As a result of my recent article on my thoughts and observations on the History Channel’s 3-part show on Roswell, a few people contacted me about my words and opinions. I mentioned in the same article that Roswell is now at a stand-still. We’ve hit a brick wall. The Air Force of today can’t find any files. Does that mean we are destined to never get the truth? Well, it depends on our approach. Almost all of the firsthand witnesses are gone. Records? None of an intriguing nature exist, aside from the so-called “Ramey Memo.” Admittedly, that is worth addressing. For all of the research that has been done, though, the memo issue – like so many other angles of Roswell – has now stalled. There is one way that might work, though, and that’s to focus our attentions on various people outside of the direct confines of the Roswell event. That might sound odd, given that we’re trying to find answers to Roswell. But, bear with me. Here’s one example that might work: while doing work for my two Roswell books – Body Snatchers in the Desert and The Roswell UFO Conspiracy – one name popped up on a few occasions. We’re talking about an extremely controversial man named Hubertus Strughold. Here’s a bit of background on the man.

In January 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed an Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) that was tasked with investigating unethical medical experimentation undertaken on human beings from the mid-1940s onward. The ACHRE was quick to realize that the notorious operation “Paperclip” personnel played direct roles in post-war human experimentation in America. To be sure, Paperclip was a totally disturbing, Faustian pact of hitherto unseen proportions. That brings us to the aforementioned Strughold. Born in Germany in 1898, Strughold obtained a Ph.D. in Biochemistry in 1922, an M.D. in Sensory Physiology in 1923 and between 1929 and 1935 served as Director of the Aeromedical Research Institute, Berlin.

In 1947, as a result of Paperclip’s actions, Strughold joined the staff of the Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine at Randolph Field, Texas; and in 1949 he was named head of the then-newly-formed Department of Space Medicine at the School – where, according to documentation uncovered by the ACHRE, he conducted research into “effects of high speed;” “lack of oxygen;” “decompression;” “effects of ultra-violet rays;” “space cabin simulator for testing humans;” “weightlessness;” and “visual disturbances.” Strughold was naturalized as an American citizen in 1956 and, four years later, became Chair of the Advanced Studies Group, Aerospace Medical Center at Brooks Air Force Base. Strughold – whose awards and honors included the USAF Exceptional Civilian Service Award and the Theodore C. Lyster Award of the Aerospace Medical Association – retired in 1968. And, as the Advisory Committee Staff stated:

“Perhaps the most prominent of the Paperclip physicians was Hubertus Strughold, called ‘the father of space medicine’ and for whom the Aeromedical Library at the USAF School of Aerospace Medicine was named in 1977. During the War, he was director of the Luftwaffe’s aeromedical institute; a Strughold staff member was acquitted at Nuremberg on the grounds that the physician’s Dachau laboratory was not the site of nefarious experiments. Strughold had a long career at the SAM, including the recruitment of other Paperclip scientists in Germany. His background was the subject of public controversy in the United States. He denied involvements with Nazi experiments and told reporters in this country that his life had been in danger from the Nazis. A citizen for 30 years before his death in 1986, his many honors included an American Award from the Daughters of the American Revolution.”

“An April 1947 intelligence report on Strughold states: ‘[H]is successful career under Hitler would seem to indicate that he must be in full accord with Nazism.’ However, Strughold’s colleagues in Germany and those with whom he had worked briefly in the United States on fellowships described him as politically indifferent or anti-Nazi. In his application to reside in this country, he declared: ‘Further, the United States is the only country of liberty which is able to maintain this liberty and the thousand-year-old culture and western civilization, and it is my intention to support the United States in this task, which is in danger now, with all my scientific abilities and experience.’

“In a 1952 civil service form, Strughold was asked if he had ever been a member of a fascist organization. His answer: ‘Not in my opinion.’ His references therein included the Surgeon General of the Air Force, the director of research at the Lovelace Foundation in New Mexico, and a colleague from the Mayo Clinic. In September 1948, Strughold was granted a security clearance from the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency director, Captain Wev, who in the previous March had written to the Department of State protesting the difficulty of completing immigration procedures for Paperclip recruits.”

