Aerospace companies and UFOs 3

Hi readers

The weekend is here again, and in Adelaide today the predicted temperature is 27 degrees C, much better than the 40 degrees we had the other day. Time to open up the house and air the rooms.

A question I asked myself the other day is why bother looking at the past when researching UFOs? What value, for example, is there in examining the role of aerospace companies? Why take apart the National Security Agency's FOIA UFO documents?

The answers I came up with were:

1. Trends and behaviours. If an aerospace company established a UFO study project once, then there is a possibility they will do so again. Here is an example.

My earlier posts about McDonnell Douglas revealed that they ran a UFO study between 1966 and 1970. Did they run any studies before this one? They may well have done. The reference for this assertion is found in one of Vallee's diary entries ( Vallee, J. 2008. Forbidden Science Volume 2. Documatica Research, LLC pages 334-335.

"I got an interesting call from a vice-president with Environmental Systems in Van Nuys who'd read Invisible College. As early as 1955 he belonged to a UFO group at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. He worked there with Wheaten (now at Lockheed, in the submarine division), Ted Gordon, Klemperer and Dave Crook. They were asked by Douglas management to assess cases from Blue Book, complete with photos and films. Their conclusion, which they were asked to "forget," was that the objects used multi-dimensional physics.

He now claims they found no less than 2,000 sites in Owen valley alone, including places where objects seem to go in and ouit of the solid ground."

If the above has truth, then it would indicate that Douglas ran a UFO study around 1955 and another between 1966 and 1970. The probability that they may have been behind another study in the period 1974-1978 as other Vallee diary entries indicate is thus, in my opinion, increased.

2. Hiding other things. The NSA says it will not release certain documents because it would reveal too much about the collection methods. Sometimes a careful reading will still reveal things, i.e. the probabilioty that the balloons being talked about in some of their SIGINT documents referred to Taiwainese launched balloons over mainland China, and not to UFOs.

What do you think?

Aerospace companies and UFOs 2

Hi readers

A thought had been sitting in the back of my mind about the contents of some of my early posts concerning Jacque Vallee's diaries. Last night I went back to the two volumes of his diaries to take another look, and worked long in to the night.

Firstly, back to 17 May 1965 (Page 135 of "Forbidden Science" Volume 1. 1992. North Atlantic Books. Berkeley, CA.) "There are rumours that many aerospace companies are conducting their own secret studies of UFOs." Vallee reported on an incident which occurred when a Martin Marietta engineer visited Vallee and the engineer became upset when someone present saw some of his papers which they should not have.

On to 23 Jul 1966, page 198. "The observatory has received a letter from an aerospace engineer, the same man who was so secretive when he visited us last year. He is asking us to send him our "twenty best cases," a request already made recently by a mysterious group of scientists from Wright Field...Is this man working for some intelligence agency? or simply for the secret study McDonnell-Douglas is rumoured to be starting?"

In 1973/74 Vallee wrote in his diary about a conversation he had with Dr Kit Green. Green ran the Life Science desk in the CIA's Office of Strategic Intelligence. (Source: Smith, P H. 2005. "Reading the Enemy's Mind." New York. Tom Doherty Associates. Page 64.)

Vallee wrote (2008. "Forbidden Science" Volume 2. Documentica Research, LLC Page 237.)
Vallee: "Don't you agree there must be a secret effort somewhere?"

Green: "Yes...I do agree with that statement. In my group we've wondered if it wasn't being run within private industry."

In an entry dated 16 Mar 1974 Vallee noted:
"In an hour I'll have dinner with Pohr, who has flown from Paris for the joint meeting of the AIAA's UFO sub committee and Allen Hynek's CUFOS...the former group is directed by Dr Joachim Kuettner...with him are...Bob Wood of McDonnell-Douglas."

Later, on page 277 dated 10 Dec 1974:
"Kit reluctantly confirmed there was a group of 15 engineers in the midwest (I assumed it was McDonnell in St Louis) secretly doing UFO research for CIA under cover of "aeronautical research.""

