by Gus Russo
June 12, 2007
from
AmericanChronicle Website
Gus Russo is the author of
four books and a reporter/producer/writer for over one
dozen US major network television documentaries, as well
as films produced in Germany, the UK, France, Mexico,
and Japan. He speaks fluent English is an uncanny
predictor of past historical events. One day after he
was born, the Cold War officially broke out.
.
[Note: In late May 2007, I was asked by Dan
Smith, who is discussed in this article, to attempt to
write an overview of the apparent interest of the
intelligence community in UFOs. Although Dan paid me a
modest retainer for my time, he agreed to have
absolutely no editorial control over my work or its
conclusions. He was fully prepared to be, possibly,
unhappy with whatever I delivered.] |
With terrorism, drug trafficking, climate change, and ever-present
pork projects on its plate, the US government, one would think,
would have zero free time – not to mention resources -- to devote
the supremely elusive topic of flying saucers. But, for some
observers, there is compelling evidence that it does -- and in
direct contradiction of its own official statements.
These federal forays into the fanciful seem inspired by the
relatively new buzzwords added to the UFO lexicon, not the iconic
“Roswell,” “Alien Autopsies,” or even “MJ-12 documents” of old.
Those passé riddles are no longer considered “coins of the realm.”
Now the most intense debates involve subjects with names like
Project Beta,
SERPO, Project Camelot, Operation Snow White, and
Star
Gate.
And weaving in and out of all these
alleged controversies, especially in the UFO internet chat rooms,
are at least three senior intelligence analysts and one retired Air
Force Special Investigator:
-
“Tom” (pseudo.), a MASINT specialist
(Measures and Signals Intelligence) with a PhD in chemistry and
Paul, an aeronautics scholar interested in “breakthrough
propulsion and gravity-modification technologies,” work down the
hall from each at the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI)
headquarters in Washington.
-
“Jim” (pseudo.), a physician and
former CIA officer in the Directorate of Science and Technology,
maintains his security clearance, and travels back to Washington
often to work on classified psychological studies.
-
Richard “Rick” Doty, a longtime
friend and colleague of Jim, was an investigator assigned the
Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI).
What has been confounding UFO buffs for
years is the regular presence of these well-informed “spooks” (and
others less active) in both the physical UFO world and the world of
cyberspace saucers. The mystery seems to have its origins in 1956,
pre Tom-Paul-Jim-Rick, and pre internet, and in the most unlikely
of settings: the office of Ward Kimball, one of Walt Disney’s key
animators. At a 1979 UFO symposium in San Francisco, Kimball told
how the US Air Force had approached Disney to make a UFO
documentary, the ostensible purpose being to help prepare the
collective American psyche for planned revelations concerning the
reality of extraterrestrials.
If that wasn’t enough, the senior
flyboys offered to supply actual UFO footage, which Disney would be
allowed to use in his film. It must have seemed to Kimball that his
character Jiminy Cricket’s “wish upon a star” had actually been
answered. However, a few weeks later, the offer was withdrawn just
as quickly as it had been made.
Kimball said that an Air Force
Colonel said brusquely,
“There indeed was plenty of UFO
footage, but that neither Ward, nor anyone else, was going to
get access to it.”
The Air Force revisited the gambit in
the early seventies, when Air Force Colonels Robert Coleman and
George Weinbrenner approached documentary filmmaker Robert Emenegger
with a very similar astounding offer. The two colonels, who were
possibly attached to AFOSI, took Emenegger to Norton AFB near San
Bernardino and awed him with footage of what appeared to be three
flying saucers landing at Holloman AFB in New Mexico in 1971.
Incredibly, the Air Force was again, according to the colonels,
going to give the footage to Emenegger as a climax to his
forthcoming film, UFOs, Past, Present and Future. But once again, at
the eleventh hour the Air Force changed its mind, they said, because
of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps the country couldn’t handle more
bad news.
