For
years, decades actually, the skeptical community has wondered how the US has
been able to suppress information about UFOs in foreign lands. Why would
foreign governments submit to a US demand that UFO sightings and UFO reports
remain hidden behind a curtain of secrecy? The answer is probably a little more
complex than I can attack here, on this blog.
However…
First,
let me point out that during the Ghost Rocket wave that began in Finland but
swept into all of Scandinavia in 1946, the Finnish government response was to
suppress the news reports about them while those in Sweden were free to report
every sighting until it became nearly overwhelming. At that point the Swedish
military and the government began to actively suppress the sighting reports as
well. Their reasons were varied, but they enacted that policy with no guidance
from the US. A policy, BTW, that seemed to have ended the reports though not
necessarily the sightings.
Second,
let’s take a longer look at the situation in Australia. On August 14, 1952,
with the United States buried hip deep in UFO reports from a wide variety of
sources from all over the country, William McMahon, the Minister for Air told
the Australian Parliament that the flying saucers were nothing more than
“flights of imagination.” Even with that, he believed that a thorough
investigation was warranted, which, of course, didn’t set it off on the right
foot. His conclusions might have been inspired by the information released by
Major General Samford in his press conference about the Washington National UFO
sightings in July of that year.
This
idea was reinforced in the United States by the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel,
which was a five-day investigation into UFOs, especially after the summer of
1952 sightings. The Panel concluded that there wasn’t much to the sightings,
suggesting that stories about UFOs be debunked, which then became an unofficial
policy of
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| Captain Ed Ruppelt |
ridicule. Remember, Ed Ruppelt explained the difference between
flying saucers and UFOs. Calling then “flying saucers” had a note of ridicule in
it as in “You don’t believe in flying saucers, do you?”
On
November 20, 1953, many months after the Robertson Panel met, McMahon suggested
that the UFO question was one that belonged to the psychologists rather than
the defense authorities. He wrote, “The Royal Australian Air Force has received
many reports about flying saucers, as have the Royal Air Force and the Royal Canadian
Air Force, but the phenomena have not yet been identified… The Royal Australian
Air Force has informed me that, so far, the aerodynamic problems relating to
the production of flying saucers have not been solved.”
The
response was a “Note of Action,” that indicated that “…all reports are still
being investigated closely and recorded as an aid to further research into
future reports of this natures.” Or in other words, they thought the sightings
should be investigated and the Royal Australian Air Force was the responsible
agency. But, as was the case in the United States, they simply weren’t
investigating all the reports and they were not looking at them for evidence of
alien visitation but thought they belonged in a more psychological arena.
Delusions, illusions and other psychological problems were the answer.
Australian
Richard Casey, the Minister for External Affairs and the Minister for
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who
originally thought little of the “saucer” reports, changed his mind and this is
the point where the USAF and Donald Keyhoe come into play, which is the real
point of all this. And yes, it has taken a while to get here but some
background was
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| Donald Keyhoe |
necessary. I laid much of this out in The UFO Dossier (pp. 237 – 254) and Michael Swords and Robert
Powell did the same thing UFOs and
Government (pp. 373 – 422) for those of you who would like to learn more.
Casey
sent Keyhoe’s book, Flying Saucers from
Outer Space, to his Chief of the Division of Radiophysics, Dr. E. G. Brown,
along with a note that suggested he had also seen the USAF statements “… about ‘Unexplained
Air Objects,’ which are always carefully worded and are at pains to explain
that the greater part of the ‘sightings’ are explainable as natural phenomena
or on some other grounds.”
Bowen
wasn’t too impressed with the information. He wrote that he “found the book by
Major Keyhoe intensely amusing and entertaining… I am far from convinced by any
of the anecdotes or arguments.” He also claimed that he knew many scientists
involved with defense matters in the United States, and that they rejected
Keyhoe’s suggestions.
In
keeping with a belief held at high levels, Bowen thought that Keyhoe’s book,
while entertaining, would eventually lead to the conclusion that there was
nothing to the tales of flying saucers. The public would eventually become
disillusioned with the UFOs and that would be the end of it. Of course, that
didn’t turn out to be the case.
It
might be said that all of this caused a change in the way the Australians dealt
with the UFO problem. Melbourne University’s O. H. (Harry) Turner was asked by
the DAFI to undertake a classified study of the early investigations held in
their files. It could be said that this was the Australian equivalent to the
Robertson Panel, that is, a review of the evidence gathered earlier with respected
scientists studying the data. The outcome was certainly different.
According
to Swords, based on information recovered by Australian researcher Bill Chalker,
Turner, in his detailed report, recommended greater official interest with a
concentration on radar-visual reports. One of his conclusions was “The evidence
presented by the reports held by the RAAF tend to support… the conclusion… that
certain strange aircraft have been observed to behave in a manner suggestive of
extra-terrestrial origin.”
