Kecksburg

The Johnson White House and the Kecksburg Pennsylvania UFO Crash

During an April 2003 visit to the Lyndon Johnson library in Austin Texas; I spent a week looking at the possible White House UFO connection to the 1965 power blackout in the northeast, and the role of the Johnson White House in the crash of an object in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. I knew the Kecksburg search would be the most important item to find in the 44 million pages of Johnson White House files, if it was there.

Based on information supplied by Kecksburg UFO crash expert Stan Gordon and journalist/researcher Leslie Kean I was looking for information that would support stories, showing the attendance of such groups as NASA (now being sued by the Coalition for Freedom of Information for their Kecksburg records), NORAD, army, air force, and the Office of Emergency Planning at the crash site.

My library research involved checking the movements of the president and key White House officials during the day of the rumored UFO recovery, and in the days just after.

The Kecksburg crash occurred around dinnertime on Thursday December 9, 1965. At the time of crash President Johnson was at his White House ranch outside of Austin, Texas. There was no significant call recorded at the time of the crash. In fact, at the time of the impact in Pennsylvania the president was taking his afternoon nap.

Even though Johnson spent a great deal of time at the ranch, it did not cut him off from important events that might be occurring around the world. He was almost as connected to the key government agencies as when in the Oval office.

Even starting as a congressman Johnson had begun to create a communications network unparalleled by many before or after. As a heavy user of the phone to conduct his political affairs, records show that by 1964 Johnson had over 120 phones at the ranch. With this came a staff of aides and White House personnel.

The ranch included secure coded transmission facilities, a communications switchboard, and a cryptographic section. A telephone communications center and three microwave towers were erected providing 120 channels to Austin, and a fifty-thousand-kilowatt emergency generator was diverted from it’s intended use at the 1964 World’s Fair provided backup.

The White House records of December 9^th did not show anything significant to tie Johnson into the Kecksburg crash, like it had for the NYC blackout the month before.

The morning after the crash, however, showed some interesting appearances at the Johnson ranch. The names had direct connections to the groups reported at the Kecksburg crash. These included:

James Webb, Director of NASA. On the day after the crash Webb left Washington at 7:15am and landed at the ranch at 9:50 the morning. Webb is important because Stan Gordon’s research indicated that a "NASA representative was sent to the site of the crash and interviewed some witnesses about the incident. " Men in white protective suits with NASA patches were also reported at the crash scene.

These strong indications of a NASA role in the Kecksburg recovery fly in the face of the Johnson White House NASA Records at the Johnson Library. They show no direct indication of a crash at Kecksburg, or any NASA involvement.

Furthermore, the records failed to even show any knowledge of the Soviet space probe Cosmos 96, which was proposed by some as the cause of all the recovery commotion at Kecksburg.

The NASA reports to the President do not even show the fact that the Venus 4 (immediately reclassified as Cosmos 96 once it exploded in its orbital holding position) had failed to launch, or that it had reentered the atmosphere. The only thing of interest, in NASA reports to the President in this December 1965 period, was a NASA report to the President mentioning at one point that there might be life on the moon.

Further support that NASA might have been involved came from an April 1995 letter that Stan Gordon received a reply from NASA. It indicated that "NASA Fragology Files consisting of reports of space objects recovery, analysis of fragments to determine national ownership and vehicle origin" for the years 1962 to 1967 were still at the Federal Records center.

These records would have been important, as they would have documented any items recovered at the crash site. They would have been connected to the Project Moondust quick recovery teams, which dealt with the recovery of "US space objects or objects of unknown origin." NASA was involved in finding and examining many cases in State Department Moondust files.

Records showed that the AFCIN intelligence teams supporting Moondust operations to recover space objects traveled in teams of three. The USAF Bluebook file on the Kecksburg incident states that a three-man Air Force team had been sent from Oakdale PA, 58 miles away, to recover whatever had come down at Kecksburg.

James Webb had always had an interest in Aviation. He gained his pilot’s license in the 1930s and was good friends with another weekend flier, rumored MJ-12 member Lloyd Berkner, who was also a weekend flier.

Strangely, the Kecksburg incident was not the first time Webb had met with the President following a rumored UFO crash. Webb also met with the President the two days following the July 8, 1947 Roswell press story of the recovery of a flying disk.

This post-Roswell meeting might have been related to other matters, but the record shows clearly that Webb was involved in aviation matters for the Truman administration. On July 2, 1947, for example William C. Foster, Under Secretary of Commerce was making a report to the President on Aviation and asked that Mr. Webb be attend the Cabinet group meeting.

Webb was also appeared to have been involved in a December 6, 1950 UFO air alert. Canadian early warning radar picked up UFOs (40 aircraft in flight at 32,000 feet near Limestone, Maine) according to a memo written in the afternoon by AF Col. Charles Winkle. . This story may also have involved a UFO crash on the same day along the U.S. Mexican border.

