AARO, UAP, Wall Street Journal: A Somewhat Personal Response

 

Just last week, I suggested that we were reliving the history of UFO investigations and the attempts by various government agencies including the Air Force to discredit witnesses, dismiss evidence and convince us that there was nothing to the tales of flying saucers. Although not mentioned in the article, one of the best examples of this was the claim that a nonexistent Project Mogul flight was responsible for the debris found by Mack Brazel and taken to Roswell in 1947. And that’s not to mention the 1953 CIA sponsored Robertson Panel that suggested ways of convincing the public that aliens were not visiting Earth.

(Note: This article is much longer than it should be but I thought the topic important. For those unfamiliar with the Robertson Panel, you can read more about it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/07/coast-to-coast-operation-mockingbird.html

There are other links embedded in the text that will take you down other rabbit holes in this long-term debunking of UFO sightings.

For those interested in the equally ridiculous claim that Project Mogul explained the Roswell crash, might I suggest reading Roswell in the 21^st Century which contains a long appendix about Mogul and all the lies told about it. Just click on the link to the left. For those who dislike me sending you off to buy one of my books, you can read more about Mogul here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2025/02/david-rudiaks-analysis-against-mogul.html

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-end-of-project-mogul.html

Or, you can just type Project Mogul into the search engine to the left you’ll find all the other postings I have made on this topic.)

Now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we are treated to the latest deception about UFOs. We are told that the DoD spread stories about UFOs and flying saucers to hide the development of the latest weapons systems. We are told that ALL, and I stress that, all significant UFO sightings are mistaken sightings, institutional misunderstanding and Cold War pranks. Really? Cold War pranks? Are we dealing with a professional military or a bunch of college boys engaging in hazing pledges?

This frat boy mentality apparently lasted for decades. According to one of AARO’s investigators, a former Air Force officer, who was unnamed in the article, said that he had been briefed on a secret alien project decades earlier which frightened him. He was warned that if he ever repeated the secret he could be jailed or executed. Really? Executed? This same claim would be repeated to more AARO investigators by other retired military men who were also unnamed. After decades of unnamed sources who had been feeding misinformation to reporters who repeated it without attempts to verify it, I’ll take a pass on more unnamed sources.

Sean Kirkpatrick, one time head of AARO.

According to the story, certain new commanders of the Air Force’s most classified programs, as part of their induction briefings, would be handed a piece of paper with a photo of what looked like a crashed flying saucer. The officers were told that the program they were joining, dubbed Yankee Blue, was part of an effort to reverse-engineer the technology on the craft. They were told never to mention it again. Many never learned it was fake. In the spring of 2023, the defense secretary’s office sent a memo out ordering the practice to stop immediately. 

This tale was printed without comment. No one realized how dumb the claim was. Why would they brief incoming officers on a project that was highly classified and for which they had no need to know? Holding a top-secret clearance does not allow the holder access to everything classified as top secret. The person must also have a “need to know.” This tale strikes me as a poor attempt to dismiss the tales from officers who were exposed to information about UFO events without a good reason but who now are talking. It was just another frat boy prank, but I suspect any commander who engaged in this nonsense would lose his command if caught by his superiors spreading the lie and then threatening execution.

But then, the first sentence in the WSJ article tells us all that we really need to know about their reporting and the reason for the leaks. “U.S. military fabricated evidence of alien technology and allowed rumors to fester to cover up real secret-weapons programs.”

This wasn’t the first time that this dodge had been attempted. We have read about the CIA use of UFOs to disguise secret projects and to their claim that many UFO sightings were of spy planes but the true answer couldn’t be offered because of national security. National security was often used as the dodge so that the difficult questions could be ignored.

This was all part of a “public disclosure that left out the truth behind some of the foundational myths about UFOs: The Pentagon itself sometimes deliberately fanned the flames, in what amounted to the U.S. government targeting its own citizens with disinformation.”

So, the question that is not answered is when did all that disinformation begin. Was it in 1947 when the idea of flying saucers first burst into public conscience or was it something designed after the CIA’s Robertson Panel decided that the public should be deceived about UFOs… not as a cover for classified projects but as a way of diverting interest in the topic? And is this why every chief of Project Blue Book can be described as hostile to the idea of alien visitation with one notable exception?

