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Vegas 2004 Presentation
Presented in Henderson Nevada at the 2nd Annual Crashed Saucer Conference November 13th and 14th, 2004
Part 1: The Presidents and the Hard Evidence
Long before Harold Shermon wrote his famous 1946 book “The Green Man” about an alien visiting the earth, there were indications that key people inside the United States government had a crashed saucer in their possession.
According to one popular story, Roosevelt’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull showed his cousin Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt a craft and pickled alien bodies in the subbasement of the U.S. capitol.
Despite the lack of documents in presidential files there are strong indicators that the early Presidents were aware of UFO crashes and controlled the secrecy surrounding the subject. Many of the main men who were involved in rumored UFO crash retrievals were close to the President.
There is lack of supporting evidence which would clearly show the President’s role in crashed saucers. The reason for this is that the President is purposely kept clear of any paperwork. The President is kept up to date on events but much of it is done orally to prevent a traceable paper trail.
General Robert Landry, who was the Air Force aide to President Truman, discussed this protection mechanism in two oral history interviews that he gave to the Truman Library. General Landry said that part of his job was to brief the President on UFOs. He stated that this was done every three months from February 1948, when Landry came to the White House, and continued until Truman left office in January of 1953. This would have amounted to 19 or 20 briefings. Landry told the interviewer that the UFO briefing given to the President was always oral.
More evidence that Truman was being kept orally briefed on important UFO events comes when we look at the President’s role in the UFO crash at Roswell. There are no records White House files showing that he met with any of the key Roswell participants. However, the little evidence we have shows conclusively that he met “off the record” with at least two key Roswell participants.
The first was Edwin Easley who was the Provost Marshall at the Roswell Army Air Base. His job was to provide security at the UFO crash site. A check at the Truman Library will show no record that he ever talked to, corresponded with, or met with Truman.
However, when asked about what he saw at the crash site, Edwin always stated that he had promised Truman his silence. When he was on his deathbed in 1992 he broke his promise and admitted to his family that he had seen more than a weather balloon at the crash site. In a Roswell special done by the SciFi channel his daughter stated,
Whenever we would ask him about Roswell, he would simply tell us that he had promised President Truman that he would not talk about it, and he wouldn’t talk about it.
In 1992, he was dying and already on high doses of morphine. My niece kept asking him, “Well Pappy – What did you see out there? What did you see? What did you see? And finally he said, “Creatures.”
General Roger Ramey is second example of a key player who has no White House record of ever having met with, talked, or corresponded with President Truman. He played a key role in Roswell, coming up with the weather balloon theory to cover up what had actually been found. Later in the second Truman term he led the debunking effort in front of the press corps after UFOs were spotted flying over the White House twice in July 1952.
Although the written official record shows no contact between Ramey and the President, an interview done with Ramey’s wife after his death showed that not only did the two meet, they were good friends and Truman and his wife had actually visited the Rameys on more than one occasion at their home in Fort Worth, Texas.
The interview was done by Major George Filer, a former intelligence officer in the United States Air Force. Filer told me,
Mrs. Ramey told me that she and her husband had been visited by Truman on several occasions. She indicated that they were quite friendly.
Major Filer further informed me that he had learned of another Truman connection to Roswell. That connection was that he had been “told by a Wright Patterson historian” that “Truman sent out award letters to the Wright Patterson Base Commander” following Roswell.
President Truman was the first president to actually have to publicly deal with the “UFO age.” He and the government of the day were scrambling to secretly put the pieces together so they could react to what most were viewing as a challenge to the security of America. What many don’t know is that those in charge of the American efforts were reaching out to other countries to help get an answer.
One of those countries that was “in the loop” was Canada. The fact that Canada was aware of the fact America possessed a crashed saucer is one of the many untold stories of Ufology.
The “crashed saucer truths” were known by Canada as early as 1950, only three years after the first explosion of flying disc stories on American newspapers front pages. The Canadian who was in charge of collecting this material for the Canadians was Wilbert Brockhouse Smith. His brief 12 years of UFO research is one of the most amazing stories in Ufology.
Smith was the head of the official flying saucer investigation run by the Canadian government. The project was known as Project Magnet. It ran from December 1950 to August 1954. It is important to this conference because it dealt in part with crashed saucers and hardware. Moreover, much of what was discovered was documented in writing.
According to Mrs. Smith her husband, Wilbert, was dealing directly with the then Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent. She cited an example in 1952 when an interim Project Magnet report sat on the Prime Minister’s desk for three months before Smith and the Prime Minister jointly decided the time was not right for the release of the report.
When the government was confronted about Project Magnet in the Canadian parliament in the 1960s, a government minister insisted that that the Canadian government never had any serious interest in flying saucer investigation, and that Wilbert Smith’s UFO work had only been a hobby that he did in his spare time.
Fortunately, the government lie was exposed for all to see a couple decades after the minister’s denial. It was exposed by Smith himself who had then had been dead for 20 years. Smith, you see, was dying of cancer of the lower bowel. When he realized that he would not survive his illness he gave his wife, Murl, instructions to hide his UFO files to protect them from the government people who he had come to totally distrust. He predicted they would be coming to recover the files following his death.
The files were hidden at the home of his eldest son James, and true to his prediction, once Smith died people representing the Canadian, United States, and Soviet Union approached Mrs. Smith asking for the files. They all claimed the files would be used for research purposes.
Mrs. Smith told me that each of the representatives was told that she had destroyed the files. They left, but at that point, as Murl told me in a 1978 interview, the break-ins at the house began. On more than one occasion, the door would be forced open but nothing in the house was taken. Mrs. Smith was convinced it was the work of people looking for the files.
