In the search
for documentation about the Roswell UFO crash, some evidence has surfaced,
though it is not the sort of thing that the proponents were looking for. Though
the documentation is not definitive, meaning that it does not mention Roswell
specifically (nor does it mention Aztec for that matter) it does affect the
overall notion that something alien fell out of the sky back in the late 1940s.
 |
| Colonel Howard McCoy |
This is a
letter, originally classified as “Secret,” written by Colonel Howard McCoy,
who, at that time in late 1940s, was an intelligence officer who operated at
the highest levels in the Air Force. He was at Wright Field in 1947 and was
probably the author of the Twining Letter of September 1947, which announced
that the phenomenon was something real and not illusionary or fictitious. He
conferred with General Nathan Twining on a regular basis, and as I have pointed
out repeatedly, was involved in studying these unidentified aerial phenomena
since the days of the Foo Fighters late in the Second World War and the Ghost
Rockets of 1946.
In a letter
dated October 7, 1948, and sent to the CIA, McCoy wondered if they had any
information about the UFOs and if they might have some sort of “domestic
origin,” meaning, quite clearly, he wondered if it was a highly classified
research project inspired by the CIA. McCoy wrote, “Your cooperation in so
doing might greatly assist in identifying our own domestic developments from
possible inimical foreign achievements.”
Okay, it really
doesn’t say much, but you would think that if there had been a crash of an
alien craft near Roswell (or Aztec for that matter), McCoy would be one of
those on the inside who knew about it. He wouldn’t need to consult with the CIA
to learn if they might know of some project that would account for the UFO sightings.
The last thing that he would want to do is create an interest in searching for
information about the flying saucers.
Don’t get fooled
by the red herring that Stan Friedman has launched. True, the letter was only
“secret” and we all suppose that the Roswell crash information would be “top
secret,” and therefore couldn’t be mentioned in a document with a lower
classification. But McCoy is asking for information and his request is
classified at the appropriate level. That McCoy made the request at all is the
important point here, not the overall classification of the letter. He could
request the information he needed at a lower level of classification without
violating any regulations and if the CIA needed to respond with top secret
information, they certainly could have done that.
That he asked at
all suggests that he didn’t have an answer, which, if Roswell was alien in
nature, wouldn’t be true. He would have known about it. Instead, he was worried
about some domestic program that might be under the auspices of the CIA. Had
Roswell happened, the CIA wouldn’t have been involved, and even if they became
interested at a later date, the Army had already collected the debris and moved
it up the chain of command. The destination would have been Wright Field and if
that was true, then McCoy would have been one of those officers who would have
been responsible for the reverse engineering and gathering other information of
intelligence value.
This letter does
not bode well for the Roswell crash proponents. I don’t believe that McCoy, or
anyone else in 1948, would have been writing these letters as a diversion in case
sometime in the future, flying saucer information found its way into the
civilian world. They assumed then that anything highly classified would remain
that way nearly forever because that is the way it had almost always been.
Civilians had no need to know or right to information that was the property of
the military. True, some was released, but these officers in 1948 knew that
information from the First World War was still highly classified. McCoy wasn’t
writing the letter to dupe us; he was asking the CIA for help in identifying
the problem… which was the nature of the flying saucers. He just didn’t seem
know and he should have if there had been the crash of an alien craft near
Roswell.
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114 comments:
It appears Colonel McCoy took the phenomenon quite seriously, and was attempting to gauge the magnitude of the potential threat by inquiring whether a significant proportion of the most credible sighting reports could be attributed to advanced aircraft in development. 60+ years later, we should have a pretty good idea about that possibility. Why must it be mutually exclusive?
Kevin,
Have you seen this biography of Colonel McCoy?
http://www.nationalaviation.org/images/nominees/2016/McCoy,%20Howard%20M..pdf
In a second search was this FOIA document for the 1947 Project:
http://www.project1947.com/fig/tslog.htm
What I found interesting was McCoy's history and in 1948, McCoy was CC'ed on this memo:
Nuclear Energy Intel Activities Nov. 12th 1948.
With McCoy's posting in 1944 on the hunt for German intelligences. "In late 1944, Colonel McCoy was assigned as Chief of Air Technical Intelligence in Europe. In April 1945 he prepared the plan for and directed Operation Lusty, the WW II air technical intelligence program for exploitation of captured German aircraft, research facilities and documents."
After this McCoy went back to Wright Field.
So this might be another lead for you. Did McCoy get involved with "Nuclear Energy Intel Activities" because of what he found in Germany first or was it because of Roswell?
Also in 1948 and 1949 McCoy was on the Project Sign committee.
Either way, I think you are correct Kevin. If he received the October 7th, 1948 letter then is CC'ed on the Nuclear Energy Intel Activities, it would seem they are connected. If not then the NEIA and Project Sign was connected. In short, McCoy was one very busy guy at Wright in 1948.
Thoughts?
Interesting that you would,mention the Twning memo. It is a secret document that specifically states that the military does not have any crashed debris.
But since Roswell is a just a religion and unfalsifiable, believers just have just created new scripture to "explain" this embarrassing truth.
How long would you guess until some deluded saucer buff weaves some conspiracy nuttery to counter your, quite reasonable, conclusions about this embarrassing memo and affirm that Saucer Jesus is still their lord?
The folks we have here on record are the top men at the time, talking amongst themselves but silly believers postulate a group of even topper men, keeping the UFO stuff hidden. These guys are naturally unnamed since they only exist in the murky world of the conspiracy theorist saucer buff.
Lance
Kevin,
You wrote, "Had Roswell happened, the CIA wouldn’t have been involved..."
I'm not so sure that is true. Deputy Director, CIG, (then) Colonel, GSC, Edwin K. Wright was in charge of the Ghost Rocket investigation. McCoy interacted with/answered to him. When Admiral Hillenkoetter replaced Vandenberg, at CIG, General Wright was retained as the Deputy Director. There is every reason to believe the CIG would have been involved with Roswell, even the possibility that Wright was in charge again (I have CIA documents on file that are from October, 1947, and the heading says Central Intelligence Group, not Agency, for what its worth).
Also, there is a letter penned by Colonel McCoy, referencing the sighting of Mr. S. C. Britton, Sr., of Dayton, Ohio. His sighting occurred on Monday, 20 October 1947. Mr. Britton was interviewed by Mr. A. C. Loedding, project officer for the saucer program, on Wednesday morning, October 22. This is the "flying fishes in the sky" story.
From the report: "They were flying very fast in a very straight course from West to East, but slightly to the North...the objects reflect the sunlight rather briliiantly...did not have wings and they looked like cigars..."
My point is, in the letter McCoy sent to Lt. Col. Garret, AC/AS-2, he stated,
"...2. A check of military aircraft operating in this area at the time...indicates that the objects seen are still unidentified. 3. An investigation indicates that Mr. Britton's testimony should be considered reliable. Objects seen could very likely be connected with the "Flying Disc" incident"
He clearly refers to a singular "Flying Disc Incident" that he feels this Britton sighting might be connected to. What "Flying Disc incident" is he talking about here? Could he be saying that he feels these objects might be attracted to Dayton because that's where the "disc" was taken? If that is the case, then he certainly WAS aware of it.
/Bob
"If he [McCoy] received the October 7th, 1948 letter then is CC'ed on the Nuclear Energy Intel Activities, it would seem they are connected."
Yes and as others have theorized what the government may have been hiding is a very deeply burried project related to radioactive weapons. I don't mean Mogul, but something more akin to what was disclosed in the 1990's regarding radioactive testing of human subjects without their consent.
Obviously just a theory but it's not the first time Roswell has been linked to a possible unknown project related to illegal testing of radioactive weapons that disperse hazardous material from the air.
Bob -
I was referring specifically to the recovery operation in Roswell. It was Army all the way, moving up the chain of command. No reason to bring in the non-existent CIA or its predecessor, the CIG. Later, as the whole situation evolved, meaning the UFO investigation, then, of course, the CIA would have had some sort of role.
Brian -
Mogul ws not a radioactive weapon and its only connection to atomic testing was the ultimate purpose of spying on Soviet atomic testing.
Kevin:
Have you considered that McCoy may have been fishing the CIA for what they knew? Intelligence agencies have been known to keep things from other agencies.
Could his activities regarding the Nuclear Energy Security have anything to do with obtaining security clearance for himself or others
McCoy was T-2, intelligence, not T-3, engineering. Whether T-2 would have full need-to-know or be involved in a back-engineering effort.
BTW, whether McCoy drafted the Twining memo or not, the complete Twining memo has listed at the end, in handwriting, the heads of five Wright Field Engineering departments. As I wrote back on thread "Twining vs. Roswell", this reads:
"This letter was coordinated by:
Col. Moore Ch. Aircraft Lab
Mr. A. Dicky Ch. Propeller Lab
Gen. D. L. Putt Engr. Div
Col. Minty Ch. Power Plant Lab
Gen. Brentnall T-3"
If the "letter was coordinated by T-3", then the bulk of the memo was dictated by T-3 and is primarily an ENGINEERING opinion, lesser so T-2, again whether McCoy drafted the final version of the letter or not. And much of the Twining memo is indeed about advocating for a saucer back-engineering effort (Gen. Putt named in the memo can be documented as being involved in such an effort for many years) involving multiple government R&D departments, including the Pentagon's Research & Development Board headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush. Bush and the RDB popped up again 3 years later in the Wilbert Smith documents as being involved in investigating the "modus operandi" of the saucers in a program classified higher than the H-bomb.
So, yes, there is very clear evidence that such a back-engineering program was in the works. Gen. Putt worked on making a saucer with more prosaic human technology (jet engines--AVRO saucer), whereas a higher level group of scientists/engineers like the DRB might be looking into more advanced possible propulsion technologies.
Again, it is very debatable whether an intelligence officer like McCoy would be directly involved in such back-engineering and be read into it. More likely, the job of intelligence would be to gather and document sighting reports, which might provide clues as to technology used. (They would also be looking for other things, like patterns of behavior.)
One of the explicitly stated objectives for studying UFO reports in Twining's later directive from 1953/54, AFR 200-2, was to study "technical aspects" of UFOs (also national security reasons). So, again, this is what intelligence would likely be doing, passing the "technical aspects" information on to the scientists and engineers, who might find clues useful for back-engineering the technology.
Bob Koford wrote:
Also, there is a letter penned by Colonel McCoy, referencing the sighting of Mr. S. C. Britton, Sr., of Dayton, Ohio. His sighting occurred on Monday, 20 October 1947.
Mr. Britton was interviewed by Mr. A. C. Loedding, project officer for the saucer program, on Wednesday morning, October 22. This is the "flying fishes in the sky" story.
[snip]
My point is, in the letter McCoy sent to Lt. Col. Garret, AC/AS-2, he stated,
"...2. A check of military aircraft operating in this area at the time...indicates that the objects seen are still unidentified... Objects seen could very likely be connected with the "Flying Disc" incident"
He clearly refers to a singular "Flying Disc Incident" that he feels this Britton sighting might be connected to. What "Flying Disc incident" is he talking about here? Could he be saying that he feels these objects might be attracted to Dayton because that's where the "disc" was taken? If that is the case, then he certainly WAS aware of it.
VERY interesting catch Bob. What indeed was "the 'Flying Disc' incident" being referenced by McCoy, specifically with the UFO report being from Dayton, Ohio (Wright Field)?
Incidentally, as I've written here previously, according to UFO historian Wendy Connors, who interviewed two surviving Project Sign personnel, Alfred Loedding was only one of two engineers at Wright Field involved with Project Sign with direct knowledge of Roswell. (This is consistent with information Kevin received from a military officer he spoke to in his pre-Roswell days who told him Sign's initial draft of the "Estimate of the Situation" DID mention metal recovered from New Mexico in supporting their ET conclusion, wording that Gen. Vandenberg had them remove from the final draft, citing they had no physical proof--Catch 22!)
Col. McCoy, Connors was told, knew of Roswell from scuttlebutt, but was not read directly into it, a source of great frustration to him.
If he was never officially briefed on the subject, having heard only rumors, anything written by him as a military intelligence officer could not state definitively anything about having crash recovered artifacts (even assuming the the recipient and classification was appropriate and he could discuss such matters).
If "the 'Flying Disc' incident" was McCoy's sly reference to Roswell, it is interesting how he worded it, not being explicit about what incident he was referring to, thus skirting around any possible classification restrictions and not putting himself on written record that he knew something for a fact. (like winking his eye--"You and I both know what I mean, but I can't officially talk about it")
Bob,
I think to put WWII in perspective, besides the advancement in weapons, there were areas on many other creations and advancements including communications, electronics and energy. In reading McCoy's biography the guy was a real genius in engineering. Yes he was in intelligences but his specialty was engineering, not HUMIT or communication intelligences. So I see McCoy having been the bridge for the Air Force between intelligences and engineering. He would have fit in either roll as T-2 or T-3 if the Air Force needed him.
The other point in the documents was the Air Force tried to keep the other military units and civilians away. I state this because when you look who received all the carbon copies, they were all Air Force. They were staking their turf over the down crafts for as long as they could.
All -
Remember that this document was not created in a vacuum. There are several others that were written at this time that followed the same path.
All,
Here's another:
http://files.ncas.org/condon/text/appndx-s.htm
30 December 1947
SUBJECT: Flying Discs
TO: Commanding General
Air Material Command
Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio
Attn: TSDIH
1. Reference is made to three inclosures, memoranda from your office to this headquarters, subject as above.
2. It is Air Force policy not to ignore reports of sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere but to recognize that part of its mission is to collect, collate, evaluate and act on information of this nature.
3. In implementing this policy, it is desired that the Air Material Command set up a project whose purpose is to collect, collate, evaluate and distribute to interested government agencies and contractors all information concerning sightings and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be of concern to the national security. It is desired that appropriate recommendations be forwarded to this Headquarters, wherever action is indicated which falls outside the field of the Air Material Command.
4. It is suggested that the activities of this project include the preparation and distribution of an initial report, as recommended in Inclosure 1, and that subsequent reports be issued on a quarterly basis. Supplementary reports should be issued at more frequent intervals should the need for same be indicated. This project is assigned priority 2A, with a security classification of "restricted" and Code Name of "SIGN". Where data of a classification higher than restricted is handled by the project such data should be classified accordingly. A complete interchange of data should be effected as recommended in Inclosure 1.
I think this is important because it indicates the "restricted" classification
for material and information collected by Project Sign.
Ed
Ed -
No one is denying that "restricted" was a level of classification. It was the lowest of those that required "safeguarding." It was charged to "confidential" by executive order by President Eisenhower (I believe). I'm not aware of a classification known as "restrictive" however.
BTW, the currently the lowest classification is "for official use only," but it just means that it should be protected from release to those unauthorized but no one really cares about it. You can keep it in a drawer or post it to a bulletin board (meaning one of those cork things that hang on a wall for you younger viewers).
@ Kevin who wrote:
"Mogul ws not a radioactive weapon and its only connection to atomic testing was the ultimate purpose of spying on Soviet atomic testing."
Yes I know which is why I wrote, "I don't mean Mogul".
Did you miss that?
My point being that the US military and the (then) Atomic Energy Commission has always been involved in illegal testing of weapons against its own troops (without consent) and especially before the 1970's. It just so happens all of this illegal activity was MADE LEGAL in the 1970-80's time frame to cover the implications of public outcry against citizens being used as unwitting test subjects.
Note:
PUBLIC LAW 95-79 [P.L. 95-79]
TITLE 50, CHAPTER 32, SECTION 1520 "CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WARFARE PROGRAM"
"The use of human subjects will be allowed for the testing of chemical and biological agents by the U.S. Department of Defense, accounting to Congressional committees with respect to the experiments and studies."
"The Secretary of Defense [may] conduct tests and experiments involving the use of chemical and biological [warfare] agents on civilian populations [within the United States]."
-SOURCE-
Public Law 95-79, Title VIII, Sec. 808, July 30, 1977, 91 Stat. 334. In U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 91, page 334, you will find Public Law 95-79. Public Law 97-375, title II, Sec. 203(a)(1), Dec. 21, 1982, 96 Stat. 1882. In U.S. Statutes-at-Large, Vol. 96, page 1882, you will find Public Law 97-375.
1945: "Program F" is implemented by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). This is the most extensive U.S. study of the health effects of fluoride, which was the key chemical component in atomic bomb production. (Griffiths and Bryson) One of the most toxic chemicals known to man, fluoride, it is found, causes marked adverse effects to the central nervous system but much of the information is squelched in the name of national security because of fear that lawsuits would undermine full-scale production of atomic bombs.
1946: Gen. Douglas MacArthur strikes a secret deal with Japanese physician Dr. Shiro Ishii to turn over 10,000 pages of information gathered from human experimentation in exchange for granting Ishii immunity from prosecution for the horrific experiments he performed on Chinese, Russian and American war prisoners, including performing vivisections on live human beings (Goliszek, Sharav).
General Willoughby (under MacArthur) listed the five most important items providing "the greatest value in future development of the United States BW program." These included the Japanese scientists' "complete report" of "BW against man" that Willoughby described as "the only information available in world"; "field trials against Chinese" using animals as “deadly bacteria conveyors", and a "summary of the human experiments."
The general's conclusion: "Data on human experiments may prove invaluable... and Japanese may now reveal research in chemical warfare [and] death rays."
1947: A secret AEC document dated April 17 reads, "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work field should be classified `secret’.”
So there may indeed be a connection between a coverup of illegal weapons experiments on soldiers or citizens that has never seen the light of day.
Clearly McCoy's association with nuclear intelligence offers a link between his interest in UFOs and illegal experiments in such a way that it is possible - perhaps even more possible than aliens crashing in the desert.
@ David and Bob:
"If "the 'Flying Disc' incident" was McCoy's sly reference to Roswell, it is interesting how he worded it, not being explicit about what incident he was referring to, thus skirting around any possible classification restrictions and not putting himself on written record that he knew something for a fact."
