Painting: The Visitors

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Digital art: The flying saucer

By Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Alien Lore #256 - A dozen of our favorite Flying Saucer/UFO images

By Jack Brummet

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Alien Lore No. 241 - UFO crash in Japan?

By Jack Brummet, Unexplained Phenomena Editor

photo purportedly released by the Japanese Navy

Several web sites and blogs, including In Other Newz, are posting articles on an alleged report on Nippon Television December 5th that “an Unidentified Flying Object, went down off the coast of Okinawa, an island at the southern tip of Japan. Several news crews, along with police and emergency vehicles, rushed to the scene just in time to see the UFO sink into the water, according to multiple sources.”  

“We saw something like a small vessel with a dome slowly submerge into the water as we arrived at the scene,” said Okinawa Prefecture Police Chief Hideki Suzuki. “We clearly saw smoke rising from it as it went down. There was a tremendous amount of steam generated as it disappeared into the depths of the ocean. We anticipate investigating the vessel as soon as we get the equipment we need to raise it from the water.”

The reports also claim that a recovery mission is underway:  "The Japanese Navy has already cordoned off the immediate vicinity of the crash and is preparing to send divers into the water to get a glimpse of the vessel and take photos for salvaging purposes. No doubt, the Navy will be heavily involved in bringing the UFO up from the depths of the ocean."

A photograph "released by the Japanese navy" shows the vessel submerged underwater, with a possible power source still glowing brightly atop the aircraft’s dome..

Another web web site points out that the the photo looks suspiciously like this Google street view image of Jacksonville, Texas.  Does this image below confirm that this is just another hoax?  

A Google street view image taken in Texas

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Alien Lore No. 240—declassified documents detail 1956 Air Force plan to build a vertical take-off flying saucer

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Editor 

“I’ve been doing this for 20 years and it never ceases to amaze me what we find in the records,” Neil Carmichael of the government's National Declassification Center told Fox News.

An illustration from the report

Declassified documents from the U.S. Air Force detail their plan to build a round, vertical take-off and landing aircraft a/k/a flying saucer. Yes, we did try to build a flying saucer.  In the end, it just didn't work as expected.

The National Declassification Center in College Park, Md., opened one of more than 100 cardboard boxes from the Air Force recently and came across a 114-page document from 1956 that will tantalize everyone with any interest in UFOs or Alien Lore. 

"These records have been classified probably since their creation during the '50s," Neil Carmichael, director of the declassification review division  told Popular Mechanics (the first media outlet to post the news of the document). "It’s like somebody went into somebody’s office, emptied out a filing cabinet, stuck it in a box, sealed it, and sent it off to the federal records center. It was deemed permanently valuable at some point in its life and that’s why we have it today."

An NDC spokesman told FoxNews.com that the group is “in the process of digitizing” the entire document and has not yet released it onto its website.  “We have about 400 million pages to get through the executive order President Obama signed in 2009,” he said. “I tell my techs, 'If you find anything interesting, let us know.'”  And they did. 

The saucer had an ejector seat and was powered by a “ram jet” that was designed to propel it to a height of 100,000 feet. The Air Force contracted the construction of the craft to a Canadian company, Avro Aircraft Limited in Ontario.

According to the specification document, the saucer had “Six Armstrong Siddeley Viper turbo-jets -- 1,900 lb. thrust, 22.0” overall diameter, 525 lb weight each -- are mounted radially in the wing, exhausting inwards; and used as gas generators to drive a pair of contra-rotating centrifugal impellers by means of a radial inflow turbine."

Much of the report contains detailed descriptions and schematics of the propulsion system, as tested in a scale model seen in numerous photographs. As it turns out, the saucer worked on paper much better than the scale models did in real life. 

“The efficiency of the airframe at supersonic speed appears good and that of the engine reasonable, so that a long supersonic cruise range is also forecast,” according to the report. But in testing, the craft, which was actually just a Frenchified hovercraft, critically malfunctioned. 

“Apparently, as it gained in altitude, it would start to wobble uncontrollably,” Carmichael explained.

The report also didcusses plans to develop weapons suitable for the saucer, to equip it for reconnaissance, as an interceptor or tactical bomber. 

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Alien Lore No. 206 - Conditioning Us For The Visitors

By Jack Brummet
Unexplained Phenomena Editor

In the last couple of months, on top of continuing releases by various governments (France, Russia, England, The United States), two books on UFOlogy/Alien Lore have appeared that make a lot more sense than much of what has appeared previously.  A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact, by Bryce Zabel (of Dark Skies fame) and Richard Dolan, and Annie Jacobsen's Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base ,[1] both raise a lot of fascinating questions and pose a few answers. 

What does it all really mean? I kind of like Jacque Vallée's take on it.   Check out the the saucer UFO lore from the ground up:

• a baffling and inexplicable technology that contradict everything we know about the natural laws of time and space;
• A phenomenon that seems intricate, but absurd, and more like a dream than imagination or rational thought;
• Many thousands of people, scattered all over the world (including at least three US President, two astronauts, and hundreds of others),  see something that shatters their previous notions of what is real;
• Governments and churches and corporations heap enough ridicule on witnesses to silence many more;
• Conspiracy theorists, UFOlogists, and total wackjobs band together and some jockey for control of a murky and sometimes sinister subculture;
• Religions are born, structured around the Alien Lore.