Decades later when Smith’s files were placed at the University of Ottawa, the true extent of Smith’s work became open for all to see. It became clear that Smith had been the head of an official flying saucer investigation funded and approved by the Canadian government.
In an October 28, 1955 letter to prominent UFO contactee Dan Fry, Smith wrote about his government status related to flying saucers.
You may know that I am the fellow who was in charge of the Canadian Government’s Project Magnet, which was the official saucer study.
Smith’s flying saucer investigation even involved the setting up of the only official government flying saucer observatory known in the western world. It was in operation from 1953 to 1954 when it was shut down along with Project Magnet. It consisted of a small shack on Defense Research Board property outside of the nation’s capitol. It tracked five different elements that Smith believed might be affected by the flyover of a flying saucer.
The station gained worldwide notoriety in August 1954 when Smith and his team of scientists and technicians claimed they had detected an unknown object that put some of the detecting instruments right off the scale. Smith’s statement to the press was that it did not resemble any known phenomena. The ensuing publicity from papers all over the country was too much for the Canadian government and Smith. The flying saucer station was closed down, Project Magnet was shut down, and the official government flying saucer investigation went underground. Much of what happened inside Project Magnet was Top Secret, and there is no record of it in Smith’s files. There were however, a glimpse of what was going on and it was very leading edge research.
The biggest untold story was actually leaked by the government itself. In 1967, the centennial year of the country, the Defense Minister Paul Hellyer went to St. Paul Alberta to open a UFO landing pad built by the town as a centennial project. During his speech opening the pad, Hellyer stated that in 1954 the government had opened a Top Secret Base for UFOs to land.
Knowing that this would have been part of the secret Project Magnet work I contacted Murl Smith and asked her if Wilbert had been involved. She stated that he had in fact been at the center. She told me that Wilbert had found a way to communicate with an alien and that he had convinced the Canadian government to open a base so the alien and his craft could land.
The base was known as Suffield Research Station. It is Canada’s equivalent to Area 51. It had a restricted fly zone over it, and it did a lot of Top Secret research such as the early testing of nerve gas.
What happened according to Murl is that an agreement had been made where the government would allow the alien to land without trying to shoot it down, the alien would land, the government would meet with the alien, and then the alien would fly off. Three groups were involved (the Prime Minister, the military running the base, and the RCMP). Each would all have to sign off on every aspect of the operation.
The agreement started to fall apart when the military could not give a 100% guarantee the alien would be allowed to take off again. The Prime Minister had a cabinet meeting, and no guarantee was forth coming. Smith called off the landing.
Years later I was one of three researchers who went after Hellyer for the records of the event. He was widely quoted as having disclosed the event and was in a box. His only out was a poor memory and that was the card he played. He stated that he had been told about the experiment by his UFO expert when he was Defense Minister in 1967. The thing was he couldn’t remember his name. We pressured him and he then claimed to have gone to his government files that were then being offered up to the National Archives. Not surprisingly he stated that he couldn’t find the UFO files that he had been provided by the expert.
The Project Magnet Shutdown
In Smith’s files there were a number of letters that described why the Canadian government shut down the flying saucer program. These insights into the shutdown are important for two reasons.
1) They are reasons being listed by Wilbert Smith who was the head of the program. 2) They give an insight into why governments around the world are keeping the alien presence secret.
According to a January 26, 1956 letter that Wilbert Smith sent to Dan Fry one of the key reasons for the shutdown and subsequent cover-up was embarrassment.
Fact is when certain government people came face to face with the reality of the space people, and realized that wasn’t anything that they could do about it; they promptly closed their eyes and hoped the whole thing would go away. (Underlined in the original letter)
Furthermore, Smith said that the Canadian government felt helpless. In an interview with the Sudbury Star newspaper Smith stated,
The only reason that those in authority have said nothing about it is that they simply don’t know what to do about it.
In a February 2, 1959 letter to a Canadian researcher Smith added,
No minister in his right mind is going to release ANY report which may prove embarrassing or give rise to questions which he or his colleagues might find difficult to answer.
Despite the fact that all governments have chosen to cover up the ET presence, Smith stated that all government knew. In a February 23, 1959 letter Smith stated,
For your information EVERY nation on this planet has been officially informed of the existence of the space craft and their occupants from elsewhere, and as nations they must take responsibility for any lack of action or for any official position they may take. There is nothing more to be done along these lines, and effort in this direction is wasted.
Prior to the shutdown of Project Magnet, Smith conducted many studies and met with some of the top people in the United States flying saucer program. This included contact with Dr. Vannevar Bush who has always been rumored to have been the main scientist directing flying saucer research in the United States.
The United States Evidence Trail: How it all Began
Smith had become interested in flying saucers after reading flying saucer books written by Major Donald Keyhoe and Frank Scully. He described his initial investigation in the United States to one newspaper and how it led to the creation of Project Magnet.
In 1950 I was attending a rather slow-moving broadcasting conference in Washington D.C. and having some free time on my hands, I circulated around asking a few questions about flying saucers, which stirred up a hornet’s nest.
I found that the U.S. government had a highly classified project set up to study them, so I reasoned that with so much smoke maybe I should look for the fire.
The fire that Smith eventually found included conclusive evidence that the “officials” in the United States had crashed flying saucers and had chosen to cover it up.
After asking a number of questions in the U.S., Smith returned to write an official TOP SECRET memo to the Canadian government detailing what he had learned. The memo, written in November 1950, did not become public until 1979 when researchers forced the Canadian government to release it.
