Former CIA Insider’s Disclosures About UFOs: Why is This Link So Difficult to Post?

Well, I initially thought that it had happened again. Every time I had tried to post a link to ex-CIA executive Victor Marchetti’s 1979 article about the agency’s “very sensitive activities” relating to UFOs, my posts disappeared into some as-yet unexplained black hole in cyberspace. Most recently, when I tried to join the conversation at Roswell researcher Dr. Kevin Randle’s blog on the thread titled “Reports of the Roswell Crash before Jesse Marcel's Revelations”, Randle told me that he had not received my post. My comment follows here:

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 4-1-16

Regarding reports of crashed UFOs prior to the re-emergence of the Roswell affair, as recounted by Jesse Marcel in 1978, I offer comments by former CIA executive Victor Marchetti, who left the agency in 1969 and wrote the best-selling exposé,The CIA and The Cult of Intelligencewhich laid bare some of the highly-illegal activities in which the agency engaged during the first two decades of its existence. [He wrote,]

‘During my years in the CIA, UFOs were not a subject of common discussion. But neither were they treated in a disdainful or derisive manner, especially not by the agency’s scientists. Instead, the topic was rarely discussed at internal meetings. It seemed to fall into the category of ‘very sensitive activities’...There were, however, rumors at high levels of the CIA…..rumors of unexplained sightings by qualified observers, of strange signals being received by the National Security Agency...and even of little gray men whose ships had crashed, or had been shot down, being kept ‘on ice’ by the Air Force at FTD (Foreign Technology Division) at Wright-Patterson AF Base in Dayton, Ohio.’

Yes, this was published in 1979, in the May issue of the now-defunct Second Look magazine—well after Marcel’s disclosures—but, again, Marchetti had resigned from the CIA some ten years earlier, therefore, the rumors he had heard had to have been circulating prior to that time.

I will also note that Marchetti’s use of the word ‘rumors’ results from his own non-involvement in the ‘very sensitive activities’ CIA had in play relating to the UFO phenomenon. Consequently, whatever information Marchetti was privy to derived from informal and probably unauthorized conversations he had with others at CIA headquarters.

But if accounts of crashed UFOs and alien bodies in cold storage were indeed discussed at ‘high levels’ within the agency, one might reasonably infer that those stories were being taken seriously.

Again, Randle initially told me that he never received this post via the normal Google Blogger route and was only able to post my comment after I sent a back-up in the body of an email to him. Today, however, he told me that he had eventually located the post. So, in this instance, the difficulties I have had posting Marchetti’s revelations in the past do not seem to apply.

Nevertheless, the issues I described at the beginning of this article did in fact occur—which prompted my sending the back-up message to Randle in the first place. A year or so ago, when I tried to post Marchetti’s exposé at journalist Billy Cox’ UFO blog, I was unable to do so. Although my posting effort was seemingly uneventful, he never received it. After Billy indicated as much, I tried again, but the second attempt met the same fate. Cox subsequently tried to post my comments himself, to his own blog, after I sent them to him in an email. He later told me that he had encountered the same unexplained and unprecedented problem. He eventually ended up posting the full text of Marchetti’s article in a follow-up piece.

In any case, the key point here is that former high-level CIA insider Victor Marchetti’s important revelations about the agency’s “very sensitive activities” relating to UFOs—decades after it had supposedly lost interest in the phenomenon—deserve widespread public attention. Therefore, I am asking persons reading this piece to forward the Cox article containing Marchetti’s disclosures to as many UFO and social media websites as possible.

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See Also:

How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon

Ex-CIA Official Says Stories of Crashed UFOs and Little Gray Men “on Ice” Discussed at a High-Level

The CIA’s Actual Involvement with UFOs: The Agency’s Public Statements are Deliberately Deceptive

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

The CIA’s Actual Involvement with UFOs: The Agency’s Public Statements are Deliberately Deceptive

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 12-8-15

      Some years after the CIA released what it claimed was its entire collection of UFO-related documents, all of which were classified Secret or lower, it was discovered—as a result of a Freedom of Information request filed by researcher Stanton Friedman—that a National Security Agency (NSA) report referenced Top Secret CIA files on UFOs that had once been shared with NSA. In other words, highly-classified CIA UFO documents, whose very existence is publicly denied by the agency, remain secret to this day.

In view of this revelation, it’s perhaps advisable to examine the history of the CIA’s involvement with UFOs—both officially-acknowledged and recently-exposed. The following is a chapter from my 2008 book, UFOs and Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites:

~ 26 ~
The Agency

“It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings...Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs, but through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.”

—Vice Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter (Ret.)

Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency

The New York Times, February 28, 1960

     Thank you, Admiral Hillenkoetter. I guess we should be thankful that even one former CIA director chose to be truthful about UFOs after leaving the agency. But that was nearly 50 years ago, so don’t hold your breath waiting for the next one. Unfortunately, Hillenkoetter later reversed himself—under pressure from the agency, according to respected UFO researcher Major Donald E. Keyhoe (USMC Ret.)—and withdrew his support for congressional hearings.

     Fortunately, another former, high-level CIA employee, Victor Marchetti, has also been candid with the public. As noted in Chapter 8, Marchetti wrote the best-selling book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, which exposed many of the agency’s counterproductive and sometimes illegal activities. More to the point, he also wrote a lengthy article about the CIA’s interest in UFOs, titled, “How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon”, which appeared in the May 1979 issue of Second Look magazine. Marchetti said,

There are many myths, few facts, and much speculation about what the CIA knows of the UFO phenomenon. These, combined with the public’s distrust of the clandestine agency, have led to a strong popular belief that the CIA is at the center of a government-wide conspiracy to cover-up the truth about UFOs. It usually follows that the cover-up is designed to keep us ignorant, or at least confused and doubtful, about contacts or visitations by intelligent beings from outer space. Thus, if we only knew what the CIA knows, and is covering up, we would be better able to understand and deal with aliens. And that would be a good thing.1

     At first glance, it seems almost as if Marchetti is mildly chastising the public for its widely-held perceptions and occasional myth-making about the CIA’s involvement with UFOs. However, he then finished his thought,

I do not know from my own firsthand experience if there are UFOs. I have never seen one. Nor have I seen conclusive, empirical, or physical evidence that they really exist. But, I do know that the CIA and U.S. Government have been concerned over the UFO phenomenon for many years and that their attempts, both past and recent, to discount the significance of the phenomenon and to explain away the apparent lack of official interest in it have all the earmarkings of a classic intelligence cover-up.2

     Here Marchetti seems to suggest that at least some of the public’s perceptions—as regards an official cover-up—may indeed have merit. And what might the CIA be hiding from the public? Well, that involves a fair amount of guesswork. However, elsewhere in the article, Marchetti writes about the rumors he heard while working at the highest level of the agency, regarding “little gray men whose ships had crashed, or had been shot down.”3 While this statement cannot be taken as proof that the CIA has been involved in the recovery of downed UFOs, or even as evidence that such events have actually occurred—given that Marchetti refers to the reports he heard as “rumors”—it at least confirms that agency employees had discussed, in a serious manner in Marchetti’s presence, the possibility that such recoveries had in fact occurred. But as researcher Mark Rodighier correctly notes, “Rumors are just that, and a serious discussion of rumors is different than a serious discussion of actual documents or knowledge about crashed UFOs.”

     Over the years, the CIA has attempted to portray its own role in the U.S. government’s UFO-related activities as a mostly passive one from the early 1950s onward. However, a number of researchers have doubted this carefully-crafted public image, believing it to be a façade designed to conceal a greater, perhaps central, role in the official cover-up. Over time, certain hints, inadvertent slips, and the rare admission by a former agency employee, like Marchetti, have coalesced in a way which suggests an official interest in UFOs far greater than the CIA is willing to acknowledge.

     Researcher Barry Greenwood writes,

The possible involvement of the CIA in UFO research has long been a hot topic of controversy. Up until the mid-1970s, the CIA’s response to inquiries about UFOs would be either not to answer or to forward the correspondence to the Air Force for attention. This was not very satisfying to individuals who had heard rumors [about], or had even experienced firsthand, [instances] of the CIA collecting and analyzing information on UFO sightings from around the world. There was little that could be done to gain more information. No legal means existed to force the CIA to answer any questions, let alone release documents.

