by Timothy Cooper

06-13-99

“Space is ... where wars will be fought.”
Barry Goldwater

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INTRODUCTION
The controversy within the United States UFO community and to some degree, the United States government itself, is whether in the late 1940’s a super-secret extraterrestrial technology intelligence collection and research and development program was created by a special classified executive order and whether such an entity exists today. One could say that the military attempted communications with extraterrestrials as early as 1924 with the Army’s Signal Corps radio experiment documented in the archives of the National Security Agency when William F. Friedman, father of American cryptology, first reviewed graphs and images taken from a crude television recording device of what has been reported as coded transmissions and images from the planet Mars.


Interest in extraterrestrial existence surfaced again when the sensational story of flying saucers and crash recoveries made headline news all around the world in July 1947. One year earlier, U.S. military intelligence had investigated the strange “ghost rocket” scare in Europe and kept their findings classified. In 1987, documents alleging crashed alien spacecraft and dead bodies captured the imaginations and consternation of UFO researchers and the federal government. For three years the controversy raged between advocates and debunkers alike. The center of the debate was the disclosure of a star chamber of military icons and distinguished scientists known as Majestic or MJ-12 who were assembled and tasked by President Harry S. Truman with providing answers for the UFO phenomenon that defied rational scientific explanation. Then in 1994 and again in 1998, new documents surfaced onto the world scene that for some, was conclusive proof that MJ-12 did exist and by extension, extraterrestrial visitation.


In the absence of verifiable physical evidence of crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft and dead bodies from another world, the actions of the United States Air Force and the CIA, and the NSA, and virtually every agency of the defense establishment who have released some UFO intelligence reports to the public, the real nature of UFO technology and their builders suggests that they are withholding critical information from the world. Excluding scanty circumstantial evidence in the form of artifacts and non-terrestrial manufacturing processes, the story told in the Majestic documents and the revelations of shadowy “insiders” and video and still pictures are our only source of information. Past efforts of noted researchers, journalists, and researchers when tracking down paper trails have largely produced very little in verifiable information that can be used in a court case against the United States intelligence community. Even law suits have been quashed in the efforts of one lawyer charging that the United States is under attack from the skies. Past efforts to attract the attention of the United Nations Security Council have failed to address the issue.


If the Majestic program existed in the time frame referenced in the new documents which this author came into possession of and if the acronym MAJIC was a code word for a multi-agency technology exploitation and replicating program, then the secrecy and security allegedly associated with it may explain the pains that the military and the private sector of industry have taken to conceal one of the greatest and most profound discovery since the invention of the wheel.


The report that follows reflects what has been learned by the author over the last six months and by the valiant efforts of others especially Dr. Robert M. Wood and Ryan S. Wood who undertook the challenge of finding verifiable confirmation of the information you are about to read. Though much work still lies ahead before it can be stated categorically that MJ-12 did exist, the data points presented in this first of several reports demonstrate the reliability and truthfulness of the Majestic documents as either professionally done disinformation—or calculated dissemination by “insiders” without official sanction from the agencies responsible for UFO and extraterrestrial intelligence collection.

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THE UFO THREAT AND THE NATIONAL SECURITY ACT OF 1947
In order to unravel the complexities attached to the Majestic documents and the whole issue of government secrecy regarding the modern UFO phenomenon, it is necessary to first examine the politics for the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 for in this document lay the beginnings of a secret government that has existed for over 50 years. It might also explain the basis for classified national security projects believed by some to be linked with technological advances associated with UFO studies conducted in classified laboratories and test installations in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.


The catalyst that influenced President Truman and the Congress to abrogate the Constitution with this illegal instrument has always been somewhat of a mystery. The National Security Act of 1947 and the more recent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1974 have allowed the U.S. intelligence community to engage in deception, cover-ups, gross violations of civil and constitutional rights of U.S. citizens and international law.


After World War II, fearing a intelligence monopoly by the military the Truman Administration sought to develop and perfect a reliable set of executive institutions to manage national security policy in light of the Pearl Harbor disaster. The National Security Act of July 26, 1947, created the National Security Council under chairmanship of the President, with the Secretaries of State and Defense as its key members, to coordinate foreign policy and defense policy, and to reconcile diplomatic and military commitments and requirements. This landmark piece of legislation provided for a revamping of the office of the Secretary of War and reconstituted it into several new institutions such as the Secretary of defense, a National Military Establishment, Central Intelligence Agency, and National Security Resources Board.