OR...more likely....
McCoy was not being "sly" at all and was simply referring to the "Flying Saucer Incident" that hit the national newspapers on July 8-9 regarding the USAAF having embarrassed themselves by mistaking something prosaic for "a flying disc" from outer space!
Only conspiracists would need to twist McCoy's words into something dramatic just to feed their hunger for secret references to space aliens.
Your assumption is about as ridiculous as the claim that Ramey purposely held a secret memo towards the camera to show the world that space people were real!
Yes, the paper trail does suggest that McCoy and Project Sign were not read in to Roswell.
My interpretation of this is basically the same as David Rudiak's, above. There is pretty good evidence to suggest that Sign was not the totality of the investigation and that a still rather well hidden group chaired by Vannevar Bush was a key group in looking to understand the technical 'modus operandi' of the discs.
Whilst Air Technical Intelligence (in it's various titles during this time period) might seem logical people to involve, and indeed were involved in more conventional analyses such as those of Russian aircraft, Roswell must have raised some particular challenges.
a) If they had to deal with a relatively large 'disc' as well as debris and bodies, the main 'disc' may well have had to be transported overland. Personally I think there is very little doubt that any such overland transport of a large object would have been taken into the White Sands Proving Ground - relatively close with sparse population and then plenty of secure remote space to park it in whilst they figured out what to do with it. Twining's visit to the area could be consistent with this. (They would also want to shift any materials already at operational bases such as Roswell and Forth Worth rapidly). Don't underestimate the potential for confusions and rapid shifts in plans in this sort of situation.
b) The 'disc' would not lend itself to conventional engineering analysis. No propellers, jets etc. in fact probably very little easily recognised and even much of the structural material must have seemed very odd indeed. This would need the highest level aerodynamicists, physicists and material scientists with research level laboratory facilities.
c) Manhatten project style 'super security' would be imposed very quickly (Smith memo). We know, for example, that Air Material Command had difficulty accessing atomic secrets for some years, which hindered guided missile development (even the CIA struggled with the AEC in the late 40's) so it is reasonable to assume a very high degree of compartmentalisation for the Roswell material too.
Take all the above together and an ad-hoc RDB committee as steering group and very compartmentalised projects looking at the debris in the very top level defence related research and development facilities might well have been the way to go. SIGNs job was a straight air technical intelligence analysis of performance characteristics and patterns of operations deduced from sightings reports, whilst other intelligence elements were tasked with scouring the world for indications of who might have developed this thing (which does rather suggest that it wasn't totally obvious from the beginning).
McCoy and the SIGN team were indeed very bright people and seemed to have figured out the basic position for themselves over the course of the following year - that had to be stamped on from a great height of course.
David is correct to mention the interesting role of Donald Putt. In 1947 he was a Brigadier and an Air Force representative on the RDB. By 1952, when Ruppelt referred to the 'Major General from Research and Development', Putt was a Major General and number two in the R&D command, and one of very few officers of that rank at time who might fit Ruppelt's clue.
The challenge is that we don't have all the pieces of the jigsaw - so the above is just my current working hypothesis.
DR is being over zealous (and hopeful) in thinking the "flying disc incident" referred to by McCoy in his memo to Garrett is the Roswell disc.
From the description of the objects: "They were flying very fast in a very straight course from West to East, but slightly to the North...the objects reflect the sunlight rather briliiantly...did not have wings and they looked like cigars..."
Does this really sound like the Roswell crashed disc?
It sounds far more like the initial Arnold sighting which captured the headlines and was still officially unidentified. True, Arnold's objects did not resemble cigars, but neither did the Roswell disc (which, in case people forget, was discovered very firmly on the ground in the desert).
Anyone wanting to link this this "flying fishes in the sky" story to the Roswell case is guilty of pure wishful thinking.
And there is still not the slightest piece of evidence that McCoy had ever heard of Roswell.
@ Anthony who wrote:
"Manhatten project style 'super security' would be imposed very quickly (Smith memo). We know, for example, that Air Material Command had difficulty accessing atomic secrets for some years, which hindered guided missile development (even the CIA struggled with the AEC in the late 40's) so it is reasonable to assume a very high degree of compartmentalisation for the Roswell material too."
Of course you ASSUME all of this is fact when:
1) The Smith memo is suspect as being nothing more than an engineer's thoughts on UFO's as it relates to his own personal pet project that never came to fruition and which was never endorsed by the Canadian Government as a real program.
2) That "Manhatten style super-secrecy" would be immediately imposed and for what? Why? What exactly are the reasons why the military would immediately hide such an event in the first place?
3) That the Roswell crashed saucer (if ever one really existed) was transported to White Sands for safe keeping via overland route. I feel shades of "Corso" coming on....
No one can extract such a story from the documents available. It's just pure fantasy speculation at best.
And once again, can anyone answer exactly why this supposed crashed saucer story would be hidden from the public "immediately" upon discovery?
Can anyone explain why these men would "hint" or "drop clues" into their 1947 memos to allow people like you in the 21st Century to eventually discover the truth behind UFO's?
It's always funny how some readers of this blog will immediately denounce speculation based on real facts in favour of speculation that has no basis in any facts.
I think Bob Koford (and I) are connecting possible dots because McCoy was making a big deal out of specifically a Dayton, Ohio sighting. Dayton is where Wright Field was located and where Roswell debris/bodies were allegedly taken. Thus it would make sense to an intelligence officer like McCoy that a reported disc over-flight of DAYTON following Roswell might be connected to the Roswell artifacts being taken there.
As for McCoy knowing or not knowing about Roswell, he could certainly read the newspapers, first seeing that the base commander at Roswell base acknowledged recovering a real flying disc and the AAF was flying it on to Wright Field for analysis, only to have it immediately retracted as a simple weather balloon. Unlike CDA or Brian Bell, I suspect McCoy would have known about the caliber of officers at Roswell (including perhaps knowing fellow intel officer Marcel) and realized no one could be THAT dumb and still have positions of high responsibility at the base. (I doubt McCoy subscribed to debunker drooling idiot theory.)
Furthermore, McCoy could have been in a similar position as Gen. Arthur Exon, then stationed at Wright, who said he heard of the Roswell debris arriving there and learned more by later speaking to the men DIRECTLY involved with analyzing the debris, photographing the site/bodies, etc., men whom he personally knew. I suspect McCoy learned further details about Roswell in a similar way, through personal contacts, but like Exon, was never read directly into the program. In that position, he could never OFFICIALLY say anything about physical artifacts being recovered, even if he indirectly knew about them (and even if the situation would have permitted him to discuss it).
As for CDA's personal conjecture that McCoy's "the 'Flying Disc' incident" referred instead to the Arnold sighting, while this might be a possibility, there were numerous other multi-disc sightings of the objects flying in formation in additional to Arnold's. (In fact, the Twining memo makes "formation flying" one of the observed characteristic of the discs, one indication of intelligent control, including evasion upon pursuit.)
So why would "the 'flying disc' incident" necessarily suggest Arnold FOUR MONTHS LATER? Nothing secret about the Arnold sighting, so why not just say the "Arnold disc incident" and remove any ambiguity?
A good example of a HEAVILY publicized multi-disc sighting of discs flying in formation, probably receiving even more publicity than the Arnold sighting, was the July 4, 1947, United Airlines crew sighting over Idaho of 9 more discs. Because these were airline pilots reporting something very similar to Arnold, it lent considerable credibility to Arnold's sighting. It thus became headline news the next day and opened the floodgate of front-page flying disc stories in the nation's newspapers through Roswell.
No, Brian, I was mentioning that you had brought up Mogul for no apparent reason.
One thing that is overlooked on the security question was that of the Cold War with the Russians. The tensions after WWII with the Russians and the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 – 12 May 1949) was certainly a factor. The CIA was created as but as because of the tensions and lessons learned by the lack of intelligences prior to WWII. The Wild Bill Donavan days and the OSS was a easy call for Truman to create the CIA.
I think in 1947 and 1948, the fear of Russian spies was very high and very real. I think this really did set the stage for a security level higher than the "Manhattan Project" and contained to a very small group of people within the Air Force. The military's two big questions back then was: Did the Russians know and maybe have their own down space craft and did the Russian's know about what we had?
While on the surface today, the Russian tensions and Berlin Blockage might not seen to be a factor. However nearly 68 years early it had to be a very strong set of reasons for all of the military's mindset.
Brian Bell wrote:
The Smith memo is suspect as being nothing more than an engineer's thoughts on UFO's as it relates to his own personal pet project that never came to fruition and which was never endorsed by the Canadian Government as a real program.
The above spin is more fabrication on BB’s part. Smith's initial memo sparked two OFFICIAL Canadian UFO investigations, Project Magnet and Project Second Story. Magnet was the direct result of Smith's first memo of Nov. 21, 1950 to the Canadian Dept. of Transport, stating first that:
"Mr. Wright, [Canadian] Defense Research Board liaison officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington, was extremely anxious for me to get in touch with Doctor Solandt, Chairman of the Defense Research Board, to discuss with him future investigations..."
Followed by:
"I discussed this matter fully with Doctor Solandt, Chairman of Defence Research Board, on November 20th and placed before him as much information as I have been able to gather to date. Doctor Solandt agreed that work on geo-magnetic energy should go forward as rapidly as possible and offered full co-operation of his Board in providing laboratory facilities, acquisition of necessary items of equipment, and specialized personnel for incidental work in the project. I indicated to Doctor Solandt that we would prefer to keep the project within the Department of Transport for the time being until we have obtained sufficient information to permit a complete assessment of the value of the work. It is therefore recommended that a PROJECT be set up... to study this problem..."
The initial "PROJECT" Smith was urging became Project Magnet. Note it says the matter was discussed fully with Dr. Solandt, who also expressed urgency that the research be carried forward and promised full cooperation of the DRB. Solandt held the near-equivalent of Cabinet level status in Canada, thus somewhat like the present U.S. Secretary of Energy green-lighting a project. Although Smith was the primary researcher, the (deliberately) small-scale, Project Magnet was definitely an OFFICIALLY SANCTIONED project of the Canadian government at the highest level. It was designed to explore fundamental physics and engineering ideas related to saucer technology.
Project Second Storey was more an exploration of sighting reports and their implications. It too was sponsored by the DRB, and consisted of multiple scientists and engineers (including Smith) and military intelligence officers. The first meeting was held April 22, 1952 chaired by--guess who?--Omandt Solandt! This was the composition of the rest of the group at the first meeting besides Solandt and Smith:
Dr. Peter Millman, Dominion Observatory NRC [National Research Council], succeeded Solandt as Chairman; Mr. H.C. Oatway, Secretary; Squadron Leader L.P.S. Bing, Joint Intelligence Service; Group Captain D.M. Edwards, Directorate of Air Intelligence; Commodore J.C. Pratt from Directorate of Naval Intelligence; Lt. Col. E.H. Webb from Directorate of Military Operations and Planning; Flight Lieutenant V.L. Bradley, DRB; Mr. A.J. Langley, DRB.
That sounds VERY official to me.
Brian Bell, like CDA, is trying to sweep this all under the carpet by disingenuously trying to portray Wilbert Smith as a mad scientist-type and lone wolf working only on his own with no official government assistance or sanction. Total BS!
Further, I notice them also ignoring another documented FACT that Donald Keyhoe's proposed magazine article on Smith's theories required HIGH LEVEL OFFICIAL CLEARANCE before it could be published by Solandt/DRB and Vannevar Bush/U.S. RDB (the highly secret group looking into the "modus operandi" of the saucers).
This is all rather difficult to understand (more like impossible) if there was no such highly classified U.S. program, as stated in the various Smith documents. No government clearance of any kind (U.S. or Canadian) would be required.
Brian Bell wrote:
That "Manhatten style super-secrecy" would be immediately imposed and for what? Why? What exactly are the reasons why the military would immediately hide such an event in the first place?
For national security reasons (keep away from your enemies and avoid public panic) and to exploit futuristic, highly advanced technology for possible military, political, and commercial advantage. (more national security)
Manhattan style super-secrecy was imposed on the Manhattan Project for these very reasons. The technology was literally earth-shaking, success of which initially conferred a tremendous military and political advantage (super-weapon, eventually energy generation and propulsion). For those very reasons, you wouldn't want your enemies (then the Germans, Japanese, and the Russians) to learn what you were up to, even though you knew they were also working on the A-bomb.
Literally a futuristic technology unexpectedly dropped in your laps would similarly want to be exploited, keeping it VERY, VERY far away from our new greatest enemy, the Russians, who at that very moment we were very fearful of stealing our atomic secrets and ending our nuke monopoly. Thus, another Manhattan style, super-secret project would need to be set up to try to back-engineer the technology, highly compartmentalized, keeping most of your own people ignorant of it (same as the Manhattan Project), to minimize the risk of the Russians learning what you were up to or what you had learned.
The other major reason would be the likely highly destabilizing social effects such an event would have. Consider, only 2 years after a highly destructive, terrifying, traumatic world war that killed tens of millions of people and leveled numerous cities. Things are just beginning to return to normal. Now are you then going to announce that, oh BTW, we might now be under invasion by Martians in flying saucer gizmos that are far more advanced then anything we have flying. And, BTW, if they turn out to be hostile, there is nothing your military and government can do about it, so maybe run for the hills. Good night and God bless.
Social chaos would very likely ensue, not only in the U.S., but around the world, another national security matter.
I don't think it mere coincidence that the Pentagon issued another press release on July 8, 1947, just before the one from Roswell came out, denying that the saucers were ours, the Russians, or "space ships". The government/military feared public panic. In fact, several news articles about Roswell mention that the public was indeed jittery about the flying saucers and the Roswell announcement raised the anxiety level until it was debunked as a weather balloon.
Much the same was spelled out by AF Chief of Staff Twining in 1953 and 1954 in the very real Air Force Regulation 200-2: "Air Force interest in unidentified flying objects is twofold: First as a possible threat to the security of the United States and its forces, and secondly, to determine technical aspects involved."
www.cufon.org/cufon/afr200-2.htm
So national security concerns and "technical aspects", or back-engineering of the technology, further stating, "The possibility exists that an air vehicle of revolutionary configuration may be developed." Again, an OFFICIAL statement of the desire to duplicate or back-engineer UFO technology.
"The Flying Saucer Incident"
For all we know McCoy may have simply been refering to the "saucer" that crashed litetally in his back yard on July 5 near Circleville.
Many Ohio newspapers had headlines like this:
"Flying Disc' Believed Found On Pickaway Farm"
"PICKAWAY 'SAUCER IS ARMY WEATHER DEVICE"
Not to mention even more "kites" were found around the same time.
Interesting that although they were clearly identified by the USAAF as weather balloon devices, people still thought they were "flying discs".
And since they were USAAF devices from balloons, why is there no record of them having flown from anywhere?
No one was apparantly tracking for recovery these USAAF balloons either....
Brian Bell asked:
“…, can anyone answer exactly why this supposed crashed saucer story would be hidden from the public "immediately" upon discovery?”
The simplest answer is that it may have been “born classified” under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which took effect in January of 1947. If the AEC decided that some or all of the “Roswell Event” was in their wheelhouse, then they would have been REQUIRED to classify it—probably as Sensitive Restricted Data. By itself, that would immediately have put the matter outside the familiar Restricted/Confidential/Secret/Top Secret classification system that was in effect within the Army Air Force and other executive branch agencies in existence in 1947.
Does anyone know if McCoy had an AEC clearance at the time?
Many thanks to Bob Koford, Craig McDaniel, Anthony Mugan, and as always David Rudiak for relevant additional information and reasoning applied to the question of the significance of McCoy's letter to the CIG/CIA.
David (part 1 of 2)
Your thoughts on any of the following appreciated
When you look at the JRDB / RDB angle some interesting names and patterns start to come up.
Ruppelt described the group as consisting of ‘rocket experts’, ‘nuclear physicists’ and ‘intelligence experts’ which is in one way annoyingly vague but in another gives quite a big clue (no biologists, pyschologists etc and specifically nuclear physicists).
Sarbacher gives us several pieces of information – Bush chaired the group, Von Neumann was involved (and probably various other names including Oppenheimer) and the very tight security classification (but alas not the compartment name). He also referred to Fred Darwin in a conversation with Freidman as someone who knew more about it.
I then started to follow through on various people…
Darwin was Executive Secretary of the Guided Missile Committee of the RDB in the late 40’s and early 50’s. The Chair of the committee at that time was Clark Millikan he and Lawrence Hafstad (who had also chaired an earlier iteration of the Guided Missile Committee) were amongst those wheeled out to downplay ‘flying disc’ reports. (Hafstad did so after the 8th July 1947 RDB meeting which was concurrent with the Roswell situation)
Hafstad was a very prominent nuclear physicist, a close associate of Bush from the Carnegie Institure before WWII. He was brought into OSRD by Bush during the war (developing the proximity fuse) and by the immediate post war period was influential in guided missile research. There are documents from the 1946 period considering sending him to Sweden to investigate the ‘guided missiles over Sweden’ for CIG (this plan was vetoed by Vandeburg as Hafstad was considered too prominent). At that time he was a consultant for the JRDB. In 1947 Bush brought Hafstad into RDB as Executive Secretary (his deputy), taking over from Lloyd Berkner. He was succeeded in that role in 1949 by Eric Walker. Hafstad himself went to the AEC as head of reactor development (close connections to the ANP programme therefore) and eventually became chair of the AEC’s General Advisory Council. His two predecessors in that role were Von Neumann and Oppeheimer, before the later fell out of favour.