In the eighties, AFOSI agent Rick Doty, a longtime colleague and
friend of analyst Jim, appeared in New Mexico in order to tease
scientist Paul Bennewitz with promises to divulge the government’s
UFO secrets. And in this case, the Air Force actually delivered the
goods, in a sense. Bennewitz, an entrepreneur who specialized in
selling high altitude testing equipment to the Air Force, had
contacted AFOSI after filming bizarre flying craft near Kirtland
AFB, outside Albuquerque.
As a result, Doty was tasked not only
with determining if Bennewitz had stumbled onto classified aircraft
tests (and also scientific research such as Project Starfire), but
also with feeding the physicist mountains of disinformation about
UFOs, the furtive purpose being to divert his attention from
classified goings-on, and later, to monitor the flow of information
through the UFOlogy network. A still-unidentified Air Force
intelligence officer also seduced best-selling UFO writer Bill Moore
(The Philadelphia Experiment and The Roswell Incident) into
assisting Doty in his spycraft; in exchange, Moore was offered real
UFO information, including meeting a live extraterrestrial –
promises that, like Emenegger’s UFO footage, never materialized.
The charade played out for most of the
eighties, driving poor Bennewitz, who coined the disclosures
Project
Beta, to a mental meltdown. Moore actually admitted his double agent
role to an astonished UFO community at a Las Vegas convention in
July 1989, however the bizarre alien tales he fed Bennewitz poisoned
the UFO database, perhaps permanently. Infinite mutations of the
Doty fictions continue to spread like an internet virus. Just google
“SERPO” for a taste.
In 1983, the government next approached Emmy Award winning documentarian
Linda Howe, then at work on a UFO film for HBO. After
meeting with Howe in Albuquerque, Rick Doty took her to the AFOSI
offices at Kirtland, and not only promised her the same footage that
was dangled in front of Emenegger, but he went one step further.
“My superiors asked me to show this
to you,” Doty said as he handed Howe a file entitled “Briefing
Paper for the President of the United States.”
Allowed only to scan the explosive
cache, Howe saw tales of crashed extraterrestrial craft, alien
bodies, and even more astounding, UFO crash survivors. Although Howe
was not allowed to take the papers away, Doty promised her the same
“landing footage” promised to Emenegger a decade earlier for his
film. But, just as they had with Emenegger, months of negotiating
went absolutely nowhere. Doty later admitted to author Greg Bishop
that the ploy was but another government counterintelligence probe
into the UFO community.
The Kimball, Emenegger, Bennewitz, and Howe affairs were just the
beginning of excursions into the world of UFO ephemera by federal
employees. In the 1990’s the feds seemed determined to insert their
agenda into the nascent internet, where UFOlogists were now trading
“evidence” around the world at lightening speed. Their newest
civilian contact became a soft-spoken computer analyst who was
determined to use the new technology to get to “the truth.”
Dan Smith of Maryland, the son of a former economic advisor to the
White House, has spent two decades, largely via internet blogging,
pursuing his interest in future apocalyptic scenarios. Invariably,
his quest led him into the miasma of rumored UFO disclosure
scenarios. In 1991, Smith learned of the possibility of a real-life
X-Files when UK crop circle researchers made him aware of analyst
Tom, and his forays into their provenance. Before calling Tom, Smith
vetted him with NASA, which readily agreed that Tom was the
government’s man on “phenomenology.” Thus, in September 1991, Smith
started calling Tom, and in only their second conversation, Tom
floored Dan by announcing, “I’m going to Los Alamos next week to
talk to aliens.” The trip to the famed nuclear lab never happened,
as best Dan can ascertain.
Dan and Tom’s relationship has progressed from phone calls and email
exchanges to attending family outings and ball games together, and
even to meeting at his agency’s headquarters. Throughout the course
of the relationship, Tom made it abundantly clear that he is
officially following the UFO topic as part of his intelligence
portfolio, admitting that he had participated, as did Jim, in an
inter-agency “Phenomenology Working Group.” When pressed for
details, however, Tom only gives obtuse, often cryptic answers as to
why the monitoring of the UFO crowd consumes what one insider
estimates as 20% of his publicly funded workday.
