From almost the days of the actual trip, rumors have flown about possible UFO sightings during the Apollo 11 mission and first manned landing on the Moon. Buzz Aldrin still insists that his comments about a light he saw were taken out of context and what he saw was simply a reflection of the sun off of panels jettisoned from the rocket that had carried them into orbit. The same was said to be true of comments made by Armstrong that were misconstrued over the years to be about something other than space junk. However, a newly released letter written by someone back in the news claims that the first man on the moon had more than just a passing-by-while-in-the-sky interest in UFOs.

“This letter could be somewhat historic because it might actually confirm that Armstrong did have an interest in UFOs.”

Neil Armstrong

Sun Online says the letter (see it here) was discovered by Dr. Irena Scott, a former Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer and author of a new book about UFO encounters, “Sacred Corridors.” Dr. Scott is well-known in UFOolgy circles, having served on the MUFON Board of Directors and as a MUFON consultant in physiology and astronomy and a field investigator. The author of the letter is Professor J. Allen Hynek, who has posthumously received 15 more minutes of fame as the focal point of the History Channel’s new series on Project Blue Book.The recipient of the handwritten letter (remember those?) was Jennie Zeidman, a close friend of Hynek who also worked with him at Wright Patterson Air Force Base on Project Blue Book.

“Dear Jennie. A week from today we sail … I got called up by the cruise director asking if the Hyneks would mind sharing a table with the Armstrongs! So – tell Barry I should be able to get the autograph for him! Did I tell you I’m going?”

Hynek was referring to an upcoming two-week cruise from New York to the west coast of Africa in 1973 on which 2,000 teachers, artists, authors, scientists and celebrities would observe a total solar eclipse and listen to lectures and discussions, including a panel with Hynek and Armstrong called “Life in the Universe.” To Scott, this is proof that, while Armstrong never publicly discussed his UFO interests, he intentionally sought on the cruise to have such discussions with a recognized expert in the field.

Sun Online also reveals Scott found evidence that Neil Armstrong and J. Allen Hynek also contacted ufologist and author Leonard Stringfield, who was at one time the director of Civilian Research, Interplanetary Flying Objects (CRIFO).

“Stringfield said that a number of years ago when Armstrong was on the board of directors of a Cincinnati bank, Armstrong and Hynek approached him with a proposal to protect the names of the government-connected informants. Armstrong said Stringfield could put his list of names in a safety deposit box at Armstrong’s bank, to which it was assumed Armstrong would also have access. The intention was that in the event of Stringfield’s death, the names wouldn’t be lost, but Stringfield rejected the idea.”

Scott implies that Armstrong was trying to help Stringfield protect the identities of 50 UFO informants. She is sketchy on this – Stringfield died in 1994 and Scott admits in the Sun article that she has no proof it actually occurred but uses it as proof that that Armstrong and Hynek had ongoing contacts, implying Armstrong had lifelong interest in UFOs and in discussing – and perhaps even covering up – their existence with a leader in the field.

So, what does this letter show? Armstrong and Hynek were already going to be on the ship together and sharing at least one panel, but it could be a sign that Armstrong had more to discuss in private – although a cruise ship dining room isn’t exactly private or secure, especially when many onboard were interested in the same subject matter and wanted to be close to the famed astronaut. Being before the fact, the letter doesn’t tell us what was actually discussed and there seems to be no published followup. Nor is there any for the the alleged but unproven meeting with Stringfield. The strongest point there is that Armstrong and Hynek had contact long after the cruise.

For now, it’s an interesting footnote – just in need of a little more foot.

Last year, I wrote a piece here at Mysterious Universe examining historical cases of UFO censorship in Hollywood products. For the most part, those censorship efforts were in line with the CIA Robertson Panel’s officially stated policy that UFOs are essentially non-existent and should therefore be “debunked and demystified” through media channels.