Both Von Neumann (definitely involved) and Oppenheimer (probably involved according to Sarbacher) were very prominent ‘nuclear physicists’ and both chaired the AEC General Advisory Council and were involved with the RDB. Oppenheimer was chair during the NEPA period and the ealy part of the ANP programme (NEPA featured on the circulation list of the Twinning memo and if you are thinking about all this in 1947 and need a very powerful propulsion system to make your disc go…). Von Neumann was a remarkable polymath best known today for game theory and the Von Neumann interpretation of quantum mechanics but he made fundamental contributions in many areas. Interestingly he had been involved in guided missile research (Aberdeen Proving Grounds) for many years and later developed concepts of cellular automata and self replicating machines (Von Neumann probes) which crop up in models of the spread of extraterrestrial civilisations.
Part 2 of 2
Going back to 1946 one Ralph L Clark was appointed Director of Programmes for the JRDB, a post he held with the RDB until 1949. He was a protégé of Lloyd Berkner and an electronic countermeasures expert but had a wide ranging brief with the JRDB and RDB. He is listed as the contact person for CIG in 1946 on the subject of guided missiles and seems to have had close dealings with the CIA in subsequent years (e.g a 1947 memo to Bush analysing the problems CIA, and therefore RDB had in accessing nuclear intelligence which was very closely held by AEC at this time). In 1949 he joined the CIA (a move initiated by Lloyd Berkner apparently) and of course crops up in 1952 as a key player in the CIA review that led to the Robertson Panel
The first piece of paper referring to the CIA review in 1952 is a memo between Clark and Durrant. The latter had joined CIA in 1951 with a background in (naturally) guided missile research in the Navy.
At the same time that Clark, Darwin, Hafsted etc were in the RDB, Brigadier (later Lt-General) Donal L Putt was one of the Air Force representatives on the board. He seems like a prime candidate to be the Major General from Research and Development referred to by Ruppelt in a 1952 meeting (Ruppelt was vague about this officer ‘I think his name was White’ he wrote in notes on his book – the only character in the book he wasn’t quite specific about in the notes). Well, there weren’t many Major Generals in Research and Development for the Air Force in 1952. Ruppelt also tells us (a paragraph or two below introducing the idea of this group) about the Canadian Avro experiments with the Coanda effect in the early fifties and seems to link this to the ideas this group he referrs to had on how the discs might be operating.
All this is of course, purely coincidental…
The point of this is to see if there are other pieces of information which might slot into the jigsaw?
There were indeed plenty of sightings of flying discs that summer. There is no reason whatever to suppose the 'flying fishes in the sky' seen over Dayton have any connection with the Roswell disc.
This is because the first lot were "flying" whereas the Roswell disc was firmly on the ground. Hence the obvious and likely Arnold connection.
And as to our supposed great man of Canada, Wilbert Smith, I am still waiting for someone to tell us how on earth Smith ever came to be told of a top secret US intelligence group investigating the propulsion method of flying discs, whether chaired by Vannevar Bush or anyone else. Every ET believer tells us that Roswell had to be kept Top Secret. Yet here we have a lowly Canadian scientist (or engineer), without any 'need to know' being told all about it, almost as if he was one of the great Majestic 12 himself.
@ Anthony Morgan
I think it is interesting to mention, that in the same month Project Sign began their work, the RDB released an assessment about Flying saucers which reads like a blueprint for the post-sign AirForce - projects like Grudge. THe RDB interpreted flying saucers as a result of mass selfhypnosis and optical illusions.
DR writes:
"Brian Bell, like CDA, is trying to sweep this all under the carpet by disingenuously trying to portray Wilbert Smith as a mad scientist-type and lone wolf working only on his own with no official government assistance or sanction. Total BS!
Further, I notice them also ignoring another documented FACT that Donald Keyhoe's proposed magazine article on Smith's theories required HIGH LEVEL OFFICIAL CLEARANCE before it could be published by Solandt/DRB and Vannevar Bush/U.S. RDB (the highly secret group looking into the "modus operandi" of the saucers)."
.....
You would indeed expect an article of this nature to require some sort of official clearance (not necessarily at the highest level) because it was describing experiments taking place in Canadian government laboratories. There is nothing surprising here.
Wilbert Smith used government labs in Ottawa for his experiments in magnetic propulsion, which was intended to produce an actual model of a flying disc. Obviously he could not use official premises without approval and clearance from above. Smith's project (and Keyhoe's article about it, later revised by Smith) did NOT require clearance from Bush, or anyone else, in the USA. From the draft of this article, no names appear in it anyway; it merely mentions "a group of Canadian scientists".
However, official clearance is quite different from being "Top Secret". The two are not connected. Smith wanted it kept secret for his own reasons, namely that he was reluctant to let his ideas on producing a working model of a flying saucer getting too widely known for fear of ridicule by his contemporaries. Thus the self-imposed 'secrecy'. He even told Keyhoe later that his project had become classified, and that nothing could, or would, now be published.
The real question is this: Was Smith's project truly classified or did Smith invent this 'classification' to avoid unwelcome publicity for his essentially pseudo-scientific project, a project that in the end got nowhere?
A. Regarding WHY an alien space craft wreck would be immediately classified and hidden for nearly 70 years:
Anthony said:
"I think in 1947 and 1948, the fear of Russian spies was very high and very real. I think this really did set the stage for a security level higher than the "Manhattan Project" and contained to a very small group of people within the Air Force."
Larry said:
"The simplest answer is that it may have been “born classified” under the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, which took effect in January of 1947."
David said:
"For national security reasons (keep away from your enemies and avoid public panic) and to exploit futuristic, highly advanced technology for possible military, political, and commercial advantage. (more national security)."
>>> You all offer different reasons. So let me get this straight. Your collective answer goes something like this:
In 1947 a crashed saucer presumed to be an interplanetary spacecraft from Mars or Venus would immediately be classified "above top secret" because the Atomic Energy Commission would have been involved and based on the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 they would have been required to classify it outside of normal USAAF protocols. Furthermore, the AEC's overriding concern would be that Soviet spies (presumably in New Mexico) would discover we had it, and since our goal would have been to reverse engineer it for weaponization a small contingent of USAAF would be involved. Additionally, the USAAF would have been fearful of two things that may jeopardize national security. The first being that if disclosed we risked starting World War III with the Soviets, and second that citizens of the US would overwhelmingly panic thereby risking what....
1) A surprise attack by the Soviets over their concern (and jealousy) that we had a crashed alien saucer?
2) Losing WW III to the Soviets?
3) Inviting a panic crazed societal upheaval that would overturn the US Government or governments worldwide?
These really aren't very good reasons to hide it then, or even now.
1) The Soviets didn't have the bomb in 1947 and we were already superior militarily speaking on land, air, and sea.
2) A crashed alien saucer doesn't guarantee any military advantage since understanding it would have been a challenge to begin with.
3) Soviets claimed they had their own saucer crashes so secrecy on our part offers little strategic or military value if they already have the same thing we do.
4) There was no evidence that society in the US (or globally) would come crashing down in 1947 if such a thing were disclosed.
5) Before you say "yes there was" look at the War of the World's radio broadcast, Kevin has already debunked that as a non-issue that never had widespread impact of any major significance (and no deaths either).
6) Don't bother mentioning the Brookings Institute Report as this didn't come about till 1960.
B. Secret Committees
It seems quite a stretch to link McCoy to Walker, Berkner, Millikan, Hafstad, Darwin, Smith, Oppenheimer, Bush, Neumann and all the others being cited as "in the know" about crashed alien saucers and specifically Roswell.
@ David who wrote:
"Donald Keyhoe's proposed magazine article on Smith's theories required HIGH LEVEL OFFICIAL CLEARANCE before it could be published...."
In addition to CDA's comments, I will also add that besides no evidence of the people you claim had to "approve" this article, you seem to think this kind of thing is highly unusual.
It's not.
My guess is that you are a self employed optometrist. If you were employed by any large institution, whether commercial or private, you would know that ALL of them prevent people employed by them to publish at their own discretion anything they want about their work.
None of the companies I worked for did, and neither did the Federal Government. Basically, it's understood that to get something published it takes approvals first.
Common....NOT extraordinary...
CDA fantacized:
"You would indeed expect an article of this nature to require some sort of official clearance (not necessarily at the highest level) because it was describing experiments taking place in Canadian government laboratories. There is nothing surprising here."
The point CDA keeps avoiding is that the primary clearance for the Keyhoe article was from Vannevar Bush and the U.S. RDB, NOT the Canadians. Why would the U.S. need to clear research from another country unless it directly involved their own classified research done in affiliation with the Canadians?
Perhaps, it had to do with the FACT that Sarbacher, who worked as a consultant to the RDB, told Smith (perhaps through Canadian embassy military/DRB attache Bremner) that the subject of flying saucers was classified higher than the H-bomb by the U.S. government. Also that Smith, through the Bremner, Canadian embassy, and Canadian Solandt/DRB channels wanted assistance with his research from the U.S. Bush/RDB super-secret saucer group.
(There is also an FBI document from Jan. 1949 stating they were informed by Air Force and Army intelligence that the subject of flying saucers was classified Top Secret, so it wasn't just Smith's documents.)
It was stated very explicitly in the first 1952 Canadian Project Second Storey meeting, chaired by none other than Solandt, that Smith was against Solandt downgrading the Canadian research under Second Storey (collection/evaluation of Canadian UFO reports) to merely Confidential, feeling the Canadians should continue to respect the U.S. classification (namely Top Secret).
There was indeed need of approval at the highest level. As mentioned, Solandt was just below cabinet status in the Canadian government, in charge of the DRB (Defence Research Board) of the Canadian DND (Dept. Nat'l Defence), the highest classified military R&D group within the Canadian government. Bush and his group, the RDB had similar status within the U.S. (Yes, Bush no longer headed the RDB at that point, only from 1947-48, but he still sat on the Board of Directors and could still chair subcommittees within the RDB, which I suspect his saucer "modus operandi" group classified higher than the H-bomb was--another of many classified RDB military R&D subcommittees.)
Perhaps this is why Smith stamped sensitive UFO documents "Top Secret", you think, because he was told that was the U.S. classification? Of course, leave it to CDA to do a little time travel mind-reading and dream up a typical CDA preposterous rationale that Smith stamped high security on his UFO papers to "avoid unwelcome publicity" and "ridicule by his contemporaries".
Not only is that incredibly lame, but also flies in the face of the historical paper trail (such as Project Second Storey minutes) and that Smith later fell somewhat out of favor in 1956 by being TOO OPEN, NOT SECRETIVE, with fellow scientists, civilians, and the press. He was somewhat of a loose cannon who felt the public had some limited right-to-know what the government was up to. It was not Smith but the Dept. of Transport and Solandt who didn't welcome the publicity that they were involved in Smith's flying saucer research, even though they had originally officially sanctioned and supported it. Only then did they withdraw official support of Smith's research, but Smith was permitted to continue on his own time and dime. (However, there is also clear documentary evidence that the Canadians through other departments, including Solandt's DRB, continued to conduct official UFO research.)
Brian Bell wrote patronizingly:
My guess is that you are a self employed optometrist. If you were employed by any large institution, whether commercial or private, you would know that ALL of them prevent people employed by them to publish at their own discretion anything they want about their work.
Sorry Brian, but Smith was a CANADIAN, not a U.S. citizen, working within Canadian government agencies. And it wasn't Smith's magazine article in any case, but Keyhoe's, based on discussions he had with Smith on his theories. So why would KEYHOE, a U.S. citizen not working for any government agency at the time, Canadian or American, need clearance from the Canadians? Simple question.
Similarly, can you can explain why Canadian Smith would need to take the Keyhoe article for clearance from the Americans? Did Keyhoe need high-level U.S. and Canadian clearance for his first TRUE magazine blockbuster article in 1950, "The Flying Saucers Are Real?" No, of course not. Private citizen not working in any classified government capacity for either the U.S. or Canadians don't need any sort of government clearance. Nor do mail carriers or social security workers who don't work in any classified capacity, even though they work for government agencies.
However, the Smith papers make it clear, it was primarily the Americans, namely Vannevar Bush and the U.S. Defense Dept.'s Research and Development Board (you know, the ones Sarbacher said had a saucer "modus operandi" group classified higher than the H-bomb) that needed to clear Keyhoe's paper. Perhaps that had to do with Smith's theories discussed in the Keyhoe article having everything to do with possible "modus operandi" and Smith was seeking assistance from the Bush/RDB "modus operandi" research group. If Smith found out the Americans believed the article contained classified material, he was going to delete it, or, as it turned out, eventually told Keyhoe not to publish it because of classification issues.
So my guess is that you are a self-employed bullshitter who even doesn't know what he is talking about, or does know better but is deliberately trying to obfuscate the facts here, as usual.
Brian... "Regarding WHY an alien space craft wreck would be immediately classified and hidden for nearly 70 years:"
I'm left baffled by your presumption that a crashed flying saucer from another planet wouldn't be deemed worthy, by your government, of trying to keep it secret. From your statement I quoted above...you don't think they had any reason to keep quiet about it even before they even attempted to figure out what it was, where it's from, what is the potential threat...and what are the long term implications.
I mean...if that's not worth keeping quiet about, then what is?
(OK...the people CAN'T be told that J Edgar wears a tutu and nylons...but telling them all about that spaceship that crashed in New Mexico last week, is alright.)
Considering your country spends an absolute fortune on your various Secret Services...what's the point in having them if you don't believe they're interested in keeping even the most extraordinary events secret?
In the past seventy-five years has anyone found any physical material that was verified as being from aliens visiting the earth. No!
The presumption everyone is making is:
1) They (humans) will know it when they see it - Maybe! If you are socialized what to expect, anything different may be filter out.
2) If the Americans and or Russians have a flying disk the presumption is the aliens would not want it back to determine what went wrong.
3) That a country could hide a saucer underground so the aliens couldn't find it. Hmmm. If the aliens are smart enough to travel here, and we are not smart enough to travel there, what makes anyone think the aliens could not find, and retrieve their saucer (or parts there of).
4) That the aliens would be passive. Why? Because we like them that way. Or we believe somehow our development makes us more superior, and we can win them over.
In reading about the Canadian connection, here is how I believe the chain started in regards to the "memory metal" or "magic metal". There were many Roswell witnesses that handled the special light weight metal that could be balled up and returned to it's original size. Kevin might have a count of the total people who handled the material.
So from Roswell, the material went to Ft. Worth then to Wright...
At the time the leading private metals laboratory was Battelle in Columbus, Ohio, and 100 miles=/- from Wright. Here is there website:
http://www.battelle.org/
Here is a UFO researcher named Anthony Bragalia and his work:
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009/06/roswell-metal-scientist-curious-dr.html
and
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2009/05/roswell-debris-confirmed-as.html
The connection leads to a new metal that was called Nitinol with is a mix of Nickel_Titanium.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_titanium
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19690002089.pdf
In the research who was credited with the discovery of Nitinol was in 1958 or 1959 by The Naval Ordnance Laboratory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ordnance_Laboratory
In a side note about the NOL, was the China Lake facility in California:
Navy's China Lake facility at Inyokern, California.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Weapons_Station_China_Lake
In this, "The China Lake Way, more formally known as Principles of Operation, were established in 1946 through the leadership of Vannevar Bush."
The point here is a bread crumb trail from the Roswell magic metal known today as Nitinol to Wright then to different laboratories including Battelle. In the end the Naval Ordnance Laboratory took the credit for creating the new metal alloy.
Last, I am not taking sides on this except the possibility of the truth.
One errata. I missed out Ribert Rhinhart who was Executive Secretary of the RDB between Hafstad and Walker.
The question was raised (was it CDA or Brian?) of how could Smith have acquired such sensitive informative. Bremner spoke to Sarbacher. Bremner was Canadian intelligence which makes Sarbacher a source (witting or unwitting). I've not seen anyone make that rather obvious point before ( shock horror, everyone spies on everyone).
There is an argument of why a supposed alien spacecraft might be instantly classified as above top secret.
Here is my reasoning of why that would happen.
Supposing That what crashed in Roswell was an alien spacecraft- the military would surely cover it up and want total secrecy.
They have no idea where these beings come from, what their intentions are, or why they crashed.
They could not and would not take any risks. These aliens could be hostile, and having the upper hand of any kind would be paramount. Especially when dealing with an advanced race- let alone our own people.
I can easily see why this would have been covered up. These aliens are reportedly buzzing all over the US at the time. No one seems to know their intentions, and one finally crashes- possibly on purpose to gauge our reaction.
With little-to-no knowledge about these beings- our military took the best step possible. Cover everything up and classify this as above top secret.
The entire human race could have been at stake. They did the right thing.
That is, of a craft of extraterrestrial origin actually crashed in Roswell.
Anthony:
Are you saying that Sarbacher (an American) who claimed to know about alien craft being recovered and analysed by a secret group in the US, would have told a Canadian Embassy official about it so that this official (Bremner) could pass it on to an insignificant Canadian engineer?
If UFOs were indeed so secret in the US that they were ranked "two points higher than the H-bomb" (whatever that means) then I say emphatically that NOBODY, Sarbacher or anyone else, would have informed a Canadian official about it at all, let alone Wilbert Smith.
Smith simply had NO 'need to know'. So yes, Smith has blown up a tale out of all proportion to its real value. I further surmise that Smith put the TOP SECRET on his memo AFTER circulating it to a few people first. Notice the handwritten comments on it by various interested parties. Notice also that the TOP SECRET only appears on the first page, instead of every page as is the custom for obvious reasons. Was Smith, shall we say, just a bit careless?
All -
Let's dial back the snarky comments. Against my better judgement, I've let a couple through but I have also stopped several others. Tone it down or the comments will not be posted. No more warnings. Appeals to me but my decisions are final.
Re Vannevar Bush, is it not time to stop this beating about the bush, so to speak? If he researched the propulsion methodology of UFOs, either theoretically or because he had an actual piece of UFO hardware to examine, where are his published papers on this? Why has nobody ever located them? Just one would suffice for a start.
There are loads of entries for him on Google, there are numerous references to his work. Please, will someone (preferably a dedicated ETHer) find even ONE of his research papers on UFOs, and display it for us. Try the Library of Congress if nowhere else.