Unbeknownst to Smith, in 1992 Tom
allegedly admitted to another internet contact, Habib “Henry”
Azadehdel, that he had indeed been part of a working group. In a
phone conversation recorded by Azadehdel, Tom, or someone
impersonating Tom, confided that he had been the first member of an
inter-agency “working group.”
“You know,” Tom offered, “I was a
member of that Working Group, ah, when it started… I was a member
of it, but I, I resigned I guess after the first meeting,”
claimed Tom. The meeting, he explained was organized by Jim, and
there were “about a dozen people there.”
In his 1990 book Out There, New York
Times reporter Howard Blum described a top secret inter-agency
Working Group, which he contended met in the Pentagon in 1987, the
purpose being to investigate UFOs. The participants Blum named
overlapped too nicely with those known to be in Tom and Jim’s
gathering: in the minds of many UFOlogists, Tom and Jim were members
of Blum’s UFO Working Group. Thus the current controversy often
postulates that their interest relates to an ongoing UFO Working
Group mandate.
Although Smith seemed only bemused by the attention, one of his
friends, an engineer who frequently holds classified government
contracts, became so concerned that he reported Tom to his agency’s
Inspector General.
“I later found out that it became a six-month
internal investigation,” says the friend, “but, in the end, Tom was
able to convince them that his communication with Smith fell within
his official purview.”
Still, Smith’s friends worry that Smith’s
health is suffering from all the gamesmanship, worried that he might
become the next Paul Bennewitz. Since 1994, Tom continues to
communicate with Dan on a regular basis.
Next up on the US intel radar was one Bob Bigelow, the billionaire
heir to the Bigelow Tea fortune and owner of the Budget Suites of
America hotel chain and Bigelow Aerospace. In 1996, Bigelow created
the National Institute of Discovery Science (NIDS) to explore
paranormal activity, especially cattle mutilations in the Utah
badlands and UFO reports. Enter officers Tom and Jim, now nick-named
collectively “The Aviary” by their contactees. Jim confirmed to a
popular website administrator that Bigelow’s think tank was the
subject of informal discussion at DIA sponsored meetings he attended
on the threats of emerging technologies. More importantly, analyst
Tom has openly admitted to Dan Smith that he was so interested in NIDS that he attended its inaugural meeting, and kept tabs on its
research until its dissolution on 2004.
The dawning of the twenty-first century saw a marked escalation in
the activities of Tom, Jim, and Rick, especially in cyberspace.
Chris Iverson, administrator with the internet’s “Open Minds Forum,”
says,
“I have spoken directly with Tom,
Jim, and Rick. The highlight so far is the conversation I had
with Tom several weeks ago. He went quite far in describing not
just his relationship with Dan Smith but also covered several
other topics as well.”
Iverson says that Tom corroborated what
he told Smith years ago about the mysterious trips to Los Alamos.
“The story is that these people made
several monthly trips out from Washington DC to Los Alamos
several years ago to either meet directly with "The Visitors" or
to meet with the people who were responsible for holding or
communicating with them,” explains Iverson.
“Tom stated that yes, these trips
did take place, but they occurred over 15 years ago and are not
happening today.”
The list of contacts goes on. Gary Bekkum, of
Starstream Research, says,
“I have had increasing contact, by
email, and phone, with some of the Aviary members, concerning
stories I have written about their activities, including
requests not to expose ‘sources and methods.’ I have also had
increasing contact from others, including a DARPA (Defense
Advanced Research Project) subcontractor.”
Ryan Dube, of Reality Uncovered notes
that his first contact with the trio came when Doty began harassing
one of his moderators.
“Tom contacted us in 2006, via
email, with a request to assist him in his investigation of
Richard Doty,” remembers Dube.