On page two of the three page memo Smith wrote,
The Canadian government reaction to the TOP SECRET memo was one of approval. The deputy minister in the Department of Transport wrote at the bottom of the memo. “OK, Go ahead with it and keep me posted from time to time.”
The material that Smith was getting from the United States was coming through the Canadian Embassy down the road from the White House in Washington D.C.
In his hidden files Smith left copies of letters to and from the embassy which pointed out how seriously the Canadian were taking the information that was being gathered by military liaisons working out of the embassy.
Based on the information gathered both Smith and the embassy officials knew the reality of saucers. One high ranking official at the Embassy wrote Smith,
The official position here is that nobody knows anything at all about the matter at all. We are, of course keeping out eyes and ears open and if anything does develop you will probably hear about it though the Wright and Solandt channel. On the Ambassador’s instruction no one at the Embassy, apart from Wright and myself, is to discuss the matter with anyone.
The embassy was so certain of the material that had been gathered that they were actually anticipating the U.S. government might soon make a public statement. Gordon Cox at the Embassy wrote Smith.
The ambassador and I would be particularly interested in any indication you may have heard while you were here on the possibility of any U.S. Government statement.
The evidence that the Canadians were basing their evaluation on was wide and deep. It even extended to the rumored head of the United States flying saucer program – engineer Dr. Vannevar Bush. Bush was the technology czar of the U.S. military complex during world WW11 that created such things as the atomic bomb, the homing torpedo, radar, and dozens of other inventions.
Smith had identified Bush as the head of “a small group” that was investigating the flying saucer situation on behalf of the American military and government. Smith’s personal files showed that Smith had even had contact with Bush.
After writing the TOP SECRET memo, Smith requested a clearance to talk to American officials and scientists on classified flying saucers issues. He received the clearance and prepared a paper on a theory for flying saucer propulsion based on the eye-witness sightings that had been collected by Project Magnet.
The paper was couriered to Dr. Bush by prominent UFO researcher and writer Major Donald Keyhoe. In a letter written to Gordon Cox at the Canadian Embassy Smith detailed the Bush contact.
I understand that Keyhoe was to have taken it to Dr. Bush for clearance. I do not know what Dr. Bush’s reaction to the material contained in the main portion of the article and my revision, but his reaction should certainly be interesting and I should like to have a talk with Keyhoe sometime at your convenience to ascertain this point.
Some of the information Smith received in the United States came from Dr. Robert Sarbacher. He, like Smith and Vannevar Bush, was an electrical engineer who ran the Washington Institute of Technology Oceanographic and Physical Sciences which was just down the street from the Canadian Embassy. Dr. Sarbacher had done work for the Canadians including working on the DEW line radar stations that were built to detect a Russian bomber attack from over the North Pole.
On September 15, 1950 Wilbert Smith conducted an interview with Dr. Sarbacher through the Canadian military liaison at the Canadian Embassy. Sarbacher gave Smith confirmation that the flying saucer situation was very real.
WBS: I am doing some work on the collapse of
the earth's magnetic field as a source of energy and I think our work may have a
bearing on flying saucers.
Years later Dr. Sarbacher recalled that the information he had gathered came from overhearing stories about a series of briefing on crashed flying saucers that had been held at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Dr. Sarbacher had been invited to go but had declined due to a busy schedule. He did however hear scientists talking about what they had learned from the briefing sessions.
When the Sarbacher-Smith interview transcript became public researcher in the early 1980s, Stanton Friedman tracked Sarbacher down to get details on the crashed saucer briefings that had been held at Wright Patterson, and to see if he could add anything more to what he had told Wilbert Smith in 1950. He is part of the transcript of the conversation.
Sarbacher: I had to run my own business, my laboratory and I couldn't go to all the meetings. Now they did have, at least I was told, that's when Karl Compton was down there.
Friedman: Did you get any clue as to where the crash had occurred?
Sarbacher: It was somewhere out west.
Friedman: OK. Any idea what year this was?
Sarbacher: Well, yah. Let’s see… Freddie (Darwin) was there in Washington. It was in the early 50s.
Friedman: OK. Did they imply that the crash had just happened or that this had happened some time before?
Sarbacher: Well yes. The conversation was that it had been recovered. The crash. That’s what we were talking about. We were going to have a meeting…going out to discuss it.
Sarbacher’s comments indicate that a UFO crash had occurred, and that top scientists associated with the military had been called in. It was therefore this information that Sarbacher used to answer Wilbert Smith’s September 1950 questions.
Wilbert Smith and the Crashed Saucers
The fact that Smith had knowledge of crashed saucers and bodies was known to me, and people who had been close to Smith, since the 1970s. It was not announced to the public till 2002.
Wilbert’s oldest son James was the one that made the fact public. In an earlier conversation with me, he had said that he was covered under the official secret act of Canada and therefore couldn’t discuss it. I reminded him that I had been told by one of Smith’s close UFO associates, a military scientist by the name of Art Bridge, that the official secret act lasted 25 years. Therefore, I explained after 1987 he should be free to talk about it because that would have been 25 years after his father’s death. At that point James then started to talk.
In an interview with the Canadian UFO show “Strange Days Indeed” James first talked about all the UFO hardware that had been sent to his father by American officials for analysis.
James: “Many times I do remember blue military cars pulling up to the house and leaving packages of things for him to do metallurgic analysis on. We asked him what they were and he said they were chunks of unidentified things that the military had either shot down or found.
SDI: Unidentified things, or did he actually use the word flying saucers?
