examine any alien bodies recovered from such sites. Most if not all of these documents have proved to be fabrications. Yet the controversy persists. (93)

Like the JFK assassination conspiracy theories, the UFO issue probably will not go away soon, no matter what the Agency does or says. The belief that we are not alone in the universe is too emotionally appealing and the distrust of our government is too pervasive to make the issue amenable to traditional scientific studies of rational explanation and evidence.

Notes

(1) See the 1973 Gallup Poll results printed in The New York Times, 29 November 1973, p. 45 and Philip J. Klass, UFOs: The Public Deceived (New York: Prometheus Books, 1983), p. 3.

(2) See Klass, UFOs, p. 3; James S. Gordon, “The UFO Experience,” Atlantic Monthly (August 1991), pp. 82-92; David Michael Jacobs, The UFO Controversy in America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975); Howard Blum, Out There: The Government’s Secret Quest for Extraterrestrials (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990); Timothy Good, Above Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Cover-Up (New York: William Morrow, 1987); and Whitley Strieber, Communion: The True Story (New York: Morrow, 1987).

(3) In September 1993 John Peterson, an acquaintance of Woolsey’s, first approached the DCI with a package of heavily sanitized CIA material on UFOs released to UFOlogist Stanton T. Friedman. Peterson and Friedman wanted to know the reasons for the redactions. Woolsey agreed to look into the matter. See Richard J. Warshaw, Executive Assistant, note to author, 1 November 1994; Warshaw, note to John H. Wright, Information and Privacy Coordinator, 31 January 1994; and Wright, memorandum to Executive Secretariat, 2 March 1994. (Except where noted, all citations to CIA records in this article are to the records collected for the 1994 Agency-wide search that are held by the Executive Assistant to the DCI).

(4) See Hector Quintanilla, Jr., “The Investigation of UFOs,” Vol. 10, No. 4, Studies in Intelligence (fall 1966): pp.95-110 and CIA, unsigned memorandum, “Flying Saucers,” 14 August 1952. See also Good, Above Top Secret, p. 253. During World War II, US pilots reported “foo fighters” (bright lights trailing US aircraft). Fearing they might be Japanese or German secret weapons, OSS investigated but could find no concrete evidence of enemy weapons and often filed such reports in the “crackpot” category. The OSS also investigated possible sightings of German V-1 and V-2 rockets before their operational use during the war. See Jacobs, UFO Controversy, p. 33. The Central Intelligence Group, the predecessor of the CIA, also monitored reports of “ghost rockets” in Sweden in 1946. See CIG, Intelligence Report, 9 April 1947.

(5) Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 156 and Quintanilla, “The Investigation of UFOs,” p. 97.

(6) See US Air Force, Air Material Command, “Unidentified Aerial Objects: Project SIGN, no. F-TR 2274, IA, February 1949, Records of the US Air Force Commands, Activities and Organizations, Record Group 341, National Archives, Washington, DC.

(7) See US Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUEBOOK Reports 1- 12 (Washington, DC; National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, 1968) and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 50-54.

(8) See Cabell, memorandum to Commanding Generals Major Air Commands, “Reporting of Information on Unconventional Aircraft,” 8 September 1950 and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 65.

(9) See Air Force, Projects GRUDGE and BLUE BOOK and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 67.

(10) See Edward Tauss, memorandum for Deputy Assistant Director, SI, “Flying Saucers,” 1 August 1952. See also United Kingdom, Report by the “Flying Saucer” Working Party, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” no date (approximately 1950).

(11) See Dr. Stone, OSI, memorandum to Dr. Willard Machle, OSI, 15 March 1949 and Ralph L. Clark, Acting Assistant Director, OSI, memorandum for DDI, “Recent Sightings of Unexplained Objects,” 29 July 1952.

(12) Stone, memorandum to Machle. See also Clark, memorandum for DDI, 29 July 1952.

(13) See Klass, UFOs, p. 15. For a brief review of the Washington sightings see Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 269-271.

(14) See Ralph L. Clark, Acting Assistant Director, OSI, memorandum to DDI Robert Amory, Jr., 29 July 1952. OSI and OCI were in the Directorate of Intelligence. Established in 1948, OSI served as the CIA’s focal point for the analysis of foreign scientific and technological developments. In 1980, OSI was merged into the Office of Science and Weapons Research. The Office of Current Intelligence (OCI), established on 15 January 1951 was to provide all-source current intelligence to the President and the National Security Council.

(15) Tauss, memorandum for Deputy Assistant Director, SI (Philip Strong), 1 August 1952.

(16) On 2 January 1952, DCI Walter Bedell Smith created a Deputy Directorate for Intelligence (DDI) composed of six overt CIA organizations–OSI, OCI, Office of Collection and Dissemination, Office National Estimates, Office of Research and Reports, and the Office of Intelligence Coordination–to produce intelligence analysis for US policymakers.

(17) See Minutes of Branch Chief’s Meeting, 11 August 1952.

(18) Smith expressed his opinions at a meeting in the DCI Conference Room attended by his top officers. See Deputy Chief, Requirements Staff, FI, memorandum for Deputy Director, Plans, “Flying Saucers,” 20 August 1952, Directorate of Operations Records, Information Management Staff, Job 86-00538R, Box 1.

(19) See CIA memorandum, unsigned, “Flying Saucers,” 11 August 1952.

(20) See CIA, memorandum, unsigned, “Flying Saucers,” 14 August 1952.

(21) See CIA, memorandum, unsigned, “Flying Saucers,” 19 August 1952.

(22) See Chadwell, memorandum for Smith, 17 September 1952 and 24 September 1952, “Flying Saucers.” See also Chadwell, memorandum for DCI Smith, 2 October 1952 and Klass, UFOs, pp. 23-26.

(23) Chadwell, memorandum for DCI with attachments, 2 December 1952. See also Klass, UFOs, pp. 26-27 and Chadwell, memorandum, 25 November 1952.

(24) See Chadwell, memorandum, 25 November 1952 and Chadwell, memorandum, “Approval in Principle – External Research Project Concerned with Unidentified Flying Objects,” no date. See also Philip G. Strong, OSI, memorandum for the record, “Meeting with Dr. Julius A. Stratton, Executive Vice President and Provost, MIT and Dr. Max Millikan, Director of CENIS.” Strong believed that in order to undertake such a review they would need the full backing and support of DCI Smith.

(25) See Chadwell, memorandum for DCI, “”Unidentified Flying Objects,” 2 December 1952. See also Chadwell, memorandum for Amory, DDI, “Approval in Principle – External Research Project Concerned with Unidentified Flying Objects,” no date.

(26) The IAC was created in 1947 to serve as a coordinating body in establishing intelligence requirements. Chaired by the DCI, the IAC included representatives from the Department of State, the Army, the Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the FBI, and the AEC.

(27) See Klass, UFOs, p. 27.

(28) See Richard D. Drain, Acting Secretary, IAC, “Minutes of Meeting held in Director’s Conference Room, Administration Building, CIA,” 4 December 1952.

(29) See Chadwell, memorandum for the record, “British Activity in the Field of UFOs,” 18 December 1952.

(30) See Chadwell, memorandum for DCI, “Consultants for Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,” 9 January 1953; Curtis Peebles, Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994). pp. 73-90; and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 91-92.

(31) See Fred C. Durant III, Report on the Robertson Panel Meeting, January 1953. Durant, on contract with OSI and a past president of the American Rocket Society, attended the Robertson panel meetings and wrote a summary of the proceedings.

(32) See Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects (the Robertson Report), 17 January 1953 and the Durant report on the panel discussions.

(33) See Robertson Report and Durant Report. See also Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 337-38, Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 95, and Klass, UFO’s, pp. 28-29.

(34) See Reber, memorandum to IAC, 18 February 1953.