When the Freedom of Information Act became law, this means was finally made available to UFO researchers. Initial attempts were not without frustration, however. One of the first organizations to pursue the CIA for UFO documents was Ground Saucer Watch (GSW) of Phoenix Arizona. Headed by William Spaulding, GSW was at the forefront of document research and made great strides in allowing public access to government UFO activities.

A request was filed on July 14, 1975 by GSW...The letter asked for copies of all UFO case investigations/evaluations by the CIA. After a long delay, the CIA responded on March 26, 1976:

‘In order that you may be aware of the true facts concerning the involvement of the CIA in the investigation of UFO phenomena, let me give you the following brief history. Late in 1952, the National Security Council levied upon the CIA the requirement to determine if the existence of UFOs would create a danger to the national security of the United States. The Office of Scientific Intelligence established the Intelligence Advisory Committee [more commonly known as the Robertson Panel] to study the matter. That committee made the recommendations found at the bottom of page 1 and the top four lines of page 2 of the Robertson Panel Report. At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to the issuance of the panel’s report, has the CIA engaged in the study of the UFO phenomenon. The Robertson Panel Report is summation of the Agency’s interest and involvement in the matter.’

This, then, was the CIA’s only involvement [with] UFOs, according to the CIA. A much protracted legal battle ensued and resulted in the ultimate release of nearly 900 pages of UFO-related documents...4

     In other words, after telling Ground Saucer Watch that it had no UFO files involving its study of the phenomenon, except for the previously declassified Robertson Panel Report, the CIA—once it had been subjected to legal pressure in federal district court—managed to find some 900 documents in its files, which it eventually released to GSW. (Researcher Jan Aldrich notes that prior to the GSW lawsuit, the CIA had listed a handful of UFO documents in its Declassification Index. Some of those documents were used in the lawsuit to ask the agency about other documents referenced in them.)

     Perhaps not surprisingly, at least not to me, a review of these 900 pages leaves one with the impression that, generally, the subject of UFOs was not one the CIA actively pursued, relative to its other intelligence-gathering and analytical activities. And this is precisely the impression the agency wished to convey. The documents included various internal memoranda, a few reports, some low-level files from friendly foreign intelligence services, and even newspaper clippings of UFO sightings overseas. In short, the picture portrayed by this rather paltry collection is that—from its creation in 1947, up to the late 1970s—the agency’s interest in the UFO phenomenon was, with rare exceptions, both peripheral and superficial.

     That said, there was among the files a memorandum, dated December 2, 1952, in which the Assistant Director of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, Dr. H. Marshall Chadwell, expressed concern about repeated UFO incursions into restricted airspace above various nuclear weapons-related facilities in the early 1950s. Because the memo does not explicitly identify the sites, referring to them only as “major U.S. defense installations”, it’s possible that the importance and sensitivity of the message was overlooked during the agency’s document declassification review.

     Regardless, once the memorandum was in the public domain, I began highlighting it’s significance during my presentations on the U.S. college lecture circuit. Interestingly, the memo is not available at the CIA’s website, if one searches for the agency’s declassified UFO documents. Perhaps someone eventually realized the apparent error in declassifying it years ago and quietly pulled it back into the shadows. (It will be recalled that the Defense Nuclear Agency once declassified the deck log of the U.S.S. Curtiss AV-4, during the period of the Operation Castle nuclear tests in the South Pacific, in the spring of 1954. One log entry from April 7th revealed that a UFO had silently buzzed the ship at low altitude. Once that revelation was publicized by researchers, the log mysteriously disappeared from the Department of Energy’s public archives.)

     In any case, on the whole, the documents released to Ground Saucer Watch in 1978 suggested that while the CIA had a moderate interest in the U.S. Air Force’s investigation of UFOs, they also seemed to rule out the agency’s involvement in any UFO investigations of its own. Nor was there any evidence to indicate that it had participated in formulating or directing government policies related to the suppression of UFO-related information—i.e. a cover-up. (Even though the CIA’s Robertson Panel Report, released years earlier, had advised implementing a covert program to “debunk” UFOs as a credible topic, using mass media to spread the message, and also recommended a government infiltration and spying operation against UFO research groups.)

     But the self-portrait of CIA non-involvement with UFOs, as painted for GSW, is highly misleading. As I wrote earlier in this book, “The selective declassification of UFO-related information by the U.S. government has been routinely utilized for decades to steer public perception in a certain direction. It’s commonly called ‘spin.’ The purpose of this propaganda tactic is to change the actual story of official interest in the UFO phenomenon, so that it appears as if there exists only minimal concern, or none at all.”

     In this particular instance, all of the documents grudgingly released by the CIA—after the agency initially denied their existence—were classified SECRET or lower. Not a single TOP SECRET, or above, UFO-related document held by the CIA was declassified. “Or above” simply means any file designated TOP SECRET/Code Word, thereby restricting access to it by those CIA employees who hold not only a Top Secret clearance, but who also have a need-to-know about the project or operation with that specific code name.

     One of those directly involved in the effort to access the CIA’s UFO documents, the late W. Todd Zechel, said that in the course of the legal action against the agency, Ground Saucer Watch’s attorney, Peter Gersten, had been informed by the CIA’s attorneys that some 10,000 pages of UFO-related documents been located. Although only an estimate, this number was nevertheless much higher—by a factor of ten—than the 1000 or so pages ultimately released to GSW. In an article written years later, Zechel described the unsatisfying outcome. Referring to himself in the third-person, he writes,

W. Todd Zechel [is the] founder of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) and [a] UFO researcher specializing in government cover-up. Zechel had initiated a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA in September 1977, in conjunction with Peter Gersten, a New York attorney, and Ground Saucer Watch, a Phoenix-based UFO group for which Zechel was Director of Research. In December 1978 the suit resulted in the CIA releasing more than a thousand documents it had claimed didn’t exist prior to the suit…

The CIA had been ordered to search all of its files for UFO-related documents and make a full accounting of them. This Stipulation and Order was in accordance with an agreement Zechel and Gersten had worked out with the CIA’s attorney and a U.S. Attorney at a Status Call hearing on the suit on July 7, 1978. It was then that Zechel had, in a rather forceful manner, threatened to have CIA officials criminally prosecuted for issuing false replies to FOIA requests on UFOs. Faced with this, the CIA had backed down and agreed to cooperate. However, subsequently the CIA only accounted for 1,000 documents and claimed to be withholding a mere 57...

Statements were made by CIA representatives during the course of the suit, [whereby] attorney Gersten was led to believe [that] in excess of 10,000 documents would be made available. There was also a letter to Zechel from the CIA’s FOIA staff asking him to suspend action on a particular request, stating, ‘1,000 pages of additional UFO related documents have just been located’ and were being processed.

It was also clear from analyzing the documents released on December 15, 1978, that the CIA was continuing to be deceptive. Brad Sparks, a researcher with CAUS, found references in the released material to more than 200 other UFO-related documents which the CIA had failed to acknowledge. Moreover, it was evident the CIA had carefully selected the documents it released, even with heavy censorship. The CIA only accounted for documents related to matters Zechel and Sparks had uncovered during their investigation of CIA involvement, and excluded many others such as conclusions of its emergency studies of UFOs in 1952, 1957, 1965, 1967, and others. These studies were carried out in secret, utilizing Domestic Contact Service (a.k.a. Domestic Collection Division) agents, during a number of UFO flaps and in conjunction with the Condon Committee study (1966-68).

A Missed Opportunity

In March 1979, after the CIA filed deceptive affidavits with the court about its purported search of files, Gersten set out to file an Order to Show Cause Why the CIA Should Not Be Held in Contempt of Court. The Show Cause order asked the court to penalize the CIA for failing to comply with the Stipulation and Order agreed to in 1978...

