If you see something, say something … or, if you’re a cow, moo really loud.

That’s how desperate law enforcement officials are feeling in Oregon – especially in Crook County in the center of the state – after months of mysterious cattle mutilations continue with no clues as to their causes. Skeptics are quick to debunk extraterrestrials as the cause and generally point to predators, while a growing number of people wonder if this is the work of a cult … in particular, the greatest cult of all time – the U.S. government. And yet … the mystery continues.

“There were no apparent animal or human tracks immediately surrounding the carcass, and only minimal blood in the area. I know from personal experience that, if an animal is killed or scavenged by predators, there is typically a large bloody messy area surrounding the carcass.”

Any news?

Crook County Sgt. Timothy Durheim is one of many local law enforcement officers to investigate a recent increase in cattle mutilations and he told the Blue Mountain Eagle the latest one he encountered at the McCormack Ranch on Southeast Bear Creek Road was like so many others reported — straight incisions, udder removed, circular cut around the anus, reproductive organs removed without puncturing the gut, left cheek, left eye and tongue removed, puncture wound between the neck and shoulder but bite marks … and no blood. Casey Thomas, manager of the GI Ranch on Lister Road in Paulina, two mutilations within a week. One was a Black Angus cow with hair removed near the stomach, all four teats cut off, left cheek, tongue and sex organs removed, and a mysterious prick mark. The second had a left cheek removed and a 2-inch patch cut into the hair on its neck. Photos were sent to Prineville veterinarian Taylor Karlin.

“I wish I had an answer. We’re kind of at a loss.”

Karlin told the Blue Mountain Eagle she is hoping for some fresh samples of flesh, hair, blood, etc. – anything she can analyze in a lab. While she’s at a loss, podcaster and skeptic Brian Dunning isn’t. He explained to the Blue Mountain Eagle:

“This is almost certainly the same kind of bird predation we’ve seen in so many similar cases.”

“Most particularly birds, and also some insects, will always go first for the exposed soft tissue: eyes, tongue, lips and mouth area, genitals. The animal is dead with zero blood pressure so there is never significant bleeding from postmortem wounds. The body is in the process of drying and decaying, so skin pulls tight from around the excised area, giving the impression of a perfect surgical cut.”

That sounds logical, although it would seem a cattle veterinarian would also know this and local vet Karlin doesn’t think these mutilations are natural. While Dunning debunks the aliens and religious cults causes, Nick Redfern points out that internal files show government interest in cattle and their diseases – particularly when suspected to have been caused by foreign biological agents – have been going on for decades, and the UFOs sometimes reported coming after the mutilations may be government black helicopters. Crook County Undersheriff James Savage, who has been involved in many of these cattle mutilation investigations, told Oregon Public Broadcasting he’s tired of it and wants answers and resolution … but he needs help.

What can we do?

“Don’t be afraid to call. If you see something, a suspicious vehicle or person in the area, also report it to us so we can try to run that down.”

And don’t forget to moo really loud.

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The huge area of Nevada that now houses Area 51 had decidedly humble origins. In the pre-World War II period, portions of the land were designated to the Department of the Interior. The reason was to create a large reservation and sanctuary for animals. Things all changed, however, not long after crazed Adolf Hitler began flexing his muscles in Europe – something which led to the start of the Second World War in September 1939. America would join the war in 1941, after the terrible, deadly attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces on December 7. The U.S. Government recognized that it was now all but inevitable that the nation would eventually have to enter the war, chiefly because Hitler’s forces were overrunning significant portions of Europe at an alarming pace. And, it was suggested in some quarters, the United States just might be next on Hitler’s list. Only the U.K. – as an island – managed to avoid being invaded, although it suffered massively from nightly bombing missions by German pilots. Pearl Harbor, though, was the key event which quickly set the wheels in motion for the U.S. to enter the Second World War. But, it’s important to note that the fear of potential war had already led the government to take certain, secret steps to ensure that if the worst scenario really did occur – which, as history has shown, it did – America would be ready to strike back in a decisive fashion.

As a result of the above developments in the war, various new facilities of the military were constructed all across the country. One of those very same new facilities was the Tonopah Bombing Range, based in Nevada. Today, there is a great deal of controversy concerning how much land previously in the public domain has now been handed over to Area 51, all in the name of national security. People have been forced to leave their homes. Land that one could once walk and drive through is now government land – and don’t even think about straying onto it. There is a very good reason for mentioning this: as history has shown, there is absolutely nothing new about any of this. In fact, on October 29, 1940, the U.S. Government quietly grabbed a significant amount of Nevada land to allow for the construction of the aforementioned Tonopah Bombing Range. In the immediate years ahead, there were name changes, new designations, and additional facilities: the Tonopah General Range, the Tonopah Gunnery and Bombing Range, and the Las Vegas General Range. In quick-time fashion, the desert land of Nevada was morphing at a startling rate – and it was morphing into what would ultimately become home to one of the most mysterious, notorious and important installations in the world. You know the one.

As the Second World War progressed, and as it became bleakly clear that defeating Adolf Hitler and his Nazi cronies was not going to be achieved overnight, further development of military facilities in Nevada were created. They included the Fourth Air Force Bombing and Gunnery Range, the Tonopah Army Air Field, and the Indian Springs Auxiliary Army Airfield. When the Nazis were finally, and thankfully, defeated in 1945, matters took a turn out in the desert. While some of the facilities that had played significant roles in the Second World War were shut down, or at least trimmed in terms of their work, a new lease of life and a change in direction was ultimately to begin. In the immediate post-war era, both Tonopah Air Force Base, and what was called the Las Vegas Air Force Base, both took on new roles. It was very much thanks to the work of the Atomic Energy Commission, which pushed for the area to become a central hub for the training of personnel in the fields of bombing, gunnery activity and more. The U.S. Government nodded approvingly at the plans of the AEC and, as a direct result of the AEC’s recommendations and forward thinking, it was on December 18, 1950 that the old Nellis Air Force Gunnery and Bombing Range was transformed into the Nevada Proving Grounds. Close to 700-square miles of local land was given to the NPG, to allow for work to go ahead at full-speed, and to ensure that the public had no access to the facility. Thus began the careful and slow confiscation of countless square-miles of the American landscape.