Oh I forgot: it is still all TOP SECRET, even after 65 years. What a great pity.
CDA -
Just thought I'd mention that there is still crap from WWI that is still classified Top Secret. Since Top Secret requires a review to downgrade it and there is no regulation that requires when something would be reviewed, it just lingers in that state until someone makes a request to downgrade it, or someone forces a review of specific records. So, it is no unusual for something to remain classified for decades.
I previously wrote:
Project Second Storey was more an exploration of sighting reports and their implications. It too was sponsored by the DRB, and consisted of multiple scientists and engineers (including Smith) and military intelligence officers. The first meeting was held April 22, 1952 chaired by--guess who?--Omandt Solandt!
I've been going through the very interesting book "The UFO Files: The Canadian Connection Exposed", by Palmiro Campagna, on Google books, which among other things indicates Canadian (most importantly the Minister of Defence, Brooke Claxton) and Solandt's involvement in UFO investigation PREDATING Wilbert Smith by at least half a year. (see Chapter 4)
http://tinyurl.com/The-UFO-Files
Campagna explains that in Claxton's papers, it indicates that Claxton was a big fan of Vannevar Bush's. Claxton and Solandt met with Bush clear back in 1948, though it isn't clear if this had anything to do with UFO's. But by April 1950 (remember the first Smith memo on the subject wasn't until November), Claxton was pushing Solandt to get the Canadian Army, Navy, and Air Force to report occurrences of flying saucers over Canada. "Claxton suggested that the matter be discussed at the meeting of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). This committee included representation from the Director of Air Intelligence (DAI), the Director of Naval Intelligence (DNI), the director of military intelligence (DMI), and the Director of Scientific Intelligence (DSI)."
This meeting on April 12, 1950, stated that the U.S. Project Saucer was completed in 1950, but they deemed it desirable that the Canadians collect saucer reports. It was decided: 1) The DSI and DAI would prepare a UFO witness questionnaire for distribution to the intel services of all military branches and the RCMP; 2) The DAI would coordinate the investigation; 3) All field reports would go to the DSI for examination on behalf of the Dept. of Nat'l Defence (hence Claxton).
During the summer, inquiries were made with the U.S., being told that Saucer concluded there was nothing to it. A recommendation was made not to prepare the questionnaire and to drop the matter. But the JIC did NOT drop the matter. The questionnaire was prepared and distributed by Oct. 1950, with reports to be classified SECRET.
Campagna comments that apparently somebody in the JIC or Claxton knew there was more to the story that the "final" negative Saucer report. In fact, there is a DND memo Campagna quotes in which it states the public and press were told the saucer studies were discontinued, but in fact had recently been "re-opened" and was now "classified". (We now know this as the beginning of Project Blue Book.) The public was being told one thing, but internally something else entirely was taking place. Claxton ignored the recommendation to drop the matter and instead ordered the JIC to act, and they did.
Remember, this is all WITHOUT Wilbert Smith's involvement, which didn't start for another month. The Canadians under the MOD's directions were ALREADY investigating UFOs involving multiple government agencies. (All agencies affiliated with the JIC, including all branches of military intelligence, the RCMP, the DND and Defence Minister.)
Please, no more debunker propaganda garbage that Wilbert Smith was some crazy lone wolf and the Canadians did not take this seriously, only Smith. By the time Smith had been briefed by Sarbacher, and then approached Solandt and briefed him about what he had been told, requesting Solandt help to set up a small research program by Smith to investigate possible saucer propulsion, Solandt was ALREADY on board. Smith's DOT memo the next day states that Solandt wanted Smith's research program to proceed ASAP and had the full support of Solandt's DRB. The stage had already been set by the time Smith approached Solandt, something probably even Smith didn't know at the time.
(part 2 of 2)
Solandt was till on board two years later with the first meeting of Project Second Storey in April 1952, which Solandt chaired. Their primary purpose was again to collect and analyze UFO reports, only this time seemingly using a committee approach instead of field reports being filtered through the DSI and then to DND as in the original set-up, pre-Smith. It was felt a more rigorous approach was needed. Second Storey still had a mix of representation from JIC plus involvement of Solandt's scientists and engineers with DRB, plus Smith from DOT.
Solandt's views at the time in that SS meeting were that based on the frequency of occurrence and persistent nature of the UFO phenomenon, it could be ruled out that they were some sort of hallucination. However, Solandt suggested they might be Russian based on ideas of AVRO engineer John Frost, who thought them Russian. Solandt felt Frost's ideas should be seriously considered, because even if the saucers proved to be ET (note, he didn't rule it out), they would need to follow conventional aerodynamic theory. Studying them might help develop our own high-speed principles of design. (AVRO at the time was in early stages of trying to create a jet-propelled saucer. This involved Gen. Putt from the U.S., one of the engineering heads at Wright Field in 1947 who helped in preparation of the Twining memo, a great deal of which had to do with a broad approach in studying the saucers with the possibility of back-engineering them.)
So again, back to back-engineering of the saucers, regardless of origins. Solandt treated them as quite real, but apparently never mentioned anything about Sarbacher's briefing to Smith (even though Smith's original memo mentions briefing Solandt on everything he knew to that point), or knowing anything about crashed saucers or Bush and his supersecret "modus operandi" group, all matters he would later deny when approached by various researchers decades later (including CDA).
But the paper trail indicates quite clearly Solandt was much more deeply involved in saucer investigations than he would ever publicly admit to, and this went well beyond Smith's involvement and started well before.
Kevin:
If this stuff is only crap (your word) I don't think we need worry too much about it, TOP SECRET or not.
Anthony Mugan wrote:
The question was raised (was it CDA or Brian?) of how could Smith have acquired such sensitive informative. Bremner spoke to Sarbacher. Bremner was Canadian intelligence which makes Sarbacher a source (witting or unwitting). I've not seen anyone make that rather obvious point before ( shock horror, everyone spies on everyone).
Smith's memo made it clear he first approached the Canadian embassy in Washington about making inquiries. It was the embassy as high-level representatives of the Canadian government, with Bremner as military attache plus embassy official Wright, both as representatives and liaisons with the Canadian DRB & director Dr. Omand Solandt (the highest level military R&D group in Canada), not Smith, who were obviously made inquiries and connected with Sarbacher. I would presume Sarbacher, physicist and missile consultant to the U.S. RDB, would also have to receive some sort of clearance before he could brief Bremner/Smith on what he knew.
Part of Smith's approach was that he had ideas on how the saucers might function, and would the U.S. be interested in his and the Canadian's assistance? Apparently they were.
As I wrote in another post, the Canadians and Solandt were ALREADY involved in assisting the U.S. on collecting and analyzing flying saucer reports, at least 6 months earlier. Solandt and Canadian Minister of Defence Brooke Claxton already knew Vannevar Bush of the RDB well, both meeting with him in 1948. (based on Claxton's personal papers) In April 1950, Claxton instructed Osmondt to get the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee to undertake an investigation of UFOs using the various military intelligence groups, the RCMP, and the Director of Scientific Intelligence, who reported directly to Claxton and the Canadian DND. At the JIC meeting that month, it was stated that the U.S. requested the Canadians to gather and analyze saucer reports over their country. That investigation was set up and running at about the same time as Sarbacher was interviewed and a full month before Smith approached Solandt about supporting a small R&D effort by Smith on saucer propulsion, which Solandt green-lighted, giving full DRB support. Smith was just part of a much bigger UFO picture in Canada.
As for Canadians allegedly not taking part in U.S. top secret projects, Canadians scientists were part of the Manhattan Project. A well known example was physicist Louis Slotin, who was killed in 1946 by a radiation overdose during a critical mass experiment. There were any number of furriners in the Manhattan Project, like Italian Fermi, Hungarians Teller, Wigner & Szilard, Germans Franck & Bloch, Pole Ulam, Austrian Rabi, etc., etc.
But apparently the Canadians were especially untrustworthy. Can't have a Canadian like Smith being involved with our top secret projects (LOL). BTW, Smith held a top secret clearance in Canada, in charge of Radio Ottawa, where Canadian spies reported in and which monitored Soviet radio transmissions. Contrary to the usual attempts by debunking trolls at portraying Smith as a loony, low-level, lone wolf working practically alone on UFOs, Smith was in reality much higher level and part of a bigger complex of Canadian UFO investigations involving many agencies of the government.
Hello CDA
You have such a lovely work view...if only it could be reality...
Yes it seems fairly obvious to me that Sarbacher was a source for Canadian intelligence. I don't know if he was witting (i.e. a traitor) or unwitting but either way Smith approached Bremner and he used his contacts to find out what was going on. You need to understand that espionage is normal behaviour between nation states.
It looks like the Canadians were able to use this background knowledge to their advantage in discussions with the US without blowing their source.
From the rather naive comments Sarbacher made to various interviewers and his willingness to discuss all this it seems probable that he was unwitting but that is an assumption.
Please try to understand that to these people (Bush etc) national security is infinitely more important than some naively idealistic view of open scientific enquiry. If you doubt that please do study the history of conventional subjects during this time period.
Once again ET'ers really need to stop with the Smith nonsense as though he's some kind of UFO hero. You sound ridiculous.
He claimed to be a "contactee" and that aliens spoke to him about science and how to construct flying saucers.
It no longer amazes me that ET'ers will accept any sort of nonsense to "prove" their case. You reject science for pseudoscience and mysticism.
"In the area of metaphysics, Smith claimed to communicate with 'occupants' of UFOs through a contact who provided him with certain information. One instance pertained to areas of reduced binding in our atmosphere. All matter is held together by forces which are not clearly understood and are known as 'binding forces'. Smith was informed that there are areas of reduced binding and that many air crashes were due to entering such regions, where the planes literally fell apart. He was told that means of detecting such areas were easily available to us and that suitable instruments could be constructed. By building a 'binding meter' according to the principles given to him, he was able to locate regions of reduced binding. He recommended to the government that further investigation be conducted, but because of the unorthodox source of his information, he was unable to obtain official recognition of this work and his letters were added to the 'crank file'."
Indeed....the crank file is where most of this convoluted "connect any and all dots including the local contactees and palm readers" strategy belongs.
Brian states: "...2) A crashed alien saucer doesn't guarantee any military advantage since understanding it would have been a challenge to begin with...."
I don't completely disagree with you here. To guarantee a military advantage from alien hardware would mean finding a way of plugging it in to 1947 Earth tech. That might have been possible depending on how far ahead of us the aliens were; 100, 500 or maybe a thousand years?
Some excellent documentaries are available on the web, such as BBC's Horizons series, (one in particular "How small is the universe?") They demonstrate quite dramatically how todays quantum mechanics boffins are more perplexed by the more they are finding out.
You might call it "pseudoscience and mysticism" Brian, but Smith's binding forces sit quite comfortably within aspects of string theory.
You might not take it seriously but plenty of the worlds top physicists do now.
Certainly the "delivery system" that Smith describes in obtaining his knowledge of binding forces is controversial, but the actual theory behind it is considered very worthwhile in studying. Funny how a "crank" could come out with something that future scientists now believe is feasible.
DR:
Wilbert Smith did NOT have a top secret clearance. He merely put "top secret" on his personal papers, presumably as a way of keeping them from inquisitive individuals. That was what Solandt told me way back in 1989 when I specifically wrote and asked him about Smith and his infamous memo.
Smith certainly did become a 'contactee' as BB says. This would not mean he was incompetent at his radio telecoms and other work but it does cast a bit of a shadow over his UFO ideas and writings, especially over his dotty articles in FLYING SAUCER REVIEW from 1958-62. The quotes from BB above are taken from one of those articles.
I should add that in 1959 Smith remarked, to an enquirer: "For your information, every nation on this planet has been officially informed of the existence of the spacecraft and their occupants from elsewhere." [See Timothy Good, ABOVE TOP SECRET, end of chapter 8]. Has there ever been such a nonsensical piece of utter garbage as this, I wonder, in the whole of ufology? Almost reminiscent of Adamski.
OK, so maybe Smith was losing his marbles by then. My question is: did Smith ever have his marbles in the first place? In 1950, perhaps he did, but only just. He did get some award for services to radio communications, I believe.
Yes, the Canadian government did at one time take UFOs seriously. So did the US, so did the UK, so did France, etc, etc. None of which goes one iota towards proving that any scientist or military official in a high position (or even a low one) had a genuine UFO, from a crash or anything else, to examine and reverse-engineer, much though they might have wished to have.
And yes, Smith once claimed that a genuine UFO crash fragment had fallen into the hands of someone in a high position in the USAF, and was passed to, guess who, himself!
And what became of this precious fragment? Your guess is as good as mine.
Kevin wrote:
"Don’t get fooled by the red herring that Stan Friedman has launched. True, the letter was only “secret” and we all suppose that the Roswell crash information would be “top secret,” and therefore couldn’t be mentioned in a document with a lower classification."
Friedman's argument "secret versus top secret", seems to be a childish and over simplistic argument, but one has to admit it is formally correct and unarguable. We can certainly rationalize and expand on many reasonable ideas on why Twining's memorandum or Mcoys letter are not conclusive, but Friedman's argument is the more efficient, formally correct, and unarguable way to reach the same goal.
If I recall well, Friedman responded to the idea that Wilbert Smith claimed to be a contactee with a powerful and simple "So what?". Indeed, it does not really matter whether Smith claimed later in his life that he was a contactee. The 1951 information about Vannevar Bush's group analyzing the modus operandi of flying saucers plus the top secret nature of UFO topic whithin the US government is still there in the document, with Sarbacher later confirming this information, adding that there was a crash of a flying saucer with bodies recovered. So the attacks on Wilbert Smith are absolutely worthless here.
Another very simple but still undeniable quote from Friedman is "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", which again, seems to be a childish and tricky one, but the more one thinks about it the more unarguable and formally correct it is, and that is what annoys CDA and other debunkers, for example.
@ Paul who wrote:
"You might not take it seriously but plenty of the worlds top physicists do now."
But I doubt they believe Smith was a contactee and that aliens shared this universal wisdom with him.
Or are you now proposing the world's top physicists should first seek alien metaphysical contact in order to find the answers they seek? Just like Smith?
I mean if that's what ET'ers are now proposing I'm wondering why they collectively forced "contactees" from their community decades ago in order to maintain some level of credibility. I guess things go full circle in ufology. Perhaps if they hadn't distanced themselves from contactees you would have all the answers by now....channeled from the great beyond...
@ CDA
Yes, these mysterious alien artifacts from crashed saucers that supposedly gave us Nitinol, transistors, fiber optics....well just about everything...
How is it that these mysterious pieces of debris have never surfaced physically or in photos, lab reports, scientific studies, etc.?
I guess they're so super-duper secret that no one knows for sure.
Funny how some reject Corso while accepting his fanciful tales as supporting evidence.
Or is it that they really aren't sure this stuff existed in the first place?
Don -
The problem with the secret vs. top secret argument is that it assumes facts that are not in evidence. We all seem to agree that if Roswell was alien, then it would be classified as top secret, but there is no documentation to support this theory. Besides, the simple answer to the problem would be for McCoy (Twining) to have upgraded the response to top secret. There is no regulation that would prohibit McCoy from making a reply that was top secret if that was what he wanted to do. So, while the argument that you can't put top secret information into a document that is only classified as secret is accurate, it is also true that McCoy (Twining) could have created a top secret response because, at the very least, Schulgen would have had a top secret clearance (and Garrett probably had one as well).
Second, the phrase that "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence," at some point becomes meaningless because there are times when the absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of absence, especially when due diligence has been performed. For example, I can say there is no evidence that Santa Claus is real and you can then response with "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Is that really a meaningful response? No, all it does is cloud the issue by suggesting that at some other time, in some other circumstance, something might be found... but this is a way of shifting the burden of proof to those who had no obligation to prove the negative.
Or, in other words, if you are the one making the extraordinary claim, then the burden of proof rests on your shoulders and you can't shift it to others by saying, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." You must provide evidence that your claim is viable before others have to review the evidence to see if it is accurate. Too often we get caught up in these was of words, losing track of the real issue.
Yes, the Canadian government did at one time take UFOs seriously. So did the US, so did the UK, so did France, etc, etc.
Yes, why is that do you suppose? Were the military/governments all run by drooling idiots, like those officers at Roswell? Or that deranged Canadian radio engineer Wilbert Smith?
Other countries known to have officially investigated UFOs are Russia, Australia, China, Sweden, Greece, Brazil, Chile, Belgium, Japan, and probably others. More drooling idiots in charge?
BTW, France STILL takes UFOs seriously since it has had an ongoing UFO investigation within their space agency for the past 40 years. The heads of the program have all gone on pubic record that the hardcore unknowns they believe to be extraterrestrial. Chile is also known to have an ongoing UFO investigation.
And despite claims by the U.S. Air Force that they shut down Project Blue Book in 1970 and went out of the UFO business, that is a lie. E.g., Air Force Instruction 10-206 directed personnel to report "unidentified flying objects", as clearly distinguished from missiles, airplanes, balloons, and other conventional flying objects. AFI 10-206 was on the books until at least 2011, when it was suddenly withdrawn after some pesky UFO researchers began making an issue of it.
Apparently nobody is paying attention to the all-knowing CDA's and BB's of the debunking world who can assure all these nations that they have been completely wasting their time and money on UFO investigations, since they know there is absolutely nothing to it. Because they say so.
None of which goes one iota towards proving that any scientist or military official in a high position (or even a low one) had a genuine UFO, from a crash or anything else, to examine and reverse-engineer
Which is entirely beside the point. The MANY government UFO investigations over the years by itself proves the phenomenon is world-wide and MANY governments have and continue to take UFOs seriously.
And as we all know, the only "proof" CDA will accept is a crashed flying saucer or alien body for his personal inspection. Testimony of scientists and military officers (including some saying there had been saucer crashes) plus known documents that state flying saucers are real and there were obvious attempts at back-engineering don't seem to count in CDA's universe.
Twining's Air Force Reg. 200-2 from 1953/54 stated UFOs were to be investigated for national security reasons and to learn of their "technical aspects", including the possibility learning the "technical aspects" could lead to development of such a craft.
It's all OFFICIALLY spelled out there in a few sentences what they were up to, if the debunkers weren't burying their heads in sands of psychological denial. Or maybe Twining was another nut case?
Brian and CDA,
I was the first to introduce into the discussion Nitinol. I NEVER raised anything about "transistors, fiber optics....well just about everything...". I also NEVER raised anything about Corso because I thought he was a fake and opportunist.
I believe Kevin's witnesses who handled the Roswell material from several of Kevin's books. I also seen the video interviews on TV shows about several who talked about it. I am sure you (Brian and CDA) are not doubting Kevin or his witnesses are you? No I don't think so. So give credit to Brian for the interviews with all of the people who did have direct knowledge and handled the material. If it wasn't for them, there would not likely be this blog today talking about everything connected to Roswell.
From there is a thin bread crumb trail back to Wright, then Battelle and The Naval Ordnance Laboratory who did take credit for creating Nitinol publically. I believe that this is the only think that can be considered back engineered for use by the public today. Simply, both Nickel and Titanium are metals found on earth and the back engineering was looking for clues how Nitinol was processed from the Roswell craft.
Last, the reason for Battelle Laboratories to have been involved was simple. They were the only ones who have testing equipment to do the metallurgical research needed. I am also sure if the Air Force and Vannevar Bush had the budget to build the research lab and buy all the equipment needed on short notice they would have done so. In short, somewhere between 1947 and 1952 someone created the groundwork for "Black Budgets" which is the holy grail we would all like to know about.
Kevin wrote:
The problem with the secret vs. top secret argument is that it assumes facts that are not in evidence. We all seem to agree that if Roswell was alien, then it would be classified as top secret, but there is no documentation to support this theory.
Therefore, logic dictates that the information in this just-secret document can NOT tell us anything about Roswell.
On the other hand, we indeed do have an FBI document saying that UFOs were considered top secret, and of course, we have the Smith's memo saying the same.
Kevin wrote:
"So, while the argument that you can't put top secret information into a document that is only classified as secret is accurate, it is also true that McCoy (Twining) could have created a top secret response because..."
Fact is he simply did not. And I repeat, we have documents informing that UFOs were considered top secret.
"For example, I can say there is no evidence that Santa Claus is real and you can then response with "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Is that really a meaningful response?"
Of course not. But, the clause "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" is handy when the evidence is disputed. A general example. For debunkers, the UFO evidence, albeit consisting of dozen of thousands of sightings and reports, is still dubious. So I can accept to be told that UFO evidence is dubious, etc. However, in debunkerland, dubious evidence magically translates (nobody knows how nor why) into UFOs cannot possibly exist.
A question still remains as to why the Air Force continually felt the need to say that there was no substance to any report, given by anyone. They continued this theme before and long after Watson's interview after Scully's book was published.
A look at the first SIGN report illustrates what I mean. It is stated in the first report that the engineering department was waiting for the Aeromedical department to complete their psychological evaluations of the reported sightings. This was being done to see how much psychology was playing into sightings.
It is stated in the report that if the Aeromedical people find that the evidence does NOT show that these sightings are the result of psychological effects, then the Engineering department will then make their evaluation and determination.
That determination was the "Twining" document.
Therefore, it is evident from the very fact that the engineering department came to the conclusion that the phenomenon was "real", demonstrates that it was as a result of the psychological branch determinations having been completed.
So again, I ask why even after it was found by their own people that the sightings evaluated were not a result of psychological trickery, did they continue saying that it was? This "having it both ways" phenomena is one reason the story never gets put to rest.
Kevin:
You wrote: "....McCoy (Twining) could have created a top secret response because, at the very least, Schulgen would have had a top secret clearance (and Garrett probably had one as well)"
I don't think your assertion is true. It is a safe bet that all three of the individuals you named had TS clearances, because their jobs would have required it. However, simply having a TS clearance does NOT give one the authority to create a TS document. To create a TS document, one has to have what's called "Top Secret Original Classification Authority". This authority originates with the President and is delegated to heads of major commands and some undersecretaries of Defense, and the like. I believe it's the case that every incoming POTUS has to periodically renew the delegation of authority. For example, here is the letter that accomplished this in 2011:
http://fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/ts-oca.pdf
As you can see, the delegation of responsibility proceeds from a Presidential Executive Order. The president has to identify specifically which commanding officers and which commands have this authority. Anyone not named in the Executive Order does not have the authority. Traditionally, it is reserved for selected flag rank officers and their equivalent civilian counterparts. I don't think Col. McCoy would have had such authority.
If he had received an order or a request that was originally classified TS by a superior officer authorized to do so, he could have responded to it at the same level, but he could not, on his own authority, have originated that classification level.
Obviously, the same principle would have applied to Major Marcel; regardless of what he might have discovered out in the field, he did not have the authority to give it a TS classification level.
Brian!
I don't know about you, but if I had come up with some new revolutionary scientific theory that was, to all intents and purposes, a precursor to something as exciting as "string theory"...then I would be wanting to take full credit for it.
The last thing I would do is admit that my alien contactee mates gave me the idea. All that would do is take away from the belief that it was my own idea in the first place.
@ Don Maor who wrote:
"So the attacks on Wilbert Smith are absolutely worthless here."
Not so much "attacks" as facts pointing out the credibility issues regarding his second hand claims about the US hiding alien technology.
No matter how smart you think Smith was, you can't escape the fact he did claim to be a contactee and given special knowledge from aliens. This raises a lot of issues regarding his overall mental health.
Unless of course (like Paul perhaps) you believe "contactees" really do exist and have privy to special cosmic knowledge that only extraterrestrials posses.
I'm sure if your boss, co-worker, or foremost government leaders were to announce publicly that everything they know or accomplished was the result of knowledge shared exclusivly with them by space aliens, you might question their sanity.
We all would question their sanity, wouldn't we?
But with Smith you and others ignore reality in favor of the fantastic.
Why?
Because to support your claim you desperately need official documents where none exist. So Smith's letter is taken for "truth" and peddled as "evidence" that your claims are genuine when really they haven't been proven at all.
Smith believed saucers were from outer space. He then set out to replicate a power source which he thought might explain their movements. He wasn't successful. He also believed his endeavor was to explore mystic science facilitated by the very space aliens he believed where out there.
There's really nothing significant in his claim.
If there is, then once again it's time for ufologists to re-engage contactees for the answers they seek.
Kevin wrote: (1 of 2)
The problem with the secret vs. top secret argument is that it assumes facts that are not in evidence. We all seem to agree that if Roswell was alien, then it would be classified as top secret, but there is no documentation to support this theory. Besides, the simple answer to the problem would be for McCoy (Twining) to have upgraded the response to top secret. There is no regulation that would prohibit McCoy from making a reply that was top secret if that was what he wanted to do. So, while the argument that you can't put top secret information into a document that is only classified as secret is accurate, it is also true that McCoy (Twining) could have created a top secret response because, at the very least, Schulgen would have had a top secret clearance (and Garrett probably had one as well).
There are several problems that I see with this argument. First of all, having a "top secret" clearance does not automatically entitle you to have access to everything top secret, ONLY classified information for which you have been deemed to have need-to-know and have been cleared, or compartmentalization of classified information.
In the U.S., according to the Washington Post, there are now 4 million people with "top secret" clearances, but they are cleared for different information. With the most extreme, most compartmentalized top secret information, there may be only a few people with clearance to see it. This is what Daniel Ellsberg, who during the Johnson administration had been a national security adviser, referred to as "above top secret" information during his Congressional testimony. There were guarded vaults in the Pentagon, he said, whom only a few people, such as himself with certain materials, could enter and read the documents. These vaults contained the nation's most closely held secrets. (What Ellsberg told me these vaults might contain were such things as covert operations and highly confidential communications between world leaders. He was unaware of a "UFO vault", but said that didn't prove anything, because the information was so compartmentalized he may simply have been unaware of it, a good example of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.")
If there were a saucer crash, people like Schulgen, Garrett, and McCoy might very well have top secret clearances, but would they have clearance to know SPECIFICALLY about such a crash? If they didn't, it wouldn't matter if they heard through the grapevine about such a crash. They couldn't write anything official based on mere hearsay. In fact, this was the position Gen. Arthur Exon said he was in. He knew about the Roswell crash and debris coming in to Wright Field, but he was never directly involved, only learning details through private talks with the men who were directly involved, men he knew well.
According to Wendy Connors, interviews with two surviving Project Sign personnel indicated McCoy likewise knew from rumors about the Roswell crash, but was never allowed direct access, which annoyed him greatly. Thus he couldn't write anything official about it even if the recipient was cleared to know, because McCoy was not and could pass on only hearsay. And further, even if McCoy were cleared and had been read in, he could not discuss it with the party on the other end, unless he knew THEY were similarly cleared.
(2 of 2)
With the Twining memo we thus have the following problems with anything being mentioned about having actual crash debris:
1) We don't know if Schulgen or Garrett were cleared to know.
2) If McCoy did most of the writing (a big "if"), we don't know if he was ever cleared and properly briefed, thus able to write officially about it.
3) The memo was ultimately directed to multiple government agencies who were going to be asked to participate in a broad investigation of the saucers. Were all these agencies cleared to know?
If the answer to any of these questions was "no" (somebody not cleared), then nothing could be said to them, regardless of the classification slapped on the memo.
The Twining memo was written so that everyone who eventually read it would take the saucers seriously, thus it starts that they were real, not imaginary. Then it defines some of their characteristics as real, advanced, high-performance aircraft under intelligent control. Then it says it might be possible to duplicate their performance, followed by enlisting the aid of a number of high-level government R&D programs. Or, in other words, a back-engineering program was being set up.
One of the R&D groups on that distribution list was the DOD's Research and Development Board, headed by Vannevar Bush. This leads directly to the back engineering efforts within Bush's RDB "modus operandi" group Wilbert Smith and the Canadians were told about 3 years later, plus the language of Twining's AFR 200-2 3 years after that, stating the Air Force was to study UFOs for their "technical aspects" with an eye to using this information to possibly duplicating them. This language is ALL about the saucers being real and trying to understand how they worked so they could be duplicated, or a back-engineering program.
But the Twining memo was all that was needed at the time it was written. If it was LATER deemed essential for any of the recipients to have more information, this could be dealt with individually, but not in a memo with a much broader distribution list.
All -
I believe you miss the point here. First, while it is true that there is a suggestion that UFO information was considered top secret, almost all of it, when classified was secret or below. But i was referring specifically to the Roswell case in which we have no evidence that it was classified as top secret. We have speculation, but no proof, so to suggest that Twining et.al. couldn't have put information about it into a secret document is assuming a fact that is not in evidence no matter how you slice it.
Second, Twining, as the commander of AMC had the necessary authority to create top secret documents, so, had he wanted to do so with his September 1947 letter, he could have upgraded it. And, as the classifying agency, he had the authority to determine who had a need to know, so to argue about need to know is not relevant here. Had he wanted to produce a top secret document, he could do it, and he could determine those who had the need to see it.
Finally, I really wish we could do away with this "absence of evidence" argument because it might be a good debate tactic, it rarely advances the discussion at all. Almost anything that you say, I can response with that, which doesn't prove my point, only muddies the waters.
This gets more to my point.
Obviously there have been many false reports, and hoaxes over the years. But back then, between '46-'48 for instance, those who had access to the eyewitnesses (some which they considered "reliable" and serious - like McCoy mentioning Britton as being reliable) came to the conclusion that the phenomena being reported were real (Twining doc., etc.). Then they began a period of time where they began to ridicule the subject and the witnesses --and slowly but surely, the over-all attitude followed suit.
Why don't some of the more skeptical individuals see the possible correlation between a long, drawn out period of time of playing down the subject, and the now more prevalent attitude that goes along with it? After all, that is exactly what they wanted to achieve.
But why? Whether or not the Roswell incident was a saucer recovery, why did the investigators, who had access to the more substantial information in the beginning, come to the conclusion that it was real? Whereas now, only after a considerable period of time being conditioned to think otherwise do they say that it is not?
Doesn't it at least project the possibility that it is because of this purposeful conditioning?
So when we talk of whether something would be classified as Secret, or Top Secret, or who would have access, this always comes into my mind.
@ Paul - you wrote:
"The last thing I would do is admit that my alien contactee mates gave me the idea. All that would do is take away from the belief that it was my own idea in the first place."
Good heavens Paul! Isn't that a little selfish?
Larry wrote:
"However, simply having a TS clearance does NOT give one the authority to create a TS document. To create a TS document, one has to have what's called "Top Secret Original Classification Authority". This authority originates with the President and is delegated to heads of major commands and some undersecretaries of Defense, and the like..."
If correct, then even though Smith was a Canadian I wonder how in his own country he could just stamp "Top Secret" on any of his documents he so wished?
I'm sure the Canadian system is as rigid as the US meaning - I doubt Smith had approval either.....
Kevin:
You have changed your tone somewhat from your co-written books of the 1990s, in which you were quite convinced that Roswell was a top secret ET case. Now you are saying that there is no evidence that it ever was top secret. In which case, are you now repudiating your previously held views and telling us, in a roundabout way, that it probably was not extraterrestrial after all?
Of course Twining could have made his memo top secret had he wanted to. So could McCoy. David Rudiak tries every possible trick to find a 'get out' for the complete absence of ANYTHING official (either documentation or actual hardware) indicating an actual UFO crash occurred in July 1947. All we get is rumors or second- or third-hand tittle-tattle, and all of it decades afterwards. Even Wilbert Smith's infamous memo does not mention it. Nor is there anything to show he had ever heard of the case. Poor fellow - he obviously did NOT have a high enough security clearance!
I couldn't care one iota which USAF general was cleared for secrecy, top secrecy, or even for interplanetary, interstellar or above-cosmic secrecy. All I care about is that after 69 years the scientific world has seen precisely NOTHING in the way of hard evidence that any such ET crash took place, at Roswell or anywhere else. Utterly incredible.
And if anyone thinks otherwise, let them produce the said hardware. It is long, long, long overdue.
I believe you miss the point here. First, while it is true that there is a suggestion that UFO information was considered top secret,
Sometimes there is MUCH more than a "suggestion" of it, such as the FBI document from Jan. 31, 1949, stating they were informed by Army and Air Force intelligence that the subject of flying saucers and the fireballs (meaning green fireballs) WAS classified top secret. Then 3 months later, the AF director of intelligence produced a TOP SECRET briefing and report for the Joint Intelligence Committee, which included the FBI:
www.nicap.org/papers/ciaufo.htm
(As Jan Aldrich points out in the article, normal FOIA requests did not produce the JIC Top Secret report as it didn't turn up in the normal search parameters, even though there were hints in other documents that it existed. It took 20 years and on-site searching of the National Archives to find it.)
almost all of it, when classified was secret or below.
That indicates nothing definite. The classification assigned to a project is the ceiling classification. Nothing can be classified higher, but many documents of lesser importance can certainly be classified lower. Because of their lower classification, they will also be easier to find and get access to. (Unlike TS material, they will automatically be declassified after a period of years.)
The fact is, the subject matter, at least at one time, WAS classified top secret, yet very few TS UFO documents from this period have turned up. Why is that? Maybe because there are a lot more, but like that JIC TS UFO document, they are very hard to find BECAUSE of their TS classification.
But i was referring specifically to the Roswell case in which we have no evidence that it was classified as top secret. We have speculation, but no proof,
What do you mean by "proof"--a CDA actual piece of the crashed saucer? An alien body? From all the evidence (mainly testimonial, such as Gen. Exon, Easley, Marcel, etc.), do you believe Roswell was a saucer crash or not? If it was, then I think there is zero doubt it was classified "top secret", whether we have the documentary or physical “proof” or not. (And Gen.’s Exon and Dubose both told us it WAS classified top secret, Dubose using "beyond top secret" in reference to what Gen. McMullen told him.)
so to suggest that Twining et.al. couldn't have put information about it into a secret document is assuming a fact that is not in evidence no matter how you slice it.
An ET saucer crash most certainly would have been classified top secret. Any EXPLICIT disclosures about it would most certainly NOT appear in a lower classified document or oral briefing, unless somebody screwed up.
Second, Twining, as the commander of AMC had the necessary authority to create top secret documents, so, had he wanted to do so with his September 1947 letter, he could have upgraded it.
Thus he also had the authority to NOT "upgrade" it to top secret and not disclose TS information. All we know for sure is that his memo IS classified SECRET and IF there was something more sensitive to disclose, it wouldn't have been disclosed here. (unless someone screwed up).
Your argument seems to be that since Twining didn't write a TS document and he could have, there was no TS information for him to disclose. This is logically invalid, While the Twining memo is not direct evidence of more sensitive withheld information, it is also NOT clear evidence that such information did not exist.
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And, as the classifying agency, he had the authority to determine who had a need to know, so to argue about need to know is not relevant here.
It is completely relevant. The memo was proposing a broad investigation of the saucers and had a broad eventual distribution list involving multiple agencies. It wasn't just intended for Schulgen's eyes only. The whole point of top secret, highly compartmentalized information is to prevent leaks of critical information, and failing that, minimize and contain them. You don't blab out such information to multiple people at once, because that is the perfect way to possibly compromise security.
Had he wanted to produce a top secret document, he could do it, and he could determine those who had the need to see it.
The question ISN'T whether he had the authority to produce a TS document. The question is what is the safest way to brief someone on TS information if Twining deemed they had need-to-know? It would NOT be to address them in a big group of eventual memo recipients. If you are trying to convey general background information about the saucers, just enough so that the various recipient intel/R&D agencies treat them seriously, and thereby get an intelligence gathering/back-engineering program going, then you write something like the Twining memo with only a Secret classification.
