Dave,
Fascinating article, thanks for taking the time.
The LIFE article is dated April 7, 1952 and during that month there was an incident which is perhaps worth recalling, particularly in view of it's possible historical repercussions.
In "Aliens from Space: The Real Story Of Unidentified Flying Objects" [ISBN: 0-385-06751-8], Major Donald Keyhoe documents the key events:
It was after a tough, two-pronged fight against UFO secrecy that the CIA took control of the Air Force investigation. Even now, not many people know the full story of that behind-the-scenes battle.
Oddly enough, it was a report from Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball which led to the CIA's drastic action.
In April of 1952, Secretary Kimball was flying to Hawaii when two disc-shaped craft streaked in toward his Navy executive plane.
"Their speed was amazing," he told me later, in Washington. "My pilots estimated it between fifteen hundred and two thousand miles an hour. The objects circled us twice and then took off, heading east. There was another Navy plane behind us, with Admiral Arthur Radford on board. The distance was about fifty miles. I had my senior pilot radio a report on the sighting. In almost no time Radford's chief pilot called back, really excited. The UFOs were now circling their plane-they'd covered the fifty miles in less than two minutes. In seconds the pilot told us they'd left the plane and raced up out of sight."
After landing, Secretary Kimball had a report radioed to the AF, since it was officially in charge of the UFO investigation. When he returned to Washington he had an aide ask the AF what action had been taken. He was informed it was against orders to discuss case analyses, even with witnesses who made the reports.
It was a mistake the AF soon regretted, for Kimball was not a man who could be easily pushed around. The secretary knew that Navy and Marine Corps pilots had made numerous verified reports, also tower operators and other Navy personnel. On checking, he found that the AF had insisted on getting all copies of reports, without even a preliminary Navy investigation. As in his own case, the AF had refused to answer any questions about these sightings, except for a few that were already known to the press, which it had tried to debunk.
As soon as he learned this, Secretary Kimball had a conference with Rear Admiral Calvin Bolster, Chief of the Office of Naval Research.
"I want ONR to make a full investigation of all Navy and Marine reports from now on-also try to get duplicate reports from the witnesses in unexplained earlier cases. This is to be kept separate from the Air Force project." (Confirmed to the author by Rear Admiral Bolster, in 1953.)
When the AF heard of this there was a hasty conference at headquarters. They were already in a tight spot. The big "flap" of 1952 had started, with UFO reports coming in from all over the country, and both Capitol Hill and the press were demanding explanations. If Kimball's bucking the AF got out it would be headlined news and the censors would be in trouble. But tangling with the Navy Secretary could make it a lot worse-he might make the Pacific encounter public, along with other Navy evidence.
During all this time, the CIA had been keeping a close watch on the UFO problem and the AF operations. (As Admiral Hillenkoetter told me afterward, this had been going on since 1948, when he was the CIA director.)
But in '52' though neither the AF nor the Navy knew it, the CIA was solidly behind the cover-up. When it learned of the Navy investigation and the Utah film conclusion it decided that Kimball had to be stopped. It would be a risky job. Kimball might defy them and publicly release the film analysis along with the strongest Navy evidence. It might be better to avoid him and try to convince President Truman that Kimball should be silenced. But this too might backfire-no one could be sure of Truman's reaction.
The CIA decided to wait for the November election. General Eisenhower's victory gave them a break-Secretary Kimball would soon be replaced by a Republican, and now he probably would not push any fight with the Air Force.
The agency heads proved to be right. As Secretary Kimball knew, preparing a strong case against the censorship would take time. In the aftermath of the election it would be difficult to launch a drive against the AF, and as an outgoing cabinet officer he would not have much chance of success. But his efforts had not been wasted; if the new secretary decided to go ahead, Admiral Bolster would have all the evidence.
Even though the Kimball threat seemed ended, the CIA knew another Navy fight could erupt, and the AF had shown it was not tough enough to cope with such a danger. The only answer was to seize control of the AF investigation and insist on a hard-boiled, ruthless censorship, to kill off public belief in UFOs.
To carry this out, the CIA arranged a meeting of scientists and AF representatives at the Pentagon, for a confidential analysis of the UFO evidence. Supposedly, this was to be a careful, objective examination of the best verified reports. Actually, the CIA-selected scientists were known skeptics. Most of them had no real knowledge of UFOs and they considered the subject nonsense. Since the CIA agents would have full authority, they could limit and offset the evidence, steering the scientists toward a completely negative verdict. The agency heads had little doubt of the outcome.
Most of the AF group were opposed to the cover-up, at least privately. Deliberately or not, they were led to believe that the CIA was worried about the growing censorship hazards. Completely unaware of the true CIA stand, they expected to present irrefutable proof of UFO reality and then join the agents and the scientists in discussing plans to end the debunking.
The CIA conference began on January 12, 1953. It was controlled by three representatives of the Central Intelligence Agency-Agents Philip G. Strong and Ralph L. Clark, and CIA scientist Dr. Marshall Chadwell. After the five-day ordeal ended, a grim-faced Intelligence colonel gave me the bad news, confirmed later by Fournet, Ruppelt and Chop.