I can’t prove that after he came to the United States Strughold was quietly briefed (in 1948) on what happened at Roswell. Several of the old-timers I interviewed, however, were 100 percent sure that Strughold was briefed on it. Not because the Roswell affair involved aliens (it didn’t; the whole thing was a terrible series of unethical, monstrous experiments using people), but because it was hoped Strughold would be able to advance U.S. research in the field of high-altitude experimentation – something that had gone disastrously wrong at Roswell in 1947. So, my suggestion is that we expand our horizons: we’ve got just about all we can find concerning the Roswell controversy. But, something along the lines of an extensive investigation of just about every official document concerning Strughold might reveal. And, then let’s see where the threads and leads take us then. And so on. Maybe, there’s something sitting somewhere in a vault that contains a wealth of material on Strughold that has been overlooked, but that might reveal something important to us. I may, of course, just be grasping at straws. But, the fact that several people said Strughold knew all of what happened – having been secretly briefed – suggests it’s the people and their backgrounds we need to dig into to get answers. And, I’m not talking about U.S. personnel. I’m thinking of Paperclip and the people who were in it. Yes, a huge amount of material on Paperclip has been declassified. Maybe, though, there’s a lot still out of our hands. It’s these alternative avenues we need to go down if we’re going to stand a chance of getting some good, solid answers. They might be the only things left for us.

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With that said, now onto how, for decades, the U.K. government has had emergency plans in place to deal with the likes of spacecraft and satellites slamming into the ground – just like Project Moon Dust. In 1979 a U.K. government Home Office document with the title of “Satellite Accidents with Radiation Hazards,” was carefully and quietly prepared in 1979 by the U.K. Government’s Home Office. It was sent to every single Chief Officer of Police, every Chief Fire Officer and every County Council in England and Wales. “Similar circulars are being issued by the Scottish Office and the Northern Ireland Office,” said the author of the paper. An examination of the 1979 file makes it clear that the Home Office’s decision to circulate the document on such a large scale was, ostensibly at least, because of an event that had occurred twelve months previously – as the following extract from the file reveals: “Following the descent of a nuclear-powered satellite in Canada on 24 January 1978, consideration has been given to contingency arrangements for dealing with the possibility of a similar incident in the United Kingdom.”

The Home Office added that the possibility of a nuclear-powered satellite crashing within the U.K. was “remote.” It was, however, careful to add that “the special considerations that affect the use of nuclear materials and the safety standards applied to them make it prudent to devise plans to deal with such an incident.” According to the file, one of the hardest predictions to make was when and where a stricken, nuclear-powered space vehicle, possibly spiraling wildly out of control and at hundreds, or even thousands, of miles-per-hour would impact. On this issue, the author of the document stated: “Although it is likely that knowledge of changes in the orbital pattern which might lead to premature return to Earth would be available many hours or even days before re-entry occurred, it would not be such that a reasonably accurate prediction of the final orbit over the Earth could be made until 12 to 24 hours before impact. Even then forecasts of the precise point of re-entry along this track might still be in error by thousands of kilometers. It is possible accurate warning would not be available till a few minutes before impact and it is possible there might be no warning.”

The document also makes it very clear that the Home Office was well acquainted with the more technical aspects of satellite technology: “Some satellites are designed in such a way that they will disintegrate on re-entry; others are so designed that fairly large components will remain intact on entering Earth’s atmosphere.”And, if a space vehicle were to impact on the U.K. what would be the outcome? The author of the document had a few ideas: “Although the parameters of the orbit of a crashing satellite can be fairly closely defined, debris might fall over an area 2,000 kilometers wide. It would not be possible to alert police forces on a selective basis. In the event of a warning that a satellite might crash in or near the UK, all police forces would be alerted.” In other words, official authorities all across the nation would potentially be put on stand-by to deal with the crash and recovery of exotic, space-based technologies. And that would only be the beginning, as the file demonstrates.