Zechel had [learned in the course of conversations with former agency employees that] the CIA had been conducting secret studies of UFOs since 1952, and perhaps even before that, and had utilized high-tech cameras, sensing devices and a nationwide field staff of agents who became covert operatives in 1973…

The Order to Show Cause was filed one day late and thrown out of court when the U.S. District Court judge upheld the CIA’s Out of Time motion. The CIA had been 88 days late with its filing, surpassing a 60 day extension by 28 days. But that mattered not to Judge John Pratt, whose rulings had been reversed five times in the past by higher courts for decisions unfairly favorable to the CIA...5

     So there the matter rested. Due to a legal technicality, there would be no appeal of the CIA’s very limited and apparently highly-selective release of UFO-related files. The first verifiable confirmation that the CIA did indeed have TOP SECRET or above UFO documents occurred in the early 1980s, after a subsequent legal action against the National Security Agency (NSA) by the group founded but no longer headed by Zechel, Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, revealed that the CIA had sent the NSA 23 UFO-related files over the years, some of them classified TOP SECRET/Code Word. In the mid-1980s, researcher Stanton Friedman used the FOIA to access four of them. He writes, “It took me two years to get nine of [the 23 documents]...They were unclassified English translations of Eastern European newspaper articles about UFOs. It took another three years in response to my appeal to get four more, [which were] very heavily censored CIA TOP SECRET/Code Word UFO documents. On two, one could read only eight words that weren’t blacked out. One said ‘DENY in TOTO!’”6

     In short, at the present time, there are for all practical purposes no CIA Top Secret or above UFO-related documents in the public domain. Moreover, there is no real assurance that the CIA actually released all of its SECRET or lesser-classified UFO documents in response to the GSW lawsuit. After all, the CIA initially lied to GSW’s attorney when it told him that the agency had no more UFO documents. Only when legal action was threatened did the CIA finally release a relatively small number of files (after its attorneys admitted that the agency had a much larger number) most of which were thoroughly innocuous. Even then, the agency continued to hide that fact that it had sent a number of TOP SECRET/Code Word UFO documents to the NSA. That fact was not uncovered until years later, and only after another lawsuit. And even then, when copies of those documents were finally released to Stanton Friedman, they were censored to the point of uselessness.

     Regarding the probable futility of another lawsuit against the CIA, UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee has written, “Both the CIA and later NSA lawsuits showed that the government could appeal to ‘national security’ to withhold documents. There was no reason to believe that the same excuses wouldn’t be used again to protect the ‘really good stuff’ we wanted. In other words, [the CIA] might locate some more, even many more, documents and simply refuse to release them all or in part for national security reasons...”7

     Regardless, in view of the agency’s documented track record of denial and obfuscation, should we the public really believe any official CIA pronouncement about its supposedly superficial and intermittent involvement with UFOs?

     This question gets right to the heart of the matter, as regards the nukes-related UFO incidents. In light of the extensive testimony provided by my ex-Air Force sources—regarding UFOs disrupting nuclear missiles or, worse, temporarily activating them—it seems a virtual certainty that the CIA would have been informed of these incidents, given their obvious and immediate impact on the national security of the United States.

     If this contention has merit, and in my view it does, the classification of such information would have been very high, at least SECRET and possibly higher, given its extraordinary sensitivity. I already know that after the Malmstrom AFB missile shutdown incidents in March 1967, the Air Force launch officers involved were debriefed and told that the incidents were classified SECRET. And that was just the initial classification level assigned to the shutdowns. It’s not out of the question that once the debriefing data were evaluated by higher-ups at SAC or the Pentagon, an even higher rating was assigned to the incidents. This last scenario, while admittedly speculative, is neither unreasonable nor unprecedented.

     Some will dispute my contention that the Air Force would have provided the CIA with information about UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites in the first place, either because it was strictly a military matter, or because of the now well-documented inter-governmental rivalries that existed during the Cold War era, which precluded the sharing of vital information on many occasions—often at the country’s expense. (For example the notorious CIA-FBI rivalry during J. Edgar Hoover’s long tenure at the bureau and, more recently, when the two intelligence groups failed to share important information about the Islamic terrorists involved in 9/11, before the attacks occurred.)

     However, considering the many nuclear weapons-related UFO incidents presented in this book—which clearly have national security implications in the most naked, fundamental manner—for one to argue that the CIA would have no documents relating to such events is to suggest one of two things:

1) Either the U.S. military successfully kept this monumentally-important information from the primary agency tasked with collating national security intelligence during the entire Cold War era.

2) Or the CIA—upon being informed about the apparent disruption or temporary activation of our nuclear missiles by those piloting the UFOs—simply shrugged and said, “That’s the military’s problem,” and thereafter circulated no SECRET or TOP SECRET memos about those incidents, and wrote no SECRET or TOP SECRET reports about them to be delivered to, for example, the President during his daily, highly-classified intelligence briefing prepared by the agency’s Directorate of Intelligence.

     While some might be able to accept one of these scenarios as credible, I simply cannot. Therefore, in my view, it is almost a given that SECRET and/or TOP SECRET documents relating to UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites continue to be held by the CIA. Needless to say, if such documents do indeed exist, they will not be available for public scrutiny anytime soon.

     In the interim, American citizens, and the rest of humanity, are left only with the tantalizing statements by two credible sources regarding the CIA’s direct involvement in at least one nuclear weapons-related UFO incident. As noted in an earlier chapter, former Air Force officers, Dr. Bob Jacobs and Dr. Florenze Mansmann, both adamantly insist that CIA agents confiscated an astounding motion picture film showing a UFO shooting down a dummy nuclear warhead with beams of light, during a missile test in September 1964—the so-called Big Sur Incident.

     Nothing in the 1000 or so documents released by the CIA in the late 1970s would indicate the agency’s involvement with, or even knowledge of, that extraordinary case. Nevertheless, the two officers at Vandenberg AFB who were directly involved unequivocally stand by their accounts of CIA intervention. According to then Major Mansmann, there was absolutely no doubt about who was in control, calling the shots, and impressing upon everyone present the importance of absolute secrecy. Mansmann has written that the incident was classified TOP SECRET. Therefore, presumably, the CIA has to have at least one TOP SECRET UFO case document, and the accompanying motion picture film, in its files. Efforts by researchers over the years to access the film have met with blanket denials from the agency about its existence.

     The important point here is that if the CIA’s official stance is factual—regarding its supposedly passive, or even non-role in the ongoing collection and simultaneous suppression of UFO data—then it should not have been interested in the Big Sur incident at all, deferring instead to the Air Force. But the former Air Force officers directly involved in the case continue to say otherwise. For example, in the early 1980s, Mansmann—after confirming in writing, on numerous occasions, former Lieutenant Jacobs’ published account of the UFO incident—also expressed concern about possible repercussions to himself from “the agency involved” in the confiscation of the film because of his willingness to substantiate Jacobs’ story.

     (When considering the CIA’s supposedly limited role in the UFO cover-up, one might also consider the statements of retired high-level FAA official John Callahan, who unequivocally states that a CIA agent confiscated radar tapes and voice communications data relating to the sighting of a huge UFO in Alaska in 1987 and angrily ordered that the incident be kept secret to prevent public panic.)

     In any case, the ongoing controversy among researchers, regarding the degree to which the CIA has been involved in monitoring—and perhaps even coordinating the government’s covert response to UFOs—is unlikely to be resolved in the near future.

     In 1994, the CIA authorized the publication of an official history of its involvement with UFOs, condensed into a 17-page article by the CIA’s own historian, Gerald K. Haines. The piece appeared in Studies in Intelligence, a classified journal accessible to members of the intelligence community. Titled, “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947–90,” it appeared in the unclassified edition of the journal in 1997.

     If Haines was not ordered to be intentionally disingenuous, it seems evident he was largely kept in the dark by his superiors at the agency, and was given a highly selective cross-section of files from which to construct his “history.” His article was probably intended as an exercise in spin. If so, it succeeded completely, if one reviews the generally uncritical, naïve, almost slavish acceptance by the U.S. media of Haines’ summation as something actually resembling reliable history.

     The sanitized version of history offered by the CIA’s in-house historian is a combination of old news—publicized long ago, at least within ufological circles—and patently ridiculous claims (e.g. CIA officials who worked on the U–2 and SR-71 spy plane projects claimed that over half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s through the 1960s were the result of manned reconnaissance flights over the United States.)

