UFO Secrecy and the Death of the American Republic
by Richard M. Dolan
A Murder Mystery
Like the Agatha Christie twist in Murder on the Orient Express, there have
been many killers of the American Republic.
There is of course the obvious culprit, finally and widely acknowledged these
days. This is the Spirit (and reality) of Empire, which has provided a none-too-subtle
knife in the back. Since the days of Rome, people have understood the incompatibility
of republican institutions with the tools of conquest and empire. By the time
of Caesar, for instance, Roman rule stretched throughout the Mediterranean,
dominating peoples as diverse as those under American military hegemony today.
The problem back then was that the old Roman Senate, already with five centuries
of history behind it, was designed for ruling Romans – in Rome. The Senate
managed well enough during Rome’s conquest of Italy in the third century
BC, and even during the pivotal Punic Wars with Carthage. But ruling faraway
(and valuable) lands like Gaul and Egypt were not so simple. Caesar knew this
as well as anyone. Solution: end of the Republic, and the creation of such offices
as Dictator for Life. Then, after his assassination, Emperor. Indeed, we may
wish to remember that Caesar’s successor, his nephew, the Emperor Augustus,
stated that his own absolute rule was only temporary, and that he eventually
intended to restore the republic.
Ultimately, republics cannot wear the armor of empire. That is because two
central principles of republican philosophy – freedom and self-government
– wither under its weight.
Empires mean war. Wars mean the stifling of dissent and constriction of free
thought at home. This happens every time. Repeat: every time. It has happened
in America today. Freedom of expression is a meaningless concept if everyone
thinks the same. It is how dissenters are treated that enables us to measure
how free a society is.
Empires also prevent people from governing themselves. That is because wars
destroy truth. Without freedom of information from the elected and appointed
leaders of our government – that is, without truth – how can ‘the
people’ rule? This was a point heavily emphasized by America’s Founding
Fathers. "An enlightened citizenry," wrote Jefferson, "is indispensable
for the proper functioning of a republic." Madison agreed: "The diffusion
of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty." But as Phillip Knightly
observed in his classic
study of the subject, the first casualty in war is truth. This fact is once
again in evidence regarding America’s current fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The so-called War on Terror is simply the latest manifestation of the new order
of things, of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation,
the old republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.
One might argue that Empires don’t have to result in reduction of rights
at home. Look at Britain, not a republic of course, but at least a "liberal"
monarchy. The British Empire spread around the world, and Brits enjoyed a higher
degree of freedom than many other peoples, at least during the Empire’s
heyday during the 19th century. That’s true, but the other side of it
is that we don’t know how free the British people would have been without
Empire. And let us not forget that there was also a great deal of "unfreedom"
in Britain, even during glory days of Britannia.
The American Empire
Lest you doubt that America is indeed a bona fide empire that garrisons the
world, consider that according
to the Pentagon itself, the U.S. military has 860 bases in 41 foreign countries.
That’s twenty percent of all the nations on earth.
But this figure is certainly too low. It leaves out bases in Afghanistan, Iraq,
Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Chalmers Johnson,
in The
Sorrows of Empire, argues that the true number is probably closer to 1,000
bases in perhaps more than 50 nations. Unlike during the cold war, when it was
possible to learn the specifics about American bases in foreign lands, today
much of the jurisdictional information is classified, and so we sometimes don’t
know matters as elementary as which nation ‘owns’ a particular base
in a particular country.
Roman Empire circa 44 B.C.
British Empire circa 1905
American Empire, now.
(source of U.S. Map - http://www.ppu.org.uk/pm/usbases.html)
Military bases are a big part of it, but not the whole story. American troops,
once again according
to the Pentagon, are currently being stationed in 135 nations of the world.
This is seventy percent of the world’s nations. Not all these places have
large numbers of troops, it’s true. But many do, and the point is, they’re
there. Today, we
are told this is in order to defend and advance the noble cause of globalization.
This is only part of the truth. In reality, empires are taken and defended in
order to win great prizes for those few who are powerful enough to make money
from them. This was true with Rome, it was true with Britain, it is true with
America today. Globalization is a game with winners and losers, and you can
be sure that America’s policy makers (as distinct from the American people)
intend to be the winners.
Since World War Two, America has pursued a grand imperial strategy to stake
out the globe. Today this strategy wears the scantiest of veils, and America’s
leaders now talk openly of "full spectrum dominance." That’s
bureaucratese for "we’re taking over the world."
Meanwhile, a profound but silent national security revolution has transformed
the country. It is silent because there is still no formal acknowledgment of
any real change. As long as the external appearances are the same (e.g. President,
Congress, Supreme Court, etc.) most people continue to live under the delusion
that things are the same, when in fact they are entirely different.
More than three decades ago, Gil Scott-Heron sang The Revolution Will Not Be
Televised. He was right. It wasn’t.
Criminal Globalization
But, as I suggested at the beginning of this article, the demands of empire
are only part of the problem.
The death of the American Republic is clearly a book-length subject, so I will
content myself to mention some of the other culprits more briefly before moving
on to my main theme.
There is a creepy interconnection of most of these villains. There is, for
instance, the unsettling confluence of the major financial institutions of the
world, the major groups of organized crime, and numerous intelligence agencies
from around the world, all carving up the globe in the name of privatization.
Behind all this is the unsettling evidence that elite powerful interests and
families do indeed exercise dominant power behind the scenes of our public institutions,
and that this is being done on an international scale.
Does anyone remember, for instance, a delightful news story (which surfaced
ever so briefly then died a quick death) from early 2001. This concerned the
Chase Bank of New York, a man named Raul Salinas, and one hundred and fourteen
million dollars. Raul Salinas was the brother of Carlos Salinas, former President
of Mexico. But Raul was much more than simply a less-famous Salinas. At the
time of his capture in 2001, he had been wanted for murder (buried bodies had
unfortunately been found at his compound) and I’m sure other unpleasant
things. He was known to be a drug dealer of apparent significant proportions.
Of course, why should this surprise anyone. The thing is, in January 2001, the
Chase Bank of New York had to announce that $114 million dollars belonging to
Raul Salinas were intercepted while on their way to a Swiss bank account.