Since 1947, when Kenneth Arnold spotted a UFO armada just eighty miles south of me, near Mount Rainier, there has been growing speculation over just what is Out There.  In the end, what do all the stories, reports, movies, books, documentaries, and investigations mean? What does this UFO thing really look like? It looks like a conditioning mechanism.   Conditioning us for what?  Why don't "They" just land on the White House lawn? As a UFOlogist once wrote "For the same reason that the chemists at Parke-Davis don't introduce themselves to their rats."  According to this school of though, we are being conditioned for their eventual arrival.  Or, more accurately--since many theorists believe they are already here--for their introduction.

As I've explained many times before to skeptics, I've written these couple of hundred pieces not because I believe in UFOs, The Greys, a Majestic-12 conspiracy, and a massive governmental cover-up, but more because I don't not believe.  No one has yet convinced me--as insane as it all sounds--that all of this is not possible.

The Krill Papers [2] are either a fascinating collection of confabulations, pretzel logic, and pure conspiracy hokum, or a shocking expose of a government that sold us down the tubes to invaders. The Krill Papers were purportedly dictated by an alien hostage left with our government when his spacecraft landed at Holloman Air Force Base in the 1960's. The Krill Papers were released by William Cooper and have been the subject of heated and protracted ebate in the UFO community. You can read them here.   If you believe Krill (read the footnote/satellite data cluster below),  you can see the conditioning is well underway.

_____________________________

[1] Jacobsen writes:  "The UFO craze began in the summer of 1947. Several months later, the G2 intelligence, which was the Army intelligence corps at the time, spent an enormous amount of time and treasure seeking out two former Third Reich aerospace designers named Walter and Reimar Horten who had allegedly created [a] flying disc. ... American intelligence agents fanned out across Europe seeking the Horton brothers to find out if, in fact, they had made this flying disc.

"The idea behind it remains, why? Why were they looking for a flying disc? And conspiracy theorists have had their hands on this declassified file for over a decade now, and they say it proves that this flying disc came from outer space. If you read the documents, the takeaway that I found fascinating was that at the end of it, the Army admits finding the Horten brothers, and that the Horten brothers admitted their contact with the Russians and that's where the file ends. Everything after that is classified."

"The plan, according to my source, was to create panic in the United States with this belief that a UFO had landed with aliens inside of it. And one of the most interesting documents is the second CIA director, Walter Bedell Smith, memos back and forth to the National Security Council talking about how the fear is that the Soviets could make a hoax against America involving a UFO and overload our early air-defense warning system, making America vulnerable to an attack."

[2] The Krill Papers stated purpose is to prove:

• Craft from other worlds have crashed on Earth.
• Alien craft are from both ultra-dimensional sources and sources within this dimension.
• Early U.S. government efforts at acquiring alien technology were successful.
• The U.S. government has had live alien hostages at some point in time.
• The government has conducted autopsies on alien cadavers.
• U.S. intelligence agencies, security agencies, and public agencies are involved in the cover up of facts pertaining to the situation.
• People have been and are currently abducted, mutilated, murdered and kidnapped as a result of the UFO situation.
• There is a current active alien presence on this planet among us that controls difference elements of our society.
• Alien forces maintain bases on Earth and on the Moon.
• The U.S. government has had a working relationship with alien forces for some time, with the express purpose of gaining technology in gravitational propulsion, beam weaponry and mind control.
• Millions of cattle have been killed in the process of acquiring biological materials.
• Both aliens and the U.S. government are responsible for mutilations, but for different reasons.
• We live in a multi-dimensional world that is overlapped and visited by entities from other dimensions. Many of these entities are hostile. Many are not hostile.
• The basis of our genetic development and religions lies in intervention by non-terrestrial and terrestrial forces.
• Actual technology far exceeds that perceived by the public.
• The United States space program is a cover operation that exists for public relations purposes. - People are being actively killed in order to suppress the facts about the situation. The CIA and the NSA are involved so deeply that exposure would cause collapse of their overt structure.
• Facts indicate alien overt presence within five to ten years.
• Our civilization is one of many that have existed in the last billion years.

Most notably, Krill said, or wrote,

"The Greys are insidious little fiends. They did exactly [to us] what they're doing here [to you]. You are not on the verge of an invasion. You are not in the middle of an invasion. The invasion has already taken place. It's merely in its final stages."

"What would you invade? [Here he describes the operational plan of the Greys from the beginning.] You would go to the most secret of communities within a society. In the case of the United States, you would go and infiltrate the CIA. You would take over some of them and you would take over part of the KGB.

