The Congressional UAP Report

 

As many of you know, I have been suggesting that the report due to Congress Friday will be less than startling. I believe, based on the past, and on some of the things being said, that the report will focus on about 140 cases in which there were limited, obstructed views of the UFOs/UAPs and there will be a suggestion that drones, which are unmanned so that the effects of excessive accelerations won’t have a human crew to crush, are responsible for many of those sightings.

We have also heard that the equipment being used and the tactics employed during these events are considered top secret. The fear inside the military and the Department of Defense is that the revelation of these classified tactics and equipment will negatively affect national security. Or, in other words, these national security concerns will conceal the real nature of the UFOs/UAPs and we’ll be left with the same sort of nonsense that has been going on for decades.

Jacques Vallee

A couple of weeks ago, I was talking with Jacques Vallee about a classified section of Project Blue Book. He suggested that the cases hadn’t been classified, but that was not accurate. Many of the early cases were classified as secret. You can see where the classification markings have been crossed out. And that didn’t address the issue of a secret, hidden part of Blue Book.

I had asked about this because of information I had received while writing UFOs and the Deep State. I had heard that there was a classified section to Project Blue Book and those files had never been released to the public. It could be said that national security was the reason but that is just an excuse to hide information that the DoD and the government, and by extension, the Deep State doesn’t want published. This hints at a less than comprehensive report.

The other thing that sometimes is overlooked is that before there was an official investigation, General Twining of the Air Materiel Command, had ordered an unofficial investigation beginning in December 1946.  This was the result of the incomplete study of the Foo Fighters of the Second World War, and a failure to find an explanation for the Ghost Rockets that had been reported in Scandinavia and later in northern Europe in 1946. Colonel Howard McCoy had been one of the intelligence officers involved in both these investigations. He was privately gathering information about UFOs through military channels.

Twining’s order came six or seven months before Kenneth Arnold made his sighting in June 1947. At that point, that unofficial investigation morphed into an official one. Orders were issued and Project Sign began in January 1948… but, the public was told the name was Project Saucer. In other words, evidence of the cover up began with the creation of Project Sign. Information flowing from that investigation to the public was not as complete as it could have been.

After an internal fight in the DoD about the reality of UFOs, and a hint that the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was less than enthusiastic about the existence of alien spacecraft, it was announced that Project Sign had been concluded and an official report was issued. There were no national security issues, and no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

However, it was merely a name change. Project Grudge was born with the same people in the same offices at the same base. Following the script written before, in 1952, it was announced that Project Grudge had been concluded. The huge report claimed there were no national security issues and there was no evidence that alien spacecraft were flying around.

Ed Ruppelt

But it was another name change and Project Blue Book was born into this rather chaotic system. Ed Ruppelt, at the time a first lieutenant, was given the task of reorganizing the investigation. For several months, he upgraded the system and the investigations, gathering as much information as he could.

In January, 1953, the CIA sponsored a panel to review the evidence. The chairman, Dr. H. P. Robertson, did not believe that there were alien spacecraft visiting Earth. He chose the panel members based, not on their unbiased opinions, but on their holding the same beliefs about the flying saucers as he did. It wasn’t a panel to review the data but one designed to destroy interest in the topic and convince the civilian world that there were no UFOs visiting Earth. It was hoped that this blatant appeal to authority would end interest and speculation about UFOs. The Deep State was still not interested in sharing its information with the public.

Although the panel’s report was classified, and the recommendations were that UFOs be “debunked,” Project Blue Book remained in operation until 1969. It was ended as a result of the University of Colorado study paid for by the Air Force. Dr. Edward Condon concluded that there were no national security issues, there was nothing to be learned from further study, and the Air Force had done a good job just as he had been hired to do. You might say that this was Robertson 2.0.

There were, of course other issues. The official figures for Blue Book were that the Air Force had investigation 12,618 sightings and of those, 701 remained unidentified. This is not true.

There are more than 13,000 sightings in the files. Many are in a section labeled “Additional Reported Sightings (not cases).” These are everything from newspaper clippings to intelligence reports on some of the sightings but were not, apparently, submitted through an official channel and were not investigated further. They were merely filed and then, routinely, ignored.

Although there are only 701 sightings labeled as “unidentified,” there are many more which are not identified. I took a look at a representative sample of cases labeled as “insufficient data for a scientific analysis,” and found there are something like 4000 labeled that way. It means there is no solution for the sighting but it is outside the dreaded “unidentified” category. It is labeled but not solved.

And I haven’t even mentioned those cases that do have solutions that make no sense, given the facts. The Levelland, Texas, sightings of November 1957 are a good example. Witnesses at least thirteen separate locations reported the UFO close to the ground and that the operation of their motor vehicles was impaired. The Air Force explanation is “ball lightning.” This overlooks the fact that ball lightning is extremely rare, it lasts for seconds and is rarely over 18 inches in diameter. Witness testimony refutes ball lightning as a solution, but the Air Force has the case labeled and that was the whole point.

I will note here that Condon carried on that tradition. About a third of the cases investigated by the Condon Committee had no solution to them. One was labeled as a phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since.” Not much of a solution but then, they didn’t leave it as unidentified.

And that brings around to Friday’s projected release of the UFO/UAP study. If history is any guide, then we will see the same sort of misdirection, misinterpretation, and misinformation. Senator Marco Rubio has suggested just that. He said that he believes the report “will provide more questions than answers,” and that it “will hold back a lot, partly because the technology we use to capture and analyze the images are top secret.” He did suggest that “If they classified something spicy in it, ain’t no way that doesn’t leak.”