     Noted ufologist Mark Rodighier’s excellent critique of Haines’ article is available online.8 Rodighier is the Scientific Director for the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS) and, while I disagree with some of his assessments, he neatly dissects Haines’ own naiveté, personal unfamiliarity with the UFO phenomenon, and probably predictable face-value acceptance of the materials he was provided with by agency higher-ups to review. Needless to say, no Top Secret or above UFO-related documents were handed to Haines to include in his “history.” Rodeghier writes,

When the press learned about the Haines study, the attention was dramatic...The media generally focused on two aspects of the Haines article. In a brief section entitled ‘CIA’s U–2 and OXCART as UFOs,’ Haines claims that many UFO sightings in the late 1950s and 1960s were actually misidentified secret American spy planes. Moreover, he alleges that the Air Force’s Project Blue Book was in on this cover-up, purposely misled the public, and falsified (Haines didn’t use that word but that is plainly what the Air Force would be doing) UFO explanations. This is important news if true, and the media rightly played up this angle…Note that the CIA is not accused of deception by Haines; rather, it is the Air Force that willingly concocted the bogus explanations…

     Press coverage focused on the [CIA’s Robertson Panel’s] recommendations that UFO reports be debunked (a policy Blue Book followed assiduously after 1953), that UFO groups be watched, and that there was a danger the Soviets might use UFOs to clog the channels of communication and then launch a nuclear attack. The deception about our spy planes was just a small part of this strategy.9

     Not surprisingly, there is no mention of nuclear weapons-related UFO incidents in Haines’ CIA-authorized history, or any of the “very sensitive activities” involving UFOs alluded to by disaffected CIA official Victor Marchetti—in his far-more-cogent, if way-too-brief 1979 article on the agency’s actual, ongoing, deadly-serious interest in UFOs.

     Even if Marchetti had not resigned from the CIA in 1969, the agency would never have asked him to write a history of its involvement with UFOs. Unlike Gerald Haines, he would have undoubtedly asked too many questions regarding the highly-selective, very limited data he was given to peruse. (I can imagine old Victor asking, “So, guys, where are all of the TOP SECRET UFO documents?”) That said, perhaps Haines can be forgiven for the often misleading article he wrote. After all, he was never privy to the hushed discussions about UFOs that took place at the highest levels of the CIA—the ones later publicly alluded to by Marchetti.

     Speaking of official history versus actual history, another notable article by Marchetti, titled, “Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History”, was published by the Journal of Historical Review, in 2001. He writes,

The CIA is a master at distorting history—even creating its own version of history to suit its institutional and operational purposes...The real reason for the official secrecy, in most instances, is not to keep the opposition (the CIA’s euphemistic term for the enemy) from knowing what is going on; the enemy usually does know. The basic reason for governmental secrecy is to keep you, the American public, from knowing—for you, too, are considered the opposition, or enemy—so that you cannot interfere. When the public does not know what the government or the CIA is doing, it cannot voice its approval or disapproval of their actions. In fact, they can even lie to you about what they are doing or have done, and you will not know it...

The CIA, functioning as a secret instrument of the U.S. government and the presidency, has long misused and abused history and continues to do so. I first became concerned about this historical distortion in 1957, when I was a young officer in the Clandestine Services of the CIA.

One night, after work, I was walking down Constitution Avenue with a fellow officer, who previously had been a reporter for United Press.

‘How are they ever going to know,’ he asked.

‘Who? How is who ever going to know what?’ I asked.

‘How are the American people ever going to know what the truth is? How are they going to know what the truth is about what we are doing and have done over the years?’ he said. ‘We operate in secrecy, we deal in deception and disinformation, and then we burn our files. How will the historians ever be able to learn the complete truth about what we’ve done in these various operations, these operations that have had such a major impact on so many important events in history?’

I couldn’t answer him then. And I can’t answer him now. I don’t know how the American people will ever really know the truth about the many things that the CIA has been involved in. Or how they will ever know the truth about the great historical events of our times. The government is continually writing and rewriting history—often with the CIA’s help—to suit its own purposes...

If the public were aware of what the CIA is doing, it might say: ‘We don’t like what you’re doing—stop it!’ Or, ‘You’re not doing a good job—stop it!’ The public might ask for an accounting for the money being spent and the risks being taken.

Thus secrecy is absolutely vital to the CIA. Secrecy covers not only operations in progress, but continues after the operations, particularly if the operations have been botched. Then they have to be covered up with more lies, which the public, of course, can’t recognize as lies, allowing the CIA to tell the public whatever it wishes.

Presidents love this. Every president, no matter what he has said before getting into office, has been delighted to learn that the CIA is his own private tool. The presidents have leapt at the opportunity to keep Congress and the public in the dark about their employment of the agency.

This is what was at the basis of my book, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. I had come to the conclusion, as a member of the CIA, that many of our policies and practices were not in the best interests of the United States, but were in fact counterproductive, and that if the American people were aware of this they would not tolerate it...10

     Marchetti was obviously ahead of the curve in exposing CIA abuses and follies, as the public now knows. Over the last few decades, other former intelligence agency employees and government officials have come forward to decry the agency’s questionable policies and practices which clearly deserve public scrutiny and greater congressional oversight. While no ex-CIA official has yet elaborated—at least candidly and at length—on Marchetti’s intriguing comments regarding the agency’s involvement with UFOs, other persons with CIA contacts have.

     W. Todd Zechel, perhaps the person most responsible for the release of the relatively few CIA UFO documents currently available, died in 2006. In one of his last published articles, he summarized his 30-year investigation of the agency’s involvement with the UFO phenomenon.

     Zechel’s history, although unofficial and incomplete, is almost certainly closer to the truth than anything offered by the agency itself. He wrote in part,

Although the United States Air Force (USAF) has been a great deal less than candid and forthright about UFOs over the years, especially in view of the fact the Air Force is charged with defending the country’s air space, it appears that it was the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which orchestrated a policy of deception in order to prevent the American people from learning the truth about UFOs.

A formerly SECRET report (the so-called Robertson Panel Report) released under the Freedom of Information Act shows that CIA officials and consultants thought people seeing and reporting UFOs was more dangerous than UFOs themselves, stating, ‘the continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena (UFOs) does, in these perilous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic.’

Another ‘danger’ cited by the CIA panel was that acknowledging UFOs could result in ‘...the cultivation of a morbid national psychology in which hostile propaganda could induce hysterical behavior and a harmful distrust of duly constituted authority.’ To counter these supposed dangers, the CIA panel recommended a policy of ‘debunking’ and education designed to persuade people that what they were seeing really wasn’t there.

In explaining how this psychological warfare against the American people should be carried out, the report stated: ‘The debunking aim would result in reduction of public interest in ‘flying saucers’ which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures and popular articles.’

The panel had further ideas on how what was essentially a disinformation program should be mounted, stating: ‘It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program.’ The report went on to name certain psychologists who might be recruited to join the debunking project.

The formation of the CIA panel came about as a sort of compromise worked out by the National Security Council (NSC) after events in the summer of 1952. A major UFO flap had taken place across the country, highlighted by puzzling incidents in July 1952, when UFO intruders were simultaneously tracked on ground radar and observed by jet interceptor pilots over the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. The public, the press, and even President Harry Truman demanded to know what was going on. As a result, the US Air Force held a major press conference on July 29, 1952, the largest press conference since WW II, at which it was suggested the UFOs were temperature inversions—layers of warm air trapped under cold air that, by some giant stretch of the Air Force’s imagination, were tracked on radar and seen as maneuvering flying craft by pilots sent aloft on scramble alert.

In August 1952, as documents released as the result of the FOIA suit filed by the author confirm, the CIA began reviewing the Air Force’s handling of UFOs. Ransom Eng, an official with the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, wrote a report in which he characterized the Air Force’s efforts as ‘scientifically invalid.’ Armed with these criticisms, the CIA wanted to take charge of UFO intelligence (the collection and analysis of UFO evidence), and proposed, through CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith, that UFOs were much too serious of a matter to be left in the hands of the USAF. The National Security Council, however, would only approve a compromise whereby a CIA-appointed panel would review UFO reports provided by the Air Force to determine if UFOs were a ‘direct, hostile threat to national security.’

...In January 1953 the CIA’s Robertson Panel—mostly consulting scientists of the CIA’s chosen to review the UFO evidence selected by the USAF—rejected the conclusions of the U.S. government’s top photo analysts from the Naval Photographic Interpretation Center (NAVPIC), at Anacostia, Maryland, Capt. Arthur Lundahl and Lt. Robert Neasham, who had concluded the objects in two 8mm UFO films submitted to the Air Force and examined by the CIA Panel were extraterrestrial spacecraft. Both men were reportedly emotionally shattered by the Panel’s rejection of their studied conclusions.