(35) See Chadwell, memorandum for DDI, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 10 February 1953; Chadwell, letter to Robertson, 28 January 1953; and Reber, memorandum for IAC, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 18 February 1953. On briefing the ONE, see Durant, memorandum for the record, “Briefing of ONE Board on Unidentified Flying Objects,” 30 January 1953 and CIA Summary disseminated to the field, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 6 February 1953.

(36) See Chadwell, letter to Julius A. Stratton, Provost MIT, 27 January 1953.

(37) See Chadwell, memorandum for Chief, Physics and Electronics Division/OSI (Todos M. Odarenko), “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 27 May 1953.

(38) See Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 3 July 1953. See also Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, “Current Status of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOB) Project,” 17 December 1953.

(39) See Odarenko, memorandum, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” 8 August 1955.

(40) See FBIS, report, “Military Unconventional Aircraft,” 18 August 1953 and various reports, “Military-Air, Unconventional Aircraft,” 1953, 1954, 1955.

(41) Developed by the Canadian affiliate of Britain’s A. V. Roe, Ltd., Project Y did produce a small-scale model that hovered a few feet off the ground. See Odarenko, memorandum to Chadwell, “Flying Saucer Type of Planes” 25 May 1954; Frederic C. E. Oder, memorandum to Odarenko, “USAF Project Y,” 21 May 1954; and Odarenko, T. M. Nordbeck, Ops/SI, and Sidney Graybeal, ASD/SI, memorandum for the record, “Intelligence Responsibilities for Non-Conventional Types of Air Vehicles,” 14 June 1954.

(42) See Reuben Efron, memorandum, “Observation of Flying Object Near Baku,” 13 October 1955; Scoville, memorandum for the record, “Interview with Senator Richard B. Russell,” 27 October 1955; and Wilton E. Lexow, memorandum for information, “Reported Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft,” 19 October 1955.

(43) See Lexow, memorandum for information, “Reported Sighting of Unconventional Aircraft,” 19 October 1955. See also Frank C. Bolser, memorandum for George C. Miller, Deputy Chief, SAD/SI, “Possible Soviet Flying Saucers, Check On;” Lexow, memorandum, “Possible Soviet Flying Saucers, Follow Up On,” 17 December 1954; Lexow, memorandum, “Possible Soviet Flying Saucers,” 1 December 1954; and A. H. Sullivan, Jr., memorandum, “Possible Soviet Flying Saucers,” 24 November 1954.

(44) See Gregory W. Pedlow and Donald E. Welzenbach, The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: The U-2 and OXCART Programs, 1954-1974 (Washington, DC: CIA History Staff, 1992), pp. 72-73.

(45) See Pedlow and Welzenbach, Overhead Reconnaissance, pp. 72-73. This also was confirmed in a telephone interview between the author and John Parongosky, 26 July 1994. Parongosky oversaw the day-to-day affairs of the OXCART program.

(46) See Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 135.

(47) See Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 128-146; Ruppelt, The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: Doubleday, 1956); Keyhoe, The Flying Saucer Conspiracy (New York: Holt, 1955); and Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, pp. 347-49.

(48) See Strong, letter to Lloyd W. Berkner; Strong, letter to Thorton Page; Strong, letter to Robertson; Strong, letter to Samuel Goudsmit; Strong, letter to Luis Alvarez, 20 December 1957; and Strong, memorandum for Major James F. Byrne, Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence Department of the Air Force, “Declassification of the `Report of the Scientific Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects,'” 20 December 1957. See also Berkner, letter to Strong, 20 November 1957 and Page, letter to Strong, 4 December 1957. The panel members were also reluctant to have their association with the Agency released.

(49) See Wilton E. Lexow, memorandum for the record, “Comments on Letters Dealing with Unidentified Flying Objects,” 4 April 1958; J. S. Earman, letter to Major Lawrence J. Tacker, Office of the Secretary of the Air Force, Information Service, 4 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Berkner, 8 April 1958; Berkner, letter to Davidson, 18 April 1958; Berkner, letter to Strong, 21 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Tacker, 27 April 1958; Davidson, letter to Allen Dulles, 27 April 1958; Ruppelt, letter to Davidson, 7 May 1958; Strong, letter to Berkner, 8 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Berkner, 8 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Earman, 16 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Goudsmit, 18 May 1958; Davidson, letter to Page, 18 May 1958; and Tacker, letter to Davidson, 20 May 1958.

(50) See Lexow, memorandum for Chapin, 28 July 1958.

(51) See Good, Above Top Secret, pp. 346-47; Lexow, memorandum for the record, “Meeting with the Air Force Personnel Concerning Scientific Advisory Panel Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, dated 17 January 1953 (S),” 16 May 1958. See also La Rae L. Teel, Deputy Division Chief, ASD, memorandum for the record, “Meeting with Mr. Chapin on Replying to Leon Davidson’s UFO Letter and Subsequent Telephone Conversation with Major Thacker, [sic]” 22 May 1958.

(52) See Edwin M. Ashcraft, Chief, Contact Division (Scientific), memorandum to Chief, Chicago Office, “Radio Code Recording,” 4 March 1955 and Ashcraft, memorandum to Chief, Support Branch, OSI, 17 March 1955.

(53) The Contact Division was created to collect foreign intelligence information from sources within the United States. See the Directorate of Intelligence Historical Series, The Origin and Development of Contact Division, 11 July 1946­1 July 1965 (Washington, DC; CIA Historical Staff, June 1969).

(54) See George O. Forrest, Chief, Chicago Office, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division for Science, 11 March 1955.

(55) See Support Division (Connell), memorandum to Dewelt E. Walker, 25 April 1957.

(56) See J. Arnold Shaw, Assistant to the Director, letter to Davidson, 10 May 1957.

(57) See Support (Connell) memorandum to Lt. Col. V. Skakich, 27 August 1957 and Lamountain, memorandum to Support (Connell), 20 December 1957.

(58) See Lamountain, cable to Support (Connell), 31 July 1958.

(59) See Support (Connell) cable to Skakich, 3 October 1957 and Skakich, cable to Connell, 9 October 1957.

(60) See Skakich, cable to Connell, 9 October 1957.

(61) See R. P. B. Lohmann, memorandum for Chief, Contact Division, DO, 9 January 1958.

(62) See Support, cable to Skakich, 20 February 1958 and Connell (Support) cable to Lamountain, 19 December 1957.

(63) See Edwin M. Ashcraft, Chief, Contact Division, Office of Operations, memorandum for Austin Bricker, Jr., Assistant to the Director, “Inquiry by Major Donald E. Keyhoe on John Hazen’s Association with the Agency,” 22 January 1959.

(64) See John T. Hazen, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division, 12 December 1957. See also Ashcraft, memorandum to Cleveland Resident Agent, “Ralph E. Mayher,” 20 December 1957. According to this memorandum, the photographs were viewed at “a high level and returned to us without comment.” The Air Force held the original negatives. The CIA records were probably destroyed.

(65) The issue would resurface in the 1970s with the GSW FOIA court case.

(66) See Robert Amory, Jr., DDI, memorandum for Assistant Director/Scientific Intelligence, “Flying Saucers,” 26 March 1956. See also Wallace R. Lamphire, Office of the Director, Planning and Coordination Staff, memorandum for Richard M. Bissell, Jr., “Unidentified Flying Saucers (UFO),” 11 June 1957; Philip Strong, memorandum for the Director, NPIC, “Reported Photography of Unidentified Flying Objects,” 27 October 1958; Scoville, memorandum to Lawrence Houston, Legislative Counsel, “Reply to Honorable Joseph E. Garth,” 12 July 1961; and Houston, letter to Garth, 13 July 1961.

(67) See, for example, Davidson, letter to Congressman Joseph Garth, 26 June 1961 and Carl Vinson, Chairman, House Committee on Armed Services, letter to Rep. Robert A. Everett, 2 September 1964.

