Showing posts with label Ghost Rockets. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ghost Rockets. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Three Types of UFO – Foo Fighters Reported During The War

Headline of article, entitled Balls of Fire - Nazi 'Foo Fighters' for Company published by The Indianapolis Star on 1-2-1945


"There are three kinds of 'Foo Fighters," said Liet. Donald Meirs of Chicago. "One is red balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us, the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us and the third is a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance–like a Christmas tree up in the air–and flicker on and off."

     A United States Night Fighter Base, France, Jan. 1.–AP–The Nazis have thrown something new into the night skies over Germany–the weird, mysterious "Foo-Fighter," balls of fire which race alongside the wings of American Beaufighters flying intruder missions over the Reich.

United States pilots have been encountering the eerie "Foo Fighter" for more than a month in their night flights. No one apparently knows exactly what the sky weapon is.

The balls of fire appear suddenly and accompany planes for miles. They appear to be radio-controlled from the ground and manage to keep up with planes flying 300 miles per hour, official reports reveal.

"There are three kinds of 'Foo Fighters," said Liet. Donald Meirs of Chicago. "One is red balls of fire which appear off our wing tips and fly along with us, the second is a vertical row of three balls of fire which fly in front of us and the third is a group of about 15 lights which appear off in the distance–like a Christmas tree up in the air–and flicker on and off."

The pilots of this night fighter squadron – in operation since September, 1943–and three fiery balls the weirdest thing they have as yet encountered. They are convinced that the "Foo Fighter" is designed to be a psychological weapon as well as military although it is not the nature of the fire balls to attack planes.

"A 'Foo Fighter' picked me up recently at 700 feet and chased me 20 miles down the Rhine valley," Meiers said. "I turned to starboard and two balls of fire turned with me. I turned to the port and they turned with me. We were going 260 miles per hour and the balls were keeping right up with us."

"On another occasion when a 'Foo-Fighter' picked us up, I dove at 360 miles an hour. It kept right off our wing tips for awhile and then zoomed up into the sky."

"When I first saw the things off my wing tips I had the horrible thought that a German on the ground was ready to press a button and explode them. But they don't explode or attack us. They just seem to follow us like will-o-the-wisps."

(An Associated Press report from Paris Dec. 13 said the Germans had thrown silvery balls into the air against day raiders. Pilots then reported they had seen these objects both individually and in clusters, during forays over the Reich).

Among pilots at this base who have encountered "Foo Fighters" is Lieut. Henry Bockstige of evensville, Ind.

Thursday, June 22, 2017

In Search Of 'Progress' in UFOlogy - At the End of the Road?

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In Search Of 'Progress' in UFOlogy - At the End of the Road?

     Every so often, a cry goes out from some well-known UFOlogist about the lack of "progress" in UFOlogy. The cry is often echoed by others, typically with great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Solutions are proposed, but ultimately nothing changes.

As those of you who follow the UFO Blogs and postings already know, the most recent cry of this kind comes from the Spanish UFOlogist Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos. Olmos has been researching UFOs for fifty years now, and since the year 2000 has been

By Robert Sheaffer
badufos.blogspot.com
6-19-17
concentrating his efforts on FOTOCAT, a world-wide catalog of UFO photo events. Many researchers have assisted with this collection, myself included. Olmos is well-respected among UFO Realists (those who attempt to adhere to facts (more or less) in investigating UFOs, as opposed to the Unrealists who are always ready to believe exciting UFO stories with little or no proof). In Jacques Vallee's autobiographical Forbidden Science (Volume 2), he mentions in an entry for 1970 that he has been corresponding regularly with Olmos concerning reported Spanish landing cases. In fact, Vallee mentions Olmos several times in that volume. You won't find anyone with better UFO street cred than that.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

When Flying Discs Invaded Our Skies For The First Time | 70th Anniversary of The Beginning of a New Epoch

Kenneth Arnold Witnesses Flying Discs 1947

     This month is the 70th anniversary of the beginning of a new epoch, when the flying discs invaded our skies for the first time…officially. For some, it began in 1946 with the “ghost rockets” in Sweden, or in the IIWW theatre with the “foo fighters”, or with the “phantom airplanes” of 1912-1913, whilst others would go back to the “airships” of the late XIX century, or to ancient times. But, we all know that it was since the US press attached the “flying saucer” tag to this subject that a large-magnitude phenomenon emerged. One that has had a heavy impact on the general population all over the world.

The way I wish to commemorate this ephemeris is by writing down my present vision about the UFO phenomenon, after 50 years of personal
Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
By Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
UFO FOTOCAT BLOG
6-9-17
study, centering on the nature of the supposed evidence that has been collected in all these 70 years of UFO phenomenology. These are the views of a sincere investigator of a mystery that seems to play with us, until we realize that we have simply allowed ourselves to be led astray by a number of surrounding circumstances and influences. What seems at first sight absurd, really is illogical, irrational, incoherent ... finally inadmissible.