But within a matter of days, Lundahl and Neasham were invited by the CIA to resign their Navy officers’ commissions and come over to the CIA as civilians and establish the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) at 5th and K Streets in Washington, D.C., with Lundahl serving as the founding Director for the next twenty years and Neasham as his top assistant...

The mastermind of what was to become the U.S. government’s UFO policy and author of the CIA’s Robertson Panel Report, which found that UFOs did not pose ‘a direct, hostile threat to National Security,’ was Fred Durant, an officer with the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) who at the time was operating under the cover of being a civilian scientist employed by the Arthur Little Co. In fact, in August 1952, Durant, claiming to represent a small group of ‘concerned scientists’ (actually CIA officers) had approached USAF Captain Ed Ruppelt, Commanding Officer of the Air Force’s UFO ‘study,’ Project Blue Book, and USAF Major Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon’s liaison to Blue Book. Most revealingly, the CIA had found it necessary to spy on the Air Force in order to find out what it had collected on UFOs, and Fred Durant had been the perfect man for the secret mission...

The CIA Takes Control

The U.S. Air Force (USAF) began collecting UFO data in mid-1947, shortly after the first civilian sightings of ‘flying saucers’ were reported. The initial study was code-named Project Sign. This was changed to Project Grudge in 1948. In December 1949 the Air Force issued a ‘Grudge’ report in an attempt to have saucer sightings dismissed as post-war or Cold War jitters, then closed down the official study program. However, in early 1951, the Commanding General of Air Force Intelligence at the Pentagon, Gen. Charles P. Cabell, secretly requested UFO studies to be reopened, and in 1952 the revitalized UFO study was assigned the code-name Project Blue Book. [Its formal name was] the Aerial Phenomena Group of the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio. Air Force Intelligence at the Pentagon designated a senior officer to be liaison to Project Blue Book.

After the fiasco of July 1952, in which the USAF ‘suggested’ at a major press conference that the multiple UFO chases involving jet interceptors after the UFOs were tracked on ground radar were just ‘temperature inversions’ and the shameful American newspapers ran screaming headlines that (uncritically) proclaimed ‘AIR FORCE DEBUNKS UFOS AS JUST NATURAL PHENOMENA,’ the CIA tried to grab control over UFO intelligence away from what it perceived as an irresponsible USAF. But the National Security Council wasn’t willing to embarrass the Air Force by taking away [its authority to investigate] the UFO problem.

The next big UFO flap started in early November 1957, when landed UFOs as large as 200 feet in diameter were observed near Levelland, Texas, by credible witnesses, including law enforcement officers. After a quick visit, an Air Force Intelligence officer [sic] dismissed the incidents as resulting from ‘ball lightning.’ This absurd explanation angered the local Texas residents and witnesses, many of whom held responsible positions in local government. Powerful U.S. Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-Tex), then Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, was contacted by the outraged Texas citizens from Levelland, and he asked the CIA to conduct a secret investigation, since it was clear the USAF was dropping the ball and just trying to protect its own ass. At one point, in November 1957, CIA Director Allen Dulles phoned Dr. Knox Milsap, then the Chief Scientist at White Sands Missile Range, in New Mexico, at 4 A.M. (local time), to request an investigation of a reported (to the CIA) UFO landing in the nearby Organ Mountains. According to Dulles, a civilian had reportedly snapped photos of the landed UFO and the CIA had an urgent need to obtain the photos for its emergency study.

As part of the November 1957 emergency UFO study, the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) ‘levied a requirement’ (sent out an order) to the CIA’s Domestic Contact Service (DCS), which had offices in 35 to 40 larger cities across America. The Domestic Contact Service was part of the CIA’s Intelligence Directorate (DDI), and agents would normally show CIA IDs and say they were collecting intelligence for the CIA. (As opposed to the CIA’s Directorate of Plans—DDP—which was the clandestine or covert branch and utilized ‘back-stopped’ covers provided by the Central Cover Staff.)

After its emergency study, CIA officials once again came to the conclusion the Air Force was arbitrarily and capriciously explaining away UFO reports that might have important scientific or intelligence value. With Senator Lyndon Johnson’s support, the CIA again proposed to the National Security Council that it be given control of UFO studies.

This time the NSC secretly concurred, reportedly issuing an intelligence directive (NSCID) in early 1958, granting control of all scientific intelligence—which included the collection and analysis of UFO data—to the Central Intelligence Agency. The USAF was in turn relegated to the control of technical Intelligence, such as the collection and analysis of data pertaining to aircraft advances by the Soviet Union.

Although the Air Force continued to operate Project Blue Book until it was disbanded in 1969, Blue Book was not in the loop for classified intelligence reports on UFOs that were originated under JANAP 146E or CIRVIS reporting instructions for American defense forces, whereas the CIA was a primary recipient of such messages and reports...11

     In other words, according to Todd Zechel, the CIA has been running the show since 1958, at least as far as the collection and analysis of scientific intelligence on UFOs is concerned.

     (Researcher Jan Aldrich disputes Zechel’s unequivocal statement regarding Blue Book being out of the loop for intelligence reports originated under JANAP 146E or CIRVIS, saying, “Project Blue Book did receive a large number of CIRVIS and MERINT reports. Maybe they didn’t receive all such reports, but Blue Book and the 4602d AISS have such reports in their files.”12 CIRVIS reports dealt with airborne UFO sightings by military pilots; MERINT reports related to sightings by U.S. Naval personnel.)

     Zechel’s research into the CIA’s covert, UFO-related activities was often augmented by information gleaned from former agency insiders with whom he had developed something vaguely resembling personal relationships. During several visits with him in the 1980s, he provided me with a great many details—far more than I can present here—relating to various conversations he had with those persons.

     To be entirely candid, Zechel audio taped most of those discussions without the other person’s knowledge. His view was that the importance of the information he was gathering outweighed the legal and moral questions surrounding the surreptitious recording of other persons without their prior consent. I am in no way defending or justifying Todd’s actions here; I am simply stating facts.

     Nevertheless, Zechel’s investigations into the extent of the CIA’s actual involvement with UFOs are considered to be without peer by many researchers, including myself. While he was never able to mount a follow-up lawsuit against the agency—in an effort to force the release of the CIA’s TOP SECRET UFO documents—Todd’s initial work in the late 1970s (together with researcher Brad Sparks and attorney Peter Gersten) was a milestone of sorts, and remains a testament to one American citizen’s attempt to learn what his government was hiding from the public on this monumentally-important subject.

     In my view, Zechel’s research convincingly paints a picture of CIA involvement in the collection and analysis of UFO data which is clearly at odds with the official portrait offered by the agency itself. While the CIA’s carefully-reinforced public image is one of occasional agency concern over certain UFO sighting reports—all of them occurring long ago, of course—and involvement in a few low-level studies, Zechel’s work has revealed a much broader and far more authoritative CIA role in the official U.S. government cover-up of UFOs.

REFERENCES:

1. Marchetti, Victor. “How the CIA views the UFO Phenomenon”, Second Look, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 1979

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Greenwood, Barry and Fawcett, Lawrence. Clear Intent: The Government Cover-up of the UFO Experience, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1984, pp. 112-13

5. http://textfiles.vistech.net/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2535.ufo

6. http://www.v-jenterprises.com/sf-government-lies3.html

7. http://textfiles.vistech.net/ufo/UFOBBS/2000/2535.ufo

8. http://www.cufos.org/IUR_article3.html

9. Ibid.

10. Marchetti, Victor. “Propaganda and Disinformation: How the CIA Manufactures History”, Journal of Historical Review, Vol.20. No.1, 2001

11. https://web.archive.org/web/20080703175448/http://www.eyepod.org/invstgtr-Zechel.html
12. Jan Aldrich to Robert Hastings, personal communication, May 28, 2008

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Ex-CIA Official Says Stories of Crashed UFOs and Little Gray Men “on Ice” Discussed at a High-Level

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Ex-CIA Official Says Stories of Crashed UFOs and Little Gray Men “on Ice” Discussed at a High-Level

By Robert Hastings www.ufohastings.com 2-28-15

     First, this article has absolutely nothing to do with the bogus claims currently being made by the promoters of the so-called Roswell Slides, which allegedly show the body of a dead alien. (I predict that this latest, regrettable chapter in ufological history will implode in the near future.)

No, my title refers to a far more credible revelation. Although Victor Marchetti, the former Special Assistant to CIA Director Richard Helms, first published intriguing information relating to high-level discussion of recovered UFOs and dead aliens in 1979, in an article published in Second Look magazine, most people are completely unaware of it.