Probably the most egregious example of this is the claim that the 1967 shut down of a flight of ballistic missiles at Malmstrom AFB was part of an experiment to determine if the electromagnetic pulse from the detonation of an atomic bomb would disable the weapons system. We are now supposed to believe, that at the height of the Cold War, the Air Force decided to attempt to disable the missiles by an outside source on an active flight of ballistic missiles. The artificial EMP, they claim took down the whole flight. Of course, the missiles were brought back on line rather quickly, which overlooks the fact that the EMP pulse would fry the electronics, rending the missiles useless without extensive replacement or repairs, something would take weeks if not months.

But a moment of digression. During one of the hearings, two men from DoD, including Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence & Security Ronald Moultier and Scott Bray, described as the Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, were providing examples of recent UFO sightings. The hearing was chaired by Congressional Representatives Andre Carson, who by the way, is a Democrat providing proof of the bipartisan nature of the interest in UAP, contrary to WSJ’s allegation this was only Republican interest and this is a digression in the digression.

Scott Bray pointing at a UAP.

During the Q&A, one of the participants asked about Malmstrom event in 1967. Both men said they knew nothing about it, which tells us a couple of things. First, they were either not as fully informed as many of us in the UFO community as they should have been or they were lying. Later, one said he was vaguely aware of the case, which meant the first answer had been a lie. They did know something about it. I believe this was a cover up of that mistake by suggesting there was nothing alien involved and therefore it would outside they investigation.

(Once again, I wrote a detailed analysis of the case in The Government UFO Files. If you are annoyed when I promote a book here, you can read my take on this particular hearing here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/05/coast-to-coast-am-more-on-congressional.html

It provides the details of the exchange between the DoD representatives and the  Congressmen.)

While the WSJ article focuses mainly on the report made by former Air Force missileer Robert Salas and his testimony about the evident, they conveniently omit the series of UFO sightings in the area at that time. There were multiple witnesses to an object hovering near one of the missile control centers. The official story now is that Salas was telling the truth about disabling the missiles, but it was part of that radical and dangerous experiment I mentioned earlier. According to documents in the Project Blue Book files, “Between the hours of 2100 and 0400 MST numerous reports were received by Malmstrom AFB agencies of UFO sightings in the Great Falls, Montana area.”

There were reports of a landing near Belt, Montana that were made by several witnesses including Cascade County sheriff’s deputies. The Project Blue Book files contain lists of a few of the witness statements but all reference to radar reports are missing. In the end, the case, investigated by LTC Lewis Chase, the UFO Officer at Malmstrom, was labeled as unidentified.

Project Blue Book reveals that on March 24, 1967, near the small town of Belt, Montana, a truck driver, Ken Williams, saw a domed object land in a canyon near the road. He was curious enough that he stopped, got out of his truck and began to walk toward the object. The UFO then lifted off, flew further up the canyon and touched down again, now hidden from the highway by a ridge.

Williams, in a handwritten document filed with the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon, a NGO, told the whole story of what he had seen that night. In response to their request, on April 7, 1967, Williams wrote:

Gentlemen:

Object was first observed approximately 5 miles southeast of Belt, Montana. I was traveling North on Highway 87 enroute to Great Falls, Montana. Object was approximately 1 mile to my left and appeared to be about 5 or 6 hundred yards [1500 – 1800 feet] altitude. I would estimate its speed to vary from 40 to 50 miles per hour. I am judging this speed by the speed I was traveling as object seemed to be running evenly with me. Its appearance was that of a large doomed [sic] shaped light or that of a giant headlight. Upon climbing up the Belt Hill in my truck, I looked to my left and about ½ mile up a gully. I witnessed the object at about 200 yards [600 feet] in the air in a still position. I stopped my truck and the object dropped slowly to what appeared to me to be within a very few feet from the ground. [Underlining in original]. It was at this time that I felt something or someone was watching me. As a very bright effecting light emerged from the object it momentarily blinded me. This extremely bright light seemed to flare three times. Each time holding its brightness. By the third time the light was so bright [underlining in original] that it was nearly impossible to look directly at it. It was at this time that I drove my truck onto the top of the hill which was about another ½ mile. I stopped a car and asked the people [Don Knotts of Great Falls] if they would stop at a station at the foot of the hill and call the Highway Patrol. I went back down the hill and viewed the object for several more minutes. It was while watching it the second time that it rose and disappeared like a bolt of lightning. I went back to the top of the hill where my truck was parked and just as the Highway Patrolmen [sic] Bud Nader, arrived the object appeared once again. About 2 miles away and traveling in a Northeast direction, whereas it stopped once again and appeared to drop to the ground [Underlining in the original.]. There are several deep gullys [sic] in the area where it appeared to drop out of sight. This was my last sighting of the object.