I have prepared an essay on the foundation of what can only be a portent or a chimera: the true level of certainty, proof and conviction, that is, the evidence. And I have asked Indiana University emeritus professor Thomas Bullard to accompany me in this global evaluation of the UFO problem with his own thoughts. We agree for the most part but we also have a degree of disagreement. But we both recognize that advancement and progress in this study will only happen when ideas are confronted in a framework of respect and tolerance.

For bibliography quotation purposes, the formal reference to this article will be as follows:
Ballester Olmos, V.J. & Bullard, T.E. (2017), “The Nature of UFO Evidence: Two Views,”


THE NATURE OF UFO EVIDENCE: TWO VIEWS

Part I

It is exactly 70 years since the society of the United States was thrilled and shaken by the first report of “flying saucers”. This was the early sighting by Kenneth Arnold on June 24, 1947. It also started a phenomenon ufologists would later call “wave”, a huge avalanche of reports throughout all the nation’s newspapers. It was short-lived and profiled as a sharp Gaussian curve developed over only three weeks: following the initial sighting’s press coverage, news interest ignited, peaked, reached a saturation point and quickly declined. This aftermath triggered two important developments: (1) the stories were disseminated all over the globe, taking on a life of their own in every country, and (2) the Army Air Force (later, USAF) jumped on the matter, beginning to investigate the visions of flying saucers (later, unidentified flying objects or UFOs).

Seven decades of UFO history have provided countless facts and histories, actions and reactions, military and civilian initiatives, Congress and Parliamentary hearings, symposia, scientists and laypersons declarations, and countless UFO-related portrayals in media, cinema, television, publishing and advertisement, daily bombarding and influencing the citizens. Not to mention the millions of supposed UFO reports that emerged from the public and the feedback they yielded. Not to neglect the important effect produced by thousands of UFO proponents all over the globe, people that James Carrion, ex-CEO of MUFON, the top UFO organization in the world, characterized as “self-proclaimed investigators or investigation journalists, whose modus operandi is to perpetuate the mystery, not to solve it”. Seen from a European perspective, this diagnostics is right on target.

Monday, December 12, 2016

(Some) UFO History

(Some) UFO History
It's About Time

Ghost Rocket
     70 years. That's how long it's been since intelligence analysts coined the term "ghost rockets" for select reports of aerial phenomena. Some UFO researchers eventually attributed the sightings to extraterrestrial visitation, a remarkably unsupported conclusion.

69 years. That's the amount of time since Kenneth Arnold reported seeing multiple unidentified flying objects while involved in an investigation of what turned out to be an extremely suspicious UFO case.
Jack Brewer
By Jack Brewer
ufotrail.blogspot.com
12-5-16
69 years is also the time since Project Seal, which had actually been discontinued, was misrepresented to the press as an ongoing top secret operation involving an airborne super weapon on the scale of the atomic bomb. Articles about the Arnold sighting and what would later prove to be the false weapons development story were in at least one instance published on the same newspaper page.

It's also been 69 years since the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release stating the 509th Operations Group recovered a "flying disc," quickly followed by a second statement advising a "weather balloon" was retrieved. The story went on to - oh, never mind. Let's just say decades of unreliable research and unverified claims were followed by a hair brained mummy story and an unpublished debate.

Allen Dulles
Allen Dulles
63 years. That's how long since DCI Allen Dulles formally green lighted MKULTRA, a behavior modification project consisting of torture, drugs, hypnosis and involuntary human experimentation. It's been 53 years since the creation of the KUBARK interrogation manual which contained techniques for use on uncooperative detainees. It was 14 years since the Bush administration began using Guantanamo Bay as a prison, and seven years since ex-Bush official Lawrence B. Wilkerson told the AP most detainees were innocent and there was no meaningful attempt to discriminate who was transported to Cuba for interrogation. Two years is how long since the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its 500-page summary of the still classified 6,000-page CIA torture report, and it's been a little over a year since publication of the Hoffman Report, a document calling into serious question the relationship between the CIA and American Psychological Association. It was about a year ago the ACLU filed a lawsuit against two psychologists who developed "enhanced interrogation techniques" for the Agency, and it's been a few days since writer and researcher Joseph Hickman, who served in the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion at Guantanamo Bay, stated in an interview that ideas about operations and techniques used at Gitmo came from the MKULTRA program. For more info see the work of Jeffrey Kaye, the reporting of Jason Leopold, and the Seton Hall Law Center paper, Guantanamo: America's Battle Lab, among other sources.