 

Bearing in mind that this “revamping” took place in peacetime not war, the diplomatic and military leadership were quick to view that the NSC had been created to coordinate political and military questions (which would include the perceived UFO threat) quickly gave way to the understanding that the NSC existed to serve the President alone. This new situation allowed the NSC to assume the role of fostering cooperation among department heads and provided the means of successive Presidents the use of the Council as a means of controlling competing departments.


Shortly after Operation CROSSROAD the U.S. military’s first atmospheric atomic bomb experiments at the Pacific proving ground at Bikini were conducted in July 1946, Europe began experiencing numerous UFO sightings. U.S. military intelligence investigated and forwarded dispatches to the War Department. Military Attaché’s in State Department legations in Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Great Britain, Austria, Yugoslavia, Turkey, and North Africa dispatched over 800 sighting reports to the office of the Secretary of State. Scientists and air intelligence experts feared that the Soviet captured V-2 rockets and the Germans who designed the most advanced ballistic missile had somehow increased its effective range and were testing them over the skies of Europe in retaliation for the atomic bomb tests. Ignorance of Soviet atomic weapons development was another reason for worry by U.S. intelligence. By the end of July the State Department classified UFO sightings TOP SECRET and it can be assumed that the military did likewise.


Lack of reliable intelligence of Soviet intentions along the occupied borders of Allied controlled Eastern Europe, British and American defense establishments began considering restructuring as a way to face this new menace. According to CIA historian Arthur B. Darling, “American press carried dispatches from London, dated October 4, 1946, announcing that British Army, Navy, and Air Command had been brought under a Minister of Defense.” This move by the British Government may have been spurred on by a report issued by the Swedish Defense Staff in that same month that stated that they had been unable after a four-month investigation to discover the “objects” and they “were not the V-type bombs used by the Germans.” The May 29 accidental launching by the U.S. Army of an errant V-2 missile from White Sands, New Mexico, nearly killed many Mexican citizens near the town of Juarez set off an immediate investigation from the State Department and the Chief of Staff of the Army which may have given rise to the “ghost rocket” scare over Europe that summer.


Wishing to avoid another sneak attack, President Truman approved a joint recommendation sighed by Secretaries Patterson and Forestall on January 16, 1947, which supported legislation establishing a council of national defense, a national security resources board, and a central intelligence agency.


As with the British Minister of Defense, Truman proposed a similar plan to restructure the defenses of the United States. As Darling noted in his historical work The Central Intelligence Agency (declassified in 1989) that a “drafting committee” composed of Charles F. Murphy, Administrative Assistant to the President, General Lauris Norstad of the Army, and Admiral Forrest Sherman of the Navy, wrote the details of the act for the National Defense Establishment and the National Security Council. The National Intelligence Authority (brainchild of General William Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services) whose members included the Secretaries of State, Army, and the Navy with the Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief General Eisenhower constituted the National Intelligence Authority (NIA) came into being after the end of World War II. The National Intelligence Authority and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) composed of the intelligence chiefs of the military functioned as an illegal spy agency of the President. It was first exposed in a story by the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Times Herald but was overshadowed by the Yalta Conference and the story quickly died.


The NIA and JIC continued their illegal intelligence activities and in June 1946, President Truman appointed General Hoyt Vandenberg to head up a cover organization for the NIA and JIC called the Central Intelligence Group (some believe it was really the Counter Intelligence Group for the NIA and JIC) and one of its tasks was to collect as much intelligence on Soviet offensive capabilities and possibly determine if the UFO’s sighted over Europe were part of the Soviet ballistic missile buildup (there are indications from other sources that military intelligence may have had the answers much earlier). Vandenberg pressed hard for the White House bill on intelligence in the Senate. On February 26, 1947, President Truman sent the bill for the National defense establishment to Congress. Appearing before the Senate’s Committee on the Armed Services and the Committee of the House of Representatives on Expenditures in the Executive Departments were Secretaries Patterson and Forrestal, Generals Eisenhower and Spaatz, Admirals Nimitz and King, Dr. Vannevar Bush and General Donovan. During the hearings, representatives of the CIG assured Senators that the proposed Central Intelligence Agency would have no law enforcement powers, no subpoena powers, and no domestic intelligence activities.