The spokesperson for Chase said in effect how good it was that procedures existed
to identify and stop such irregular transfers of money. The press, typically,
did not follow up. (And just to refresh your memory, you may be familiar with
the name of the family that has dominated the Chase Bank since forever. They’re
called the Rockefellers.)
But I keep asking myself: was Raul Salinas really that stupid? Didn’t
anyone bother to ask why he might have thought he would be able to run $114
million through Chase to begin with? Perhaps he had a reason to think he could
succeed? Perhaps he had done so before? Perhaps someone didn’t get paid
off sufficiently and ratted out the operation?
For something as big as narcotics trafficking, which by most estimates is the
second largest business in the world (not quite as big as the weapons industry),
isn’t it obvious that to make the money "legitimate" you have
to clean it up, and you can’t exactly use your local mom and pop savings
and loan institution. Yes, I think it’s fairly obvious. There is so much
money in this. Far, far beyond the wildest dreams of greed – for most
of us, that is.
America’s Silent Coups
That’s drugs. That’s another topic for a different day. What’s
worse, possibly, are the frightening implications of ‘behind the scenes’
intelligence activities in the two most publicly traumatic events of the last
fifty years of American history: the Kennedy assassination and the events of
September 11, 2001. Both of these are symptomatic and further cause of the demise
of republican government.
Regarding Kennedy, so much time has elapsed, and the nation still cannot get
truth from its government. Indeed, mainstream media has been all too happy to
go to bat for the men who were behind this. In 2003, during the 40th anniversary
of Kennedy’s death, I watched, awestruck, as Peter Jennings of ABC hosted
a TV special explaining "why the conspiracy theories are wrong." Such
a disingenuous, selective, and often misleading portrayal of facts regarding
that case could not have been accidental. I can only assume that the men who
killed Kennedy are still in power, and have the ability to dictate what comes
out of ABC. Especially so, when you consider that the men behind the killing
appear to have included some of the Cuban ex-patriots whose operations Kennedy
tried to disband after the Cuban Missile Crisis. And when you consider that
30 miles off the coast of Cuba in 1961 was a small oil operation that appears
to have secretly supported the infamous Bay of Pigs operation on behalf of the
CIA. The company was called Zapata Oil. It was run by a man named George Herbert
Walker Bush.
Sure, perhaps it’s all a big coincidence.
GHW Bush - Bay of Pigs Operative? Looks like it.
9/11, same thing. I should pause and explain something here. I am from New
York City. My dad is a retired New York City police officer. For seven years,
after his retirement from the force, he was employed at the World Trade Center
as a fire safety director. For five years, in fact, he was posted at the observation
deck at the South Tower. For his last two years there, he worked at Building
4, an administration building. He happened to have Tuesdays off; the man he
shared his job with – a very nice man whom I had the pleasure of meeting
– was killed that day.
For two years after the catastrophe, I was honestly too shaken to want to look
into the details of the event, even though so many researchers had already begun
to do so. I received emails from friends and readers, urging me to look into
the circumstances surrounding 9/11. "Too busy with my other research, I’ll
get to it later," was my typical reply. Frankly, I was hesitant to think
there could be much credence given to the possibility of a real U.S. intelligence
connection. It was just too big, too sinister, for me to want to think it was
something other than what I was told. In this respect, I was just like most
people, who don’t want to examine those deep fears.
But the inconsistencies of 9/11 are enormous. Absolutely enormous. In an article
of this length, I cannot give a comprehensive analysis of all the problems,
although David
Ray Griffin has ably pointed out the direction in which research needs to
go.
For now, it is at least enough to ask:
(1) Regarding the Pentagon attack, how were bodies from the Boeing 757 identified,
while at the same time 60 tons of metal supposedly vaporized?
(2) Also regarding the Pentagon, how could a student pilot make a Boeing 757
jet nosedive toward the ground and then, a la Harry Potter at a quidditch match,
pull up at the last moment and zoom along without radar guidance toward his
target, literally inches above the ground?
(3) How did that 757 – essentially a hollow tube – pierce six reinforced
walls of the Pentagon fortress? No source I have read has convincingly explained
how this could have happened. Incidentally, the final hole, of which there is
fortunately a photograph, is remarkably well-defined, and about 7 feet in diameter.
Photo of the sixth reinforced wall of the Pentagon.
(4) Why were at least two independent video cameras of the Pentagon attack
confiscated, and why are they still unavailable to the public?
(5) Why did NORAD’s standard defense procedures -- procedures which had
worked efficiently for years and years, and which were activated 70 times in
the 12 months before 9/11 -- fail on that single morning?
(6) Why did Building 7 of the WTC complex -- a 47 story tall steel frame structure
-- collapse as it did at 5:30 p.m. (no significant debris or aircraft hit it);
and why did it sure as hell look as though it came down as a controlled demolition?
(7) What exactly did WTC landlord Larry Silverstein mean when he told PBS that
he and the Fire Chief agreed at 5 p.m. to "pull" Building 7? "Pull"
is construction lingo for controlled demolition. Since you can’t wire
a building that quickly, ipso facto it was pre-wired. If Building 7, why not
the North and South Towers? And if so, why not admit it?
(8) Along these lines, why would numerous witnesses on the ground in lower
Manhattan, including several NYC fire fighters, speak of a series of explosions
emanating from the South Tower during its collapse? Such explosions were of
a kind that would be consistent with the theory of controlled demolition.
(9) What was the true relationship between Al Qaeda, the Pakistani intelligence
agency ISI, and the CIA?
(10) Why for an entire year did the President try to prevent a commission from
forming to investigate the event?
(11) Why did the committee itself -- appropriately referred to by Michael
Ruppert as "mobbed up" friends of the President and National Security
Advisor -- egregiously and steadfastly refuse to do a real investigation? (And
please do not bother citing that travesty known as the 9/11 Commission Report,
which deals forthrightly with none of these questions.)
Oh, there’s more, much more, but hopefully you get the idea. I think
about 9/11, and it angers me, but not in the way that most Americans get angered.