But what about the flipside of the coin? Is there any substance to the popular notion that the government has been using Hollywood not to censor UFO information, but to encourage us to believe in alien visitation? Conclusive proof of a UFO acclimation agenda remains elusive as the entire theory rests on only a small handful of cases scattered across the decades, which I present in my book, Silver Screen Saucers. Arguably the most compelling case in support of a government alien acclimation agenda is that of the feature documentary film UFOs: Past, Present, and Future (1974).

In 1972, filmmaker Robert Emenegger and his producing partner Allan Sandler were encouraged by the United States Air Force (USAF) to make a major documentary feature about the UFO phenomenon. Emenegger, a former Vice President and Creative Director at Grey Advertising (a real-life Don Draper from Man Men), told me that his partner “had very strange connections” for a producer and that he thought Sandler “did things for the CIA, and maybe even the FBI… they all seemed to work together.”

Robert Emenegger and the book based on his documentary film of the same name.

Emenegger was ideally suited to an assignment of this nature. As a student at UCLA in the mid-1950s, his thesis examined “The Influence of Motion Pictures on Public Behavior,” and the the young Emenegger was particularly interested in how cinema could be used “as an instrument of propaganda.” Additionally, Emenegger had spent a number of years working for the United States Information Agency (or USIA—a politically correct name given the government’s long-running propaganda agency). Emenegger had also performed duties for President Richard Nixon. In December 1968, the then President-elect wrote to Emenegger seeking his “active participation and assistance” in finding “exceptional individuals” worthy of appointment in his incoming administration. Nixon referred to Emenegger as “a leader” and “in a position to know and recommend… the best minds in America.”

Norton Air Force Base, circa 1970.

Emenegger described to me how he was briefed on the UFO project at Norton Air Force Base in “a clean room used by the CIA… so there was no way anyone could eavesdrop on us.” In an offer similar to that made to Walt Disney some twenty years earlier, the USAF promised Emenegger real UFO footage, this time allegedly showing a UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in 1971 and the subsequent face-to-face meeting between alien visitors and delegates of the US government. Emenegger was sceptical, but he was assured by the USAF that the footage existed and was genuine.

While he waited for the footage to materialize, Emenegger and his crew continued with their wider production research, for which they were given unprecedented access to DoD facilities, including the Pentagon. Emenegger was even granted time with high-ranking military officers well-versed in UFO-related matters, among them Col. William Coleman, a former spokesman for Project Blue Book, and Col. George Weinbrenner, then head of Foreign Technology at Wright Patterson Air Force Base—the location where alien materials and bodies allegedly recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash are said to have been stored.

Col. William Coleman.

But who in the Air Force would sign off on such a controversial project? Emenegger put this question to Pentagon spokesman Col. Coleman, who informed him that “the Secretary of the Air Force gave us the order to cooperate.” Thus, in an unprecedented move, the Air Force, Army, and Navy gave their full backing to a UFO-themed production—so too did NASA, who provided Emenegger’s research team with previously unreleased photographs of what appeared to be UFOs in space taken by Gemini astronauts. “We had carte blanche to go anywhere, ask any questions,” Emenegger told me, “there were no restrictions put on us.”  Emenegger even claims to have been shown “top secret” footage shot at Vandenberg Air Force Base which showed two UFOs “playfully running behind” a US missile.

After months of shooting, Emenegger’s documentary was complete, save for one crucial ingredient—the much-hyped alien landing footage. At the eleventh hour, the USAF withdrew its permission for use of the material; the political climate had changed, it said, and was now deemed inappropriate due to the Watergate scandal, which had recently broken in the news. “I felt like we had egg on our face,” Emenegger told me. “I felt cheated that we were not allowed to see this film. It was taken back to the Pentagon… I stupidly expected to have this footage, which would have been earth-shattering.”  Today, Emenegger seems as baffled by the whole affair as anyone, “Were we had? Were we being used?” he asks.