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UFO SIGHTINGS IN THE UNITED STATES
Alarm bells began to sound off and a sense of foreboding quickly took hold among the members of the NIA and JIC when reports from official intelligence channels that the same “rocket” phenomena had surfaced over the United States and its territories beginning in the spring of 1947. The Central Planning Staff of the CIG according to Darling was “soon loaded with orders for investigation and report of a variety of subjects that were intricate and sweeping.” Admiral Sidney Sours, former Director of the CIG instructed the Central Planning Staff “to make abroad survey of all clandestine collection of foreign intelligence by agencies in the Government” by making a survey “of the coverage of the foreign language press in the United States.” No doubt U.S. intelligence was concerned over the possibility that Soviet espionage agents were sending coded reports back to Moscow of this situation and this was accomplished through the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service. Any information of this type was included in the Strategic Intelligence Digest which in turn was included in the Strategic Intelligence Estimate prepared for the President.


Unknown to U.S. intelligence, the Soviet espionage project ENORMOUS has successfully stolen the blueprints for America’s atomic bomb program right out of Los Alamos through “moles” within the OSS and the State Department. What was more critical was the design for the FAT MAN implosion device that according to an alleged TOP SECRET/MAJIC document known as the WHITE HOT ASSESSMENT (released to the public in late 1998 by Dr. Robert M. Wood and Ryan S. Wood) the design for the plutonium implosion device was based on technical studies taken from a crashed space object recovered by the Army in 1941 that according to the document allowed the Army to “exploit” the secrets of the atom to “extend our technology beyond the threshold that we have achieved.” That “threshold” was the MANHATTAN Project.


All the files that once was under the personal control of the MANHATTAN Project director General Leslie R. Groves have not been declassified and possibly the real story behind FAT MAN may ultimately resolve that question. It may not be coincidence that work on the shell design for FAT MAN began in the summer of 1942 before Los Alamos scientists could imagine how big the bomb would be. Nuclear physicists believed that separating isotopes was impossible. This did not stop the Army from producing drawings for the implosion and shot gun bombs and in June 1942 with the appointment of Colonel Groves (retired a three star general in 1948) of the Army Corps of Engineers by General Brehon Somervell to head the MANHATTAN project. Only six Army personnel were permitted to study the spherical design of the nuclear power plant recovered in 1941. Two were of general rank and the other four were graduate students of lesser rank. Also unknown to the Los Alamos scientists was the fact that the shell for the implosion device was specifically designed to fit in the bomb bay of the B-29 Superfortress under development by the Boeing Aircraft Company.


On May 9, 1947, the Planning Committee authorized the CIG to establish the Intelligence Advisory Board whose members included Dr. Vannevar Bush, head of the Research and Development Board, Admiral John E. Gingrich of the Atomic Energy Commission, Admiral Thomas Inglis of the Office of Naval Intelligence, and General Stephen Chamberlin of Army Intelligence, all involved in collection of technical intelligence and scientific data produced by the CIG for UFO’s and Soviet military capabilities. Admiral Souers, during his term as Director, Central Intelligence Group, recommended that the Atomic Energy Commission should have permanent membership in the Intelligence Advisory Board and would have “direct access” to other intelligence agencies to secure scientific and technological guidance in the event that items of interest regarding applications of nuclear energy for either new weapons development or for aircraft and missile propulsion should fall into U.S. hands.


According to unconfirmed sources there was a recovery of a “flying disc bomb” near Los Alamos, New Mexico, on March 25, 1947, and of another “disc-like object” on May 28 near the White Sands Proving Ground. The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project at Sandia Base reportedly had possession and this was not reported to David Lillienthal, Chairman of the AEC. General Groves had kept the President and the AEC in the dark regarding the status of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. On April 3, 1947, AEC Commissioner David Lillienthal informed President Truman that the United States had “no stockpile...not a single operable atomic bomb.” Truman was also told that a nuclear defense against UFO’s or a Soviet invasion of Europe “did not exist” to which Truman replied, “What [do] we propose to do about it?” This discovery was so secret that it was never committed to paper.


