Moon Dust Documents Online

 Back in 1969, the Condon Committee declared that there was nothing of scientific value that could be learned by further study of flying saucers. The Air Force closed Project Blue Book and the implication was that the government was no longer investigating UFOs.

Dr. Edward Condon, who had the conclusions of the
investigation before it had even started.

Although unknown in 1969, the real point of the Condon Committee study was to remove public interest in flying saucers and allow the Air Force to close its unclassified investigation. This is a somewhat simplistic way of looking at the situation, but it was a direct outcome of the conclusions drawn by the committee. You can read more about this in my book, cleverly entitled, Project Moon Dust which was rewritten and revised in 2022. I have also addressed Moon Dust on this blog several times and you can read some of that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2021/04/coast-to-coast-am-moon-dust-controversy.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2024/03/aaro-and-project-moon-dust.html

Anyway, the conclusions drawn by Condon were not true and we learned in 1984 that there was something called Moon Dust that had a UFO component. The best information I have is that Moon Dust began in October 1957 after the Soviet launch of Sputnik. The purpose was to recover returning space debris of foreign manufacture and unknown origin. That unknown origin was off-world craft. How do I know… I found Moon Dust reports in the Blue Book files and there have been several Moon Dust responses launched to investigate UFO sightings that involved some sort of debris recovery.

Oh, I should note that Moon Dust continued until the mid-1980s when the name was compromised inadvertently by the State Department. At that point the name was changed and FOIA requests were met with the statement that the new name was properly classified, which made learning more about Moon Dust nearly impossible.

This brief background is to note that many Moon Dust documents are now available on line. I have published some in various books, as has other researchers. I updated my book on Moon Dust, which provides a more comprehensive look at the material. You can now review many of these original Moon Dust documents here:

https://www.governmentattic.org/54docs/ProjMoondust1967-1972.pdf

Before we leave this discussion, I should point out that the first link above suggests there was no Project Moon Dust but that Moon Dust was the code name for attempts to recover returning space debris. In other words, when there was some sort of UFO incident, and investigation would be conducted, an officer at the nearest base would be assigned as the project officer and reports would be written using the code word Moon Dust. However, there was no on-going project. It was activated as needed. When the code words Moon Dust were compromised, they were changed to something else. I believe all this becomes clear in the links provided above.

One further note. Type Moon Dust into the search engine on this blog and you’ll find additional articles that show the evolution of research into Moon Dust. I suppose, at some point, I should consolidate all that information into a single, cohesive article, which I might do at some point. Just not right now.

And one other point. There is a document that I found in the Blue Book files that provided a date for the beginning of Moon Dust. I wasn’t able to make a copy of it, given the microfilm reader I was using at the time, but I wrote down the specifics. Our research would benefit from finding that document again. To assist in the search, you can read about that here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2020/02/project-moon-dust-little-help.html

The final point here is that research never seems to end and there are many rabbit holes for us to go down. Anyway, one of the best contributions to our understanding of Moon Dust might by finding that document again. The best clue I have is that I was doing research in the November 1957 UFO sightings, and was looking through the administrative documents from that period. That specific message might be in one of the case files from Blue Book, or in the administrative documents that file boxes and boxes

The Latest From ARRO: More of the Same

 

There are many of us old-timers in the UFO field who have been around for more decades that we care to admit and who can see the many flaws in the latest, and probably last ARRO report, given there is a new office and new investigation into UAP. We know the flaws in that assessment and the repeated lies that lace it. We have the documentation, the interviews, and the evidence to support that claim.

Before I get into the many flaws, let me point out one area that is positive. As I was working on The Government UFO Files, I mentioned an unofficial investigation that began in December 1946. This was based on the work of Keith Chester, Wendy Connors, Michael Hall, and Michael Swords. I had noticed that each time the US government was involved in investigations of mysterious objects beginning with the World War II Foo Fighters, then the Scandinavian Ghost Rockets and finally with some strange sightings by American service members, one name came up. Colonel Howard McCoy.

According to Connors and Hall, McCoy had been given an order by General Nathan Twining to set up an unofficial project to study these reports of strange objects. Most of the information they had, and that I had, was not completely documented. Connors and Hall believed that most of the files of this early project were buried under one of the golf courses at Wright-Patterson AFB. General Arthur Exon, who had been the base commander there in the 1960s, almost confirmed this to me when I met with him at Wright-Patterson.

Brigadier General Arthur Exon

I provided more information on this in The Government UFO Files, though I had wished there were some sort of official statement confirming that early, pre-Kenneth Arnold sighting of June 1947, project. With the release of the “AARO Historical Report, Volume 1,” we learn of Project SAUCER (1946/1947 - January 1948). (No one seemed to wonder how it could have been called Project SAUCER before Arnold’s sighting, but I digress).