Back in 1933, Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany. He never actually received
a majority of the German vote, although his party had received the largest plurality
in the most recent parliamentary elections. Thus, in January of 1933, the ancient,
revered, and decrepit Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, appointed Hitler
as Chancellor. A little more than a month later, the German parliament building,
known as the Reichstag, was in flames. Arson.
Hermann Goering, director of the national police and number two man in the
Nazi Party, immediately proclaimed this to be the work of the Communists. An
easily confused and not-very-intelligent man, a foreigner (Dutch) and Communist,
who was at the scene and had been goaded into the deed by the Nazis, confessed
to everything and was executed. In fact, the best evidence indicates that Goering,
Joseph Goebbels, and Reinhard Heydrich planned the whole thing. The result was
the infamous Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial and extreme powers
– supposedly temporary to meet the current crisis. The crisis happened
to last for twelve years.
What I am saying is that 9/11 appears to be America’s version of the
Reichstag Fire.
The Silent Watchdog and Invisible Fascism
People who live in their little private Idaho read all this with such incredulity.
"Well, why isn’t any of this in the major media?" "Wouldn’t
the press just love such a scoop?"
The answer is no. Of course not. That people can still believe this about their
media is something that I continue to marvel at, but – in case, dear reader,
you’re still not getting it – it is time to wake up.
Americans have lived with the Patriot Act for more than three years. A few
people have voiced their concerns about the loss of their Fourth Amendment right
to privacy. For those who want a refresher, this is the complete amendment,
which went into effect in 1791:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers,
and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated,
and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things
to be seized."
The 400-page Patriot Act (HR 3162) completely overturns this amendment, which
has been the cornerstone of the American right to privacy for more than 200
years. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress within weeks of 9/11. It
was certainly written before 9/11, waiting in the wings, so to speak. The members
of Congress rivaled the wisdom of Homer Simpson who, when once faced with a
waiver to sue for damages from the dreaded Mr. Burns and his team of lawyers,
stated courageously, "I’m not signing anything until I read it or
somebody gives me the gist of it!"
The Patriot Act is bad, very bad. The carefully worded Section 213, for example,
provides for the infamous ability to "sneak and peak." It establishes
the ability to issue secret warrants for any federal crime – not just
terrorism – and indeed to extend the secrecy indefinitely. Police can
break in, examine and remove or alter items, and can do this without ever presenting
owners with a warrant detailing what they were entitled to do.
The Patriot Act also allows authorities to examine your medical, financial,
educational and even library records, whether or not they show any evidence
of a crime. Credit reporting firms must also disclose to the FBI any information
that agents request in connection with a terrorist investigation, without the
need for a court order. In the past, this was only permitted in espionage cases.
And just what constitutes terrorism, these days? Your guess is as good as mine.
It gets worse. For now we also live with the Intelligence
Reform Act, passed in December 2004, an even more mammoth piece of legislation
which continues the assault on the rights of American citizens.
For instance, it enables the President to select top Intelligence positions
without Senate confirmation. As writer Mike
Whitney put it, this is "an invitation to create his personal security
apparatus without congressional interference." It also enables the new
Intelligence Director to exempt his office from audits and investigations. It
eliminates provisions to ensure that Congress receives timely access to intelligence.
It allows the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to screen
testimony before the Intelligence Director presents it to the Congress. (Thus,
a president – including the current one – can stonewall or selectively
present information to Congress). Whistle blower protections were removed from
the bill so that federal employees cannot report on their superiors. Amazingly,
it also hides the entire intelligence budget from Congressional scrutiny.
Finally, as Whitney points out, the Intelligence Director "shall have
authority to direct or undertake electronic surveillance and physical search
operations pursuant to FISA if authorized by statute or executive order."
Yes, that’s executive order.
The U.S. major media was silent on these issues. Indeed, our major media is
a crucial part of the problem. It has become the watchdog that doesn’t
bark. I’ve written about this a number of times. Talk about this long
enough and you begin to feel as though you’re howling into a vacuum. Which
is essentially the case. Just remember the words of longtime publisher of the
Washington Post, Katherine Graham in 1988: "there are some things the general
public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes
when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the
press can decide whether to print what it knows." That’s some interesting
take on the idea of democratic rule. It is also a statement that our major media
have taken to heart.
Katherine Graham
A Schizophrenic Society
Years ago, I spent some time studying the German language behind the "Iron
Curtain" in East Germany. Wonderful experience, wonderful people. It was
1986, and I was 24 years old. Perhaps it’s my nature, perhaps fate, but
early on I befriended some of the most prominent dissidents in the country at
that time. Thus, while I was studying Deutschsprache at a DDR state-sponsored
language program, I was hanging out at night and on weekends with some of the
wildest people I’ve ever known. In the process I gained an insight into
dissident culture. I met a man who had been beaten in an East German prison
for his political views. And I saw the glaring discrepancy between official
East German propaganda and the things that people would talk about, often in
whispers, with small groups of friends. A schizophrenic society, I thought to
myself. Official truth and actual truth.
What I’ve learned since then is that all societies have such a schizophrenia;
it simply varies according to the level of repression that exists. There are
always official truths, and there are always quiet, real truths. Here in America,
in the year 2005, the discrepancy is greater – yes, I say greater –
than it was for my friends in East Germany in 1986. And we know what happened
to that country within a few years.
Americans have lived on a mental autopilot for long enough. Every day, millions
of children mindlessly recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag "and to
the republic for which it stands." Do they know what a republic is? Do
the adults who teach them know? Do you? The word once had meaning for all Americans,
but those days are long gone. Today, we hear nothing about such things as republican
institutions, and even less discussion about what structures of real power have
actually evolved in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. I am
not sure what exactly we should be calling this new government, but it isn’t
a republic, nor is it particularly democratic.
One certainly hears a lot these days about "American fascism." Certain
commentators like to point out that fascism was a distinct historical development
that evolved from the European wreckage after World War One. Some maintain that
to call what is happening in America "fascism" is a disservice to
those who lived under Hitler, Mussolini, or other dictators.