By June the Army Air Force’s Air Defense Command at Mitchell Field, New York, had compiled numerous UFO reports that were forwarded to the Air Intelligence Requirements Branch, Headquarters, Air Force Intelligence at the request of Brigadier General George Schulgen, head of the Requirements Branch. In Occupied Germany General Arthur G. Trudeau, head of the civil defense presented his assessment of the Soviet attack strategy to General Clay of the High Command. The 509th Composite Bombardment Group of the Eighth Air Force located at Roswell AAF, New Mexico, has less than twenty B-29’s and crews that knew how to handle and deliver atomic weapons and this fact caused a heightened state of panic in Washington. Talk of Word War III was privately being discussed among military leaders and the Secretaries of the Army, Navy and, Army Air Force.


Fearing the worst, President Truman signed the instrument creating the National Security Council called Public Law 80-253 on July 26, 1947, as a general reorganization of the U.S. national security apparatus and thereby reconstructing the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee (SWNCC the forerunner of the NSC) which had been established in 1944. Acting on the advice of White House Counsel Clark Clifford who was dismayed by the disorder among the intelligence agencies, Truman hoped by establishing the NSC, institutional stability to national security would quickly come about.
The outcome of Public law 80-253 was the National Security Act of 1947 which in effect, established the sweeping power of the intelligence community to lie and deceive not only the Congress, but the American people regarding the UFO invasion issue. The act did not resolve the bickering and in-fighting that persisted among defense intelligence and hampered any real progress in addressing a growing suspicion that something was going on in the skies over the United States.

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UNIDENTIFIED SATELLITE STUDY
As the Army Air Force’s “rocket” investigations began to paint a clearer picture of a real invasion over Europe, a crash study by the Army Air Force’s RAND Project (REsearch ANd Development) was ordered by General Curtiss LeMay, Director of the Office of Research and Development, Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, in April 1946. The study published as the May 2, 1946 Preliminary Design for an Experimental World Circling Spaceship was a 324-page analysis that concluded that it was possible for a spacecraft to remain in earth orbit and would be undetectable from then-existing radar systems. As early as 1945 the Army Air Force Scientific Advisory Group reported to General Arnold, Chief of the Air Staff, that a foreign power could position long-range rockets in space and that they could be launched from orbiting satellites.


James Lipp, who at that time was head of RAND’s missile division produced a working paper in February 1947 in which, among other things, thought it feasible that such a satellite equipped with “television” and long-range optics could “be placed upon an oblique or north-south orbit so as to cover the entire surface of the earth.” With no conclusive proof that the Soviets had made a breakthrough in rocket technology developed by the Germans and lacking reliable intelligence of Soviet intentions and capabilities, Army Air Force intelligence went on the assumption that the UFO sightings in Europe and reports coming in from reliable observers in the United States in May of that year, that satellites of unknown origin were as the alleged Oppenheimer-Einstein draft assessment states “are defacto.” This is the earliest known reference to satellites prior to the Russian Sputnik satellite placed into orbit ten years later.


After the “flying saucer” invasion from June-August 1947 the Air Materiel Command issued the now famous September 23, 1947, Opinion letter written by General Nathan F. Twining to Headquarters, Army Air Force, in which Twining emphasized that the unidentified objects were “real” aircraft and that a classified project to investigate, collect, and disseminate all technical data was needed. Just two days later, the Air Staff instructed the Air Materiel Command to re-evaluate the RAND satellite studies. On December 13, 1948, James Lipp submitted a paper titled Possible Places of Origin to General Donald Putt, Director of Research and Development requested in February. RAND was tasked with producing requirements for component and techniques for a reconnaissance satellite based on “present knowledge” acquired through physical examination of crash remains recovered in the New Mexican desert.


Lipp had studied the possibility that since the “flying objects” sighted over the United States beginning in the Spring of 1947 after five atomic weapons were detonated could have been the result of an overhead, low altitude reconnaissance activity by foreign power. Lipp presented two possibilities: that the “spaceships” would arrive in a “group” for a “full-dress contact”; and that “numerous small craft might descend from a mother ship” or a orbiting “satellite” launching “rockets”. Lipp also speculated that vertically descending “rockets” would appear as “a luminous disk” to a ground observer. He also observed from reports provided to him by the ATIC that the distribution of reports was “peculiar” in that it if an invasion was in progress, the sightings would be global in nature. Since the sightings were focused largely on the United States (particularly in New Mexico), the localization of the sightings, to his reasoning, suggested that some foreign power may have, in his words, “feeling out” U.S. defenses.

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THE CIA AND SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE
During the “rocket” scare of 1946 Admiral Sidney Souers as Director of the CIG requested the services of Dr. H.P. Robertson to coordinate scientific intelligence with the Office of Scientific Research and Development after the Bikini atomic bomb tests were completed. On August 1, 1946, the newly formed Atomic Energy Commission took control of the Manhattan Engineer District form the War Department in which intelligence activities of foreign atomic research would come under the jurisdiction of the CIG and later the CIA. Robertson became scientific consultant to the CIA on problems associated in the field of scientific intelligence.


On April 29, 1947, CIA Director Hillenkoetter received estimates from a subcommittee created by General Vandenberg before he left the CIG called the Special Studies and Evaluation (SSE). SSE had prepared a plan to deal with the possible surveillance of U.S. atomic weapons research installations by “foreign” satellite objects and how to deal with the growing anxiety that prevailed on the U.S. defense intelligence agencies that Spring. On September 30, 1947, SSE concluded that if war, or the threat of war was determined by the President, the Director of Psychological Warfare should control and direct an “authoritative” coordination. The SSE was operated by military intelligence and that by an “executive action” the President could establish the existence of a national emergency and “take steps to maintain national security” apart from the authority of Congress.


On September 24, 1947, prior to the first meeting of the NSC, CIA Director Hillenkoetter submitted a classified memorandum to Admiral Souers, Executive Secretary of the NSC Staff urging the NSC to take “immediate steps” to “centralize” an organization which would conduct “vitally needed psychological operations”. This organization (possibly Majestic Twelve) would have “interdepartmental representation” at the “policy-forming level” under the “guidance” of the Council. Though Hillenkoetter’s memo did not elaborate upon the “functions” of the CIA’s participation in the “centralized organization” he later confided with his Assistant Director for Special Operations, Colonel Galloway, that he was personally opposed to involving the CIA in psychological warfare.


It would seem that the “centralized” organization composed of scientific intelligence and the propaganda machinery of the U.S. came together in the common goal of appraising the threat of war posed by the crisis of the “flying saucer” invasion and keeping the Soviets off balance as to what was occurring. It would appear that the alleged September 24, 1947 Truman memorandum to Secretary of Defense Forrestal authorizing the CIA to commence Operation Majestic Twelve may have relevance here in light of the above. It may also shed light on the alleged Special Operations Manual prepared for Majestic-12 teams that suggests that not only was collecting extraterrestrial technology of vital concern but maintaining security seems to be the overriding issue all of which will be discussed in Part Two below.

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MJ-12 Report Part II

The Question
Opinions of a Air Intelligence Staff Member The high level confusion over just what was flying over the United States that summer did not prevent some at Wright Field from expressing personal views and opinions of what had been recovered in New Mexico. In an unofficial BLUE BOOK document that was written in 1954 by an unnamed civilian staff member, the confusion existed there as well as reflected in the following you are about to read. What are flying saucers? Are they a secret, terrifying weapon of the United States? Are they the weapon or photographic reconnaissance device of another power? Are they spacecraft of visitors from Venus, Mars, or from still other planets outside our solar system? Are they robots, operated by remote control from somewhere beyond our atmosphere? Are they “thought forms” given substance and projected by higher intellects than our own? Are they angelic forms from Heaven, come to warn the world of impending catastrophe?. Or are they one of the most colossal hoaxes ever foisted off on a gullible [military]? All of these questions—and more—have been asked and answered, often quite vehemently, by a great many people [here].