“He wanted to know the details of
the harassment and Rick's supervisor contact information. I was
suspicious of Tom from the start, and didn't believe him.
However we verified that his emails were coming from DIA
military servers and the contact phone number he initial gave me
was in fact located in the DC area. That's when I realized that
I was actually talking to the real Tom - the intelligence
analyst. I've been in contact (phone and email) with Tom up
until about three months ago, as well as Jim.”
The Tom, Jim, and Rick Show even enjoys
syndication across the pond. Brendan Burton, the British
administrator for the “Open Minds” forum, vividly recalls when Jim
emailed him in early 2006. The missive is again a bit of a tease,
wherein the agent makes “hypothetical” statements about the size of
the UFO cover-up. But, Burton adds,
“He seemed to confirm that the US
government was indeed in this thing, right up to their necks!”
The UK’s Caryn Anscomb, who frequently
contributes to the “Reality Uncovered” and “Starstream” sites, first
heard from analyst Jim in 2004, and has had regular communications
from him ever since. Ditto Steve Broadbent, another Reality
Uncovered administrator from England.
Both Tom and Jim have made only half-hearted attempts to hide their
identities (this is especially peculiar regarding Tom, who still
works full-time at the highest echelons of US intelligence.) Their
impressive CV’s, contact information, and emails are regularly
exchanged by the bloggers as the amateurs try to brainstorm an
answer to the ultimate question: what is their agenda? Also asking
the question is UK filmmaker John Lundberg, who has been traipsing
across the US recently, filming anyone who will agree to speak on
the subject for his forthcoming film Miragemen. Lundberg has, like
this writer, also had communications with both Tom and Jim.
Dan Smith and the rest of his web colleagues, who are still in
regular contact with Tom, Jim, and Rick, are confused for another
reason: the feds have officially stated ad nauseum that they
maintain no interest in the subject of little green men. The
proclamations began in 1953 with the publication of the CIA’s
“Robertson Panel Report.”
Chaired by CIA physicist Howard Percy
Robertson, the panel concluded that 90 percent of UFO sightings
could be readily identified with meteorological, astronomical, or
natural phenomena, and that the remaining 10 percent could be
similarly explained with more study. It further suggested that the
Air Force should begin to reduce "public gullibility" and utilize
the mass media, including influential media giants like the
Walt
Disney Corporation, to demystify UFO reports.
In 1968, Rick Doty’s Air Force weighed in with the 1,438-page
Condon
Committee Report, a two-year study chaired by physicist
Edward
Condon. The investigation, undertaken by eight faculty members from
the University of Colorado, concluded (albeit with some dissention
amongst the faculty ranks) that all UFO reports had conventional
explanations, and further study of the subject would not be
worthwhile.
The Air Force put the issue aside for
almost three decades, then in 1995 released a UFO “Fact Sheet” that
noted:
“From 1947 to 1969, the Air Force
investigated Unidentified Flying Objects under
Project Blue
Book. The project, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force
Base, Ohio, was terminated Dec. 17, 1969. Of a total of 12,618
sightings reported to Project Blue Book, 701 remained
‘unidentified.’”
Two years later, a Pentagon spokesman
told the press that the military had “long ago” stopped tracking
UFOs. That same year, Gerald K. Haines, the official historian of
the CIA, joined the chorus of denials when he authored the Agency’s
position in its official publication, Studies in Intelligence.
Although the CIA was concerned about UFOs until the early 1950s,
Haines wrote, it has since “paid only limited and peripheral
attention to the phenomena.” Haines added that the actual
explanation to the UFO mystery was much more mundane than the
fantasy of alien visitation: UFOs were nothing more than classified,
experimental US aircraft.
How then to explain the ongoing presence of Tom, Jim, and Rick?
UFOlogists are quick to point out one other study that might explain
their true goal. In 1960,
the Brookings Institution drafted a
100-page report for NASA, advising the newborn US space agency of
societal chaos if it discovered alien life and did not release the
story in a very controlled way. (NASA ultimately ignored the
Brookings warning when, in 1972 it launched the Pioneer 10
spacecraft to the farthest reaches of space; affixed to the craft
was a gold-anodized aluminum plaque engraved with a map showing the
location of Earth.)