(68) See Maxwell W. Hunter, staff member, National Aeronautics and Space Council, Executive Office of the President, memorandum for Robert F. Parkard, Office of International Scientific Affairs, Department of State, “Thoughts on the Space Alien Race Question,” 18 July 1963, File SP 16, Records of the Department of State, Record Group 59, National Archives. See also F. J. Sheridan, Chief, Washington Office, memorandum to Chief, Contact Division, “National Investigation Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP),” 25 January 1965.

(69) Chamberlain, memorandum for DCI, “Evaluation of UFOs,” 26 January 1965.

(70) See Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 199 and US Air Force, Scientific Advisory Board, Ad Hoc Committee (O’Brien Committee) to Review Project BLUE BOOK, Special Report (Washington, DC: 1966). See also The New York Times, 14 August 1966, p. 70.

(71) See “Congress Reassured on Space Visits,” The New York Times, 6 April 1966.

(72) Weber, letter to Col. Gerald E. Jorgensen, Chief, Community Relations Division, Office of Information, US Air Force, 15 August 1966. The Durant report was a detailed summary of the Robertson panel proceedings.

(73) See John Lear, “The Disputed CIA Document on UFOs,” Saturday Review (September 3, 1966), p. 45. The Lear article was otherwise unsympathetic to UFO sightings and the possibility that extraterritorials were involved. The Air Force had been eager to provide Lear with the full report. See Walter L. Mackey, Executive Officer, memorandum for DCI, “Air Force Request to Declassify CIA Material on Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO),” 1 September 1966.

(74) See Klass, UFOs, p. 40, Jacobs, The UFO Controversy, p. 214 and Everet Clark, “Physicist Scores `Saucer Status,'” The New York Times, 21 October 1966. See also James E. McDonald, “Statement on Unidentified Flying Objects,” submitted to the House Committee on Science and Astronautics, 29 July 1968.

(75) Condon is quoted in Walter Sullivan, “3 Aides Selected in Saucer Inquiry,” The New York Times, 8 October 1966. See also “An Outspoken Scientist, Edward Uhler Condon,” The New York Times, 8 October 1966. Condon, an outgoing, gruff scientist, had earlier become embroiled in a controversy with the House Unamerican Activities Committee that claimed Condon was “one of the weakest links in our atomic security.” See also Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 169-195.

(76) See Lundahl, memorandum for DDI, 7 February 1967.

(77) See memorandum for the record, “Visit of Dr. Condon to NPIC, 20 February 1967,” 23 February 1967. See also the analysis of the photographs in memorandum for Lundahl, “Photo Analysis of UFO Photography,” 17 February 1967.

(78) See memorandum for the record, “UFO Briefing for Dr. Edward Condon, 5 May 1967,” 8 May 1967 and attached “Guidelines to UFO Photographers and UFO Photographic Information Sheet.” See also Condon Committee, Press Release, 1 May 1967 and Klass, UFOs, p. 41. The Zaneville photographs turned out to be a hoax.

(79) See Edward U. Condon, Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects (New York: Bantam Books, 1969) and Klass, UFOs, p. 41. The report contained the Durant report with only minor deletions.

(80) See Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense, News Release, “Air Force to Terminate Project BLUEBOOK,” 17 December 1969. The Air Force retired BLUEBOOK records to the USAF Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. In 1976 the Air Force turned over all BLUEBOOK files to the National Archives and Records Administration, which made them available to the public without major restrictions. Some names have been withheld from the documents. See Klass, UFOs, p. 6.

(81) GSW was a small group of UFO buffs based in Phoenix, Arizona, and headed by William H. Spaulding.

(82) See Klass, UFOs, p. 8.

(83) See Wilson, letter to Spaulding, 26 March 1976 and GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859.

(84) GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859, p. 2.

(85) Author interview with Launie Ziebell, 23 June 1994 and author interview with OSI analyst, 21 July 1994. See also affidavits of George Owens, CIA Information and Privacy Act Coordinator; Karl H. Weber, OSI; Sidney D. Stembridge, Office of Security; and Rutledge P. Hazzard, DS&T; GSW v. CIA Civil Action Case 78-859 and Sayre Stevens, Deputy Director for National Foreign Assessment, memorandum for Thomas H. White, Assistant for Information, Information Review Committee, “FOIA Litigation Ground Saucer Watch,” no date.

(86) See “CIA Papers Detail UFO Surveillance,” The New York Times, 13 January 1979; Patrick Huyghe, “UFO Files: The Untold Story,” The New York Times Magazine, 14 October 1979, p. 106; and Jerome Clark, “UFO Update,” UFO Report, August 1979.

(87) Jerome Clark, “Latest UFO News Briefs From Around the World,” UFO Update, August 1979 and GSW v. CIA Civil Action No. 78-859.

(88) See Wortman, memorandum for DCI Turner, “Your Question, `Are we in UFOs?’ Annotated to The New York Times News Release Article,” 18 January 1979.

(89) See GSW v. CIA Civil Action 78-859. See also Klass, UFOs, pp. 10-12.

(90) See John Brennan, memorandum for Richard Warshaw, Executive Assistant, DCI, “Requested Information on UFOs,” 30 September 1993; Author interviews with OSWR analyst, 14 June 1994 and OSI analyst, 21 July 1994. This author found almost no documentation on Agency involvement with UFOs in the 1980s.

There is a DIA Psychic Center and the NSA studies parapsychology, that branch of psychology that deals with the investigation of such psychic phenomena as clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, and telepathy. The CIA reportedly is also a member of an Incident Response Team to investigate UFO landings, if one should occur. This team has never met. The lack of solid CIA documentation on Agency UFO-related activities in the 1980s leaves the entire issue somewhat murky for this period.

Much of the UFO literature presently focuses on contactees and abductees. See John E. Mack, Abduction, Human Encounters with Aliens (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994) and Howard Blum, Out There (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990).

(91) See Charles Berlitz and William L. Moore, The Roswell Incident (New York: Berkeley Books, 1988); Moore, “The Roswell Incident: New Evidence in the Search for a Crashed UFO,” (Burbank, California: Fair Witness Project, 1982), Publication Number 1201; and Klass, UFOs, pp. 280-281. In 1994 Congressman Steven H. Schiff (R-NM) called for an official study of the Roswell incident. The GAO is conducting a separate investigation of the incident. The CIA is not involved in the investigation. See Klass, UFOs, pp. 279-281; John H. Wright, Information and Privacy Coordinator, letter to Derek Skreen, 20 September 1993; and OSWR analyst interview. See also the made-for-TV film, Roswell, which appeared on cable TV on 31 July 1994 and Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 245-251.

(92) See John Diamond, “Air Force Probes 1947 UFO Claim Findings Are Down to Earth,” 9 September 1994, Associated Press release; William J. Broad, “Wreckage of a `Spaceship’: Of This Earth (and U.S.),” The New York Times, 18 September 1994, p. 1; and USAF Col. Richard L. Weaver and 1st Lt. James McAndrew, The Roswell Report, Fact Versus Fiction in New Mexico Desert (Washington, DC: GPO, 1995).

(93) See Good, Above Top Secret; Moore and S. T. Friedman, “Philip Klass and MJ-12: What are the Facts,” (Burbank California: Fair-Witness Project, 1988), Publication Number 1290; Klass, “New Evidence of MJ-12 Hoax,” Skeptical Inquirer, vol. 14 (Winter 1990); and Moore and Jaime H. Shandera, The MJ-12 Documents: An Analytical Report (Burbank, California: Fair-Witness Project, 1990), Publication Number 1500. Walter Bedell Smith supposedly replaced Forrestal on 1 August 1950 following Forrestal’s death. All members listed were deceased when the MJ-12 “documents” surfaced in 1984. See Peebles, Watch the Skies, pp. 258-268.

Dr. Larry Bland, editor of The George C. Marshall Papers, discovered that one of the so-called Majestic-12 documents was a complete fraud. It contained the exact same language as a letter from Marshall to Presidential candidate Thomas Dewey regarding the “Magic” intercepts in 1944. The dates and names had been altered and “Magic” changed to “Majic.” Moreover, it was a photocopy, not an original. No original MJ-12 documents have ever surfaced. Telephone conversation between the author and Bland, 29 August 1994.