Page 310 dated 27 Sep 1975:
"At the AIAA I spoke after Bob Wood, a Douglas aircraft engineer of the "nuts and bolts" school who flatly equated all psychic phenomena with hallucinations."

Page 412 dated 5 Jan 1978
"Yesterday I received a phone call from a fellow who works with McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics. He told me that "on a private basis" he was compiling a new close encounter database. I am not stupid enough to believe that his company has no corporate interest in the matter. They have an on-going secret project, well funded, with the blessing and official monitoring of the CIA and they're discretely connected with major UFO groups, all of which love the secret intrigue of a link to the spooks even as they vilify "the government coverup" in their public announcements."

The final relevant entry appeared on page 439 dated 15 Oct 1978:
"McDonnell Douglas is continuing their quiet but well funded study with John Schuessler also monitored by the agency. They seem to be looking for exotic alloys."

Well, that's the material from Vallee's dairies.

Who was it?

I wondered who might have been conducting UFO research inside aeronautical/aerospace companies? Then, purely by chance, I came across an article in the October 2008 issue of the MUFON Journal which revealed that the McDonnell Douglas company had been researching UFOs in the 1960's! Who headed the project, a Dr Robert M Wood.

The McDonnell Douglas study

The following is a summary of Wood's article.

In 1966 Dr Robert M Wood was working for the McDonnell Douglas aviation company. His boss Raymond W Hallett was scheduled to provide the USAF with a response to the question of how to get to Earth orbit and return. Wood suggested looking at how UFOs did it.

Wood was later asked by senior management about how to generate new business. He voiced the opinion that UFOs had "...figured out some sort of gravity control...so the ONLY question in my mind is whether we are going to figure it out how they work before or after Lockheed!"

Management approved establishing a small project "Advanced Projects." Wood hired Chan Thomas, "...because he was a psychic who claimed to be in contact with ETs sometimes." "I had counsel from Dr Darrell B Harmon-who was already knowledgeable and interested in the UFO topic..."

In June 1969 Wood hired Stanton Friedman to read the UFO literature full time. Dr Joseph M Brown was employed to look at physics theory. Later, a private detective Paul Wilson was hired to interview UFO witnesses.

Brown, Thomas, Wilson and Friedman were full time. Other McDonnell personnel were seconded to the project as needed. Wood spent about 10% of his time managing the Project.

In summary staff were:

Joe Brown-focused on theoretical works.
Chan Thomas-"...his value to me was his tremendously innovative mind."
Paul Wilson-interviews. Also took a company outfitted van with state of the art equipment to a UFO prone area for a week to look to make direct observations.
Stanton Friedman-"identify specific clues that would help us decide which technologies should be pursued."
Darrell Harmon-Part time PhD Physics consultant.
Leon Steinert-Mathematician.
Harvey Bjornlie-experimentalist.

Re Allen Hynek - "...I don't believe I ever exposed the total scope of our program to him."

On the labwork, Joe Brown took the lead.

Labwise-"Since the observed UFO phenomena so often indicated large magnetic fields, an obvious question is whether the speed of light could be influenced by a large magnetic field."

Paul Wilson and Joe Brown, in Aug 1968, interviewed a 1958 abductee and Paul interviewed other witnesses to sightings.

On field observations- "Both Allen Hynek and Jim McDonald were excited about the possibility of our developing a mobile van to be used for going out to the sites of UFO reporting."

"All of our employees involved knew that Bob Wood thought that the UFOs were ET craft, and most of them knew that our gaol was to find out how their travel system worked."

On Government contact - "The only contact with the Government about the Project came towards the end in the spring of 1970, when there was interest expressed by one of the intelligence agencies." The McDonnell Douglas group submitted a proposal for Project Skylite. To Wood' knowledge no such contract was ever given to McDonnell Douglas.

The total expenditure on the project was $500,000. Basically at the end, the Project "...had no clues about how close we might be getting to any breakthrough" and the Project was closed.

The McDonnell Douglas documents

I went off in search of more information on this project. I found a website (click here) which appeared to display scans of 275 pages of McDonnell Douglas UFO study papers. The information shown there is consistent with the general desciption of the project and specifics given in the MUFON Jopurnal article's reference section.