Indeed, an online search for the piece, titled “How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon”, yields very few results. While the Internet provides access to vast numbers of UFO-related documents, books, articles and blogs, one of the most important pieces ever written on the topic, authored by a knowledgeable government insider, has been almost completely overlooked.

Interestingly, when I attempted to post Marchetti’s informed disclosures at a popular blog operated by journalist Billy Cox, my comments and link to the article disappeared into the cybervoid. Repeated attempts met the same fate and, when I subsequently asked Cox to post them for me, he encountered the same problem.

Cox later told me, “I managed to get your post on my blog just now, but it took some doing. When I tried to do it normally, by putting your name and email address in the cue fields, it simply wouldn’t post; I kept getting a message saying it had already been posted, which obviously it had not. And of course when I try to reply to your messages lately, it bounces back as undeliverable. I wound up having to publish it under my name, then going in behind the post and replacing my name/address with yours. Very strange, Robert.”

I told Cox one might argue that efforts had been undertaken, by an unknown party, to block Marchetti’s revelations from being made more accessible online. Lest this charge seem too paranoid, I added that I had often had to endure such anomalies when attempting to communicate with my ex-military sources regarding their involvement in UFO incidents at nuclear weapons sites.

Furthermore, my attempts over the years to post those individuals’ disclosures at various blogs had frequently encountered the same sort of disconnects. Nevertheless, some of those dramatic revelations—involving UFOs shutting down American nuclear missiles—were livestreamed by CNN during my 2010 press conference in Washington D.C.:

In any case, Marchetti’s lengthy article contains important information about the CIA’s secret involvement, as well as its self-proclaimed non-involvement, with the UFO phenomenon. He writes, “I do know that the CIA and U.S. Government have been concerned over the UFO phenomenon for many years and that their attempts, both past and recent, to discount the significance of the phenomenon and to explain away the apparent lack of official interest in it have all the earmarkings of a classic intelligence cover-up.”

To give you a sense of the author’s importance, the agency once took Marchetti all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, to attempt to stop the publication of his tome, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, which subsequently became a best-seller in 1974. The disenchanted agency man had resigned from the CIA in 1969; his book was an unprecedented, historic exposé of his former employer’s numerous illegal activities—including spying on Americans, something forbidden by its charter—many of which were later investigated by Congress.

In short, Marchetti was especially dangerous to CIA simply because he knew so much about its operations, legal or not, and was willing to divulge them to the world as a hoped-for partial antidote.

While this same informed-observer status and careful, thoughtful analysis underpins Marchetti’s revelations about the agency’s relationship to UFOs, it must be remembered that CIA’s approach to all subjects is the use of compartmentalization, whereby any given individual’s knowledge is usually limited to one small part of a project or operation, to keep an overall understanding of the situation restricted to a very few high-level managers. The same was/is true with UFOs and, therefore, Marchetti can only report on what he personally knew, given that he was not involved with the agency’s apparent UFO projects/operations and had no need-to-know about them.

Nevertheless, his published comments are noteworthy. He writes:

During my years in the CIA, UFOs were not a subject of common discussion. But neither were they treated in a disdainful or derisive manner, especially not by the agency’s scientists. Instead, the topic was rarely discussed at internal meetings. It seemed to fall into the category of ‘very sensitive activities’...People simply did not talk about the UFO phenomenon.

There were, however, rumors at high levels of the CIA—rumors of...little gray men whose ships had crashed, or had been shot down, being kept ‘on ice’ by the Air Force at FTD (the Foreign Technology Division) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.¹

Please note that Marchetti used the word “rumors”. Again, this is the result of his own non-involvement in whatever “very sensitive activities” CIA had going on relating to the UFO phenomenon. Consequently, whatever information Marchetti was privy to resulted from informal and undoubtedly unauthorized chitchat he had encountered in the corridors of CIA headquarters.

But if stories of crashed UFOs and the bodies of the crews being kept in cold storage were being discussed at “high levels” within the agency, one can infer that those rumors were taken seriously. One might also speculate that information about all of this had been secured by CIA agents, probably by spying on the U.S. Air Force.

One important aspect of Marchetti’s revelation is the timing of the discussion at CIA. Marchetti resigned in 1969, nearly a decade prior to the seminal disclosures by retired U.S. Army counterintelligence officer Jesse Marcel who, during a television interview in 1978, divulged that he had held in his hands wreckage from a craft “not of this Earth” that had crashed northwest of Roswell Army Air Field in July 1947.

Confirmation of this event originates with another credible person, USAF Brigadier General Arthur E. Exon, who has stated for the record that one or more plane-loads of that wreckage did indeed arrive at Wright Field (later renamed Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) shortly thereafter and was subjected to intense analysis by aeronautical engineers. During an audiotaped interview with Roswell researcher Dr. Kevin D. Randle, in 1990, Exon said:

...They knew they had something new in their hands. The metal and material was unknown to [everyone] I talked to. Whatever they found, I never heard what the [analytical] results were. A couple of guys thought it might be Russian, but the overall consensus was that the pieces were from space. Everyone from the White House on down knew that what we had found was not of this world within 24 hours of our finding it…Roswell was the recovery of a craft from space.²

All of Exon’s published comments regarding the matter may be read at roswellproof.homestead.com/exon.html.

A number of UFO debunkers have claimed that the Roswell UFO crash story is a “modern myth” that originated as a result of public fascination with the writings of Stanton Friedman, Bill Moore, and others in the 1979-80 time-frame, which incorporated Marcel’s candid remarks about his involvement in the discovery of the mysterious wreckage in 1947.

However, in light of Marchetti’s revelations, this simply cannot be true. Given his resignation from CIA in 1969, he had to have heard those high level “rumors” about crashed UFOs and dead aliens stored at Wright-Patterson prior to that time.

In his article, Marchetti theorizes that the primary reason underlying the U.S. government’s refusal to acknowledge the reality of UFOs, if indeed the craft are piloted by alien beings, results from its fear that existing power structures would be fundamentally undermined by such an admission. He writes:

...the U.S. Government, in collusion with other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public. The purpose of the international conspiracy is to maintain a workable stability among the nations of the world and for them, in turn, to retain institutional control over their respective populations. Thus, for these governments to admit there are beings from outer space attempting to contact us, beings with mentalities and technological capabilities obviously far superior to ours, could, once fully perceived by the average person, erode the foundations of the Earth's traditional power structure. Political and legal systems, religions, economic and social institutions could all soon become meaningless in the mind of the public. The national oligarchical establishments, even civilization as we know it, could collapse into anarchy. Such extreme conclusions are not necessarily valid, but they probably accurately reflect the fears of the "ruling class" of the major nations, whose leaders (particularly those in the intelligence business) have always advocated excessive governmental secrecy as being necessary to preserve "national security." The real reason for such secrecy is, of course, to keep the public uninformed, misinformed, and, therefore, malleable.³

Given that so much information, misinformation, disinformation, speculation, and general bullshit about UFOs is available on the Internet, one must of necessity carefully choose which material to ingest. Marchetti’s unique, informed, credible perspective should be added to the short list of must-reads.

References:

1. Marchetti, Victor, "How The CIA Views The UFO Phenomenon", Second Look, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 1979

2. Randle, Dr. Kevin D., Roswell UFO Crash Update: Exploring the Military Cover-up of the Century, Inner Light - Global Communications, February 1995

3. Marchetti, Victor, "How The CIA Views The UFO Phenomenon", Second Look, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 1979

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Retro Friday: a blast from the past

By Billy Cox De Void 2-20-15

Whistleblower Victor Marchetti charged the 'Clandestine Services' branch of the CIA with responsibility for keeping tabs on global UFO events/CREDIT: phil-mershon.blogspot.com

Before blowing the whistle on America's illegal covert Cold War activities, Victor Marchetti was a 14-year CIA veteran ultimately promoted to executive assistant to The Agency's Deputy Director. After resigning in 1969, he wrote two exposes -- 1971's The Rope Dancer, and The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence in 1974. The latter, which the federal government attempted to ban from publication, was among the many slings and arrows contributing to the formation of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings in 1975.