The crash of a nuclear-powered satellite would present problems such as: “There would be a possible radiation hazard; debris from the crashed satellite might be scattered over a very large area, perhaps the greater part of the country; and the individual pieces of debris might be very small, yet each might present a small radiation hazard.” Most significant of all, however, is a section of the document that refers not to when, but if the public should be informed of such a disaster: “A Government decision would then be sought on whether the police should be alerted and whether a public statement should be made. If such actions were to be decided upon, overall responsibility for the measures to deal with an incident would be exercised from a central point in Whitehall, in a manner similar to procedures already established to handle a terrorist incident.”

In many respects, these outlines and plans of the U.K. government mirrored what the United States had been doing as far back as the 1950s with Project Moon Dust.

That’s quite a question! For years – decades, in fact – there have been rumors to the effect that there’s a secret U.S. program to quickly retrieve damaged, malfunctioning and crashed alien spacecraft. Many UFO researchers point their fingers in the direction of a project that goes back to the 1950s. For years, it was titled Project Moon Dust (also spelled Moondust). Today, however, it has a classified title. Mention the operation to a lot of Ufologists and they’ll tell you that Moon Dust is the key to the secrets of where crashed Saucers and dead aliens are stored away. But, are their thoughts and conclusions correct? Nope. Time and again I have seen UFO researchers say that the available Moon Dust documentation (via the Freedom of Information Act) proves that UFOs have crashed. Actually, in relation to aliens, it doesn’t prove anything at all. If you do what I have done – namely, to go through all of the declassified Moon Dust papers (which amounts to thousands of pages) – you’ll see that for the U.S. military, government, and intelligence community, the term “UFO” meant something very different. For most people, if you use the term “UFO” they will assume you are talking about extraterrestrial spacecraft. And that’s totally understandable. A careful and close look at the available files, however, shows that for the Moon Dust teams, “UFO” – on almost every occasion – meant captured Soviet hardware: aircraft, parts of satellites, missiles gone off-course and so on. It did not mean “extraterrestrials.” That doesn’t take away the fact that the history of the program wasn’t fascinating. It certainly was. Now, with that all said, let’s take a look at some of the cases under the Moon Dust microscope.

One now-declassified Moon Dust document states:”On 30 September 1960, a TWX report was sent to the Pacific Air Forces on a sighting of an unidentified object that entered the water near the village of Ctaru. The report originated with the Japanese Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF) headquarters and was relayed to us by the Japanese Air Self Defense Force (JASDF). According to the report, a fiery object fell from the sky and into the sea, making a fountain of water which was described as looking like a ‘geyser.’ Technical intelligence personnel from Tokyo took over the case, but were unable to locate or reclaim the object.” Additional documentation was that the most likely scenario was space debris. Another document says: “On 11 October 1960, a pilot over the beach east of Kisawa observed an orange flash on the horizon. He described the phenomenon as being distinct and looking like a great bubble. The area in which the phenomenon could be observed was along the southern coast of the Soviet Kuril Islands.” And, there’s also this one: On 14 September 1960, a pilot was flying an F-86D between an overcast above and below him when a greenish-white object appeared from the overcast above him. The object fell straight down, and disappeared in the overcast below. The object was described as looking like a green pea. Preliminary investigation could not identify any balloons or other known objects in the area which could have accounted for the sighting.” Eventually it was shown to have been a balloon.

A 1965 document declassified by the CIA, a copy of which is in the Moon Dust files, is titled: “Fragment, Metal, Recovered in the Republic of the Congo, Origin Believed to be an Unidentified Flying Object,.” It provides the following: “The purpose of this report is to present the results of the exploitation of a metallic fragment recovered near the town of [illegible] in the Republic of the Congo. Fragment recovery was the result of a ground-level search which was coordinated after an unidentified flying object exploded and fell to earth in the area. The sighting and recovery took place sometime between 10 and 15 October 1965. Other than a reported east-to-west direction of flight for the UFO, specific observation and recovery details are lacking.” The final outcome was something that had come off an aircraft that had caught fire in the air.” Yet again, we see the use of the word “UFO,” but not in the context of an alien ship.