SOURCE: Central of Intelligence Agency (CIA) – Gerald K. Haines is the National Reconnaissance Office historian.

Historical Document

• Posted: Apr 14, 2007 04:51 PM
• Last Updated: Jun 27, 2008 07:48 AM

{ https://gaf.news/ }

11-05-2020 om 01:08 geschreven door peter  

One of the many significant things that surfaced while I was doing research into my new book, The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy, was the connection between the military and strange, aerial phenomena. As just about everyone with an interest in UFOs will know, when the December 1980 events took place in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, U.K., they involved a significant number of military personnel. I have several other cases in my files that involve (a) a fairly large military presence; and (b) unusual things seen in the sky. Based on what I discovered during the course of that same research, I strongly suspect that Rendlesham was not the first fabricated UFO event in the U.K.

We’ll begin with the experience of Paul Greensill. His confrontation of the mystifying type happened back in 1962. He retired from the British Army in August of that year, after having served with 9 Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers. With a successful military career behind him, Greensill then enlisted in the Army Reserve. The Ministry of Defense provides background: “The Army Reserve is the largest of the Reserve Forces. The Army Reserve provides support to the Regular Army at home and overseas, and throughout its history almost every major operation has seen reservists operate alongside their Regular counterparts. Army Reserve Soldiers come from all walks of life and work part-time as soldiers for the British Army alongside full-time Regular soldiers.”

It was in August 1963 when Greensill and his comrades were taking part in a training-based military operation not too far from Ripon, Yorkshire, England. It was an exercise that was comprised of around forty personnel and that began shortly before midnight. Suddenly, a globe-like, dazzling ball of light shot across the skies and stopped over the amazed troops at a height of no more than about eighty or ninety feet. It hung silently in the sky for several minutes, after which it accelerated away at a fast speed. It then briefly returned, after which it yet again soared away into the starlit night. No official report was made, said Greensill. But, just about everyone was excitedly talking about the events the following day – which is not at all surprising. Despite the lack of official paperwork created, Greensill said that the higher-ups were keen to see what the regular troops thought of it all. Today, interestingly, 9 Parachute Squadron RE is stationed at Rock Barracks at…Woodbridge, Suffolk, where the December 1980 events occurred. What goes around certainly comes around, it would seem. With that case addressed, here’s another one for you.

Approximately two years before the dense trees of Rendlesham Forest were lit up, and lives were forever changed, something similar occurred on the U.K.’s expansive and wild Yorkshire Moors. Yes, Yorkshire, again. The witnesses were Mike Perrin and “Titch” Carvell. At the time, both men were with the British Army’s Royal Armored Corps. As the name of the RAC suggests, its role is to provide the armor capability of the Army, such as tanks. Perrin and Carvell were part of a military exercise on the moors when a decidedly strange intruder suddenly appeared on the scene – and right at the time the pair, in their Land Rover, was carefully negotiating a winding stretch of road. Suddenly, a circular, silvery thing appeared out of nowhere and hung in the air at a precarious level and at a distance of around 140-150 feet. Even at that distance they could hear a loud, “strange buzzing” coming from the object. Suddenly, the engine of the Land Rover died and the vehicle coasted to a stop. That was most assuredly not a good thing. In fact, it was a decidedly ominous thing.

Land Rover

Perrin said: “It was about the size of five Land Rovers and had portholes. Lights inside were flashing red and white. I tried to start our vehicle, but the engine was totally dead. We watched the UFO for five minutes, then it shot off and all the power returned to our engine. It’s Army policy to dismiss UFO reports, but when we went back to the area next morning with a sergeant, we found a large circle of burnt grass where the object had hovered.” The event was over. That “UFOs” should have appeared on two occasions in Yorkshire, England – and when military operations were going on – make me suspect that these events (just like Rendlesham) were deliberately hoaxed. The purpose: to determine how military personnel react when faced with strange phenomena and unforeseen events.

VIDEOS, SELECTED BY PETER2011

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

10-05-2020 om 20:04 geschreven door peter  

All of the sightings were recorded in Ministry of Defence reports

By Nathan Hyde

People claim to have seen flashing lights, fireballs and strange sea horse shaped objects in the sky above Yorkshire.

That's according Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) reports released by the Ministry of Defence, following several freedom of information requests.

They include all of the reported sightings in the UK between 2009 and 2000.

Over that nine-year period there were 156 reported sightings in Yorkshire, as people claimed to see everything from bright beams of light to something that "looked like a jellyfish flying in the sky".

You can take a look below at some of the strangest incidents that were recorded by the Ministry of Defence.

2009

In Bradford on February 20, someone saw "two strange lights" behind the clouds and they "appeared to be playing with each other and pretending to crash into each other" while a third light hovered underneath them.

On April 26 in Huddersfield a witness gave a detailed account after they spotted a mysterious flying object.

The report states: "A black spherical object 12m in diameter. It was 500ft up and travelling at 500 mph. It made no sound. It had a light on but switched it off when the witness shone a torch at it."

In Wakefield on May 24, someone spotted "a white object with a silver beam coming from it" and said it "change shape as it moved" over Pugney's Country Park.

In June, an air traffic controller was working in North Yorkshire when he saw bright orange lights. He said one of them was "followed by a group of three and then another single light".

On September 2, someone in Filey saw a "brilliant and dazzling pure white horizontal ring of light" and they said it "appeared to be perfectly still in the sky above the houses and was totally silent".

2008

On February 28, someone claimed they saw "30 UFOs" flying over Bingley.

Shortly after 12.20am on June 8, people in Middleton and Ilkley saw "five orange objects and then one orange 'blob" in the sky.

CLICK TO PLAY

UFOS OVER WEST YORKSHIRE

On June 20 in Doncaster someone reported a "metallic, capsule-shaped object" which was "going quite fast and didn't slow down at any point" but didn't make a sound.

Later that month (June 22) a man in Wakefield claimed he saw "five bright, oval-shaped orange lights" in the sky and three of them were in a group while the others were travelling behind.

On July 20, someone in Scarborough saw "a cork shaped object that glowed like an angel fly up and over some trees".

2007

A person in Huddersfield said they saw "a moon shaped object that kept reappearing every two minutes" and "it swerved rapidly to the left and right at different levels above the horizon" on July 6.

On August 4 in Sheffield someone saw "two strange objects followed by three others" and said "they were bright and fire coloured and spinning and moving very fast across the sky".

In Wakefield, someone saw a grey fast-moving "elongated triangular shaped object with rounded corners" on August 7.

{ https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/ }

07-05-2020 om 23:57 geschreven door peter  

David Farrier Of Netflix Dark Tourist And David Roth Of Deadspin Bully UFO Eyewitnesses On Twitter, UFO Sighting World News.

Hey everyone, I just came from Twitter where I was trying to talk to two famous people, one writer and one actor. Maybe you have heard of them. David Roth a writer for Deadspin and SB Nation. The other, David Farrier the lead actor on Netflix show called Dark Tourist and a Hulu show called Tickled. 

Being semi celebrities they should be more caring and thoughtful to others feelings, but they go and attack eyewitnesses of UFO sightings trying to intimidate and embarrass...basically bullying those who claim to have seen UFOs. 

I do not tolerate those who bully others. Its horrible that those two social influencers are spreading such cruel and heartless messages to the public. The world is changing and the public is becoming more confident about coming out and telling the world their story of their UFO sighting. We must protect those can't protect themselves. 

Of course I responded in defense of those who have been fortunate enough to have had UFO sighings. Read my tweets below. 
Scott C. Waring 

Scott C. Waring, World Famous Researcher.@SCWbooks

@david_j_roth @davidfarrier @netflix @deadspin Tens of thousands have a UFO sighting daily. They need to feel confident that others will believe them, not to feel afraid that others will attack them with cruel and heartless assumptions and make fun of them. Stop bullying people!