The Project Blue Book file on this case contains what was known as a Project Record Card, which was a 4 x 6 card that outlined the details of the case. While the case is labeled as “unidentified,” it also noted that there was “(1 witness),” which they believed to be so important that it was underlined. But that isn’t true and other documents in the Blue Book files prove it.

According to a letter written by LTC Lewis D. Chase, and addressed to Dr. Edward Condon at the University of Colorado, there was, at least, one other witness. According to Chase, “Mr. Nader [sent by the Highway Patrol] reported that upon reaching the scene he observed an unusual light emanating from the area that the truck driver, Mr. Williams, claimed the object had landed a second time.”

The Newspaper Accounts

The Great Falls Leader carried a series of articles about the UFO sightings in the area at the time. Interestingly, some of what was printed in the newspaper was not found in the Blue Book files. Those who conducted the military investigation should have been aware of these other sightings, but there is no mention of them. It seems that, to the Air Force anyway, those sightings never happened.

Ron Rice, a staff writer on the newspaper said that there had been UFO sightings all over the state that day. He wrote, “Before midnight it was the Belt area; after 3 this morning, Malmstrom Air Force Base where one was picked up on the bottom of a Federal Aviation Agency radar scope which tracked it for a time before it disappeared in the direction of the Belt Mountains.”

There were visual sightings as well. Airman Second Class (A2C) Richard Moore, a communicator-plotter said that he had seen something about five or ten miles from the base at 3:30 a.m. Airman Third Class (A3C) said that he had seen an object that he said was a bright light with orange lights on the bottom. This, according to Moore, was close to the ground and it was what the FAA radar had detected.

Moore also said that a sabotage alert team had located another object about 4:40 a.m. directly over Malmstrom. Moore said that he saw it as well, but it was more a point of light moving across the sky than anything else. He said it wasn’t a satellite because it was zigzagging.

Another airman, Warren Mahoney, said that Moore had told him about the UFO at 3:10 a.m. and that at 3:42 he had received a call from the FAA that there was an object on their radar northwest of the base providing corroboration for the sightings. Three minutes later it had turned, flying toward the southeast. At 4:26 a.m. it disappeared from the FAA radar.

Rice also mentioned that there had been a search of the canyon where Williams and Nager saw the UFO that appeared to be landing and they found some evidence, though it isn’t clear exactly what that evidence was. Sheriff’s deputies Keith Wolverton, Jim Cinker and Harold Martin, searched the ground for about two and a half hours and discovered some freshly broken twigs on bushes and branches of the trees around the alleged landing site. They thought it might have been cattle, but there were no cattle in the area at the time of the sighting. Martin was also reported as saying, “Some of the trees are 25 feet high, and had limbs broken from them, and some bushes below them were broken. All were fresh breaks.”

According to the Great Falls Tribune, Trudy Fender provided a rough drawing of an object she had seen with a steady white light on one end, a blinking white light on the other and a red light in the center. She had been waiting for her ride on March 26. The sighting isn’t important because of the object, but the fact that she saw something and drew make an illustration of it. That refuted a theory that there had been no UFO sightings in Montana other than Williams sighting two days earlier.

The Project Blue Book file

With all that was going on that night, with the news media alerted and with local law enforcement involved, there wasn’t much that the Air Force could do other than respond. Air Force regulations in affect at the time required it. The Blue Book file, in a teletype message that was unclassified revealed, “Between hours of 2100 and 0400 MST numerous reports were received by Malmstrom AFB agencies of UFO sightings in the Great Falls, Montana area.”

The message noted that “Reports of a UFO landing near Belt, Montana were received from several sources including deputies of Cascade County Sheriff’s Office. Investigation is being conducted by LTC Lewis Chase… The alleged landing site is under surveillance. However, daylight is required for further search.”