Then, there is a Department of State telegram of August 1967 from the American Embassy at Khartoum to Washington. It states: “Local press 17 Aug 1967 reported that a satellite, cube shaped, weighing approximately three tons discovered 3 August 50 miles from Kutum. Satellite described as made of soft metal presumably light aluminum in oblong cubes measuring two inches by one inch tightly fastened together and covered by a silky material. Nationality not identified as no inscriptions evident on outer surface. Local authorities in El Fasher have photographs and with difficulty cut samples.” It did indeed amount to parts from a space satellite. But, the recovery was handled by Moon Dust, whose teams used the word “UFO.” Thus, a UFO legend was created. Now, is it possible that the Moon Dust teams really did recover fallen alien technology? Yes, it’s possible – and, certainly, Moon Dust would have been the perfect project to perform such retrievals of UFOs. If only there were some evidence. There isn’t. So, in finality, if you happen to see the term “UFO” in a government report, remember that it doesn’t necessarily mean the references are to “aliens,” extraterrestrials,” “non-humans,” or…well, the list goes on.

PS: In my next article, we’ll see how a near-identical situation took place in the U.K. – and, if needed, still does.

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Now and again I get asked to take part in regional radio shows back in the U.K. Usually, it’s late-night radio. In the case of a show a few nights back, the host claimed that it was “the fault of people like you” (meaning me, of course) for creating tales of the likes of black helicopters, chemtrails, M.I.B., government assassinations and so on. When we got to the matter of those aforementioned black helicopters, I told the host that it was ironic he should castigate me for promoting matters relative to those mysterious helicopters when much of the original publicity came from the FBI and the New Mexico police. The host huffed and puffed and basically accused me of lying – and fell back on his claim that it’s all down to people like me. So, I recommended that he check out the FBI’s website, The Vault, and have a look at their file titled “Animal Mutilation.” The file is a fairly lengthy one (it’s in three-figures) and contain significant material on black helicopters.

Taken by Nick Redfern, roaming around government archives

All of the following material was put together by U.S. agencies way back in the early-to-mid 1970s onward. And not by cattle mutilation researchers. As I’ll now demonstrate. By the way, all of the italics below are mine. In August 1975, Senator Floyd K. Haskell, of Colorado, made his voice known to the FBI, on the growing cattle mutilation controversy: “In Colorado’s Morgan County area there has [sic] also been reports that a helicopter was used by those who mutilated the carcasses of the cattle, and several persons have reported being chased by a similar helicopter.” One particular FBI document makes a distinct connection between the mutilations and mysterious, black helicopters. Dated February 2, 1979, it notes:

“For the past seven or eight years mysterious cattle mutilations have been occurring throughout the United State of New Mexico. Officer Gabe Valdez, New Mexico State Police, has been handling investigations of these mutilations within New Mexico. Information furnished to this office by Officer Valdez indicates that the animals are being shot with some type of paralyzing drug and the blood is being drawn from the animal after an injection of an anti-coagulant. It appears that in some instances the cattle’s legs have been broken and helicopters without any identifying numbers have reportedly been seen in the vicinity of the mutilations. Officer Valdez theorizes that clamps are being placed on the cow’s legs and they are being lifted by helicopter to some remote area where the mutilations are taking place and then the animal is returned to its original pasture.”