Thus, it is postulated, the intelligence
community might be preparing the world for “Disclosure.”
Some Answers
Greg Bishop, who chronicled the Bennewitz-Doty saga in his 2005 book
Project Beta, and has himself been contacted separately by four
intelligence professionals, sums up the feelings of many, saying,
“There is no denying a concern with
the UFO subject in the corridors of the Pentagon and the halls
of our government. How much these people actually know is the
subject of hot debate.”
Recently, however, in private statements
to bloggers and to this writer, some clarity is coming to the issues
of “who knows what” and “what is their agenda?” Research for this
article points to these answers: they know little or nothing about
UFOs, and their agendas differ.
Ryan Dube recalled what Tom once revealed about his interest.
“Once,” Dube said, “when I pushed
Tom over the phone on why he remains so involved with in ufology
“his statement - paraphrased, was essentially: ‘No one needs to
know why I'm interested... and if I have any hint that anyone is
at all on to why I am interested, I'll certainly do everything
within my power to distract them - but I can tell you one thing
- my interest certainly has nothing at all to do with aliens or
UFOs.’”
This is consistent with Tom’s statement
to another site administrator:
“There are no classified files on
UFOs because UFOs don’t exist.”
Ryan points out the obvious paradox:
“The active involvement of current and former government
officials certainly suggests that our government sees value in
the field of UFOlogy for some reason.”
Tom’s motivation, it now appears
certain, can be summed up in two words: national security. In a
recent interview, a senior intelligence official who is familiar
with spooks in cyberspace explained,
“Tom is interested in the
subject because, one, he is concerned that DIA officers parading as
CIA officers -- a felony -- are leaking classified material to the
UFO groups. He also knows that in years past the KGB used
parapsychology and paranormal groups to get to military people with
classified information. He is concerned that any enemy group could
easily use these forums to search out national security secrets.”
Joel Brenner, the United States national counterintelligence chief
recently said that the number of Russian agents operating in the
country had reached “Cold War levels,” according to the Russian News
& Information Agency.
“They are sending over an increasing
and troubling number of intelligence officers into the United
States,” Brener reported.
Former head of FBI counterintelligence
David Szady echoed Brenner's, adding that Russian agents often
arrived in the U.S. under the cover of students or businessmen. The
Times UK recently noted the Russians’ escalation in spy wars against
the US:
“White House intelligence advisers
believe no other country is as aggressive as Russia in trying to
obtain US secrets, with the possible exception of China. In
particular the SVR, as the former KGB’s foreign intelligence arm
is now known, is using a network of undercover agents in America
to gather classified information about sensitive technologies,
including military projects under development and high-tech
research.”
The article adds that Putin’s
intelligence apparatus views cyberspace as a powerful new weapon.
Among the evidence cited is Moscow’s recent cyber attack against the
Baltic state Estonia over its decision to relocate a Soviet-era
military monument.
Some see corroboration for the government’s interest in internet UFO
writers in the so-called “Stargate Archive” files.
Stargate was the
name of a remote viewing project founded by the DIA in 1972, then
later transferred to CIA. In 2004 the CIA released under a FOIA
request the Stargate Archive files, which reveal that the CIA was
indeed concerned about monitoring UFO authors who might be privy to
classified material.
Then there were the security breaches that occurred during Operation Stargate itself, which Tom was instrumental in bringing to an end in
1996. By the mid-seventies it was learned that Stargate, which had
Aviary members on its board, and other CIA projects, had been
massively infiltrated, the target of Scientology’s infamous
“Operation Snow White.”
In 1979, eleven highly placed Church
executives, including Mary Sue Hubbard (wife of founder L. Ron
Hubbard and second in command of the organization), pleaded guilty
or were convicted in federal court of obstructing justice, burglary
of government offices, and theft of documents and government
property.
Tom admits that there is one other minor reason for him to be
surfing the UFO web. In a recent email, he let his guard down a tad,
explaining how UFO bloggers can serve a patriotic purpose, if
inadvertently.
“Under normal times this tendency towards mass
delusional states and radical heresies is perhaps a weakness,” Tom
wrote.
“However in stressful times it
promotes radical out-of-the-box thinking…[it] plays an
increasingly important role as we approach cataclysmic species
survival stress points. The end of accessible oil could be such
a point. Most people will continue to believe new oil
discoveries are just around the corner…[bloggers] search for
solutions in the strangest places. Perhaps they will find one in
time.”
Working down the DNI hall from Tom,
cyberspace regular Paul, the aeronautics and advanced propulsion
researcher, explains that, much like fictional X-Files agent Fox
Mulder, he believes because he wants to believe. Further, he hopes
to end his science colleagues’ discrimination against UFO believers.
Then there is Jim, whose professional history in the subject goes
back to his personal involvement in the Stargate project in the
1970’s and as a participant in the legendary “Working Group”
meetings in the eighties. As one of the intel community’s most
senior medical analysts, Jim frequently communicates with UFOlogists.
Chris Iverson believes that Tom and Jim
clearly have differing agendas, noting,
“Jim is the person I have had the
most contact with over the last several months and he seems to
be interested in the spreading of viral memes over the internet,
particularly in relation to this subject.”
Iverson is not far off the mark.
However, in a recent meeting with this writer, Jim explained that
his internet presence emanates from a number of overlapping
pursuits.
“The whole subject,” Jim says in
wonderfully measured speech, “is composed of three components:
delusion, sociological groupthink, and a kernel of truth.”
Jim then reminds that he is first and
foremost a medical scientist.
“My interest in this subject is
much, much more professional than it is personal. That is, 90 to
95% of all persons who are engaged fully with this [UFO] subject
are psychiatrically ill, and by that I mean that they are on
medication or should be.”
Jim elaborates that “viral memes,” [see
below] in which disturbed people seek validation in numbers on the
web, is, or should be, a growing public health concern. That said,
Jim nonetheless has a real interest in UFO’s, and seemingly with
good reason.
“I believe there’s a ‘core story’,”
Jim explained, “but I don’t know what it is. I have been told by
people more senior than me that there is some truth to it, but
they told me time and time again to stop pursuing it with CIA
people and other intel types. Two very senior officials told me
they saw briefing books, [however] the only ones who would be
cleared to know the story are the most senior Pentagon career
officers.”
Jim refuses to divulge his sources, but
when pressed, he reiterates what they told him: look to the Pentagon
and the private sector’s aerospace and weapons labs, etc. US
intelligence “doesn’t have labs capable of dealing with something
this profound.” He also notes that over the years he has received
thousands of UFO-related government documents in unmarked envelopes.
Although some are obvious fakes, others, according to Jim, contain
information that correlates with known, but still classified,
scientific studies.
In an intriguing footnote, Jim adds,
“I have spoken to three former
Presidents and the subject always comes up, not as a briefing,
but they also want to know the truth. But apparently they aren’t
cleared for it.”
Both Tom and Jim seem to share at least
one rationale for their internet excursions: studying the
frightening potential of “viral internet memes.” Coined by
evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins in 1976 (The Selfish Gene), a
meme is a unit of cultural information that evolves the way a gene
propagates from one organism to another, and subject to all the
analogous unintended mutations. In the view of many, computers and blogs could function as powerful meme “replicators.”
Richard Brodie, the creator of Microsoft
Word, notes,
“Most of these viruses of the mind
are spread because they are intriguing or frightening or
inspiring, and not necessarily because they're true. That's the
problem.”