In the background, we learn:

AARO reviewed official USG efforts involving UFOs/UAP since 1945… The exact date of the founding of this first effort as well as its official and unofficial name are unclear. According to one source, General Nathan Twining, Commander of the Air Technical Services Command, established Project SAUCER on December 30, 1947 [I believe this should be early December (maybe the sixth 1946) to collect and evaluate all information relating to UFO sightings which could be construed as of concern to national security. Captain Edward Ruppelt claimed that Project SAUCER was the informal name of Project SIGN, and it was designated a high priority. However, in an interview with an employee of Project SIGN, the employee claimed the project started a year earlier, in 1946 and that Project SAUCER was its original informal name.

The results, according to the report, were that Project SAUCER did not find evidence of extraterrestrial technology. But that really isn’t the point here. The AARO report confirmed the information about the early beginnings of research into these strange phenomena, pushing back the beginnings of the investigation by six or seven months. Makes you wonder what had happened to cause Twining to issue the order to McCoy and why none of those files were transferred to the first of the official projects.

I’m going to skip some of the other, earlier reports on various government run UFO studies because this would become much too long. I will point out that they lumped the Green Fireballs in with the UFO reports. This was Project Twinkle, which this new report does suggest that “That the literature is not clear if Project TWINKLE was officially supported by the original Project GRUDGE, but it was managed by the USAF’s Cambridge Research Laboratory.”

The report said in the “Results” section that “This project was only able to secure one camera, which was frequently moved between locations following fireball reports, and no photographs of the fireballs were ever taken.”

The problem is that there is documentation that there was one photograph taken of a fireball. A single picture, taken from a single location wouldn’t do much to provide data about the fireballs, other than showing there were fireballs. The ultimate plan, to use multiple cameras to take pictures from multiple angles, was never implemented.

I’m going to jump over several other reports, committee recommendations and conclusions to reach what might be the most egregious example of collusion between the Air Force and an American university.

When the Project Blue Book files were released into the public arena in 1976, Bob Cornett and I were able to review them while the files were still at the Air Force Archives at Maxwell Air Force Base. We found document after document explaining how various members of the government and the Air Force were attempting to end Project Blue Book for years. This was from the top of the civilian aspects of the government, various scientific boards and committees and the highest-ranking members of the Air Force. They wanted an excuse to close Blue Book.

To that end, the Air Force, following a plan to end Blue Book, searched for a university to take on a “scientific” study UFOs. The Air Force finally found the University of Colorado to accept their half-million-dollar grant (which, according to this new report, was only $325,000) and that Dr. Edward U. Condon would lead the effort. This would be an “objective effort” to find a solution to the mystery of UFOs.

To spell this out, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler sent a letter to what would be called the Condon Committee. Hippler wrote that the Air Force wanted to end Blue Book because of the cost to taxpayers. He pointed out that it was difficult to prove a negative and speculated on what an alien species would do if it was visiting Earth, though, according to him, there was no evidence of such. The point of the letter was to get the Air Force out of the hole that it found itself in. I printed the text of the Hippler letter in The UFO Dossier. And you can read more about the letter, as well some commentary about those efforts to end the Air Force investigation here:

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

Dr. Robert Low, the number two man on the Condon Committee acknowledged the letter and in the text of his response wrote, “On the second page, you indicate what you believe the Air Force wants of us, and I am very glad to have your opinion.”

The text of that response was also published in The UFO Dossier. The Air Force wanted an investigation that would show there is nothing to UFO sightings, there is nothing to be learned of scientific value and there is no threat to national security.

While it might seem that the discussion is vague, just three days after that letter was received, Condon delivered a lecture to scientists in Corning, New York, telling them, “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude right now is that there is nothing in it. But I’m not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.”

While the Condon Committee found that the Air Force had done a good job of investigating UFOs, despite the ridiculous solutions appended to some sightings (the Lubbock Lights were birds despite the photograph that wasn’t birds; Levelland was ball lightning despite all the evidence that proved it was not), that there was no threat to national security (despite the sightings around Malmstrom Air Force Base proving otherwise) and that there was nothing of scientific value to be learned by continued investigation (despite the fact one of the sightings was explained as a natural phenomenon so rare it had never been seen before or since), they recommended that the investigation be ended. In 1969, the Air Force closed Project Blue Book. Of course, they did continue to investigate some UFO sightings and there was Project Moon Dust which had a UFO component to it that persisted until 1985 when the name was compromised. At that point, there was a new name, which was, according to the Air Force, properly classified. This means that the investigations continued, but it was all classified.

Of course, the real problem with the AARO report is the take on the Roswell UFO crash. I am not sure how someone who is supposed to be investigating the topic of UFOs with a dispassionate attitude can subscribe to the Project Mogul explanation. I am going to spend a little more time on picking apart the conclusions offered for the debris recovered at Roswell.