In 1979, Marchetti stoked yet another controversy by providing a rare if not largely speculative glimpse into the mindset of The Agency's uneasy relationship with The Great Taboo. Titled "How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon," Marchetti's magazine piece took a cautious approach. "The topic was rarely discussed at internal meetings," he wrote. "It seemed to fall into the category of 'very sensitive activities,' e.g., drug and mind-control operations, domestic spying, and other illegal actions. People simply did not talk about the UFO phenomenon."

Thanks to an assist from UFOs and Nukes author Robert Hastings, De Void is posting the article in its entirely. It's a lengthy piece -- you probably won't have time to read it at your work desk. But it's worth your time to see how little has changed, even with nearly 36 years worth of additional data, the collapse of the USSR, and allegations of buried UFO material from yet another former CIA operator three years ago.

How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon

By Victor Marchetti
SECOND LOOK
Vol. 1, No. 7
May 1979

     There are many myths, few facts, and much speculation about what the CIA knows of the UFO phenomenon. These, combined with the public's distrust of the clandestine agency, have led to a strong popular belief that the CIA is at the center of a government-wide conspiracy to cover-up the truth about UFOs. It usually follows that the cover-up is designed to keep us ignorant, or at least confused and doubtful, about contacts or visitations by intelligent beings from outer space. Thus, if we only knew what the CIA knows, and is covering up, we would be better able to understand and deal with aliens. And that would be a good thing. I do not know from my own firsthand experience if there are UFOs. I have never seen one. Nor have I seen conclusive, empirical, or physical evidence that they really exist. But, I do know that the CIA and U.S. Government have been concerned over the UFO phenomenon for many years and that their attempts, both past and recent, to discount the significance of the phenomenon and to explain away the apparent lack of official interest in it have all the earmarkings of a classic intelligence cover-up. My theory is that we have, indeed, been contacted--perhaps even visited-- by extraterrestrial beings, and that the U.S. Government, in collusion with other national powers of the Earth, is determined to keep this information from the general public. The purpose of the international conspiracy is to maintain a workable stability among the nations of the world and for them, in turn, to retain institutional control over their respective populations. Thus, for these governments to admit there are beings from outer space attempting to contact us, beings with mentalities and technological capabilities obviously far superior to ours, could, once fully perceived by the average person, erode the foundations of the Earth's traditional power structure. Political and legal systems, religions, economic and social institutions could all soon become meaningless in the mind of the public. The national oligarchical establishments, even civilization as we know it, could collapse into anarchy. Such extreme conclusions are not necessarily valid, but they probably accurately reflect the fears of the “ruling class” of the major nations, whose leaders (particularly those in the intelligence business) have always advocated excessive governmental secrecy as being necessary to preserve "national security." The real reason for such secrecy is, of course, to keep the public uninformed, misinformed, and, therefore, malleable. During my years in the CIA, UFOs were not a subject of common discussion. But neither were they treated in a disdainful or derisive manner, especially not by the agency's scientists. Instead, the topic was rarely discussed at internal meetings. It seemed to fall into the category of “very sensitive activities”, e.g., drug and mind-control operations, domestic spying, and other illegal actions. People simply did not talk about the UFO phenomenon. There were, however, rumors at high levels of the CIA.....rumors of unexplained sightings by qualified observers, of strange signals being received by the National Security Agency (the US Government's electronic intercept and communications intelligence collector), and even of little gray men whose ships had crashed, or had been shot down, being kept "on ice" by the Air Force at FTD (Foreign Technology Division) at Wright- Patterson AF Base in Dayton, Ohio. And there was the odd case of the lady from Maine who, while in a hypnotic trance, had allegedly communicated with a starship. Most of these rumors, I found to be unimpressive—except for the strange signals from outer space being received by NSA. Perhaps that was because I had once been an NSA officer. Or perhaps it was because I had frequent contact with that agency while serving with the CIA, and the little I learned of the signals was treated with extreme caution even by SIGINT standards. But let us assume that there have been contacts by intelligent beings from beyond the Earth. How would the CIA and US Government respond to such a phenomenon? The first order of business would be to determine whether UFOs were secret weapons of the Soviet Union or some other foreign nation. The task of coordinating this program would be given to the CIA because it is the President's personal intelligence organization and the nation's only non- departmental, or independent, intelligence component. As such, it is charged, among other things, with performing "services of common concern" which relate to "intelligence affecting the national security." However, the military intelligence services, NSA, and other agencies and departments would also participate in the collection and analytical efforts under the program. If it were concluded that UFOs were not of terrestrial origin but, rather, vehicles from outer space, the next step would be to assess their weaponry capabilities and the intentions of the aliens controlling the ships. At this point, the CIA and US Government, aware that the phenomenon was of a worldwide nature, would seek cooperation in the investigation from the Earth's other technically advanced nations, such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and even the USSR. The CIA would function as the US Government's agent, just as the KGB would be the USSR's, MI-6 would be the UK's, and so on. These agencies, in addition to specializing in secrecy and deceit, are quite accustomed to cooperating with each other on matters of mutual interest. Cooperation in the intelligence business is not restricted to allies. There are times when the CIA and KGB have found it advantageous to work together. One example is the production and publication of Khrushchev Remembers, the "memoirs" of the former Soviet leader--a ruse on the public which is actively being continued to this day. Furthermore, both the CIA and KGB sometimes "declare," i.e. identify, their officers to each other in order to facilitate the smooth functioning of clandestine intelligence activities. Even the famous U-2 program was conducted with mutual understanding --until the Soviets shot down Francis Gary Powers. According to the Chief of the CIA's Clandestine Services it was an example of two hostile governments collaborating to keep operations secret from general public of both nations. "Unfortunately, there aren't enough of these situations," he said. But before full cooperation on the UFO phenomena was achieved, there might be a period of suspicion and perhaps competition, each government hoping to gain some advantage over the others through the use of aliens and their superior scientific knowledge. It would soon, however, become apparent to all the nations involved that this was not feasible and that the UFO phenomenon was a common problem. Thus, cooperation, secret cooperation, would become a fact. Later, after further study, if it were judged that UFOs were harmless, perhaps even unarmed, vehicles from outer space controlled by aliens seeking merely to observe the Earth and its peculiar inhabitants....like so many galactic Jane Goodall's studying chimps in their native environment....and, therefore, presented no direct, hostile threat to the Earth's power structure, then another collective decision would have to be made. Should the public be told the full and true story of the phenomenon ? It is unlikely, for the reasons mentioned earlier, that any government aware of the UFO facts would deem it necessary or wise to inform its people of the truth. Governments prefer an ignorant and gullible public because an unknowing public is much more easily manipulated. In fact, that is one of the major reasons for so much governmental secrecy and official disinformation. Once the international cover-up had been decided, the CIA and US Government would act pretty much the way they have with regard to the UFO phenomenon. There would be a prestigious scientific group (the Robertson Panel) convened to declare that UFOs were no threat to the national security. The fact that the panel's conclusions were not immediately made public is of no great consequence. Here, the primary consideration would be to turn off the speculation brewing among the military, bureaucrats, and other secondary levels (including the US Congress) of the governmental apparatus. The information would eventually filter down to the news media and public. But, because of the intensity of public curiosity, a formal investigation (Project Blue Book) would be launched, after a couple of false starts. And when public interest continued to build, another scientific panel (the Condon Group) was assembled to assure us that there were no such things as UFOs. With that accomplished the US Government--the Earth's spokesman on the issue--could call off all further official investigations, slamming the lid of secrecy on the problem. But despite governmental proclamations, the sightings--often by astronauts, professional pilots, and even prospective presidents--have continued. Public pressure is again building for an honest, authoritative explanation of UFOs. Of all the evidence that exist with regard to UFOs, the single, most impressive item (to my mind) is the Jimmy Carter experience. One night in Georgia in 1973, the man who was destined to become the President of the US and his son, Jeff, saw what they believed to be a UFO. Three years later when campaigning for the presidency , Carter promised to make "every piece of information the country has about UFOs available to the public." He never fulfilled that pledge. Nor has he ever again spoken out publicly on the subject. Meanwhile, his White House staff has parried all queries on the matter and both his Director of NASA, Robert Frosch, and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, have officially dismissed the UFO phenomenon as nothing more than something that exists only in the public's imagination. This sequence of events can mean only one of three things. What Jimmy Carter saw in 1973 was:

• A) a reflection of a physical event which has since been explained to him:

• B) the testing of a secret weapon to which he is now privy, but for reasons of "national security" it is still a secret: or

• C) a UFO.