• 5

7:45 AM - May 7, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

• 51 people are talking about this

Scott C. Waring, World Famous Researcher.@SCWbooks

@david_j_roth @davidfarrier @netflix @deadspin David, How dare you say that! Let me name a few who had a UFO sighting, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, John Lennon, Astronaut Kovalyonok, Astronaut Afanasyev, Astronaut James McDivitt, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, Astronaut Gordon Cooper,

• 5

7:45 AM - May 7, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

• 73 people are talking about this

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

07-05-2020 om 21:30 geschreven door peter  

Aliens Enter Astronauts Bodies Upon Launch Of Apollo 12, NASA Confirms 2 Lightning Strikes On Rocket! UFO Sighting News.

Above photo shows glowing astronaut and lighting striking Apollo 12 rocket. (100% real photos)

Date of sighting: November 14-20, 1969

Location of discovery: Earths Moon

Source photo: 

• https://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/images/print/AS12/46/6826.jpg

Here we have a glowing astronaut on the moon. Its from the Apollo 12 mission from 1969. How is it even possible that an astronaut walking on the moon is glowing? It shouldn't be possible. 

 

We also know the its not a reflection, since there are other other things in the photo. Its not because the suit is white, because other things in the photo are white, but they don't glow. 

 

I believe an alien entity entered this astronauts body and the entity was leaving, and got caught on film. Why would I think this? Because the Apollo 12 rocket was hit by lightning on liftoff, not once...but twice! That is almost impossible. The odds of lightning striking twice in the same place are astronomical. Yet NASA stated that the Apollo 12 rocket was hit twice by lighting on takeoff and no damage was taken. The rocket should have exploded since it was full of rocket fuel to go to the moon and back to earth, yet it had no damage...let me tell you why.

 

So...twice means two entities doesn't it? The lightning was actually two energy entities entering the rocket and entering the bodies of two of the astronauts. Yes, so I wonder who the other astronaut was the carried the alien entity within them?

 

Energy entities are the most highly advanced of any species alien species out there. They probably wanted to see first hand (without interrupting the astronauts thinking in any way) how the astronauts reacted as they entered space and how they did their job from within the capsule. Energy entities don't use ships or drones, they just enter the objects to share the experience and learn from it.

May sound strange...that a alien entity is so powerful they could enter a human body, but one day humans may evolve to such a level...in a few billion years.

Scott C. Waring - UFOlogist

November 14th, 1969, Apollo 12 is struck by lightning on take off.

 

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

07-05-2020 om 21:22 geschreven door peter  

The U.S. military establishment has finally publicly admitted that the infamous Tic-Tac UFO videos are real and the objects in them are unidentified. Do you believe them? Do you think the Pentagon has much more information about these flying objects that hasn’t been released? Of course it does … and most likely so does the Japanese military, which nonetheless has formally requested more data on them from the Pentagon. Will the Pentagon release all of it to Japan? Any of it? Should it?

“No SDF [Self-Defence Force] pilot has encountered a UFO. The videos have come from the US Defence Department so I would like to hear their analysis. I don’t really believe in UFOs. We would like to establish procedures in the event an encounter takes place with a UFO.”

South China Morning Post reports that Japan’s Defence Minister Taro Kono has appealed to the U.S. Defense Department for more info on UFOs which he himself doesn’t believe in. He also claims that no Japanese military pilot has ever encountered a UFO (more on the claim later) but, being a good Defense minister, he wants to develop a protocol so that they are prepared if that day ever happens. Or has it already happened, and this feigned disbelief is merely a cover-up?

“One of the people I have interviewed is Mamoru Sato, who was a wing commander in the Air Self-Defence Force, and who collected testimony from a number of military pilots who had interacted with UFOs. Those reports were met with ridicule and the authorities refused to take him seriously.”

Greg Sullivan, director of the Japan Centre for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, told the South China Morning Post of sightings by Japanese military pilots of a “flying saucer” at close range, a series of highly reflective craft moving at speeds beyond a conventional aircraft and others. Japan’s government has publicly denied the existence of UFOs before. Of course, ridicule and censorship of military pilots reporting UFOs is nothing new – U.S. pilots attest to this and have expressed relief and admiration for the pilots who admitted in public their sightings in the Tic-Tac incidents. However, the denial and cover-ups in Japan seem to extend beyond the military.

In 1994, the flying-saucer-shaped Cosmo Isle Hakui Space and UFO Museum was set to open in Japan with over 10,000 official documents relating to UFO phenomena gathered from multiple countries that would be available to researchers and to the general public. After an FBI investigation, the museum mysteriously switched to just offering memorabilia from space missions. And Japans’ former Prime Minister of Yukio Hatoyama (2009-2010) has intimate knowledge of one particular UFO encounter – that of his wife, Miyuki Hatoyama. In her book, Very Strange Things I’ve Encountered, she described her own UFO encounter in 1970.

“While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus… It was a very beautiful place, and it was very green.”

It’s a safe bet that both Japan and the U.S. know more about UFOs than either will admit to the public. Will they admit it to each other? In these days of fast-shifting alliances and increased military and space competition, that seems unlikely. Should they anyway? Knowledge is power, and the U.S. at the moment is struggling to maintain its place on top of the world power structure. If these are secret aircraft of a human enemy, keeping knowledge of them from further leaking could be considered crucial. Sharing secrets is a sign of trust – do the U.S. and Japan trust each other anymore?

On the other hand, if the Tic-Tacs are hostile alien crafts, wouldn’t an alliance against them be better than going it alone? If they’re not hostile, the U.S. would probably want to be the first to announce them just for the publicity, and giving the knowledge even to an ally runs the risk of leaking.

Bottom line? Japan probably knows about them already and this is just a front by both powers to keep the public at bay. Given the choice — and the fact that the world is getting stir-crazy from the coronavirus lockdowns – most people would probably opt for joining Miyuki Hatoyama on a triangular-shaped UFO to Venus.

Did she say ‘triangle-shaped’? Hmmm.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-05-2020 om 23:37 geschreven door peter  

One of the things I highlight in my new book, The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy, is the fact that the events of December 1980 in those woods were not alone. Several such experiments were undertaken in the U.K.  The following incident – one of at least five – which is very similar to the collective Rendlesham Forest events, occurred in the early 1990s at yet another military base in Suffolk, England. On this occasion it was RAF Lakenheath. As Militarybases.com state of the base: “Royal Air Force Lakenheath is a RAF military base that is run and operated by the U.S. Air Force. It exclusively hosts American troops. It is located in Suffolk, in the eastern part of the United Kingdom…The installation is a co-base run by the Americans under the British regulations and laws…It was activated on site in 1952 and represents one of the longest lasting units in the Air Force, serving in the area for almost 60 years. The wing counts almost 8000 individuals. About 2000 of them are British civilians and family members, while almost 6000 are active military troops.”

Jets at RAF Lakenheath

-

The original source of the story was a UFO researcher named Roy Wilkinson. He shared it, in the late-1990s, with Matthew Williams. The latter is someone who, for a number of years, was a Criminal Investigator with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Today, it is called HM Revenue and Customs. Williams told me that it was late one night, during the course of military operations in Suffolk woods, when something very strange happened. Over to Williams: “A report came through that on one particular night those on maneuvers should expect to see something being tested in the area; and when the testing was taking place, they were to ignore it: pretend it’s not there and carry as normal.” Quite understandably, as Williams says: “They found this a bit hard to do, because when this thing came along, it was actually a ball of light and was too small to be manned – so it had to be a remote drone of some kind, they thought. But, it was pure light, no mechanics, no rockets, no noise, which makes me think it wasn’t a drone. And this thing moved silently above the area where they were on maneuvers – off the base and in the woods.”

