A
UFO conspiracy theory is any one of many often overlapping
conspiracy theories which argue that
evidence of the reality of
unidentified flying objects is being suppressed by the
governments. Such theories are often intentionally
hoaxed, and are backed by little or no evidence, and absolutely no reliable evidence despite significant research on the subject by non-governmental scientific agencies, and therefore, are considered
pseudoscience. They commonly argue that Earth governments, especially the
Government of the United States are in communication or cooperation with
extraterrestrials, despite public claims to the contrary. The theory's tendency to target the United States government over others, is likely because it is an
American cultural phenomenon. Some of these theories claim that the government is explicitly allowing
alien abduction.
Popular culture and opinions
It has been suggested that UFO conspiracy theories have been presented to UFO enthusiasts as
disinformation designed to distract from prosaic but secretive government effort; there is one well-documented instance of this occurring; see
Paul Bennewitz. Some UFO conspiracy theories have been studied as emergent
folklore or
urban legends. It has also been suggested that UFO conspiracy theories were deliberately played into by the U.S. Air Force during the Cold War in order to create fear in the minds of Soviet leaders that the United States had access to superior alien technology and, thus, should not be attacked or provoked.
Various conspiratorial UFO ideas have flourished on the internet and are frequently featured on Art Bell's program, Coast to Coast AM.
In fiction, television programs (The X-Files and Stargate), films (Men in Black and Independence Day) and any number of novels have featured elements of UFO conspiracy theories.
Elements may include the government's sinister operative from Men in Black, the military bases known as Area 51, RAF Rudloe Manor or Porton Down, a supposed crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, the Rendlesham Forest Incident, a political committee dubbed the "Majestic 12" or successor of the UK Ministry of Defence's Flying Saucer Working Party (FSWP).
Some civilians suggest that they have been abducted and/or body parts have been taken from them. The contention that there is a widespread cover-up of UFO information is not limited to the general public or UFO research community. For example, a 1971 survey of Industrial Research/Development magazine found that 76% felt the government was not revealing all it knew about UFOs, 54% thought UFOs definitely or probably existed, and 32% thought they came from outer space.
Notable persons to have publicly stated that UFO evidence is being suppressed include Senator Barry Goldwater, Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (former NATO head and chief of the British Defence Staff), Brigadier-General Arthur Exon (former commanding officer of Wright-Patterson AFB), Vice-Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (first CIA director), astronauts Gordon Cooper and Edgar Mitchell, former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, and the 1999 French COMETA report by various French generals and aerospace experts.
Chronology
This is a list of events, statements and personalities which are related to UFO conspiracy theories.
1930s
On the night before
Halloween in 1938,
Orson Welles directed the
Mercury Theatre in their live radio adaptation of
H. G. Wells's classic novel,
The War of the Worlds. By mimicking a
news broadcast, the show was quite realistic sounding for its time, and some listeners were fooled into thinking that a
Martian invasion was underway in the United States. There was widespread confusion, followed by outrage and controversy. Some later studies have argued that the extent of the panic was exaggerated by the contemporary press, but it remains clear that many people were caught up, to one degree or another, in the confusion.
In other countries, reaction wasn't dissimilar. In 1949, part of the script for the War of The Worlds was read out at San Quentin, without announcement, as if it were a major piece of breaking news. Huge crowds of people emerged onto the streets, and sought refuge inside of churches with their families. When the radio station was informed, they broadcast the fact that there was no invasion. An angry mob formed, and burned the station to the ground, resulting in somewhere between six-twenty deaths. There were many other countries that experienced problems when broadcasting the war of the worlds.
According to U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the Air Force's files often mentioned the panicked aftermath of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast as a possible reaction of the public to confirmed evidence of UFOs.
1940s
The Great Los Angeles Air Raid
"The Great Los Angeles Air Raid" also known as "The Battle of Los Angeles" is the name given by contemporary sources to the imaginary enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942 over
Los Angeles,
California. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from
Japan, but
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox speaking at a press conference shortly afterward called the incident a "false alarm." A small number of modern-day
UFOlogists have suggested the targets were
extraterrestrial spacecraft. When documenting the incident in 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" likely triggered by a lost
weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries.
Ghost rockets
In 1946 and 1947, numerous so-called
ghost rockets appeared over Scandinavian countries, primarily Sweden, and then spread into other European countries. One USAF top secret document from 1948 stated that Swedish air intelligence informed them that some of their investigators felt that the objects were not only real but could not be explained as having earthly origins. Similarly, 20 years later, Greek physicist Dr. Paul Santorini publicly stated that in 1947 he was put in charge of a Greek military investigation into the ghost rockets sighted over Greece. Again, they quickly concluded the objects were real and not of conventional origin. Santorini claimed their investigation was killed by U.S. scientists and high military officials who had already concluded the objects were extraterrestrial in origin and feared public panic because there was no defense.
Roswell Incident
In 1947, the
United States Air Force issued a press release stating that a "flying disk" had been
recovered near
Roswell, New Mexico. This press release was quickly withdrawn, and officials stated that a
weather balloon had been misidentified. The Roswell case quickly faded even from the attention of most
UFOlogists until the 1970s. There has been continued speculation that an alien spacecraft did indeed crash near Roswell despite the official denial. For example, retired Brigadier General Arthur E. Exon, former commanding officer of
Wright-Patterson AFB, told researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt that a spacecraft had crashed, alien bodies were recovered, and the event was covered up by the U.S. government. Exon further claimed he was aware of a very secretive UFO controlling committee made up primarily of very high-ranking military officers and intelligence people. His nickname for this group was "The Unholy Thirteen" (see also
Majestic 12)
Mantell Incident
The 1948 death of Air Force pilot Thomas Mantell (the so-called
Mantell Incident) may have contributed to a distrust of governmental UFO studies. Mantell's airplane crashed and he was killed following the pursuit of an aerial artifact he described as "a metallic object...of tremendous size." (Clark, 352)
Project Sign personnel investigated the case and determined that Mantell had been chasing the planet
Venus, a conclusion which met with incredulity. Later this theory was changed to include a
Skyhook balloon instead of Venus, an explanation which continues to be debated to this day.
Project Sign
The U.S. Air Force may have planted the seeds of UFO conspiracy theories with
Project Sign (established 1947) (which became
Project Grudge and
Project Blue Book).
Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Blue Book, characterized the Air Force's public behavior regarding UFOs as "
schizophrenic": alternately open and transparent, then secretive and dismissive. Ruppelt also revealed that in mid-1948, Project Sign issued a top secret
Estimate of the Situation concluding that the flying saucers were not only real but probably extraterrestrial in origin. According to Ruppelt, the Estimate was ordered destroyed by Air Force Chief of Staff
Hoyt Vandenberg.
1950s
The UK
Ministry of Defence’s UFO Project has its roots in a study commissioned in 1950 by the MOD’s then Chief Scientific Adviser, the great radar scientist Sir
Henry Tizard. As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the Department set up the
Flying Saucer Working Party (or FSWP).
In August 1950, Montanan baseball manager Nicholas Mariana films several UFOs with his color 16mm camera. Project Blue Book is called in and, after inspecting the film, Mariana claimed they returned it to him with critical footage removed, clearly showing the objects as disc-shaped. The incident sparks nation-wide media attention.
Frank Scully's 1950 Behind the Flying Saucers suggested that the U.S. government had recovered a crashed flying saucer and its dead occupants near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948. It was later revealed that Scully had been the victim of a prank by "two veteran confidence artists".
Donald Keyhoe was a retired U.S. Marine who wrote a series of popular books and magazine articles that were very influential in shaping public opinion, arguing that UFOs were indeed real and the U.S. government was suppressing UFO evidence. Keyhoe's first article on the subject came out in True Magazine, January 1950, and was a national sensation. His first book, Flying Saucers Are Real also came out in 1950, at about the same time as Frank Scully's book, and was a bestseller. In 1956, Keyhoe helped establish NICAP, a powerful civilian UFO investigating group with many inside sources. Keyhoe became its director and continued his attacks on the Air Force. Other contemporary critics also charged that the United States Air Force was perpetrating a cover-up with its Project Blue Book.
Canadian radio engineer Wilbert B. Smith, who worked for the Canadian Department of Transport, was interested in flying saucer propulsion technology and wondered if the assertions in the just-published Scully and Keyhoe books were factual. In September 1950, he had the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. arrange contact with U.S. officials to try to discover the truth of the matter. Smith was briefed by Dr. Robert Sarbacher, a physicist and consultant to the Defense Department's Research and Development Board. Other correspondence, having to do with Keyhoe needing to get clearance to publish another article on Smith's theories of UFO propulsion, indicated that Bush and his group were operating out of the Research and Development Board. Smith then briefed superiors in the Canadian government, leading to the establishment of Project Magnet, a small Canadian government UFO research effort. Canadian documents and Smith's private papers were uncovered in the late 1970s, and by 1984, other alleged documents emerged claiming the existence of a highly secret UFO oversight committee of scientists and military people called Majestic 12, again naming Vannevar Bush. Sarbacher was also interviewed in the 1980s and corroborated the information in Smith's memos and correspondence. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Smith granted public interviews, and among other things stated that he had been lent crashed UFO material for analysis by a highly secret U.S. government group which he wouldn't name.
The Robertson Panel was a secret, CIA-assembled scientific UFO review committee that met in January 1953. In part, it recommended a public relations campaign to reduce public interest in UFOs, including ridiculing and discrediting those who claim UFO encounters, and to spy on civilian UFO groups. The Robertson Panel's existence was first disclosed in 1956 by former Blue Book director, Edward Ruppelt, who had participated in the discussions. Immediately after the Panel, Blue Book public relations officer Al Chop told Ruppelt that, "We've been ordered to work up a national debunking campaign, planting articles in magazines and arranging broadcasts to make UFO reports sound like poppycock." (Dolan, 193-202) This protocol is still in effect.
A few weeks after the Robertson Panel, the Air Force issued Regulation 200-2, ordering air base officers to publicly discuss UFO incidents only if they were judged to have been solved, and to classify all the unsolved cases to keep them out of the public eye. In addition, UFO investigative duties started to be taken on by the newly formed 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS) of the Air Defense Command. The 4,602nd AISS was tasked with investigating only the most important UFO cases with intelligence or national security implications. These were deliberately siphoned away from Blue Book, leaving Blue Book to deal with the more trivial reports. (Dolan, 210-211)
In 1954 an automatic working station for UFO monitoring was installed at Shirley's Bay near Ottawa in Canada. After this station detected the first suspicious event, all data gained by this station was classified as secret, although the cameras of the monitoring station could not make any pictures because of fog.(citation?)
1956 saw the publication of Gray Barker's They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, the book which publicized the idea of sinister Men in Black who appear to UFO witnesses and warn them to keep quiet. There has been continued speculation that the men in black are government agents who harass and threaten UFO witnesses.
Also in 1956, the group Foundation for Earth-Space Relations, led by film producer Tzadi Sophit, tested their own flying saucer outside the Long Island town of Ridge Landing. It is speculated in Robertson's "The Long Island Saucer" that an FBI cover-up silenced witnesses. (citation?)
On January 22, 1958, when Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were precensored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before", CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release". What Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and a 1952 Project Blue Book engineering analysis of UFO motion presented at the Robertson Panel. [Timothy Good, 286-287; Richard Dolan 293-295]
Astronaut Gordon Cooper reported suppression of a flying saucer movie filmed in high clarity by two Edwards AFB range photographers on May 3, 1957. Cooper said he viewed developed negatives of the object, clearly showing a dish-like object with a dome on top and something like holes or ports in the dome. The photographers and another witness, when later interviewed by James McDonald, confirmed the story. Cooper said military authorities then picked up the film and neither he nor the photographers ever heard what happened to it. The incident was also reported in a few newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times. The official explanation was that the photographers had filmed a weather balloon distorted by hot desert air.
1960s
Throughout much of the 1960s, atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald suggested—via lectures, articles and letters—that the U.S. Government was mishandling evidence which would support the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
1970s
Although strictly unrelated to a UFO conspiracy theory, the
Watergate affair brought the curtain down on the era when authorities were generally trusted by the public. A decade after the assassination of
John F. Kennedy a cottage industry of JFK conspiracy theorists seemed to spring up out of the woodwork, fed by the
tabloids. UFO conspiracy theories found fertile ground in this paranoid
zeitgeist.
Clark also notes that many UFO conspiracy theory tales "can be traced to a mock documentary, Alternative 3, broadcast on British television on June 20, 1977, and subsequently turned into a paperback book." (Clark, 213–4)
Holloman Air Force Base
Clark cites a 1973 encounter as perhaps the earliest suggestion that the U.S. government was involved with ETs. That year,
Robert Emenegger and
Allan Sandler of
Los Angeles, California, were in contact with officials at
Norton Air Force Base in order to make a
documentary film. Emenegger and Sandler report that Air Force Officials (including Paul Shartle) suggested incorporating UFO information in the documentary, including as its centerpiece genuine footage of a 1971 UFO landing at
Holloman Air Force Base in
New Mexico. Furthermore, says Emenegger, he was given a tour of Holloman AFB and was shown where officials conferred with EBEs. This was supposedly not the first time the U.S. had met these aliens, as Emenegger reported that his U.S. military sources had "been monitoring signals from an alien group with which they were unfamiliar, and did their ET guests know anything about them? The ETs said no." (Clark 1998, 144) No film was ever presented, however, and the documentary was released in 1974 as
(narrated by
Rod Serling). The alleged Holloman UFO landing was discussed in the documentary and was depicted with illustrations.
In 1988, Shartle said that the film in question was genuine, and that he had seen it several times.
Paul Bennewitz
The late 1970s also saw the beginning of an affair centered around
Paul Bennewitz of
Albuquerque, New Mexico.
1980s
MJ-12
The so-called
Majestic 12 documents surfaced in 1982, suggesting that there was secret, high-level U.S. government interest in UFOs dating to the 1940s.
Linda Moulton Howe
In September 1979 to May 1980,
Linda Moulton Howe, Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7 (then a CBS affiliate) produced, wrote, directed, edited and reported a documentary film for TV entitled
A Strange Harvest about the Colorado and worldwide phenomenon of bloodless, trackless animal deaths called "animal mutilations." The documentary was first broadcast as a two hour special on May 18, 1980, and Howe was awarded a 1981 Regional Emmy. Some time after the broadcast, Linda was contacted by Jean Abounader, Director of the Documentary Division at Home Box Office, about producing an hour for HBO that would go beyond
A Strange Harvest.
On March 21, 1983, Howe was in New York City to sign a contract in the HBO offices to produce an hour with the working title,
UFO's: The ET Factor. Peter Gersten, New York attorney who had filed Freedom of Information Act inquiries on behalf of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) for UFO information from the CIA, NSA and other intelligence and military organizations, met with Howe in New York City. Mr. Gersten showed Howe correspondence he had from an AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) Agent named Richard C. Doty. Doty's correspondence with attorney Gersten was about an alleged military exchange at Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota with a landed UFO and humanoid entity that fired a ray of light at a security guard's gun. The ray allegedly melted the gun and burned the guard's hand. Gersten said that he and CAUS would like to investigate the Ellsworth AFB case and that he would arrange contact for Howe with Richard Doty. A meeting was set for April 9, 1983, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the Kirtland AFB office of AFOSI. Howe thought she was to receive names and phone numbers for eyewitnesses to the Ellsworth AFB event. Instead, Doty showed her a "Briefing Paper for the President of the United States On the Subject of Unidentified Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)." (Clark 1998, 154) Howe says she was not allowed to copy the paper or take notes, and was required to read it in Doty's presence. The document, Howe reported, detailed a series of events: several UFO crashes and recoveries, including one where an alien occupant was alive and remained in the care of the U.S. government at Los Alamos Laboratory "until it died of unknown causes on June 18, 1952."
Howe reported that Doty promised considerable confirmation, including documents, film and photographs. She called Jean Abounader at HBO and the two agreed that an official letter from the U. S. Air Force was necessary to back up the promise of film, photographs and documents for use in Howe's HBO documentary. Abounader asked Howe to meet with the number two executive at HBO, Bridgett Potter, on May 18, 1983, to discuss the government's potential contribution to the HBO TV production. Howe met with Potter, Abounader and others at the New York HBO offices, but no official letter was ever forthcoming. Potter gave Howe until October 1983 to come up with official administration and military confirmation to her at HBO about the details of the briefing paper. Doty stopped communicating with the Howe/Gersten effort in June 1983 and nothing of an official nature was provided. HBO and Howe reached the October deadline and the documentary project ended.
Howe continued to develop her own military and intelligence sources independent from the HBO/Doty/Gersten period of March to June 1983 and produced four books and other documentaries, including An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms (1989); Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. 1: Facts & Eyewitnesses © 1994; Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. 2: High Strangeness (1998); Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles (2002); Strange Harvests 1993, an hour documentary film about an upsurge in animal mutilations and human interactions with aerial lights in Alabama and surrounding region from 1993 to 1994.
By 1999, Linda Moulton Howe created Earthfiles.com, a news website Howe reports, writes and edits about science, environment and Real X-Files issues and breaking news. Earthfiles has received several journalism awards for excellence. The Real X-Files section contains interviews, documents, illustrations and photographs related to a non-human presence on Earth and its interactions with civilians and military.
Milton William Cooper
In the 1980s,
Milton William Cooper achieved a degree of prominence due to his conspiratorial writings.
Bob Lazar
In November 1989,
Bob Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on Las Vegas TV station KLAS to discuss his alleged employment at S-4. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought the saucers were secret, terrestrial aircraft, whose test flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports. Gradually, on closer examination and from having been shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion that the discs must have been of extraterrestrial origin. In his filmed testimony, Lazar explains how this impression first hit him after he boarded the craft under study and examined their interior.
For the propulsion of the studied vehicles, Bob Lazar claims that the atomic element 115 served as a nuclear fuel. Element 115 (provisionally named 'Ununpentium' (Uup)) reportedly provided an energy source which would produce anti-gravity effects under proton bombardment along with the production of antimatter used for energy production. Lazar's website says, as the intense strong nuclear force field of element 115's nucleus would be properly amplified, the resulting effect would be a distortion of the surrounding gravitational field, allowing the vehicle to immediately shorten the distance to a charted destination.
Lazar also claims that he was given introductory briefings describing the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings with this planet for 10,000 years. The beings originate from the Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 star system and are therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulians, popularly called 'Greys'.
Lazar says he has degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, the Los Angeles Times looked into his background and found there was no evidence to support his claims.
"UFO Cover-Up?: Live!"
On October 14, 1988, actor
Mike Farrell hosted "U.S. UFO Cover-Up: Live!" a two-hour prime-time syndicated television special that was broadcast in North America (and elsewhere).
William Moore and
Jamie Shandera appeared (among many other guests) and discussed the acquisition of the
Majestic 12 documents, and introduced their sources "Falcon" and "Condor", allegedly high-level government intelligence officials. Interviewed in shadow and with masked voices, Falcon and Condor disclosed information about the U.S. government’s involvement in UFOs and alien interaction, UFO crashes and occupant retrievals, and alien biology. This broadcast also included the first known mention of
Area 51 on television. Also known as the "strawberry ice cream show" in reference to the informants' remark that a captured
EBE enjoyed strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music.
July 1989 MUFON Convention
The
Mutual UFO Network held their 1989 annual convention in
Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 1, 1989.
Bill Moore (ufologist) was scheduled as the main speaker, and he refused to submit his paper for review prior to the convention, and also announced that he would not answer any follow-up questions as was common practice. Unlike most of the convention's attendees, Moore did not stay at the same hotel that was hosting the convention.
When he spoke, Moore said that he and others had been part of an elaborate, long-term disinformation campaign begun primarily to discredit Paul Bennewitz: "My role in the affair ... was primarily that of a freelancer providing information on Paul's (Bennewitz) current thinking and activities." (Clark, 1998, 163) Air Force Sergeant Richard C. Doty was also involved, said Moore, though Moore thought Doty was "simply a pawn in a much larger game, as was I." (ibid.) One of their goals, Moore said, was to disseminate information and watch as it was passed from person to person in order to study information channels.
Moore said that he "was in a rather unique position" in the disinformation campaign: "judging by the positions of the people I knew to be directly involved in it, [the disinformation] definitely had something to do with national security. There was no way I was going to allow the opportunity to pass me by ... I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough to lead those directing the process into believing I was doing what they wanted me to do, and all the while continuing to burrow my way into the matrix so as to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why."(ibid., 164)
Once he finished the speech, Moore immediately left the hotel. He left Las Vegas that same night.
Moore's claims sent shock waves through the small, tight-knit UFO community, which remains divided as to the reliability of his assertions.
Rendlesham Forest Incident
Britain's most celebrated UFO incident, and one of the best-documented in the world, occurred outside the US Air Force base at Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, shortly after Christmas 1980. Various lights were seen in neighbouring
Rendlesham Forest by numerous servicemen, who investigated and found an apparent landing site. This site was examined by the deputy base commander,
Charles I. Halt, who took readings with a Geiger counter and was also witness to a flashing light in the direction of
Orford Ness as well as star-like objects in the sky. Copies of Halt's letter to the U.K. Ministry of Defense were routinely released by the American base public affairs staff until the base closed.
1990s
On November 24, 1992, a UFO crashes in Southaven Park, Shirley, NY. John Ford, a Long Island MUFON researcher, investigates the crash. On June 12, 1996, Ford is arrested and charged with plotting to poison several local politicians by sneaking radium in their toothpaste. On advice of counsel Ford pleads insanity and is committed to the Mid Hudson Psychiatric Center. Critics say the charges are a frame-up.
The Branton Files have circulated on the internet at least since the mid-1990s. They essentially recirculate the information presented above, with many asides from "Branton", the document's editor.
Philip Schneider made a few appearances at UFO conventions in the 1990s, espousing essentially a new version of the theories mentioned above. He claimed to have survived the Dulce Base catastrophe and decided to tell his tale.
In 1999 the French government published a study, "UFOs and Defense: What Must We Be Prepared For?" Among other topics, the study concludes that the United States government has withheld valuable evidence.
2000s
UFO conspiracy theories show no signs of abating. 2003 saw the publication of
Alien Encounters (ISBN 1-57821-205-7), by
Chuck Missler and
Mark Eastman, which primarily re-states the notions presented above (especially Cooper's) and presents them as fact.
MoD secret files
1978 to 1987 eight files on UFO sightings were first released on May 14, 2008, to the National Archives' website by the British Ministry of Defence. 200 files are set to be made public by 2012. The files are correspondence from the public sent to government officials, such as the MoD and
Margaret Thatcher. The information can be downloaded. Copies of Lt. Col. Halt's letter regarding the sighting at RAF Woodbridge (see above) to the U.K. Ministry of Defense were routinely released (without addition comment) by the American base public affairs staff throughout the 1980s until the base closed. The MoD released the files due to requests under the
Freedom of Information Act. The files included, inter alia, alien craft flying over
Liverpool and
Waterloo Bridge in London.
Allegations of evidence suppression
There have been allegations of suppression of UFO related evidence for many decades. There are also conspiracy theories which claim that physical evidence might have been removed and/or destroyed/suppressed by some governments. (See also
Men in Black) Some examples are:
On July 7, 1947, William Rhodes photographed an unusual object over
Phoenix,
Arizona. The photos appeared in a Phoenix newspaper and a few other papers. An Army Air Force intelligence officer and an FBI agent interviewed Rhodes on August 29 and convinced him to surrender the negatives, which he did the next day. He was informed he wouldn't be getting them back, but later unsuccessfully tried to retrieve them. The photos were analyzed and subsequently appeared in some classified Air Force UFO intelligence reports. (Randle, 34–45, full account)
A June 27, 1950, movie of a "flying disk" over
Louisville,
Kentucky, taken by a Louisville
Courier-Journal photographer, had the USAF Directors of counterintelligence (
AFOSI) and intelligence discussing in memos how to best obtain the movie and interview the photographer without revealing Air Force interest. One memo suggested the
FBI be used, then precluded the FBI getting involved. Another memo said "it would be nice if OSI could arrange to secure a copy of the film in some covert manner," but if that wasn't feasible, one of the Air Force scientists might have to negotiate directly with the newspaper. In a recent interview, the photographer confirmed meeting with military intelligence and still having the film in his possession until then, but refused to say what happened to the film after that.
In another 1950 movie incident from Montana,
Nicholas Mariana filmed some unusual aerial objects and eventually turned the film over to the U.S. Air Force, but insisted that the first part of the film, clearly showing the objects as spinning discs, had been removed when it was returned to him. (Clark, 398)
According to some conspiracy theorists, during the military investigation of
green fireballs in
New Mexico, UFOs were photographed by a tracking camera over
White Sands Proving Grounds on April 27, 1949. They claim that the final report in 1951 on the green fireball investigation claimed there was insufficient data to determine anything. Conspiracy theorists claim that documents later uncovered by Dr.
Bruce Maccabee indicate that
triangulation was accomplished. The conspiracy theorists also claim that the data reduction and photographs showed four objects about 30 feet in diameter flying in formation at high speed at an altitude of about 30 miles. According to conspiracy theorists, Maccabee says this result was apparently suppressed from the final report.
On January 22, 1958, when
NICAP director
Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were pre-censored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before," CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release." Conspiracy theorists claim that what Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948
Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and Blue Book's 1952 engineering analysis of UFO motion). (Good, 286–287; Dolan 293–295)
A March 1, 1967 memo directed to all USAF divisions, from USAF Lt. General Hewitt Wheless, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, stated that unverified information indicated that unknown individuals, impersonating USAF officers and other military personnel, had been harassing civilian UFO witnesses, warning them not to talk, and also confiscating film, referring specifically to the Heflin incident. AFOSI was to be notified if any personnel were to become aware of any other incidents. (Document in Fawcett & Greenwood, 236).
John Callahan, former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the
FAA, Washington D.C., also a
Disclosure Project witness, said that following a 1986 encounter of a Japanese airlines 747 with a giant UFO over Alaska, recorded by air and ground radar, the FAA conducted an investigation. Callahan held a briefing a few days later for President Reagan's Scientific Study Group, the FBI, and CIA. After the briefing, one of the CIA agents told everybody they "were never there and this never happened," adding they were fearful of public panic.
See also
Area 51
Aliens (Extraterrestrial life in popular culture)
Bielefeld Conspiracy
Brookings Report
Crop circle
Extraterrestrial life
Flying Saucers
The Disclosure Project
Kecksburg UFO incident
List of magazines of anomalous phenomena
List of major UFO sightings
New World Order (conspiracy)
Robertson Panel
Ufology
Ummo
United States gravity control propulsion research (1955 - 1974)
Mutual UFO Network
References
Clark, Jerome. The Ufo Book: Encyclopedia of the Extraterrestrial. Visible Ink, 1998. ISBN 1-57859-029-9.
Dolan, Richard M. UFOs and the National Security State: An Unclassified History, Volume One: 1941-1973. Keyhole Publishing, 2000. ISBN 0-9666885-0-3.
Fawcett, Lawrence and Greenwood, Barry J. The UFO Cover-Up (originally Clear Intent). New York: Fireside Books (Simon & Schuster), 1992. ISBN 0-671-76555-8.
Good, Timothy. Above Top Secret. New York: William Morrow & Co., 1988. ISBN 0-688-09202-0.
Philip J. Klass. UFOs Explained> New York: Random House, 1974. ISBN 0-394-49215-3.
Peebles, Curtis. Watch the Skies! A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth. Washington, DC:Smithsonian Institution, 1994. ISBN 1-56098-343-4.
Rose, Bill and Buttler, Tony. Flying Saucer Aircraft (Secret Projects). Leicester, UK: Midland Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-85780-233-0.
Ruppelt, Edward J.. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. 1956, available online:
External links
CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90
National Security Agency UFO Documents Index
Alien Conpsiracy Alien Conspiracy
ATS the internet's most popular conspiracy theory community
GLP the internet's most popular alternative theory community
UFO conspiracy theory forums
A collection of images photographed by the SOHO sun-watching satellite claimed to be possible extraterrestrial ships
FBI Freedom of Information Act site on unusual phenomenon
Project Blue Book microfilm archive of U.S. Air Force UFO investigation
Coast to Coast AM, an example of a popular radio show discussing paranormal phenomena and conspiracy theory.
The Destruction of Paul Bennewitz, by Low Lawhon
Jeff Rense Radio Show, another radio show that discusses UFOs, abductions, Conspiracies, etc.
UFO Casebook Homepage
Malevolent Alien Abduction Research Homepage: UFO/Alien Conspiracies
News report about Project Condign by Nigel Watson
Naval Historic Centre
UFOs Alien Information
MOD Report
The Exmoor Files - slideshow by The First Post
Category:Conspiracy theories
Category:UFO-related theories