This segment begins saying, “According to press reports, President Clinton tasked former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger to determine if the USG held aliens or alien technology. President Clinton said, ‘As far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico in 1947… [ellipses in original] if the USAF did recover alien bodies, they didn’t tell me about it… and I want to know.’”

This would not be the first time or the only time that a president, or presidents, were not told about ongoing intelligence operations. I point to Operation Solo, in which the FBI office in New York City did not tell several presidents that there was a spy with access to the highest levels of the Soviet government. The operation was run out of New York City to protect its integrity of the operation and to keep leak happy Washington out of the loop. This was exposed after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the death of the spy, Morris Childs. The book, by John Barron, was called Operation Solo.

This doesn’t prove anything other that there have been times when information was withheld from presidents in the interest of national security. It is relevant only in proving that such things do happen, especially at the highest levels. In UFOs and the Deep State, I do mention the way that bureaucrats are able to dodge presidential inquiries.

The report then moves on to Congressman Steven Schiff, who initiated a GAO search for information from several government and military organizations about the Roswell case. This, of course, spawned an Air Force investigation into the Roswell case as well. The results were:

The [GAO] report stated that the USAF’s research did not locate or develop any information that indicated the “Roswell Incident” was a UFO event, nor was there any “cover up” by the USG. Rather, the materials recovered near Roswell were consistent with a balloon of the type used in the then-classified Project Mogul. No records showed any evidence that the USG recovered aliens or extraterrestrial material.

So, let’s break this down. First, there were several witnesses, high-ranking officers stationed at Roswell, who were not interviewed. Many of us, Bill Moore, Stan Friedman, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and me, to name a few, interviewed these men and had both audio and video tape of those interviews so that the validity of the quotes could be established.

Although I told Lieutenant McAndrew, who worked with Colonel Weaver that I could make all the information available, they seemed less than interested. This included a statement from Colonel Edwin Easley, the base Provost Marshal in 1947, to me about the extraterrestrial nature of the event. Specifically, I asked if we were following the right path.

Easley asked me, “What do you mean?”

“We think it was extraterrestrial.”

“Let me put it this way. It’s not the wrong path.”

Major Edwin Easley, Roswell Provost Marshal.

In fact, every member of Colonel Blanchard’s staff (Blanchard was the commanding office at Roswell in 1947) that we interviewed took us in the same direction with a single exception. I, among others, have laid this out in several books and articles, including Roswell in the 21^st Century and Understanding Roswell. Yes, all this is not the sort of thing that the GAO would have uncovered, but it is evidence of something strange.

The Air Force investigation did interview some former and retired officers, but ignored those who would have provided a different perspective. I think of General Arthur Exon who provided Don Schmitt and me with some very interesting information about what had been recovered in Roswell, including descriptions of the strange metallic debris that did not match the balloon material that is supposed to be what was recovered. To be fair, Exon didn’t see the metal himself but was reporting what he had been told by those who did.

I could mention here Master Sergeant Bill Rickett who was assigned to the counterintelligence office at Roswell in 1947. He not only handled the metal and provided descriptions to several UFO researchers including Don Schmitt and Mark Rodeghier. Rickett’s testimony is in direct conflict with that of Captain Sheridan Cavitt who was the officer in charge of the counterintelligence office in 1947.

This, I suppose, boils down to a case of who do you want to believe. I’ll note here that in the interviews that Don and I conducted with Cavitt, he lied to us repeatedly, telling us that he wasn't in Roswell in July 1947. Yes, I have that quote on tape.

Which leads to the “then-classified Project Mogul.” There are many problems with this. I laid it out at length in Roswell in the 21^st Century. While Mogul was classified, the experiments being conducted in New Mexico were not. The equipment was off-the-shelf neoprene weather balloons and rawin radar targets. That material would have been easily recognized by the officers at Roswell and that would have been the end of the story.

Charles Moore reviewing the winds aloft data I had
supplied. Photo by Kevin Randle

Photographs of one of the balloon arrays were published in the newspapers on July 10, 1947, which would have compromised the purpose of Mogul if anyone was paying attention. But the experiments in New Mexico were not classified and were run by a team from New York University. Although Charles Moore, one of the men working on the project in New Mexico, told me that he had never heard the name “Mogul” it was used in the field notes of Dr. Albert Crary, the man in charge of the research. Again, it was the purpose that was classified and not the experiments being conducted in New Mexico.

But here’s the real problem. It was alleged that Flight No. 4 was the culprit in this. It was to be launched on June 4, 1947, but according to the field notes, and the later analysis of the results of the flights, Flight No. 4 was cancelled. It did not fly. Later in the afternoon, those in New Mexico launched a small cluster of balloons that did not leave the confines of the ranges around Alamogordo Army Air Field or the White Sands Proving Grounds. It did not approach the Brazel (Foster) ranch where it was alleged the balloons were recovered.