In
what can only be considered a case of irony, Turner cited Keyhoe’s Flying Saucers from Outer Space, using
the reports he described as coming from the USAF. Turner did qualify his
report, saying “if one assumes these Intelligence Reports are authentic, then
the evidence presented is such that it is difficult to assume any
interpretation other than that UFOs are being observed.”
Given
that Turner had used Keyhoe’s interpretation of what official USAF reports and
intelligence documents said, the DAFI did communicate with the USAF to confirm
the accuracy of Keyhoe’s statements, which isn’t surprising. The response from
Washington, D.C. was “I have discussed with the USAF the status of Major
Keyhoe. I understand that his book is written in such a way as to convey the
impression his statements are based on official documents, and there is some
suggestion that he has made improper use of information to which he had access
while he was serving in the Marine Corps. He has, however, no official status
whatsoever and a dim view is taken officially of both him and his works.”
As
a result of this, the report was weakened considerably. The Department of Air
concluded, “Professor Turner accepted Keyhoe’s book as authentic and based on
official releases. Because Turner places so much weight on Keyhoe’s work, he
emphasized the need to check Keyhoe’s reliability. [The Australian Joint
Service Staff] removes Keyhoe’s works as a prop for Turner’s work so that the
value of the latter’s findings and recommendations is very much reduced.”
The
problem here was the RAAF and the DAFI believed the information that was
provided by the USAF. In the Levelland, Texas, sightings in November 1957, the
Air Force and Keyhoe got into another such battle with the Air Force suggesting
that Keyhoe was wrong about the number of witnesses. Keyhoe had claimed there
were nine but the Air Force said there were only three who had seen an object.
A study of the case, including an examination of the Project Blue Book files,
shows that both were wrong. There is good evidence that witnesses at thirteen
different locations saw something, and there is a very good possibility that
the sheriff was one of those who saw a craft.
The
relevance here is that the USAF was not a fan of Keyhoe so that when the
Australians asked for an analysis of Keyhoe and his book, they got a biased
report that was not based on the evidence but on what the USAF had claimed
about Keyhoe’s reliability. It is now evident that the Air Force had engaged,
as Swords wrote, “an act of either conscious or unconscious misrepresentation
on the part of the U.S. Air Force. They were engaged in a campaign to undermine
the popularity of Donald Keyhoe’s books. While Keyhoe may have slightly
overstated his USAF data, the intelligence reports quoted by Keyhoe and used by
Turner to support his conclusions to DAFI were authentic. Eventually the Air
Force admitted that the material Keyhoe used was indeed from official Air Force
reports.”
Or,
in other words, the USAF was able to manipulate the investigation being
conducted in Australia to match their conclusions. If nothing else, it should
be obvious based on this that after the negative conclusions of the Robertson
Panel in 1953, the Air Force was actively attempting to implement the various
debunking recommendations and were not interested in gathering UFO information.
They were more interested in convincing everyone that there was nothing to UFO
reports.
But
in the world of 2018, we now know that Keyhoe was right more often than not,
and that his work was based, at least in part, on official investigations and
classified information. According to Frank J. Reid, in the International UFO Reporter for Fall, 2000, “For a little over five
months – from August 1952 through February 1953 – a narrow window opened into
Project Blue Book… According to Dewey J. Fournet Jr., an Air Force major
assigned as Pentagon liaison to Blue Book, ‘The entire press had the privilege
of requesting this [UFO] info: Don Keyhoe happened to be one who found out
quickly about this [new] policy and took maximum advantage of it.’… Especially
good cases were volunteered to him…”
What
this means, of course, is that Keyhoe’s information was solid and had been
rejected by the RAAF because their counterparts in the USAF told them Keyhoe
was unreliable. I don’t know if the USAF officers were lying or simply didn’t
know the truth. They were reporting to the RAAF what their superiors had told
them. Keyhoe couldn’t be trusted.
Which
brings us back to the original point. The USAF was able to influence the RAAF,
leading them to a conclusion that was ill advised. What would have happened had
they known that Keyhoe did have the inside sources, some of them official, who
were providing him with quality information about the UFO situation. Instead,
there was a watered-down version of their official report because they believed
it was based on tainted information when, in fact, the information was good.
In
other words, the prominence of the USAF in the world of UFO investigation
suggested to the RAAF, that there wasn’t much to UFOs, and the RAAF responded
in kind. They thought the USAF had the “goods” but it turned out to be more
fool’s gold. It looked good, it looked right but it just wasn’t what everyone
thought it was. And today we have to live with that misguided interpretation so
that we continue to have these discussions rather than moving forward… but we
see how, at least in part, the US can suppress UFO information in other
countries.
