Zodiac

Introduction

From time to time, someone will bring up the topic of "Zodiac." By this, they mean either "Zodiac" is one name for the MJ-12 cover-up group, or "Zodiac" is the name of a crashed UAP retrieval program. Bits of information are scattered in a number of places, so I thought it would be useful to bring together the threads of information which I have come across while researching "Zodiac."

1998 UFO Magazine

Sedge-Masters.pdf (richarddolanmembers.com)

An intriguing article appeared in the May/June 1998 (Vol.13 No.3) issue of "UFO Magazine." Titled, "Deep files Trans "X" Communique:Letter to a UFO Recruit," it is attributed to "Greg Halifax." The editor of the magazine prefaced the article with the following:

"What you're about to read is largely unverified...But that doesn't mean it's not true. It's the type of UFO information that will typically be deeply buried, then carefully studied and compartmentalized by a small faction within the intelligence community, as suits any sensitive black operation. As such straightforward corroboration is difficult at best. But UFO Magazine has the advantage of more than a decade's worth of collected bits of information and broad-based facts on which to construct some fair extrapolations, drawn from a range of sources. The following incident reflects upon one of the blackest of American covert operations - that deals directly with the UFO phenomenon."

The article

The article relates that a character called "Sedge Masters" who was recruited by the CIA and briefed on an assignment at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. The briefing letter spoke of two craft recovered at Roswell in 1947, with both deceased and live beings.

The then President of the USA ordered the formation of a special group, Majestic-12 or MJ-12 for short. However, for most of the time, the code name assigned to the group and program was "Zodiac." 

"As of the early 1980's, the Agency exercised complete control over Zodiac...From 1947 to the early 1980's Zodiac recovered eleven other alien craft...Some craft were turned over to our government by friendly powers, most notably Denmark...There were ongoing efforts to discover the technological secrets of the recovered craft and to reverse engineer them or their subsystems, but so far these efforts have met with limited success...By the late 1960's Zodiac has been able to recruit members of an elite recovery team sixty seven well trained men...You have been selected to be part of a newly formed debriefing team..."

That then is a summary of the article. The article carried a note by the magazine- a short bio of the author Greg Halifax. "A writer-researcher for over 20 years, Greg Halifax lives in southern California."

Next issue

The September (Vol. 13 No.5) 1998 issue of "UFO Magazine" carried on the Sedge Masters story and how he debriefed people on the recovery team who had all lost one and a half hours during the recovery operation. A note at the end of this article read:

"A writer-researcher for over 20 years Greg Halifax lives in southern California. He has a  number of good friends in the military-industrial complex."

Third issue

Volume 13 Number 8 of "UFO Magazine," dated December 1998 sees Masters briefing his boss on Masters' findings. Here we read of UFO sightings by two men, Mike Castillon and Bob Earnest, who, inter alia, had reported a "large USO (underwater submerged object) off the coast of Palos Verdes near Catalina Island." Masters and a female psychologist interviewed the two men. There is a separate story of two other men, who in August 1971, and named John Hodges and Peter Rodriguez, reported seeing two "brains" in the middle of the road ahead of them.

Sedge Masters is later shown an object; "a "Piloted craft;" at WPAFB. A recovered craft from around 1972 found in the US Midwest. He then was shown a larger "ovoid disc..." recovered off the coast of Denmark.

Well, so goes the articles in "UFO Magazine." No one in the then UFO community appeared to take any notice of the articles, and so the story seemed to die, in late 1998. 

1999

However, someone, namely Hal Puthoff had taken notice, but we didn't learn this until the release of an internal NIDS memo in 2019.

A memorandum dated 23 March 2001 from Dr Eric W. Davis to Bob Bigelow, contained a copy of an email thread. One of these emails, dated 31 July 1999 was from Puthoff to Kit Green and his partner Kristin Zimmerman. It read:

"Just wanted to check. Didn't I send you as pkg of UFO Magazine articles by pseudonymous (sp?) author "Sedge Masters" concerning crash retrievals by a group called Zodiac. If so, still hoping for a readout by you on this, as we have reason to believe the set of articles (3, I think) are only slightly fictionzlized versions of a source's experience writing up records for the archives at WPAFB, specifically ever heard of Zodiac, which is supposed to be a true name?"

There is nor record of a response in the email thread.

2000/2001

Jacques Vallee's book "Fordbidden Science: Volume 5" throws more light on Zodiac. 

FS5 page 28 22 March 2000

"Eric has spoken recently openly at CIPA about NIDS and his efforts to track down a woman who'd worked at TRW in Roswell days and might be able to confirm UFO crash data."

Notes:

1. CIPA is short for California institute of Physics and Astrophysics.

2. NIDS is short for the National Institute for Discovery Science. 

3. Northrop-Grumman owns the old TRW as at this date.

FS5 page 35 8 May 2000

A conversation between Hal Puthoff, Dr. Eric W. Davis and Jacques Vallee.

"The first topic concerned the revelation of a former TRW employee. An attorney friend of hers has gathered her testimony. She was part of a secret reverse-engineering project called Zodiac. Eric has compiled his own file, but it doesn't lead to the verifiable, hard facts we need."

FS5 page 77 3 March 2001

Meeting of nine people at Joe Firmage's place.