The investigation was apparently completed several days later and on April 8, 1967, LTC Chase wrote a report that he sent on to Dr. Edward Condon at the University of Colorado who was leading the Air Force sponsored “scientific” investigation into UFOs. After setting the scene, Lewis wrote:

Numerous reports were being received by the dispatcher at Base Operations, plus questions from the public. At 2205 [10:05 p.m.], Lt. Col. Lewis D. Chase, Base UFO Investigating Officer, was notified by the Command Post of a reported landing. Sequence of events following notification were as follows:

2215 – Check was made with Base Operations as to aircraft movement in the area. An outbound transient aircraft departed Great Falls enroute to Glasgow, Montana. Departure time was 2109 [9:09 p.m.]. All other aircraft were accounted for.

2230 – Discussion with the Sheriff of Cascade County revealed that he had dispatched additional deputies to the area. Requested that he notify me of any significant findings. While talking to the sheriff, he contacted one of his mobile units. The man reporting said that they were at the scene and that there was no activity at the time. Requested the sheriff to forward any subsequent developments.

2330 – I called the Sheriff of Cascade County for a status report. He put one of his deputies on the line (Ziener?) who had been at the scene and had interviewed the truck driver and highway patrolman. While on the phone, Sheriff Martin from Belt, Montana, called in from the scene. He discussed the possibility of manpower assistance from Malmstrom and/or helicopter support. Informed him that daylight would be the first possible helicopter support and that I would discuss the other manpower request with Colonel Klibbe.

2345 – Discussion with Colonel Klibbe. He suggested that I go out and evaluate the situation and make my recommendations from there.

0030 – Departed the base in radio equipped station wagon accompanied by Major John Grasser of the Helicopter Section, for an evaluation of the terrain for any possible helicopter survey at daylight, a driver, and the alert photographer.

0100 – Arrived at the scene. Was met by Sheriff Martin, who repeated the previous reports. He had been on the scene continuously. A study of the terrain revealed the hopelessness of any ground survey at night. A tentative plan was agreed upon – the sheriff’s office to conduct a ground search of the reported landing area on the morning of 25 March 1967, while concurrently a helicopter survey of the area would be performed by Malmstrom. (It had been reported by Major Grasser that a helicopter training flight was scheduled for 0730 Saturday morning. This procedure was later approved by 15^th AF, provided no landing was made). Sightseers were in the area due to radio publicity and Martin reported some had gone on the ridges before he could stop them.

0215 – Reported to Colonel Klibbe the tentative plan agreed upon with Sheriff Martin. He approved.

0230 to 0340 – Numerous sightings reported.

0350 – Discussed the make-up of a message with Captain Bradshaw, Wing Command Post, IAW [In Accordance With] AFR [Air Force Regulation] 80-17, to notify concerned agencies, including CSAF [Chief of Staff, Air Force], of numerous sightings, plus the reported landing under investigation. Was concerned with resulting publicity and the need to notify other agencies prior to press releases. Message will merely state reported landing, that it is under investigation, that daylight hours are required to complete investigation, and that a subsequent report will be submitted. Preliminary message dispatched.

0800 – Sheriff’s ground search and Malmstrom aerial survey completed with negative results. Follow-up messages dispatched to interested agencies (AFR 80-17) stating negative results of the investigation.

The last part of the report confirmed that Chase had conducted it and provided contact information for him. He later, in a teletype message reported, again, that there had been negative results but this does show that AARO and the WSJ omitted this information from their reports because it would conflict with their EMP effect theory.

All mention of the radar reports is missing from the official files, as are the reports from Air Force personnel. Even if Chase was uninterested in most of the civilian sightings, he should have interviewed airmen who saw something, if for no other reason than to explain those sightings. This is a flaw in that investigation.

The radar sightings, with the corroborative visual reports would seem to be a very important part of the case. This would make it a stronger case, but Chase didn’t follow up on it. He didn’t explore the radar sightings, he did not request information from the FAA, and he didn’t interview any of the radar operators. The newspaper files suggest that the information had been reported the next day. Chase should have known about it given that it already knew of the sightings.

There might have been something else operating here, and that was the mission of Malmstrom AFB. It was a minuteman missile base, and just days before, an entire flight of missiles had suddenly fallen into a “No-Go” situation which meant that they had been deactivated. This was an issue that was a matter of national security and that might explain the reason the Belt, Montana sighting was so poorly investigated.