An unmarked black helicopter photographed by Nick Redfern, outside of his apartment, in October 2018

Much of the work was undertaken by Police Officer Gabe Valdez of Espanola, New Mexico. The FBI said: “Officer Valdez theorizes that clamps are being placed on the cow’s legs and they are being lifted by helicopter to some remote area where the mutilations are taking place and then the animal is returned to its original pasture. The mutilations primarily consist of removal of the tongue, the lymph gland, lower lip and the sexual organs of the animal.” The FBI continued: “Officer Gabe Valdez is very adamant in his opinion that these mutilations are the work of the U. S. Government and that it is some clandestine operation either by the CIA or the Department of Energy and in all probability is connected with some type of research into biological warfare. His main reason for these beliefs is that he feels that he was given the ‘run around’ by Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory and they are attempting to cover up this situation.”

There was also this from the FBI: “Tom Adams of Paris, Texas, who has been independently examining mutilations for six years, said his investigation has shown that helicopters are almost always observed in the area of the mutilations. He said that the helicopters do not have identifying markings and they fly at abnormal, unsafe, or illegal altitudes.” What all of this demonstrates is that from the mid-to-late 1970s, a great deal of the cattle mutilation data surfaced from well-respected people in the world of law-enforcement and from a respected senator. And, so, having a radio host stupidly saying it’s all down to people like me is…well…stupid!

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Lying practically in the center of Australia, sitting out among the dry and dusty forbidding landscape around 11 miles from the remote desert outpost town of Alice Springs, is the somewhat jarring sight of an installation of squat buildings and satellite dishes ensconced within odd-looking white balls dotting the area, called radomes. Sitting out in this remote, inhospitable land of sun scorched earth as it is, it is easy to conjure up the image that this is a mysterious base on some alien world, but it is in fact a top secret joint American-Australian run military installation officially called the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap (JDFPG), or more commonly just Pine Gap, also known by its unclassified cover name RAINFALL. Although its official function is to track and monitor satellites, the isolated location out in the middle of nowhere and the complete secrecy surrounding it have made sure that this place has attracted plenty of conspiracies and tales of secret experiments, UFOs, and all manner of strangeness.

The base itself began operations in 1970, established by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in conjunction with the Australian government. Originally described as a facility for “space research,” its main purpose, or at least what they tell us, is satellite surveillance, its location and remote moonscape of an area perfect for watching vast expanses of the skies, as well as hiding from any spy ships passing in international waters that might try intercept the signals from its array of spherical tracking systems. Since the Cold War it has also been utilized as a missile detection and tracking station, as well as for intercepting and recording weapons and communications signals from hostile nations such as North Korea. The base employs around 1,000 people, sprawls out over at least 20,000 square meters of floor space, and houses a massive expanse of supercomputers and a spider web of tunnels beneath it all, however, its exact layout and the extent of its subterranean facilities are hidden behind a wall of classified top secrecy. Since it is a secret, reclusive desert base completely off limits to outsiders, patrolled by armed security and surrounded by fences generously festooned with “Keep Out” signs, it is perhaps no surprise that over the years strange tales have gravitated towards Pine Gap, ranging from the weird to the totally outlandish.

Pine Gap

Perhaps the most well-known, publicized, and plausible stories surrounding the facility are that it has been instrumental in coordinating and carrying out lethal drone strikes in warzones such as Afghanistan, rumors which angered many Australians who did not want to be complicit in illegal targeted strikes and objected to having that blood on their hands. The accusations of Pine Gap being used to coordinate these killer drone strikes have been categorically denied by military officials for years, even though declassified NSA documents have shown that similar facilities, such as Menwith Hill Station in the UK, have indeed been used for launching targeted drone strike missions, so these documents heavily suggest that Pine Gap, with its cutting edge technology, is also used for these purposes. There has been some confirmation in that the NSA has admitted to using Pine Gap for intelligence sharing and for missions concerning the war on terror, whatever that may entail.

Similarly nefarious and unethical are claims made by famed whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has said that Pine Gap is heavily used for intercepting communications not only from enemies of the state, but also from private communications over phone, emails and faxes, essentially allowing the military to eavesdrop and spy on anyone in the world at any time, monitoring everyone at all times. Making this more ominous still is that there have been claimed to be at least two areas of the base that are completely off-limits to Australian personnel. Of course both the governments of Australia and the United States dismiss all of these allegations, but still they persist. After all, that the government would be involved with this will probably be not that big a stretch of the imagination for many, yet this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Pine Gap, and other claims start to veer off into the bizarre. Yes, I’m talking about UFOs and aliens.