Joint Chiefs of Staff The morning after the Kecksburg crash all members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff flew into the ranch. If the Kecksburg event had involved a UFO crash there is little doubt that the Joint chiefs would have known, because both the Army and Air Force were reported at the crash site. Moreover, the head of the Special facilities Division appeared to be involved in the recovery, and their key reporting contact was the Joint Chiefs of Staff Command Center.

Although the president’s schedule for December 10 stated that the Joint Chiefs were there for a budget meeting on the Vietnam War, it would not have taken much for President Johnson to get the chiefs by themselves for a report on the events at Kecksburg. The Joint Chiefs and the President, for example traveled around in his limousine from 12:51 pm to 1:05 pm.

William Scranton The Governor of Pennsylvania showed up in the afternoon. Scranton was one of a number of governors who came to the ranch on December 10, so his arrival was probably coincidental. Reports from the Kecksburg crash site gave reports of the Pennsylvania State Police were key players in the recovery operation. It would have been interesting to know if Johnson called Scranton aside to talk about the event.

The correspondence between the two men was checked at the library and no connection was found. There was also no known contact between the two men on the night of the crash or at any time in the days following the crash.

Dr. Donald Hornig, Director of the Office of Science and Technology and LBJ's science advisor. Was familiar with UFOs, and received a two hour UFO briefing from Dr. James McDonald on June 29, 1966. Hornig met with the President, Charles Schultze (who maintained going to the moon "nothing but a big show) and James Webb while Johnson rested in his room from 2:15 to 3:00 pm.

Johnson Returns to White House

On Sunday night, three days after the crash President Johnson arrived back at the White House. The next afternoon, Johnson met off the record for almost 30 minutes with Buford Ellington. Ellington was the head of the Office of Emergency Planning, is inside the Executive Office of the President. This was one of the groups that appeared to have been involved in the Kecksburg crash.

Johnson_Ellington_a.jpg (18173 bytes) One of the key people under Buford Ellington was USAF Col. J. Leo Bourassa. He headed up the "Special Facilities Division" within the Office of Emergency Planning.

His name appeared in the Blue Book file dealing with the Kecksburg crash. The USAF file stated,

(Time) "2323 – Mr. J.L. Bourassa, Chief, Special Facilities Division, OEP, code Blue Grass, called and advised that Mr. _______________had called him and advised him with this info. My man __________ has been given 2 pieces of aluminum type material near Lapier, Mich. Area. Mr. ______ was trying to be wary of a hoax. Mr. ___________ would like to be informed of the latest developments.

(Time 23:40) As a result of this call from Mr. Bourassa I called Mr. ______ to obtain a first hand account of what he thinks he has. The three pieces are to be brought to him in the morning by Mr. ______. He asked if we minded if he kept one piece to a spectral analysis on it. I said go right ahead but send the other two. The pieces were reported as not being very charred; however, the other people finding these "pieces" said they showered from the sky and are spread over a wide area. Mr. _____ said the sighting of the fireball was approximately 200 nm north of Flint Michigan.

While at the Johnson library I was looking for files on Bourassa and on the "Special facilities Division" to see how it fit into the Kecksburg crash. What I learned about Bourassa while at the library is that he, and the organization that he ran, had also been heavily involved in the 1965 blackout of New York City. Like the Kecksburg crash, the New York City power outage had a strong tie to UFOs. (See complete story)

It was not until I got home from the Johnson Library that I figured out exactly who J. Leo Bourassa was, and why this might be significant to his involvement in the Kecksburg crash.

Bourassa was a USAF colonel whose main claim to fame prior to the Kecksburg crash was that he claimed to have been the intelligence officer who handed President Eisenhower the note in 1959 stating that CIA U-2 pilot Gary Powers had been shot down over the U.S.S.R.The note reported that Powers was still alive, and being held by the Soviets.

At the time of the Kecksburg crash in 1965, Bourassa had moved up and was now in command of Mount Weather. It was his job as President Eisenhower had told him "to save our government."

Mount Weather, also known as "high Point," is an underground facility that was so secret it was not discovered by the press until On December 1, 1974, when a TWA Boeing 727 jet crashed into the fog-draped mountain.

The facility is a 200,000 sq. foot nuclear attack proof bunker 48 miles outside of Washington D.C. It is the place where the president and top government leaders such as cabinet members and Supreme Court judges will be taken in case of nuclear attack.

Mount weather represents the key building block in the present "black" continuity-of-government operational plan. It serves as the place where the government will continue to operate in a nuclear war situation. In fact, on September 11 when the Trade Towers were hit, the top 15 government leaders were rounded up by the secret service and taken there, while Cheney directed things in the President’s Emergency Management Center bunker under the East Wing of the White House.