"You would create great dissension and disagreement between factions of the public at large -- some groups saying they have seen UFOs, others saying 'No, no, this is not possible.' You would involve two major countries in an on-going idiotic philosophical disagreement so that while the Soviet Union and the United States constantly battle back and forth about who has which piece of territory or whether one invades Iran or whether one invades Afghanistan or whatever... whether one dismantles one nuclear warhead or the other dismantles another group of warheads -- you would sit back and laugh if you had the capacity to laugh.

"You would present yourself indeed to some in a group who would protect you [CIA or MJ-12] thinking they had a secret more secret and more perfect knowledge of something than anyone else on this planet had, and they would covet you and you would trust their own greed and you would trust their own mass stupidity to trap them. And you'd do it on both sides

"You'd show yourself to some of the mass populace to further involve [factions of] the government in an attempt to shut them up, to keep them even more busy quieting them and trying to 'stop more information about UFOs from getting out.' You'd have the mass populace to a state where they distrusted the government. 'Oh, why don't they believe us? Why can't they understand that these things are really happening? We're not crazy!'

"So you would have battles constantly about whether UFOs exist or they don't exist. You would have the public and the government at each other's throats. You would set two major superpowers at each other's throats. And you would have set up groups like 'haves' -- the wealthy but contented -- and the 'have- nots.' You would plant the seeds of massive discontent.

"Eventually you might have some show of ships landing in the 1990s. One or two. By the time they have landed, be assured they will be in complete control. You will start doing crossbreeds and more crossbreeds, generation after generation.

"You bribe the government with a few tidbits -- a Star Wars system. You tease and tempt the Soviet Union with a laser system far finer than any of their own scientists could think of. And you always have that subtle inference -- just on the borderline of consciousness so that UFOs don't seem to believable, yet you keep it couched in secrecy and make it seem quite so insane that no one would believe them. On top of it, you would unleash forces that would want to kill them [UFO contactees] if they disclosed that the CIA is dealing with the exact same things the [contact victim] is.

"Maybe one or two hundred years from now, some of the Greys will even physically mingle and you may have some creatures walking around who are pretty much hybrids between Greys and your own race. For now, anything that walks around will look much like yourselves. It's simpler. It holds down on mass panic.

"Everyone who has experiences with them [Greys] will be at odds with the government. To add to that, we will go into a complete phased of earthquake after earthquake and upheaval after upheaval.

"The inner core of the CIA is deeply controlled by the Greys. The CIA sees interaction with the Greys as a path to greater scientific achievement.

"One reason you are seeing so many different kinds of UFOs is that other cultures are watching with extreme interest. Scientists from other cultures arrive to watch. The Greys have not only taken over the intelligence agencies, they have also taken over what those agencies call 'lunatic fringe groups.' "

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Alien Lore No. 194 - The first UFO visit, and the first UFO crash 114 years ago?

 By Jack Brummet, Paranormal and Alien Lore Editor

This incident is often considered to be the first documented sighting of a UFO, although generally UFOlogists skip ahead to the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting near Mount Rainier half a century later. . .

In 1897 a cigar shaped object--they weren't known as "flying saucers" until 1947--was reported by numerous Americans as it traveled from San Francisco to Chicago. Hundreds of people lined Lake Michigan in wait for it's appearance.  Earlier that same year, newspapers reported that a spacecraft crashed into a Judge J.F. Proctor's windmill and then exploded.  They found the body of a tiny pilot, described as "not of this world."  A journal found in the space vehicle contained writing in an unknown language.  Sweetly, the townspeople arranged for the burial of the tiny pilot.

In  1973, a Dallas Times Herald reporter, Bill Case, digging around the crash site found a number of metal fragments.  He brought the shards to Dr. Tom Gray, a North Texas University physicist, who said at least some of the strange pieces of metal could not be identified.

The reporter compared metal detector readings from the crash site to those at the grave of the space pilot. The unusual signals were identical. This first "documented" UFO crash is still a mystery.

Curiously, around the same time, Marie Harris, in Garland, Texas, found a strange thing growing in her backyard that was "as big as a platter, foamy and creamy, and pale yellow" and "pulsated like a beating heart." When Mrs. Harris chopped on it, its "blood" was a red and purple goo.  A biologist from the University of Texas called it a fungus. Finally, sunlight seemed to kill it.

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Alien Lore No. 183 - The World's UFO Greeter (bunked and debunked?)

By Jack Brummet

Alien Lore and Unexplained Phenomena Editor

"Hi.  Welcome to earth.  Have a good day!" or ala Idiocracy, "Welcome to earth.  I love you."

As you may have heard, we now have an official alien greeter, thanks to the United Nations. 

The current head of the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Mazlan Othman--a Malaysian astrophysicist--has been allegedly selected as the U.N. ambassador, to meet and greet visitors from other planets. . .presumably, she will also direct them to the various departments and countries in which they may be interested. 

At first, the U.N. General Assembly in Vienna, Austria, called the now widespread news reports hokum.  It has been reported by The Sunday Times that next week Othman will make an announcement about her appointment as chief alien ambassador at a scientific conference, in Buckinghamshire, England.

The science magazine Wired UK, which says Othman has said in recent lectures that extraterrestrials will someday give signs of their existence to mankind.  As you know, there is a fairly large contingent of people, ranging from generals to scholars to out and out fruitcakes, who believe the visitors have already shown those signs. 

“When we do [see those definitive signs], we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject”, Othman said in a recent lecture.

Update--just this morning the Associated Press...Othman said she thought it would be a really cool job, but no, she is not the Alien Ambassador.

"Yes, she heads the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. No, she has not been appointed to represent the Earth in future negotiations with aliens.

"That's the word from Mazlan Othman, who Tuesday debunked British press reports indicating she would be Earth's ambassador to beings from outer space if they land in "Take me to your leader" mode.

"Still, it's apparent she kind of likes the idea.


"I think it's cool, but no, I am not about to be appointed the ambassador to aliens," Othman said Tuesday before speaking at a Royal Society conference dealing with extraterrestrial life."


"The issue of Othman's possible role as a point person for aliens was raised nine days ago by the Sunday Times in London, which reported that the U.N. was poised to give Othman the position."

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Alien Lore No. 165 - UFO Hovers Over The Kremlin

[Thanks to Jeff Clinton for suggesting this story]

The hottest video on the Russian YouTube site is film of an alleged UFO hovering over the Kremlin. Some say the triangular craft could be up to a mile in length. As you see in the video clips below, it has been seen in both daylight, and at night.

Russia has become a hotbed in recent years of UFO news, UFO records and investigations made public, and indeed. . .numerous purported alien craft sightings. . .

The video clips, probably shot from a passing car, have gone viral, particularly in the former Soviet Union.









Nick Pope, who has worked on MoD's UFO Desk [ed's note: MoD is the British Ministry of Defense] for three years, called it "one of the most extraordinary UFO clips I've ever seen."\
He said: "At first I thought this was a reflection, but it appears to move behind a power line, ruling out this theory."

Web theorists suggested an air balloon or stunt, but a spokesman for aerospace experts Jane's News said: "We have no idea what it is."




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Alien Lore No. 155 (in a collector's series) - A petition to the government to investigate UFO indidents

In 2007, an international group of scientists, aviators, politicians and generals, majors, colonels, military personnel, and even a governor, met, researched, and later held a press conference at the National Press Club as they released a petition asking the United States government to get real, and quit covering up--or at least quit avoiding seriously investigating at all--unexplained UFO incididents. Really, all they want to do is promote international cooperation among governments and the military in investigating UFOs. They're not saying there are aliens, or that we have been visited by aliens. They ask only that we investigate. There were a lot of respectable people on this panel--all of who saw something really weird that was never seriously researched or explained.

International Declaration to the United States Government
Facilitated by the Coalition for Freedom of Information
November 12, 2007

Preamble:

We, the signatories below, with backgrounds and careers in government, aviation, or the military, hereby present this declaration as a result of our common experience and purpose. While on active duty, each of us has either been a witness to an incident involving an unidentified flying object or has conducted an official investigation into UFO cases relevant to aviation safety, national security, or for the benefit of science.

We use the term “unidentified flying objects” (UFOs) simply to mean any airborne phenomena that cannot be identified or explained, a definition first used by the U.S. Air Force in the 1950’s. We make no claim as to the nature or origin of these objects.

While most UFO sightings can be explained as misidentifications of known objects or natural phenomena, those governments that have studied them, including some with which these signatories have been on staff, have consistently found that a small percentage of sightings defy conventional explanation. Reports of these incidents often involve credible witnesses such as police officers, military personnel, pilots and air traffic controllers, and include solid, official documentation.

Therefore:

We believe that for reasons of both national security and flight safety, every country should make an effort to identify any object in its airspace. Especially after the attacks of 9/11 it is no longer satisfactory to ignore radar returns for which no transponder data are available and/or which cannot be associated with performances of existing aircraft and helicopters. While civil aviation radars and air traffic controllers mainly rely on secondary radar, military air defense radars should be configured such as to detect and track any object in the air, even when static or operating at very slow or very high speeds.

In this regard, we refer to the incident that occurred at O’Hare International Airport in November, 2006 when a metallic disc was observed hovering over the United Airlines terminal for several minutes. Since it was not detected on radar, the Federal Aviation Administration declined to investigate. The FAA also did not accept the many corroborating reports from United Airlines pilots and other personnel at face value, dismissing the sighting as “weather.” We suggest that prejudice against the term 'UFO' and against reports of unknowns could lead officials to dismiss sightings that involve unconventional aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicles engaged in espionage or terrorist activity, especially when radar returns are not available.

However, important sightings have also been ignored when radar is not a factor. Even though hundreds of citizens witnessed a massive triangular object traveling over Arizona in 1997, the U.S. government ignored inquiries from state officials about the incident, and never offered the public any explanation about this invasion of US airspace by a strange, unknown flying machine. We believe this kind of disengagement represents both a missed opportunity and a potential risk.

We maintain that a restive, concerned public has the right to be informed of the facts about UFO incidents that are well-documented and involve multiple witnesses. In addition, science lacks potentially important knowledge that may be gained by the study of these events involving objects demonstrating speeds, maneuvers or other characteristics that challenge our current scientific paradigm.

Call-to-Action:

We, the undersigned, ask the United States to join in cooperation with those governments which, recognizing the reality of unidentified flying objects and related aviation safety concerns, have already set up their own investigative agencies. Following in the footsteps of its now defunct Project Blue Book, we propose that the United States Air Force reopen its research effort, or that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration initiate such a research effort, to address the international concerns stated herein, provide needed reassurance and increase scientific understanding.

We call on the United States of America to engage with us and with currently active officials around the world to address this problem in an ongoing dialogue, beginning with the gathering of some of the signatories below in Washington, DC on this 12th of November, 2007.

Signed,

Vasily Alexeyev - Major General, Russian Air Force, Space Communications Center in Russia
Ricardo Bermudez S. - General, Brigada Aérea (Ret.); Former President of the CEFAA, Chile
Ray Bowyer - Captain, Aurigny Air Services, Channel Islands, UK
Wilfried De Brouwer - Major General, Deputy Chief of Staff Operations and Planning (Ret.)
Belgian Air Force
John Callahan - Division Chief of Accidents, Evaluations and Investigations, FAA (Ret.)
Don C. Donderi, Ph.D. - McGill University; Contract Researcher, Dept. of National Defence, Canada
Julio Cesar Chamorro Flores - Comandante Peruvian Air Force (Ret.); Founder of the OIFAA, 2001
Rodrigo Bravo Garrido - Officer Chilean Army, Military Pilot, Associate with CEFAA
Richard F. Haines, Ph.D. - Sr. NASA Research Scientist (Ret.)
Charles I. Halt - Col. USAF (Ret.), Former Director, Inspections Directorate, DOD I.G.
Parviz Jafari – General, Iranian Air Force (Ret)
Denis Letty - Major General, French Air Force (Ret.); Chairman of COMETA
Oscar Santa Maria - Commander and Fighter Pilot of the Peruvian Air Force (Ret).
Anthony Choy Montes - Lawyer, researcher with the OIFAA, Peruvian Air Force, 2001-2003
James Penniston – TSgt, US Air Force (Ret.)
Nick Pope - Ministry of Defence, UK, 1985-2006
Jean-Claude Ribes - Astronomer, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France, 1963-1998
Yves Sillard - Chair of the Steering Committee, GEIPAN in France
Fife Symington III - Governor of Arizona, 1991-1997

Contact: Leslie Kean www.freedomofinfo.org

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Alien Lore No. 142 - The UFO sightings outside Istanbul, Turkey

Many people in the UFO community, and elsewhere believe this sighting, and video, to be "one of the most significant UFO videos of all time." The footage also shows two extraterrestrials on tape. The sighting/incident took place in a compound in Kumburgaz/Istanbul and was witnessed by nearly a dozen residents and filmed by a night guard (unfortunately I missed it, although I was in the vicinity last summer). The images captured are expected to have a tremendous impact throughout the world and be listed as the most important UFO/extraterrestrial images ever filmed.

As is often the case, thanks to Jeff Clinton for the tip...Jeff is often rumored to be the progeny of President William Jefferson Clinton. He is no blood relation to the soon-to-be Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. . .

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Alien Lore No. 109/Donald Keyhoe's The Flying Saucers Are Real

Donald Keyhoe's The Flying Saucers Are Real, published in 1950, was one of the very first modern books published on UFO's and alien lore. This book's copyright was not renewed and it is now in the public domain.

This book provides a sort of blueprint for all of what I consider to be alien lore: the paranoia, allegations of government disinformation and cover-ups, the conclusion that the saucers are not a government research project, but come from somewhere else. This book was the cornerstone of alien mythology. And yet many of the cases studied in this book remain unexplained. . .

You can download the entire book free, and legally, at Project Gutenberg.

Here is Chapter One:
____________________________

IT WAS A strange assignment.

I picked up the telegram from my desk and read it a third time.

NEW YORK, N. Y., MAY 9, 1949

HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATING FLYING SAUCER MYSTERY. FIRST TIP HINTED GIGANTIC HOAX TO COVER UP OFFICIAL SECRET. BELIEVE IT MAY HAVE BEEN PLANTED TO HIDE REAL ANSWER. LOOKS LIKE TERRIFIC STORY. CAN YOU TAKE OVER WASHINGTON END?

KEN W. PURDY, EDITOR, TRUE MAGAZINE

I glanced out at the Potomac, recalling the first saucer story. As a pilot, I'd been skeptical of flying disks. Then reports had begun to pour in from Air Force and airline pilots. Apparently alarmed, the Air Force had ordered fighters to pursue the fast-flying saucers. In one mysterious chase, a pilot had been killed, and his death was unexplained. That had been seventeen months ago. Since then, the whole flying-saucer riddle had been hidden behind a curtain of Air Force secrecy.

And now, an assignment from True magazine on flying saucers.

Twenty-four hours later, I was in Ken Purdy's office.

"I've had men on this for two months," he told me. "I might as well warn you, it's a tough story to crack."

"You think it's a Russian missile?" I asked him. "Or an Air Force secret?"

"We've had several answers. None of them stacks up. But I'm positive one was deliberately planted when they found we were checking."

He told me the whole story of the work that had been done by the staff of True and of the reports sent in by competent writers. The deeper he delved into the mystery, the tougher the assignment got. The more I learned about flying saucers, the less I knew.

"There's one angle I want rechecked," Purdy said.

"You've heard of the Mantell case?"

{p. 8}

I nodded.

"O.K. Try to get the details of Mantell's radio report to Godman Tower. Before he was killed, he described the thing he was chasing--we know that much. Project 'Saucer' gave out a hint, but they've never released the transcript. Here's another lead. See if you can find anything about a secret picture, taken at Harmon Field, Newfoundland--it was around July 1947. I'll send you other ideas as I get them."

Before I left, Purdy wished me hick and told me that he would work in closest harmony with me.

"But watch out for fake tips," he said. "You'll probably run into some people at the Pentagon who'll talk to you 'off the record.' That handcuffs a writer. Look out they don't lead you into a blind alley. Even the Air Force statements and the Project 'Saucer' report contradict each other."

For six months, I worked with other investigators to solve the mystery of the disks. We checked a hundred sighting reports, frequently crossing the trail of Project "Saucer" teams and F.B.I. agents. Old records gave fantastic leads. So did Air Force plans for exploring space. Rocket experts, astronomers, Air Force officials and pilot gave us clues pointing to a startling solution. Many intelligent persons--including scientists--believe that the saucers contain spies from another planet.

When this first phase was ended, we were faced with a hard decision. We had uncovered important facts, We knew the saucers were real. If it was handled carefully, we believed the story would be in line with a secret Air Force policy.

It was finally decided to publish certain alternate conclusions. The Air Force was informed of True's intentions; no attempt was made to block publication.

In the January 1950 issue of True, I reported that we had reached the following conclusions:

1 The earth has been observed periodically by visitors from another planet.

2. This observation has increased markedly in the past two years.

"The only other possible explanation," I wrote, "is that,

{p. 9}

the saucers are extremely high-speed, long-range devices developed here on earth. Such an advance (which the Air Force has denied) would require an almost incredible leap in technical progress even for American scientists and designers."

Nation-wide press and radio comment followed the appearance of the article. This publicity was obviously greater than the Air Force had expected. Within twenty-four hours the Pentagon was deluged with telegrams, letters, and long-distance calls. Apparently fearing a panic, the Air Force hastily stated that flying-saucer reports--even those made by its own pilots and high-ranking officers--were mistakes or were caused by hysteria.[1]

But three days later, when it was plain that many Americans calmly accepted True's disclosures, the Air Force released a secret project "Saucer" file containing this significant statement:

"It will never be possible to say with certainty that any individual did not see a space ship, an enemy missile or other object."

In this same document there appears a confidential analysis of Air intelligence reports.[2] It is this summary that contains the official suggestion Of. space visitors' motives. After stating that such a civilization would obviously be far ahead of our own, the report adds:

"Since the acts of mankind most easily observed from a distance are A-bomb explosions, we should expect some relation to obtain between the time of the A-bomb explosions, the time at which the space ships are seen, and the time required for such ships to arrive from and return to home base."

(In a previous report, which alternately warned and reassured the public, the Air Force stated that space travel outside the solar system is almost a certainty.[3])

Since 1949 there has been a steady increase in saucer sightings. Most of them have been authentic reports, which Air Force denials cannot disprove. In January, mystery

[1. Air Force press release 629-49, December 27, 1949.

2. Air Force Project "Saucer" December 30, 1949.

3. Air Force report M-26-49, Preliminary Studies on Flying saucers, April 27, 1949.]

{p. 10}

disks were reported over Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, Pennsylvania, and several other states. On the Seattle Anchorage route, an air freighter was paced for five minutes by a night-flying saucer. When the pilots tried to close in, the strange craft zoomed at terrific speed. Later, the airline head reported that Intelligence officers had quizzed the pilots for hours.

"From their questions," he said, "I could tell they had a good idea of what the saucers are. One officer admitted they did, but he wouldn't say any more."

Another peculiar incident occurred at Tucson, Arizona, on February 1. Just at dusk, a weird, fiery object raced westward over the city, astonishing hundreds in the streets below. The Tucson Daily Citizen ran the story next day with a double-banner headline:

FLYING SAUCER OVER TUCSON?

B-29 FAILS TO CATCH OBJECT

Flying saucer? Secret experimental plane? Or perhaps a scout craft from Mars? Certainly the strange aircraft that blazed a smoke trail over Tucson at dusk last night defies logical explanation. It was as mystifying to experienced pilots as to groundlings who have trouble in identifying conventional planes.

Cannonballing through the sky, some 30,000 feet aloft, was a fiery object shooting westward so fast it was impossible to gain any clear impression of its shape or size. . . .

At what must have been top speed the object spewed out light colored smoke, but almost directly over Tucson it appeared to hover for a few seconds. The smoke puffed out an angry black and then be came lighter as the strange missile appeared to gain speed"

The radio operator in the Davis-Monthan air force base control tower contacted First Lt. Roy L. Jones, taking off for a cross-country flight in a B-29, and asked him to investigate. Jones revved up his swift aerial tanker and still the unknown aircraft steadily pulled away toward California.

Dr. Edwin F. Carpenter, head of the University of

{p. 11}

Arizona department of astronomy, said he was certain that the object was not a meteor or other natural phenomenon. . . .

Switchboards Swamped

The Tucson police station was jammed with inquiries. Hundreds saw the object. Tom Bailey, 1411 E. 10th Street, thought it was a large airplane on fire. [A later check showed no planes missing.] He said it wavered from left to right as it passed over the mountains. Bailey also noticed that the craft appeared to slow perceptibly over Tucson. He said the smoke apparently came out in a thin, almost invisible stream, gaining substance within a few seconds.

This incident had an odd sequel the following day. Its significance was not lost on the Daily Citizen. It ran another front-page story, headlined:

WHAT DO YOU MEAN ONLY VAPOR TRAIL?

As though to prove itself blameless for tilting hundreds of Tucson heads skyward, the U.S. Air Force yesterday afternoon spent hours etching vapor trails through the skies over the city.

The demonstration proved conclusively to the satisfaction of most that the strange path of dark smoke blazed across the evening sky at dusk Wednesday was no vapor trail and did not emanate from any conventional airplane.

The Wednesday night spectacle was entirely dissimilar. Then, heavy smoke boiled and swirled in a broad, dark ribbon fanning out at least a mile in width and stretching across the sky in a straight line. Since there was no proof as to what caused the strange predark manifestation, and because even expert witnesses were unable to explain the appearance, the matter remains a subject for interesting speculation.

There is strong evidence that this story was deliberately kept off the press wires. The Associated Press and other wire services in Washington had no report. Requests for details by Frank Edwards, Mutual newscaster, and other

{p. 12}

radio commentators ran into a blank wall. At the Pentagon I was told that the Air Force had no knowledge of the sighting or the vapor-trail maneuvers.

On February 22 two similar glowing objects were seen above Boca Chica Naval Air Station at Key West. A plane sent tip to investigate was hopelessly outdistanced; it was obvious the things were at a great height. Back at the station, radarmen tracked the objects as they hovered for a moment above Key West. They were found to be at least fifty miles above the earth. After a few seconds, they accelerated at high speed and streaked out of sight.

On the following day Commander Augusto Orrego, a Chilean naval officer, reported that saucers had flown above his antarctic base.

"During the bright antarctic night," be said, "we saw flying saucers, one above the other, turning at tremendous speeds. We have photographs to prove what we saw."

Early in March, Ken Purdy phoned the latest development in the investigation. He had just received a tip predicting a flurry of saucer publicity during March. It had come from an important source in Washington.

"You know what it probably means," he said. "The same thing we talked about last month. But why were we tipped off in advance?"

"It's one more piece in the pattern," I said. "If the tip's on the level, then they're stepping up the program."

Within three days, reports began to pour in--from Peru, Cuba, Mexico, Turkey, and other parts of the world. Then on March 9 a gleaming metallic disk was sighted over Dayton, Ohio. Observers at Vandalia Airport phoned Wright-Patterson Field. Scores of Air Force pilots and groundmen watched the disk, as fighters raced up in pursuit. The mysterious object streaked vertically skyward, hovered for a while miles above the earth, and then disappeared. A secret report was rushed to the Civil Aeronautics Authority in Washington, then turned over to Air Force Intelligence.

Soon after this Dr. Craig Hunter, director of a medical supply firm, reported a huge elliptical saucer flying at a low altitude in Pennsylvania. He described it as metallic, with a slotted outer rim and a rotating ring just inside. {p. 13} On top of this sighting, thousands of people at Farmington, New Mexico, watched a large formation of disks pass high above the city.

Throughout all these reports, the Air Force refused to admit the existence of flying saucers. On March 18 it flatly denied they were Air Force secret missiles or space-exploration devices.

Three days later, a Chicago and Southern airliner crew saw a fast-flying disk near Stuttgart, Arkansas. The circular craft, blinking a strange blue-white light, pulled up in an arc at terrific speed. The two pilots said they glimpsed lighted ports on the lower side as the saucer zoomed above them. The lights had a soft fluorescence, unlike anything they had seen.

There was one peculiar angle in the Arkansas incident. There was no apparent attempt to muzzle the two pilots, as in earlier airline cases. Instead, a United Press interview was quickly arranged, for nation-wide publication. In this wire story Captain Jack Adams and First Officer G. W. Anderson made two statements:

"We firmly believe that the flying saucer we saw over Arkansas was a secret experimental type aircraft--not a visitor from outer space. . . .

"We know the Air Force has denied there is anything to this flying-saucer business, but we're both experienced pilots and we're not easily fooled."

The day after this story appeared, I was discussing it with an airline official in Washington.

"That's an odd thing," he said. "The Air Force could have persuaded those pilots--or the line president--to hush the thing up. It looks as if they wanted that story broadcast."

"You mean the whole thing was planted?"

"I won't say that, though it could have been. Probably they did see something. But they might have been told what to say about it."

"Any idea why?"

He looked at me sharply. "You and Purdy probably know the answer. At a guess, I'd say it might have been planned to offset that Navy commander's report--the one on the White Sands sightings."

{p. 14}

The White Sands case had puzzled many skeptics, because the Pentagon had cleared the published report. The author, Commander R. B. McLaughlin, was a regular Navy officer. As a Navy rocket expert, he had been stationed at the White Sands Rocket Proving Ground in New Mexico. In his published article he described three disk sightings at White Sands.

One of the disks, a huge elliptical craft, was tracked by scientists with precision instruments at five miles per second. That's 18,000 miles per hour. It was found to be flying fifty-six miles above the earth. Two other disks, smaller types, were watched from five observation posts on hills at the proving ground. Circling at incredible speed, the two disks paced an Army high-altitude rocket that had just been launched, then speeded up and swiftly outclimbed the projectile.

Commander McLaughlin's report, giving dates and factual details, was cleared by the Department of Defense. So was a later nation-wide broadcast.

Then the Air Force made its routine denial.

Why was McLaughlin, a regular Navy officer subject to security screening, permitted to give out this story? Was it an incredible slip-up? Or was it part of some carefully thought-out plan? I believe it was part of an elaborate program to prepare the American people for a dramatic disclosure.

For almost a year I have watched the behind-the-scenes maneuvers of those who guide this program. In the following chapters I have tried to show the strange developments in our search for the answer; the carefully misleading tips, the blind alleys we entered, the unexpected assistance, the confidential leads, and the stunning contradictions.

It has been a complicated jigsaw puzzle. Only by seeing all parts of this intricate picture can you begin to glimpse the reasons for this stubbornly hidden secret.

The official explanation may be imminent. When it is finally revealed, I believe the elaborate preparation--even the wide deceit involved--will be fully justified in the minds of the American people.
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Alien Lore No. 101—The oldest known UFO photographs

By Jack Brummet, Alien Lore Ed.

The most interesting information about these photos is that they were all photographed many years before The Roswell Incident, or the Mt. Rainier UFO sightings of 1947—both of which helped catapult UFOs into the popular imagination.

Click photograph to enlarge

This photo was taken in 1870 at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire. The photo has been called "the oldest UFO photograph ever taken." This image was the subject of spirited bidding on E-bay in 2002 and was purchased by Samuel M. Sherman, the President of Independent-International Pictures Corp.

Click photograph to enlarge

This image was shot in 1927 at Cave Junction, Oregon. The picture was reportedly snapped by a volunteer fireman. Click on to see full size image to really appreciate the picture.

click image to enlarge

In 1929 at SlideWard, Colorado, a photographer captured this alleged UFO photograph. According the Hetty Pline, the photographer's daughter "This photo was taken by my father Edward Pline at the sawmill in Ward where we lived at the time, I think it was 1929. I was about six years old then. My father was there to photograph the sawmill for some reason or another, and as he was taking the photo, he described a "terrible thunderous bellow," and a large round thing as big as a very large boulder that moved through the air above them. You can see it in the picture. None of the sawmill workers saw the thing in the photo, but they all heard the sound and felt the ground shudder. Later in my life I tried researching the incident at the County Historical Society, but I did not find any references to it. My father passed on a few years after the incident, and I have not found any surving sawmill workers from that time. "

click image to enlarge

In this image, the alarm klaxons installed in the event of a Japanese air raid began blaring, and flying objects are seen and announced in the sky off the city. I have written about this incident before. A blackout was declared and terrified Los Angelenos turned off all the lights.

The anti-aircraft guns opened fire on the UFOs, and as you see in the photo, the projector beams began searching the sky. Many witnesses saw small objects flying at high altitude, of red or silver plated color. The saucers moved in formation at a high rate of speed, and the anti-aircraft artillery were useless. FDR got involved in this one. See the story in All This Is That...

click photo to enlarge

In May 1932, at St. Paris, Ohio, someone took this picture of George Sutton. It was probably 1932 judging by the license plate on the car. George looks pretty calm for having a UFO hovering over his head. Nobody has been able to account for the dark object seen over Sutton's left shoulder in this photograph.

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Poem and Photograph/Collage: The Grey Convoy Flies Over the UFO Crash Site

. . .click the photograph to enlarge. . .

The Greys fly
Over the crash site
Murmuring
"There but for the Grace
Of God. . ."
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