In terms of important events in the history of the development of Area 51, the next time period of note was 1955: that was when Area 51 really began to come to fruition. But, before we get to that, let’s continue with our study of the work of the overall Nevada Test and Training Range. It was also in 1955 – specifically in July of that year – that the legendary U-2 spy-plane flew at the NT&TR’s huge runway at Groom Lake, thus cementing the range’s undeniable role in aviation history. Further land was soon grabbed, such as that which surrounded the Tonopah Test Range. As a result, and just before the dawning of the 1960s, plans were made for what became known as the Tonopah Test Range Airport. They were plans for the construction of a runway close to 20,000-feet in length. Just about anything – terrestrial or maybe even extraterrestrial – could fly out of the facility. And, largely, no-one would ever know.

Area 51 site map, as depicted in declassified CIA documents released via its CREST program

(Credit: CIA.gov/Wikimedia Commons).

The land-grabbing didn’t end there. In fact, it had barely begun. In this case, the grabbing was internal: in 1961 a wealth of land previously used by the U.S. Air Force was handed over to the Atomic Energy Commission, something which not all of the higher echelons of the Air Force were particularly happy about. They suddenly found out how the locals felt. From the 1960s though to the 1970s, the Nevada Test and Training Range performed a major role in the training of pilots destined to go into battle during the Vietnam War. By the late 1970s, the range’s staff were working on some deeply, secret programs. And “deeply” is a very apt term. One of the primary tasks of the personnel was to bury the wrecks of some of the ill-fated “stealth” aircraft tested out on the range. It was imperative that Soviet space-satellites didn’t take pictures of the crashed planes – and, in the process, secure significant data on America’s growing research into the field of stealth-based technology. So, in many cases, the crashed planes were buried – using bulldozers to ensure the aircraft and their remains were hidden deep below the desert floor. Ironically, given that the Russians were trying to figure out what was going on at the range, one of the aircraft which crashed and was buried – in 1984 – was a captured Russian MiG-23 aircraft.

Today, as well as being home to Area 51, and to the S-4 facility that Bob Lazar claimed he worked at briefly in the late 1980s, the Nevada Test and Training Range houses the Tolicha Peak Electronic Combat Range, the Eastman Airfield Target, and the Point Bravo Electronic Combat Range. That’s quite a history!

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Over the years (decades, in fact) there have been claims to the effect that more than a few people in the UFO field have been murdered for what they knew. We’re talking about those who allegedly got too close to “the truth,” and who just had to be exterminated by the likes of the Men in Black and hired assassins. There’s no doubt this is one of the most controversial angles of Ufology. For that reason, it’s a topic that should be examined carefully. Very carefully. Today, I’m going to share with you a number of such cases that, as I see it, are worth addressing. For example, there was the jump (or, maybe, the ruthless push) of the first Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal from the 16^th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland on May 22, 1949. It has been rumored that it was top secret knowledge of UFOs and aliens that led to Forrestal’s breakdown. Ufologists will tell you that Forrestal – a man with a mind filled with swirling secrets – was overwhelmed by the dark, alien secrets he suddenly found himself burdened with. The only thing we know for sure is that just a couple of months before Forrestal’s life was no more, he told his long-time friend, William O. Douglas, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court: “Bill, something awful is about to happen to me.” Something awful did happen. Death came for Forrestal. The very first fatal victim of a UFO cover-up? Maybe.

James V. Forrestal

Now, let’s take a look at a now-dead writer, Danny Casolaro. From the late 1980s to the early 1990s, Casolaro claimed he was hot on the trail of what he called “The Octopus.” It was said to have been a worldwide organization with tentacles all across the world (hence the term “Octopus”) that manipulated major events, made murders look like suicides, and even sought to have us all under some kind of “New World Order” in the years ahead. The Octopus also had a connection to the UFO subject, said Casolaro. It was the summer of 1991 – specifically August 1 of that year – when the body of a middle-aged man was discovered in a hotel room in the Martinsburg, West Virginia Sheraton Inn. His body was lying in the shower. It was a grim sight for the maid that made the discovery. The man, it seemed, had committed suicide: his wrists were cut deep, something which effectively meant that without anyone to help him, the man was doomed. And, he was. It didn’t take more than a few moments for hotel staff to figure out who, exactly, the man was. He was identified by the person on the front-desk as none other than Danny Casolaro. He was an investigative journalist of the Woodward and Bernstein variety. Casolaro’s death was a big tragedy for his family and friends. Suicide is always a terrible tragedy – and not just for the victim, but also for those left behind who have to pick up the pieces. But, was Casolaro’s death really just the suicide that it appeared to be?

Danny Casolaro

Many people in the field of conspiracy theorizing doubted the official theory for Casolaro’s death. More were fascinated by the UFO angle to it all.  Casolaro said he had proof of the existence of the so-called secret group known as Majestic 12. Supposedly, it oversaw Area 51, and the wreckage and alien bodies said to have been found in New Mexico in the summer of 1947 – the legendary Roswell affair, of course. For the record, the Majestic 12 issue has been an integral one to the field of Ufology for decades. For some UFO investigators, Majestic 12 is the real deal. For others, though, it’s nothing but government disinformation designed to confuse the Roswell incident even further. By early 1991, Casolaro’s head was spinning – which is hardly surprising. Unfortunately, Casolaro did not live to see the truth of the Octopus unveiled – by himself, he hoped. The matter of his death in August 1991 ensured that. While Casolaro’s death could have been due to suicide – certainly, that’s what it looked like – there were solid and valid reasons to suggest that his death was due to something very different. At the time of his passing, Casolaro was certainly not in a state of woe or depression. It was the exact opposite: he was energized by new leads, and new revelations, in his quest to find the truth of the Octopus, its activities, and its motivations.