It doesn’t take much intuition to
envision an enemy creating memes that can be used to destabilize a
society, or a freelance predator utilizing them to cozy up to
potential victims. Caryn Anscomb writes online,
“The UFO community
has been deeply penetrated by the manipulators of information, who
couldn’t really give a fig whether there might be any valuable data
pertaining to Aliens and contact hidden behind the deafening noise.
That’s not their business; their business is information warfare.”
Rick Doty’s intent seems by far the most mysterious. He has been
vouched for by two former Directors of Central Intelligence (DCI) –
as well as Jim – but has been excoriated by his former superior at
AFOSI, Col. Richard L. Weaver, who recently noted that Doty had been
“cashiered out of OSI” and that he has a well-known “lack of
veracity.” It should also be noted that the two DCIs only knew Doty
before they ran the Agency, when they all were deployed in Europe
together.
The DCIs are only vouching for his previous work, not his
UFO allegations.
Doty has promulgated some of the most outlandish “alien contact”
stories extant. He not only fed them to Paul Bennewitz in the
1980’s, but to the public at large in his 2005 book with Robert
Collins,
Exempt From Disclosure. But amidst the book’s sci-fi-like
claims of extraterrestrials in US custody and “reverse engineered”
saucers -- currently being exploited by one Gordon Novel with his
Project Camelot -- Doty also admits the following:
“There are times when you deceive
the public you are doing the public a great service and I
certainly protect the public with deception operations if it
were for their own good.”
Nonetheless, much the same way that
reporters speculated about the fraudulent New Orleans DA Jim
Garrison forty years ago, there remains a group of UFO bloggers who
continue to opine about Doty: “He must have something.”
Greg Bishop, among the most sober of the UFO authors, sums up the
continued presence of federally employed UFO believers like Jim,
Paul and Rick thus:
“Their agenda is to do their jobs
first, and find out what is going on behind the scenes with the
UFO enigma… They get hints, but never the whole picture, and
that becomes the quest after they leave active service.”
What then of the so-called “Top Secret
UFO Working Group” in which Tom, Jim and others participated in the
1980s? Fortunately, four participants in those gatherings have
communicated with this writer, and one in particular shared original
paperwork from the meetings with Caryn, who graciously shared them
with me.
Consequently, the following can be said
of the Working Group story:
-
The key meetings were held from May
20-25, 1985 in the secure facility of the BDM Corporation (a
high clearance military contractor) in MacLean, VA.
-
There were twenty known attendees
(we have the names) representing Los Alamos Nuclear Labs, Army
Intelligence, CIA, Lockheed, McDonnell Douglas, and various
scientists with security clearances. Other unnamed guests such
as Jim attended.
-
The meeting was titled “Advanced
Theoretical Physics Conference” and its main objective was to
study odd radar tracings to determine their origins (“friendly”,
“enemy” or “unknown”). They turned out to be totally anomalous.
Jim notes that quite a few of the
attendees turned out to be closet UFO buffs who only showed up to
see who knew the truth about ETs (no one did). He called it a waste
of time, leaving after just the first day. Tom recalls attending a
follow-up meeting at the Pentagon that was so silly that he made a
derisive remark before walking out in the middle of it.
Summing it all up, there is certainly a very small percentage
government officials with intelligence clearance -- some active,
some retired -- who are interested in the UFO research community, if
not UFOs themselves. Some of these men are of the impression,
rightly or wrongly, that a very few individuals in government and
the private sector are keeping the big secret even from them. This
is small consolation to earnest UFO researchers, but at least they
should no longer feel alone and marginalized as kooks completely at
odds with officialdom.
All this does not mean that evidence for alien visits is
non-existent, it’s just that Tom, Jim, Paul, and Rick don’t appear
to be the keepers of it. The opinion of Ryan Dube appears
inarguable.
“If the field of UFOlogy could be
cleaned of the rubbish,” Dube wrote me, “we may find that there
remains very valid and important evidence and stories that
demand our attention - and might actually finally reveal the
truth about the alien and UFO question.”
And if Jim ever decides to reveal his
sources, things could get very interesting.
|