James: Yes, on a couple of instances I remember packages about the size of a loaf of bread coming in. The box would contain a chunk of metal that he had been told that the Air Force had shot of a chunk off a flying saucer. They had already done some analysis it and wanted him to have a go at it too.
SDI: Now was this the American or the U.S. Air Force?
James: Well I don’t recall what color the plate was. But it came from the states. Whether it was delivered to the house by the Canadian or…
SDI: So it came from the states?
James: Yes.
SDI: You actually saw some of these pieces as well Jim?
James: Oh Yes, I saw them when he unpacked the boxes to see what in there, and take a look at it.
SDI: How old would you have been then?
James: Well looking… 10 to 17…in that age group.
SDI: Did you get to handle any of them? How would you know what was an unusual looking piece of metal at 17?
James: I got to handle a few of them. One was a chunk about the size of a brick - semi circular in shape. It was a very smooth metal except for the jagged edges where it had been disconnected from whatever it belonged to. It was quit heavy in terms of its size. He had an analysis done of that one. I remember seeing that particular analysis sheet.
Others close to the Smith UFO work in the 1950s told similar stories about this small UFO hardware that was being sent from the states for analysis. Art Bridge, the military metallurgist working with Smith, openly stated he had handled it. When I asked him “Exactly how much of it he and Smith had actually handled,” he paused for a long time and then said, “Lots of it.”
Another story came from Bob Groves who was a school teacher and a UFO researcher belonging to the Cleveland Ufology Project. A few months before Wilbert died he was in Ottawa visiting Smith. Although Smith was very sick, he took time to talk with Groves. Groves was interested in the work Smith had done on UFO propulsion, but part of what was discussed involved the UFO hardware that Smith had received for analysis from the United States. When Groves arrived back in Cleveland he gave an interview in which he detailed what Smith had told him.
During the actual operation of this when Mr. Smith was on his feet he was constantly visited by both Canadian government officials as well as American government officials. These were, of course, upper echelon people with attaché cases that were chained and locked to their wrists to make sure that none of the information was dropped or left in a bus station. So he had a number of these visits. They had samples they wanted him to analysis of hardware that is actually metal that had had found.
According to Mr. Smith the United States military intelligence has tons of hardware. They had readily admitted this to Mr. Smith upon interview when he was the director of this research project (Project Magnet) in Canada, and they also had much film.
Carol Halford Walkins, who was the wife of one of Smith’s close UFO associates, described another story Smith had told about UFO hardware in possession of U.S. officials. She stated that she recalled Wilbert Smith had talked about a special room that was in the Pentagon. In this room, according to Smith, was a collection of small UFO fragments for display. Smith had been there himself.
In Smith’s files there are letters that detail more about the hardware, and who controls it. In a letter to a Mr. Popowitch Smith wrote,
In posting your representative with questions be sure the questions asked are exactly what you want to know. If you ask, “Does the U.S. Air Force have UFO hardware?” you will get “No” truthfully. The hardware is not held by the Air Force.
In a letter to another member of the Cleveland Ufology Project Smith wrote,
You seem most interested in “UFO hardware.” There is a great deal of this around, most of it in official (not USAF !) hands.
In a phone interview with the same researcher Smith talked again about hardware and about the secret group to whom the UFO fragments were being returned.
Fitch: You say that you had to return it (a piece of hardware) - did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?
Smith: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that.
Fitch: The Central Intelligence Agency?
Smith: (Chuckles) I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point. I can say that it went into the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem - their identity - for yourselves.
Wilbert Smith and Crash Retrievals
In his correspondence Wilbert Smith made a few direct references to the fact that he was aware of UFO crash retrievals.
I do have knowledge from excellent sources that saucers HAVE crashed and fallen into the hands of “earth people.” I have even handed “hardware,” but all this is buried deep in classification and may as well be in the fourth dimension for all the good it is in evaluating the reality of the craft or the people who manipulate them.
In a 1955 letter Smith made another comment about crashed saucers.
I think there are several of them in earth people’s hands, but I am afraid that they won’t learn much about them from inspection; about as much as a Hotentot would learn about one of our aircraft. One must go to kindergarten before one goes to college.
James Smith, who had come forward about the hardware his father handled, also stated he was aware his father had been involved in craft retrievals. He told Errol Knapp on the Strange Days UFO radio show,
SDI: Jim, you mentioned that he (Wilbert Smith) was shown bodies at one point.
James: Yes, he was in the states a lot partly due to his work as Superintendent of Radio Regulations. So he had to deal with frequency allocations, channels, radios and that sort of business So he was frequently on committees in the states where they were working out joint allocations for example. On several occasions he was invited off to be shown things along this line. That was pretty much under the Official Secrets Act he told us. However, just before he passed away in 1962, when he felt the Act couldn’t get him anymore, I did ask him and he said, “Yes he had seen the bodies.”
SDI: Did he describe them at all? Do you recall?
James: Not that I can recall except that the descriptions that had been out and about were fairly accurate…I think there were descriptions of smallish types. I don’t exactly remember about the coloring. I don’t remember a lot of those details. It just satisfied my curiosity that he had seen them, and that they were real.
I interviewed James on the same subject and he confirmed the fact that Wilbert Smith had also seen a downed craft. This was a story that one of Smith’s close associates had been telling since the 1970s.
Cameron: Buchanan told the story about crashed flying saucers and you mentioned the bodies.
James: Yes.
Cameron: And Buchanan mentioned the story that your father had seen a crashed flying saucer at an Air Force Base outside of Washington.
James: That’s right.