If what President Carter saw falls into category "a," there is no reason why he could not publicly say so. As presidents go, he has been relatively humble and honest on other matters of personal embarrassment. If it falls into category "b," there is again no reason why he should not admit to the fact. There is no way that such a weapon system could possibly still be a secret from the Soviets. But if what he saw was a UFO--and there is a secret international agreement among the great powers to withhold this information from the people--then Mr. Carter would act exactly the way he has. He is neither smart enough nor tough enough to override the pressures of the Establishment. Thus, the CIA would be called upon once again. This time to release to the public all the information it has regarding the UFO phenomenon.....after, of course, the usual and long ritualistic procedures of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. We can safely assume, however, that the CIA would not disclose everything it knows or that it would reveal any data it believes would not advance the UFO cover-up. The CIA, like other intelligence organization, has little respect for the public's right to know. It is an attitude they all consistently display. Ironically, however, among the vast body of circumstantial evidence pointing to the existence of UFOs or contacts from outer space, the FOIA documents recently provided by the CIA have done more to make the public suspect there is an official conspiracy than any of the recent sightings or reports of encounters. In fact, the entire FOIA exercise has the same aroma of the agency's previous messy efforts to hide its involvement in drugs and mind-control operations, both prime examples of a successful intelligence cover-up. The CIA, under the scrutiny of Congress, admitted only to experiments and a few operational indiscretions which occurred mostly in the 1950's and 60's. There was little or no disclosure of the full operational use of drugs and mind control techniques. The stratagem employed by the agency was, as it is known in the business, a "limited hangout," i.e., admitting to a few past errors then declaring the program has ended and, therefore, there is nothing else to tell. With that, all investigations come to a halt. The FOIA/UFO exercise is stained with the same telltale spottiness. Furthermore, the conduct and conclusions of the Robertson Panel (1953) and the Colorado Group (1969) are suspiciously similar to those concerning another great mystery--the JFK assassination. The findings of the Warren Commission in 1964 and, for all practical purposes, those of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978/9) differ from the UFO studies only in that the former sought to promote a "lone nut killer" hypothesis while the latter offered a "multiple nut believer" explanation. Regardless of its shortcomings, the recently released CIA information does, however, tell us something...perhaps more than the government thinks. From the very beginning in 1947, the CIA closely monitored UFO reports on a worldwide basis. Although most of the FOIA documents indicate only a routine interest in the problem which was handled largely by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. Foreign Documents Division, and the Domestic Contact Service--all innocuous, non-clandestine collection units--they also disclose by inference a standing requirement of the Directorate of Science and Technology for gathering UFO data. This, in turn, indicates other collection components, namely the Clandestine Services, the CIA's main directorate, was tasked with providing information from all over the world on the UFO phenomenon. However, few such reports were released--and that implies a cover-up ! By 1953, the US Government, acting through the CIA and using the vehicle of the Robertson Panel, had clearly decided to cap the persistent public rumors of UFO sightings and extraterrestrial contacts. The panel concluded that UFOs were not a direct or hostile threat to national security but that continued emphasis of the phenomenon could clog the communication channels of the establishment or cultivate a morbid national psychology which enemy propaganda might exploit. For good measure, the panel recommended that the public should be "educated" to recognize real hostile actions against the nation and the UFOs be stripped of their "mysterious aura." Very nifty. The tone and timing of the Robertson Panel were almost perfect. In early 1953, the nation was preoccupied with the Korean War in particular and the Cold War in general. Stalin was not yet dead. There were almost daily confrontations with Communists somewhere in the world. A new terror weapon had just been introduced into the arms race--the hydrogen bomb. General Curtis LeMay of the Strategic Air Command was warning of the "bomber gap." And Senator Joe McCarthy was scaring the bejesus out of everybody in Washington, including the CIA. Furthermore, there was no self-respecting accredited scientist prepared to risk his reputation by challenging the government's position on UFOs. Thus, the Robertson Panel provided an excellent opportunity to sweep the phenomenon under the rug of official secrecy. There is one other thing about the Robertson Panel that has always puzzled me. Nowhere in its report does the panel deny the existence of UFOs. The panel only addresses the question of UFOs as a "possible threat to national security" and concludes there is no direct evidence indicating such a threat. Could it be that the evidence showed that UFOs did exist, but the data revealed that the extraterrestrial contacts were of a benign nature, i.e., there were no "foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts" and, therefore no "direct physical threat to national security?" After the Robertson Panel, there was a curious development. The CIA, according to the FOIA documents, apparently faded into the background. The Air Force assumed responsibility for the UFO problem and initiated a series of reviews culminating in Project Blue Book and the Condon's Colorado Study. But the CIA continued "unofficially" to follow developments concerning the phenomenon...and to display an uneasy, overly cautious, even defensive attitude toward outside curiosity about its UFO work. In fact, during the preparation of the Condon Panel's report, the CIA reacted so skittishly in providing aid to the panel that one can only wonder if the agency was attempting to hide something from the Air Force.....not an unusual occurrence in the inter-tribal relations of the US intelligence community. The performance is reminiscent of how the CIA responded to the first public revelations that it was deeply involved in illegal drug and domestic spying operations. In December 1969, the findings of the Condon Panel were made public by the Department of Defense. Again, it was concluded that UFOs were no threat to national security, and we were given the added assurance that those sightings (roughly one-half of one percent) categorized as "unidentified" evidenced no technical capabilities beyond our scientific knowledge. A rather odd commentary. In addition, the panel stated there was no evidence that UFO sightings (not contacts or signals) represented extraterrestrial visitations. A flat statement that was supported by no empirical evidence.....only the panel's opinion. Were the panelists again begging the question? With the release of the Condon Report, Project Blue Book was canceled, and the Air Force, like the CIA , seemed to drop out of the UFO business. The timing of the Condon Report, like that of the Robertson Panel, was, to say the least, interesting. We were fighting--and losing--a war in Vietnam. There was severe domestic turmoil caused by the civil rights and peace movements. Again, the nation was not, at the time, much concerned with UFOs. Perhaps that is why the government opted for a flat denial. It was another excellent chance to stop all the speculation about UFOs and to further sweep the phenomenon under the rug of official secrecy. But ten years have gone by since the Air Force allegedly closed its UFO shop and more than fifteen years since the CIA claims to have lost interest in the subject. The sightings and contacts, however, continue --not only by questionable sources. Even the President of the United States thinks he saw a UFO. Thus, we are left with five possible conclusions.

ONE: The US Government is trying to keep certain super weapon systems secret from the Soviets. In this age of advanced electronic, photographic, and other intelligence sensors, when the testing of a new system begins by any nation, the other participants in the geopolitical game soon learn of it.

TWO: The US Government, in cooperation with its allies, is playing a game with such rivals as the USSR, trying to confuse them with false reports of UFOs. The state of the art in intelligence collection and analysis, as well as science, precludes the possibility of such a ruse.

THREE: The US and its allies are attempting to keep UFOs a secret from the USSR. The Soviets, however, are as astute in space science as we are. If we know about UFOs, so do they...and so do all the technically advanced nations.

FOUR: There are no UFOs, nor have there ever been any contacts from outer space. However, the amount of circumstantial evidence to the contrary (including indications that our planet may have been visited in the distant past by extraterrestrials) argues against this conclusion--or at least for further study of the UFO phenomenon. FIVE: There are UFOs or there have been contacts--if only signals --from outer space, but the evidence reveals the aliens are interested only in observing us. They have no hostile intentions and are no direct threat to any nation. But public knowledge of these facts could become a threat. If the existence of UFOs were to be officially confirmed, a chain reaction could be initiated that would result in the collapse of the Earth's present power structure. Thus, a secret international understanding--a conspiracy -- has been agreed to by the world powers to keep the public ignorant of and confused about contacts or visitations from beyond Earth.

Victor Marchetti was the executive assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA and is the co-author of "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence," the only book ever censored by the US Government prior to publication up to 1979. He lives in suburban Washington D.C.

Continue Reading . . .

See Also:

THE MARCH 22, 1950 FBI MEMO ON CRASHED FLYING SAUCERS: Livescience.com Spins the Facts

CIA Veteran Claims Knowledge of Roswell-Alien Cover-up

UFOs at Defense Sites Told in CIA Documents

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE