[LWB Note: Back on October 8, 1989, in collaboration with the late Robert H. Bletchman of Avon, Conn., I issued a Q.&A.-formatted monograph for the public interest group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy. Its title -
Exploring the Ultimate Secret: The Case for a Congressional Inquiry - has as much relevance today as it did 22 years ago, for official UFO secrecy retains a built-in force multiplier: knowledgeable insiders die off, and the cadre of secret-keepers solidifies. Besides its exopolitical and historical value, the monograph still may serve as a catalytic motivator for current/future UFOIA activists and prospective whistleblowers.]
The U. S. government's policy and practices of "UFO secrecy" have outlived whatever utility they may have had since their inception in 1947.
Realizing that the time is long overdue for a full accounting on what certain government agencies know (and when they knew it) about UFO reality, more and more citizens from all walks of life are calling for congressional action to resolve the issue.
Some UFO researchers have been urging that an appropriate congressional committee convene a series of public hearings, for which pertinent current and former government officials would be invited (and subpoenaed) to testify on, and present evidence of, their involvement in what's known as the "UFO cover-up."
Much as the congressional inquiry into the Watergate scandal complemented a partial investigation mounted by major news media, so, too, can the sought-for UFO hearings help an increasing number of news-media representatives zero in on this political secret called the "Cosmic Watergate."
In the process, the evidence gathered by independent UFO researchers during the past decade not only can speak for itself in a secure, probing public forum but also can serve as a beacon for attracting additional evidence.
What does the UFO-secrecy evidence reveal so far? In question-and-answer format, here is the emerging picture of official deception and manipulation - a picture that Congress should find hard to ignore.
QUESTION: Back in the sixties, at least two congressional hearings on the UFO problem were held. What was wrong with them?
ANSWER: They simply didn't go far enough. In such a forum, you have to ask the right questions of the right people. This means that certain current and former military intelligence personnel, aviation/flight operations specialists, and records administrators, for example, have to come forward with a tell-all mentality (and with appropriate protection from official retaliation). Also, had the congressmen back then had access to the Freedom-of-Information-Act-acquired material now on hand, they would've been in a better position to ask "the right questions."
Q: Well, how about that FOIA-acquired material. How important is it, and so what?
A: For one thing, it shows how seriously the Executive Branch of government has been taking the UFO problem, behind the scenes. It means that for more than 40 years the government has been trying to have it both ways on the issue of UFO reality: on the one hand, officials deny that UFO reports merit serious attention, while on the other hand they continue to collect and analyze hard-core UFO evidence from within government channels.
Q: What "government channels"?
A: From the military intelligence community, the U. S. Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Defense Attache system of the State Department. Thanks to FOIA action (including lawsuits), we've produced such revelations as -
- Agencies withholding from public view certain UFO-related records: the Central Intelligence Agency admits to withholding at least 57 documents; the National Security Agency, at least 135; the Defense Intelligence Agency, at least six.
- Official admission (via USAF Brig. Gen. Carroll H. Bolender's Oct. 20, 1969, memo) that the military's own reports of UFO encounters were to be excluded from processing through the USAF Project Blue Book.
- Concern within the Federal Bureau of Investigation that the military has acquired (and concealed) certain UFO artifacts and UFO crew members (viz., as expressed in (1) an F.B.I. memo of July 10, 1947, in which Director J. Edgar Hoover notes: "for instance, in the La. case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."; and (2) an F.B.I. memo of March 22, 1950, which recounts the crash-landing of three occupied "flying saucers" in the desert of New Mexico, as having been relayed to (or through) an Air Force investigator by someone who F.B.I. officials now admit was a "local law-enforcement officer"). NOTE: The officer's censored identity (and other withheld portions of the March 22, 1950, memo) became the object of a CAUS FOIA lawsuit in June 1988, which still is being litigated in U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. [LWB update: the judge eventually decided that releasing the officer's name would invade his privacy - the privacy of probably a dead man.]
Q: So, what else does the F.B.I. have to do with UFO research?
A: Well, they consistently deny they have any jurisdictional role in investigating UFO encounters. Even so, they continue to collect - and to maintain - UFO-related records. One of those records pertains to at least one apparent case of UFO abduction back in 1967 - a Virginia businessman's account of his "missing time" encounter with small humanoids. Then you have the various dossiers being maintained on UFO researchers. One of these pertains to the UFO-research activity and objectives of nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman. Since the dossier is being withheld in its entirety on the grounds of "national security," the Bureau is being asked to justify that censorship in a lawsuit filed on Aug. 28,
1989, by CAUS official Larry W. Bryant in U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria Division). [LWB update: the judge in this case declared that he's not going to second-guess the F.B.I.'s classification authority, thus denying Bryant's request that the court perform an in-camera inspection of the contested records; but the district's assistant U. S. attorney did free up several pages of highly censored documentation - material whose existence the Bureau initially had denied when Friedman himself requested it.]
Q: Isn't Friedman the principal investigator into the now-famous 1947 crashed-saucer case near Roswell, N. M.? And, incidentally, besides that incident, what more-recent case stands out as deserving specific congressional interest?
A: Friedman certainly has become the man-of-the-hour on Roswell, continuing to amass further first-hand testimony on the event (as shown, for example, in the NBC-televised Unsolved Mysteries segment Sept. 20, 1989). Perhaps the most promising prospect for congressional pay dirt lies in the case documented in the Mutual UFO Network's journal for January 1989. It pertains to a former USAF officer's participation in, and unwitting cover-up of, the officially filmed, day-time intervention of a discoid UFO during a test-firing of an Atlas missile in September 1964 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The missile's dummy atomic warhead was seen to incur strikes from light rays emitted by the hovering UFO.
Q: Now, in this eternal UFO paper chase, what have you been doing to raise public awareness and to elicit more information from "people in the know"?
A: Since September 1984, one segment of the public - the military community - has been treated to a series of advertisements placed by Larry W. Bryant in various post/base weekly newspapers. The ads solicit UFO-cover-up testimony and other evidence from prospective whistleblowers privy to inside information. After some of the ad submissions had been interfered with by military officials, Bryant filed suit in 1986 to prohibit any further rejections or censorship of the ads. In a "consent order," the government agreed to desist. At the same time, Bryant, a federal employee, filed suit to enjoin his employer from punishing him for his thus daring, as a private citizen, to question authority on matters unrelated to his official duty. That litigation led to a ruling in October 1988 by the U. S. Supreme Court that Bryant (and any other so-punished federal employee) has the right to seek judicial remedy for any such violation of his First Amendment rights.
Q: The U. S. Army has admitted that, back in the fifties, the Army counterintelligence directorate at the Pentagon operated a UFO-related activity called Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit. Where are the records of that activity, and do they support (1) former CIA director Admiral R. H. Hillenkoetter''s published conclusion that "the UFOs are unknown objects operating under intelligent control"; (2) former Canadian official W. B. Smith's finding, in 1950, that "the matter [of flying saucers] is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb"; and (3) former CIA official H. Marshall Chadwell's assessment (in 1952) that "I consider this problem to be of such importance that it should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council in order that a community-wide coordinated effort toward its solution may be initiated"?
A: Whew! Perhaps that question should be at the top of the list for the proposed congressional inquiry. So far, the Army has yet to provide any more information about the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, despite requests to do so. Hillenkoetter's role in official UFO research remains a matter of conjecture (including the possibility of his having authored the controversial 1952 "briefing document" for President-elect Eisenhower - a "leaked" paper detailing the findings of a supersecret group of scientists and military leaders overseen as "Majestic-Twelve" by the National Security Council). Besides the Roswell incident, the "briefing document" synopsizes another crashed-saucer case - the one occurring near the Texas-Mexico border in early December 1950. Coincidentally, one of the FOIA-released documents of December 1950 from F.B.I. files notes: "This office very confidentially advised by Army Intelligence, Richmond, that they have been put on immediate high alert for any data whatsoever concerning flying saucers." It should be noted that in a secret December 1952 memo addressed to the CIA director, Chadwell observed: "At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that here is something going on that must have immediate attention. . . . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U. S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles." Like its domestic-oriented sister agency (the Federal Bureau of Investigation), the Central Intelligence Agency maintains records on UFO researchers. One of them, Richard H. Hall of Brentwood, Md., is expected to be the subject of an FOIA suit to compel the full disclosure of his CIA dossier.
NOTE: Readers of this Q.&A. update are encouraged to provide copies of it to their elected representatives, to their local news-media contacts, and to members of the academic community - many of whom may be ready and willing to join in the call for greater UFO freedom of information and accountability (UFOIA) - a call that can be answered, in part, by the proposed congressional inquiry.
Please send a copy of all your congressional and media responses to Larry W. Bryant at the CAUS Washington, D. C., office: 3518 Martha Custis Drive, Alexandria, VA 22302; telephone: (703) 931-3341.
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= EPILOGUE (12 Sep 11) ==
If today's federal workforce were to read the government's own UFO-related documentation already FOIA-released (and/or citizen-leaked), they'd realize that nondisclosure (a.k.a. secrecy) of UFO-E.T. reality has morphed into de facto disclosure (a.k.a. partial openness). And: if the evidence of this transition (such as that sampled by this paper) were presented to a grand-jury probe, the chances would point to at least a 95-percent certainty of indictment. Why doesn't (or can't) Congress step forward and preempt that process by convening a whistleblower-centered series of open hearings? Put that question to your own congressional delegation, if you dare! - Larry W. Bryant