Now, onto the matter of the infamous Roswell “UFO crash” affair of July 1947. Miriam Bush was someone who knew exactly what happened just outside of Roswell in early July of 1947. Not only that, she may well have paid for that knowledge with her life. Miriam has, at times, been incorrectly described as a nurse who worked at the military hospital at the Roswell Army Air Field. She was not: Miriam was actually an executive secretary at the facility. The distinction may sound small, but the fact is that Bush’s position meant that she would have been in a prime position to see the mangled bodies when they were secretly brought to the base. It’s hardly surprising, given the circumstances and the subsequent warnings issued to Bush and others in the base hospital at the time, that Miriam Bush became deeply paranoid and even in fear of her life. Although she had been told by high-ranking personnel at the base never, ever to discuss what she had seen, Bush secretly chose to confide in her family, but warning them to never tell anyone what had happened and what she knew. For Bush, though, the Roswell affair came to dominate her life: she became even more paranoid, entered into a loveless marriage, and soon started hitting the bottle to a serious degree. Miriam would soon be a full-blown alcoholic. Such were the effects of what can happen when finds oneself tangled in a conspiracy as disturbing and dark as the Roswell event surely was.

For Miriam Bush, matters came to a head – and to a shocking and suspicious end – in the late 1980s. Without warning, and on a particular day in December 1989, she took off for San Jose, California and checked into a local motel under her sister’s name – a strange action, and which further suggests that she was concerned she was being watched. After all, why would she try and obfuscate her real identity, if she had nothing to hide? The very next day, Bush was found dead in that very same motel room: a plastic-bag was around her neck. It had been tied tightly. Marks on her arms were indicative of a scuffle having occurred at some point after she checked in the motel. Despite the evidence suggesting she was murdered, the official conclusion was that Bush had taken her own life.

Morris K. Jessup

In 1955, one of the most controversial of all the many and varied UFO books published in the fifties was released – and, for the UFO field, to a distinct fanfare. Its title was The Case for the UFO. The author was Morris K. Jessup. His book was a detailed study of the theoretical power-sources for UFOs: what was it that made them fly? How could they perform such incredible, aerial feats, such as coming to a complete stop in the skies, hovering at incredible heights? Jessup believed that the vitally important answers lay in the domain of gravity. Or, as he saw it: anti-gravity. Jessup may well have been onto something, as it wasn’t long at all before the world of officialdom was on Jessup’s back – specifically senior figures in the U.S., Navy. And it was one particularly intriguing office of the Navy that was watching Jessup – a “special weapons” division. Clearly, someone in the U.S. Navy was interested in, and perhaps even concerned by, Jessup’s findings and theories. Maybe, that same office of the Navy was worried that Jessup just might stumble onto the same technology that was being used to fly Uncle Sam’s very own UFOs – those UFOs which the military were very happy for the public to perceive them as alien spacecraft, as it all helped their long-term plan to fabricate an alien invasion. Just like Miriam Bush,  Jessup became deeply worried – paranoid, even – that he was being spied on by certain elements of the U.S. government. In the early evening of April 20, 1959, the lifeless body of Morris Jessup was found in his car, which was parked in the Matheson Hammock Park in Miami, Florida. The car’s engine was still running and a hosepipe, affixed to the exhaust, had been fed through the driver’s side window. Jessup was dead from the effects of carbon-monoxide. Jessup’s body was found by a man named John Goode, who worked at the park. Shocked at the sight before him, Goode quickly called the police, who arrived in no time at all. The verdict was suicide. Not everyone in the UFO field at that time agreed.

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If you know the history of the Men in Black phenomenon, you’ll also know that the whole thing began in the early 1950s with a guy named Albert Bender. He found himself on the wrong side of the creepy MIB. It was something that altered his life forever. And also something that led to the coining of those three, memorable words: Men in Black. But, what about Bender’s life before that trio of menacing, strange characters were on the scene? Not many people – even in Ufology – are aware of those earlier years; a time when, for Bender, the nightmare had yet to begin. With that said, let’s have a look at what went down in that pre-MIB period. It all began in a dark, eerie attic in a three-story, old house at 784 Broad Street, Bridgeport, Connecticut. And it revolved around a young man (Bender, of course), who was an undeniable eccentric and someone with a fascination for the realms of monsters, the supernatural, alchemy, the paranormal, and the occult. And with a significant degree of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and an obsession with clocks. Without him, they (the Men in Black) may never have left the terrible marks – or, perhaps, more correctly, the ugly scars – on society they most assuredly have. But, I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself. Read on…

The early years of Bender’s life were nothing out of the ordinary. In fact, quite the opposite was the case. Born in 1921, Bender lived in Duryea, Pennsylvania, where he worked in a factory. In the aftermath of the terrible attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in 1941, Bender joined the United States Army Air Corps, stationed at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland. He served from June 1942 to October 1943 – as a dental technician – and was given an honorable discharge. Bender, his mother Ellen, and his stepfather, Michael Ardolino, made a home for themselves in Bridgeport, Connecticut. And, that’s when things started to get weird. Very weird. Too weird, some might say.  Michael J. Bielawa – a poet and the author of Wicked Bridgeport – states that Bender “…was employed as chief timekeeper at Acme Shear Co., the world’s largest manufacturer of scissors. The factory was located across the Pequonnock River from downtown at Hicks and Knowlton Streets. Perhaps it was Bender’s sense of humor, but in an ironic salute to his job Bender filled his living space with an assortment of twenty chiming clocks. Every fifteen minutes, half hour and on the hour, 784 Broad Street resounded with the din of bells, bells, bells.” The strangeness had well and truly begun. It was followed by Bender’s decision to convert the attic room in which he lived into what can accurately be termed as his “Chamber of Horrors.”