 

Practically everybody has gotten into the act of explaining, debunking.... Many have tried to peer behind the curtain of security that cloaks the real nature of the saucers. All kinds of theories have been advanced, ,most of the theories being of a contradictory nature. These statements reflect quite accurately the secret September 23, 1947 Air Materiel Command Opinion letter written by General Twining to Air Force headquarters. You recall that Twining stated that the phenomenon “reported” by military intelligence units that it “is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” His also expressed the opinions of the AMC investigators that the “possibility” that the “objects” were of “domestic origin” or of a “high security project” that his command was not made aware of. Twining alluded to the “lack of physical evidence” from which to describe the actual “shape” of the “crashed recovered exhibits” that could, in his words, “prove the existence of these objects.”

 

Other writers have suggested that Twining was deliberately withholding some sensitive information regarding the finds recovered in New Mexico. This may be true. If true, what. In 1995, my elusive and secretive source, the infamous Thomas Cantwheel, orally stated to me an unbelievable account of what transpired during Twining’s unscheduled trip to Alamogordo Army Air Field in July 1947. Though I cannot vouch nor confirm what you are about to read next, I present it as a matter of record. You be the judge. According to Cantwheel, he and his IPU team arrived at Alamogordo sometime on July 5th where, according to the late retired Colonel Paul F. Helmick, USAF, at that time the base commander, a “atomic-powered aircraft” was brought onto the base and stored in a B-29 hanger located at Area 2.

 

When Twining and his senior staff arrived on July 7, Helmick had made arrangements for Twining to personally inspect what was brought onto his base by a rocket recovery team (it has been established that the 9393rd Technical Services Unit did exist and was located at Alamogordo AAF at that time and was the only rocket recovery unit qualified for recovery of V-2 warhead components). The AMC staff was driven to the hanger which was under tight security by base MP’s and Twining, his staff and some junior officers went inside where a near “wingless” aircraft was resting on a wooden carriage supporting the fuselage off the ground. As Twining and his group approached for a close look, some of the junior officers began talking too loud and Twining ordered them outside for fear the MP’s would overhear what was being said. The senior staff touched the outer skin and walked around the aircraft without saying too much only muttering awe and amazement at its design and construction. It appeared to be undamaged and intact.

Though Cantwheel (who said he was there) did not give me a physical description, he likened it to what he refers to as a “lifting body of sorts”. It was approximately 90 to 100 feet long with a chime about its centerline and exhibited a dark glossy finish. It appeared to be a single piece, that is, it had no sections. Towards its rear, a small, delta-shaped wing was observed. Absent was a canopy, observation windows, exhaust or intake units, or doors. Twining allegedly said it was “the damnedest thing” he’d had ever seen. According to Cantwheel, it was found near the White Sands Proving Ground just south of the town of Socorro buried in the desert sand. No one knew how long it had been there or where it came from. After Twining and his staff had finished there inspection, he wanted to talk to the “pilot” who was being kept under armed guard at a building that housed Norton bomb sights (the exact location was not given).

 

Twining ordered everyone to stay outside and entered the building where an Army medical doctor and one guard where stationed near a security cage (Cantwheel claims he accompanied Twining at this point). The medical doctor was asked if the “pilot” was “OK” and could he be interrogated to which the MD said “yes,” but did not indicate that the “pilot” had said anything yet. Twining then ordered the guard to unlock the security cage and then ordered the guard and doctor to exit the area. After Twining assured himself that no one else was in the building, he entered the security cage where he saw a human-like figure sitting motionless on a cot dressed in a one-piece flight suit staring at a wall. Before Twining could say anything, the “pilot” described by Cantwheel turned his eyes towards Twining, at which Twining just stood there without saying anything. Then the “pilot” seemed to almost float to his feet and approached Twining within inches, at which, Twining became afraid and quickly exited the cage and yelled for the guard to come back and lock the cage. Cantwheel stated that Twining said nothing and quickly exited the building looking scared and was white as a sheet.