Perhaps, for the purpose of this post, the most interesting page was page 130 out of the 275, (Page 56 of a file "Advanced vehicle concepts research")headed "Competitors efforts" dated 2 May 1968.

"Hughes (10 men at Fullerton under Meiers.)
Lockheed Sunnyvale.
RAND has proposed project.
Martin had (has) gravity project
(as have several other companys)
Several companys have UFO related efforts
Raytheon (has had computer project for Condon U of Colo)"

Wow, what a lot of information to absorb! Many questions come immediately to my mind:

1. If the McDonnell Douglas study headed by Wood was between 1966 and 1970, who was conducting the research mentioned in Vallee's diary entry of 10 Dec 1974? Was it McDonnell Douglas as Vallee thought, or someone else? If it was MCDonnell Douglas it would seem that Wood did not know about it. If not McDonnell Douglas, then who?

2. Vallee's diary entries for 1978 mentioned above, speak of McDonnell Douglas as continuing a "...quiet but well funded study..." Who in the company was conducting the work? Vallee speaks of it being "..with the blessing and official monitoring of the CIA..."

3. A "big" question is "Are any aerospace companies conducting research today?"

Well, that's probably enough for now, my brain is spinning and I need to go away and think some more. However, I need to leave you with one more thought.

Another piece of the puzzle may be found in Nick Cook's 2002 book titled "The hunt for zero point" ISBN 0 09 941 498 8.After finding a 1956 article, written by one Michael Gladych on anti-gravity research, Cook tried to track down a George S Trimble mentioned in the article. Cook found that Trimble was "...head of Advanced Programs...at Martin Aircrfat " company. In 1961 Martin became Martin Marietta-the same company mentioned in Vallee's 1965 diary entry! Cook found that Trimble was then still alive and asked through Lockheed Martin (in 1994 Martin Marietta merged with Lockheed) to interview him. Although this intially looked promising, Trimble eventually declined to be interviewed by Cook. Did Martin Marietta also have a UFO study on the go?

I welcome comments on this post, or any additional information you may be able to share.

Aerospace companies and UFOs

Hi readers

I've just been reading an excellent article by Dr Robert M Wood in the October 2008 issue of the MUFON Journal. It revealed that the McDonnell Douglas company conducted an official investigation of UFOs between 1966 and 1970. This reminded me of some quotes around this issue in Vallee's book "Forbidden Science" (both Volumes 1 and 2.)
I'm off to conduct some research into this area.

New abductee book published

Hi all

23 degrees centigrade here in Adelaide, a low temperature Summer's day. Makes a change from the 43 degree days a while ago. My brain stops working at such high temperatures.

Today's post is about a newly published book by an abductee. It is written by Stan Romanek, titled "Messages: The world's most documented extraterrestrial contact story." Published by Llewellyn Publications, Woodbury, Minnesota. 2009. ISBN 978-0-7387-1526-1. 259 pages.

Stan was born in 1962 and spent his early childhood moving from one USAF base to another as his father was in the USAF.

At age 5, in 1968, his father, brother and others reported seeing a UFO over Northwood, North Dakota. At around the same time Stan had his first of several encounters with a "lady" who had extraordinary large and slanted eyes.

In the year 2000, Stan saw, and video taped a metallic object, segmented into multiple spheres, near Morrison, Colorado. This event was followed by "strange clicking sounds every time I talked on the phone" (page 18.) A man told him "It's not over yet." Electrical equipment malfunctioned around him. Birds seemed to die around Stan.

On 21 September 2001, at about 2.30am, after yet another UFO sighting, Stan was awoken from sleep by knocking at his front door. His sister had answered the door and Stan saw two men and a woman- 4.5 feet tall, the males wore light blue jumpsuits and the woman, a light blue robe. They all had large, almond shaped eyes - with blue irises. He fought the entities but blacked out. He woke next morning "...feeling weak and tired...." with unusual marks on his back. (p34.)