Back to Williams: “Then, the light increased in intensity and illuminated the whole area like a flare would. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and just broke their orders. They watched this thing for a minute or so, and then it diminished in size and went off at a high speed into the distance. Everyone was talking about this and, really, it unnerved them to a certain degree. The whole evening’s events were then called off, because everything was in such a state of disarray. If the military experimented with things which could be perceived to be UFOs, i.e., balls of light, then – because of their knowledge that the event was going to happen – they would have to have those UFOs stored somewhere near.”

Both tellingly and suspiciously, the very next day several of the personnel involved were extensively questioned by senior officers. Those senior officers wanted to know what the witnesses thought of the incident: did they believe the statement that something had been “tested” in the skies over Suffolk? Or did they distrust their senior officers, and think it was really a UFO that was encountered? Could it have been an alien spacecraft? Did anyone have strange dreams after returning to their base and falling asleep after dawn? What was it that caused them to go against their orders? Was the whole thing too fantastic and panic-inducing to prevent the men from operating in the ways expected of the military? These were fascinating – almost bizarre – questions. They were also questions that suggested the senior officers in charge of the operation were very keen to see what the effects were on the men who were exposed to the phenomenon. With a fair degree of hindsight, we can say that the Lakenheath incident was a perfectly orchestrated operation designed to see just how far and wide the human mind could be tampered with – and using unwitting military personnel as the targeted individuals. Just like the Rendlesham Forest affair.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-05-2020 om 22:28 geschreven door peter  

Some UFO cases are weirder than others. On June 27, 1947, a man by the name of Harold Dahl was out with his son, his dog, and two other men on a harbor patrol boat near the east shore of Maury Island, on the Puget Sound in Washington state. On this day he was out gathering logs that might be a danger to shipping, which they would then sell for a salvage fee, but his work was interrupted and his attention drawn to the sky when he allegedly spotted six “donut-shaped” objects hovering about a half a mile up in the air directly above them. Whatever they were seemed to glint as if made from some sort of metal, and they were estimated as being rather large, at 100 feet in diameter. This was all quite odd enough as it was, but it took a turn into the bizarre when one of the unusual objects suddenly dropped from the sky and Dahl could now see it had what looked like portholes along the side and even an observation deck. This would be the beginning of a very odd early UFO case that would bring together aliens, conspiracies, and the notorious Men in Black.

As the outlandish object fell further and further, it almost seemed as if it were on a collision course with the boat, and so Dahl began getting out of there as fast as he could, managing to make it to shore, from where he continued to observe the otherworldly series of events playing out over the sound. He allegedly took some photographs of the strange craft, and then something would happen to make it all even stranger still. At some point another of the craft dropped down to join the first one that had descended and seemed to join up with it somehow, like a kind of docking maneuver. However, whatever the craft were trying to do does not seem to have been successful, as a terrifying sequence of events would then unfold.

Maury Island

Dahl would claim that there was a sudden loud noise, and one of the ships began spewing out pieces of a white metal, followed by an eruption of what looked like “lava rocks” that hissed and steamed when they hit the water and flew everywhere. Some of these shards of dark material evidently were propelled towards the witnesses, raining down upon them, with one of the pieces injuring Dahl’s son and another actually killing his dog. After this the objects flew off and the terrified witnesses were left reeling. They then took their boat back to their original dock, finding that the radio was in operational and disposing of the dead dog along the way, and upon arrival Dahl wasted no time in telling the whole strange tale to his supervisor, Fred Crisman. At first the supervisor was skeptical, but when he saw the photos that Dahl had taken, he was curious. Crisman later allegedly went out to Maury Island to see the scene for himself, and as he was there he said he also saw of the UFOs, which he had the impression was watching him. It would only get weirder from there.

The morning after the incident, Dahl says that someone paid him a visit at his home. It was an unfamiliar man in a black suit, with a large black Buick lurking out past him sitting on the street. The stranger invited Dahl to have breakfast with him, which for some reason Dahl accepted, and they found themselves at a nearby restaurant. As they ate, the man began retelling the tale of what happened to Dahl exactly as it had happened down to the last detail, which startled him because it was almost as if he had been there. The black-suited man then issued a stark warning to Dahl not to speak of any of it to anyone, and that bad things would happen to him and his family if he were to do so. The mysterious man then made his departure and drove off in his enigmatic vehicle to leave Dahl sitting there shaking in fear and disbelief. It is largely thought that this is probably the earliest known report of one of the enigmatic Men in Black.

Despite the dire warning, Dahl and Crisman made efforts to get their story out, sending the photographs and pieces of the strange white metal to a Chicago publisher named Ray Palmer, and Palmer would then relay the tale to UFO investigator Kenneth Arnold. Upon hearing of this outlandish account, Arnold excitedly made arrangements to meet with Dahl and Crisman personally, flying out to Washington along with a pilot named E.J. Smith. After hearing the two men’s accounts and examining the supposed UFO fragments, they became convinced that Dahl and Crisman were telling the truth, and notified Federal investigators about it all. In July of 1947, two intelligence officers, Captain Lee Davidson and First Lieutenant Frank Brown of the U.S. Army Air Force, were sent to do their own investigation into the matter, interviewing the two witnesses before heading back to their base at Hamilton Field, California aboard a B-25 bomber, supposedly along with some samples of the material from the UFO. Rather eerily, they would never make it, their plane crashing near Centralia, Washington to kill them both.

Adding to the intrigue of it all was that several witnesses would step forward to say they had heard what sounded like anti-aircraft fire at the time of the crash, and that they believed the plane had been shot down. Curiously, a journalist named Paul Lance, with the Tacoma Times, would write an article titled “Sabotage Hinted in Crash of Army Bomber at Kelso: Plane May Hold Flying Disk Secret,” in which he talks about the idea that the plane had been sabotaged or shot down, and also confirms that it was carrying some sort of classified cargo, only for Lance to turn up dead a few weeks later. Apparently, no cause of death could be ascertained. Making it all even weirder is that two of the bomber’s crew had been able to parachute to safety, with only the two investigators going down with the plane. Coincidence or not? The FBI would quickly deem the crash an accident. What happened to the supposed pieces of the UFO that were purportedly onboard? Did Lance’s death have anything to do with all of this? Who knows?

B-52

In the end, the feds would dismiss the entire affair of what was being called the “Maury Island Incident” as a hoax, saying that the pieces of metal retrieved were merely aluminum, and that the men were just enacting a publicity stunt. It did not help that Dahl himself would later admit that it was all a hoax, but then again he had once said that he planned to claim it was a hoax if questioned by authorities in order to get them off his back, meaning it is hard to know if it was a true confession or not. Dahl would also later recant his confession in a 1950 issue of Fate Magazine and say that it was not a hoax after all. As spectacular as all of this talk of exploding UFOs and Men in Black was, it did not really receive wide attention at all until it was written of in the 1956 book They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, by UFO researcher Gray Barker, which helped to propel both it and the notion of the shadowy Men in Black into the public consciousness.

In the end it is hard to know what to make of all of this, and theories have abounded. The official explanation is that this was all a hoax carried out by Dahl and Crisman, that there were never and pieces of metal or rock from the UFO, and that the B-52 bomber crash was merely an unfortunate and unrelated accident, its connection to the Maury Island Incident simply a coincidence. However, of course conspiracy theories abound, chief among them being that the government did find something, and that the crash was orchestrated to eliminate the investigators and their evidence. This ties in with Dahl’s claim of his strange black-suited visitor, and it is hard not to think that the timing of the crash and its victims, as well as the mysterious death of Paul Lance, are more than just a coincidence. Whatever happened here, it remains a case that has never really been solved, a tale of intrigue and conspiracies, and a curious early account of the Men in Black

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

05-05-2020 om 21:53 geschreven door peter  

Patriotic UFOs "Flash Red, White & Blue" To Jimmy Carter, 8 Years Before He Is US President, UFO Sighting News.

Date of sighting: January 6, 1969
Location of sighting: Leary, Georgia, USA

This UFO sighting is proof that these aliens have knowledge of the future and probably have time travel. 

In this interview with US President Jimmy Carter, he mentions something I have never heard him say before about the sighting. He said he saw the UFO flashing lights...red...white...and...blue. The color of the American flag. Thats right folks, the UFO not only knew who Jimmy Carter was at the time, but the aliens knew who Jimmy Carter was going to be in 8 more years. They tried to salute the future US president by flashing the American colors to him...for ten minutes. So it looks like Jimmy had the aliens blessings. They stuck around long enough to show Jimmy aliens and UFOs are real.  But I don't think anyone has ever linked the flashing colors of that UFO to the colors of the American flag before. I wonder if President Jimmy Carter ever thought about that. Watch the video below and listen to him describe the colors at the 33 second mark. I wonder what else the aliens did to Jimmy to help him? Did they manipulate his mind in any way? Did they try to persuade him to reveal the truth about the existence of aliens to the world? 

If the UFO stopped at about 500-1,000 meters away as Jimmy says, then for them to know who he was, they must have had some telepathy, some ways of reading human thoughts from far away to assess who it was standing there. Although he downplayed the sighting on national TV, if you read the details below...you will see it left a lasting effect on him and that he did believe it was an alien craft. 
Scott C. Waring 

FULL REPORT OF JIMMY CARTERS SIGHTING BELOW:

Carter’s UFO sighting began shortly after dark on a windless night. Jimmy Carter was standing outside the Lion’s Club in Leary, Georgia, waiting for a meeting to start. Suddenly, he and ten or more witnesses, sighted a red and green orb radiating in the western sky. Carter described an object that "it seemed to move towards us from a distance, stop, move partially away, return, then depart. Bluish at first; then reddish - luminous - not solid." "At times," reported Carter, "it was as bright as the moon, and about as big as the moon - maybe a bit smaller. The object was luminous; not solid." In an interview with the Atlanta Constitution, Carter described the moving nature of the event. He described the sighting as a "very remarkable sight."

This is an important event, because many of the skeptical investigations done on the Carter sighting, have tried to paint the event as a ho-hum occurrence. None of the descriptions Carter has made of the event have ever described it as ho-hum. Jimmy Carter’s mother Lillian also confirmed that Carter had been very impressed by what he had seen. "The UFO made a huge impression on Jimmy," she stated. "He told me about the sighting many times. He’s always been a down-to-earth no-nonsense boy, and the sighting by him, as far as I am concerned, is as firm as money in the bank." Carter had, in fact, described the UFO sighting many times in the years since it occurred.

In every instance, including the latest known telling of the story at Emory University in 1997, Carter has never backed off on the spectacular nature of the event. He has also never conceded that was he saw was some misidentification of a natural phenomena. Carter estimated that the object was three hundred to one thousand yards away. He estimated that the event had lasted 10 minutes. Then the object disappeared. Carter was so impressed by what he had seen, he recorded his impressions of the event on a tape recorder at the time.

Videos, selected by peter2011

{ https://www.etdatabase.com/ }

05-05-2020 om 15:25 geschreven door peter  

“In the final days of December 1980, strange encounters and bizarre incidents occurred in the heart of Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. Based upon their personal encounters, many of the military personnel who were present at the time believed that something extraterrestrial came down in those dark woods. What if, however, there was another explanation for what happened four decades ago? What if that explanation, if revealed, proved to be even more controversial than the theory that aliens arrived from a faraway world? The ramifications for the field of Ufology would be immense. In my new book – The Rendlesham Forest UFO Conspiracy – I reveal that one of the most famous UFO cases of all time was really a series of top secret experiments using holograms, mind-control programs, deception, disinformation, conspiracies and cover-ups. The shocking truth of a forty-year-old mystery is now revealed.” Those are my words. They also happen to be words I absolutely stand by.

That’s right: after having spent a long time digging into certain aspects of the Rendlesham affair, I’m sure that aliens never, ever landed in the forest. In many ways, it was something much stranger. As to why I come to such a controversial conclusion, read on. In the final days of December 1980 multiple, strange encounters and wild incidents occurred in Rendlesham Forest, Suffolk, England. And across a period of three nights, no less. Based upon their personal encounters, many of those who were present believed that something almost unbelievable came down in the near-pitch-black woods on the night of December 26. Lives were altered forever. That said, let’s now get to the heart of the controversy.

One of the most important revelations in this overall story concerns the locations of where the monumental events happened. I’m actually not talking about Rendlesham Forest. At least, right now I’m not. Rather, I’m talking about the surrounding locales and their mysterious histories. And why do I consider it my duty to bring your attention to those same surroundings? I’ll tell you: it’s vital to note that for decades the entire area around those famous woods acted as a powerful magnet for classified government programs, sensitive military operations, and top secret projects. They were all of a highly important – but down to earth and domestic – nature. On January 28, 1935, the Tizard Committee, established under the directorship of Sir Henry Tizard, convened its first meeting. It ultimately led to the top secret development of a workable radar system of the type that was employed in the Second World War.

To understand the wider scope of this part of the story, we must address one of the strangest – and one of the most enduring – stories from the Second World War. Arguably, it has become a legend; a most grim and grisly one, too. It concerns a small village in Suffolk called Shingle Street. It is located in between the aforementioned Bawdsey and Orford. As the Guardian newspaper says: “Shingle Street itself has been the subject of fevered speculation ever since it was evacuated in 1940. Conspiracies include rumors of a German landing and a shoreline littered with burning bodies, schemes to protect the coastline with an impenetrable barrage of flames and the testing of experimental chemical bombs. Four dead German airmen were certainly washed up on the beach, and weapons testing did result in the Lifeboat Inn being blown up. As for the rest, the conspiracy theories rumble on.”

We’ll now take a look at a place called Orford Ness and what went happened there in the 1950s. The U.K.’s National Trust state: “The 1950s saw the construction of specialized facilities to exploit new post-war technologies such as nuclear power. AWRE [Atomic Weapons Research Establishment] Orford Ness was one of only a few sites in the U.K., and indeed the world, where purpose-built facilities were created for testing the components of nuclear weapons. At the height of the Cold War AWRE and the Royal Aircraft Establishment used Orford Ness for developmental work on the atomic bomb.” Moving onto the 1960s, there is the following from the National Trust: “In 1968 work started on the top secret Anglo-American System 441A ‘over-the-horizon’ (OTH) backscatter radar project, finally code-named ‘Cobra Mist.’ The Anglo-American project, whose main contractor was the Radio Corporation of America, was set up to carry out several ‘missions.’ including detection and tracking of aircraft, detection of missile and satellite vehicle launchings, fulfilling intelligence requirements and providing a research and development test-bed…”

All of the above, top secret research was undertaken only a handful of miles from Rendlesham Forest. That’s right: the area has been the location of highly classified experiments since the 1930s. My research has led me to conclude that the “UFO incident” was just another secret experiment. One of the most important parts of this story revolves around the testing of advanced holograms. There is strong evidence that demonstrates the military men in the woods were led to believe they were seeing a UFO landing, and alien activity, when in reality things were very different. Namely, a huge operation designed to deceive on a massive scale. Ray Boeche is someone who has a longstanding involvement in the Rendlesham case. I interviewed Ray extensively for my book. He met with two U.S. Department of Defense whistle-blowers who told him what really happened at Rendlesham Forest. Ray said to me: “They said there was a sense that this was maybe, in some sense, staged. Or, that some of the senior people there were more concerned with the reaction of the men, how they responded to the situation, rather than what was actually going on. That this was some sort of psychotronic device – a hologram – to see what sort of havoc they can wreak with people.”

Jenny Randles was onto this angle too: “This is a device which manipulates the subatomic basis of matter at a quantum level and builds a bridge between mind and physical substance. If I understood it correctly, this supposedly stimulated the mind into having vivid hallucinations but, at the same time, created physical effects in the real world which could take on a semblance of the appearance of the hallucinated images.”  Clearly, exposing military personnel to advanced hologram-based technology in those woods, and late at night, would have been a perfect way of gauging just how successfully the manufactured visions had achieved their goals. Those goals were: the creation of holographic UFOs that could interact with not just the environment, but with those who were in its presence, too.

There’s also evidence that at least some of the men were affected by hallucinogens. Over the years, the late Georgina Bruni (who wrote You Can’t Tell the People)  provided me with various data that related to a connection between the Rendlesham Forest experiment and scientists at Porton Down, Wiltshire, U.K. As the BBC note, U.K. military personnel were regularly used in secret mind-altering experiments at Porton Down in the 1950s and 1960s. So, why not use American personnel who were stationed to the United Kingdom in December 1980? The BBC say: “Porton Down was set up in 1916. It was a center designed to test chemical and biological weapons. Nerve gases such as Sarin and CS gas were tested on volunteer servicemen. Servicemen were offered around £2 and three days leave as an incentive to take part in tests. Very few servicemen knew what they were volunteering for and some were even told it was research into the cure for the common cold. In 1953 it is alleged that serviceman Ronald Maddison died after taking part in a Sarin gas experiment. In 1962, one of Porton Down’s own scientists, Geoffrey Bacon died of the plague. Since the end of WWII, 20,000 people have taken part in experiments at Porton Down.” LSD was tested at Porton Down, too. On military personnel, no less. And as the Guardian newspaper stated in 2005: “Fifty years ago, Eric Gow had a baffling and unexplained experience. As a 19-year-old sailor, he remembers going to a clandestine military establishment, where he was given something to drink in a sherry glass and experienced vivid hallucinations.”

It was in January 2001 that the then-retired – and now late – British Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Hill-Norton, decided to get into the Rendlesham Forest controversy. Having had an interest in UFOs for decades, he used his considerable clout to try and figure out what occurred in 1980. It was hardly an easy task for Hill-Norton to achieve. Of specific interest to Hill-Norton were the claims of a connection to the activities of the Porton Down staff. He wanted to know “whether personnel from Porton Down visited Rendlesham Forest or the area surrounding RAF Watton in December 1980 or January 1981; and whether they are aware of any tests carried out in either of those two areas aimed at assessing any nuclear, biological or chemical hazard.”

Hill-Norton got a response from the government he had dutifully worked for. It was not, however, the reply that he hoped for. The reply came from Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean. She spoke on behalf of the MoD, who provided nothing but a concise comment that didn’t really advance the investigation into the case at all. The baroness said: “The staff at the Defense Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) Chemic and Biological Defense (CBD) laboratories at Porton Down have made a thorough search of their archives and have found no record of any such visits.” It has to be said that government agencies – and their fawning lackeys – can be extremely careful about what they say and how they say it. It should be noted that Baroness Symons never said that there was no Rendlesham-Porton link. What she said was that no evidence of such a connection had been found. That’s a very different thing, altogether. Playing things carefully and tactfully provides government personnel with a perfect “get out clause,” in the event that additional information might later surface that shows the earlier claims to have been erroneous.

Mind-control, hallucinogens, holograms, and a location that has been a hotbed for highly classified experiments since the 1930s: they were all key components that led to the creation of one of the most famous UFO cases of all time. Except for one thing: the whole situation was nothing but an incredible, disturbing, series of tests to see just how far the human mind could be manipulated – and how such technologies could potentially, one day, play significant roles on the battlefield.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

04-05-2020 om 20:33 geschreven door peter  

The year was 1966, and the children of Westall High School, in Melbourne, Australia, were going about their daily business and out playing in the school yard. There was nothing at all that marked this as anything other than an ordinary day, until something very strange appeared in the sky above them. Coming in from the distance was a greyish saucer-shaped craft with a slight purple hue, also described as “a round humped object with a flat base,” which then came in low over the high school’s south-west corner to disappear behind a nearby stand of trees, beyond which was a paddock and an overgrown field and wilderness area called the Grange. After a few moments it then popped up over the trees again and moved off into the distance, with some witnesses later claiming that it was then pursued by what appeared to be several military aircraft, and the entire bizarre scene played out in front of over 300 students and teachers. This would go on to become one of the most intriguing mass UFO reports in Australian history, and still has many questions surrounding it.

Oddly, at the time not much was reported on the incident, despite the sheer number of witnesses. It was mentioned in only a few brief articles in The Dandenong Journal and The Age, which wrote it off as a weather balloon and that was that. There were UFO researchers and journalists who tried to get more information, but strangely most of the witnesses were uncooperative and reluctant to talk about it, some outright refusing to meet with interviewers, and it turned out that all of the teachers and students had been told not to speak of the incident to anyone. On top of this, school authorities apparently did their best to deny access to the witnesses in the first place, and it seemed as if there was a drive to sort of brush it all under the carpet. However, over the years more and more of the people who saw that strange sight began to open up about it.

As more witnesses came forward, a clearer picture began to emerge about what happened. It would be discovered that some witnesses had actually seen more than one of the objects, and that it seemed as if the military craft had been chasing any trying to engage them. Although there could be found no records of any aircraft scheduled to be in the area, either commercial or military. It was also found that the UFO had left a mark in the ground, which appeared as a circle of yellowed grass with a “swirly pattern,” and that some witnesses had seen official looking men in blue uniforms inspecting this mark. One of the most interesting pieces of the puzzle uncovered was during an interview with one of the witnesses at the time, a science teacher from the Westall school by the name of Andrew Greenwood. In a recorded interview with UFO researcher Dr. James E. McDonald, Greenwood would divulge a good amount of information on what was seen that day. McDonald would describe what Greenwood had told him:

Greenwood told me the UFO was first brought to his attention by a hysterical child who ran into his classroom and told him there’s a flying saucer outside,” McDonald says on the recording. He thought this child had become deranged or something so he didn’t take any notice, but when the child insisted that this object was in the sky he decided to go out and have a look for himself.

He called it the most amazing flying he had ever seen in his life. The planes were doing everything possible to approach the object and he said how they all avoided a collision he will never know. Every time they got too close to the object it would slowly accelerate, then rapidly accelerate and then move away from them and stop. Then they would take off after it again and the same thing would happen.

Greenwood would explain that the whole spectacle had lasted around 20 minutes, and that shortly after the headmaster had warned the faculty and students not to talk about what they had seen with anyone, even going so far as to threaten to fire or expel anyone who did. Some even spoke of some sort of military-looking figures lurking about. According to him, this was enough to get many of the witnesses to shut up about it all, and is one of the main reasons the whole story just sort of fell off the media’s radar, only really being unearthed until years later. Yet, even now decades later the witnesses have stuck to their stories and insist on what they saw, leaving us to try and figure out what it could have been.

One idea is that it was just as the original articles stated, merely a weather balloon or perhaps a high altitude balloon used to test for radiation in the atmosphere, with one of these apparently in the area at around the time of the incident. One notion is that it was a sort of practice target used by the military called a “drogue,” which would have been a nylon, tube shaped object towed by one plane for other aircraft to chase and engage. This certainly seems plausible, but a major detail of the report is that the main craft descended to land in that field before taking off again, and furthermore there are no records of any sort of military aerial activities in the area at the time. There is also the theory that this might have been some sort of experimental aircraft, but the mystery has never really been solved, despite several documentaries delving into it, such as the 2010 Westall ‘66: A Suburban UFO Mystery.

To this day one can still see an information board at the school commemorating the event, although it seems to be just as obscure a case as ever. What did these people see that day and why exactly were they so reluctant to talk about it? Did the military have some hand in trying to cover this up? There are not many answers, and it remains a very curious mass UFO sighting that has been sort of mostly forgotten.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }

04-05-2020 om 20:19 geschreven door peter