UFOs

While the French agency under Velasco’s direction was focused on the scientific study of UFO evidence as a program within the National Space Center throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, the American government was doing absolutely nothing to address ongoing UFO sightings on the other side of the Atlantic, no matter who reported them or what effect they were having on aircraft or military facilities. Since the termination of Project Blue Book, U.S. public policy seemed to be to deny any interest in UFOs whatsoever, even if it meant obvious evasiveness or a little bending of the truth here and there. Ideally, despite the extraordinary data collected in France and other parts of the globe, the U.S. government clearly hoped that everyone in America would simply forget about UFOs altogether.

Air Force statements issued at the close of Project Blue Book generated ammunition for UFO denial that is still used today, showing that nothing has changed in America for over forty years. When approached with a question about UFOs, the Air Force still sends out essentially the same form letter—ironically called a “fact sheet”—that it began using when Blue Book was terminated. Stating that UFO investigations have been discontinued, the statement presents three points—exactly the same ones made by the Air Force in its 1969 news release announcing the close of Blue Book. It stated then, as it does today, that the U.S. government will no longer be investigating UFOs for the following reasons:

• No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.

• There has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as “unidentified” represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge.

• There has been no evidence indicating the sightings categorized as “unidentified” are extraterrestrial vehicles.[96]

Did this Air Force “fact sheet” really give us the facts at the time, and is it applicable today? In contrast to other government agencies that are represented in this book, a look behind the scenes at how the American government really has behaved toward UFOs since the close of Blue Book—despite its public positioning—shows continuing official duplicity and leaves many questions unanswered about what was actually going on.

In examining the fact sheet, the second point can be disputed simply by credible, multiple-witness case studies on record at the time, and many others that have occurred since, such as those of General Parvis Jafari and Comandante Oscar Santa Maria Huertas. Dr. James Harder, a University of California professor of civil engineering, told the House Science and Astronautics Committee in its 1968 hearing:[97] “On the basis of the data and ordinary rules of evidence, as would be applied in civil or criminal courts, the physical reality of UFOs has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” UFOs have demonstrated “scientific secrets we do not know ourselves.”[98] The question of extraterrestrial origin, the third point, remains an unproven hypothesis, but there was enough evidence at the time to keep this possibility in the running, and certainly no justification for dismissing it altogether. The first point, a claim that UFOs have never threatened national security, however, is the one most relevant to any government, because it absolves agencies charged with defending the nation from any responsibility for paying attention to unidentified objects in the sky.

However, this first point is simply false. No UFO, not even one, has ever impacted national security? “Threat” may be too strong a word, and it could be that the choice of that particular word, as uttered by General Samford in his 1952 press conference,[99] is what allowed the Air Force to get by with the statement that no UFO has ever given even an indication of threat to national security. We still have not observed hostile or aggressive behavior from a UFO. But there is no question that in the years leading up to this statement, UFOs had shown themselves to be of defense or national security concern, impacting our defense capabilities and causing alarm during the Cold War.

Despite the Robertson Panel intent to diminish public focus on UFOs for national security reasons, former CIA director Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, the first director of the CIA, who served until 1950, did not agree with the 1953 CIA position that UFOs should be ridiculed in the public arena. In 1960, he issued a statement, as reported in the New York Times. “It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings,” he said. “Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.” The opening of the article, distributed through United Press International, reads as follows:

The Air Force has sent its commands a warning to treat sightings of unidentified flying objects as “serious business” directly related to the nation’s defense, it was learned today. An Air Force spokesman confirmed issuance of the directive after portions of it were made public by a private “flying saucer” group. The new regulations were issued by the Air Force inspector general Dec. 24. The regulations, revising similar ones issued in the past, outlined procedures and said that “investigations and analysis of UFOs are directly related to the Air Force’s responsibility for the defense of the United States.”[100]

Later that year, Congressman Leonard G. Wolf entered an “urgent warning” from Vice Admiral Hillenkoetter into the Congressional Record, stating that “certain dangers are linked with unidentified flying objects,” particularly since UFOs could cause accidental war if mistaken for Soviet weapons. He pointed out that General L. M. Chassin, NATO coordinator of Allied Air Services, warned that a global tragedy might occur. “If we persist in refusing to recognize the existence of the UFOs, we will end up, one fine day, by mistaking them for the guided missiles of an enemy—and the worst will be upon us,” he said. Based on a three-year study by the well-known National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) with which Hillenkoetter was associated, Rep. Wolf stated that all defense personnel “should be told that the UFOs are real and should be trained to distinguish them—by their characteristic speeds and maneuvers—from conventional planes and missiles.… The American people must be convinced, by documented facts, that the UFOs could not be Soviet machines.” [101]

Later, a different type of national security concern was registered that didn’t involve the Russians, but concerned the safety of our own military bases. Just two years before the Air Force told the public that UFOs were not a national security threat, an event occurred which some former military officers believe dramatically contradicts that conclusion, even though any intent—purposeful or directed action—on the part of the UFO remains impossible to determine.

On the morning of March 24, 1967, Air Force First Lieutenant Robert Salas, a missile launch officer, received a call from a frightened security guard reporting a glowing red, oval-shaped object hovering directly over the Oscar Flight Launch Control Center at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. With an “above Top Secret” clearance, Salas was stationed there as part of a team in charge of the missile sites and responsible for deploying the nuclear-tipped warhead missiles in the event of a war. Salas immediately went to wake up the crew commander, First Lieutenant Fred Meiwald, who was napping on his break. Then, within one minute of the phone call, the missiles started shutting down, one by one.

“They went into no-go while the UFO was overhead,” Salas says. “This means they were disabled, not launchable.” There were ten missiles at Oscar Flight, and Salas remembers losing all of them. The missiles were located five to ten miles from the control center where the UFO hovered, and were about a mile apart from one another with independent backup power sources. A week earlier, on the morning of March 16, 1967, about thirty- five miles away from Oscar Flight, UFOs had visited the Echo Flight facility as well, and all of its missiles went down, too. In total, twenty missiles were disabled within the span of a week.

A formerly classified Air Force telex states that “all ten missiles in Echo Flight at Malmstrom lost strat alert [strategic alert] within ten seconds of each other.… The fact that no apparent reason for the loss of ten missiles can be readily identified is cause for grave concern to this headquarters.”[102] Salas learned from Boeing engineers years later that technicians checked every possible cause for the missile failures, but were not able to find any definitive explanation for what happened. At the time, it was suggested that