 

He ordered his staff to say nothing about what they had seen and not to discuss it with anyone or among themselves until a full report was made. Cantwheel also stated that General Spaatz had secretly flown in and he and Twining had a private meeting at the base. It is not known what Twining had told him and it is Cantwheel’s belief that he told him little or nothing about his face to face encounter with the “pilot”. Then Twining took Spaatz to the hanger and showed him what was found and possibly briefed him on the whole situation as much as he was aware of. Though I had spoken to Colonel Helmick on several occasions before his death in 1993, I did not have this information until a few years later, so I could not question him on this story. When I broached the subject of Roswell and White Sands, Helmick became defensive and hostile over the phone denying completely the Twining visit. I later sent him a Xerox copy of the Alamogordo paper detailing Twining’s tour of the base to which Helmick denied that he knew of anything of Twining’s visit, all of which is not surprising in light of what is alleged to have happened.

 

As bizarre as this must sound, there are circumstantial evidence that something of an unusual nature did occur there. Cantwheel then laid an even more bizarre account that transpired shortly thereafter. When AMC requested a technical report for headquarters, supposedly the “aircraft” and the “pilot” had disappeared. When I asked Cantwheel what he meant by “disappeared”, he said, “they were gone...vanished...without a trace.” He speculated that some “authority” had removed all physical evidence from the base but did not elaborate any further. The “lack” of “physical evidence” alluded to in Twining’s September letter may explain this in spite of the fact that he did not have a detailed report describing the “shape of crashed recovered exhibits.” And so, the question began to taunt the air intelligence experts at Wright Field. ‘What are we dealing with?’ I think the views of the unnamed writer of the “riddle” is appropriate here. Trying to understand the attitude and actions of the USAF with regard to flying saucers is like trying to unravel the riddle of the Sphinx.... trying to understand the actions of our Air Force is part of the problem of trying to understand the nature of the saucers.

 

Every year since 1947, USAF has stated regularly that, while the possibility that some of the “unknowns” sighted might drift in from outer space, there exists no tangible evidence to prove or disprove this possibility. The writer goes further by addressing what was the current thinking at Wright-Patterson. ...in spite of contradictions, in spite of seeming double-talk, in spite of seeming foul-ups in press releases, in spite of seeming inconsistencies between stories issued by different branches of the services, USAF has hewed to a pretty consistent official line. This line, with waverings here and there, with deviation here and there, is as follows:

1. The Air Force does not know what flying saucers are.

2. The Air Force has no [physical] evidence to indicate that they are the products of a foreign power.

3. Whatever they are, they pose no threat to the security of the skies of the U.S.A.

4. The Air Force has never ruled out the possibility that, if they exist, they may drift in from outer space, although no tangible evidence exists to prove or disprove this idea.

According to the Air Force, there have been no fallen saucers, no fragments, no little men, either alive or dead. Also, according to the Air Force, no good movies, no good still photographs of saucers exist. Captain E.J. Ruppelt, officer who was head of [Blue Book]...wrote in... that it is his belief that “some saucers are not a hoax, then they have to be from some other planet or planetary system.” This is the closet to an official statement of belief by the Air Force...to indicate that there is some reason for [the] thinking that saucers do come from outer space.

 

What would you have done, faced with the problems of safeguarding the security of the nation, knowing...of secret work on aircraft, guided missiles, and who knows what else, yet faced with the puzzling phenomena of continuing reports of craft evidently not of this country or any other country on earth? No saucer reported—according to official [intelligence] statements—ever stayed around.... Are you going to risk trying to shoot them down—and hazard swift and unknown forms of retaliation? And how are you going to shoot down something that can outspeed even the fastest experimental rocket—in fact, that can fly rings around the rocket? Supposing they were extraterrestrial aircraft? What could you do about it? And how could you announce them positively as such unless you had irrefutable [physical] evidence—fragments, landed craft, bodies either alive or dead, temperature readings, exact speeds and altitudes measured under completely scientific conditions, photographs, charts, diagrams and all the other evidences of believability. Or, supposing you announce that these craft—if craft they are—are either flown or guided by extraterrestrial intelligences, only to discover that they are something else?

 

Whether the comments of the unnamed writer and the story given me by Cantwheel have any connection to the Roswell case or not, whether the stories of a crashed spacecraft and dead bodies is true, or whether the official disclosures by the Air Force are true or not, one thing stands out. The question,

‘Did “Something” come to earth and was that “something” beyond our ability to comprehend?’,

remains. Whether this question had an answer then or now, the highest levels of power in the government wanted to know. Starting here, is where the MJ-12 legacy begins.

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