Following more UFO sightings he went public with the story, even being interviewed by Fox News. Strangely the story wasn't used for 8 months and when it was shown locally there was an inexplicable power failure.

In 2002, he was hypnotised by Deborah Lindemann about the September 2001 event, and recalled detailed memories of standing, bound at the ankles and wrists. The three figures from his front door were present and one of them "...appeared that he was scraping tissue from my lower back..." (p58.)There was a flow of information into his head. He then recalled waking in his own bed. Following the regression he drew symbols and equations on paper, seemingly from the flow of information into his head during the experience. Stan felt that he would have been incapable of creating the equations himself.

Then followed video taped red orbs in Nebraska; equations he jotted down while he was asleep; a second abduction on 17 November 2002; his son Jake drew equations beyond his years; there was an unusual figure videotaped looking into Stan's home on 17 July 2003 (click here to see the video) ; another abduction in 2003 which left him outside his house; unusual dreams and an episode in which he went to bed wearing a T shirt and woke up wearing a woman's nightgown (p122) with puncture marks on his hip.

Following the November 2002 abduction Stan noted a "...pear sized lump near my hip..." (p147.) In 2004, following a visit to the doctor a "...tiny tear-drop shaped object (p149) was found. The "implant" was sent for analysis "...that's when they realized that the implant wasn't from around here." "The implant itself was made of some kind of quartz crystal...microscopic fibers embedded...and even what appeared to be tiny microscopic gears and an extremely minute computer chip..." (p151.) The implant "...simply vanished from the research lab." (p151.)

Stan underwent further hypnotic regression, and while under related meeting an alien child which he felt was his. Later, another entity was filmed at Stan's house (pp177-181.)

In 2005, "...the most unnerving element of high strangeness is the appearance of shadow people....simply pockets of darkness that seemed to hover for several seconds at a time before inexplicably dissolving into nothingness." (p184.) There were apparent poltergeist-like episodes and electronic voice phenomena. More pictures of apparent grey aliens watching them (pp192-193.)

2006 saw Stan fall from a ladder and tear his anterior cruciate ligament and hamstring muscle. One night he fell asleep and overnight, a counter clockwise 8 foot circle appeared outside the house. The grass within the circle died, and his injury had fully recovered. however, he was left with "...five perfectly spaced holes running vertically down the right side of the knee" (p208.) Stan said his doctor was puzzled.

Dr Leo Sprinklwe conducted several additional hypnotic regression sessions with Stan and Stan "channelled" some other entity - a grey.

Appendix A to the book is a letter from Dr Jack Kasher about the equations Stan drew. "But several of the equations he wrote were graduate level physics and beyond... " (p249.)

Appendix B is a letter from Dr Sprinkle. "Stan Romanek is neither a psychotic person nor a psychopathic personality; he is not crazy, and he is not engaged in a hoax."

Appendix B is comment by Jerry Hofmann, owner of JLH Productions in Aurora, Colorado. After examining six video clips of Stan's Jerry stated that he found no special effects or computer generated effects present. "Further the noise over the faces of the aliens is consistent with the rest of the videos in these shots."

Comment: I read this book in a single sitting. There is a great deal of details, and reported involvement of other people, other than Stan.

Stan mentions a number of investigators who were involved from time to time, and I would love to see their full investigation report; their affidavit from the doctor involved in the miraculous knee cure; the same from the doctor who saw the implant; the full laboratory analysis report on the implant; etc etc.

Click here for Stan's own website.

Project Moon Dust

Hi readers

In reading the FOIA documents on the various CIA/DIA/NSA websites, you sometimes come across a reference to "Project Moon Dust." I thought I'd take some time to see what I could track down on this Project for my own curiosity.

The June 1986 (number 8) issue of the "JUST CAUSE" Newsletter (click here) contained an item on Project Moon Dust. The article referred to work undertaken by researcher Robert Todd, who in 1979 received a document released by the USAF. The document was identified as AFCIN-1E-0, and dated 3 November 1961.