What I fail to understand is how the skeptics and the scientific community can continue to demand documentation but ignore the written record that removes Flight No. 4 from the list of culprits. In other words, if the flight was cancelled, then it couldn’t have been responsible for the strange metallic debris found by Mack Brazel and some of which was recovered by Major Jesse Marcel.

I was going to end this long analysis here and provide a list of alternative sources of information, but just have to mention the last bullet point in the AARO. It said:

Reports of military units that allegedly recovered a flying saucer and its “crew” were descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in dummy recovery operations. Claims of “alien bodies” at the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) hospital were most likely the result of the conflation of two incidents” a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives: and a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.

The problem here is that some of the witnesses that Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, and I interviewed over the years, weren’t stationed in Roswell at the time of these later events. They wouldn’t have been “fooled” by the tragedy of the aircraft accident or the injury of others in the years after the reported UFO crash. There is not logical way that many of them could have conflated these two incidents into their memories of what they witnessed in July 1947.

There are other aspects of the overall report that can be refuted by evidence, which I have jumped over. The Robertson Panel of 1953, sponsored by the CIA, apparently had the final report written before the first day of testimony. Michael Swords provided an in-depth analysis of this, which would render the findings of the panel as irrelevant to anyone who understood the circumstances around its creation.

I have limited this analysis to the historical aspects of the report. Others, I’m sure, will attack the later material, including the UAP research of the last few years. For those interested in following up on some of this, or looking for more detail, you can read it on this blog by typing in a keyword sure as “Mogul.” Other sources, including special articles on this blog can be found here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2013/07/mogul-and-roswell.html

And here is a reference that not only provides additional information but also links to a series of blog posts about Mogul:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/search?q=Mogul

For those interested in the Lubbock Lights that the Air Force decided was birds, here is a long article that talks about much of that:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2023/02/coast-to-coast-am-lubbock-lights.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2019/01/historys-project-blue-book-lubbock.html

For those interested in the Levelland sightings of November 1957, might I suggest finding a copy of the book cleverly entitled Levelland. It is my analysis for that sighting as well as a look at the history about those sightings.

Condon and his committee never did much with the Levelland sightings. They are barely mentioned. Here is a new perspective on that aspect (and yes, I know it is supposed to be just UAP without the “S,” but I find that proofreading is not my strongest skill:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/08/nasa-and-uaps-ufos.html

And for a general overview of much of this, you can find information at this link. Yes, some of it will be redundant:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-latest-on-government-uap-report.html

I have published several books relevant to this conversation for those who wish to really to learn as much as possible. I would suggest, in no particular order, Understanding Roswell, Roswell in the 21^st Century (which contains a long analysis of the whole Mogul history,  Levelland, UFOs and the Deep State, and The Government UFO Files. You might also wish to look at the Carey and Schmitt books beginning with Witness to Roswell, and you might be interested in the book written by Colonel Weaver, the man who conducted the Air Force investigation called Backstory: Roswell. You might also wish to find a copy of the Air Force Report, The Roswell Report that contains much information about Project Mogul and the field notes and diaries kept by Dr. Albert Crary, that proved there was no Flight No. 4.

There are many other sources of information, but I’ll sure this is much more than most people wish to read. I mention all this to provide a sample of the work that I, among others, have done on this. If there are other questions, use the search engine on my blog, kevinrandle.blogspot.com.

NASA and UAPs (UFOs)

 

More than a half century ago, the Air Force sponsored at the University of Colorado, a study of UFOs. Lead by Dr. Edward U. Condon, they concluded that there was no national security issue, that nothing of scientific value would be learned by further study, and that the Air Force had done a good job during its twenty-two-year investigation. From that point on, other scientists, journalists, news organizations and DoD officials used those conclusions to ignore the UFO phenomenon and often to ridicule those who took it seriously or who claimed to have seen an alien spacecraft.

Dr. Edward Condon

None of this came as a surprise to those who were paying close attention. The conclusions for the Condon Committee as it became known, were written at the very beginning of the investigation. Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler wrote to Robert Low of the Condon Committee to outline the Air Force expectations. These were to find no national security issues, to find nothing of a scientific value in additional research and to say some positive things about the Air Force investigation. As noted, all this came to pass.

For those interested in exploring this aspect of the “scientific study” of UFOs, you can read about it here:

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

Condon even expressed his belief about UFOs and what the ultimate conclusions would be at a meeting in Corning, New York, on January 25, 1967, where he told the audience that UFO’s “are not the business of the Air Force… It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business. My attitude is that there’s nothing to it… but I’m not supposed to reach a conclusion for another year.” That was reported in the January 26, 1967, edition of the Elmira Star-Gazette.