Cameron: Did you ever hear that story?
James: Yes.
Cameron: OK. Did you hear that story from other people or did your dad tell you that.
James: No my dad told me that.
The one crash story that seems to back this Smith account of a crashed saucer outside of Washington is a story that was related by the first crashed saucer researcher, Len Stringfield, in his January 1980 Status Report #2.
The story was told by a former Army Intelligence officer, who Stringfield called Mr. JK. Jk told Stringfield that he had been stationed at Wright Patterson Air Force base and had heard the story that there was a saucer being stored at Langley. Perhaps this is the saucer that Smith saw.
In Status Report #2 Stringfield related a story he had been told about alien bodies being stored at Langley. The story was a claim made by aviation historian Air Force Major Truman Weaver, who was a friend of UFO researcher Don Berliner. Weaver showed a letter to Berliner from Robert Thompson, a friend of his, who was in the aviation business and who claimed in 1953 to have worked “right across the alley” from where 13 alien bodies were being stored. Thompson stated that the strong odor of embalming fluid used to waft over to where he was working. His letter to Weaver he stated that the bodies were later moved to a small Air Force Base (Langley) at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
When Stringfield tracked him down he confirmed that he had worked across from Building 18F, and that although he had not seen the bodies he had seen an “interim report” by his boss, named McAdams which confirmed the fact that the alien craft and bodies were on the base. He confirmed to Stringfield that his understanding was that the 13 bodies and two craft had been moved to Langley. Thompson said that he had heard about the move of the bodies and craft from an unreachable source in Canada.
In Status Report #3 Stringfield had another witness who reported that four bodies from a crash in New Mexico had been seen at Langley.
Another story that shows that Smith had access to the crashed saucer data comes from the story of the Aztec UFO crash in 1948. The story had been written up by Frank Scully in 1950 in a book called “Behind the Flying Saucers.”
In his September 1950 interview with Dr. Robert Sarbacher, Smith asked about how accurate the Aztec story was. Sarbacher replied, “The facts in the book in the book are substantially correct.”
Now the Scully story has generally been written off by most Ufologists as a hoax put over on frank Scully by oil well prospector Silas Newton. However, a single line in a book published in 1983, now indicates that Silas Newton may have been telling the truth. The 1983 reference also gives added weight to the argument that Smith saw the bodies.
The important reference is found in a book called “UFO Dynamics” by Berthold Schwartz. Speaking of Newton Schwartz wrote,
Newton became acquainted with several high-ranking geophysicists who had actually seen the downed craft and occupants, and according to Sherman, through the intervention of Wilbert Smith, electronics expert and organizer of Project Magnet, Newton actually saw the bodies himself.
The importance of the statement is twofold;
1) If Newton was making up this part of his story it makes no sense that he would say that he received access to alien bodies from a foreign national who would have slim chance at being read into American ultra Top Secret secrets. He surely would have said he was shown by some high ranking US official or scientist. 2) The story that Smith had access to crashed saucers and bodies was not made public till 20 years after Schwartz wrote of Newton’s claim.
Dr. Eric Walker
Wilbert Smith’s statements and files led to other confirmable goldmines of information. Dr. Eric Walker is a prime example.
When Stanton Friedman tracked down Dr. Robert Sarbacher in 1983, he asked him to identify someone who had been at the crashed saucer briefings held at Wright Patterson who might still be alive. Sarbacher named off a number of people by all were dead. Then he identified one man from Pennsylvania who had attended all the meetings, but he couldn’t remember his name.
I remember there was one guy. Frankly I didn’t like him very much. He had some company as I had. Seemed to me he was in Philadelphia. He was going to all the meetings, and acting very smug about it.
To make a long story short, research was conducted and the name Eric Walker seemed to fit. Walker had a long a distinguished career which included being President of Penn State University for 15 years.
Walker had also been Executive Secretary of the Research and Development Board in the early 1950s. He was close to all the big named rumored with UFOs and MJ-12. He stated, when asked, that he knew all the men listed on the MJ-12 document released by Stanton Friedman and Bill Moore. In fact, when he first entered the Pentagon in 1951 he took over the office of Dr. Vannevar Bush who was at the time leaving public service.
Dr. Sarbacher was recontacted and he confirmed that Dr. Walker was the man who had attended all the crashed saucer briefings.
Six researchers around the world then contacted Walker over the period of eight years to get him to tell what he knew. Dr. Walker was a reluctant witness, but he could not hang up the phone. He eventually gave up enough information to clearly show he had been a key player and that the crashed saucers stories were very real.
The first researcher to contact him was former California researcher Bill Steinman. After Steinman got a confirmation from Sarbacher that Walker was at the meetings, he immediately phoned Walker and asked him if he had attended briefings at Wright Patterson regarding the “military recovery of flying saucers and the bodies of occupants.” Walker replied,
Yes, I attended the meeting concerning that subject matter; why do you want to know about that?
In the same interview Steinman asked him about the MJ-12 document which had been made public only weeks before. Walker replied,
Yes. I know of MJ-12. I have known of them for 40 years. I believe that you're chasing after and fighting with windmills!!
The term “fighting with windmills” was strange and he was asked a question year later to try and get him to elaborate. In the end it appeared that Dr. Walker thought UFOs were so advanced only those with the “mind of Einstein” could comprehend it, and Ufologists were wasting their time trying to get through the government secrecy that surrounded the subject. On one occasion for example he stated,
You are delving into an area that you can do absolutely nothing about. So why get involved with it or concerned about it? Why don't you just leave it alone and drop it? Forget about it!!