Artwork of bloodsucking bats, monsters, ghouls and skulls adorned the walls. There was barely a space for wallpaper. Imagery of vampires, the Moon, a horse’s head, and black cats could be seen. Interestingly, Bender painted a picture that showed a cloaked man wearing a fedora hat while prowling around an old, tree-shrouded cemetery after sunset. Both the cloak and the hat were, of course, black in color. Does that mean the MIB were already getting their claws into Bender? I should stress there’s no evidence of that, but who knows? Fedoras were, and still are, part and parcel of the outfits of the MIB. In light of that, just maybe there’s a part of the story that has been lost forever. Bender was very much a loner (he would marry later, though). Girlfriends were nowhere in sight. Much of his spare-time was taken up watching sci-fi movies and horror flicks on Saturday nights. By Bender’s own admission, his visits to the local cinema were always made alone. As were the late-night walks back home. When the few friends Bender had called on him, he would entertain them with spooky sound-effects that boomed around the room. It was all good fun – albeit undeniably odd. And, it surely cannot have been healthy to have lived in such a claustrophobic situation. Even Bender himself had to admit: “Late at night the attic became a creepy place.” No shit!

Interestingly, Riley Crabb – the director of Borderland Sciences Research Associates and who followed the Bender affair – went on record as saying of Bender that, for years, he had: “…dabbled in magic, with no success in table-tipping, and surprising success with a yes-or-no technique using the Holy Bible. There was a history of psychic phenomena in his family.”

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On the night of September 12, 1952, something terrifying descended upon the small, West Virginian town of Flatwoods. Precisely what it was remains very much a mystery to this day. All that can really be said for sure is that it was hideous, fear-inducing and downright monstrous. It has, quite appropriately, become known as the Flatwoods Monster. Situated in Braxton County and dominated by a cool, picturesque, forested landscape, Flatwoods is a distinctly small town – that much is apparent from the fact that, today, its population is less than four hundred. Back in 1952, though, it was even less than that. On the night in question, however, the people of the town found themselves briefly added to by one visitor from…well…no-one really knows from where. It all began just as the sun was setting on what was a warm, still, September evening. A group of boys from Flatwoods were playing football in the town’s schoolyard when they were frozen to the spot by the sight of a brightly lit, fiery object that shot overhead, provoking amazement and wonder in the process. All that the boys could be sure of was that the object appeared to be either egg-shaped or circular. Its color fluctuated from orange to a fiery red.

As the stunned children watched in awe, they saw the object begin to descend – and at a high rate of speed, no less – and then appear to come down on one of Flatwood’s largest hilltops. Not surprisingly, being kids, they saw this as a big adventure looming large. The result: they, with a woman named Kathleen May and a recent U.S. Army recruit, Eugene Lemon, headed off for the scene of all the action. It wasn’t long before the group reached the hill in question – and with nightfall rapidly closing in. The first thing the group noticed, as they reached the darkened peak, was something brightly lit within the trees. What it was, no-one had a clue. But, it clearly wasn’t the lights of a farmhouse, truck, or car. Suddenly, the air was filled with a sickening odor – not unlike that of devilish brimstone. That was not a good sign. To their credit, however, they pushed on, determined to figure out the true nature of the source behind the lights. They soon found out: as the air became filled with a strange, sizzling sound, nothing less than a pair of self-illuminated red eyes could be seen getting ever closer. Kathleen May had the presence of mind to bring a flashlight with her and she quickly focused it on the eyes. In doing so, she also lit up the abominable creature that possessed those fiery eyes.

Looming before the now-terrified band of intrepid souls was an approximately ten-feet-tall, floating monster. It appeared to be humanoid in shape and had something almost like a large, black hood-like piece behind its head – that gave the entire thing an “Ace of Spades”-type appearance. Oddly, its lower half was ice-cream cone-shaped and had wires and cables running from it. This issue of the cone-shaped lower portion led flying saucer sleuths to later suggest the monster my actually have been encased within some kind of remotely piloted vehicle. As the creature then turned its attention to the group, and wildly fired laser-like beams from its eyes, the brave band was suddenly brave no more. They didn’t wait to see what might happen next. One and all fled, screaming – possibly for their lives. Mrs. May breathlessly shouted to the boys to follow her to her home, which they all did. On arrival, and possibly as a result of exposure to the noxious odor that hung around the hill, several of the boys became violently ill, feeling nauseous and even outright vomiting.

Kathleen May quickly called the local police, who, rather intriguingly, were busy responding to reports of what was described as an “airplane crash” somewhere in the area. It turns out that no such crashed aircraft was ever found – something that suggests the “airplane” and the brightly lit UFO that descended upon the high hill that night were, almost certainly, one and the very same. As a result of the fact that Flatwoods was, and still is, a very small town, word soon got out about what had happened. The local media was quickly on the scene, and even the U.S. Air Force sat up and took careful notice. Despite intense investigations by the press and the military, the mystery of the Flatwoods Monster was never solved to the satisfaction of everyone: the creature was long gone by the time anyone else was on the scene. It is, however, decidedly interesting to note that Flatwoods is only around 125 miles from the town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where, from 1966 to 1967, yet another red-eyed monster was seen. Its famous name is, of course, Mothman.

Months after my Roswell-themed-book, Body Snatchers in the Desert, was published in June 2005, I received an out-of-the-blue email from a well-respected Australian UFO researcher, Keith Basterfield. As Keith notes of himself: “I have been interested in the subject of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) since the 1960’s. Over the years I have held a variety of roles in numerous Australian state, national, and international organizations, studying the phenomena. My work has appeared in various state, national and international newsletters, magazine and journals. Between 2003 and 2008 I was involved in a search for Australian government documents relating to UAP with the Adelaide based AURA network.” Keith had a fascinating account to relate that dovetailed very closely with the data given to me by Al Barker, Bill Salter, the Black Widow, and the Colonel – four people who I interviewed for my 2005 book, Body Snatchers in the Desert. Notably, the information was provided to Keith well before Body Snatchers in the Desert was published and when the existence of the book – and the story it told – was still firmly under wraps in the offices of Simon & Schuster in New York. It was specifically after my book was published that Keith realized the data given to him some time earlier was eerily similar to that which I had uncovered. He wasted no time in getting in touch with me. I listened carefully to what Keith had to say.

Tuesday, January 11, 2005, Keith told me, was the date on which he received a story just about as shocking and controversial as the ones I had uncovered between 2001 and 2003. On the day in question, Keith was interviewed on Australia’s ABC 891AM radio station. The subject was the work of the Adelaide-based Australian UFO Research Association, specifically in relation to the issue of so-called “UFO disclosure.” Although Keith did not know it at the time, while he was taking part in the show, a caller phoned in, left his name and number, and asked for Keith to get in touch. He did precisely that. It was later in the day that Keith made the call, in which his source somewhat hesitantly revealed snippets of a dark and dirty secret concerning certain things that went down – as in quite literally down – in the New Mexico desert in the summer of 1947. We’re talking about Roswell. Such was the potential dangerous nature of the information, Keith felt it was much wiser for the pair to meet up in-person, rather than discuss such matters over the phone. Keith was wise to follow his instincts; after all, one never knows who might be listening in.

When Keith related the account to me, he preferred not to use the informant’s name and gave him an alias instead: Martin. Echoing this, Martin said to me that if I ever told his story, his name should never be revealed. It should be noted, however, that both Keith and I know Martin’s real name. As Keith told me, he met Martin at the latter’s home in Adelaide on January 15, 2005 – roughly six months before Body Snatchers in the Desert hit the bookshelves. The story went as follows: Martin’s father – a Brit – had worked for a certain arm of British intelligence decades before Keith got the story. I would later learn that the agency was specifically MI5, which is the U.K.’s equivalent of the United States’ FBI. Martin’s father was sitting upon a secret of epic and grim proportions – one which he had already been silently keeping under wraps for years. Such were Martin’s concerns and worries about sharing the story with Keith, he insisted that the information not be revealed to anyone – at all – without his, Martin’s, specific permission. Or, until after Martin’s death; whichever came first. Keith agreed to the terms and sat back and listened as the dark and shocking tale came tumbling out.

Keith revealed that at the time Martin chose to share the secrets of his father, Martin’s health was far from good. He was seriously ill – with a heart condition. It was possible that Martin was not long for this world, although he was not quite on his deathbed, yet. The upshot was that Martin wanted to reveal to someone the story that his father had told him, while there was still time. Keith agreed to listen and also agreed not to place Martin’s real, full name into the public domain. According to Martin, he was told by his father of the truth of Roswell way back in 1959 – when Martin was only twelve years old. Such were his father’s concerns about imparting what he knew, he asked young Martin never to reveal the story until he was either very old or on his deathbed. Given his serious heart problems that were in evidence in 2005, Martin thought it was a case of possibly now or never – hence his decision to share what he knew with Keith.

Martin’s father had gotten all of the information on Roswell from a source working in the U.S. Intelligence community – who, exactly, we still don’t know. Martin’s father explained that the events which occurred out on the wilds of the Foster Ranch, Lincoln County, New Mexico in July 1947 were born out of early, and highly secret, experiments that had a bearing on the formative years of what would ultimately become the U.S. space program. Keith, in a July 2011 online article, revealed what else Martin chose to share with him: “The Americans were working on getting into space. Their biggest concern was getting back to Earth and landing without killing the people inside the space vehicle. Landing in water was not considered, but a ground landing was the order of the day. The Americans were experimenting with craft they dropped from ‘aircraft’ flying in the stratosphere. Also, gigantic balloons were being flown in the stratosphere to drop craft fitted with retrorockets and a drogue chute. The retrorocket was fitted with an altimeter to fire them close to the ground. Lots of UFO sightings were of these craft. The U.S. released bogus flying saucer sightings and later discredited them.”

Martin recalled – to both Keith and I – how his father had informed him of a series of high-altitude experiments in the United States, in 1947, involving monkeys and pigs, specifically in connection with the prototype aircraft / balloon flights. On this particular occasion, however – the one that spawned the ever-enduring legend of Roswell’s crashed UFO – it was decided that a human crew was finally needed. Keith was told that “Prisoners could volunteer for dangerous missions in return for early release but were not used in these experiments.” This issue of prisoners used in experiments, specifically in relation to radical aircraft-based technology, is not a matter of doubt or a tale born out of folklore or conspiracy-theorizing. In 1948, staff of the Nuclear Energy for Propulsion of Aircraft (NEPA) program practically salivated at the idea of using prisoners in its aircraft-related trials. Official, now-declassified, records on this issue state: “The Committee is not in a position to make recommendations as to where these tests can be conducted other than that they should be carried out at some federal, state, or Armed Services prison, where life prisoners are incarcerated and where arrangements can be made with the prison authorities to cooperate in the experiment.  The selection of the prison is a matter for top military consideration. Continued cooperation of the prison staff and prisoners for a matter of many years will be required [italics mine].”

That somewhat mirrored the words of my own informants in my 2005 book – namely, that prisoners were secretly offered reduced sentences if they were willing to engage in dicey and potentially missions for the military. On this occasion, however, it was not prisoners who were on-board the ultimately ill-fated craft, but physically and mentally handicapped people. As Keith recalled: “Two to three live people were needed. The government got people with hydrocephalus – water on the brain – from a facility.” From the interview with Martin, both Keith and I recalled much more too on the matter of the human guinea-pigs. Keith said that the people roped in had “big heads, tiny bodies, jaundiced color – one even had no eyes. They put these people in the craft – either the balloon ruptured early or blew off course and came down. Retrorockets went off and set fire to it. It landed and a farmer / rancher saw it and reported it.” That “farmer / rancher,” of course, was Mack Brazel; the man who let the Roswell cat out of the bag. Thus was born the legend of the “Roswell ‘UFO’ Crash” of 1947.

Today, and for the last week, as you will have seen, I’ve been digging further into the angle of Roswell having nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with shocking tests on people. And here’s a bit more of the story. The late Leonard Stringfield, who passed away in 1994, was a UFO researcher who firmly believed that, since the 1940s, the U.S.  Government had secretly recovered a number of crashed UFOs and dead aliens, and which were stored and preserved a variety of military bases across the country – many at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. Stringfield, too, however, was given a number of accounts relative to the issue of secret and shocking human experimentation on handicapped people; experimentation that was tied in with the Roswell affair.  One of those stories came to Stringfield from a highly controversial figure in Ufology. His name: Timothy Cooper, a resident of Big Bear Lake, California and someone who, it has often been said, exited the field of UFO research years ago. Not quite so. Far more than a few people in Ufology have very little time for Cooper, suspecting that many of the documents he supplied to the UFO community in the mid-1990s were bogus, rather than the highly classified papers that they were purported to be. They were bogus; there is no doubt about that. But, Cooper himself was not the forger. It’s the “pre-documents” era we have to take a look at. It paints a very different picture of Cooper to that which many ufologists have accepted.

Tim Cooper said to Stringfield in 1990 that he had numerous sources of the old-timer kind – some of who assured Cooper that, yes, aliens really did crash outside of Roswell in the summer of 1947. Others, however, quietly hinted to Cooper that the truth was far more controversial: a scenario involving human guinea-pigs – Japanese and handicapped individuals – and the creation of UFO-themed disinformation programs and faked, pro-UFO documents to hide the down-to-earth truth of the Roswell enigma. Also in 1990, Cooper supplied Stringfield one specific story which Stringfield decided to firmly keep under wraps until the following year, 1991, when he published it in a lengthy report on tales of crashed and secretly retrieved alien spacecraft. The story concerned a woman who Cooper first crossed paths with in 1989. He described her only as a nurse, and gave her the pseudonym of “Mary.” Decades ago, Cooper’s informant allegedly worked at what is, today, the New Mexico-based Los Alamos National Laboratory.

In Cooper’s own words of 1990, and which Stringfield published: “She casually mentioned to me over coffee that ‘bodies’ were being flown to Los Alamos periodically from late 1945 to sometime in 1947. I asked her if she had seen these ‘bodies’ and she said no, but others had. I asked her where these ‘bodies’ were coming from. She said she did not know but it was rumored that they were human experiments for biological and nuclear medicine research. She thought they may have come from Japan after the war [italics mine]. I asked her why she thought that. She said that they were small bodies with deformed heads and limbs. The eyes were abnormally big, she was told. She did have some view of them in the morgue very briefly for a few minutes at some distance. I asked her why she was allowed to be present at the autopsies. She told me that she was asked to assist in the preparation and cleanup. I asked her again about the bodies. She said they were being flown in on special transport planes equipped with refrigerator units to keep the bodies from decomposing. The flesh was badly burned and charred. There was no hair on the heads and had a grayish-yellow color. That’s all she knew.”

It has to be said this is the part of Ufology that so many people in the UFO scene prefer to ignore. The reason: because it threatens their belief systems when it comes to the issue of what did or did not happen outside of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Some may dismiss all of this (or choose to forget about it), but the fact is there are so many threads of this type that push things down a “secret experiments” angle. Don’t close your eyes and ignore it all. Instead, follow the story and dig into it even more – as I have done – and you may well find something that might shock you, but that deserves to be shared with us all. Before, that is, the whole thing is hidden from us to such a degree that we will never know the truth.

Over the last few days I’ve written articles on how and why the Roswell affair of July 1947 had nothing to do with aliens, but everything to do with secret experiments that involved huge balloon arrays, some of which were created by the U.S. military and others that were based on Japanese documents captured at the end of the Second World War. At this stage in the story, I am going to draw your attention to the fact that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI noted a parallel between the investigation of UFOs in the summer of 1947 and the Japanese balloon wave of a few years earlier, when the Second World War was still raging. The FBI document quoted from below – which surfaced thanks to Freedom of Information legislation – shows that in the summer 1947 there was a mindset that suggested “disk” sightings were not unlike the Japanese Fugo balloon sightings and investigations of a couple of years earlier – at least, in terms of how they should be investigated. 

According to the FBI:

“It is felt that the situation regarding these flying saucers and flying disks is very similar to the situation which was previously encountered by the Bureau during the past war in handling complaints arising out of the sightings of Japanese balloons. You will recall that at the inception of these complaints the Bureau conducted considerable investigation and located numerous balloons as a cooperative measure for the Army then informed that these were military weapons and that they would take over the handling of these completely. This they did and in an extremely short time issued a big press release as to the splendid work of the Army in locating these Japanese balloons. From the information available thus far it does not appear that these disks should be treated other than as a military weapon. Certainly the Bureau has no way to determine what experiments the Army and Navy are conducting and whether such might be arising out of experiments being conducted by them, nor do we have any way of determining how far the Russians have progressed in certain experiments and whether such might be the results of experiments by the Russian Army.”

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, the keeper of all secrets

As this memo reveals, the FBI was making certain investigative parallels between the Fugo balloons of the Second World War and the flying saucers of 1947. It is most eye-opening that the FBI also noted: “…the Bureau has no way to determine what experiments the Army and Navy are conducting and whether such might be arising out of experiments being conducted by them…” This strongly suggests there was a fair degree of belief, or suspicion, within the FBI that what was being seen was not from some faraway star-system, but from right here. On Earth. That the FBI also stated, “From the information available thus far it does not appear that these disks should be treated other than as a military weapon,” also speaks volumes about where the collective mind of the FBI was then-currently at. In view of what we have seen so far, we can make a good case that in the summer of 1947, the FBI knew – or at least strongly suspected – that UFOs were the product of Uncle Sam. Now, let’s take a look at a certain, central figure in the Roswell mystery who also had a link to…wartime Japanese balloons.

Master Sergeant Lewis “Bill” Rickett – of the Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) – was someone who many Roswell investigators believe knew exactly what happened on the Foster Ranch in July 1947. At the time of the mysterious event, Rickett was the Non-Commissioned Officer-in-Charge at the Roswell Army Air Field. Years after the event, Rickett admitted to UFO researchers his presence at the ranch site – along with Sheridan Cavitt, also of the CIC – on July 8. Rickett also shared a few other snippets of data, when the mood took him. For the most part, though, he remained very tight-lipped – even cagey at times – on exactly what took place. Rickett did, however, admit that approximately two months after the crash on the Foster Ranch took place, he liaised on the top secret matter with one Dr. Lincoln LaPaz. At the time, he was the Director of the University of New Mexico’s Institute of Meteoritics. He and LaPaz undertook a secret assignment to try and figure out “the speed and trajectory” of the craft that slammed into the heart of Lincoln County. Reportedly, the pair found a “touchdown” location just a few miles from the ranch, as well as a patch of ground that had been exposed to a significant amount of heat. According to Rickett, the object that hurtled to the ground on the ranch was somewhat bat-winged, but certainly not what anyone would call a flying saucer – which is an important point, given that all the talk at the time was of saucers and disks.

There are good indications that Rickett knew a great deal about the Roswell bodies, too. UFO investigator Stan Friedman had the opportunity to speak with Rickett back in the 1980s. It was an absolute cloak-and-dagger-like conversation that was noted not so much for what Rickett did say, but for what he didn’t say. Friedman recalled: “When I mentioned bodies, Rickett clearly reacted and indicated that this was an area he couldn’t talk about. He indicated there were different levels of security about this work; that a directive had come down placing this at a high level. He went on to say that certain subjects were discussed only in rooms that couldn’t be bugged.” Clearly, Rickett was a concerned man – as he certainly should have been. In other words, decades after the mystifying incident, Rickett was still fearful of saying too much to too many – and particularly so on the matter of the bodies. Nevertheless, it may have been a result of opening his mouth just one too many times that finally led Rickett to get what we might call a friendly warning. You know the sort: they are actually anything but friendly. From whom? From Sheridan Cavitt, formerly of the Counter-Intelligence Corps; the man who assured the U.S. Air Force in the 1990s that nothing stranger than a weather-balloon was the cause of all the sensational press-coverage way back when.

One particularly important fact that many Roswell researchers have either not realized or have carefully avoided highlighting, in case – shock, horror – it dares to support my conclusions, is Dr. Lincoln LaPaz’s connection to the issue of Japan’s Fugo balloons. In 1945, the University of New Mexico issued a press-release titled “New Mexican Had Lookout Job For ‘Japanese Germs.'” It revealed a certain, previously secret, aspect of LaPaz’s life, and it reads as follows: “Dr. Lincoln LaPaz of the University of New Mexico was in the thick of the fight against Japanese plans to send disease germs into America by balloon, said President J.P Wernette of the University today. Commenting on stories from the Navy in Washington revealing that use of germs and viruses in the Jap balloon-barrage was an enemy project as the war came to an end, Dr. Wernette said that Dr. LaPaz, head of the department of mathematics and the University’s Institute of Meteoritics, was with the government’s secret anti-balloon project during the war.”

University staff continued: “‘If the war had not ended when it did, in the opening stages of a full-scale balloon offensive which probably would have taken place between October 1945, and now, when the velocity of the west wind at high altitude is greatest, this country would have had unpleasant experiences,’ Dr. LaPaz said today. ‘People most concerned were trained scientists, and stockmen, too, he said. Anthrax spores could have been sent over in the paper balloons in great numbers, and Manchurian sheep pox could have easily struck the hooved animals of this country because the disease has not been found here and there would be no natural immunity, Dr. LaPaz went on.” LaPaz was quoted as saying: “But the Japanese, using radio devices to locate their balloons on the flight to this country, apparently did not realize that we could pick up the signals an find the balloons before they reached the mainland.”

A similar press release issued by the University of New Mexico – also in 1945 – details further information on LaPaz’s Fugo-themed work for the U.S. military: “Observers, watching for meteors, thought they had something when they saw some brilliant lights in the sky from February to May, 1945. And they did, said Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, mathematics department head at the University of New Mexico and director of its Institute of Meteoritics, today. The displays were actually made by Japanese balloons, Dr. LaPaz said, revealing the history of a scientific study of meteors which went on before and during the time that Dr. LaPaz was busy in secret government work of studying and combating the balloon offensive. Nevertheless, a few months later, on Nov. 29, 1945, a great meteorite fell slowly across northern California and Nevada, and observers mistook it for everything from a jet plane to a Hollywood publicity stunt. Members of the Society for Research on Meteorites and the American Meteor Society, thought at first that it was a new type [of] Japanese balloon bomb.”

If, as the interviewees in my The Roswell UFO Conspiracy book asserted, the key event that led to the legend of the UFO crash at Roswell involved a “next-generation of Fugo” balloon of huge proportions that was responsible for launching an experimental aircraft that catastrophically crashed, then who better to enlist into the study of how and why the experiment failed than an expert on those very same balloons? Namely, Dr. Lincoln LaPaz.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

In the 21st century, we get a lot of our Earth political news on late night talk shows, and now we can get our space news there as well. Renowned physicist, string theorist and popular TV scientist Michio Kaku has been making the rounds lately talking about the James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to be launched in the fall of 2021. Like a good scientist, he’s in favor of using new and better technology, but he’s also cautious about how some of his colleagues will use this particular tool for exploring the cosmos.

He told The Guardian this week:

“Soon we’ll have the Webb telescope up in orbit and we’ll have thousands of planets to look at, and that’s why I think the chances are quite high that we may make contact with an alien civilization. There are some colleagues of mine that believe we should reach out to them. I think that’s a terrible idea. We all know what happened to Montezuma when he met Cortés in Mexico so many hundreds of years ago.”

Montezuma

For those who only know of Montezuma from the bad joke about gastric problems, Moctezuma II (Montezuma) welcomed the alien known as conquistador Hernán Cortés to the Aztec empire, and both he and the empire died as a result. Montezuma reached out in peace, just as many of our SETI messages say “We come in peace,” and Kaku thinks this is a bad idea too because it implies we’re unarmed and could convince extraterrestrials to “come and rule us.” Or, as he said in 2018, come and “develop” our planet – building their own structures, planting their own plants and installing their own government. Gee, that’s never happened on Earth, has it?

“To be honest, I’ve get emails from people that say: ‘You’re wrong professor, the aliens are already here. They’ve been in the flying saucers, they have been kidnapped.”

Kaku followed up his Guardian interview with an appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” He anticipated and addressed the blowback from many people who believe UFOs are alien spaceships and Earth is already populated with extraterrestrials, both camouflaged and out in the open, abducting humans but returning them seemingly unharmed. How come they haven’t conquistadored us like Cortés?

“I tell them the next time you are kidnapped by an alien flying saucer, for God’s sake, steal something. I don’t care whether it’s a pen or a chip, steal something! Because there is no law against stealing from an extraterrestrial civilization.”

What was I supposed to do?

Obviously, Michio Kaku is a scientist who values facts and proofs over speculations. Of course, stealing a writing quill from Cortés wouldn’t have saved Montezuma – he still had hundreds of troops, dreams of gold, superior weapons and infectious diseases. Kaku says he hopes aliens are friendly but let’s let them show it – don’t reveal our cards to them right up front.

Is he right? There are many who believe we’ve already alerted alien civilizations we’re here and not to bright by our industrial pollution and growing numbers of satellites doing nothing but orbiting – at least from their perspective.

And the biggest sign to aliens we’re not to bright and ready for conquest? We get our science knowledge from late night talk shows.

History is full of odd and eccentric individuals. Countless people have managed to make their mark with their odd behavior, abilities, claims, and achievements, very often scurrying off into the mists of time to leave behind more questions than answers, their stories cut short and incomplete. One such strange individual went out into a desert in South America, built a UFO landing pad, and then vanished off the face of the earth to take any answers to his bizarreness with him to never be known.

Not known is much about the earlier life of the man named Werner Jaisli, and he seems to have been pretty much a nobody until one day in 2008, when he had a life-changing experience. Jaisli had travelled from his native Switzerland to the country of Argentina, where he seems to have been living at the time in the town of Forte Alto. On the evening of November 24, 2008, he was hanging out with his neighbor Luis when the power suddenly cut out and the night fell completely silent. He would say of what happened next:

I was there, at Forte Alto, at midnight on November 24, 2008. Suddenly, everything was silent and the power was cut off. At that moment, two luminous objects advanced about 200 meters above the Calchaquí River. They were solid, circular, and had the color of burnished metal. They stood about 100 meters above our heads and projected a powerful beam of light. The strange thing is that this extraordinary light did not affect our vision at all. At that moment, something began to boil through my brain: it was an order.

This order was telepathically beamed into his head loudly and clearly, nearly seared into him, and it told him to build a landing and launching pad for their spaceships, directing him to a remote area of desert near Cachi, a village in the Argentinian province of Salta. This telepathic message was so strong and compelling that Werner went about purchasing a plot of land in Salta, where he got to work building the vision that had been given to him by the aliens. It was to be a massive, sprawling construction he called the “Ovniport,” and over the next several years he would tirelessly and obsessively construct a huge, a 36-pointed star with a diameter of 160 feet, as well as a smaller 12-point star in the center and others around it, all of it laboriously handmade by himself out of piles of white and brown rocks. As this was going on, Werner became quite the sight wandering around the area wearing Druid robes and sporting a large, bushy beard. When it was completed in 2012, the Ovniport was an undeniably impressive feat which could clearly be seen from the air, and before long it was attracting quite a lot of attention from both locals and visitors alike.

The Ovniport

When news got out about this bizarre UFO landing pad out in the desert, it became a minor sensation, with people flocking in from all over the world to see it. Many of the UFO enthusiasts who came here also reported that there were several UFO sightings made in the area after the construction of the Ovniport, making it quite a mysterious place, indeed. Then, just as his fame was growing, Werner Jaisli just suddenly vanished without a trace. He didn’t tell his neighbor Luis, made no mention of travelling to any of his few friends, he just disappeared into thin air. Authorities searched for him but his house remained untouched, with all of his belongings still there and no hint as to where he could have possibly gone, which started rumors that perhaps he had joined his alien friends and been taken away aboard their spacecraft. More likely is that he simply went back to Switzerland, or that he was worried about the law and fled. It turns out that in 2011 he had a run-in with police when he was arrested for stealing wallets from tourists, so perhaps he was feeling the heat. One person claimed that he had mentioned going to Bolivia on the run, but this could not be confirmed. No one has seen Werner since, and his whereabouts are unknown.

The Ovniport he built is still there, and continues to be a tourist attraction in this remote, desolate area with not much else to see. Why did he toil away in the hot sun building this thing? Was this really due to messages from aliens, or was he just a derailed individual with a strange obsession? Why did he suddenly leave and where did he go? Did he go off with aliens or is he sitting around somewhere having a good laugh about it all? We will probably never know for sure.