Pine Gap has for years been ground zero for all sorts of claims of UFO activity in and around the base. It has gained a reputation as a hotspot of UFO sightings, and has even gained the reputation as “Australia’s Area 51,” furthering its cred as a decidedly oddball place. One strange type of report that has popped up frequently is that of all the hidden camouflaged doors in the surrounding area of the base that strange flying craft come and go through. In as early as 1980 there was a report from two police officers that were in the vicinity helping with a search for a missing child, combing through the desert scrub when right in front of them a door opened in the ground to disgorge several bizarre craft described as “flying bathtubs.” These mysterious objects then flew across the base to enter some sort of portal that appeared in the hills not far away, after which it and the craft vanished. A similar report occurred in 1989, when three hunters saw a hidden door open in the hillside they were on, from which emerged a large metallic gray disc. The door then closed to blend perfectly into the environment as if it never existed. This flying object then reportedly silently flew out across the base to hover right above it before shooting straight up in the sky at breathtaking speed.

Other strange UFO activity has been reported from the base as well. Back in 1975 the pilot and passengers of a private plane flying not far from Pine Gap witnessed a huge white light take off from the base and shoot off into the distance at speeds far exceeding a normal aircraft. Interestingly, when they tried to file a report of the sighting they were told in no uncertain terms to forget what they had seen. Perhaps even stranger than this was an incident that supposedly happened in 1984, when a group of five UFO watchers were staking out the area after apparently receiving an anonymous tip that something big was going to go down at the base, and it seems they would not be disappointed. They claim that there was a sudden flurry of activity by personnel at the base, after which a beam of light shot into the sky and formed some sort of cloud-like portal, from which flew five UFOs that flew around the base shooting down green pillars of light at the domed radomes for several minutes before entering the cloud again and vanishing into thin air. There have indeed been numerous other reports of UFOs hovering over the radomes, and these domed radar installations seem to be of particular interest to these mystery craft.

The mention of the portal in this case fits in very well with some of the other off-the-wall conspiracies about the Pine Gap base. It has long been rumored that among the many secret experiments allegedly carried out at the base are those concerned with opening up doorways to other planets and even other dimensions. Other experiments said to happen at the base are those involving time travel, teleportation, reverse engineering alien technology, controlling the weather, and creating super soldiers. You name it, there has probably been a conspiracy claiming that it is an experiment being carried out at Pine Gap. It is hard to know just how many of these rumors are true and how much of it is just conspiracy theory nonsense, but considering that it is such a top secret place that no one can get near, out in the middle of a forsaken wasteland, it is not hard to see why it has managed to attract so much weirdness. What is with this place? We will perhaps never know what really goes on there, but as long as something is going on there the stories will likely continue to swirl, and if you want tales of UFOs, weird experiments, and high strangeness, you can do worse than Pine Gap.

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Over the years (decades, in fact) a number of people have come forward claiming that alien technology, alien bodies, and even live ETs, are secretly held out at Area 51 – and maybe even deep underground the facility itself. The most well-known such figure is Bob Lazar. He scarcely needs an introduction. Also, there is Charles Hall. He claims knowledge of one particular type of alien at Area 51 that have become known as the “Tall Whites.” As their title makes clear, in appearance they are far removed from the dwarfish Greys. According to Hall, back in 1964 he was working at Nellis Air Force Base, a facility inextricably tied to Area 51 and its secret programs of numerous kinds. There is absolutely no doubt at all that Area 51 would not have attained the high degree of mystique and mystery that it has without the input of the aforementioned Bob Lazar. He, more than anyone else, thrust both the base and the name solidly into the public domain. It should be noted, though, there were others who knew something of the tales of aliens at Area 51, and that have added to the claims of Lazar.

One of those people, said George Knapp – a highly-respected, long-time journalist in Las Vegas, Nevada – was a man named Roy Byrum; he provided tax-based services to some of the employees at Area 51 from 1976 to 1979. Several of Byrum’s clients quietly told him what they knew of the alien craft held at Area 51, and of how massive funding for the UFO programs was being siphoned from other government programs, as a means to hide the paper-trail and the money. After sharing this information with journalist George Knapp, Byrum was leaned on by government agents who paid him a less than friendly visit.

Also in the 1970s, several employees of a company called Holmes & Narver Corporation revealed certain data on Area 51’s alien angle, said George Knapp. It’s a company that provides engineering and construction services. One of the sources – and a former employee of Holmes & Narver – was a woman who worked in the Clark County court system and who was ready to speak with journalist George Knapp. That was quickly nixed, though, when the woman’s life was threatened. As was that of her family. Also pre-Lazar, there is the story of Doug Schroeder, an electrical engineer who confided in Las Vegas TV producer Bob Patrick about what he was told was going on at Area 51. Namely, the reverse-engineering of alien craft and extraterrestrial technologies. Although, Schroeder stressed that, in terms of actually flying the craft, not a great deal at all had been achieved. George Knapp noted that in 1991 Schroeder “died in somewhat mysterious circumstances.”

You may buy into the stories of aliens (dead or alive) out at Area 51. Or, you just might suspect the stories could have been concocted by U.S. Intelligence to try and freak the Soviets – during the Cold War – into thinking that we really do have extraterrestrial technology, when we actually don’t. It’s interesting to note that the tales concerning Byrum and Schroeder both dated from the 1970s. That was the very same time-frame when the CIA – and other U.S. agencies, too – were concerned that certain American ufologists were being groomed for secret work by none other than the KGB. Let’s take a closer look at all of this. In the 1990s, Gerald K. Haines – in his position as the historian of the National Reconnaissance Office – wrote a paper titled “CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90.” It’s now in the public domain, thanks to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act. It can be read at the CIA’s website. Haines’ paper detailed the history of how, and why, the CIA became interested and involved in the phenomenon of UFOs. Although Haines’ study covered a period of more than forty years, I will bring your attention to one particular section of his paper. It’s focused on the 1970s.

Haines wrote that CIA officials “…looked at the UFO problem to determine what UFO sightings might tell them about Soviet progress in rockets and missiles and reviewed its counterintelligence aspects.”  The Soviets, then, in the 1970s, were camouflaging their secret rocket tests by spreading false and fantastic tales of UFOs. Haines also noted something that is absolutely key to this article: “Agency analysts from the Life Science Division of OSI [Office of Scientific Intelligence] and OSWR [Office of Scientific and Weapons Research] officially devoted a small amount of their time to issues relating to UFOs. These included counterintelligence concerns that the Soviets and the KGB were using U.S. citizens and UFO groups to obtain information on sensitive U.S. weapons development programs (such as the Stealth aircraft), the vulnerability of the U.S. air-defense network to penetration by foreign missiles mimicking UFOs, and evidence of Soviet advanced technology associated with UFO sightings [italics mine].”

What all of this tells us is that U.S. counterintelligence programs, Russian plots, and certain American Ufologists tied to KGB operations in the 1970s, were swirling around everywhere. Could it be that some (or all) of the 1970s-era stories concerning aliens at Area 51 – that I described above – were carefully seeded by U.S. Intelligence to (a) spread the “aliens at Area 51” scenario; (b) scare the Russians into thinking we have extraterrestrial technology; and (c) maybe, as a result, snare a couple of men from overseas named Ivan and Dimitri? ? Very possibly, yes.

Finally, if you want to learn more about the pre-Lazar accounts and cases that George Knapp secured, get a copy of George’s excellent paper, “Area 51, Bob Lazar, and Disinformation.” You can find it in the MUFON Symposium Proceedings of 1993.