Often in his contacts with researchers Walker tried to get across the fact that “This is a subject I don’t talk about.” He would try to talk around the questions he was being asked, but ended up giving up little pieces with every interview. Some of the pieces were very confirming.
He volunteered the fact that he had notes from the crashed saucer meetings.
I am sure that I have notes of those meetings at WPAFB. I would have to dig them out and read them over in order to jog my memory.
In 1990 Walker was interviewed by Armen Azadehdel, who claimed to me that he could get Dr. Walker to talk. Azadehdel told me that he and a German friend of his had come across a crashed flying saucer in a mountain area of Bolivia in 1977, while searching for rare orchids which was a hobby of his.
He proceeded to tell the story to Walker to get him talk. Walker asked a number of questions trying to ridicule the story, but when Armen stuck to the story, he suddenly told Armen that he could not help him saying, “I have no resources at all, no friends for these things where I am now.”
Armen took the opportunity to get something concrete,
Q: Have we captured anything? We must have.
A: Sure. Q: Anything, did we learn anything? A: Yeah. I think so. In a later interview Armen asked Walker more questions about the MJ-12 type group running things. Q: Are there government scientists? A: Everyone mistakes this issue. I gather by that you mean whether they work for the Defense establishments of the military. Q: Yes, Doctor, that is what I meant. A: Well, that is where you are wrong. They are a Handful Of Elite. When you are invited into that group I would know. Q: Are the members 10, 12, 14? Are they all Americans? A: I cannot give you the numbers, and no, not necessarily, they are not all Americans. On crashed saucers Dr. Walker said this, Q: Have we captured any saucers or any material from the discs to study? A: The technology is far behind what is known in ordinary terms of physics that you take the measure and obtain measurements. You are pushing for answers aren't you? Based on many interviews we concluded that Dr. Walker himself had probably been at the UFO crash in Kecksburg, Pa. He lived only 100 miles away, and had identified 1965 as the last time that he had been involved with UFOs. Azadehdel agreed to interview Walker on the subject. Surprisingly Walker confirmed immediately that he had been there, although he would not talk about what was found. Well, we went there... There were two from the military - but not on duty. Years after Dr. Walker died Canadian researcher and writer Palmiro Campana phoned Dr. Walker’s son who had been in charge of Dr. Walker’s papers after he died. Palmiro asked him if he had seen anything in his father’s papers related to UFOs. Brian confirmed that he had seen something. Campagna related to me what Brian told him. He (Brian Walker) saw a file that contained a number of official government documents but he claims he did not read them. He recalls that there were drawings but does not mention of what i.e. disks, bodies etc. He claims the file contained information on an event in Pennsylvania (Kecksburg perhaps?) and one in the southwestern US. He does not recall seeing any mention of other persons. He thinks his father destroyed it before his death, as it was never located afterwards. Arthur Lundahl
The final trail I wish review related to Wilbert Smith’s work is the UFO connection to Arthur Lundahl. Lundahl was considered the premiere intelligence officer of the 1950s in the United States.
Lundahl ran the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) which was responsible for analyzing all the U-2, SR-71, and satellite surveillance photos. He briefed many Presidents on this collected intelligence, such as when he went into President Kennedy’s office with his large photographic charts to brief the President on the missiles in Cuba.
Lundahl was a very powerful Washington official who happened to be extremely interested in UFOs. This interest was illustrated in a 1971 handwritten note from Lundahl to UFO researcher Dr. James McDonald. The February 2, 1970 letter read in part,
I am glad you are keeping up the good work and assure you that my interest is just as high as ever.
In another April 7, 1970 letter to McDonald on April 7, 1970 Lundahl wrote,
Will look forward to seeing you and engaging in more discussion of a most important subject – the UFOs.
Lundahl played some big roles in UFO history. He was rumored to have been the CIA briefing officer on UFOs for at least three U.S. Presidents. He was rumored to have been using intelligence satellites to look for UFOs. He is confirmed to have directed the analysis of all the photographic evidence that was used in the 1953 CIA Robertson panel report on UFOs. At the time Lundahl was working for the Navy. Months after doing the Robertson Panel UFO photographic work he was hired by the CIA.
It is important to note at this point out that there is also a close connection between Arthur Lundahl and the Majestic Documents that Bob and Ryan Wood have been analyzing for the last number of years.
The main figure at the center of the Majestic Documents is Tim Cooper. In the past year the Woods have released a commendation that was received by Tim’s father Harry. It was signed by Curtis LeMay and cited Cooper for
His exemplar knowledge of film processing and printing techniques provided necessary aids and photographic production for intelligence evaluation of gun camera and still photographs requested on call by the Foreign Technology Division and the National Photographic Interpretation Center in their contribution to the USAF UFO Program.
Harry Cooper therefore was doing UFO related work for Lundahl’s National Photographic Interpretation. It may be a factor in why his son would become the vehicle for government documents after he started filing FOIAs on UFOs.
One of Lundahl’s first UFO roles involved a story that occurred when he was still in the Navy. (The group that Smith had the most contact with in the United States)
In July of 1952 UFOs flew over the U.S. capitol on two separate weekends. Days after the first flyover the CIA had a piece of hardware that was believed to have been related. It had been recovered by Alvin Moore who was the head of the Naval Bureau of Aeronautics Technical Information Branch of ‘BuAer.”
When Moore joined the CIA he showed the piece to Arthur Lundahl who had been a reserve officer in the Navy. Moore said that he and Lundahl had a lot in common “especially about flying saucers.” Lundahl must have been impressed with the piece as he was still talking to Dr. James McDonald about it in 1970.