"We were double-crossed. The CIA doesn't want to prepare the public-they're trying to bury the subject. Those agents ran the whole show and the scientists followed their lead. They threw out the Utah film-said the Navy analysts were incompetent. We had over a hundred of the strongest verified reports. The agents bypassed the best ones. The scientists saw just fifteen cases, and the CIA men tried to pick holes in them. Fournet had sightings by top military and airline pilots-even scientists. The agents made it seem as if the witnesses were dopes, so the scientists brushed off the whole Fournet report-said he didn't have the slightest evidence of interplanetary spaceships. Ed Ruppelt had a program for a special tracking system and they threw that out. I know those CIA agents were only following orders, but once or twice I almost blew up."
Luckily the Fournet group had not given any hint of their secret preparation plan. In February they made a determined effort to put over the special press conference. They seemed on the verge of winning-then the CIA moved in. That afternoon, at the Pentagon, Chop told me what had happened.
"They killed the whole program. We've been ordered to work up a national debunking campaign, planting articles in magazines and arranging broadcasts to make UFO reports sound like poppycock."
There's a whole lot more to the story than that, but as it stands, it's an interesting snapshot of that period.
As an aside, Keyhoe believed that, "The CIA take-over of the Air Force investigation occurred in 1953. (Vice Admiral Hillenkoetter was not involved; his tour as CIA director had ended before this.)"
Keyhoe had known Hillenkoetter "since we were classmates at the Naval Academy" and seems to have trusted him implicitly, expressly excluding the suggestion that Hillenkoetter was part of any conspiracy.
An interesting aspect is that the 1947 Roswell case was simply not an issue at the time Keyhoe was writing and claims of a cover-up involving recovered alien craft and bodies would almost have been a preposterous suggestion.
Vice Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter was appointed as Director of Central Intelligence on 30 April 1947, by President Truman and sworn in 1 May 1947.
The National Security Act of 26 July 1947 established the Central Intelligence Agency, which replaced the Central Intelligence Group on 18 September 1947 and Hillenkoetter was reappointed under the new law by President Truman on 24 November 1947, an appointment confirmed by Senate on 8 December 1947.
Amongst the comments Keyhoe attributes to Hillenkoetter is a claim that, "The Air Force has constantly misled the American public about UFOs...I urge Congressional action to reduce the danger from secrecy."
Interesting to note that the accusation is specifically directed against the US Air Force and not the government per se.
NICAP was founded by T. Townsend Brown in October 1956 and Hillenkoetter joined in 1957. According to Keyhoe, "Hillenkoetter was a board member almost from the beginning".
Here we have a situation where the Director of Central Intelligence at the time of the Roswell incident is subsequently an active proponent of a USAF cover-up of UFO related data, but at no time do we have any indications of a crash/retrieval.
Was Hillenkoetter sincere in his actions, or was his role deemed to be an acceptable price for an influential position within NICAP?
Certainly NICAP seems to have been heavily infiltrated by members with CIA associations.
When the chips were down and NICAP had perhaps it's best opportunity to present a case to the government, press and public, what happened?
Keyhoe documents events thus:
"In his five years on the NICAP Board he [Hillenkoetter] had played an important role in combating UFO secrecy. If he did accept the Congress group role, it probably would result in the biggest break in the cover-up.
As I had guessed, the letter was from Hillenkoetter.
Dear Don:
In my opinion, NICAP's investigation has gone as far as possible. I know the UFOs are not U.S. or Soviet devices. All we can do now is wait for some action by the UFOs.
The Air Force cannot do any more under the circumstances. It has been a difficult assignment for them, and I believe we should not continue to criticise their investigations.
I am resigning as a member of the NICAP Board of Governors.
As I reread this incredible letter some of Hillenkoetter's public statements flashed through my mind:
"The UFOs are unknown objects operating under intelligent control... The Air Force is still censoring UFO sightings. Hundreds of authentic reports by veteran pilots and other technically trained observers have been ridiculed or explained away as mistakes, delusions or hoaxes...It is imperative that we learn where the UFOs come from and what their purpose is. The public has a right to know...."
The most important statement of all was the one Hillenkoetter had signed on August 22, 1961, which was sent to Congress after the death of Space Committee Chairman Overton Brooks:
Acting with the majority of the NICAP Board of Governors, I urge immediate Congressional action to reduce the dangers from secrecy about Unidentified Flying Objects...Two dangers are steadily increasing:
1. The risk of accidental war, from mistaking UFO formations for a Soviet surprise attack.
2. The danger that the Soviet Government may, in a critical moment, _falsely_ claim the UFOs as a secret Russian weapons against which our defenses are helpless.
For the third time I went over the admiral's astonishing letter or resignation. There was no hint that he had been told about the Congress group's expose' plan. Yet it was the only believable explanation. But Hillenkoetter had been absolutely convinced that the cover-up should be exposed. How could he have been pressured into this complete reversal?
Threats would have not worked-I knew this tough fighter too well to believe that. The only answer was persuasion at a very high level that it was his duty to help block the Capitol Hill showdown-and to attempt a change in NICAP policy. But this would still require some powerful reason for continuing the secrecy. That it was some frightening situation, to be kept from the public at all costs, I refused to believe. With all the confidential sources I had established since '49' I would have had at least an inkling. In an effort to find some clue, I went back over all the main points of the UFO evidence. But the cause of the admiral's action was still a mystery".
It's a tangled web to unravel, but interesting that even if we take a sceptical view and accept that Hillenkoetter was not involved in a dark conspiracy, his comments conversely become a sincere testimony to a perceived cover-up and potential threat.
James. WWW; http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/pulsar/
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