The problem here is that an unnamed source leaking highly classified material about UFOs/UAPs might not be believed. It will look just like so much other false information coming from the government. Without a source and without some sort of extra evidence, the leak will be ignored.

In other words, I think this is going to be Condon 2.0. An attempt to avoid answering the questions by hiding the information under the mantle of national security and answers that provide no information. It won’t move us toward Disclosure or revelation about what is happening and what is being seen and photographed, but then that’s what the Deep State wants. Keep it buried to keep them in power.

Kenneth Arnold and the Null Hypothesis

It has become an article of faith among some that the Kenneth Arnold sighting with its misreported description of a flying saucer is the genesis of modern UFO shape. Arnold had said that the objects he saw moved with a “motion like that of saucers skipping across a pond,” which reporters took to mean that Arnold had seen disk-like objects. Skeptics have pointed out this error, suggesting that Arnold had not seen a disk, but crescent-shaped or heel-shaped craft. Others, coming after Arnold, used this error in their descriptions of UFOs because that was what had been so widely reported. Skeptics said, “Arnold didn't see a saucer--but the press reported that he did and thereafter saucers were pretty much the standard shape for UFO's. Denying the implications of this is just part of the reason that UFO belief falls outside scientific (or rational) interest.”

I had suggested a null hypothesis for this. If we found sighting reports in the months that preceded Arnold that would suggest that some were reporting what they had seen without contamination by the press reports of Arnold’s “flying saucers.” The response to that was:

I don't think so. It's a rather common shape and is documented in earlier science fiction.

It's the huge media frenzy and the resulting reports that followed that suggest that the shape followed the press report. We have no reason to think that all of those reports were anything other than at least the standard ~90% (and I suggest more like 100%) bunk that make up all UFO cases. So among those cases, it is strongly suggested that folks had learned that they should see saucers (not the off bat-wing/half plates that Arnold saw). And they dutifully began to "see" them.

Of course nothing social like this is open and shut and completely clear cut. There very well may have been earlier reports of a saucer shape. I don't think that matters.

I think there is plenty reason, particularly under media induced hysteria. I will mention the famous experiments done in the UK that David Clarke revisits in his excellent new book, "How UFOs Conquered the World: The History of a Modern Myth" as rather clear evidence of this.

Again, ignoring or trying to feebly minimize this inconvenient truth hasn't served UFO believers well in trying to get folks outside the myth to take interest.

Or, in other words the null hypothesis was rejected because there were other influences that could account for the reported shape of these objects. The suggestion that it was documented earlier in science fiction might be seen as a corollary to the null hypothesis, or that science fiction images influenced the description of the flying saucers rather than the misreporting in 1947. It seems to me that this would nullify the idea that Arnold’s sighting was the driving force here because you couldn’t have it both ways. Either science fiction was responsible or the reports of Arnold’s flying saucers were.

I made a survey of science fiction magazine covers for the 1940s and didn’t find the saucer shape to be there. I was thinking that most people in the 1940s wouldn’t be reading science fiction and any exposure to the concepts would have come from seeing the magazine covers on the newsstands. When spacecraft were represented, they fell into the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon rockets with tail fins. A saucer shape behind the alien spacecraft just wasn’t seen all that often.

The same can be said for the representations in science fiction movies and serials that would have had a wider audience. The few that had a space theme again fell into the rockets seen in Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon arena. When the saucer

The Day the Earth Stood Still.

shape appeared, it was post Arnold and could be said that the flying saucers being reported influenced the look of alien craft in the movies. The 1950 classic, The Day the Earth Stood Still is one of the best examples of this.

I would suggest at this point that one of the null hypotheses has failed. Science fiction did not influence the shape of the objects reported in 1947. There were simply too few, if any, examples of saucers as spacecraft in the literature or the movies. If there was an influence, then the reports would have been of rockets rather than saucers.

That leaves the idea that there were saucers or disks reported prior to Arnold. Looking at the literature, there are many examples. Biron Savage said that he had seen a flat, disk-like object in May 1947. That was documented in the press on June 26, 1947.

And that illustrates the problem for many of those earlier sightings. Project Blue Book mentioned a number of pre-Arnold sightings, but it seems they were reported after Arnold. Any reports that had been gathered prior to Arnold disappeared when the official investigation of UFOs began. (And yes, that can be proven. Sightings mentioned in both Project Sign’s and Project Grudge’s final reports mention sightings that are not found in the Blue Book index but indicate they had been gathered.)

I did find other pre-Arnold sightings that mention disks or saucers. On February 28, a formation of disks was reported near Lake Mead. In March 1947 a Los Angeles woman said that she’d seen a disk. Also in March a disk was seen early in the morning in Putnam, Connecticut. On March 30, two women and a young girl saw several silvery disks. On April 11, a woman watched a disk-shaped object for two minutes. On June 2, a circular object was seen in Shreveport, Louisiana.  Well, you get the point. Many sightings but the problem is that the documentation for these all come from sources published after June 24, 1947.

The exception for this might be the Minczewski case from Richmond, Virginia in April. This is one of those sightings that was apparently investigated by the Army prior to the Arnold sighting. There is no record of it in the Blue Book files, but it is mentioned in the Project Grudge final report. That suggests to me that there would have been documentation for it prior to Arnold but the case file was removed from the “regular” files at some point. In all fairness, I must note that I have found no documentation dated prior to Arnold about this sighting. I merely have a suspicion that it does exist if we could access the proper records… which means we haven’t asked the right agency to review their files.

Without being able to document that these sightings were reported prior to Arnold, it can be said that they were contaminated by the press after Arnold. There is no proof of that, but then, without some sort of documentation, that is a possibility and that means the null hypothesis is unconfirmed at this point. Not that it is in error but it is unconfirmed.

There is another factor in all of this. I noticed, as I surveyed the newspapers from that era that flying saucer or flying disk was used to describe objects even when the witness used other words. In an article headlined, “Carpenter Reports ‘Discs’ in Midwest.” The last line in the article said, “He added that he could not describe the shape of the objects since he could not see them clearly.”

In an article that was headlined, “Flying Saucer Story Grows,” it was reported that George Glover, in Bellingham, Washington, said that he had seen several shiny objects that were shaped like kites. In another sighting reported in that article, the object was described as round, like the sun.

In a case that underscored this point, the article, headlined, “AKRON, O., July 5 (AP) — ‘Flying saucers’ made their appearance here Friday night,” when it was reported, “Dr. Forrest Shaver said the silvery disc he saw ‘looked like a balloon with a light inside.’ Larry E. Hoertz described it as ‘a light with a propelling device.’ Both men said they saw the ‘saucers’ about 8:30 P. M. while driving near Akron.” This suggests that the term had become generic, describing any strange thing in the sky regardless of shape.

In the end, we have a theory, that the error made by reporters in the Arnold case drove the shape of the objects seen in its wake. But what a review of the newspaper articles show is that flying saucer and flying disk became the generic term for all unidentified objects including those that were not circular or round. A review of the literature shows that many of the reports were of lights in the sky, bright flashes of light that had no shape behind them, star-like objects, streaks of light and cigar-shaped objects.

What is interesting is the claim that even if it was proven that saucer-shaped craft were seen prior to Arnold, it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters because it nullifies the theory that people saw saucers because that was what was reported by the press after Arnold.

As it stands right now, the null hypothesis is unconfirmed and the theory is unproven. Additional information and documentation can solve this riddle but it will take some in depth research. My survey of newspaper articles wasn’t as extensive as it could have been, but even though limited, I found many examples suggesting shapes other than saucer and articles that mentioned “disk sightings” but the object see was not disk shaped.

This discussion seems to be one that we all could end by simply surveying the newspaper articles from June 24 to July 9 (when the press seemed to mostly stop reporting saucers at the request of the Army and Navy). One of the places to begin would be Ted Bloecher’s Report on the Wave of 1947. We can actually apply some science here and reach an intelligent and proper conclusion.

Flying Saucers and Kenneth Arnold

(Blogger’s Note: Yes, I’ve touched on this before but in the last week or so the MSM, that is to say Time, published a UFO story that made the point that flying saucer was based on an error so of proving there is nothing to the sightings. I thought I’d take another run at this idea.)

I have seen recently more suggestions that the term, “Flying Saucer,” is a misnomer because Kenneth Arnold wasn’t describing the shape of the objects he saw but their motion through the air. Reports from June 1947, however, seemed to indicate that some objects were saucer shaped, and others, who were busy

The original drawing made by Arnold for the Army in 1947.

misidentifying mundane objects, whether natural or human constructed, began talking of flying saucers regardless of shape. It is a point that I find interesting.

When I was working on The Government UFO Files, I tried to track all this down. Looking at the newspaper reporting, at the Project Blue Book files, at the documentation that came from APRO, NICAP and other organizations, I tried to find any story published prior to June 24, 1947, that mentioned disk-shaped or saucer-shaped craft. I found virtually nothing.

Photograph by William Rhodes in July 1947.

There were many stories in the newspapers after Arnold about strange craft, and many of them referred to flying saucers even when the object reported was not saucer shaped. The term became a catchall for anything that people had seen and had been unable to identify. The best seemed to be a report in the newspaper from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that predated Arnold, but the truth was that while it seemed the man had seen the objects on June 24 (as best as I can figure) it wasn’t reported until days after Arnold so was no help in my quest. You can read about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-june-23-1947-ufo-sighting.html

On April 1, 1947, a series of sightings made by Walter Minczewski began near Richmond, Virginia that involved the U.S. Weather Bureau and seemed to meet my rather arbitrary conditions. This would later become Incident No. 79 in the Project Grudge final report. According to the information provided:

A weather bureau observer at the Richmond Station observed on three different occasions, during a six month period prior to April, 1947, a disc-like metal chrome object. All sightings were made through a theodolite while making pibal [balloon] observations.

On the last reported sighting, the balloon was at 15,000 feet altitude, the disc followed for 15 seconds. It was shaped like an ellipse with a flat level bottom and a dome-like top [emphasis added]. The altitude and the speed were not estimated, but the object, allegedly through the instrument, appeared larger than the balloon.

Another observer at the same station saw a similar object under corresponding circumstances, with the exception that her balloon was at an altitude of 27,000 feet and possessed a dull-metallic luster. There was good visibility on days of observation. Report of this sighting was not submitted until 22 July 1947.

AMC Opinion: There is no readily apparent explanation. If there were only one such object, it seems amazingly coincidental that it would be seen four times near the pibal of this station only. On the other hand, there would have to be a great number of these objects to rule out coincidence, and as they number of objects increases so do the chances of sightings by other witnesses.

Project Astronomer’s Opinion: There is no astronomical explanation for this incident, which, however, deserves considerable attention, because of the experience of the observers and the fact that the observations was made through a theodolite and that comparison could be made with a pibal balloon. The observers had, therefore, a good estimate of altitude, of relative size, and of speed – much more reliable than those given in most reports.

This investigator would like to recommend that these and other pibal observers be quizzed as to other possible, unreported sightings.

This series of reports, made by Minczewski, are not mentioned in the Project Blue Book Index, which lists only a couple of reports made prior to the Kenneth Arnold sighting. All were reported after the press coverage of the Arnold sighting, so there is no way to document the actual date of the sighting.

Ted Bloecher, in The Report on the UFO Wave of 1947, added some important details to the case. He wrote:

As early as the middle of April 1947, at the Weather Bureau in Richmond, Virginia, a U. S. Government meteorologist named Walter A. Minczewski and his staff had released a pibal balloon and were tracking its east-to-west course at 15,000 feet when they noticed silver, ellipsoidal object just below it. Larger than the balloon, this object appeared to be flat on bottom, and when observed through the theodolite used to track the balloon, was seen to have a dome on its upper side. Minczewski and his assistants watched the object for fifteen seconds as it traveled rapidly in level flight on a westerly course, before disappearing from view. In the official report on file at the Air Force's Project Blue Book, at Wright-Patterson Field, in Dayton, Ohio, this sighting is listed as Unidentified.

The point here is that we have a case of a disk-like object, and a date assigned by the Air Force about the sighting, but we have no documentation that I can find dated prior to the Arnold sighting. There might be something hidden away in the Weather Bureau records, or somewhere else, but I have nothing that pre-dates Arnold for this case.

And before I hear of all those sightings of disks and saucers from early in the 20^th century, I was looking for something in the months prior to Arnold. I arbitrarily set a year as the outside limit though I did look at the Foo Fighter reports. The Swedish Ghost Rockets in 1946 all seemed to be of something that resembled German vengeance weapons as opposed to flying saucers.

While the claim that “flying saucers” are the result of bad reporting and people leaping onto the bandwagon, there is some evidence that saucers had been seen prior to Arnold but there is virtually nothing in the record to show these sightings were reported prior to Arnold. That might be because no one thought much about it until the Arnold sighting hit the national press, but whatever the reason, the point is, I could find nothing about a saucer-shaped object dated in the months prior to Arnold (and to beat a dead horse, I have the reports published after Arnold that refer to events before Arnold, but nothing in the newspapers or anywhere else published prior to it). 

Chasing Footnotes and the Fort Monmouth Radar/Visual Sightings

I have been chasing footnotes again as I work on my new book. This time the trouble wasn’t as outrageous as it has been in the past.

I was researching the series of sightings at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. These were radar and visual sightings that took place on September 10 and 11, 1951. It all began when a student radar operator tracked an object at a speed faster than fighters at the time. Not much later, the pilot of a jet trainer saw an object that he believed to be a flying saucer. Other radars were involved, though one of those sightings on the tenth was clearly a balloon. The next day there were some additional sightings. For our purposes here, the details of the sightings aren’t all that important. It is the footnote.

As I always do, I check the skeptical side of the argument to see if there is a plausible answer. The skeptics are not always wrong. In Curtis Peebles Watch the Skies, I found an explanation for the sightings and he referenced Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book and the author of The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects published in1956, as the source. Peebles, I have noticed, wrote as if there are no UFOs, meaning alien craft, and tended to ignore the situation if the explanation was shaky… sort of the opposite of the true believers who write as if nothing anomalous has an explanation.

Given how Peebles had footnoted his entry, I checked my copy of Ruppelt’s book. Peebles had been discussing how the transition from Project Grudge to Project Blue Book had been handled, the involvement Major General Cabell and his outrage when he learned that nothing was actually being done to investigation the sightings at Fort Monmouth and the appointment of Ruppelt to take over the project.

The pages Peebles cited, while talking about all that, and mentioning Fort Monmouth, didn’t offer the explanation for the sighting he cited. That was nowhere to be found there. But I remembered that Ruppelt had seemed to dwell on the Fort Monmouth sightings more than what was in the sections noted by Peebles, so I flipped through the rest of the book until I found Ruppelt’s explanation for the sightings, which matched what Peebles had written. So, he wasn’t wrong in suggesting the sightings were solved and citing Ruppelt as the source. He simple didn’t get the page numbers right (providing, of course, that the edition I used was the one he used. It’s difficult to say for certain because all of them have the same copyright date to add to the confusion).

The other thing that I did and I’m not sure that Peebles did, was search the Blue Book file on the Monmouth case. It is clear from some of the documentation that part of the purpose of their investigation was to mock those who had reported the UFO. It came in a climate in which the Air Force wasn’t taking UFO sightings seriously, which explains why no one had bothered to investigate until Cabell, or one of his aides, had a meltdown about the lack of investigation. If nothing else, they should have been concerned about something unidentified flying along the coastal defense zones of the United States. Such an attitude might have overlooked something more dangerous than a radar image traveling at high speed.

There is one other aspect to this. Ed Ruppelt’s papers were purchased long after his death. In those papers is a report of a wire recording made by Jerry Cummings, who, at one point in early 1950, was the ranking officer for the UFO investigation. Apparently the Fort Monmouth case isn’t quite as cut and dried as Ruppelt, and later Peebles, made it seem. And to add to the confusion, in Grudge Special Report No. 1, dated December 28, 1951, the T-33 sighting made by Lieutenant Wilbert S. Rogers was listed as “probably a balloon.” Later, in line with the Project Blue Book policy, the “probably” was dropped and it became a balloon though Rogers denied that he had been fooled by a balloon.

The real point here is that in chasing the footnotes, I discovered a minor error in Peebles’ book that is easily correctable. All he needed was to add an additional page number. He did, however, point to Ruppelt’s book as his source and with that I was able to verify that he had quoted the material correctly. That it partially disagrees with the Blue Book information that is buried under a pile of rhetoric, changing investigative policy and a desire to eliminate all the unidentified cases is really a minor point. It’s just that sometimes you have to look beyond the answer you want to hear to the one that complicates everything ever more.