Although the document had deletions, the following could be made out:

* "...in addition to their staff duty assignment, intelligence team personnel have peacetime duty functions in support of such Air Force projects as Moondust, Bluefly and UFO..."

* "Blue Fly has been established to facilitate expeditious delivery to FTD of Moon Dust or other items of great technical intelligence interest. AFCIN SOP for Blue Fly operations, February 1960, provides for 1127th participation."

* "As a specilized aspect of its over all material exploitation program, Headquarters USAF has established Project Moon Dust to locate, recover and deliver descended foreign space vehicles. ICGL # 4, 25 April 1961, delineates collection responsibilities."

* "Peacetime employment of AFCIN intelligence team capability is provided for in UFO investigation (AFR 200-2) and in support of Air Force Systems Command (AFSC) Foreign Technology Division (FTD) Project Moon Dust and Blue Fly...These three peacetime projects all involve a potential for employment of qualified field intelligence personnel on a quick reaction basis to recover or perform field exploitation of unidentified flying objects, or known Soviet/bloc aerospace vehicles..."

I located a website (click here) which had the text of the 25 April 1961 document - titled US Air Force Intelligence Guidance Collection Letter 4.

Its subject was Moon Dust reporting in "...response to Moon Dust alerts."

* Headquarters USAF initiates Moon Dust alerts-based on anticipated foreign satellite re-entries

* Interested personnel collect information on sightings of such re-entries. The document lists the kind of information which should be collected and forward and included the position of the observer, what was seen falling to earth etc

* Reports, citing "...the unclassified nickname Moon Dust should be sent to:
- Headquarters USAF (AFCIN)
- ATIC (AFCIN-4A) Wright Patterson, Ohio
- Space track R & D Activity, Hanscom Field, MA
- NORAD, Ent AFB, Colorado

* The overall Project is classified

* Moon Dust alerts are confidential.

Australia

Here in Australia, the Disclosure Australia project (click here) (see final report part 2 appendix 2) found a Department of Supply file (SA5644/2/1) which contained a 1962 memo in which it mentions that the United states Embassy unofficially sought information on sightings of or downed fragments of space vehicles.

The Project's final report page 64 lists nine such reported space fragments recovered in Australia.

Moon Dust references

An examination of the FOIA documents released by the US Defence Intelligence Agency reveals the following documents with Project Moon Dust references:

1. 22 January 1965 Rajasthan, India
2. 11 January 1967 Agadir, Morocco - an object fell into the sea.
3. 28 March 1967 Kasba Tadla, Morocco -An object 8.5m diameter landed on the roof of a house but then took off again.
4. 25 Mar 1968, Nepal - Four object located.
5. Jul 1968 Location unknown - nose cone photographed.
6. 1 Aug 1970 Lai, Chad - 18 inch diameter sphere weighing 20-25lbs. Welded two halves. resembled pressurised fuel tank.
7. Nov 1973 Ivory Coast - One object found with cryrillic characters.
8. 20 Oct 1973 New Zealand -Cylindrical object 2 feet long and 7 inch diameter.
9. Dec 1976 Windsor, Ontario, Canada - Objects found.
10. 23 Oct 1978 Ashburton, New Zealand - Two spheres found.
11. 11 Aug 1979 Bolivia - Sphere 70cm in diameter with hole in one side. Second sphere 6kg in weight and 80cm diameter.

Comments:
A review of FOIA released material post 1979, failed to find anything which mentioned Project Moon Dust or spoke of foreign space fragments. There were however documents forwarding on information on UFO reports through to 1996.

Moon Dust changes name?

Researcher Robert Todd referred to a 1987 letter from the USAF, which stated that the "...nickname Project Moon Dust no longer officially exists...It has been replaced by another name that is not releasable." (click here) Has any reader come across references to just what the Project is called these days?

Comment:
Would the USAF still be interested in just not the current Russian space vehicles but also those of Japan, India, China etc? Is the project still running? Has any reader come across evidence that it is?