But if you want to disclose critical top secret info to the head of an agency so they could properly carry out their assigned task, that would most likely be done INDIVIDUALLY elsewhere, either orally or in writing (preferably orally so as to not leave a paper trail). And you tell them ONLY as much as they need-to-know to do their jobs, nothing more.
In most cases, they would NOT need-to-know that we had actual possession of a saucer (or pieces of one) and bodies to do their jobs. Even a little deception might be used to maintain security. E.g., materials scientists might be given pieces and asked to figure out what they were made of and how to reproduce them. If they felt they needed more information and inquired where the debris came from, they might be told it was from a Russian craft as a cover story. Even if they don't believe it because the material seemed far beyond Russian capability to produce, they would still have nothing concrete as to origin, and plausible deniability would be maintained.
Similarly, I also don’t deem it unlikely that a little disinformation might be slipped into the Twining memo to help maintain security, namely denying that they had crash artifacts. Roswell was no secret in the sense that it was in the newspapers and on the radio and the AF admitted in that initial press release that they had one. That alone might get the tongues wagging and speculation going within the intelligence and military branches. So just deny it ever happened, no crash artifacts existed, in case you were wondering. (It is unclear why anything here was inserted at all, unless Schulgen specifically inquired about it, also being well aware of Roswell--his investigation began the day after the press release because he wasn't satisfied that the saucers could truly be explained away as weather balloons and other branches of the Air Force might know the truth. But nobody has been able to turn up Schulgen's initial inquiry to Twining, so we simply don't know.)
Most of these agencies wouldn’t need to know the whole truth to do their assigned jobs. And go prove otherwise if you doubted the official story. Generally not a smart career move.
David wrote:
"The MANY government UFO investigations over the years by itself proves the phenomenon is world-wide and MANY governments have and continue to take UFOs seriously."
Yes that is true, but I would expect any government to take an unknown intrusion into their airspace seriously. If done repeatedly I would also surmise that a government might set up a committee to investigate why they can't prevent it. Even so this alone doesn't prove the supposed incursions were the result of beings from another world.
We should note that while documents exist that indicate the U.S. showed interest in this phenomenon, we still don't have any documents explicitly confirming the USAAF or any other nation absolutely had evidence that the phenomenon was indeed people from outer space. It's just not there. Memos and secret letters expressing concern or showing investigations were taking place doesn't prove they knew for certain the phenomenon was extraterrestrial in nature.
If anything, we might conclude all of these governments never reached a definitive conclusion that ET exists and pilots UFO's. Some officials might have written that without explanation they simply concluded UFO's come from outer space, but only because they couldn't explain it satisfactory.
I want to see government documents that describe the retrieval of such craft, it's power source, mechanical drawings of its construction, metallurgic analysis and engineering specifications, photographs of our men working on disassembling the machine, and medical reports describing the dead aliens themselves.
None of this exists. It's why a group of men chose to create the MJ12 documents to fill the gap where no real documentation exists.
Furthermore governments often fund or conduct studies on things that really have little to do with important investigations.
In recent years government projects have included studying if rabbits respond to Swedish massage, if mothers love dogs more than children, if chimpanzees like to gamble, if Wikipedia is sexist, and many more.
In terms of Kevin's point about lack of evidence for the classification of the Roswell crash, the evidence is the Smith memo.
In terms of the criticism of Smith the content of memo is a repetition of information sourced by Bremner from Sarbacher and consistent with evidence from another reliable source ( Ruppelt) of a second tier study group in Research and Development. He even points us to the Canadian Avro project.
That Smith later made misjudgements does not alter the provenance of this information.
Anthony:
Where in the Smith memo does it refer to the Roswell crash? Where does it refer to Roswell at all?
Earlier in this memo Smith specifically talks about the Keyhoe and Scully books. Sarbacher confirmed for Smith (via Bremner) that Scully's book was "substantially correct". Roswell does NOT enter into it.
Therefore, if we take Sarbacher and Smith seriously, we ought to be discussing the merits of Aztec crash not the Roswell one. This so-called 'study group', if it existed, was set up to investigate the Aztec hardware not the Roswell hardware. At least, that is what the Smith memo strongly points to.
Unfortunately Aztec bit the dust long, long ago. So where does that leave the crashed saucer situation, as far as the Smith memo is concerned?
Anthony Mugan wrote:
"In terms of Kevin's point about lack of evidence for the classification of the Roswell crash, the evidence is the Smith memo."
There's also the testimony of Generals Exon and Dubose. Exon said there had been a cover-up at the highest level, right up to the White House.
Sample of some of Dubose's statements:
"The entire operation was conducted under the strictest secrecy."
"[Gen.] McMullen [Deputy C/O of SAC] told me, ‘You are not to discuss this… this is more than top secret… it’s beyond that. It’s within my priority as deputy to [Gen.] George Kenney, and he in turn responsible to the President, this is the highest priority you can exhibit. And you will say nothing."
Regarding who gets read-in on top secret, highly restricted projects, and who doesn't, it's all based on Need-To-Know. This can lead to some seeming paradoxes, where people you would think would be read-in aren't, whereas sometimes complete nobodies are read-in because they have a NTK to do their jobs.
The Manhattan Project is a good example. Harry Truman as vice-president was NOT read-in until he became president. Neither was Gen. MacArthur, even though he was in command of the Army for the entire Pacific. MacArthur wasn't told of the A-bomb until 5 days before they dropped the first one on Hiroshima.
But my lowly uncle and aunt knew all about it for 2 years, since my uncle, a chemical and metallurgical engineer, was drafted right after getting his bachelors and sent to Los Alamos. He and my aunt knew it was about building an A-bomb. A cousin of mine was born at Los Alamos.
These two "kids" (my aunt was only 20) had a NTK why they were at Los Alamos and received the necessary clearances. My aunt knew they were building the A-bomb, but would tell us my uncle would not discuss his work with her for security reasons. Similarly, he had no idea what the people in the building next door were up to. That was the compartmentalization at work.
There were a LOT of young college graduates in the needed sciences, engineering, mathematics, and bio-sciences at Los Alamos, all of them then nobodies. Some eventually became very famous, physicist Richard Feynman being one example, another "kid" at the time. (Feynman's various books have tales of his experiences with the Manhattan Project, some of them extremely funny.)
All these young nobodies had NTK, but Truman and MacArthur didn't. Go figure. That's the way it works. Truman and MacArthur weren't needed to build the bomb, but the young scientific nobodies were.
So when CDA starts ranting that someone like Wilbert Smith would never be read-in to a super-secret back-engineering project, it just goes to show that he doesn't know how these things work. (To be honest, I don't completely understand how it works.) Smith's approach was to state he had some ideas on the "modus operandi" of the saucers, which, as it turned out, the Bush/RDB secret "modus operandi" group were interested in, because (according to Sarbacher) they weren't making much progress. Thus it was deemed Smith had NTK if he was to work with them in tackling the "modus operandi" problem.
But some very famous scientists might not be deemed to have NTK, either because it was thought they had nothing to contribute or might be security risks. Atomic physicist George Gamow, e.g., was not asked to join the Manhattan Project even though he was one of the top atomic physicists of his day. Why? He was deemed a security risk because he had defected from Russia and they still weren't sure where his loyalties lay. (He was never told of the U.S. A-bomb project, but deduced it was underway because physics journals suddenly stopped publishing articles on nuclear fission.)
CDA quibbled:
Earlier in this memo Smith specifically talks about the Keyhoe and Scully books. Sarbacher confirmed for Smith (via Bremner) that Scully's book was "substantially correct". Roswell does NOT enter into it.
Therefore, if we take Sarbacher and Smith seriously, we ought to be discussing the merits of Aztec crash not the Roswell one. This so-called 'study group', if it existed, was set up to investigate the Aztec hardware not the Roswell hardware. At least, that is what the Smith memo strongly points to.
Unfortunately Aztec bit the dust long, long ago. So where does that leave the crashed saucer situation, as far as the Smith memo is concerned?
I'm afraid our friend CDA is again being a bit too literal minded. Sarbacher said Scully's book was "substantially correct", correct in SUBSTANCE or the basic themes/ideas, not necessarily in details. The substance of Scully's book was about the reality of flying saucers, that some had crashed, and the U.S. government was attempting to back-engineer them.
Sarbacher's written letter to William Steinman in 1983 seems to confirm this interpretation of what Sarbacher originally called the substance of the Scully book:
www.roswellproof.com/Sarbacher_Nov1983.html
www.presidentialufo.com/old_site/sarbacher_steinman.htm
"Relating to my own experience regarding recovered flying saucers, I had no association with any of the people involved in the recovery and have no knowledge regarding the dates of the RECOVERIES...
"My association with the Research and Development Board under Doctor Compton during the Eisenhower administration was rather limited so that although I had been invited to participate in several discussions associated with the reported RECOVERIES, I could not personally attend the meetings...
"I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at the Pentagon... There were reports that instruments or people operating these machines were also of very light weight, sufficient to withstand the tremendous deceleration and acceleration associated with their machinery. I remember in talking with some of the people at the office that I got the impression these 'aliens' were constructed like certain insects we have observed on Earth, wherein because of the low mass the inertial forces involved in operating of these instruments would be quite low. I still do not know why the high order of classification has been given and why the denial of the existence of these devices."
In an interview with Stanton Friedman in 1983, Stan tried to press him on where and when the recoveries took place. Sarbacher was unsure. He seemed to think one was after 1950 while he worked with the RDB under Karl Compton. But there were RECOVERIES. As to where, all he could recall was he was told one was out "west".
In a phone interview with Whitley Strieber in 1986, just before Sarbacher died, Strieber says Sarbacher told him the following: "That fabric we obtained at Roswell had molecular welds so small you couldn't even identify what they were until the sixties, when the microscopes to do it became available. ...What I can be certain about is that it was not produced by any technology we were aware of in 1947, or now."
All I can say here is that Sarbacher seemed to not know the specifics of when and where about the recoveries when previously interviewed, but according to Strieber was talking about Roswell and 1947 just before his death. Was Sarbacher playing a little dumb before and speaking more in generalities? Did Strieber make it up? I don't know.
But Sarbacher in his initial briefing to Bremner/Smith, speaking about saucer reality and the "substance" of the Scully book being correct, was clearly talking about at least one crash recovery that had happened, regardless of the when and where.
David -
You might wish to scratch the Strieber data from the Sarbacher information. According to Strieber, in Communion, Sarbacher "died a few days before I became aware of his letter [to William Steinman]... I was unable to interview him."
Kevin, (1 of 2)
However, in "Breakthrough", he said he did interview him. That's from where the Sarbacher quote about Roswell was taken.
About 15 years ago I emailed Strieber and asked him about the conflict in his two books. He wrote back (this is from memory now) that he spoke to someone (in 1986) who he thought at the time was Sarbacher, but in Communion, written shortly after (1987) said he didn't interview Sarbacher because later he wasn't sure it was the real Sarbacher.
He "explained" that right after he spoke to whomever, he sent a letter to Sarbacher's address to get written confirmation of the conversation. It was returned marked "Deceased". When he inquired further, he said he was told that Sarbacher had drowned. (From what I've read, Sarbacher died of pneumonia, so "drowning" in his own fluids, but not literally drowning).
Thinking that maybe Sarbacher was already dead when he spoke to someone on the phone saying they were Sarbacher, Strieber got paranoid and began to think maybe it was someone impersonating Sarbacher to screw with him. Not being sure, he left the quote out of the Communion and said he never interviewed him.
But when writing Breakthrough (1995), he decided maybe he really had spoken to Sarbacher after all, and put the quote in.
Yes, confusing, convoluted, strange story. I wouldn't blame anyone for not believing Strieber's account. However, there are some interesting details in the quote that make me think it might be genuine. To repeat the quote:
"That fabric we obtained at Roswell had molecular welds so small you couldn't even identify what they were until the sixties, when the microscopes to do it became available. ...What I can be certain about is that it was not produced by any technology we were aware of in 1947, or now."
First, the reference to "fabric". I know of only three credible witnesses who described at least some of the "memory foil" as being like fabric: Sally Strickland Tadolini, Jesse Marcel, and Sgt. Earl Fulford. (Walt Whitmore Jr. also referred to cloth-like properties, but his story changed so much, I'm leaving him out.)
The most detailed and credible of these was Marcel's, who in his last interview with Linda Corley explained the memory metal was a fabric of some sort because he could blow through it, meaning that it was porous (also explaining that this ruled out some sort of balloon material). Tadolini and Fulford, in contrast, said it felt like a fabric, but neither said they tried to blow through it or that it was porous. Tadolini's testimony was out there when Strieber published "Breakthrough" (1995), but not Marcel's or Fulford's.
Most debris witnesses did NOT describe the memory metal as cloth-like. So it's a somewhat unusual description and not generally known. Would Strieber have known about it? Maybe. He did wrote a novel ("Majestic") based on Roswell. However, only Marcel's testimony (not available to Strieber) would suggest a fabric-like weave or grid that would be porous and be close to Strieber's "Sarbacher" quote of "molecular welds", suggesting to me a grid of fibers welded together at the cross-over points.
The second detail in the quote was about not having microscopes until the 1960s that enabled them to image the material. This is a real piece of obscure scientific historical trivia, and would be referring to scanning electron microscopes. Although the first crude one was built in 1937, it wasn't commercialized and generally available until 1965.
Conventional electron microscopes are transmission microscopes and require extremely thin slices of what's being imaged for the electron beam to be transmitted through. They do NOT work on metals.
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But scanning electron microscopes are reflecting microscopes that scan the sample with the electrons being reflected back. They CAN be used to image the surface of metals. (In fact, when imaging a non-metallic sample, such as a fly's eye, a thin film of metal is first evaporated onto the sample.)
Another difference is that scanning EM's produce spectacular 3D images of the entire surface, something much easier to interpret by eye than transmission EM's 2D images of thin slices.
Again, would Strieber have known this? I doubt it, but someone like Sarbacher would have.
The only other thing I learned from Strieber was that he wrote down the quote from memory immediately after the phone conversation and thought it close to verbatim. So there's no recording of whomever saying it to prove it was said. But I don't think Strieber could have or did make it up, because of the obscure details.
Hello CDA
I think David R has 'substantially' covered the ground in terms the issue you raised....no point me repeating it.
The original topic was "Howard McCoy and Roswell".
We are now discussing Strieber and electron microscopes. This digression seems to happen very often. What is it about ufology (and Roswell in particular) that causes us to digress so easily?
To return to the topic (or to things related to it), is there anything in writing, such as official reports or memos, to indicate beyond doubt either of the following:
1. That any one of Sarbacher, Smith, Bush or even McCoy had ever heard of the Roswell affair, as distinct from Aztec.
2. That the CIA or any other intelligence agency had ever handled crashed saucer debris from either of these events.
Bear in mind that the CIA convened the Robertson Panel in early 1953 to examine the whole UFO situation.
I assume the answer that ET diehards will give to no.2 is that the CIA could never disclose such a thing even if they knew about it.
Also, can anyone suggest why Sarbacher should, in 1983, refer to early discussions on the aliens being "constructed like certain insects"? Was it a reference to Gerald Heard's book, published at about the same time as Scully's Aztec tale and Keyhoe's first book?
Come on now, nobody really believes the Roswell or Aztec saucer occupants were like insects, do they? I suggest Sarbacher was getting a bit confused over things by 1983.
But I am open to correction.
David -
I was well aware that Strieber had reversed himself and I do not find his second story to be credible. He said that Sarbacher died before he learned of him and then said he talked to him just before he died... Nope. I do not believe this because it doesn't not seem to flow naturally and it is a complete contradiction of what he had said earlier. I'm reminded of Glenn Dennis telling me (and others) the nurse's name was Naomi Self and then when he learned that no nurse by that name had served in the Army at that time, changed the story to he said he would tell us the name but it wouldn't be the right name. Complete BS.
Kevin, I can easily understand how you would dismiss the "Sarbacher" Roswell quote from Strieber. For one thing it is specific about Roswell whereas Sarbacher claimed ignorance in previous interviews about the specifics of the crash recoveries (the where and when).
But I still find the esoterica in the quote difficult to explain (information Strieber probably would not be aware of), which to me suggests the quote could very well be genuine and Strieber's strange account of what happened true. It could also be Sarbacher was holding back the more specific, detailed information in earlier interviews out of a sense of caution.
I am also approaching this from another angle. I'm assuming the saucers are absolutely real and have always been interested in how the technology works. That is why I have always been interested in the anomalous debris descriptions and what got me interested in Roswell to begin with (I could care less about the "space brothers" or "space demons" angle.)
The Sarbacher quote about the Roswell "fabric" as viewed under a scanning electron microscope (the microscopes not available until the 1960s, one of the esoteric details) would be an important clue about its composition and construction. For some time I've felt that the anomalous physical properties described by eyewitnesses (particularly the "memory foil") might be best explained if the material was constructed out of superstrong carbon nanotubes or a composite. All the described properties of the "memory foil" would be consistent with a nanotube fabric (a weave or grid of carbon nanotube threads).
So my ears prick up when I hear a more detailed description calling the material "fabric", viewed under a suitable microscope being a mesh that has been micro-"welded" together (what we now call nanotechnologyy, virtually unknown back in 1995 when Strieber published "Breakthrough"). That is quite unique and I don't think Strieber knowledgeable enough to dream it up, especially back in 1995.
CDA asks another of his pointless questions:
"1. That any one of Sarbacher, Smith, Bush or even McCoy had ever heard of the Roswell affair, as distinct from Aztec."
In case CDA has forgotten, Roswell was in the newspapers and on the radio, a national and international news story (Army recovers flying saucer). I strongly suspect all four of them had heard of it. In contrast, we have yet to a find even one contemporary news story about Aztec. If the local paper did publish a story (as some witnesses claim they remember), nobody has found it (few copies of the local paper survived into the present because of poor stewardship).