Ten years later, Frank Press, who was the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and was President Jimmy Carter’s science advisor, wrote to Robert Frosch, the administrator of NASA. In a friendly letter, Press suggested that UFOs were a subject that should be a focal point for NASA. In other words, Press seemed to be suggesting that NASA take an interest in UFO reports and sightings.

In his response, Frosch, mentioned the negative conclusions of the Condon Committee, cited other organizations with opposite views, including CUFOS and NICAP, but also thought that some sort of inquiry might discover significant new findings. He also suggested that NASA had to be assured that there was a justification for opening such an inquiry because of the time and resources that would be involved.

In a response to this, Noel Hinners, the Space Science director, was appointed to formulate a response. There were rumors, or leaks (which I suppose are much the same thing) that Stephen P. Maran, of the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), would spend two months examining the UFO world post Condon, meaning he would look at the developments from 1969 to 1977. Instead of this, and other positive ideas, Hinners sent a letter to Forsch. In keeping with the skeptical view, Hinners wrote, “There are two major problems involved in considering any review of the UFO phenomenon, by NASA: first, an apparent lack of any tangible or physical evidence for laboratory analysis (emphasis added); second the absence of any sound scientific protocol for investigating the phenomenon firsthand. There is a plethora of secondary source material – human observation and reports thereon – but hearsay is difficult to deal with scientifically…”

Finally, on December 21, Forsch wrote to Press, telling him that NASA was leaving the door open to examine any evidence, though he again mentioned the lack of any physical evidence. He wrote, “I wish in no way to indicate that NASA has come to any conclusion about the phenomena as such; institutionally we retain an open mind, a keen sense of scientific curiosity and a willingness to analyze technical problems within our competence.”

While they continued to cite the lack of physical evidence, Dr. Peter Sturrock of Stanford University, wrote Frosch on December 30, saying, “my colleagues and I in the Study Group on Anomalous Phenomena have obtained access to some physical evidence such as films, material samples, etc.”

NASA Headquarters was somewhat surprised and was unprepared to deal with Sturrock’s suggestion about “obtaining meaningful assessment of these items of evidence.” NASA did, however, think that Dr. Stephen Maran of Goddard Space Flight Center was the man to take on the task of assessing the materials because “He is a skeptic on UFOs; he is extremely sharp and energetic; and he is politically acute.”

Assigning a skeptic to the investigation is not a bad thing. I would think that someone of a skeptic nature, who is interested in reviewing the evidence would be the man to do the job. But, for some reason that never happened. It seemed that NASA decided that any sort of study would consume time, money and resources and it would distract the agency from its original and primary mission which dealt with rocketry, launching satellites and developing a vehicle that could be reused.

I will also note that this idea that he is “politically acute,” suggests that he might have been swayed by the political arena surrounding UFOs, believing that any finding suggesting alien visitation would not be well received. In other words, the wrong conclusion might jeopardize his career. I have no evidence that such is the case other than that one minor phrase.

Today NASA is now saying, according to Daniel Evans, the assistant deputy associate administrator at the Science Mission Directorate that, “We’re going full force on the UAP study… This is really important to us and we’re placing a high priority on it.”

But this wasn’t the only thing said by the NASA representatives at the town hall meeting where this was discussed. They had to add a disclaimer, saying, “NASA has said there is no evidence that UAPs are visiting aliens.”

Please note that this is the same thing they said decades ago. They now reduce the observations of witnesses to little more than anecdotal testimony because that diminishes the important of that evidence. And yet, I would have told them about important observations in and around the Levelland UFO sightings from November, 1957. As I researched the book, Levelland, about those sightings, it became clear that it was much more complicated and robust than we thought. Here was a sighting that had many of the elements that science demanded. There were multiple, independent eyewitness to the object, seen at close range for as long as five to fifteen minutes. It interacted with the environment by stalling car engines and filling the radios with static. There are reports of landing traces, again with multiple witnesses. And what was the official investigation about? The number of witnesses. The Air Force said only three had seen an object, but their own investigation produced more than that.

In the past, while it seemed that NASA was interested in UFOs, there were those who were less than enthusiastic, especially when scientists outside of NASA and the editors various magazines with a more skeptical tone mentioned the nightmare of having to deal with a subject that many considered to be phony and a waste of time. This is, of course, an outgrowth of the Condon Committee’s negative findings which, as I mentioned, were bought by the Air Force with half a million bucks (which in today’s dollars would be something much higher).

Skeptics (or I should say, “debunkers”) entered the discussion at some point. Philip Klass wrote that President Carter had barely had time to find his way around the White House his inauguration before he was inundated with letters and telegrams from people Klass described as uneducated, inarticulate and confused. There was also the allegation that 87% of those who wrote NASA about UFOs were eleven or twelve years old. Or, here was a group of people who didn’t know what they were talking about trying to force a policy on a government agency. The attitude of hostility grew out of this.

NASA, though it seemed would be the perfect agency to investigate claims of alien visitation, rejected all suggestions they do so. While it would seem that evidence that interstellar flight was possible would increase their research budgets, they seemed to think it would bring discredit on the agency.

But now we seem to have come full circle. We have moved from a time in which many of those at NASA thought UFO investigation might be worthwhile, to those who worried that it would damage the agency in some way, back around to it being something NASA should do. Of course, they mention again, that there is no evidence of alien visitation and that they believe the answers are all terrestrially based, but they are now going “full force on the UAP study…”

Please paint me as skeptical, but hopeful. I fear that this will end up where all other good intentioned investigations in the topic had ended up… There is no evidence that they find acceptable no matter what that evidence might be.

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.

Condon Committee Negated

 

More than fifty years ago, the Air Force, believing that they were on the spot about UFOs, paid the University of Colorado more than a half a million dollars to investigate the subject. The claim was that this would be a scientific study into the reports of UFOs and a search for evidence. Dr. Edward U. Condon, a respected nuclear physicist who had once headed the National Bureau of Standards and was one-time president American Association for the Advancement of Science, was chosen to lead the project. He was selected, according to some sources, because he had no expressed bias about UFOs.

Dr. Edward U. Condon

That wasn’t the case.

Early on, in the investigation, an exchange of letters between Lieutenant Colonel Robert Hippler, who served in 1967 in the Air Force’s Science Division, Directorate of Science and Technology, and Dr. Robert Low, who was a member of Condon’s staff, outlined what was expected which was contrary to the stated purpose of the study. Hippler wrote:

This is an informal letter expressing some thoughts on our round- table discussion on the UFO program, and does not constitute the formal letter requested by John Coleman.

There are two items which leave me a little uneasy. The first is the Wertheimer Hypothesis, and its corollary that one cannot "prove" the negative on extraterrestrial visitations. The second is an apparently obscure understanding of what the Air Force wants. Since I will discuss this second item, you will see why this is an informal letter expressing my own opinion–and hence is not binding on you.

On the first item, I wish to present a slightly different approach. When we first took over the UFO program, the first order of business, even before approaching AFOSR, was to assure ourselves that the situation was as straightforward as logic indicated it should be. In other words, we too looked to see if by some chance the intelligence people have information other than what exists in Blue Book files. There were no surprises. While there exist some things which may forever remain unknowable in the universe, certainly an extraterrestrial visitation must fall in the "knowable" category. An alien would not come light years merely to pick up surreptitiously some rocks, or melt holes in reservoir ice (al la Edwards). He would have long since gone through the geologic bit, and would be fairly knowledgeable of the make-up of stars and planets. You have stated that President Truman was unaware of the Manhattan Project until he became President. In that same time period, physicists not connected with the project were aware of the possibilities and knew that something was going on.

No one knows of a visitation. It should therefore follow there has been no visitation to date. As you are aware, if UFOs are an Air Force "sacred cow," the other services in the usual competitive spirit would not be constrained by this "sacred cow." Nor the “fear of panic” holding anyone’s tongue. No one is reticent about the horror of an ICBM attack. Words such as “end of civilization have been used many times.

This brings us to the second item. When you have looked into some sightings and examined some Blue Book records and become acquainted with the true state of affairs, you must consider the cost of the Air Force program on UFOs, and determine if the taxpayer should support this for the next decade. It will be at least that long before another independent study can be mounted to see if the Air Force can get out from under this program. If the contract is up before you have laid the proper groundwork for a proper recommendation, an extension of the contract would be less costly than another decade of operating Project Blue Book.

Condon understood exactly what was being asked of him even if others didn’t. Just three days after reading the letter, Condon was in Corning, New York, to lecture scientists including members of Corning Section of the American Chemical Society and the Corning Works Chapter of Sigma Xi. He said, “It is my inclination right now to recommend that the government get out of this business [UFO investigations]. My attitude right now is that there is nothing in it. But I am not supposed to reach that conclusion for another year.”

What this demonstrates is that the fix was in. Although this was supposed to be an unbiased, dispassionate examination of the UFO phenomenon, it was, in fact, a program designed to explain away UFO sightings by wrapping it all in the mantle of science. And, for fifty years, we have heard about the Condon Committee’s negative findings and its conclusions that there is nothing of scientific value in continuing to study UFOs.

I’ll add here that another purpose of the committee was to determine if there was a national security implication in the sightings. They found that there was not even though they had run into that national security implication in the Belt, Montana/Malmstrom Air Force Base sightings of March 24, 1967.

In the end, Project Blue Book was closed and the Air Force claimed that they were no longer interested in collecting information about UFOs.

BUT –

All that has been negated by what we have learned recently. There have been many government programs to collect UFO data around the world, including one that we know as Moon Dust. According to the documentation available, Moon Dust continued until 1985, when the program was exposed. In a letter to UFO researched Robert Todd, an Air Force officer explained that Moon Dust was compromised. The name was changed but that name was classified, implying that the investigation had continued.

We have, of course, learned about the AATIP program, which again, was a study of UFOs. It was discontinued a couple of years ago. But Congress, as part of a Covid-19 relief package included a mandate for a study of UFOs with a report due 180 days after passage of the package. It was announced, just days ago, that the report would be submitted on June 25.

Here is what has been overlooked.

The New York Times reported, “U.S. Find No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule It Out Either.”

This effectively negates the Condon Report which did rule out alien technology. The latest information tells us that there is something to be learned from further study of UFO reports and it doesn’t matter if they are alien, natural phenomena, terrestrial technology or something we haven’t even considered. The point is, we can now throw out the conclusions of the Condon report, study the case files because there is some solid investigation in them, and reevaluate our position. But we can no longer say that science investigated and found there was nothing to study.

The idea that there is no alien visitation based on the Condon Committee’s investigation has just been rejected by the headline that tells us that though they have no evidence of alien technology, they cannot rule it out, which is exactly what Condon did.

The next time someone says that we know there are no alien spacecraft because of Condon’s “Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects,” we can respond with, well, that might be what they said but it doesn’t seem to have been true then and certainly is not true now. The latest investigation, conducted by a mandate of Congress, says that such a conclusion can’t be ruled out. At this point we are starting from ground zero and given the history of UFO research, that’s not a bad thing.

Coast to Coast - The UAP, DNI Report

I have updated this report a half dozen times in the last 24 hours because more information keeps leaking into the public environment. I will note that we have reached June (obviously) and that the report about what we now call UAPs rather than UFOs is due to Congress, allegedly arriving on June 25, the anniversary of the Custer disaster at the Little Bighorn. Or for those on the other side would say, the Battle of the Greasy Grass.

I say allegedly because these things have a way of slipping. There are all sorts of tricks used to make it seem that the requirements have been met, but, of course, the true spirit is sometimes overlooked. We have heard a lot about this since the mandate was passed as part of one of the Covid-19 relief packages last year. I will also note that this was supposed to be an unclassified report about these UAPs, but there is discussion about a classified appendix to it, which we, outside the Congress, will not see. The important note, however, is that it was to be an unclassified report but almost immediately there was talk of a classified section.

These recent video recordings of UFO sightings have spurred a renewed interest in UFOs and is the cause of the Congressional interest. While all that sounds good on paper, I have been hearing some disturbing things about the report. There are some rumors that the report will be delayed because the 180-day time frame did not allow for the collection of the data from the various government agencies. That is always a problem. Multiple government agencies have multiple agendas, which sometimes don’t fit together. Although we have a release date, it might not be met.

We have heard from the former Director of National Intelligence, the DNI, John Ratcliffe that the government has “a lot more” sightings of the UAPs. Importantly, he said, “When we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain. … traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.”

Ed Ruppelt

I need to point out that we can look at the long history of UFO sightings and see the same observations made decades ago. Ed Ruppelt, one time chief of Project Blue Book, tried to determine how the UFOs could exceed the sound barrier without the sonic boom. It was something that plagued them in the 1950s. Even artillery rounds, that move faster than sound make, well, a sound. Those interested in ballistics will tell you that the crack associated with pistol and rifle fire is the sound of the bullet breaking the sound barrier. Only .22 caliber short rounds do not break the sound barrier which is why some assassins prefer to use that round. (And yes, there is a sound when the weapon is discharged, but that is not the same as the crack.)

On June 1, just last Tuesday, questions about the timing were directed at Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby who said that the report was coming from DNI and that the release of the “Congressionally mandated study,” was up to him.  He also refused respond to an inquiry that they, in the Pentagon, have ruled out the possibility of lifeforms out there, meaning beyond Earth. That rumor does persist. And, according to some of the leaked information, they didn’t find aliens… I’m not surprised.

The New York Times reported on June 3, that “U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can’t Rule it Out, Either.” This is, of course, what I think of as weasel wording. It tells us nothing at all.

They go onto to say, “The report determines that the vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not original from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology, the officials said. That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret.”

This sort of dancing around the point is, of course, exactly what I thought would happen because we have seen this all before. In 1969, the Condon Committee, the

Dr. Edward Condon

study commissioned by the USAF at the University of Colorado, didn’t find any evidence of alien visitation either. The conclusions at the end of that “scientific” study was that the Air Force had done a good job of investigation, nothing could be learned by further investigation, and there were no national security aspects to the UFO/UAP sightings.