Echo Flight

Years later, Robert Salas and Jim Klotz were the first to tell the story of Echo Flight, originally in an online article at cufon.org and later in their book, Faded Giant. Robert Hastings, in his UFOs and Nukes, provided additional information. The story they told started early on the morning of March 16, 1967, when two missile maintenance teams who had been working on two of the flight’s widely scattered launch facilities said they had seen strange lights in the sky near where they were located. A mobile security team confirmed this, saying they had seen the lights as well. All of this was told to Colonel Don Crawford by Captain Eric Carlson and 1^st Lieutenant Walt Figel as Crawford came on duty, at least and according to what Salas had been told during his 1996 taped interview with Figel. Hastings had been told virtually the same things during his own interviews with Figel, confirming that Salas had reported the information accurately.

About 8:30 a.m., that same morning, as both Carlson and Figel were performing routine checks, the flight’s missiles began to drop off line. Within seconds, though Figel would later suggest it was minutes, all ten missiles were inoperable. In the event of war, they could not have launched. This was a major national security issue and a point that would become important later.

Hastings wrote, “Immediately after the malfunctions at Echo, the launch officers ordered two separate Security Alert Teams to drive to each of the launch facilities where the UFOs had been sighted. Nevertheless, the maintenance and security personnel at each site reported seeing UFOs hovering near the missile silos.”

He added, “…some months after my book came out, in July 2008, I interviewed Figel on tape. He said one of the two SAT teams reported seeing the UFO over one of the silos. In 1996, he told Salas that both teams had seen it. A faded memory, it seems…”

But the story wasn’t quite so mundane, as Hastings learned during his interviews with Figel. When Hastings talked to Figel, a retired Air Force Colonel on October 20, 2008, he was told that one of the guards had suggested the UFO had shut down the missiles. Figel thought the guard was joking. He told Hastings, “I was thinking he was yanking my chain more than anything else.”

Hastings asked, “He seemed to be serious to you?”

And Figel responded, “He seemed to be serious but I wasn’t taking him seriously.”

Hastings wanted to know what the man had seen and Figel said that it was just a large, round object that was directly over the launch facility.”

To clarify the situation Hastings and Figel discussed the security procedures. Figel said, “[When] the missiles dropped off alert, I started calling the maintenance people out there on the radio… [I asked] ‘What’s going on?’ … And the guy says, ‘We got a Channel 9 No-Go. It must be a UFO hovering over the site.”

Figel, of course, didn’t believe him. He said that one of the Strike Teams, they had dispatched two, but one of them thought they had seen something over the site. They told Figel that a large object was hovering there.

All of this, of course, suggests that UFOs were somehow involved with the sudden shut down of the missile systems. Although the government officials rejected the idea, there is a great deal of eyewitness testimony for the UFO sightings in the area.

The maintenance teams were dispatched and once they had located the problem, they were able to bring the missiles back on line, but the process was not simple and required hours for each missile. There was an extensive investigation that involved not only the Air Force but also the contractors who had designed and built the missiles.

According to the 341^st Strategic Missile Wing Unit History, recovered through Freedom of Information:

On 16 March 1967 at 0845, all sites in Echo (E) Flight, Malmstrom AFB, shutdown with No-Go indication of Channels 9 and 12 on Voice Reporting Signal Assemble (VRSA). All LF’s in E Flight lost strategic alert nearly simultaneously. No other Wing I configuration lost strategic alert at that time.

Guidance & Control channel 50 dump data was collected from E-7 facility and E-3 Facility and all 10 sites were then returned to strategic alert without any LF equipment replacement. All 10 sites were reported to have been subject to a normal controlled shutdown…

The only possible means that could be identified by the team involved a situation in which a couple self test commands occurred along with a partial reset within the coupler. This could feasible cause a VRSA 9 and 12 indication. This was also quite remote for all 10 couplers would have to have been partially reset in the same manner…

In the researching of other possibilities, weather was ruled out as a contributing factor in the incident.

A check with Communications maintenance verified that there was no unusual activity with EWO-1 or EWO-2 at the time of the incident.

All of which, in the short term, did not explain why the missiles all went off line at virtually the same time. In a very technical aspect of the Unit History, it explains that a “30 micro sec Pulse… was placed on the Self Test Command (STC) line… Seven out of 10 separate applications of a single pulse would cause the system to shut down with a Channel 9 & 12 No-Go.”

Or according to the Blue Book files, a randomly introduced electronic pulse which might be considered an EMP, which shouldn’t have affected the missile systems, had shut them down. The point of insertion was apparently the Launch Control Facility, but all those areas should have been shielded from just such an occurrence and that includes an EMP.

The information about the Echo Flight was, quite naturally, communicated to the Condon Committee, and Dr. Roy Craig responded. Craig was working on the government contract for the Air Force when he made his notes on his meeting with LTC Chase at Malmstrom. Craig’s notes on the meeting said:

After Colonel Chase and I exchanged pleasantries in his office, I asked him about the Echo incident. The Colonel caught his breath, and expressed surprise that I knew of it. ‘I can’t talk about that’… If I needed to know the cause of this incident, I could arrange through official channels, to see their report after the completion of the investigation… Although local newspapers carried stories of UFO sightings which would coincide in time with Echo, Colonel Chase had assured me that the incident had not involved a UFO… I accepted the information as factual and turned review of Major Schraff’s report (on the Echo incident) over to Bob Low [Dr. Robert Low, also a member of the Condon Committee], who had received security clearance to read secret information related to the UFO study… Low, in turn, had to interface with his Air Force Liaison in Washington, Col. Hippler [Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler] …. [Low wrote to Craig] ‘Roy, I called Hippler and he said he would try to get this, but he suspects it’s going to be classified too high for us to look at. Says he thinks interference by pulses from nuclear explosions is probably involved.

So, it seems that a cause had been found, or rather it seemed to have been found, but the ultimate source of the pulse was not identified. Hippler, speculating about the source of the pulse came up with an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from a nonexistent atomic blast. That the pulse shut down all the missiles made it a national security issue, which changed the level of the classification.

(To digress one more time, there had been communication between Hippler and Low before the contracts were signed to begin the investigation. Hippler told Low what the Air Force wanted and Low responded in the positive. If you wish to dive into that rabbit hole, you can read more about it here:

https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/03/hippler-letter.html

And, of course, I have published additional information on this. Just type Hippler Letter into the search engine at the right.)

Oddly, in the 341^st SMW Unit History, it noted, “Rumors of Unidentified Objects (UFO) around the area of Echo Flight during the time of the fault were disproven. A Mobile Strike Team, which had checked all November Flight’s LFs [Launch Facilities] on the morning of 16 March 67, were questioned and stated that no unusual activity or sightings were observed.”

But that doesn’t seem to be quite accurate. Hastings interviewed James Ortyl who had been assigned as an Air Policeman at Malmstrom. Ortyl said:

I was an Airman 2^nd Class [A2C] at the time. We were working the day-shift at Kilo Flight in March of 1967… It was mid-morning and three or four Air Policemen were gathered in the launch control facility dispatch office. Airman Robert Pounders and I were facing the windows looking out to the yard and parking lot. The others were facing us. As we were conversing, I witnessed a shimmering, reddish-orange object clear the main gate and in a sweeping motion pass quickly and silently pass by the windows. It seemed to be within 30 years of the building. Stunned, I looked at Pounders and asked, “Did you see that?!” He acknowledged that he had.

To be fair, Ortyl didn’t know the exact date, but said that in was near his birthday of March 17^th. But then there is Craig’s interview with Chase which also moves in the direction of UFO sightings on the proper date. Craig’s notes indicate that he had the names of some of those involved with the UFO sightings at the time of Echo’s shut down, but he never contacted any of them.

Craig also had the name of Dan Renualdi who, in March 1967, was a member of the Site Activation Task Force (SATAF). He said that he had been within a few feet of an object. There was also a sergeant with the Air Force Technical Evaluation Team who said he had seen a flying saucer. There is no record of Craig talking to either of these men, nor are there any reports in the Project Blue Book files to suggest that the sightings had been reported through official channels. That was a violation of the regulations in force at the time, although it could be argued there were contradictory regulations.

All this demonstrates is that there was another reported UFO around the time that Echo Flight had gone down, contrary to what the Unit History said. It does not prove that the UFOs had anything to do with the anomalous pulse.