However, I believe CDA means did they ever hear of it OFFICIALLY as being a real flying saucer crash? I lack CDA's time traveling remote viewing capabilities, so, unlike CDA, I cannot say definitively whether they were ever given oral or written briefings on the matter. CDA, no doubt, knows for certain they did not.
However, I can say, in the case of Bush, that Omand Solandt did admit discussing the subject of flying saucers "informally" with Bush on a regular basis. I can say that Bush was questioned by reporters Roswell-time about his knowledge of the flying saucers, denying they were a project of the U.S. government or knowing anything about them (the news articles astutely observing that even if he did know something, security would prevent him from saying anything). I can say that Sarbacher in 1950 (and in interviews decades later) had briefed Smith that the "substance" of Scully's book was correct (crashed flying saucers) and there had been multiple "recoverieS", and that Bush was leading a supersecret group with the Research and Development Board looking into their "modus operandi".
Most importantly, I can say that Bush and the then Joint RDB met in a sudden 2-1/2 hour meeting called by Gen. Vandenberg the morning of July 8, 1947, simultaneous with the morning staff meeting at Roswell? Another amazing "coincidence"? (Right after the meeting, the Executive Secretary issued a debunking saucer statement and the Pentagon issued a press release denying the flying saucers were "space ships". More coincidences?) This would suggest that Bush and the RDB knew about Roswell right from the beginning.
I can also say that Wilbert Smith's son James said his father told him on his deathbed that he had eventually been granted access to the craft and bodies. I can say Wilbert Smith said he had been given recovered saucer debris by a very high group in the U.S. government to analyze to see what he could make of it. I can say that Smith's metallurgist interviewed by Grant Cameron, reportedly said: "I'll tell you flat out Grant. I analyzed a piece that was 'pulled off' that New Mexico thing. I know that thing was analyzed. It was a super light material."
Finally, I can say that Wendy Connors, interviewing two surviving Project Sign personnel, was told that McCoy knew about Roswell but was never officially read-in, which frustrated him enormously. (And, of course, McCoy likely knew about Roswell from the media, unless he never read newspapers or listened to the radio.)
But can I say with absolute CDA-like certainty that they knew specifically about Roswell? No, but the circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that at least some of them did.
Since this is supposed to be primarily about Col. Howard McCoy, not all that much is known about him or exactly what he thought about the subject matter of flying saucers, but he popped up again in 1966 at a NICAP meeting in Washington, D.C. in honor of Dr. Olavo Fuentes, Brazil's leading Ufologist. Anthony Bragalia had one of his better articles about this meeting, which had a number of interesting aspects to it:
http://shatteringthematrix.com/m/group/discussion?id=2127676%3ATopic%3A493236
For some backstory (not mentioned by Bragalia), Dr. Fuentes had written a letter to the Lorenzens of APRO (he was affiliated with APRO) back in 1957 that in exchange for giving some Brazilian Naval intelligence officers samples of Ubatuba, Brazil saucer crash fragments for analysis (a whole other story), they gave him an intelligence briefing on what was known about the saucers and military thinking at the time.
Like that nutcase Sarbacher, Fuentes said he was told there had been multiple recovered saucers (three) and their existence, therefore, was undeniable (no CDA, Roswell wasn't specifically mentioned). Like that nutcase Wilbert Smith, Fuentes said he was told that the subject matter was classified Top Secret and that every country's government and military had been informed that the saucers were real and ET. But there was also a world-wide cover-up in place because of the extreme seriousness of the matter, the aliens believed to be hostile, having blown a number of a planes out of the air, with a high probability given to them being an invading force or placing a quarantine on the planet.
Because the situation was considered so serious and dangerous, the militaries had essentially taken over to handle the situation, with civilian governments having little power. This information was deemed so explosive, with the potential of widespread panic and social breakdown, that all means necessary were being employed to keep the information from the public, ranging from ridicule of the subject matter and witnesses (sound familiar?), but also an occasional assassination.
So this is who NICAP was honoring, another crashed saucer "enthusiast" speaking of massive government coverups and invading aliens. In addition to NICAP officials and fellow travelers, guess who also showed up but McCoy and a number of high NASA officials and scientists. What were they doing there at a UFO nutcase meeting honoring a fellow nutcase?
The most interesting of these other attendees was Col. Howard Wright, now a NASA official, but previously a decorated WWII pilot, then to intelligence, like McCoy. The incredible recorded remarks of Wright were long confused with coming from McCoy. But essentially Wright said that he believed the aliens already walked among us, and had for some time, to learn who we were. He based this on what humans did for intelligence, namely ALWAYS planting agents on the other side, whether it be Germany, Japan, Russia, etc. There was no question in his mind that the aliens would operate in the exact same way, purely as a military intelligence matter.
It is pretty clear intel officer/NASA official Wright thought the aliens were here and walked among us (a theme, e.g., that nutcase researcher/author Timothy Good has taken up). I don't have CDA's mind-reading powers to know absolutely what McCoy thought or didn't think about Wright's remarks, but McCoy sure did keep interesting company long after he left Project Sign in 1948 (or Sign left him).
Brian!
I was hoping you might have given me your opinion on the two points I've made to you, in this thread, concerning some of your posts here.
(I find it strange that someone as garrulous as yourself would pass the opportunity by!!!)
1. Why would the US Govt/Military NOT keep secret the fact they had recovered a flying saucer...until they had at least spent time investigating it's origins/potential threat/ capabilities/ agenda.
2. If Wilbert Smith was barking mad...why did he come up with the notion of "binding forces"...something that top physicists believe to be feasible now in aspect to string theory?
Kevin...
Like yourself, I'm completely unconvinced by Glenn Dennis' story. And the real kicker was when you nailed him over "Naomi Self"
Now I appreciate this is really, really off topic,(you brought it up, mind)... but one thing does puzzle me and that is why Dennis picked such an unusual name to give out!
I'm pretty well travelled, but I never have come across anyone with that surname before.
If I wanted to tell a fictional story, as I'm sure Dennis did, then in order to make the nurse far more difficult to track down, then "Mary Smith", or the like, might have been a better choice.
It's bothered me for years.
Paul -
Yes, I have thought the same thing. I did find four Naomi Selfs in my search but I have often wondered why he came up with such a strange name... if it had some significance to him (though I never found out what that might have been) and then his confession that he had made up the name (which I find bogus given other interaction with him). So, I don't have an answer as to why he would pick such a strange name.
One possible answer to the strange name "Naomi Self" is that Glenn Dennis knew two people from the past, one called Naomi and another whose surname was "Self", and combined them.
I once knew a John Self whilst at school in the UK. A rare name yes. But had Dennis chosen a name like "Mary Smith" people would have suspected him at once, knowing it would be far more difficult for an investigator to track down someone with such a common name.
David Rudiak's mention of Olavo Fontes (not Fuentes) of Brazil reminds me that it was he who supplied APRO with the dope on three high sounding cases of the late 1950s. These were: the Trindade island UFO affair involving some controversial photos taken aboard a scientific research ship in Jan 1958, the so-called Ubatuba 'fragments' case dealt with by the Condon Committee, and the Fort Itaipu second-hand or third-hand 'radiation burns' case, in which everyone involved was anonymous (even the hospital the two burned sentries were taken to). And yes, either Fontes invented the Itaipu affair or he was told a yarn by some story teller. There is no record that such an incident ever occurred. (See Wikipedia for further leads). Fontes was indeed a nutcase on the 'world-wide conspiracy' theme. And why was NICAP 'honoring' Dr Fontes anyway? It should have been APRO, not NICAP.
Despite what DR says, I am still curious to know who or what these 'certain insects' were that allegedly piloted the crashed UFOs that Sarbacher wrote about 33 years after meeting Wilbert Smith by proxy. Were these crashed discs (Aztec, Roswell or any others) piloted by insects or not?
Or was Sarbacher getting confused and recalling something else entirely?
@ Paul who wrote:
"1. Why would the US Govt/Military NOTkeep secret the fact they had recovered a flying saucer...until they had at least spent time investigating it's origins/potential threat/ capabilities/ agenda."
>>> It's been nearly 70 years following the supposed crash of an alien saucer in New Mexico. That's a pretty long time to "investigate" something. So are they done yet? Have they reached a conclusion? And if so, what's the big secret they are withholding? What could be so important that despite SETI and NASA searching for life elsewhere in a very public way, our government still has a deep dark alien secret that requires absolute secrecy?
"2. If Wilbert Smith was barking mad...why did he come up with the notion of "binding forces"...something that top physicists believe to be feasible now in aspect to string theory?"
So you prefer to give Smith credit for discovering molecular forces and string theory?
Instead of your usual nonsense let's look at facts.
The first reference to the nature of microscopic binding forces is found in Alexis Clairaut's work Theorie de la Figure de la Terre. Other scientists who contributed to the investigation of microscopic forces include: Laplace, Gauss, Maxwell and Boltzmann.
Note Smith's name isn't listed as a contributor....humm.
Furthermore a Canadian scientist has attempted to replicate Smith's theory (which again came by way of a medium who conducted seances with aliens exclusively for Smith).
Here are the facts from Smith's letters (probably marked Top Secret to hide they can from a spirit guide).
Exploration of molecular binding force (2001):
Wilbert Smith was informed by the extraterrestrials that molecular binding force can vary under certain conditions. These conditions are created by the propulsion system of their space vehicles, thus accounting for the occasional disintegration of aircraft in close proximity to UFOs. The conditions are also created by the explosions of atomic bombs, which occurred regularly during the 1950s.
By way of a spirit guide and medium, Smith was given the specifications of a simple meter that could measure variations in molecular binding force, and several of these devices were constructed. He measured significant changes in binding force in small areas adjacent to aircraft crash sites near Ottawa and Quebec City. He also found that the binding force in a large area covering the city of Toronto, Canada, was lower than in the region outside of this area, and this difference was consistent over at least a five-year period.
The details of new investigations testing Smith's theory of the binding force are described below:
1. An evaluation of a molecular binding force meter
Since we cannot easily alter the molecular binding force, the experiment took advantage of Smith's observation that the Toronto area had a consistently lower binding force than the Ottawa area during the 1950s. A similar comparison of these two regions in 2006 found no significant difference. Apparently, the conditions that result in a reduction in binding force no longer exist as they did 50 years ago.
2. Does spirit energy affect molecular binding force?
Smith's investigations, combined with information about ET craft propulsion obtained through a medium, suggested that spirit energy in a physical mediumship seance may also affect the binding force meter. An experiment indicated that this was true, although more investigation is required.
>> So Paul, are you now advocating that the true nature of ET and his presence on earth is best discovered through a local spirit guide, fortune teller, and seance conducting medium? This is Smith's source for his claims which ARE NOT related to string theory but rather the local quack.
Anybody backing Smith's claims must accept the fact it all came from a local fortune teller as Smith wrote himself in his own journals.
When I looked at the google photo entry for Howard McCoy, i.e. the one showing the same photograph as Kevin displays here, this photo had "MJ-12" emblazoned across it. There were 12 MJ-12 members, 13 members of the Unholy 13 (see General Exon) and now 14 attendees of this strange meeting convened by NICAP. Is somebody playing games?
@ CDA
The image of McCoy with the MJ-12 above his head is posted on the ufochronicals' website where Kevin debates with Friedman the falsity of the MJ-12 documents. A good read for those still foolishly claiming the documents are authentic.
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2014/10/colonel-howard-mccoy-and-mj-12.html?m=1
AND
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2014/09/mj-12-kevin-randle-rails-against.html?m=1
Friedman looks quite foolish in his response. Clearly if the documents were authentic McCoy would have been included.
Thanks Brian! But I was asking you about your comment from 25th May 12.59 PM
"And once again, can anyone answer exactly why this supposed crashed saucer story would be hidden from the public "immediately" upon discovery?"
You are strongly insinuating here that there's no reason why the US Military would keep quiet about a crashed ET event "immediately upon discovery"...
...ie...even before they had conducted the slightest investigation of the threat implications, agenda, impact on the public, etc.
That would be silly of the military, and irresposible...and you know it...hence you go to your usual fall back position of widening the goalposts in order to deflect from your idiotic comments...as displayed below...
BB" 1st June 7.23AM...It's been nearly 70 years following the supposed crash of an alien saucer in New Mexico. That's a pretty long time to "investigate" something. So are they done yet? Have they reached a conclusion? And if so, what's the big secret they are withholding?"
Brian Bell..."So you prefer to give Smith credit for discovering molecular forces and string theory?"
No...Actually the opposite!
If I recall, Smith NEVER wanted any credit for his comments on the "binding forces" theory.
Hence my comment on 28th May 4.51AM... "Certainly the "delivery system" that Smith describes in obtaining his knowledge of binding forces is controversial, but the actual theory behind it is considered very worthwhile in studying."
Just to put it language that even your reading comprehension skills can cope with, the "controversial delivery system" I refer to is the alien contact.
I can only come to the conclusion that you garrulous enthusiasm to write as many comments on this forum as you can fit into your waking day...is affecting your ability to understand what anyone else here is writing.
@ Paul who previously wrote:
"You might call it "pseudoscience and mysticism" Brian, but Smith's binding forces sit quite comfortably within aspects of string theory. You might not take it seriously but plenty of the worlds top physicists do now....Funny how a "crank" could come out with something that future scientists now believe is feasible."
And I wrote in response:
"So you prefer to give Smith credit for discovering molecular forces and string theory?"
And Paul then responded:
"No...Actually the opposite! If I recall, Smith NEVER wanted any credit for his comments on the "binding forces" theory."
So Paul, you do or you don't want to give Smith credit for discovering molecular binding forces? Which is it? Can't make up your mind, eh?
First you say Smith wasn't a "crank" because his binding forces theory (e.g. Molecular Binding Forces) is taken seriously by today's scientists, then when asked if he deserves the credit for his supposed "brainchild discovery" you write, "No, actually the opposite!"
Are you confused Paul? You flip and flop like a classic politician who always wants to dodge the answer when he's boxed in.
Oh well, typical "true believer" antics.
Furthermore you write:
"Certainly the "delivery system" that Smith describes in obtaining his knowledge of binding forces is controversial, but the actual theory behind it is considered very worthwhile in studying."
Is "delivery system" your way of hiding the FACT Smith got all of his ideas from a psychic fortune teller?
It's not only controversial, it's down right ridiculous. If you believe psychics have all the answers about UFO's why not visit one yourself? Or maybe you already are....?
I'll be waiting to hear what secrets you discover.......please share them as soon as your psychic gets in touch with the aliens. Thank you.
Kevin,
I was reading Filer Files 23-2016 about the Rand Corp.
I then did some research on Clyde E. Williams. There were some interesting connections between General Lemay, Donald Douglas and others. What caught my attention was RAND went from being a very small research non-profit in 1947 to 200 people in early 1948.
https://books.google.com/books?id=nFMmCqsZUfQC&pg=PA8&lpg=PA8&dq=Clyde+E.+Williams.+Rand&source=bl&ots=_ovFKYdQzd&sig=PjRW9ki-p-m3oWZbrXC98rSFvzI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjP57fy143NAhUl94MKHTu5AigQ6AEIJDAB#v=onepage&q=Clyde%20E.%20Williams.%20Rand&f=false
I'm not confused Brian. It just seems that you have very poor reading comprehension skills that require you to have everything spoon fed to you.
Fortunately, I'm a very patient chap so we'll go through it again.
From the start, I've said that the "delivery system" attributed to Smiths knowledge of the subject of binding forces (ie...that he was told about it by aliens) is the controversial part. Not the theory of binding forces itself.
And considering Smith never took any credit for the theory himself...hence my comment above...
"No...Actually the opposite! If I recall, Smith NEVER wanted any credit for his comments on the "binding forces" theory."
Now I don't know what you don't understand about that, unless you have learning difficulties, of course...
As for people getting messages through telepathy/ESP/clairvoyance....well, some pretty serious studies have been made of those subjects, and to my knowledge, the jury is still out.
@ Paul who wrote:
"Now I don't know what you don't understand about that, unless you have learning difficulties, of course..."
>>> What I understand Paul is that you continue to dodge the question(s) further clarifying your statements. I can see now your goal is to simply make blanket pronouncements in favor of ETH without any factual support (in this and other threads).
I'm sure you have no answer(s) because there aren't any, and since there's no substance behind your commentary it's just paper thin conjecture that you'd like others to see as fact.
Regarding your opinion on Smith, clearly you're downplaying the fact he received all of his "knowledge" of molecular binding forces from a psychic.
As I said, if you believe psychics are in touch with alien races as the vehicle for enhanced knowledge then your claims sound ridiculous.
You also wrote:
"As for people getting messages through telepathy/ESP/clairvoyance....well, some pretty serious studies have been made of those subjects, and to my knowledge, the jury is still out."
Yes lots of money has been wasted on such endeavors. Once again you claim "the jury is still out" when the truth is almost all of these studies proved nothing. Those minimally successful can be explained statistically by random chance.
Once again you're attempting to legitimize Smith's claims as authentic by referencing personal belief that clairvoyance is "real".
As I said, if your local palm reader has all the answers you're seeking about UFO's you'd best drop in today for the latest channeling session "from the great beyond".
Paul
"As for people getting messages through telepathy/ESP/clairvoyance....well, some pretty serious studies have been made of those subjects, and to my knowledge, the jury is still out."
It is interesting to note that Howard McCoy also was interested in parapsychological research, precisely in the medium Eileen Garrett, who was tested in the 40s.
And if Ingo Swanns book "penetration" is legit, then parapsychological research was indeed used to explore the ufo phenomen.
Brian!
There you go again proclaiming something (telepathy etc) is an impossibility...because you say so!
Some fairly highly regarded academics continue to research the subject...Unlike yourself...because you don't need to research the subject...because you already know it's impossible. (Probably goes against your religion)
Anyway...here's something that you'll enjoy.
It seems that not only can aliens telepathically link up with Humans...but African Grey Parrots are pretty good at it too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UX4d2nb7yU
Zac...
Yes, I do find it a fascinating subject and it does seem, somehow, to resonate with some CE-3 reports.
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that if communication between aliens and humans really has occurred, then it makes more sense that it would be a telepathic thing rather than vocal.
@ Paul
Here you go again with your contradictions....make up your mind Paul.
"It seems that not only can aliens telepathically link up with Humans...but African Grey Parrots are pretty good at it too. "
versus
"I suppose we shouldn't be surprised that if communication between aliens and humans really has occurred, then it makes more sense that it would be a telepathic thing rather than vocal."
So in one sentence you claim aliens are indeed telepathic and can speak through fortune tellers and have done so with Smith, and next you say "if" they have made contact.
So they do or they don't? Make up your mind.
If they have made contact (never mind they haven't even been proven to exist) which you believe anyway I presume, why say "if".....to cover your bases in case you're wrong?
Where is the data that proves "aliens" use telepathy instead of voice?
Ah.....nowhere.
This is all nonsensical blather with not a shred of evidence behind it.
What next Paul, will you tell us these aliens have death rays, tractor beams, transporters, and phaser guns?
All -
This discussion about telepathy ends now. It has nothing to do with the original post.
(1 of 3)
Wilbert Smith's "psychic" source has a name, Mrs. Frances Swan, The REAL, very complex, and very strange story about her is nothing like the ignorant cartoon sketch Brian Bell tries to paint of her as the “local” “fortune teller”, “spirit guide”, and “palm reader”, which she was NOT. Smith only became aware of her because her neighbor, Rear Adm. Herbert Knowles, found her completely credible and contacted the White House and head of Naval Intelligence. The FBI, CIA, and the Secret Service also got involved. Smith probably learned of her through Knowles, to whom Smith had shown a piece of metal he said he was analyzing for some highly secret US group. Knowes would later acknowledge the meeting with Smith and seeing the piece of metal. The piece had allegedly been shot off a small flying saucer over Washington, D.C. in July 1952 during the big 1952 flap.
The Frances Swan story all began in April 1954, when Swan said she met at a party a perfectly formed man calling himself AFFA. Later that month she began going into trances, which involved automatic writing with messages from AFFA. AFFA told her he was the commander of one of two space ships circling the earth. Knowles observed and questioned her during her trances and was totally convinced she wasn't faking it.
According to Canadian researcher Grant Cameron, who reviewed period White House UFO documents at the Eisenhower Library, Knowles then wrote Eisenhower in early May, the letter staying at the White House a full month before being sent to the Secret Service. The letter said Mrs. Swan had exhibited the ability to answer scientific questions well beyond her education, the questions being answered for her by an alien named AFFA. Knowles added that the Navy and Canadian government were investigating the strange abilities of Mrs. Swan. This again ties in with Wilbert Smith’s first memo of 1950, in which he stated the U.S. government was also concerned with “mental phenomenona” associated with the saucers. Here Knowles referenced not only the Canadians (which would include Smith) but the U.S. Navy as ALSO investigating the strange “mental phenomena”. Knowles and perhaps the U.S. Navy were apparently as crazy as Smith!
For his troubles, Knowles got put on the S.S. potential “threat list”, along with just about anybody who wrote Eisenhower about UFOs, such as researcher Len Stringfield. Knowles also wrote the head of Naval intel May 27, saying as hard as it was to believe, he thought it should be pursued because of the obvious importance of the information should it be true. That letter also eventually ended up in Secret Service hands. As we shall see, Naval intel., though expressing skepticism, did not drop the matter and were still investigating Mrs. Swan as late as 1959.
This story sounds bizarre. However, there is a complex back story that lends it some support. Back on Feb. 15, 1954, society columnist Dorothy Killgallen wrote, "Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of world military heads next summer."
Two weeks later in early March 1954, it was publicly announced that N.M. astronomers Clyde Tombaugh and Dr. Lincoln La Paz, on behalf of the Army, were said to be searching for any "natural satellites" circling earth, which might serve as natural space stations. Tombaugh, who admitted to 6 UFO sightings, had already told Hynek in July 1952 that he was willing to put his telescopes at the disposal of the military to search for UFOs if they wished. La Paz was also up to his eyeballs in UFOs, having two sightings of his own, plus assisting the military in their green fireball investigation, and also allegedly Roswell. ( I have a more detailed summary of this complicated story on my website, including links to various newspaper articles, at: www.roswellproof.com/ramey_and_ufos.html#anchor_3625 )
(2 of 3)
However, Donald Keyhoe wrote that his Pentagon sources told him that the real reason for the search was that new long-range radar had already picked up the satellites in 1953, which were also not following predictable orbits, i.e., maneuvering, meaning they were artificial. On May 13, shortly AFTER Mrs. Swan started going into trances and doing automatic writing and Knowles had already written Eisenhower, Keyhoe went on radio commentator Frank Edward's program and stated that Earth was being circled by one or two artificial satellites and this information was being withheld from the public. Keyhoe added that U.S. Government scientists at White Sands, N.M. (i.e. La Paz and Tombaugh), were making an intensive effort to locate and chart the course of the satellites in an attempt to determine what they were and where they came from.
On May 6, 7, and 13, Keyhoe later wrote that large objects had also descended on Washington D.C., had been picked up on radar, and were thought to have been in orbit. (Keyhoe said the story was briefly printed in the Washington Post and reporters questioned the Pentagon about it, but I have yet to find a press mention of it. I seriously doubt Swan would have heard anything about it. Besides, Knowles had already written about Mrs. Swan before all this.)
On May 15, AF C/S Gen. Nathan Twining (Twining memo infamy) was with THE Gen. Ramey (Roswell infamy) in Amarillo, TX, for Armed Services Day giving a speech. Before the speech, reporters for unstated reasons (Washington DC?) asked him about UFOs. Twining said 10% couldn't be explained, they were being seen by highly credible people, they were being treated very seriously, in fact, they had their best scientists studying them. Then he said there was no point in worrying about them if they were that far advanced (perhaps a signal back to Washington that he either wasn't concerned or we couldn't do nothing anything about it anyway).
On May 27, Adm. Knowles first wrote the head of NI about Mrs. Swan and AFFA. Although skepticism was expressed, the matter was not dropped. There are also FBI and CIA files on the whole thing. (See: www.presidentialufo.com/document-downloads/cat_view/92-frances-swan )
Then on Aug. 23, the story broke in Aviation Week magazine that two satellites had been found only 400 and 600 miles out. They were termed "natural satellites" and implied that they had been recently captured, despite this being a virtual impossibility. The story was in the nation’s newspapers the next day. Although La Paz was again directly implicated in identifying the objects, he was to immediately deny his involvement and eventual truth of the story. Tombaugh would also later deny anything had been found. However, the very staid and mainstream N.Y. Times cited an anonymous source close to the project (damn those anonymous sources--the Times must have made it all up and committed journalistic fraud) who said that the story was true and La Paz was indeed involved, in fact had been the one to spot and identify the objects as natural rather than artificial satellites. (See: www.roswellproof.com/Satellites_NYTIMES_1954.html )
I think one of the reasons Mrs. Swan’s "ravings" were considered credible was because she was automatic writing about the two orbiting satellites back in late April and early May based on said communications with AFFA, but the story about the satellites being real had not yet gone public. Keyhoe only began leaking the story about the satellites shortly after Knowles letter to the White house, and the Aviation Week and newspaper stories didn’t appear for another 3 months. Although the stories about the search for satellites dated back 2 months before, they were treated as strictly theoretical possibilities, not real. So how could Swan possibly already know about them before anything went public? Maybe she WAS in mental contact with the aliens orbiting earth and should be taken seriously.
(3 of 3)
But the Swan/AFFA story didn't end there, nor did U.S. intelligence's interest in her. Grant Cameron's website has write-ups on Mrs. Swan, including being contacted by U.S. intelligence for years afterward. In particular, in July 1959, two commanders from Naval intelligence visited her, she went into a trance, and started her communications with AFFA. To test her (like Adm. Knowles did), they started asking Mrs. Swan scientific questions that the simple and poorly educated Swan was very unlikely to know the answers to. To their amazement, she answered them all correctly. They returned to Washington convinced she was for real. One of the commanders soon started going into trances of his own with automatic writing. In the first of these, AFFA was asked to prove he existed. Allegedly they were told to look out the window, whereupon a flying saucer immediately flew by.
A few hours later, more witnesses were brought in, including Col. Robert Friend, then head of Project Blue Book, and the head of CIA photoanalysis Art Lundahl (who had analyzed the Tremonton UFO film for the Navy, was said to have one of the largest UFO libraries in existence in his home, and briefed three presidents on the subject). Both Friend and Lundahl witnessed the commander in a trance and doing the automatic writing. Friend later said he was convinced the trance and automatic writing were for real and should be followed up on, whether aliens were behind it or not. Lundahl would later say he thought his friend was having a breakdown, and a UFO was never seen as reported. But apparently the incident, whatever exactly happened, had occurred. More:
http://presidentialufo.com/old_site/affa_cia.htm
My point here is that many more besides Wilbert Smith took Mrs. Swan seriously. So did Adm. Knowles (and his wife who knew her well and vouched for her). So did Naval Intelligence, at least up to 1959, including the two Naval commanders who interviewed her, with one later doing what she did. So did Col. Friend, BB head.
There are known CIA and FBI files on her, though apparently a critical CIA memo believed to be written by Lundahl after the 1959 incident is missing. Lundahl denied writing said memo, though it was stated as genuine by some other credible witnesses. Allegedly the CIA document substantiated everything said by Friend and most of what was reported to Friend by the Navy intelligence officers. It named the spacemen, their organization, their purpose, the times and places of several meetings called to investigate the case – including the one at which the UFO flew by their window.
One witness who confirmed the document was real and genuine was Col. William Coleman, former chief spokesperson for the Air Force, who stated: “The document is authentic, and even without the document substantiating him, Col. Friend’s credibility is beyond reproach.”
I guess Swan must have been damn good at her scam (for which she got no benefit whatsoever), since a number of very intelligent people apparently fell f
DR wrote:
"This story sounds bizarre. However, there is a complex back story that lends it some support. Back on Feb. 15, 1954, society columnist Dorothy Killgallen wrote, "Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of world military heads next summer." "
In what way does this story support either Frances Swan, Wilbert Smith or Herbert Knowles? Was there such a meeting, either 'hush-hush' or otherwise, of "world military heads" that summer, or indeed at any time?
I suggest this tale told by Ms Kilgallen is total BS. Recall that she is the person who issued a famous press release about attending a party in London in May 1955 where she learned about crashed UFOs from a British government informant of high standing.
Nobody ever found out who her informant was (Lord Mountbatten was suspected but that is all).
And we all know that Kilgallen met a mysterious death in the wake of the JFK assassination, don't we?
See how it all links up into a grand detective tale? That is, if you want it to.
As an addendum to those two satellites allegedly 'discovered' in 1954, it is only to be expected that Keyhoe would propound the idea that they were ET bases and that the US government had initiated a secret search for the ET origins.
But this is not the story as told by Willy Ley, the rocket scientist, in his book SATELLITES, ROCKETS AND OUTER SPACE (1962). In it he says the reason being put about for this search was for a possible low orbiting natural satellite upon which a space station could be built. Tombaugh and LaPaz were thus engaged on this search. Remember this was in 1954. Ley doubted very much if the space station idea was feasible.
So, regarding the search, Keyhoe was propounding one thing (UFO biased), whereas the press and Aviation Week were propounding another.
Here is what Willy Ley says about the report of the discovery of two such satellites 400 and 600 miles above the earth:
"There came a report one day that Tombaugh had discovered a small moon at a distance of 400 miles from the ground and another one at 600 miles. To this day the origin of the report is a mystery but it is certain that it was a canard. When I asked Clyde Tombaugh about it he replied that not only had he not discovered any additional moons but that he had not yet even searched the regions 400 and 600 miles distant."
So in answer to David Rudiak, yes the NYT was indeed fed a tall tale from an anonymous source. And nothing to indicate otherwise has happened in the 62 years since.
That's an excellent overview of the Smith/Swann/AFFI story by David Rudiak.
The fact of the matter is that if Smith was a "crank" for giving her any credence, then so were the CIA, FBI, and various admirals, colonels and the what not.
"That's an excellent overview of the Smith/Swann/AFFI story by David Rudiak."
I agree with that. Thanks, Mr. Rudiak.
CDA:
So in answer to David Rudiak, yes the NYT was indeed fed a tall tale from an anonymous source. And nothing to indicate otherwise has happened in the 62 years since.
But the stories of satellites being found did NOT stop there and there were OTHER sources. It was repeated the following year in Popular Mechanics magazine, TWICE, May and October. In the first, they again claimed two satellites had been found with further claims that anonymous "sourceS" told them they were secret U.S. satellites. In the second article, astronomer Clyde Tombaugh claimed the stories that the had found satellites were false and that his search for satellites had nothing to do with flying saucers. (However, his denial seems very suspicious given that Tombaugh told Hynek in 1952 he was willing to put his telescopes at the AF's disposal to search for them.)
Also on May 25, 1955, conservative, very well-connected Washington columnist and insider Joseph Alsop wrote:
"...the possibility that the Soviets will launch a satellite is taken so seriously that a satellite-detection program has been established at White Sands, N.M. and Mt. Wilson, Calif. A tremendous flap was caused not along ago in the Pentagon when the project identified not, one but two satellites. It turned out that both were natural satellites, never before detected."
Note here first that Alsop was claiming the satellite program was for detecting Soviet satellites, not "natural" ones, the public rationale given the year before.. The public story kept changing, suggesting the original “natural satellites” was a cover story, but for what? Neither the U.S. nor the Soviets had launched any satellites until 1957/58. So why was M.I. being told simultaneously that the detected satellites were not only real, but U.S. in origin? Sounds like another cover story to me.
Second Joseph Alsop stated the satellite story was indeed true and had thrown the Pentagon into a tizzy, just as Keyhoe claimed the year before. Alsop also repeated the Aviation Week “natural satellites” story, instead of MI’s U.S. aatelllites.
My website further comments: "This column on the Pentagon's lack of urgency about a satellite program was one of a number of columns by Stewart and brother Joseph Alsop critical of the Eisenhower administration's defense posture. At a National Security Council meeting the next day, Robert Cutler [Eisenhower’s natural security advisor] was so livid with the column that he ordered two members of the NSC, close personal friends of Joseph Alsop, to cut all contact with him. In a series of columns from June 8-13, the Alsop brothers complained bitterly about Cutler's pettiness and vindictiveness and the administration's heavy-handed attempts to censor the press. (NY Herald-Tribune, May 25 - June 13, 1955)"
According to the Alsop brothers, there were two leakers within the NSC, personal friends of Joseph Alsop. This isn't coming from me, but from the columns the Alsops wrote right after the one talking about the satellites.
What was Cutler so angry about? That the NSC members were talking out of school with Alsop, and Alsop was using the information to write critical columns of the administration? Or that they were talking about classified information, namely the satellites? I can't prove the latter, but there was a strong suggestion in the multiple Alsop columns that the satellite story came from the NSC members and got Cutler so steamed up that he ordered them to cut all ties with Joseph Alsop.
BTW, this is the same Robert Cutler of the so-called MJ-12 Cutler/Twining memo, announcing a briefing by MJ-12, July 16, 1954, at a White House meeting. If the memo is genuine, that might answer CDA's question of what happened to that summer UFO meeting of world military heads mentioned by Dorothy Kilgallen Feb. 1954, the meeting called because the flying saucer situation was considered so serious. Giant artificial satellites circling earth might be considered serious.
Interestingly, for what its worth, the U-2 was developed for use in 1954. It was the precursor to our spy satellite program, Weapon System-117L, the Advanced (Military) Reconnaissance Satellite (ARS) program.
Two facts I discovered regarding (these) programs:
1. The U-2 was not just designed for earthward mapping, but had side looking, horizon photographing/monitoring capabilities. Whether this capability existed in the first generation, or was built into it with later models is unknown to me
2. Contrary to what others have said, the ARS system could most definitely have had capabilities that were secret, to monitor for things other than those on the surface of the earth...namely UFOs. Many times, the Lockheed people had to leave the building when ARPA people were brought in, in order to add secret sub-system features to the satellites. The whole program was made to appear unclassified, but in reality, security was very tight, and layered with Need-To-Know at the forefront. Why bring this up? Because the U-2 was the temporary measure put in place before the ARS was functional.
______________________________
As far as this original article message is concerned, there are at least two other items that have always struck me as odd that seem to relate.
Yes, I know that it doesn't follow any clearly defined reasoning for a skeptical assessment, but the wording always bothered me. The wording problem actually occurred two times, one with the message McCoy relayed to the Scientific Advisory Board, when he first mentions Project SIGN:
"...We have a new project--Project SIGN--which may surprise you as a development from the so-called mass hysteria of the past Summer when we had all the unidentified flying objects or discs. This can't be laughed off....I can't even tell how much we would give to have one of those crash an an area so that we could recover whatever they are".
The other was with the Project SIGN report (Technical Report No. F-TR-2274-IA, UNIDENTIFIED AERIAL OBJECTS PROJECT SIGN), where it says,
"CONCLUSIONS...It is unlikely that positive proof of their existence will be obtained without examination of the remains of crashed objects."
Yes, I am fully aware that I would be "reading into" the documents to get a different take on the meaning here, but it is interesting to me, none-the-less, how they are both worded, and that the word "without" has been underlined by someone in the Technical Report, whether it was done by Ruppelt later or someone else, I don't know.
So, do we take from this you no longer support a roswell crash of an unknown, Kevin,?
People posting on Caracas forums seem to be spreading this
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