It’s true that there are major differences here today with certain features
of those regimes. For one, the current regime is not as in-your-face about it
as, say, Hitler was. There has been no openly acknowledged coup d’etat
to which one can refer. But the changes to America have yet been profound. What
I believe is that the Jacobin-styled revolutionaries who run America these days
have learned an important lesson from the past: that the best revolutions are
silent. Manage the media, manage the other major institutions of power, and
you can have your way about almost anything. You can change the structure of
society at the most profound levels, as long as you keep the old appearances.
I call this silent fascism.
But my main quarry for this paper is not empire, not the covert influence of
big money, not globalization, not the co-option of what was once an independent
media, nor even fascism per se in America.
There is another disease eating away at America. It is something which receives
nearly no attention, even from those people who think and care about such quaint
issues as republican virtue and freedom.
That is that matter commonly referred to as UFOs. In the next part of this
paper, I will discuss the cancerous effect of UFO secrecy on the American Republic.
Of Science And Politics
The development of silent fascism in America is of such historical significance,
you might ask, "why talk about UFOs?" There is no shortage of culprits,
so why bring in the lunatic fringe?
Conversely, there are also UFO researchers who want no part of political analysis
interfering with their field of study. This is a scientific issue, they maintain.
Introducing political perspectives just muddies the waters. Analyze the evidence,
know your facts, and stay objective.
But the UFO topic has important political implications. We cannot afford to
ignore them. One of these is the damaging effect UFO secrecy has had on our
society. It is an issue that intimately affects public policy, national security,
and our very freedom. Indeed, as I will argue, the topic of UFOs and the extreme
secrecy concerning them will determine a significant course of our civilization’s
future.
Because UFO secrecy hasn’t been the only danger to our recent history,
I tried in the first part of this article to provide some perspective, and by
discussing some important non-ufological cancers that have eaten away at the
American Republic. Such as the events of September 11, 2001.
[As an aside, I should mention that after the first part of this article was
published, most people who wrote to me commended me for discussing 9/11. But
some questioned the wisdom of doing this. Indeed, one 9/11 researcher questioned
some of my own assumptions regarding the Pentagon attack, but supported other
assumptions, and led me to an argument with
greater sophistication that arrived at the
same conclusion, namely that some measure of complicity was involved in
the attack. The fact is that 9/11 is the defining event of our era, and remains
extremely divisive. To me, the events of that day appear a certain way, and
I have stated what I think. I have not yet decided for myself what level of
complicity occurred (e.g. various levels are possible, ranging from "someone
in the government knew something beforehand," to "The President and
his Cabal did it.") I do maintain that the events look suspicious, and
that public inquiry has been blocked at every turn. Had this event happened
in another country – say China – I believe that Americans and the
American media would be looking at this very differently. An excellent general
link on the matter is http://911research.wtc7.net/]
Now to the matter at hand.
Reality of UFO Phenomenon
UFOs are not fun and games, they are not delusions. They are real. The phenomenon
has involved real technology, doing real things that are not supposed to be
possible. This technology, since at least World War Two, has engaged in a confrontational
and provocative manner with U.S. military forces on many occasions. It has involved
both air space violations and alarmed responses, and has elicited the concern
of some of the highest ranking military and intelligence officers in the country.
We know this because, for a relatively brief period in America’s history
(primarily the late 1970s and into some of the 1980s), the Freedom of Information
Act enabled researchers to obtain official documents from government agencies
which clearly demonstrated this. Not that FOIA is officially dead today, but
it has had its ups and downs over the years. As far as obtaining UFO-related
information, FOIA’s moment of glory was long ago, in the post-Watergate
and post-Vietnam era.
Thus, agencies such as the CIA, DIA, FBI, and pick your alphabet-soup agency,
which for years had steadfastly denied having anything to do with UFOs, suddenly
released thousands of pages of documentation proving the opposite. It is true
that, among these officially released documents, there is no absolute smoking
gun – e.g. a memo from the President stating "Okay, what do we do
about these pesky aliens, anyhoo?" There are, however, quite a few documents
that are one cut below this. That is, documents that describe utterly awesome
military encounters with the unexplainable.
Taken individually, such FOIA documents do not prove the existence of UFOs
as something "not us." After all, people, even military witnesses,
can make mistakes. Radar can be faulty or misinterpreted. But, taken as a whole,
the released FOIA documents provide a large body of evidence relating to serious
military encounters with UFOs. After you read the first fifty of these, you
start to wonder.
Let’s review a couple of these documents.
We have, for instance, a document from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico
from January 31, 1949, directed to the USAF Chief of Staff. There was a flurry
of UFO activity going on in New Mexico at this time. The document in question
described yet another of these sightings from the previous day, seen by about
30 people. The document states:
"Estimate at least 100 total sightings. AEC, AFSWP, 4th Army, local commanders
perturbed by implications of phenomena.... All appear to be same object at different
points in trajectory. Unless instructed to contrary this office will make all
out investigation with view to location of impact point if any."
All those agencies "perturbed by implications of phenomena." Yes,
indeed. I would be perturbed, too.
On the same day that the Kirtland document was issued, Strategic Air Command
sent a memo to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. It stated that the matter of UFOs
was "considered top secret by Intelligence Officers of both the Army and
the Air Forces."
A 1950 Confidential Memorandum with the heading, "Flying Disks."
This memo is remarkable, and I want to separate each sentence from one paragraph,
so that you read it carefully:
"Since 30 July objects, round in form, have been sighted over the
Hanford AEC Plant.
These objects reportedly were above 15,000 feet in altitude.
Air Force jets attempted interception with negative results.
All units including the anti-aircraft battalion, radar units, Air Force
fighter squadrons, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been alerted
for further observation.
The Atomic Energy Commission states that the investigation is continuing
and complete details will be forwarded later."
Where oh where are the academic historians regarding this memo? Failed intercepts?
Anti-aircraft battalions? Good lord. And whatever happened to the AEC investigation
and report?
The answer to that last question might be contained in the wording of the 1949
memo sent to Hoover. It stated that the matter of UFOs was "considered
top secret." Yet, of the thousands of UFO related documents that obtained
release through the Freedom of Information Act, only the smallest handful of
(highly censored) documents were actually Top Secret. The rest were typically
classified Restricted or Confidential, or at most Secret. Lower levels of secrecy,
in other words. So where are the Top Secret documents?
Despite the best efforts of FOIA researchers, the best reports and intelligence
remain far removed from the public domain. Despite what some people had hoped
back in the day, the FOIA has not turned out to be a magic bullet.
It is also fairly obvious that UFO secrecy involves classifications higher
than Top Secret. Higher classifications are themselves classified, so who knows
how far they really go. James Bamford in Body
of Secrets, a study of the NSA, writes, "like an endless spiral, there
are secret classification systems within secret classification systems."
What we do know is that Canadian government official Wilbert Smith wrote in
1950 that he had made "discreet enquiries through the Canadian embassy
staff in Washington" and learned that the subject of UFOs was "the
most highly classified subject in the United States government."
The last of the early memos I want to show you is from Robins Air Force Base
in Macon, Georgia, dated July 9, 1951. It describes a ten minute aerial UFO
encounter that took place in the early afternoon. The pilot, a first lieutenant,
was flying an F-51 on a routine flight from Lawson AFB in Columbus, Georgia.
Not far from Augusta, he encountered an object that was "flat on top and
bottom and appearing from a front view to have rounded edges and slightly beveled."
At one point the object dived while in front of the pilot’s view. When
it did so, it appeared "completely round and spinning in a clockwise direction."
The amount of detail on this report is remarkable. It continues: "From
front view as object dived observer noted small spots on the object ...Object
did not appear to be aluminum. Only 1 object observed. Solar white. No vapor
trails or exhaust or visible system of propulsion. Described as traveling at
tremendous speed." The object eventually "disappeared under his plane."
Not only was this for an extended duration, but the pilot got to within 300
to 400 feet of the object. He estimated its size at about 10 to 15 feet in diameter.
This object was moving very fast. According to the report, the pilot thought
the object was moving at the speed of a jet. He felt a "disturbance in
the air described as a bump when object passed under plane.... Pilot flew in
combat in Europe for 12 months 1944-1945. Pilot considered by associates to
be highly reliable, of mature judgement and a creditable observer."
There are other documents like this. Taken as a group, they establish that,
during this early period at least, there were quite a few events that were recorded
and classified by U.S. military and intelligence personnel that they took seriously.
It is easy to understand why.
Soviet? American? Other?
Were these objects of Soviet origin, developed perhaps with the aid of captured
German scientists – some of whom were indeed experimenting with disk-shaped
planforms? This possibility was investigated, and rejected. Today, years later,
there is still no evidence that the Soviets invented "flying saucers"
after World War Two.
What about the Americans? They captured their own cache of German scientists,
after all. One can speculate on the possibility that some breakthrough was made
in the immediate post-World War Two years, in deep secrecy, as a result of purely
terrestrial science.
But there are several problems with this theory, as well. First, the documentation
that we have indicates serious efforts on anti-gravity commencing in the mid-1950s.
If anything started sooner within the United States, we have no documentary
evidence. That is not to say it didn’t happen, but there are no documents
to show it.
Nor would it seem logical that this was a deep black American program, at least
when viewing the confrontational nature of some of these encounters. The 1951
pilot encounter cited above, for instance, or the many intrusions over military
bases and research centers, don’t make sense as a secret American project,
at least not on the face of it.
Unless, of course, you speculate that a rogue human group obtained radically
advanced technology; a group beyond the control of official militaries and governments.
I can’t prove this, but is it possible? Of course.
That, frankly, seems to be the conservative interpretation, and it’s
not exactly conservative. Then there is the more radical interpretation, which
is that this technology wasn’t human in origin at all.
Either way, this was clearly a serious matter to serious people. H. Marshall
Chadwell, for instance, who was the CIA’s Deputy Director of Scientific
Intelligence. By 1952, when UFO sightings were getting rather out of hand, and
not just the public but military personnel were encountering these things with
incredible frequency, we can imagine the concern that was generated at high
levels. Only a handful of documents and statements have come down to us from
that period: some books, a few reports and memos.
One of them, however, speaks volumes. It’s a brief document, prepared
by Chadwell for his boss, CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith. It was dated December
2, 1952. Chadwell was careful. He didn’t come out and say, "boss,
we’re being invaded." Here is the relevant paragraph:
"At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something
going on that must have immediate attention....Sightings of unexplained objects
at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S.
defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural
phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."
Not natural phenomena, not known types of vehicles, and not (apparently) U.S.
manufactured. It didn’t appear to be Soviet. So what does that leave you
with? No matter what the answer, this was clearly a matter of grave concern
to the decision-makers of U.S. defense and intelligence policy.
With that in mind, we can assume that the public statements, repeated over
and over (flying saucers exist only in the imagination, nothing to them, all
hoaxes or misidentifications, etc.) were intentional acts of deception. You
can defend this lying if you choose. Maybe the government was trying to prevent
mass panic, or hide their knowledge of this from the Soviets.
But before you draw that conclusion, let us continue. And while we continue,
I suggest you try to retain the image in your mind of an enormous reality that
has continuously been denied by America’s responsible leaders. Like a
big sleeping bear in the corner of your dining room that no one is allowed to
acknowledge. Just sit quietly and eat your dinner.
Technology and Bodies
FOIA documents, important though they are, are not the whole story. Unfortunately,
researchers in this field have the odds stacked against them. We’ve obtained
some documents to review, it is true. But in reality, this is clearly a sprinkling
– the spray of the ocean. The ocean itself remains roped off.
So we must be resourceful. We must be journalists as well as historians. We
seek out people who have something to say on this matter. We judge their credentials.
We check their facts. We continue trying to piece this story together. The process
is not infallible, we all know this. But it is necessary, and we must rely on
our best judgement and sense of caution throughout.
And thus we come to the strong reason to believe that UFOs are more than just
objects flying around in the sky, but are in fact retrieved technology that
is being stored and studied, and perhaps duplicated, at secret bases. We also
come to the likelihood that there are bodies – alien bodies – that
have been studied by human scientists.
We come to this amazing conclusion because more than fifty years of history
point inexorably toward it. There is Roswell, of course. Because the Roswell
case has been so rich, so full of witness testimony, so portentous for its implications,
debunking it has been a priority since the case arose. Roswell will not go away,
despite ABC’s recent best effort to do so. But, frankly, Roswell is not
of critical importance to establish the likelihood of UFO crash retrievals by
the U.S. military. UFOs were recovered many times by U.S. military personnel.
Kingman, Arizona in 1953, Las Vegas in 1962, and Kecksburg, Pennsylvania in
1965 are only among some of the better known cases in which U.S. military teams
recovered what appear to have been genuine UFOs. There appear to be others.
Once again, a remarkable statement by Canadian government official and scientist,
Wilbert Smith, sheds light on this matter. Not long before his death in the
early 1960s, Smith said that during the great UFO wave of 1952, the U.S. military
had shot off a piece of a flying saucer near Washington, D.C. He said that the
U.S. Air Force had loaned him a small piece for "a very short time."
He showed it to his friend, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles. When asked
if he returned the piece to the Air Force, he replied, "Not the Air Force.
Much higher than that." Was it the CIA? Smith chuckled and said, "I’m
sorry, gentlemen, but I don’t care to go beyond that point. I can say
to you that it went into the hands of a highly classified group. You will have
to solve that problem, their identity, for yourselves."
Claims and statements have been around for years regarding the storage of alien
bodies at secure facilities, most notably Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in
Dayton, Ohio. During the late 1970s, UFO researcher and World War Two veteran
Leonard Stringfield began to look closely into what he began calling "the
crash retrieval syndrome." People contacted him anonymously, he followed
leads and uncovered other individuals. By the early 1980s, he had spoken to
twenty first-hand military informants who had either worked on a UFO crash retrieval
or seen alien bodies in storage, another thirty or so who were intermediaries.
By all accounts, Stringfield was a gentleman and a careful researcher. He honored
his promise to protect the identities of the people who came to him, and never
jumped to conclusions about what they told him. He also considered the possibility
that he was being "played." Still, Stringfield ultimately believed
that the sources were too disparate and did not appear to be coordinated. They
appeared to be genuine, and the information legitimate. Collectively, they told
a story of several crash retrievals of alien vehicles by U.S. military personnel,
as well as the housing of bodies and study of technology at deeply classified
levels.
Stringfield’s research into this matter preceded the resurgence of the
Roswell case. Indeed, we can trace rumors of crashed discs and alien bodies
within the military to at least as early as 1949. There is an FBI document from
March 22, 1950, addressed to J. Edgar Hoover, that is so suggestive, one wonders
if researchers even know what to do with it. But the document – another
gift from FOIA – appears to be authentic. It states:
"An investigator for the air forces stated that three so-called flying
saucers had been recovered in New Mexico. They were described as being circular
in shape with raised centers, approximately fifty feet in diameter. Each one
was occupied by three bodies of human shape but only three feet tall, dressed
in metallic cloth of very fine texture ..."
Many UFO researchers who stay in this field long enough develop their own contacts
with the classified world. I have, and I have only been publicly involved in
this field for five years. For some of the people who have confided in me, I
have not been able to confirm their identities fully; for others there is no
question that they are who they say they are. A few of these people are quite
prominent. They have told me the same thing Stringfield’s contacts told
him: there are deep black programs to study alien technology and bodies.
But there is one person, very prominent indeed, who has been talking about
this publicly for some years. He is Dr. Edgar Mitchell, of Apollo 14 fame, and
the sixth man to walk on the moon. On several occasions, Mitchell has spoken
in public about his knowledge of such programs – knowledge that came to
him, he said, through more than one elite-level connection. The manner in which
the mainstream media has handled his statements would be an embarrassment, if
one didn’t sense an ulterior motive behind such treatment, namely to defuse
his statements as much as possible.
The secrecy on this matter is unbelievable. It appears to be part and parcel
of an apparatus that is absolutely mammoth, and which does not exist officially.
Dr. Richard Sauder has documented
the existence of an enormous system of underground bases and even tunnels
that stretches throughout the United States. Some of his research has uncovered
a massive "shadow" government, so important and powerful that it appears
to have authority over the "real" government. It would seem to me
a logical guess that this system is related at least in part to the study of
such bodies and technology.
Along these lines, I have a friend who is a military attache living in Washington,
D.C. Some time ago, this person told me of some quiet discussions he has had
with his own colleagues. One friend of his was a senior Congressional Aid with
significant budgetary review responsibilities. After a long period of number
crunching, this Aid came to the conclusion that there existed an enormous black
arm of the U.S. government. That is, a substantial, powerful, expensive, and
secret executive branch of the U.S. government. This individual believed it
was connected to UFOs. I was unable to get further information about this person.
What It Looks Like
Even this is only a partial picture, but the story looks clear enough. Cutting
with Occam’s razor, the simplest explanation as I see it is something
like this.
During and immediately after World War Two, U.S. military personnel began encountering
exotic, unconventional, and extraordinary craft. It quickly became apparent
to the best and brightest minds that these did not originate with the Soviets,
nor with the Americans. They almost certainly concluded the "true UFOs"
did not originate from our civilization. Hardly willing to share this information
with others, secrecy became the rule.
At some point very early on, alien technology and bodies were recovered. It
would be of paramount importance to determine several things as quickly as possible:
the intentions of these "others," how to exploit their technology,
and how to keep information away from undesirable groups, which would be just
about everybody.
The reason for secrecy would be much more than preventing mass panic or some
other form of public protection. That sounds noble, and it may have been a factor
early on in determining policy. But secrecy grows its own tentacles, and develops
its reasons for self-preservation. I think that by the 1950s at the latest,
the office of the Presidency lost control over UFO secrecy.
Imagine being one of the members charged with managing the UFO problem. You
have to keep it so secret, you almost have to hide it from yourself. Layer upon
layer of deception follows, false cover story upon false cover story. We can
assume that the technology itself would have been amazingly advanced, perhaps
hopelessly so compared with what we had circa 1950. But perhaps, after a number
of years, one clever scientist hit upon an idea based on one aspect of the recovered
technology. Not only an incalculable technology advantage, but a nice ground
floor investment opportunity.
Over the years, much of the UFO information would have gone to private channels.
This has been happening with all aspects of the military, why not UFOs? It’s
especially useful in maintaining secrecy. Unlike a federal office, contractors
such as Lockheed, Wackenhut, Kodak, General Motors, or any number of lesser
known corporations, are not subject to Freedom of Information Act laws. A senior
military or intelligence executive could hand off any number of sensitive papers
to a trusted colleague in the private sector, knowing full well that the "working
group" would maintain access to all material anyway.
The value of this technology is, potentially and certainly in reality, immense.
I spoke to one man, not anonymous but a real person with real black-world credentials,
who said to me, "you know what they’re guarding out at Area 51? They’re
guarding money! An enormous amount of money!" Money, he said, in the form
of immensely valuable alien technology.
Something else seems to have occurred along the way. According to a former
head of Lockheed Skunkworks, the late Ben Rich, direct control over the UFO
problem was removed from the U.S. Presidency around 1969. Since that time it
has been controlled by private, international, channels. This is impossible
to confirm at the present time. But it would be consistent with the ascendancy
of international corporations and elites over most other aspects of global power.
What it looks like is that UFO secrecy has led to the establishment of a secret
network which controls access to ET technology. While the network is international,
it uses the substantial resources of the U.S. black budget and other secret
military groups as a primary tool, to engineer exotic technologies that enable
it to maintain scientific, military, and economic superiority. Yes, that’s
what it looks like.
We need to re-examine the major events of our history and try to understand
them in light of this. UFO reality makes our actual history vastly different
from what we are taught in the standard books. With the existence of a secret
and extremely powerful group controlling this subject and all that concerns
it, a massive disinformation network has become necessary. Who knows how far
the disinformation has gone? This is in itself a critical part of the reason
UFO secrecy has helped to kill off the American Republic. Such levels of deception
go beyond mere secrecy and make it necessary to toss out the old system in all
but name.
Recall my references in the first part of this article to important non-ufological
threats to human freedom. For what is now apparent is that UFO secrecy has changed
our system of government so much over the years, that various "corrections"
have had to take place so that the externals can to some extent conform with
the profound changes at the deeper levels. This has resulted in what I am currently
calling silent fascism. Silent because the official powers are not acknowledging
it as such, but it is there all the same. One wonders what the next "correction"
could bring.
A Matter of Practical Interest
There is another, less appreciated, dimension to UFO secrecy. These objects,
we know, have demonstrated amazing maneuvering capabilities. Some of them, at
least, can accelerate instantly in all directions, turn on a dime, stop and
hover motionlessly, and remain silent the whole while.
Our military aircraft have been unable to compete. In 1975, UFOs that could
hover like silent helicopters and move like silent jets were unmolested by U.S.
aircraft. In a well-known incident over Belgium in 1990, a triangular UFO thoroughly
outclassed F-16 interceptors. During the summer of 2002, just outside Washington,
D.C., a UFO easily outpaced and outmaneuvered pursuing F-16s.
A common question that arises is, what kind of propulsion system do these objects
use. But I wonder, what makes them go?
This question is more than academic. There are legitimate reasons to expect
that we are about to experience a petroleum crisis of epic proportions, much
sooner than we expect. Once a fringe belief, there are now many oil analysts
who believe this. The problem is basic supply and demand. The supply is finite;
the demand shows no signs of limit. In fact, global oil demand is now increasing
at the fantastic rate of 4 percent annually, which translates into a doubling
rate of every 17 years. I don’t care what your supply is, you cannot double
demand of anything indefinitely, and certainly not at the rate the petroleum
demand is moving.
Recall the ancient Chinese story about the peasant who performed a good deed
for the Emperor. "I will grant you any wish you ask," said the grateful
Emperor. The peasant took a chess board and said, "I don’t ask for
much. Simply place a grain of rice on the first square, then double the amount
for each successive square on the board, and I will be content." "Silly
peasant," thought the Emperor. "I would have given him something of
value." For much of the board, the amount of rice was small enough. By
the last few squares, however, the Emperor went broke. By the final square,
the amount of rice would have exceeded all the rice in the world.
Experts argue about when the petroleum crisis will hit, but it is the height
of folly to pretend it won’t arrive. Whether it will be 50 years, 20 years,
or 5 years, our civilization needs to find a way to replace petroleum. UFO technology
very likely holds part of the answer, maybe all of the answer.
Some people agree with this assessment, and believe that the "powers that
be" are simply holding out on us until the oil truly runs out, just to
maximize their profit. Then it’s free energy time – although we
assume someone will find a way to make money from it.
You had better hope that such blind trust turns out to be accurate. I’m
less confident that a benevolent elite will bail my ass out at the eleventh
hour. For all I know, they may have decided that there are too many of us on
this planet, anyway. "Time to clean house. I’ve got my bunker. How
about you?"
Freedom and Self-Governance
For a democratically-based political system to function, there must be a reasonable
amount of congruence between what people believe and what is actually the case.
You elect a member of congress with the idea that he or she will represent your
interests within the nation’s primary instrument of political power: the
Congress. Except that Congress has been made irrelevant by other centers of
power, or been taken over by them.
You get your news from television or your newspaper with the idea that the
journalist on the other end is a kind of watchdog, looking out for the public
interest. Except that the journalist is working for a corporation which is itself
antithetical to the public interest.
Unseen structures of power have evolved over the previous generations, advancing
sometimes slowly, sometimes with a dramatic suddenness. But most people lack
the conceptual means by which to understand what is happening.
As I have suggested, I believe that a significant part of that power structure
involves the possession and exploitation of UFO-related technology. And I certainly
believe that the secrecy has gone on for so long that it has become integral
to keeping the whole system together.
Once you start lying, how can you un-do the lie? Today, UFO secrecy has been
with the U.S. – and by extension the world – for about sixty years.
That’s nearly as long as the Soviet Union existed on the basis of its
own labyrinthian web of lies.
The comparison is apt. I still recall holding in my hands a commemorative oversized
Soviet book celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution of
1917. The book was published in 1937, during the depths of Stalin’s rule.
There was a colorized version of a famous photograph showing Lenin at a podium
speaking to a crowd, and I noticed that Leon Trotsky – Stalin’s
great political enemy – had been airbrushed out of the picture. That’s
simply how the Soviet system worked. The government lied constantly, and everyone
knew it, and everyone in the country pretended that the government didn’t
lie.
Constant lying in the Soviet Union meant that the official powers had to systematically
think about how to organize and manipulate public information to keep people
in line. I remember trying to read through The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, an
impossibly organized mess of propaganda and fact so that you couldn’t
learn anything about anything that truly mattered. That’s just how it
was.
Looking back, we can see how it would have been impossible for such a society
to continue indefinitely, ruled as it was on the basis of a series of lies.
When Gorbachev took power in 1985, he wanted to reform that society. His catchphrases
were glasnost and perestroika: openness and restructuring. I was a young student
of Soviet history at that time, and remember the excitement well. I also recall
the skepticism of some of my professors who continued to believe for some time
that this was yet another communist plot.
No matter. Within six years, there was no more Soviet Union. What happened?
Well, one thing that happened, a big thing, was that the process of reform spiraled
out of control. You make a big change here, and the next guy wants change over
there. It becomes hard to put on the brakes. You start with openness, for example,
and you open the books on Stalin’s gulag. You open the books on the particulars
of the Bolshevik coup. Or the reconquest of the Ukraine in the 1920s, or the
capture of the Baltic States in 1940, and on and on. Before long, entire subject
peoples want to bolt, and many openly question the legitimacy of the Party’s
rule. Then it is over.
Disclosure Scenarios
It’s no different today in America, and the UFO secret is at the core.
Imagine if the President of the United States were to decide to end UFO secrecy.
How would he do it?
I can see him now. President George W. Bush steps up to the podium. Beloved
Vice President Dick Cheney stands behind him. Trusted lieutenants Donald Rumsfeld
and Condoleeza Rice are there, too. The cameras of all the world’s media
are upon him.
"Good evening," he begins. "Through a series of meetings with
certain senior scientific and defense officials, it has come to my attention
that the UFO phenomenon apparently is real, and is of extraterrestial origin."
Silence.
"Hokey dokey, that’s really all I have to say for now. We’ll
provide updates as we get ‘em. I’m going on vacation for a while.
Goodnight everyone."
Well, maybe not. Disclosure is a pandora’s box with a panoply of taboo
topics just waiting to spring out. It is, as one friend of mine calls it, "a
sloppy tar-baby," a threatening, friendly, frightening, and inseparable
bundle of unavoidable eventualities.
So I can imagine a few questions, even from a media as compliant as the American.
"Mr. President," one correspondent might say, "what are the intentions
of these aliens?" Or, "Mr. President, what does this say about the
claims of alien abduction? Are they real, after all?" Or how about, "Mr.
President, what about claims of underground alien bases? Or claims of secret
possession of alien technology?"
These questions might not arise immediately. But they would arise eventually.
Once you open that lid, it will be very difficult to control the outcome. The
answers would not be pretty.
For this reason, I doubt that disclosure will come from America’s political
establishment. But there are always other countries. There are always the aliens.
The truth is already here; it’s simply waiting to land.
After all, what exactly are the secret keepers protecting? Let’s see.
Power, wealth, control, their plans for the future, access to information, underground
bases already built, the status quo.
But there must be more. How about communication with aliens? Worm hole technology?
Access to our genetic code? Or any number of technologies that we have not even
begun to discuss openly in our society. Remember the statement of an Area 51
insider to aerospace journalist James Goodall – this was back in the 1980s
– "we have things in the Nevada desert that would make George Lucas
envious." In other words, Star Wars technology.
Can you imagine the front page of the New York Times following a true disclosure
of all this? "MASSIVE COVERUP EXPOSED." The biggest journalistic fiasco
in history would finally be acknowledged, wholesale resignations would sweep
the intelligence community, a political third party would do a clean sweep of
Washington. Congress would promise emergency hearings, Arab oil nations would
be in a state of collapse as oil price futures plummet, and the stock market
would be in a headlong tailspin.
People would realize that a massive power structure has existed for generations,
and has siphoned away trillions of dollars. They would learn that it has played
a dominant, though unacknowledged, role in shaping their lives.
Think about NASA and the space shuttle program. There are no shortage of quiet
discussions about the antiquated nature of NASA’s shuttle technology.
Astronauts have died because better technology was denied to them. And that
is merely the tip of the iceberg, for this issue goes far beyond NASA.
No, people wouldn’t be pleased or especially understanding. Heads would
roll.
The American system of government, as it has come to exist, and by extension
American society, and by extension our current global civilization, is not compatible
with true UFO disclosure. Disclosure would rip it all away.
You might argue that this would be a good reason to maintain the secrecy. On
the other hand, I would argue it’s the best reason for disclosure.
As bad as things look today, I retain hope for a post-disclosure world. I retain
a faith – yes, I guess it’s faith – in the value of truth
over all things. A statement by my favorite writer, Leo Tolstoy, hangs before
me every day: "the one thing necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the
truth." I cannot believe that a society based on a foundational lie can
be better than one based on a foundational truth.
When the Soviet Union came to an end, people adjusted to face new problems,
but also new opportunities. We would have to do the same. Following the sense
of betrayal, following the frenzy of revelations, following the planetary chain
reaction of scrutiny and exposure, we might just awaken to a new world one fine
morning. A world in which the lies have been scrubbed away, and in which new
truths are shining everywhere.
Copyright ©2005 by Richard M. Dolan. All rights reserved.
[The author would like to thank several careful and thoughtful readers for their
assistance and feedback in preparing this paper. They know who they are.][This
article was originally published in two parts, February 21, 2005 and February
28, 2005, on the web site Through
The Keyhole.]