NASA and Project Moon Dust

I also came across the fact that journalist Leslie Dean headed a FOIA law suit against NASA to locate NASA documents relating to the Kecksburg, PA 1965 crashed object case. (Click here for her final report)

Her work and that of others on this case did reveal that NASA had files on recovered foreign space fragments - the so called "fragology files." However, despite several searches by NASA these files could not be found.

"The documents I received concerned, by and large, the recovery and analysis of fragments and space debris here and abroad; orbital debris; policy formulations for above; discussions of hazards and liability due to falling space debris; clarification of NASA’s role in relation to other government agencies and its role overseas; some Project Moon Dust documents; Gemini and Apollo missions; correspondence and meeting files. Files from the State Department included UFO cases and reports of sightings. These documents shed light on the history of the time, but overall, that’s as far as they went."

"However, some documents did reveal interesting bits of information, even if not about Kecksburg. For example, a one page “memo for record” was prepared by Richard Schullherr, a NASA engineer whose responsibilities included fragology (he was custodian of the fragology files) and who was a liaison to Project Moon Dust, the federal program involving the retrieval of space debris and objects of unknown origin. Dated January 18, 1969, the memo records a visit Schulherr made to the Foreign Technology Division (FTD) of the Air Force Systems Command at Wright Patterson AFB. The purpose was to identify some space debris which had been sent to
NASA, and to “re-establish personal liaison with newly assigned FTD Moondust personnel” headed by Lt. Robert McGill."

Amino acid found in a comet

Today in Adelaide, South Australia it is a maximum of 43 degrees centigrade and we are towards the end of a heatwave. Should be back down to a maximum of 26 degrees C on Tuesday. I have been watching the TV news about the big freeze in Europe, and in the US.

So, I am in the cool of the local library reading astronomy magazines catching up in this area of my interests.

"Astronomy" magazine dated December 2009 on page 23 has an interesting item.

"Samples of Comet Wild returned to Earth by NASA's Stardust spacecraft show the unmistakable presence of the amino acid glycine."

"Because terrestrial life uses glycine, earlier researchers didn't know if the glycine might be earthly contamination. But Elsila's team found the glycine carbon-isotope abundances matched those in space."

"Our discovery supports the theory that some of life's ingredients formed in space and were delivered to Earth long ago by meteorites and comet impacts..."

My overview of the NSA FOIA documents

Hi all

Well, what to make of the documents relating to UFOs which are publicly available on the National Security Agency's website?

There are some documents which probably relate to propaganda balloons launched over China; probable sightings of Russian aircraft over northern Canada; the fascinating 1976 Iran aircraft encounter; miscellaneous old sightings; and the world wide program Project Moondust which was vacuuming up bits of fallen satellites.

When you spend the time to look through these documents and think about the implications, as I have in recent weeks, you get a sense that there is some good material here which should have helped to further understand the UFO phenomenon.

From earlier posts I note the following:

1. Richard M Dolan in his work "UFOs and the National Security State: chronology of a coverup 1941-1973" page 118 stated that "The NSA immediately became involved in UFO reports" but fails to document the source of this assertion. For more information on Dolan's work click here.

2. In 1972, Jacques Vallee (Forbidden Science Volume 2 p 159) mentioned talking to one Howell McConnell of NSA who told Vallee "So we keep an eye on things." For information on Vallee, see his personal website here. McConnell gets a mention in Timothy Good's 2007 book "Need to know" click here. After retiring from the NSA McConnell spoke at conferences, for example here. Finally click here for a 2008 mention of McConnell.

3. In 1975, Jacques Vallee wrote of meeting an NSA physicist (Forbidden Science volume 2 p 312)who told him that he (the physicist) conducted a search of the NSA for intercept messages relating to UFOs and failed to find any. For one review of Forbidden Science Volume 2 click here.

4. In 1976, Vallee (Forbidden Science volume 2 p327) spoke of meeting someone who claimed that they had been apart of a special NSA group dedicated to researching UFOs.

I guess, in the end, it boils down to a) either these are all the NSA documents on UFOs and there had been no officially sanctioned research project on UFOs; or b) there was such research by NSA and these research documents have not been released.

Over to you readers, for your comments.