"Eric Davis retold the story of Zodiac, which involves real people like Jerry Rosenberg, currently at IDA and Dale Graf, who was part of the remote viewing experiments at Wright-Patterson. Eric has been told there are ten Velobind volumes at Wright-Pat with Roswell data concerning the two crashed 'Mantra Ray' shaped craft, recovered bodies, foil-type material, and a special study by TRW."

2002

In 2019 two documents emerged, from former astronaut Edgar Mitchell's estate, namely, the previously mentioned Davis 2001 memorandum, and a document, dated 16 October 2002, which came to be known as the Wilson/Davis notes. Amongst the notes we find a reference to:

"EWD...Told Wilson about Mary Elizabeth Elliot - TRW story.

TW: Feedback - Mary Elliot sounds like real deal based on her info and behavior with attorney (Jeffrey W. Griffith.)

- Probably will only come totally clean on her deathbed 30 years from now."

2020/2021

On 21 November 2020, US researcher Richard Dolan ran an article about "Zodiac" on his website. 

On 5 August 2021, US researcher James Iandoli interviewed Richard Dolan for Iandoli's "Engaging the Phenomenon" podcast. Below are some of the points made about Zodiac.

* During a Dolan/Elizondo podcast - when asked about Zodica Elizondo replied along the lines of I can't talk about that

* Dolan says Zodiac is roughly equivalent to MJ-12 ie a coverup group

* The 2001 memo with email thread was said by both Davis and Green, to be genuine

* The three articles were written as fiction

* When asked by Iandoli who Greg Halifx was, Dolan said I think I know, not 100% sure. People who try to contact him just get the phone hung up on them. He's quite old now. He was "almost certainly a corporate attorney for TRW." Definitely in aerospace

* Dolan - I suspect he spent some time in Halfax Canada

* On the USO mentioned - The late Ann Druffel apparently investigated that particular case and wrote up her findings for MUFON J Dolan expressed his belief that "the author Greg Halifax as either a direct witness to that particular UFO event, or very, very close to a woman whose name is listed in the Wilson notes who might have been the direct witness"

* The author has been interested in UFOs since his sighting in  the 70's

* There was no follow up to the three articles

* Zodiac - "Even off the record I have not gotten, I must stress this, any, any kind of concrete meaningful admission as to what it is"

* The Majestic documents, as opposed to the original MJ-12 documents, were obtained from  Timothy Cooper

* Dolan - I don't think there is a reference to Zodiac in the Majestic documents.

important_memo.pdf (majesticdocuments.com)

Note: In fact there is one mention. In a seven-page letter, dated 7 July 1999, and sent to Timothy Cooper, an anonymous author, speaking about the cover up group, writes:

"The group has been called by many names. The most recent one was used in 1992 and was identified by the name JEHOVAH. At one time it was called ZODIAC and may have changed in 1995."

* Dolan "It's frustrating, honestly, after all this time. None of this proves that ther's a real Zodiac program and we just have to honestly state that"

* Dolan "I don't have proof that Zodiac is a real thing. I mean what you have is a lot of smoke that looks like there's a fire...and you do have, there are definitely people who believe like, people with more infor mation than you and I have who believe its real. That to me is totally clear'

2023

The topic of Zodiac continues to interest a number of people. There were threads of discussions on Reddit One Reddit thread included a link to a video about David Grusch. Among the comments about the video was one which purportedly came from a "Current Aerospace Engineer for the USAF" who commented "...this retrieval program is REAL and the most highly classified program in the US. The program is called ZODIAC."

Comments:

1. If one pieces together all the mentions of Eric Davis' work on Zodiac, it appears to reveal that a woman named Mary Elizabeth Elliot told her story to attorney Jeffrey W. Griffith. Elliot worked for TRW Inc. an American company which was involved, at various times, in electronics and aerospace. The account appears to have centered around the 1947 Roswell crash incident.

2. Dolan states that he believes "Greg Halifax" to have been a corporate attorney for TRW. This ties in with Davis' research. 

3. There is currently an attorney by the name of Jeffrey W. Griffith in California, born in 1950.  In his bio appears the statement that "He served as corporate counsel for the Hughes Aircraft Company and general counsel for another corporation headquartered in southern California." To my knowledge he has never acknowledged being an attorney for Mary Elizabeth Elliot and has never stated that he was the author "Greg Halifax."  

4. What about Mary Elizabeth Elliot? One Twitter user @inf3rence believed she had found the real Mary Elizabeth Elliot. Included in one of Joe Murgia's tweets about Zodiac was a video by @inf3rence giving her reasons why she thought she had found the real Mary Elizabeth Elliot by following the footsteps of a woman named Mary Ann Elliot who was in aerospace. However, to my knowledge no one has ever physically located and interviewed Mary Elizabeth Elliot. 

5. All in all, we still have no definitive proof that there was an entity named "Zodiac" - either as a cover-up group or as a crash retrieval program. I come back to Vallee's 8 May 2000 statement:

 "Eric has complied his own file, but it doesn't lead to the verifiable, hard facts we need."

Acknowledgement:

I would like to thank Welsh researcher Jonathan Davies for sharing his knowledge about "Zodiac" and for some stimulating discussions on the topic. 

Update: I had incorrectly spelled Eliot's name with two t's. I have corrected this.