Project Blue Book, the RB-47 and Moon Dust

 Yes, I put Project Blue Book, RB-47, and Moon Dust in the title and story because it is a good draw to the blog, but also because all these things are related in a way. I’ve been looking into the RB-47 case and this resulted in a review of the material that can be found in the Project Blue Book files.

What I found strange was that Project Blue Book files about the RB-47 case contained two long documents that were written in 1971, or some 18 months to two years after Blue Book was officially closed. One was the long analysis written by Dr. James McDonald and the other was a rebuttal of sorts, written by Philip Klass. The project card, which identified the source of the UFO report as American Airlines Flight No. 655, carried a note to refer to McDonald’s report. A letter, contained in the file and dated January 1972 mentioned that a copy of Klass’ document was being sent on to the Project Blue Book Case File. So, in the years that followed the end of Blue Book, material was still being added to it.

That might not be a bad thing and as near as I can tell, both documents seemed to have been added with almost no comment. This makes the file a better resource, but then, what else in the Blue Book Files has been altered over the years?

I do know that while Blue Book was in operation that files were removed. Prior to Kenneth Arnold’s sighting of June 24, 1947, there had been other UFO reports. One of those was from meteorologists in Virginia in April 1947. There is no case file in Blue Book but there had been something about it at one point. In the Final Report on Project Grudge, these sightings were mentioned. All this means is that the Blue Book files were altered while the project was in operation, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except when they were taking material out never to be seen again.

In the RB-47 case, there are contradictions that were not resolved by the Air Force investigators which demonstrate the level of concern for the truth they displayed in 1957. According to the interview with Major Lewis Chase, the pilot of the RB-47, the ground radar station known as UTAH (Duncanville, Texas), a CIRVIS report, as required by regulations, was made of the radar sighting of a UFO. However, a TELEX in the files seems to show that no such report was made. Although the TELEX has been redacted, after a fashion, and the statement about the radar sighting is somewhat obscured, it seems to prove that no ground radar sighting was made at UTAH.

But the question is if the two statements are mutually exclusive. Chase referred specifically to a CIRVIS report and was told that one had been filed. The TELEX doesn’t mention CIRVIS, only that the ground-based radar didn’t track the UFO. To this point I have been unable to find a CIRVIS report, which probably means that one was not filed. That question, though, remains unanswered and I continue the search.

Finally, as mentioned before, as I was searching for other things in the Blue Book files, I found references to Moon Dust. This demonstrates that Moon Dust did have a UFO component and that it was used in some cases for UFO research. All the cases I have located can be explained in the mundane or are of observations that were so fleeting and so vague to be nearly useless. There are a few references, just four or five that I have found and that is all. These cases take place just a couple of years after the RB-47 sighting. In other words, Moon Dust cases did, for a short period, find their way to Blue Book but after those few months, nothing else is mentioned, as far as I can find now.

This just proves that after all these years since the Project Blue Book files made their way into the public arena, there are still nuggets to be found. There are more than 12,000 cases in the files, and thousands of pages of other documents, reports, memos, directives, and administrative materials. Even after more than thirty years, they haven’t been fully researched.

Oh, and just to be clear on this, I don’t see anything nefarious in the additions of the McDonald and Klass documents to the files, only that it is curious.

UFO Cover Up - The Early Days

The other day I was on a radio show and the host asked if there was a cover up. I said, "Yes," and that I could prove it. The documentation available shows that the military tried to hide what it was doing with UFO investigations, sometimes in a not very clever way. Sometimes, I think it was just a case of incompetence rather than anything particularly nefarious.

In my search of UFO files, at the National Archives, at the Center for UFO Studies, and using the Project Blue Book files, I learned how some of this transpired. The following will provide a glimpse into the convoluted trail that leads into the cover up.

The military, after the code name Project Sign, the first of the official UFO investigations was compromised, claimed that the UFO investigation had been closed. They had merely changed the name and kept going under the code name of Grudge. Then, in December 1949, they announced that Project Grudge had been ended. The study hadn't ended, but continued, still using the code name Grudge. Later that name was changed and Blue Book was born.

In the beginning, Blue Book was a solid investigation of UFOs. But after the summer of 1952, that situation changed. Clearly UFOs were not something that were going to go away. Clearly the public interest, after more than five years, was at an all time high. Newspaper reporters and magazine writers were trying to learn everything they could about UFOs. Books on the topic sold well and more were scheduled to be published that year. Something had to be done to end the interest.

One of the responses was the CIA's Robertson Panel which would determine that there was nothing to UFOs, but more importantly, they didn’t threaten national security.

The other was a new set of regulations and a change in the way the UFO investigation was going to be handled. ATIC and Project Blue Book, who had been the main action addressees on UFO related items of intelligence were about to lose that distinctive status. New regulations, issued by the Air Defense Command on January 3, 1953 created the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS). Other new regulations, including Air Force Regulation 200-2, dated August 1953, tasked the 4602d with the investigation of UFOs. All UFO reports would pass through the 4602d AISS prior to transmission to ATIC. That was a major change in the UFO investigation.

It is interesting to note that Ed Ruppelt, after briefing the members of the Robertson Panel, was on his way to Ent Air Force Base near Colorado Springs, the headquarters of the 4602d. He was scheduled to arrive on January 24, 1953 to "present a one hour briefing at Officers Call." The trip was arranged by Major Vernon L. Sadowski on January 7, 1953, or about a week before the Robertson Panel began its meetings.

But Ruppelt, in describing how the 4602d entered into the UFO investigation business, seemed to think it was the result, not of manipulation at the top, but because of his pushing from the bottom. He wrote, "Project Blue Book got a badly needed shot in the arm when an unpublicized but highly important change took place: another intelligence agency began to take over all field investigations...the orders had been to build it up - get more people - do what the [Robertson] panel recommended. But when I'd ask for more people, all I got was a polite 'So sorry.'...I happened to be expounding my troubles one day at Air Defense Command Headquarters while I as briefing General Burgess, ADC's Director of Intelligence, and he told me about his 4602d Air Intelligence Squadron, a specialized intelligence unit that had recently become operational. Maybe it could help..."

Ruppelt explained that he didn't expect much from Burgess. Ruppelt expected to write memos and letters and seal "it in a time capsule for preservation so that when the answer finally does come through the future generation that receives it will know how it all started."

This time things were different. Ruppelt writes, "But I underestimated the efficiency of the Air Defense Command. Inside of two weeks General Burgess had called General Garland, they'd discussed the problem, and I was back in Colorado Springs setting up a program with Colonel White's 4602nd."

In Ruppelt's book, he implies that all this happened late in the summer of 1953. Ruppelt's tour at Blue Book was scheduled to end in February 1953, and he departed for two months of temporary duty in Denver. He writes, "When I came back to ATIC in July 1953 and took over another job, Lieutenant Olsson was just getting out of the Air Force and A1/c (Airman First Class) [Max] Futch was now it...In a few days I again had Project Blue Book as an additional duty this time and I had orders to 'build it up.'"

So, Ruppelt, at the end of the summer, is talking to General Burgess and within weeks, he is told that the 4602d is available to investigate UFOs. Documentation, however, doesn't bear this out.

On March 5, 1953, months before Ruppelt met with General Burgess, a letter headed, "Utilization of 4602nd AISS Personnel in Project Blue Book Field Investigations," is sent to the Commanding General of the Air Defense Command and to the attention of the Director of Intelligence at Ent Air Force Base. The plan of action, outlined in the letter was approved on March 23, 1953.

In the letter, it was written, "During the recent conference attended by personnel of the 4602nd AISS and Project Blue Book the possibility of utilizing 4602nd AISS field units to obtain additional data on reports of Unidentified Flying Objects was discussed. It is believed by this Center that such a program would materially aid ATIC and give 4602nd AISS personnel valuable experience in field interrogations. It would also give them an opportunity to establish further liaison with other governmental agencies, such as CAA, other military units, etc., in their areas."

The interesting statement here, as in many of the other documents relating to the 4602d, is the idea that the field teams, by interrogating witnesses to UFO sightings, can gain valuable experience in interrogating people. Ruppelt pointed out that the 4602d had a primary function of interrogating captured enemy airmen during war. In a peacetime environment, all they could do was interrogate "captured" Americans in simulations. According to Ruppelt, "Investigating UFO reports would supplement these problems [wartime simulations] and add a factor of realism that would be invaluable in their training."

All this went on while Ruppelt was on temporary duty and someone else was heading Project Blue Book. It would seem that some correspondence between the ADC and ATIC would have been on file at Blue Book. Ruppelt, when he returned to ATIC, should have been aware that negotiations between the 4602d and ATIC were in progress. Yet his own book suggests he didn't understand that.

Upon publication of Air Force Regulation 200-2, in August 1953, a briefing about implementation of the regulation was held at Ent Air Force Base for members of the 4602nd. Publication of a regulation suggests that the changes had been in the planning stage for a long time. It suggests that the implementation of ADC regulation 24-3, published on January 3, 1953, was part of a larger plan. All of it was probably an outgrowth of the wave of sightings from the summer of 1952.

During the briefing, one of the officers asked, "What is the status of the 4602d in regards to this new UFOB regulation?"

Major BeBruler said, "I want to say that on this UFOB regulation that ADC will designate the 4602d as the agency to discharge its responsibility for field and certain preliminary investigations. Secondly, there will be a criteria established as a guide to determine when the field units will conduct a detailed follow-up investigation and when they will not."

This is important because it marks the shift in the UFO investigations. The Robertson Panel recommended no secrecy. They wanted to share everything with the public to prove there was nothing to hide. But that didn't happen. Instead, Blue Book was stripped of its investigative function and became little more than a public relations clearing house. The real investigations were conducted by the 4602d AISS, an intelligence agency of which no one outside a limited circle inside the intelligence community knew. Public questions about UFOs went to Blue Book but no one asked the 4602d what they were doing. They operated outside the spotlight of the media.

From the documentation available, it is clear that the investigative function after 1953 rested with the 4602d. UFO sighting reports were transmitted electronically to the closest of the field units for investigation. Once that investigation was completed, those sightings which were not identified were transmitted on to ATIC and supposedly provided to Project Blue Book.

Although AFR 200-2 was first published in August 1953, implementation of it seems to have lagged until August the following year. Reports available in the 4602d Unit History, originally classified secret, show that there was some reluctance to take on the task of UFO investigation.

This is not to suggest, from some of the early reports, that the 4602d was operating to suppress UFO data, though that was the effect. The men at the meetings, from the questions asked, seemed more concerned with the logistical support available to them to complete their mission rather than hiding anything about their work. The regulations at squadron and flight levels had not yet been written.

During the initial briefing held in 1954, Lieutenant Vaughn, said, "General Carey is very vehement in his desire to see these reports before they are sent anywhere. What will be done about that? He has seen this AFR 200-2, but before they are sent in, he still wants to see them."

Colonel White answered, "I see no objection to that, if they don't get tied up. There is nothing in 200-2 that says that written reports (AF 112) should go to General Carey. Again this is in his division area of responsibility. General Carey is one of the sharpest officers in the Air Force today, and if he wants you to do something like this in his area, it, of course, should be done. The one arrangement that I would make is that you should hand carry the reports to him."

The question that begs to be asked is if this was in some way an attempt to circumvent AFR 200-2 by General Carey. And why should the reports be hand carried to him?

The simplest answer is that General Carey, because the UFO program was moving into his area of responsibility wanted to be kept apprised of what was happening in the field. Hand carrying the reports just expedited the process. There seems to be nothing underhanded or nefarious in the operations as they were being established by the 4602d. They were tasked with a job and were attempting to carry it out to the best of their abilities.

What is important here is the shift of investigative responsibility. Ruppelt complained that his tiny shop was overworked and undermanned, and a splendid compromise was found. In reality, since none of this was made public until long after the fact, it is clear that it was one more aspect of the conspiracy of silence.

In 1947 and 1948 when Project Sign was created, the public name given it was Project Saucer. A review of the magazine articles and books released in that time frame speak of Project Saucer. Once the real name, Project Sign, was compromised, the public name of Saucer was scrapped. Officials then suggested that Sign had been closed and no new investigation had been undertaken. Of course, it was only a name change, the project still existed.

This time the name was left in place, but the location of the investigation shifted. Blue Book would issue press releases and reporters would call the project for information, but the investigation was now housed in the Air Defense Command and conducted by the 4602d as part of their training.

While it can be argued, persuasively, that military secrets are a necessity, and since Blue Book was well known by the beginning of 1953, the policy makes sense. But it can also be argued that the policy is an outgrowth of a desire to mislead the public about the reality of the situation. The question that can be asked, and frequently was, "How can anyone suspect the Air Force takes UFOs seriously if the investigation consists of an officer, an NCO, an enlisted man or two and a secretary?" The answer is, of course, not very.

But, of course, that wasn't the true picture. Investigation was continuing at a very high level with the addition of the 4602d's intelligence teams. More information comes from the unit history (originally classified as Secret) and dated from 1 January - 30 June 1955. "The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron continues to conduct all field investigations within the zone of the interior to determine the identity of any Unidentified Flying Objects." The unit history also noted, "The responsibility for UFOB investigation was placed on the Air Defense Command, with the publication of AFR 200-2, dated 12 August 1954."

This merely confirms what we had suspected before. There was a secret study of UFOs conducted by the Air Force that was not part of the Blue Book System. Clearly ATIC was involved because regulations demanded it, but there is nothing to suggest that every report forwarded to ATIC made its way down to Blue Book.

More on William A. Rhodes

I said that I would look for more information on William A. Rhodes (seen here in a bad photograph, but one taken in 1947) and I have uncovered a few addition facts. Seems he wasn’t quite the dummy that the Air Force would have us believe. The Air Force reported that Rhodes was a self-employed musician and the only source of income was his wife’s salary as a fourth grade teacher.

In a report written by Lynn C. Aldrich, (on a form labeled with United States Air Force and dated 17 August 1949), Rhodes is described by a Mr. and Mrs. (name redacted) as "emotionally high strung, egotistical and a genius in fundamentals of radio and electronics.

In another interview conducted on July 15, 1949 of another witness whose name is also redacted, she described Rhodes as "emotionally high strung and egotistical."

In a report dated July 14, 1952, by Gilbert R. Levy, Rhodes is again described as "an excellent neighbor, who caused no trouble, but judged him to be emotionally high strung, egotistical, and a genius in fundamentals of radio. He conducts no business through his ‘Laboratory,’ but reportedly devotes all his time to research."

They also report that he is listed in the telephone book as "Dr." but they could find no reference to Rhodes in the classified section of the telephone directory "under Physicians & Surgeons (MD), Dentists and Veterinarians." Which, of course, would be of great importance if these sorts of people were the only ones entitled to be addressed as "Doctor."

They do suggest his claim of a Ph.D from Columbia University could not be verified, and checks by others including James McDonald, bore this out. We have seen, however, why Rhodes believed that he had been granted the degree and he did have a small replica of the diploma encased in plastic. He said that he had a larger one somewhere but never did produce it.

The Air Force also seemed annoyed that Rhodes claimed he owned or worked for Panoramic Research Laboratory. They could find no evidence that it had ever been incorporated or that it ever conducted any business.

In the AMC summary evaluations, as part of the Project Grudge Report, Appendix 1, they go further in their character assassination of Rhodes. They noted, "In subsequent correspondence to the reporter of this incident, the observer [Rhodes] refers to himself as Chief of Staff of Panoramic Research Laboratory, the letterhead of which lists photography among one of its specialties. Yet, the negative was carelessly cut and faultily developed."

They also note, "there are other undesirable aspects to this case. The observer’s character and business affiliations are presently under investigation, the results of which are not yet known."

The same report continued, "Dr. Irving Langmuir studied subject photographs, and after learning of the prior passage of a thunderstorm, discounted the photographed object as being merely paper swept up by the wind."

And then, as if to reinforce this character assassination, the report said, "AMC Opinion: In view of the apparent character of the witness, the conclusion by Dr. Langmuir seems entirely probably (sic)."

Of course, not mentioned is the complete discounting of the verbal report by Rhodes. He heard a whooshing sound which drew his attention to the craft which, of course, rules out paper blown by the wind. And you must discount the size, speed and altitude estimates provided by Rhodes, though most people, looking up at an object in the sky fail to correctly estimate much about it. But here there were clouds in the sky which gave, to some extent, a point of reference. And, in the second picture, there is some foreground detail.

In other words, the Air Force seemed to go out of its way to discredit Rhodes, suggesting that he was an egotistical man who lived off the income of his wife. Although the neighbors had said he was a good neighbor, the Air Force reported that he hated cats and dogs and has shot several animals that strayed onto his property. I’m not sure that I would describe someone who shot pets as a good neighbor, so you have to wonder about these claims by the Air Force.

And here’s the flip side of this. Rhodes said that he had done experimental work with the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. during World War II. He returned to Phoenix in 1942 and worked as an instructor at Falcon field.

Tony Bragalia and I both found that Rhodes did hold multiple patents which suggested he wasn’t quite the "weirdo" that the Air Force made him out to be. He seemed to be the genius that his neighbors believed him to be. And with patents often come licensing fees, which would be a source of income not readily seen by those who didn’t know about it. I saw nothing in the Air Force investigation that suggested they had looked at his tax returns to learn if his lab brought in any income.

Dr. James McDonald investigated Rhodes in the 1960s and found that he held a variety of patents, and according to a letter dated February 18, 1967, wrote, "...who has made a modest living off an impressive variety of inventions." McDonald, then, did what the Air Force couldn’t, or didn’t, that is, verify Rhodes’ creative genius.

It is quite clear from the files that the Air Force thought little of Rhodes and his "eccentric life style." They made fun of his lab and his research, suggesting he was an unemployed musician and mentioning little about his technical background. Clearly he was a clever man who invented or modified a number of things and was granted patents on them.

I have found nothing in the case file, nor in the investigations to reject the photographs or to suggest they were a hoax. Instead, I noticed that the Air Force drew a line connecting the Rhodes photographs with the first of the Kenneth Arnold drawings. I think that was a connection they would rather not be made in the civilian world because it suggested that Rhodes tended to corroborate Arnold and they would be happier if the sightings were not connected.

But the real problem here, knowing now what I know, is that the Air Force was attempting to belittle the value of the photographs by careful character assassination. Rhodes was a clever man, doing work at a Ph. D. level for the government during the war, but when his name surfaced with UFO photographs, he became a crackpot who inflated his ego with his Panorama Research Laboratory and claiming a degree he had not earned.

In the end, there is no valid reason to reject the photographs. At least there was none I could find in the files. If that is true, then the pictures become more important... as does the Arnold sighting.

The Washington National UFO Sighting Press Conference, Part 1

I have been advised, by a friend, Tim Banse, who seems to understand these things, that some of my postings are waaaaaaaay too long. He suggested that I break them up into smaller bites. In keeping with what I believe to be sage advice, here is the first part of the entire transcript, with my editorial comments, of the Air Force press conference about the Washington National UFO sightings in 1952.

This came about after the second round of Saturday night radar and visual sightings, and after a number of failed intercept attempts. The Air Force believed it necessary to call a press conference to explain the situation, at least as they saw it. Ed Ruppelt called the conference the largest and longest that had been held by the Air Force since the conclusion of the Second World War. Ruppelt also suggested that the cards had been stacked again Major General John A. Samford, the Director of Intelligence, who was the senior officer at the conference. Because Samford had to "hedge" on many of the answers to questions because the investigations had not been concluded, it seemed, to many of the assembled reporters, that the Air Force was attempting to hide the truth.

The press conference was held at the Pentagon, in room 3E-869, to be precise. Also attending for the Air Force was Major General Roger M. Ramey, then the Director of Operations for the Air Force and the same Roger Ramey who had been at 8th Air Force Headquarters in Fort Worth during the Roswell UFO crash briefings in July, 1947, as our old friend CDA thought to advise me, as if I didn’t know. Others there for the Air Force included Colonel Donald L. Bower, of ATIC, Captain Roy L. James, an expert in radar operations and also from ATIC, Ed Ruppelt, the chief of Project Blue Book, and Mr. Buroyne L. Griffing, a civilian from ATIC.

Conspicuous by their absence were Major Dewey Fournet, the military liaison officer between the Pentagon and Project Blue Book, Al Chop, the official Pentagon spokesman on UFOs, and Lt. John Holcomb, the Naval officer who was an expert on radar and electronics. Since all three had been at Washington National during the second set of sightings, their inclusion would seem to be a natural event. Apparently the Air Force had other ideas because none were there to answer questions even though all were assigned to the Pentagon in Washington.

The press conference began with an introduction by a civilian Pentagon press relations official who said:

Ladies and gentlemen, let me remind the military that, while they are welcome here, this is a press conference and let’s be sure that the press is all seated before the conference begins.

This refers to the fact that many military officers who had no role in the press conference were in the room to listen to it. They were being told to sit down and shut up.

Let me introduce General Samford, Air Force Director of Intelligence, and General Ramey, Director of Operations. General Samford.

Major General Samford: I think the plan is to have very brief opening remarks and then ask for such questions as you may want to put to us for discussion and answer. In so far as opening remarks is [sic] concerned, I just want to state our reason for concern about this.

The Air Force feels a very definite obligation to identify and analyze things that happen in the air that may have in them menace to the United States and, because of that feeling of obligation and our pursuit of that interest, since 1947, we have an activity that was known one time as Project Saucer and now, as part of another more stable and integrated organization, have undertaken to analyze between a thousand and two thousand reports dealing with this area. And out of that mass of reports that we’ve received we’ve been able to take things which were originally unidentified and dispose of them to our satisfaction in terms of bulk where we came to the conclusion that these things were either friendly aircraft erroneously recognized or reported, hoaxes, quite a few of those, electronic and meteorological phenomena of one sort of another, light aberrations, and many other things.

It is important to note that there never was a Project Saucer in a real sense. When the Air Force created its first investigation, code named Sign, it publicly called the project by the name of Saucer. Later, after the code name Sign was compromised, the Air Force announced that it had ended its investigation, but, in reality, continued it as Project Grudge. Eventually Grudge evolved into Project Blue Book, but when speaking with civilian officials and members of the press, the unofficial name of Project Saucer was often used.

The actual press conference began then and will be noted in the next installment of this posting.