Shortly thereafter Moore sent the UFO piece, and a gelatin-like substance that was found at the same time and place, to none other than Wilbert Smith in Canada for analysis.
We know of no letter that went back from Wilbert Smith following his analysis. All Moore described was an analysis from the National Bureau of Standards saying it was not a natural stone. The piece eventually disappeared from Moore’s locked safe in his CIA office.
Wilbert Smith also had a piece related to the 1952 Washington sightings over the White House. Some had concluded that it is the same piece recovered by Alvin Moore. Smith stated that his piece had been shot off a two foot wide disc by a jet. It was similar to the Moore/CIA piece but not exactly.
Q: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct?
Q: What about this particular piece from that UFO near Washington…did it differ from conventional materials? Was there anything unusual about it?
The second story that involved both Lundahl and Wilbert Smith is a fascinating story of an incident that occurred in 1959. It was a story which showed how two different countries could quickly jump on a good UFO cases with the best people they had.
It involved the same alien that was supposed to land at Suffield Station before the deal fell apart.
The story began in 1954 when Smith’s friend Admiral Herbert Knowles was contacted by a woman in his home town of Elliot, Maine, by the name of Francis Swan. (Knowles would later go on to become on of the board members of NICAP)
Mrs. Swan claimed that she was being contacted by aliens many times a day that were orbiting the earth. Knowles watched to see how the contacts were being made. He was impressed and contacted Wilbert Smith, the head of Navy Intelligence, the FBI, and President Eisenhower.
Smith and the FBI showed up immediately to check out the claim. Smith was fascinated with the contact and remained in regular contact with Mrs. Swan right up to his death in 1962. The FBI reported what they had seen and sent it off to the Air Force. The White House held on to the Knowles information and then sent it off to the Secret Service.
Lots of very interesting things happened related to Mrs. Swan and U.S. government agencies, but because it is a long story let me just cite one wild tale, and then move on to 1959 when Arthur Lundahl gets involved.
Author and UFO investigator Major Donald Keyhoe reported in his writings that the United States Air Force had detected large satellite objects orbiting the earth in the fall of 1952 with new long range radar that had just been developed. Keyhoe reported that panic set in within the Air Force, and the race was on to do something about it.
The White House was also became involved. The key point man on the satellite issue for President Eisenhower was his national security advisor General Robert Cutler. Cutler, like Eisenhower, was a fanatic about secrecy.
Cutler was the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council and may be known to many Ufologists as the author of the now infamous Cutler - Twining MJ-12 memo which was discovered in the Suitland Archives. He may also be known by researcher as the man inside the NSC who received the Robertson Panel Report when it was sent to the White House in 1953.
What happened on the mysterious satellite issue was that Stewart Alsop, a powerful syndicated columnist with the New York Herald Tribune, published the story that two mysterious satellites had been discovered. According to Major Keyhoe’s account of the event Cutler was so angry about the leak that people inside the NSC were afraid to be around him.
Lundahl Talks to an Alien
In 1959 Lt. Commander Robert Neasham and U.S. Navy Commander Julius Larsen found the report about Mrs. Swan’s contact with the aliens, and decided to fly from Washington to Maine to investigate her.
Neasham was a close friend of Lundahl’s, and with Lundahl had been one of the founding members of NPIC. Neasham had created the enhanced light source that was used on the NPIC film tables.
Neasham had also worked on the team with Lundahl that had analyzed the CIA Robertson Panel UFO photographic evidence. In fact, he actually testified to the committee, stating that after 1000 hours of analysis of the objects in the Utah (Tremonton) the analysts had determined that the film showed self luminous objects that could not be accounted for by any known physical phenomenon.
Neesham and Larsen stayed at the Swan house for a couple of days, and to make a long story short Mrs. Swan taught Commander Larsen how to contact the one of the aliens named AFFA.
Neesham and Larsen raced back to Washington with their discovery and headed for the NPIC to show Arthur Lundahl. Lundahl was very interested and asked Larsen to sit down and make a contact with AFFA.
Larsen sat down and subsequently went into trace. Lundahl and Neasham asked questions. Larsen used automatic writing to answer the questions.
After a series of questions a request for proof was made. Neasham asked, “Can we have proof of your existence.”
Larsen switched from automatic writing to talking and things started to happen.
AFFA: What kind of proof do you want?
Neasham: Can we see your craft?
AFFA: When do you want to see it?
Neasham: Now.
AFFA: Go to the window. (Everyone races to the window)
Neasham: Are we looking in the right direction?
AFFA: Yes.
According to a Dr. J. Allen Hynek hand written reproduction of the Lundahl written CIA memo describing the incident,
At this time, approximately 1400, 6 July, 1959, these three men saw what they have indicated was a flying saucer. They described the object as round, with the perimeter brighter than the center. Lt. Commander Neasham checked with Washington Center (Radar) and was informed that for some unknown reason radar return from the direction in which the ship was supposedly seen had been blocked out at the time of the sighting.”
Major Friend from Blue Book was called in for an emergency meeting. In this meeting they attempted another contact which failed. Friend returned to write up the event to his commanding General, but was told to drop it because another agency would handle it. As a top intelligence official, Lundahl would have had a lot of the answers to the mystery of UFOs that interested him so much.
Former Director of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy, Todd Zechel, saw Lundahl’s person library outside of Washington. He said it appeared that Lundahl had every UFO book that had ever been written.