That was it. Condon found what he was required to find, as outlined before the study even began, and the Air Force used the report to close Project Blue Book, one of the goals of the investigation. That was the end of official investigations into UFO sightings and if you saw something strange, well, the advice was to call local law enforcement if you felt threatened. If you think that is overstating the case, see:

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

But now we know all that isn’t true. Other agencies have been investigating UFOs. One, operating under the name “Moon Dust,” operated until 1985, when that name was compromised. The evidence suggests only the name was changed but the investigations continued. Now we know about the AATIP program, which was another study or investigation, or at the very least, a collecting of UFO information, that was operating in this century. What that means is simply that the Condon Committee wasn’t a scientific investigation, but was a public relations move. Given all that, maybe we can retire the tired suggestion that science looked at the UFO sightings and determined there was nothing to worry about. Seems that there is something to worry about based on what the government has been doing for the last decade or so.

Lue Elizondo, who sparked some of this interest when he leaked the Tic-Tak footage, just last week filed an Inspector General complaint against what he said was a DoD “disinformation campaign” against him for speaking out about the UFO situation.

Although it seems that Elizondo is interested in clearing his name, he also said he was trying to get the Pentagon to clear up, what he called “the ambiguity about UFOs, that there are different groups that are responsible for responding to this particular phenomenon. They’re not briefing each other on this.”

Which does play into the trouble with the required report, gathering the information from the various organizations that control it, and writing the report for Congress that is unclassified. None of this bodes well for disclosure of UFO information, but that has been the problem for decades. Those in charge simply don’t want the information disseminated to the general public and the reason for that is laid out in UFOS and The Deep State. 

Coast-to-Coast AM: The Latest Navy Videos

 

Last week I discussed the latest Navy video showing pyramid-shaped objects near a number of US military vessels. This week, I received information from a listener who noted that the objects on that video looked like those produced in by a civilian. He provided a link to a YouTube video in which someone had attached a cell phone camera to a night vision device and hit record. The video shows an object that resembles that found on the Navy videos also captured using night vision devices. Here’s the link to that video:

https://youtu.be/g256IPFoqMg

Talking with John Greenewald, he wondered if this latest might not be Condon 2.0. The Condon Committee was created in the 1960s to review the Air Force investigation. It was organized after years of discussion about ways to remove the UFO investigation from the Air Force. That, and a way of belittling UFO sightings, was the mission. We know this because the conclusions of the investigation were written prior to the beginning of the investigation. The Condon Committee was to say some positive things about the Air Force investigations, that there was no threat to national security and that nothing of scientific value could be learned by further research. Here’s the link to that letter:

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

In other words, these were the recommendations made by the CIA sponsored Robertson Panel in 1953. Like the Condon Committee that followed, the purpose of the Robertson Panel was not to investigate, but to provide a “scientific” label to the investigations so that it seemed something important had been accomplished. They spent five days looking at the evidence and decided that there was nothing to UFO sightings. They suggested finding a mysterious sighting that was later revealed to be something ordinary. Take the mystery out of UFOs, and the problem would go away.

Dr. Edward U. Condon.

They suggested that teachers not allow students to research UFOs. They wanted to end the interest in the topic by claiming there was nothing to it. The suggested that the whole phenomena be “debunked.

At that point the Air Force began a debunking campaign, which failed. The officers in charge of Project Blue Book were selected because of there anti-UFO bias. They appended labels to sightings that had no real relation to the sightings. Once a case was labeled as anything other than “unidentified,” they were happy about it.

As noted, this all culminated in the Condon Committee, which ended the public end of the Air Force investigation. Documentation suggests that sightings were still investigated, but there was no longer a requirement for the results to be made public. They could just say that they no longer investigated UFO sightings and let it go at that.

Now we have a situation with the Navy providing a mysterious video that we now find to be duplicated by digital cameras and night vision devices. Could it be that the Navy, and by extension the Deep State, is attempting to implement the plans suggested by Robertson and reaffirmed by Condon to end public interest in UFOs?

This is what I now fear. The Navy will investigate these sightings that have had so much public scrutiny. They had already acknowledged that the videos released at Navy video were authentic, meaning they were videos made by Naval personnel. They offered no explanation for them. But, as I noted, there are similar videos that do not required an extraterrestrial explanation. If the Navy determines that the videos are a result of the interface of digital cameras and night vision devices and not alien visitation, won’t that go a long way to convince many that there is no case of alien visitation, regardless of what other evidence is presented.

Rather than move toward Disclosure, we now move back to the darkest days of UFO research when nearly everyone was making fun to the topic. The investigations can again be hidden behind a curtain of ridicule that intimidates witnesses, prevents solid academic research, and an attempt to learn the truth. We enter a new dark age in the search for answers about UFOs.