Emenegger’s Golden-Globe-nominated documentary, UFOs: Past, Present and Future, was finally released in 1974 and was ground-breaking in its extensive use of information provided by the DoD. In addition to the aforementioned photographs from NASA, it featured sit-down interviews with the former heads of Project Blue Book, and footage shot inside the Pentagon of Col. Coleman talking open-mindedly about the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis. In the absence of the landing footage, Emenegger was forced to include an animated reconstruction of the event as described to him by the USAF, complete with artistic renderings of the alleged aliens. The documentary presented the incident as “one that might happen in the future, or perhaps could have happened already.”

An artist’s imagining of the alleged Holloman UFO landing, based on details provided to the filmmakers by the US Air Force.

But the promised landing footage wasn’t entirely absent, at least not according to Emenegger. During the dramatic reconstruction of the alleged landing, eagle-eyed viewers can catch a few frames of what appears to be a genuine, self-luminescent Unidentified Flying Object descending slowly in the distance against the backdrop of Holloman’s surrounding landscape. These frames, Emenegger claims, were taken from the original landing footage and authorised by the USAF during the editing stage for use in his completed documentary.

Although Emenegger’s documentary was green-lit by the Secretary of the Air Force, the roots of the project likely lead back to Langley, Virginia, and to the CIA. Emenegger revealed to me that it was his production partner, the CIA-connected Allan Sandler, who brought the project to him in the first place; and let us not forget that Emenegger received his briefing at Norton Air Force Base in a CIA “clean room.” Furthermore, Emenegger told me that a “CIA courier” named Dick Beske shadowed him and his crew throughout his documentary’s entire production process. Beske was “always hanging around us,” said Emenegger, “observing.”

Richard “Dick” Beske later became a member of the steering group for Veteran Intelligence Officers for Sanity (VIPS), an organization comprised of former and serving officials of the United States Intelligence Community, including some from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the U.S. State Department’s Intelligence Bureau, and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). VIPs was formed in January 2003 as a “coast-to-coast enterprise” to protest the use of faulty intelligence in the lead-up to the US-led invasion of Iraq.

It should be noted that Emenegger’s documentary was re-edited and re-released in 1979 featuring additional content. It also received a new title: UFOs: It has Begun. You can watch it here (the Holloman landing reconstruction begins around the 1:17:00 mark, towards the end of the documentary)…

Could it be there really is a government agenda to acclimate us to UFO reality? If so, then, on the face of it, those behind this agenda would, at times, have been working in direct opposition to the Pentagon, which has worked hard over the years to keep UFOs out of the popular imagination and/or to distance itself from UFO conspiracy theories onscreen. But perhaps there has long been a separate, more sophisticated power group working through the national security apparatus—one whose Hollywood agenda transcends the polarized dynamic of debunk vs. acclimate? The UFO subject has always been a divisive one, even within the corridors of power, and it would be a mistake to assume that all branches of the government and military see eye-to-eye on this thorny issue. If there is a hidden hand tweaking and seeding Hollywood’s UFO-themed products, it could well belong to a group or agency so secretive that its very existence is unknown to the public—a quasi-governmental/quasi-private entity accountable only to itself. Something to contemplate while you’re munching on your popcorn at the next big alien movie.

Loch Ness, Scotland has a reputation for high-strangeness. It dates back not just to relatively recent times, but centuries ago, even. There is, for example, the 565 AD affair of St. Columba, who allegedly saw a strange creature in the waters of the River Ness, which flows from the huge loch. More than a thousand years later, there was a deep belief in the area that the waters of Loch Ness were home to what became known as “water horses” or “kelpies.” They were dangerous and deadly shapeshifters. From 1899 to 1913, the “Great Beast” himself, Aleister Crowley, had a home at Loch Ness: Boleskine House. In 1933, the phenomenon of “the Loch Ness Monster” took off big time. In the 1970s, Nessie seeker Ted Holiday had an encounter at the loch with a Man in Black. In other words, Loch Ness is definitively weird.

More Loch Ness weirdness hit the news in 2011, specifically in August of that year. The UK’s Daily Express newspaper splashed a headline across its pages that read: “Alert as UFO is sighted over Loch Ness.” The story was, undoubtedly, an odd one. That something occurred does not appear to be in doubt. It is, however, the nature of the “something” that remains open to debate. It was on the night of August 20, 2011 that a number of people –many being completely independent of each other – encountered something unusual in the skies over Loch Ness. Witness descriptions of the movements of the object fell into two camps: those who said they saw it descending into the loch and those who maintained it was actually hovering above the expansive waters. As for the appearance of the UFO, it very much depended on who one asked. But, whatever it was, it quickly caught the attention of the emergency services, who were contacted by worried locals.

Martin Douglas, of the Loch Ness Life Boat crew, told the Daily Mail that someone in the area had seen what, superficially at least, resembled a microlight or a hang-glider, and which actually seemed to enter the loch in a controlled flight. Oddly, however, others who saw the unknown craft described it as being somewhat balloon-shaped. Then there were those who opined it looked eerily like a fully-open parachute.  There was, then, no real, solid consensus on what was seen – or on what wasn’t seen. Crew member Vivian Bailey added that although the mystery was not resolved, the emergency services were pleased that concerned people had quickly contacted them. There is, however, a very odd afterword to all this.

Exactly one month previously, on July 21, law enforcement offices in the vicinity of 125-miles-long Lake Champlain – which covers parts of New York and Vermont, and portions of Quebec, Canada – were inundated with calls from worried locals, all who had seen a balloon-like object fall into the huge lake, near Rouses Point, New York. Police and Border Patrol personnel were quickly dispatched and scoured the area, but with no luck. After around four hours, the search was called off. It remained a mystery. It should be noted, however, that, just like Loch Ness, Lake Champlain has its own resident monster. Champ – as the creature is famously known – is, like Nessie, a large, long-necked leviathan that has taken on near-legendary proportions.

Is it only coincidence that two lakes on opposite sides of the world – both with resident monsters – should have been the sites of unusual, and very similar, UFO-like activity within a month of each other? Or is this yet further evidence of profound paranormal weirdness wherever lake monsters lurk?

Just a few weeks ago, I did a radio show on UFOs that started off on the Men in Black, but which later became focused on the well-known document titled Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs, a part of which was focused on alien life. It was a document written by an employee of the Brookings Institution named Donald N. Michael. The report was contracted by the Committee on Long Range Studies, which was an arm of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The document was completed and provided to the House of Representatives in the 87^th United States Congress on April 18, 1961.

The host of the show referred, on several occasions, to the “top secret” nature of the document. I pointed out that the document had not been top secret at all. “Yes, it was,” was the reply. “No, it was not,” I hit back. Other people who phoned in said the document had a high classification. One caller stated it had “been classified above top secret.” There is no “above top secret” category, by the way. Matters went on like this for around fifteen minutes. Afterwards, and for a few days, I decided to run a little experiment. I spoke to a few people in Ufology about the Brookings report and deliberately steered the conversation in the direction of the supposedly secret document. I was amazed at the number of other people who had assumed the document had been highly classified. One was sure there was a “top secret” stamp on his copy of the report, which is complete crap. All of this demonstrates just how unreliable our memories can be. How do we know this? Well, consider the following:

In the December 1960 / January 1961 edition of the NICAP UFO Investigator magazine, a feature appeared under the banner of Space-Life Report Could be Shock. It tells us this: “The discovery of intelligent space beings could have a severe effect on the public, according to a research report released by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The report warned that America should prepare to meet the psychological impact of such a revelation. The 190-page report was the result of a $96,000 one-year study conducted by the Brookings Institution for NASA’s long-range study committee.”

As the above extract from NICAP (the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena) makes abundantly clear, the ufologists of the day – late 1960 / early 1961 – knew all aboutthe Brookings report. It was not a hidden report. In other words, there was nothing secret about it at all. NICAP added: “Public realization that intelligent beings live on other planets could bring about profound changes, or even the collapse of our civilization, the research report stated. ‘Societies sure of their own place have disintegrated when confronted by a superior society,’ said the NASA report. ‘Others have survived even though changed. Clearly, the better we can come to understand the factors involved in responding to such crises the better prepared we may be. Although the research group did not expect any immediate contact with other planet beings, it said that the discovery of intelligent space races ‘could nevertheless happen at any time.”

Brookings Institute in Washington DC

NICAP had more to say: “Even though the UFO problem was not indicated as a reason for the study, it undoubtedly was an important factor. Fear of public reaction to an admission of UFO reality was cited as the main reason for secrecy in the early years of the AF [Air Force] investigation. Radio communication probably would be the first proof of other intelligent life, says the NASA report. It adds: ‘Evidences of its existence might also be found in artifacts left on the moon or other planets.’”

And then there was this from NICAP: “…previous thinking by scholars who have suggested that the earth already may be under close scrutiny by advanced space races. In 1958, Prof. Harold D. Lasswell of the Yale Law School stated: ‘The implications of the UFOs may be that we are already viewed with suspicion by more advanced civilizations and that our attempts to gain a foothold elsewhere may be rebuffed as a threat to other systems of public order.’ The NASA warning of a possible shock to the public, from the revelation of more advanced civilizations, support’s NICAP’s previous arguments against AF [Air Force] secrecy about UFOs. All available information about UFOs should be given to the public now, so that we will be prepared for any eventuality.”

Even when I brought all of this to the attentions of friends and colleagues, some were still sure it had been a highly classified document, with one claiming it had remained classified until the 1990s. Garbage! This may have far more to do with the human mind and our memories, rather than sloppy research. I’m reminded of other similar situations and memories of the Fortean kind, such as those concerning the “missing Thunderbird photo,” a subject I’ll get to on another day.

With the recent FOIA release of a list provided to Congress pertaining to the controversial Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), there has been a lot of resulting buzz about wormholes, warp drives, and other futuristic concepts pertaining to advanced physics.

Steven Aftergood with the Federation of American Scientists was one of the recipients of the new disclosure, which he posted on the FAS website. In an interview with Motherboard, Aftergood expressed some surprise that the Defense Intelligence Agency would have provided so little financial backing for such disproportionately far-out projects.

“I think anyone who looks at these titles will scratch their heads and wonder what on earth the Defense Intelligence Agency was thinking,” he said. “These are the kinds of topics you pursue when you have more money than you know what to do with.”

Most news outlets that have commented on the release have, as expected, gravitated toward its more sensational aspects. While there is little in the way of direct mention of UFOs in the small batch of documents, a number of physics papers and research studies pertaining to propulsion, cloaking, and other technologies are listed. One might presume such technologies—if they existed in ways that could be practically and efficiently implemented—would be required to account for some of the more compelling UFO observations spanning the last 75 years.

However, what few are talking about in relation to the little breadcrumbs that are finally beginning to appear in relation to AATIP is what it tells us not only about the scope of the program but also the motivations behind it… wherein there are a number of similarities to previous government UFO studies.

One minor detail—but an important one—is the inclusion of the word “and” between “Threat” and “Identification.” In other words, the implication of the new title as referenced by the DIA in their letter to Aftergood (Nick Pope and others received essentially identical FOIA information around the same time) entails Advanced Aerospace Threat AND Identification Program: hence, the objective is not so much “threat identification” as it is an assessment of aerospace-related threats and the identification of advanced aerospace technologies. Yes, it’s a minor point, but one worth noting. 

In terms of the financing side of the equation, as Aftergood noted, “These are the kinds of topics you pursue when you have more money than you know what to do with.” The paltry $22 million that was appropriated for the program hardly foots that kind of bill, although the reasons for its allocation are fairly evident. One aspect has to do with the fact that the Congressmen involved with the project—Harry Reid (D, Nevada), the late Ted Stevens (R, Alaska) and the late Daniel Inouye (D, Hawaii)—all had a history of allocating earmarks for their constituencies in their home states.

U.S. Senator Harry Reid.