Unfortunately the files related to Lundahl’s UFO work remain hidden. Even Lundahl himself is very much a mystery, perhaps because of his very secret government work. An example is that my request to the FBI came back with a reply that they had “no file” on Arthur Lundahl.
The story of the CIA talking to an alien never became public while it was going on. It only became know in the 1970s when Robert Emenegger and Allen Sandler were approached by the Pentagon officials and told the story. They were then encouraged tell the story in a government directed UFO documentary.
This leads to Part 2 of this talk which looks at how the government has carefully leaked to the public the history of UFO crashes and the secret government handling of the UFO presence on Earth.
Part 2: The Presidents and the Hard Evidence
Astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell has stated publicly that his sources have told him that after President Kennedy the cabal that controlled the UFO presence stopped briefing the President on what was going on. If this scenario is correct it represents a serious constitutional problem in America.
The evidence I have seen shows that although the Presidents may not have been given the whole story they appeared to have had enough information to make the security related decisions required of the commander-in chief of the military.
I think some of the confusion lies in the fact that the President has been shielded from any questions that would reveal anything he might know about UFOs, or what he has done to deal with the mystery.
Surprisingly, the President of the United States has only twice publicly taken a question on UFOs twice since 1947. The first was a couple days after the Roswell crash when President Truman was asked whether he knew anything about the flying discs that were on the front pages of major American newspapers in July 1947.
The second UFO question came during a December 1954 press conference when President Eisenhower was asked what he though about UFOs. The question had been inspired by a major flap of sighting that was taking place in Europe at the time.
That was the last time the President was asked, or in other words, the President has not been asked a question in 50 years. It is not hard, therefore, for the public to come to the conclusion that the President doesn’t know anything.
There are a number of incidents, testimonies and statements that show the President has been in the loop all along. President Lyndon Johnson is an example.
Gordon Cooper, the pioneer astronaut who died recently, told a key story in his book “Leap of Faith: An Astronaut's Journey Into the Unknown" that when he was flying on Gemini 5 photos he had taken of Area 51 had been confiscated, and that President Johnson told him personally, “Son, I ordered it classified.” The statement shows a President in charge.
Johnson also seemed to have inside knowledge about UFOs when one views the events that took place in the days following the Kecksburg UFO crash which occurred in December of 1965.
On the night of the crash Leo Bourassa, who ran Mount Weather where the President and top staffers would be taken in the event of a nuclear attack, was involved in the phone traffic about the crash. He passed on the fact that he had received word of recovered metal in Michigan.
As I mentioned here last year, Bourassa was also important because he was the Director of the Special Facilities Division which was described by former USAF physicist Robert Collins as a cover for the MJ-12 group. In addition, Brigadier-General Steven Lovekin stated that during his time with Signals Corp that Mount Weather had facilities to track UFOs.
NASA was reportedly at the crash site and the next morning, the head of NASA James Webb, landed at Johnson’s Texas ranch to meet with the President. At almost the same time, all the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff landed at the ranch to meet with Johnson. That afternoon the Governor of Pennsylvania flew to the ranch to meet with Johnson.
When Johnson arrived back in Washington a couple days later one of his first meetings was Leo Bourassa’s boss, Lionel Ellington, the head of the Office of Emergency Planning.
If Johnson did know and have control he would have been the perfect President for the job. He had a fascination with the space race right from the night he stood out on his Texas ranch and watched Sputnik orbit overhead in October 1957.
He had the biggest collection of outer space files of any President, and a correct reading of history will show that it was Johnson who talked Kennedy into going to the moon. Kennedy was actually not very interested in outer space.
It was only months after Johnson left office that Project Blue book shut down, and it is not certain what role he played a role in this. One of the people who did play an unintentional role in the closing of Blue Book was then Congressman Gerald Ford. In 1965 Ford had a flap of UFO sighting take place in his Michigan constituency.
He demanded a congressional investigation into the UFO phenomena. In a 1966 interview with Face the Nation Congressman Ford spoke forcefully about the UFO situation.
Mr. Ford, what about flying saucers? You’ve had some in Michigan in the past week. Do you really believe in flying saucers – you’ve called for a congressional investigation?
Dave, we’ve had several incidents in Michigan in the last week -incidents that many reliable good citizens felt were sufficient to justify some action by our government and not the kind of flippant kind of answer that was given by the Air Force where they passed it off as “swamp gas.” And in addition there are other incidents that have happened from time to time - reportings by people who basically I think are fully sincere and who are honest.
It appears to me that this mystery that has been around the country with all the various sightings does require that the Congress take a good look at it. Bring up these witnesses from the Air Force and the National Aeronautics and Space Agency. Have them interrogated by members of the House or Senate Committees. Let them put their records on the line. Let the people who have allegedly seen these Unidentified Flying Objects come and testify.
I think the American people would be more assured that there were or were not if a public hearing were held.
The pressure that was exerted by Ford did get the Congress to briefly look at UFOs, but it also gave the Air Force a platform where they were able to get a seemingly independent university to publicly state future investigation was a waste of time. The Air Force took this University of Colorado analysis as the prime opportunity to pull the plug on Project Blue Book, and to get out of the UFO controversy forever.
In terms of what I am about to explain this dumping of Project Blue Book was an important event. When the Air Force dumped Blue Book they were able to completely divest themselves of UFOs, or any discussion of UFOs. UFOs had been a public relations nightmare for the Air Force since 1947.
Consider, for example, the trepidation towards the UFO subject expressed by Colonel Hector Quintanilla in a book that he wrote in the 1970s. Quintanilla was the head of Project Blue Book from 1963 till it shut down in 1969. Quintanilla said,
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