There is another aspect to this. Quite naturally, the Air Force wanted to know what had happened. The man who conducted the investigation for Boeing, the Defense Contractor for the missile systems was Robert Kaminski. In a letter dated February 1, 1997 to Jim Klotz, he wrote:

At the time of the incident, I was an engineer in the MIP/CNP (Material Improvement Project/Controlled Numbered Problem) group…. The group was contacted by the Air Force so that Boeing could respond to specific Air Force Minuteman Missiles problems that occurred in the field…

I was handed the E-Flight CNP assignment when it arrived by the group supervisor. As the internal Boeing project engineer I arranged meetings necessary with management and technical personnel required to determine a course of action to be taken, in exploring why 10 missiles had suddenly fallen from alert status – green – to red, with no explanation for it. This was an unusual request and we had no prior similar incident or experience to this kind of anomaly….

Since this was a field site peculiar incident, a determination was made to send out an investigative team to survey the LCF and the LFs to determine what failures or related incidents could be found to explain the cause…. After a week in the field the team returned and pooled their data. At the outset the team quickly noticed a lack of anything that would come close to explain why the event occurred. There were no significant failures, engineering data or findings that would come close to explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert. This indeed turned out to be a rare event and not encountered before. The use of backup power systems and other technical system circuit operational redundancy strongly suggests that this kind of event is virtually impossible once the system was up and running and on line with other LCF’s and LF’s interconnectivity….

The team met with me to report their findings and it was decided that the final report would have nothing significant in it to explain what happened at E-Flight. In other words there was no technical explanation that could explain the event… Meanwhile I was contacted by our representative… (Don Peterson) and told by him that the incident was reported as being a UFO event – That a UFO was seen by some Airmen over the LCF at the time E-Flight when down.

Subsequently, we were notified a few days later, that a stop work order was on the way from OOAMA to stop any further effort on this project. We stopped. We were also told that we were not to submit the final engineering report. This was most unusual since all of our work required review by the customer and the submittal of a final Engineering report to OOAMA…

However, as I recall nothing explained this anomaly at E-Flight.

I’ll step in here again to note that if an EMP was responsible for the missiles going off line, there were have been evidence of that when the engineers checked. The fried circuits would have been a clue, but according to this, they found no reason for the failure.

Hastings, in a review of the material in 2013, wrote, “Actually, the large round object sighted by the missile guard, and reported to launch officer Lt. Walter Figel, had been hovering over one of the Echo missile silos, not the launch control facility itself. Nevertheless, Boeing engineer Kaminski’s revealing testimony essentially confirms Figel’s account of a UFO presence during the incident.”

Oscar Flight

In March 1967, Robert Salas was a Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander (DMCCC) at Malmstrom AFB. When he first told his tale in 1995, he had thought he had been assigned to Echo Flight, later he thought it might have been November Flight, but once he located his former commander, Fred Meiwald, he learned it was Oscar Flight. The story he told, in 1995, was essentially the same as that about Echo Flight, or in other words, that all ten missiles had gone off line within seconds of each other.

According to what Salas would report, while he was sixty feet underground in the capsule, he received a call from an NCO in the Launch Control Facility telling him that they had seen some UFOs nearby. They were just lights and they just weren’t sure what they might be. But not long after that, the NCO reported that the object, later described as a red glow that was saucer shaped, was now over the gate. Before the NCO completed the report, he said that one of the men had been injured, apparently by the UFO. He hung up to go assist.

Salas said that he woke the commander and began to tell him about the UFO sightings. Within seconds, their missiles began to go off line. Later, there would be some question as to how many of the 10 missiles they lost. It might have been part of them or it might have been all of them. In May 2013 Salas told me he had believed it was all of them but his commander thought it was only five or six. In his first reports, Salas just split the difference.

In fact, Salas would say that once he mentioned what was happening outside, his commander, Meiwald said that he had heard about a similar event the week before. Meiwald said that there had been an intrusion alarm that went off and that a two-man security team had been ordered to respond. As the team approached the site, they saw a UFO hovering over it. They raced back to the Launch Control Facility, shaken by what they had seen.

In a letter to Salas dated October 1, 1996, Meiwald wrote, “…Topside security notified us the mobile team had reported observing the “UFO” while responding… to the situation at an outlying LF…”

Hastings interviewed Meiwald in 2011 about the events at Oscar Flight. Meiwald said:

…essentially, I was resting—whether or not I was sound sleep I don’t recall—but I know Bob got me up because we had unusual indications on the consol [sic], plus we’d had a security violation and, uh, the response team that [inaudible] had gone out to investigate at one of the LFs. They reported unusual activity over there and—by that time I was up—and saw consol indications. [I] also directed that the strike team return to the LCF while maintaining radio contact on the way back. As they came back we did lose radio contact for a short period of time, however, the flight [security] leader—the person who was in charge at the time—recognized the team as it was approaching the LCF and opened the gate so that his troops could get in.

He also confirmed that those above ground had seen something in the sky. Meiwald didn’t remember much about that but did confirm they had seen something in the sky. Hastings asked him about the Flight Security Crew saying that it was a bright red oval-shaped object but Meiwald said that he could only remember something about a bright object, confirming, at least, the UFO sighting.

Later, Meiwald said that he and Salas had been called in for a debriefing by the AFOSI. He confirmed that they had been asked to sign nondisclosure statements, but to him that was not a big deal. That sort of thing apparently happened occasionally. At the Citizen Hearing in May 2013, Salas told me, as well as others, that they had been required to sign the nondisclosure statements. “It was then designated a highly classified incident,” according to Salas.

The trouble at Oscar Flight was also reported by 1^st Lieutenant Robert C. Jamison, who was Minuteman ICBM targeting officer at Malmstrom in March 1967. According to what he told Hastings and reported in UFOs and Nukes, he, Jamison, said had been tasked to assist in the restart of “an entire flight of ten Minuteman ICBMs which had simultaneously and inexplicably shut down immediately after a UFO was sighted in the vicinity…”

More importantly, Jamison said that before he was sent into the field, he and his team were told to remain at Malmstrom until all UFO activity had ended, and then they received a “special briefing.” They were told to report any UFO they saw in the area. If they saw something they were at the missile silo, they were to enter the personnel hatch and wait until the UFO left. The Air Police guards, who were to accompany the team, would remain outside to watch the UFO.

While he was in a hangar waiting to go into the field, Jamison overheard a two-way radio conversation about a UFO on the ground. This is a clear reference to the Belt sighting and dates Jamison’s recollections to March 24. Jamison said that one of the highest-ranking officers on the base was on the scene of the landing. According to the newspaper accounts and the Blue Book files, this was Colonel Fred Klibbe.

The special briefing apparently was not just a one-time affair. He said that for two weeks after the missile shut down, his team received a UFO briefing prior to heading into the field. This is something that would be repeated in other, similar events at other Air Force bases.

This seemed to be a repeat of the situation that happened just days earlier. Salas was convinced, later, that this happened on March 24, which was the date of the Belt, Montana sightings.

But unlike the Echo Flight incident, there was no official record of this event. The Unit History doesn’t mention it, and there is no documentation for it. It is as if it never happened and for that reason, there are some who think that this is a hoax. The only reason for the mention of UFOs in Blue Book files is that the news media was already involved with the Belt sightings and they couldn’t be ignored. Had that not happened, then neither the Echo Flight nor the Oscar Flight events would have leaked into the public arena.

I will note here that if what Salas said was true, and the latest AARO confirms what he said, they just provide a non-alien reason for it. AARO’s investigation saying that Salas witnessed part of the experiment, then two missile flights were shut down, not just one. That is, twenty missiles, part of the MAD strategy were taken off line by a US experiment that was conducted during a series of UFO sightings, made by civilians, law enforcement and military personnel. These sightings were corroborated by FAA radars but apparently the AARO investigative team never bothered to verify this information. They boiled it down to a single witness and then provided what seemed to be a plausible explanation counting on the media failing to ask the legitimate follow up questions about the timing. WSJ seemed to ignore the idiocy of conducting such an experiment on part of our missile defense shield. Rather than be outraged by the risk of doing that, they all just nodded and said, “Got it.”

The WSJ concedes there was a cover up, but it wasn’t of an alien event but of a ridiculous experiment to use an EMP to shut down an active missile flight rather than conduct the experiment away from the Air Force base where no harm could be done. They fail to mention the UFO sightings in the area at the time of the experiment or that the EMP is nearly impossible to reverse, rending the missiles useless.