The other has to do with what the latest FOIA releases show: that the clear areas of focus of the “contract” (as it is referred to in the documents) are in technological areas which, presumably, may have applications for weapons systems or other advancements well outside mere threat assessment and identification of different varieties of “advanced aerospace.”

I recently spoke with Alejandro Rojas, a writer for Open Mindsand arguably one of the more fact-oriented reporters on the UFO subject today, about the new releases. He shared my view that the practical side of government UFO studies—having to do with financial incentives and other advantages a government agency might hope to glean from such investigation—is something that is often under-emphasized, if not overlooked entirely in light of the more sensational implications of unidentified aircraft or other phenomena.

“First of all we live in a world where you’ve gotta make money,” Rojas says. “Any research or scientific research project out there has to have an end game that means profits. And it’s rare that you get research in areas that don’t have that.

“Sometimes government does need to step in for that reason: corporations don’t see that they can make a profit off of the medicine. We’ve seen this even in cancer research, where they think, ‘we’re not sure we can make money off of this medicine, even though it may help people.’ So the government has to step in to fund that sort of research because its gotta make money.”

“It’s got to have a purpose; it’s got to have a benefit. It can’t be science for science’s sake. Unfortunately, that’s frustrating for scientists… Then you have to play the politics game.”

Journalist Alejandro Rojas at Devils Tower, Wyoming

(photo by the author).

Rojas and I also spoke about past government studies in relation to this, most notably the U.S. Air Force’s Project Blue Book, and how it contrasts with the present AATIP program and its apparent areas of focus.

“In Project Blue Book they said they were researching potential threats caused by UFOs, essentially, and they determined there was no threat posed by the phenomenon,” Rojas said. “Which is interesting in itself because it does seem that that’s true. I mean, even with the Nimitz situation (see the U.S.S. Nimitz Incident, as recounted by pilot Dave Fravor) they’re chasing something around, but in none of the Blue Book cases does a threat seem to be posed.”

Rojas, who has spoken in the past with Luis Elizando, former head of the Pentagon study associated with AATIP, notes that Elizondo describes the ideology of the AATIP program slightly differently from its earlier government predecessors; specifically, the threat angle seems to come into play more prominently.

“However, what Elizondo has done is something different—and I don’t know if it’s him, or maybe Harry Reid and the group, you know, this was what they were doing—but Elizondo is very quick to point out… that anything unidentified constitutes a threat. Potentially, at least from their perspective, they have to consider every unknown a threat until we know otherwise. And I think that ideology is important because Blue Book closed when they determined this unidentified ‘whatever’ doesn’t seem to pose a threat. Elizondo is saying, ‘no, if you’re saying it’s unidentified, then by its nature it’s still a threat, from our perspective.”

“So it’s kind of justifying why we have to continue, even though Blue Book already happened. Blue Book determined arguably that there was unidentified craft… so what [Elizondo] is saying is that we can’t stop there–that if they’re unidentified, then we still need to consider them a threat, and that justifies us looking further into all of this.”

“There is a difference between the two programs in that manner,” Rojas concludes, underscoring the necessity for practical results from government UFO studies which seems to remain. “[AATIP] is more actively looking to produce some science or some potential other benefits in developing weapons from these identifications.” 

Within this context, the AATIP program may be seen with at least some degree of greater clarity than before. It is a “contract”, as the recent DIA papers phrase it, which secured a limited amount of funding on behalf of Senators from three states based on a mutual interest they shared (and in the case of Harry Reid, which he shared with certain friends and constituents, namely Robert Bigelow). However, in order to obtain earmarks for such a program, its focus, as outlined in the recent DIA documents, clearly seems to have objectives which may have hope for producing scientific, strategic, or other incentives in the long term. The result appears to be a program that explores more practical areas of development and national security interest while facilitating some justification for the study of “unknowns” along the way, and on a budget that would have been considered pretty modest even decades ago.

None of this undermines the scope or objectives of the AATIP program, per se, although it is perhaps worthwhile to consider some of the details we have begun to glean about it that have less to do with its sensational elements and the mysterious phenomena associated with it.