Bourassa, who at Mount Weather had instant access to the Joint Chiefs of Staff Command center, all the military services, fire departments, NORAD, and other key agencies, was involved in the Kecksburg recovery and may actually have been directing the proper units to the site behind the scenes.

Aerial photographs of Mount Weather show the presidential heliport where the president is dropped off. The tower that directs in the president’s flight is known as "bluegrass tower." In the Kecksburg Blue Book file right after J. Leo Bourassa’s name you will find (Code blue grass). Another connection to the code "bluegrass" is a paranormal CIA project started in 1955, which I haven’t confirmed yet.

The Special Facilities records I found at the Johnson library showed a few interesting items. The Special Facilities Division had a meeting for Special facilities Representatives, chaired by Bourassa, every Thursday. In fact they held a meeting only hours before the crash in Pennsylvania.

A week later, on December 16^th, another meeting was held and in this meeting Bourassa made an announcement sounded interesting in light of the crash seven days before.

"The Chairman covered briefly the addition new responsibilities placed on OEP/SFD to secure and report information on significant incidents of possible national importance."

Another person who adds evidence for this role of Mount Weather in UFOs was Brigadier-General Steven Lovekin who testified for the Briefings held by CSETI for Congressmen and others in April 1997. Recounting a trip to Mount Weather with President Eisenhower in the late fifties he recalled what he had been told about UFOs and Mount Weather,

"I was fortunate enough to travel around Washington DC area, and I was fortunate enough to speak to one individual who was a government employee. He was not military. I only knew him as Frank, and I first met him at Mount Weather Virginia, Winchester, which is the place many of you might know where the president in case of attack. He told me at that time, the first time that I saw him, because he knew I was interested in this subject matter, that this place also had facilities to track these UFOs."

Post Kecksburg and the Special Facilities Division

It may not be conclusive proof, but it is interesting to note that many of the key people that might have been involved in the Kecksburg crash all strangely showed up for tours at the very secretive Special Facilities Division in the days following the crash. These included:

James Webb, the Director of NASA at the time of the crash, visited the Special Facilities Division about six weeks after the crash. Col. Bourassa and Kenrick W. Hackett briefed Webb and key staff at NASA on January 28, 1966.

The special team from the Joint Chief of Staff visited the Special Facilities Division on January 20, 1966.

General Train (Commanding General of the U.S. First Army) was planning a visit to the SFD in January 1966. The 662^nd Radar Squadron at the crash scene was an Army unit.

The 662nd squadron was responsible to Space Command at NORAD. NORAD officials announced an intention to visit the Special Facilities Division the month after the crash.

Special Facilities Division and the UFO Cover-up

Further information that identified the Special Facilities Division was a key UFO entity in the cover-up can be found in research done in the seventies and mid eighties by UFO researcher Bill Moore. He obtained this information from contacts with a series of high-level intelligence people who helped him piece together a flow chart showing which government agencies had been involved in the UFO cover-up.

In 1985 Moore released the flow chart showing the UFO chain of command. At the top of the chain was the President. Below him was as an advisory group known as the Special Advisory Committee to the President on Alien Matters.

Directly below the President in the chain Moore listed "MJ-12-FEMA-NSA." Making up this group was the "Special Facilities Division – FEMA – C-Group for the NSA"

MJ-12 chart.jpg (81653 bytes)

This chart was posted on the Internet in 1996, following the release of the movie "Independence Day" by former USAF physicist Robert Collins. In addition to this chart he posted a message that made another key claim about the role of the Special Facilities Division.

"The following has been uncovered over the years of research. MJ-12 had a "cover" under which it operated and that cover was reportedly "The Office of Emergency Preparedness, Special Facilities Division."

More on FEMA and UFOs

In addition to this information, there is other information that indicates that the OEP (name changed to FEMA by the Carter administration) played a role in UFOs. According to the COMETA report, a report on UFOs written by top ranking French military people, FEMA prepared a UFO training manual for firefighters at its National Fire Academy.

Chapter 13 of the manual titled "Fire Officer’s Guide to Disaster Control" is called "Enemy Attack and UFO Potential." Dr. William M. Kramer, professor of Fire Science at the University of Cincinnati and an Ohio Fire Chief, wrote it.

The chapter warns firefighters of potential "UFO hazards" they might incur "in the event of the unexpected arrival of UFOs in their communities." The UFO hazards included power blackouts, air and ground disruptions by force fields, psychological effects, and the hazards of touching one that has landed."

I followed up on this possible MJ-12 role related to the Special Facilities Division, and in the possible role of the Special Facilities Division and the Office of Emergency Planning at the Kecksburg crash, during a recent trip to the National Archives in Washington. The Johnson archives people were sure that specific Special Facilities "Duty Action Logs" would be there and accessible. However, after a two-day search I was unable to come up with a single piece of paper on the unit. This was after reviewing almost every box of files from the Office of Emergency Planning available for review.