UFOS AND THE CIA
By REG A. DAVIDSON
Extracted from New Dawn No.36 (May-June, 1996) (c) 1996 by
Reg A. Davidson The modern age of UFO phenomena began on a July
afternoon in 1947 when private pilot Kenneth Arnold reported
nine unidentifiable silvery, crescent-shaped objects that skimmed
through the sky at an incredible rate of speed. Their motion,
Arnold said, reminded him of "a saucer skipping over water."
A news reporter took up Arnold's description and the phrase "flying
saucers" soon become imprinted on the collective consciousness.
When strange objects continued to be reported by competent witnesses,
the U.S. authorities began investigating the phenomenon. The
task fell under the auspices of the United States Air Force,
but few were aware the CIA took an interest in the strange phenomena
soon after the first reports of 'flying saucers' emerged. The
Air Force was actually in a state of near panic due to the wave
of sightings. UFOs were reported over Maxwell Air Force base
in Alabama, then, to the horror of the top military brass, over
the White Sands Proving Ground - right in the middle of their
atom bomb territory. General Nathan Twining, commander of the
Air Materiel Command, wrote to the commanding general of the
Army-Air Force stating that the phenomenon was something real,
that it was not "visionary or fictitious," and that
the objects were disc-shaped, as large as aircraft, and controlled.
The press latched onto the reports and sensationalised stories
of alien invasion gripped the population. The press and the Government
were demanding answers. The Air Force, worried that the whole
situation was getting out of hand, tried to quell public angst
by ordering a full investigation. On December 30, 1947, Major
General L. C. Craigie ordered the establishment of Project Sign
at what became known as Wright- Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton,
Ohio. Operating under auspices of the Air Material Command's
Technical Intelligence Division, Project Sign was directed "to
collect, collate, evaluate and distribute to interested government
agencies and contractors all information concerning sightings
and phenomena in the atmosphere which can be construed to be
of concern to the national security." The project was given
a 2A restricted classification security rating under a system
that acknowledged 1A as the highest, or most secret, designation.
The following year, three men from Wright-Patterson approached
Dr. J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer then employed by Ohio State
University in nearby Columbus. "They said they needed some
astronomical consultation because it was their job to find out
what these flying saucer stories were all about," Hynek
recalls. Hynek was hired as a consultant with the Air Force and
remained in that capacity for over two decades as Sign evolved
into Projects Grudge and Blue Book, the last officially ceasing
in December of 1969. According to Hynek, the Air Force had a
simple, but effective, method to explain UFOs: Dismiss all sightings
as misidentified astronomical phenomena. The problem, says Hynek,
was the Air Force "regarded it as an intelligence matter"
instead of handing the investigation to an academic or university
group. Therefore, any serious investigation of the new phenomena
was stultified because top military brass believed it an 'intelligence'
matter, another intrigue of the emerging Cold War. However, military
personnel directly involved in Project Sign had a different view.
While 96% of reports turned out to be misidentified astronomical
phenomena (e.g. the planet Venus), the other 4% were not so easily
discredited or explained, and a minority of military personnel
took these seriously. Minority intelligence opinion then divided
into the two camps, namely, those who saw UFOs as evidence of
new Soviet technology, and those who thought they might be precursors
of an invasion by extraterrestrials. 'Flying Saucers' and the
CIA Ever since 1948 the CIA has maintained an interest in UFOs
and remains tight-lipped to this very day on the subject, keeping
evidence and documents on the phenomena many levels above Top
Secret. A memo sent on January 29, 1952 to the CIA's deputy director
of Intelligence from Ralph Clark of the Office of Scientific
Intelligence (OSI) states: "In the past several weeks numerous
UFOs have been sighted visually and on special UFO group radar.
This office has maintained a continuing review of reputed sightings
for the past three years and a special group has been formed
to review the sightings to date." Many researchers believe
that from the very beginning the CIA was quite certain UFOs were
not just Soviet technology. In fact, as evidence accumulated
pointing to the possible extra-terrestrial origin of UFOs, the
CIA became increasingly nervous that other U.S. government agencies
might launch their own inquiries into the matter. Secrecy would
be an impossibility if everyone investigated UFOs, and in a matter
of time, details would leak to the media and the public. In response
to these concerns, the CIA began a process of maintaining a tight
rein over the investigations to ensure no public inquiries would
ever take place. To discredit the phenomenon, the CIA set up
a panel of experts whose job was to explain away UFOs. The CIA
convened on 14 January, 1953 a confab that became known as the
Robertson Panel, after its Chairman Dr. H. P. Robertson, then
Director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense, and also a CIA employee. The sequence
of events leading directly to the Robertson Panel involved a
series of UFO sightings over the nation's capital in the summer
of 1952, sightings confirmed by military personnel, including
radar operators and scrambled interceptor pilots, and which themselves
resulted in the largest post WWII military press conference to
that date. At the press conference itself, the repeated radar
sightings were put down to "temperature inversions,"
and the attending Air Force officers made no mention of the scrambled
jet fighters. Besides the esteemed Dr. Robertson, the Panel also
included as members physicist Dr. Luis Alvarez, later a Nobel
Laureate, Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, another physicist from Brookhaven
National Laboratories who was an associate of Einstein's and
had discovered electron spin, a former University of Chicago
astronomer and then Deputy Director of the John Hopkins Operations
Research office, Dr. Thornton Page, and finally Dr. Lloyd Berkner,
yet another physicist and one of Brookhaven's directors. The
Panel was addressed by a variety of CIA and Air Force personnel
who reviewed some 20 of the better UFO cases and showed 2 film
strips of alleged flying saucers, one of which purportedly portrayed
objects characterised as "self-luminous" by no less
an authoritative source than the Navy's Photograph Interpretation
Laboratory which had spent over 1000 hours analysing the particular
movie film in question. Although impressive evidence was presented
to the panel, highlighted by detailed reports documented by the
Air Force, its recommendations read like they were formulated
before the panel even convened. The CIA had already developed
a cover story to cloak the real story: UFOs were to be dismissed
as just another scientific enigma, a Cold War datum, one that
might be cleverly manipulated by the enemy. In short, the Robertson
Panel ruled "That the evidence presented on Unidentified
Flying Objects shows no indication that these phenomena constitute
a direct physical threat to national security." While this
ruling is considered contentious by many UFO researchers, it
was the panel's second conclusion that really shocked. The panel
decreed there was no national security threat from UFOs, however,
its members did see a real and distinct danger posed by UFO reports!
In the panel's own words, it concluded "That the continued
emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena, in these perilous
times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective
organs of the body politic." "We cite as example [of
such danger]," the Panel continued, "the clogging of
channels of communication by irrelevant reports, the danger of
being led by continued false alarms to ignore real indications
of hostile action, and the cultivation of a morbid national psychology
in which skilful hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior
and harmful distrust of duly constituted authority." In
other words, UFO reports might induce national psychosis that
could be subject to manipulation by the Soviets. In the final
list of recommendations, the panel calls for "national security
agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying
Objects of the special status they have been given..." The
CIA had effectively halted any serious research into the phenomena,
and now controlled all ongoing U.S. military investigations.
Ruppelt vs. the CIA The public became aware of the panel a few
years later with the publication of "The Report on Unidentified
Flying Objects" by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, former commander
of Project Blue Book. Both Ruppelt and his Intelligence Liaison
Officer, Major Dewey J. Fournet, gave evidence to the Robertson
Panel. Although the panel relegated UFOs to the dustbin of history,
Walter Smith, then-Director of the CIA, saw fit to keep all evidence
classified. The CIA's decision shocked Captain Ruppelt and Major
Fournet. Both were part of the minority of intelligence officials
that believed the evidence for UFOs was incontrovertible. They
also believed the possibility of hysteria would be reduced if
the public were told the truth. Ruppelt had fought hard to keep
the Air Force investigations afloat, after joining the Project
Grudge team in January 1951, but soon found the CIA constantly
interfering and withholding valuable information. Project Grudge
evolved into the now famous Project Bluebook in March 1952 with
Captain Ruppelt appointed as its chief. All this came in response
to a spate of UFO sightings, beginning with the 25 August, 1951
famous sightings at Lubbock, Texas, which caused an enormous
stir with the American public. And soon after, on 12 September,
1951, a major UFO sighting above the skies of Fort Monmouth in
clear view of visiting military brass, contributed to the Air
Force's new found enthusiasm. Ruppelt first became aware of the
CIA's unwanted presence after the Washington UFO 'invasion' of
July 1952, when he was hampered from doing his job, and witnesses
to the sightings were intimidated into changing their reports
or simply remaining silent. The person who most worried Ruppelt
was Chief of Staff, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg. It was Vandenberg
who had buried Project Sign's official UFO 'Estimate' report,
caused its incineration, and had the project renamed Project
Grudge. It is not clear just how much Vandenberg was influencing
top military officials responsible for implementing the Air Force's
UFO projects. Vandenberg had been head of the Central Intelligence
Group (later the CIA) from June 1946 to May 1947, and his uncle
was once chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, then the
most powerful committee in the U.S. Senate. Clearly, Vandenberg
still had great influence in those areas - and according to Ruppelt,
pressure was always coming from them to suppress the results
of official UFO investigations. Thus, Ruppelt was not surprised
when the CIA and other high-ranking officers including General
Vandenberg convened a panel of scientists to 'analyse' all the
Blue Book data. Nor was he too surprised when the Robertson Panel
found that no further study was necessary. The pieces of the
jigsaw puzzle started to fall into place. It was clear to Captain
Ruppelt and other members of Project Blue Book, that the purpose
of the Robertson Panel was to enable the CIA and Air Force to
state in the future that an impartial body had examined the UFO
data and found no evidence for anything unusual in the skies.
Subsequently, the Air Force embarked upon a public relations
campaign to eliminate UFO reports totally. The CIA decided not
to declassify the sighting reports and tighten security even
more while continuing to deny "non-military personnel"
access to UFO files. One month later CIA director Walter Smith
classified all UFO documentation and all subsequent directors
continued to endorse the policy. Initiation of a Cover-Up In
August 1953 Ruppelt left the Air Force out of disgust and because
of the limitations placed on his work by the CIA. The same month
the Pentagon issued the notorious Air Force Regulation 200-2,
that prohibited the release of any information about a sighting
to the public or media, except when it was positively identified
as natural phenomenon. The new regulation also ensured that all
sightings would be classified as restricted. In December 1953
the much worse Joint-Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146 made
the releasing of any information to the public a crime under
the Espionage Act. And the most ominous aspect of JANAP 146 was
that it applied to anyone who knew it existed, including commercial
airline pilots. Any information flow to the public was effectively
cut. By the end of the year Project Blue Book was severely decimated
and for all intents and purposes, UFO research plunged into secrecy
and under the control of the CIA. In just over six years since
Kenneth Arnold's sighting of strange silvery objects, the infamous
intelligence agency had secured complete official silence on
the subject of UFOs. The cover-up began and continues today,
due to the CIA's indomitable power over all other intelligence
groups within the U.S. security establishment. The truth is out
there... and it just might be somewhere deep inside the secret
files of the CIA. |