Hidden Truth/Hidden Truth.iso/data/genufo/cosmic_conspiracy_six_decades_

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Cosmic Conspiracy: Six Decades of Government Cover-Ups Part Two


(Vol. 16, No. 8, May 1994, pp. 54-56)


By Dennis Stacy


Editor's note: This is the second of a six-part series investigating UFOs and
government secrecy through the years. The decade under scrutiny here is the
1950s.

Shortly before midnight of July 19, 1952, air-traffic controllers at
Washington National Airport picked up a group of unidentified flying objects
on their radar screens. Over the next three and a half hours, the targets
would disappear and reappear on their scopes. They were visually corroborated
by incoming flight crews. At 3:00 in the morning, the Air Defense Command
dispatched two F-94 jet interceptors, which failed to make contact with the
targets.

The following weekend, the same scenario virtually repeated itself. Unknown
targets were picked up on radar and verified both by incoming pilots and
ground observers. This time, the hurriedly scrambled jets did manage to make
visual contact and establish a brief radar lock-on, and the general public
joined in the hoopla as well. According to THE UFO CONTROVERSY IN AMERICA, by
Temple University historian David Jacobs, "So many calls came into the
Pentagon alone that its telephone circuits were completely tied up with UFO
inquiries for the next few days." In several major newspapers, the 1952 UFO
flap even bumped the Democratic National Convention off the front-page
headlines.

The so-called "Washington Wave" also resulted in at least two events that
have been debated ever since. On July 29, in an attempt to quell public
concern, the military held its largest press conference since the end of
WWII. Press conference heads Maj. Gen. John Samford, director of Air Force
Intelligence, and Maj. Gen. Roger Ramey, chief of the Air Defense Command,
denied that any interceptors had been scrambled and attributed the radar
returns to temperature inversions.

In addition, the Washington sightings led directly to the CIA-sponsored
Robertson Panel, so named after its chairman Dr. Harold P. Robertson,
director of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group for the secretary of
defense. The Panel's basic mandate was outlined in a document later retrieved
under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

In that crucial document, a 1952 memorandum to the National Security Council
(NSC), CIA director Walter Bedell Smith wrote that "a broader, coordinated
effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the
several phenomena which are apparently involved in these reports, and to
assure ourselves that [they] will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold
War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack."

In line with this mandate, the panel that finally convened in Washington, DC,
in mid January of 1953 consisted of some of the best scientific minds of the
day. Members included a future Nobel Prize laureate in physics, Luis Alvarez,
formerly of Berkeley; physicist Samuel Goudsmit of the Brookhaven National
Laboratories; and astronomer Thornton Page of Johns Hopkins University, later
with NASA.

Yet for all of its scientific expertise, the Panel's major recommendations
fell mainly in the domain of public policy. After a review of the evidence,
the Panel concluded that while UFOs themselves did not necessarily
"constitute a direct threat to the national security . . . the continued
emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does [threaten] the orderly
functioning of the protective organs of the body politic."

Panel members recommended that "national-security agencies take steps
immediately to strip the UFO phenomenon of its special status and eliminate
the aura of mystery it has acquired." Perhaps a public-education program with
the dual goals of "training and debunking" could be implemented? In this
context, the Panel suggested that the mass media might be brought to bear on
the problem, up to and including Walt Disney Productions!

More interestingly, the Panel also recommended that pro-UFO grass-roots
organizations be actively monitored "because of their potentially great
influence on mass thinking if widespread sightings should occur." Mentioned
by name were two organizations that had arisen in the wake of the Washington
Wave: Civilian Saucer Intelligence of Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, both now defunct.

Is there evidence that such surveillance was conducted or that the Robertson
Panel recommendations influenced government policies? "The paper trail is
sketchy at best," says Dale Goudie, a Seattle advertising agent and
information director for the Computerized UFO Network, or CUFON, an
electronic bulletin board specializing in UFO documents retrieved under the
FOIA. "What we know is that some agencies tend to keep some old UFO files
while throwing out or mysteriously losing others. For example, we know the
FBI kept a file on George Adamski, a famous UFO `contactee' of the Fifties,
perhaps because they thought he was a communist, and that the CIA had
communicated with Maj. Donald Keyhoe, later one of the directors of the
National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena.

"When it comes to their own programs, however, the agencies are a bit more
absent-minded." An example, says Goudie, is Project Aquarius. "The National
Security Agency [NSA] admitted in a letter to Senator John Glenn that
apparently there is or was an Air Force Project Aquarius that dealt with
UFOs," Goudie states. "Their own Project Aquarius, they said, did not, but
they refused to say what it did deal with. They did admit it was classified
top secret and that the release of any documents would damage the national
security. The Air Force denies the existence of their own Project Aquarius,
and the NSA now says it was mistaken. They ought to get their stories
straight."

"It's almost impossible to confirm that any individual action was directly
dictated by the Robertson Panel," agrees physicist and UFOlogist Stanton
Friedman, co-author of CRASH AT CORONA, "but was the subject defused at every
available opportunity per its recommendations? You bet!"

Friedman points specifically to a press release issued on October 25, 1955,
by the Department of Defense, chaired by secretary of the Air Force Donald
Quarles. The occasion was the release of Special Report 14, issued by Project
Blue Book, the Air Force agency publicly charged with investigating UFOs.
Quarles said there was no reason to believe that any UFO had ever overflown
the United States and that the 3 percent of unknowns reported the previous
year could probably be identified with more information.

As Friedman sees it, however, Special Report 14 was the best UFO study ever
conducted. Interpreting the report for OMNI, Friedman says it showed that
"over 20 percent of all UFO sightings investigated between 1947 and 1952 were
unknowns, and the better the quality of the sighting, the more likely it was
to be an unknown. The press release failed to mention any of the 240 charts
and tables in the original study," adds Friedman, "nor did it point out