60 years is the length of time it's been since the FBI launched Counterintelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. It was a brutal effort, later acknowledged by the FBI to be "rightfully criticized," to "expose, disrupt and otherwise neutralize" targeted organizations. About a month is how long it's been since the FBI director questionably chose to formally announce an investigation of a presidential candidate while failing to disclose the Bureau's quite likely investigation of a rival candidate.

Dr. David Jacobs
David Jacobs
Over half a century. It's now been 53 years since Dr. Benjamin Simon employed hypnosis with Betty and Barney Hill. In spite of all the material now published by qualified experts establishing hypnosis as extremely ineffective as a memory enhancer - and the fact Dr. Simon was reportedly treating trauma, not conducting a UFO investigation - a segment of the UFO community continues to promote hypnosis-induced testimonies as accurate interpretations of objective reality. It's been some 40 years since Leo Sprinkle influenced the genre with his hypnotic regressions, 35 years since Budd Hopkins employed hypnosis to establish himself as a supposed UFO expert, and 20+ years since former MUFON Director of Abduction Research John Carpenter covertly provided Robert Bigelow with data, including recordings of hypnosis sessions, from case files of alleged alien abductees in exchange for cash. It was six years ago the story broke that amateur hypnotist David Jacobs instructed Emma Woods during telephone hypnosis sessions to tell people she suffers from multiple personality disorder, consider wearing a chastity belt - that he could send her - as a strategy for dealing with alleged ET-human hybrids, and mail him her unwashed underpants without thinking about it afterwards. Jacobs rather incredibly described himself as an advocate of scientific methodology.

27 years ago Bill Moore, while delivering his keynote speech at the annual MUFON con, told attendees he collaborated with Richard Doty and additional undisclosed members of the intelligence community to publish disinformation directed at Paul Bennewitz and the collective UFO community.

Vance Davis of the GB6
Vance Davis of the GB6
26 years ago half a dozen NSA intel analysts deserted their posts in West Germany and lit out for Florida to protect the world from the Antichrist. Claiming to be under the direction of aliens and Mother Mary, the group, dubbed the Gulf Breeze Six, was eventually taken into custody - under arguably unusual circumstances - literally down the street from where the annual MUFON con had just wrapped up. The late Philip Coppens reported that when the case was declassified, 1400 of its 1600 pages were withheld.

20 years is how long we've been tolerating fantastic stories of Skinwalker Ranch since an article ran in the Eugene Register-Guard. The article stated property owner Robert Bigelow declined an interview, while CIA consultant and non-lethal weapons expert John Alexander told the newspaper details of how or why research was being conducted would not be provided. Former ranch owner Terry Sherman said Bigelow had him sign a nondisclosure agreement. It was five years ago James Carrion wrote he and an accompanying scientist were denied access to the ranch, and Bigelow, during dealings with MUFON, moved funds on behalf of an undisclosed financial sponsor, the identity of which was revealed only to John Schuessler, but not to the rest of the MUFON board of directors.

It's been over three years since UFO disclosure activist Steve Bassett stated, "The goal of the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure is the end of the truth embargo in 2013," and two years since he announced a "concentrated three-month effort" which, if followed by Congressional hearings, would make it "quite likely the truth embargo will collapse." It's been six months since Bassett declared, "We are going to get disclosure this year," adding that he was 85 percent sure Obama would make an announcement before leaving office.

Atacama humanoid, featured in Stephen Greer film
Atacama humanoid, featured in Stephen Greer film
Two years ago Stephen Greer, who considers himself the father of the disclosure movement, released a crowdfunded film that would once and for all blow the lid off UFO secrecy. A year ago he initiated crowdfunding for a film that would once and for all blow the lid off UFO secrecy.

Last week Gene Steinberg, a podcaster who's perpetually spinning one suspicious story or other about why everyone should send him their money, wrote his e-list that he's falling behind on rent for a residence he urged them to send him cash to obtain in the first place about two months ago.

You were right if you chose less than a week on the over/under on how long it would take the new International Association of UAP Researchers (IAUAPR) to stumble into public relations problems. Just a few days after issuing a release about its intentions to up ufology's game via such activities as accepting and reviewing research papers, the group's organizer became entangled in social media flame-throwing about proper protocol for conducting professional research.

Right now - as Van Halen put it - Tom DeLonge is promoting work which includes an upcoming film framing the U.S. intelligence community as heroic for its cover-up of alleged aliens. He says he has high level sources in his disclosure camp. Good thing, 'cause we're obviously an extremely discriminating bunch about where we get our information.

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Ghost Rockets Documentary – A Review

Ghost Rockets Documentary – A Review
Watch the skies for Ghost Rockets, which received its Texas premiere today at Other Worlds Austin

In search of UFOs and meaning

     There's a supreme arrogance to pretending there is no life beyond Earth. But isn't it equally hubristic to think they would traverse inconceivable interstellar distances, just to see us scarcely upright apes?

And yet, as Fox Mulder would say, we want to believe.
By Richard Whittaker
The Austin Chronicle
12-4-16

Scandinavian documentary Ghost Rockets catches that inner contradiction through the work of Clas Svahn and UFO-Sweden, a nonprofit dedicated to sorting the wheat from the chaff of airborne sightings. Only, so far, it's all been chaff. "My working day is all about ministrepretations," says one of the team, as he rattles off a list of reasoned explanations that debunk every single sighting.

Well, almost every sighting.

Sunday, March 20, 2016

The Greek Ghost Rockets of 1946


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The Greek Ghost Rockets of 1946

     The wave of the so-called “ghost rockets” of Scandinavia during the summer and early autumn of 1946 is well-known. Less-known is its Greek “offshoot”. In fact the ghost rockets were crossing the skies of other countries outside Scandinavia –especially in the Mediterranean area. Needless to say the general impression and the standard interpretation of the time was that they were secret weapons, most probably of Soviet origin.
Thanassis Vembos
www.vembos.gr
3-19-16

Loren Gross
To my knowledge, the most comprehensive report on the Greek ghost rockets was and still is a few paragraphs that noted UFO historian Loren Gross (right) devotes in his 1974 booklet The Mystery of the Ghost Rockets (p. 25). This and dozens other booklets constitue a dedicated and praiseworthy attempt to construct a chronological history of early UFOogy. Gross' sources were most probably exclusively news reports of the time, particularly New York Times, Manchester Guardian and Chicago Tribune which used reports of Associated Press and other agencies. Gross also cites a table of the sightings on pages 50 & 51. There are also a few lines cited by Timothy Good in his Top Secret, which circulate over and over in the Internet. My own research was based on the existing contemporary Greek newspapers. A presentation of the whole story through the Greek media of the time follows.

On September 5, 1946, Greek prime minister Constantine Tsaldaris, while in London, stated during a press conference that “flying rockets” were sighted in the skies of Northern Greece. [...]

Tuesday, March 01, 2016

GHOST ROCKETS: UFO-Sweden Initiates Crowd Sourcing Project To Help Solve Mystery

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GHOST ROCKETS: UFO-Sweden Initiates Crowd Sourcing Project To Help Solve Mystery

     Clas Svahn (from UFO-Sweden) welcomes everyone to join in in the collaborative ufo investigation into the previously classified military documents.
GhostRocketsFIlm
YouTube
2-25-16

Sunday, March 15, 2015

'Today, Ufology Finds Itself in a State of Utter Chaos'

Ufology, There’s a Hole in Your Bucket

Ufology, There’s a Hole in Your Bucket


James Carrion By James Carrion
followthemagicthread.blogspot.com
3-14-15

      When offered a rational and irrefutable down-to-earth explanation of a UFO event, the believer will often counter as last resort with the UFO bucket argument of “well what about this case” - citing any number of anomalous airborne experiences documented throughout history. Their bucket is filled with stories of ancient astronauts, strange humanoid petroglyphs, aerial objects in medieval paintings, crashed saucers spirited away by sinister supra-governmental forces, decades old scientific studies, and of course the myriad of anecdotal stories faithfully recorded by an army of UFO investigators. The UFO faithful do not fret when one case is irrefutably explained away and pulled out of their UFO bucket– there are a million more left.

But when a whole historical wave of sightings like the 1946 Ghost Rockets is emptied from the UFO bucket - events from the very start of the modern UFO era, well then that is one big orifice that cannot be ignored. Such a huge hole in the UFO bucket that deflates the ET hypothesis in favor of a terrestrial one, makes even the so-called open-minded UFO investigator hold on to their bucket a little tighter less their own pet theory or case fall out and splatter on the ground.

After showing conclusively that the 1946 wave of sightings over northern and southern Europe has more to do with cold war intrigue than extraterrestrial visitation – the wider UFO community has countered my research with complete and utter silence. Sure, the boisterous and outspoken Stanton Friedman briefly tried to debunk my findings through proclamation, stating publicly that my book The Rosetta Deception was disinformation before he even turned over the first page, but when challenged to a real debate to discuss the evidence, his proclamations diffused away like flatulent hot air.

And therein lies the problem with Ufology and Ufologists, they race after every case, every witness, every shred of evidence regardless of provenance that will help prove what remains in their bucket but will ignore all evidence to the contrary. If we examine what the UFO bucket really is, it is an egocentric belief that we humans are so interesting and our planet so alluring that other civilizations for any number of reasons can’t help to visit us – in the past and the present. We are as the UFO bucket reveals - the Las Vegas of the Milky Way galaxy, a must-not-miss destination in the Universe’s cosmic tour book.

Ironically, UFO believers who tend to think of themselves as cosmically aware are actually selling themselves short by holding on so tightly to their alien terrestrial visitation bucket. There exists a much larger bucket that should satisfy their penchant for the mysterious - a cosmic bucket that encompasses the whole of the Universe, and which contains not just one, but millions of alien civilizations, proof of which is based on the laws of statistics and probabilities. Yes Virginia, there is life in the Universe outside the confines of Planet Earth, but Ufology has made it its quest to answer just one question – has some of that life visited us? In fact it has been at this quest since the late 1940s and what does it have to show for over 70 years of serious inquiry? A big bucket of stories that Hollywood salivates over but science rejects as undeserving of its attention.

Sure, we can try to blame the serious lack of scientific attention, as Ufology has over all those same years, on a grandiose conspiracy of silence, a purposeful cosmic Watergate, a sinister cover-up by the powers to be, but when push really does come to shove, the cover-up argument is just a sorry excuse for investigative laziness and cherry-picking of evidence and even worse the failure to adopt the scientific method and adhere to scientific standards of investigation.

Today, Ufology finds itself in a state of utter chaos and Ufologists, those who consider it their profession to seriously investigate UFOs, have no one to blame but themselves. For too long, even allegedly scientific-minded UFO organizations like MUFON have adopted a double standard of searching for truth while pandering to outside interests who have no interest in truth. Interests like billionaire Robert Bigelow who showers cash of questionable sources on UFO organizations for less than transparent reasons or media interest from the myth-spewing television cable channels who have no qualms about sacrificing truth in favor of ratings.

MUFON, has plain and simple, sold out its role as a non-profit public service for cold hard cash and advertising presence. Case in point is MUFON’s Hangar 1 show, its recent illicit love affair with Hollywood, which has created a shameful and monstrous offspring that is so antithetical to the word science, that MUFON should change its motto from the Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity to the Pseudo-scientific study of UFOs for the Benefit of Hollywood.

Simultaneously, other “serious” UFO investigator are losing the battle for discovering truth by competing for public hearts and minds with hoaxers, self-promoters, dis-informers, human deception specialists (aka, the intelligence agencies) and other human ilk whose agendas are not as lofty as “for the benefit of humanity”. Who cares about a genuine strange light in the sky videoed or photographed by a smartphone camera when ultra-professional special effects artists are churning out mega-slick, close-up, alien craft fly-bys that generate hundreds of thousands of YouTube views?

The failure of Ufology to weed out these side-show carnival acts means that Ufology has itself become a traveling carnival, complete with psychics and conjurers who excel at preying on the human mind. And we all know that no one goes to a carnival expecting to see a real paranormal act, as the real cannot be distinguished from the sleight of hand performance.

Meanwhile the “serious” media ignores the UFO bucket and only draws from it when it is a slow news day or their audience needs a good laugh, while the “entertainment” media scoops up large chunks from the bucket to feed their docu-tainment machine that frustratingly leaves viewers with more questions than answers.

So where does that leave us today? Well, with a lot of soul-searching and introspection. What do we humans really want to leave as a legacy to future generations? Do we want our children growing up, watching on cable TV or the Internet, UFO documentaries that are really just mythology, falsely promoted as history, and which serves to only poison their minds with conspiracy and distrust of authority? Do we really want our history being written by the myth makers? Or are we going to stand up for truth, no matter what that that truth may be? In all honesty, each of us has to make a decision – do we want to solve this mystery, or do we want to perpetuate it?

Solving the mystery does not mean abandoning the ET hypothesis of terrestrial alien visitation. It is completely within the realm of possibilities that we have been visited either in the past or the present, but when one’s desire to prove this causes them to lose objectivity and to forsake science in favor of a race to the “evidence”, the results are ultimately disastrous.

My research into the 1946 Ghost Rockets should not be shunned but embraced by the UFO community, as it puts to bed one UFO myth so that investigative time could be more properly focused on other cases from the UFO bucket. Unfortunately, the human ego is not that altruistic and historically when Ufology has felt threatened by the loss of a pivotal case to the ET argument, rather than accept and embrace, the tendency has been to shun and close ranks. But this time the hole is too big and will only grow bigger over time as once-ignored and poorly investigated evidence comes to the light of day. Ufology be warned, there is a hole in your bucket, and ignoring that hole will not make it go away.

Friday, March 13, 2015

The UFO Spy Who Came In From the Cold

The UFO Spy Who Came In From the Cold

James Carrion By James Carrion
followthemagicthread.blogspot.com
3-12-15

      If you have more than just a passing interest in UFOs, then you have probably heard many times, the historical spectrum of events that make up the whole of UFO mythology. It began as many believe, in days past with extraterrestrial visitation to the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, supplemented by periodic revisits through the millennia until the World War 2 era when the foo fighters arrived on the scene, followed by the 1946 Ghost Rockets and the 1947 Maury Island incident, Kenneth Arnold’s sighting, and the universally known, Roswell incident.

But the story I am about to tell you focuses on just one of these events – the 1946 ghost rockets and their inextricable link to a man who chose to engage in the second oldest profession in the world, espionage. That man’s name is Stig Wennerström, and in 1963 he was arrested in his native Sweden, accused of being a Soviet spy. Indeed, Mr. Wennerström, a well-known and liked Swedish Air Force officer, had been working as a Soviet spy since 1948, selling some of his country’s most valuable secrets to the Russians. When he was finally caught, the shock waves of his betrayal reverberated throughout Sweden and all the way to the United States as Mr. Wennerström had been posted during his traitorous tenure as the Swedish military attaché in both Moscow and Washington.

I am not going to recount Mr. Wennerström’s spying exploits on behalf of the Soviets, but instead on some spying that he did for the Americans, starting with a mission he was sent on in 1946.
The mission is detailed in a couple of books, one originally written in Swedish before being translated into English. In the book A Spy without a Country by H. K. Ronblom, the author details Wennerström’s mission on behalf of the Americans:
In 1946, the (Swedish) Air Force received an invitation-the first of its kind-to send its own representative to a Russian air display outside Moscow at which the new Russian jet aircraft would be demonstrated. Wennerström had had something to do with this business in its initial stages-it was his good friend, Lieutenant Colonel Rybachenkov of the Soviet Embassy who arranged the invitation-and it was he who was picked to attend on behalf of the (Swedish) Air Force.

Sometime in the summer of 1946, before he attended the air display in Moscow, Wennerström was invited (in Stockholm) to his friend’s the American air attaché. Among the guests was someone in civilian clothes whom Wennerström did not know, but this was soon put right when the man in civilian clothes introduced himself as an American intelligence service man and started telling Wennerström what the Gehlen’s organizational papers said about him.
The Gehlen organization was made up of remnants of Nazi intelligence that in the postwar period the Americans put to work spying against the new enemy – the Soviet Union. Wennerström was identified by the Gehlen organization as a “valuable contact” who during WW2 spied on occasion on behalf of Germany.
The American gave it as his opinion that anyone who had helped Germany might as well help the United States, since in both cases it was the Soviet Union the whole thing was about. The end of the conversation was that Wennerström was given a mission to carry out, of what nature does not appear from the published records.
In another book, An Agent in Place, author Thomas Whiteside fills in the gaps on this mission Wennerström was sent on by the mysterious American intelligence agent:
Next, the agent, by Wennerström’s account obviously aware of his coming trip to the Soviet Union, remarked on the opportunity he would have, as a neutral, to move about with comparative freedom, and proposed that he agree to mail a certain parcel in Leningrad on his way to Moscow. Wennerström told his interrogators that he accepted the assignment and mailed the parcel – which he understood to contain radio tubes, or some sort of equipment that might be used in a clandestine radio transmitter – without difficulty. On his return to Stockholm, he said, he had no further contact with the presumed American agent, and his close relations with both the American and the Soviet embassies continued pretty much as before.
Wennerström’s tale of delivering a package in Leningrad was considered implausible by author Whiteside who commented:
In any case, most sources, inside and outside the Pentagon, agree that, whether or not Wennerström actually was approached by an American agent in Stockholm in 1946, his story of his American Intelligence mission to Leningrad is, at best, a dubious one, and may very well have been part of an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of his interrogators. Such a mission, these sources say, would have been contrary to every security practice of American Intelligence.
Although Wennerström was hiding the real nature of his mission to Moscow, the details came spilling out in declassified American documents. On August 19, 1946, a Top Secret message from the US military attaché Moscow, Robert C. Macon to General Chamberlin of the War Department revealed that a Swedish Air Officer, Major S. Wennerström, was in Moscow on a 3 day official visit for a Soviet airshow and had information to share on the (ghost) rockets.
Wennerström revealed that 200 flying bombs had passed over Swedish territory traveling south to north, some on a zig zag course. Radar plotting indicated that most came from Peenemünde, but some from the Soviet Baltic coastal area. Only one curved east towards Norway while all others curved west. The missiles are not V1 but similar and slightly larger, are radio controlled, with no warhead except to self-destruct. They have been seen as high as 1000 and as low as 15 meters, travelling at 400 to 600 kilometers per hour and appeared to be under good control. The max plotted course was 1000 kilometers and could have been longer but there was no Swedish plotting station in the far north. No reports of missiles over Finland and have probably fallen in the Bothnia Gulf.

Extensive work in Murmansk for some launching project and Soviet wide-spread aerial mapping of the Kola Peninsula for possible mining of Uranium. The Soviets restored and are operating German underground experimental facility in the Hartz Mountains near Nordhausen.
On its face, this memorandum portrays Wennerström collegially just passing on information he gleaned from official Swedish sources to the US military attaché, but as it turned out, that was not the case. In another Secret memorandum dated August 23, 1946 from the U.S. naval attaché at Stockholm, William D. Wright, subject: Sweden Guided Missiles, the following very interesting observations are made about Wennerström’s trip to Moscow:
Swedish intelligence officers have passed information to U.S. intelligence officers both in Stockholm and in Moscow (Wennerström) which indicate an attempt to ‘plant’ the impression that large numbers of Russian-launched rockets have passed over Sweden, giving detail to infer that they are extremely efficient guided missile. The Swedish intelligence officer who ‘planted’ this information in Moscow (Wennerström) also intimated that Russian uranium mining activities and launching sites were being developed, giving the implication of atomic warfare with radio-controlled guided missiles. A Swedish intelligence officer also ‘planted’ a similar report of Russian rockets with the S.S.U (CIG, then CIA) in Stockholm.
What is most interesting about this memorandum is the repeated use of the word ‘planted’ by the very astute and experienced-in-intelligence-matters attaché who could see right through what Wennerström and his Swedish colleagues were up to – what other Secret memorandum would reveal was the wholesale spreading of unsubstantiated rumors about the Ghost Rockets. What attaché Wright could not know at that time was that the true hand that was being played here was not Swedish but American.

But why would some elements of American intelligence entice Swedish intelligence to deceive other American intelligence personnel? Welcome to 1946, the Wild West era of US intelligence history, where the American intelligence community was in a state of flux while fears of Soviet infiltration of all aspects of American life was rampant. If there was ever a time when the maxim “Trust no one” was most relevant, 1946 was that year.

By planting rumors of Russian missiles over Scandinavia that appeared to originate from Swedish intelligence but was ultimately directed by elements of American and quite probably British intelligence, the Soviet Union was blamed for flagrant violations of the sovereign airspace of its neighbors, creating a media storm and backlash of world opinion that has since been immortalized as unexplained UFO events.

So as not to muddy the story any further of what is a complex intelligence operation, I have left out many details that confirm the dangerous deception game that was being played out by Wennerström and others in 1946 Sweden, details that will be included in the rewrite of my book The Rosetta Deception, freely available online at http://rosettadeception.blogspot.com .

After sifting through all of the evidence related to the 1946 Ghost Rockets, especially the official declassified documents that have come out of US and British Government archives, only one conclusion can be drawn from the data – 1946 had zero to do with alien visitation and 100 percent to do with cold war intrigue and deception of the human kind, but it took a spy coming in from the cold for the pieces of this jigsaw puzzle to fall into place.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

Considerations of the Work of James Carrion

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Considerations of the Work of James Carrion

Considerations of the Work of James Carrion


Jack Brewer By Jack Brewer
The UFO Trail
10-3-14

     James Carrion is a writer, researcher and former intelligence analyst. No stranger to the UFO phenomenon, for a while he occupied the hot seat at the Mutual UFO Network. In his latest blog post, he identified what he termed "the smoking gun" of an intelligence operation theorized in his book, 'The Rosetta Deception', available for free on Carrion's blog site of the same name. He recently launched the Rosetta Deception Forum, a message board where you can post questions, discuss the book and share related research.

Ghost Rocket
Possible "ghost rocket" depicted in a photo widely circulated and originally released by Swedish Army, according to Wikipedia
'The Rosetta Deception' contains a substantial amount of cited research focusing upon parts of 1946 and 1947. A series of well sourced events and circumstances are presented that suggest the "ghost rocket" reported sightings over Europe were the results of a U.S.-led deception operation. I suspect Carrion's interpretation is extremely likely to be accurate.

Carrion suggested in his book that motives for the operation included building global distrust for the Soviet Union while the world was speculating who was testing missiles over Europe. The primary objective, however, may have been to crack the Russian diplomatic code. This would have been accomplished in part through a method known as gardening, which involves creating circumstances of interest to enemy spies so that specific key words can be expected to be prevalent in coded messages, thus increasing opportunities to break the code. More complete understandings and context can be gained by taking other relevant circumstances of the era into account, many of which are specifically presented and sourced in the book.

In his latest blog post, Carrion outlined some particular points of his theory and added what he referred to as the smoking gun: A 1946 NYC-initiated strike of communications employees which significantly decreased available methods for Soviet intelligence agents located in the States to send messages safely to Moscow. Carrion reports that a resulting bottleneck of information flow created optimum conditions for American agents to gain access to encrypted Soviet messages. There are specific circumstances presented in 'The Rosetta Deception' in support of the likelihood, including the established and substantial presence at the time of the U.S. allied intelligence community in Stateside media and communications corporations, the very outfits which would have been relied upon.

Those who wish to debate Carrion's perspectives on the ghost rockets were invited to do so. Read more about his challenge, including definitions of standards of evidence and the requirement that an actual theory must be put forth, in his related blog post.

Objectives of Deception

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to accurately understanding intelligence operations, and particularly those that overlap with the UFO community, would be the failure to consider there is no all inclusive explanation. There is more than one reason the IC manipulated circumstances commonly perceived as related to UFOs. The purposes and objectives change from one specific circumstance to the next and cannot be discussed effectively in an overly generalized manner. Particular eras and specific cases should be considered independently of one another.

Consider, for example, a now declassified 1954 CIA memo in which agents were instructed to contemplate fabricating a sensational UFO story. The purpose of the potential fabrication was not in and of itself to deceive the public. The objective, according to the memo, was to divert public attention from Agency involvement in a Guatemalan coup.

If we neglect to seek such documents, we fail ourselves as researchers. We also fail as interested members of the public searching for accurate information.

If we perpetually subscribe to extreme beliefs, to either side of center, we increase the likelihood we are missing important data. That would be the case in arguing the IC was never involved in ufology, as well as limiting our perspectives to the incorrect assumptions that the only objectives must have involved either covering up an alien presence or the polar opposite of deceiving the public into believing aliens are among us. As Carrion suggests in his work and the 1954 CIA memo demonstrates, there are many potential objectives for UFO-related deception operations. Their intricacy would be par for the course, not the exception to the rule.

It appears to this writer that UFO-related deception operations conducted by the IC are reasonably a given. Their extents, specific circumstances and objectives are yet to be conclusively determined - not their existence.

It is important to understand that we must demand verifiable information in order to draw conclusions. Such conclusions cannot be found in passionate opinions or baseless arguments that go in circles but never reach resolution as is all too often the case within ufology.

We Have Seen the Enemy...

It has been said that propaganda is sometimes aimed at the media with the ultimate intention of influencing politicians and global leaders. If taken from that perspective, confused and misinformed members of the public might be viewed as little more than relatively inconsequential byproducts of some deception operations, at least to the powers that be.

Another way of looking at that would be to consider the IC may not be as responsible for the runaway beliefs attached to UFOs as much as the UFO community sometimes took a nudge and did the rest largely on its own. Among our biggest challenges as a community in search of accurate answers continues to be ourselves, or at least a segment of our community.

There is a leading segment of the UFO community that chronically seeks to perpetuate mysteries rather than solve them. They seek no prosaic explanations, and scrupulously avert from them at virtually all costs to logic and rationality.

Some of the mysteries that find their ways into UFO circles may indeed one day prove to be groundbreaking and of great interest. The vast majority will most certainly not.

It was not the IC that single handedly turned the "ghost rockets" into a supposedly alien-related cultural phenomenon that became perpetuated for over half a century. Neither was a Pentagon think tank solely responsible for such a large number of questionable UFO stories evolving into never ending sagas of mythical proportion. We did that on our own.

I recommend checking out the work of James Carrion. I think it is worth the time and attention. He operates the blogs 'The Rosetta Deception' and 'Follow the Magic Thread'. Join and participate at his recently launched message board at Rosetta Deception Forum.

Tuesday, September 09, 2014

Former MUFON Director, Now Author, James Carrion Offers Free Access To His Book, The Rosetta Deception

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The Rosetta Deception

     The Rosetta Deception documents how the US and the UK used strategic deception to fire the opening shots of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The deception had two major goals in mind - the first was propaganda in nature, depicting the Soviet Union as the aggressor on both sides of the iron curtain that was descending upon Europe. The second was even more ambitious - to read the mind of Joseph Stalin by breaking the Soviet diplomatic code - thereby rivaling the greatest code breaking successes of WW2 when the UK broke the German Enigma code and the US the Japanese Purple Cipher.

Strategic deception was used during WW2 by the United Kingdom and the United States to deceive the axis powers. The successes are well chronicled in excellent works such as The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War by Thaddeus Holt and Bodyguard of Lies: The Extraordinary True Story Behind D-Day by Anthony Cave Brown.

The two major allied deception organizations were the London Controlling Section in the UK and Joint Security Control in the United States. Records from the US National Archives show that in the post war period, Joint Security Control continued its unique mission in peacetime, this time to defeat the new emerging threat, the Soviet Union. The London Controlling Section meanwhile changed its name to the Directorate of Plans in the post war period.

The players on the US side include some well-known characters in Government circles - General Hoyt Vandenberg and Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, both future Directors of Central Intelligence; General Omar Bradley of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Colonel Carter Clarke of the Army Security Agency. Some of the lesser know characters include Admiral Henry Kent Hewitt who commanded the Top Secret deception unit known as the Beach Jumpers during WW2 as well as General Clayton Bissell, General Stephen J. Chamberlin, General George C. McDonald, and Captain Henri H. Smith-Hutton all deception planners who were members of Joint Security Control.

The Rosetta Deception is available, in its entirety here: