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From: legion@werple.net.au
Date: Sun, 9 Feb 1997 08:15:34 +1100 (EST)
Fwd Date: Sat, 08 Feb 1997 19:13:32 -0500
Subject: Re: Wilbert Smith and MJ-12 - Article

Hi Greg;

 > Date: Mon, 27 Jan 1997 13:33:57 -0500
 > From: Greg Sandow <GSANDOW@prodigy.net>
 > To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <updates@globalserve.net>
 > Subject: Re: UFO UpDate: Wilbert Smith and MJ-12 - Article

 > Very interesting post on Wilbert Smith -- a long essay by
 > Christopher D. Allan, debunking Smith's supposed high status in
 > the Canadian government, and his notes about supposed high-level
 > American UFO secrets.

Not sure if it was "debunking" (kind of depends on your definition of
the word, I suppose), but it did confirm something Loren Gross wrote a
few years ago: Smith had no "institutional base" to declare Project
Magnet "Top Secret".  It was a classification restriction he'd imposed
by himself.

 > Two notes. Allan writes, about the offhand way in which Smith's
 > Project Magnet was authorized by Canadian officials:

 > >From _UFO BRIGANTIA_,  July 1990

 >> There is no official return memo authorizing the project; only a
 >> simple handwritten note on Smith's memo, from C.P.  Edwards, Deputy
 >> Minister of Transport (Air Services) saying "LOOK, go ahead with
 >> it and keep me posted from time to time".  For a supposed official
 >> top secret project, it is surely most irregular for it to be
 >> authorised in this disinterested, almost brush-off like manner.

 > Curiously, as I noted here some months ago, Franklin Roosevelt
 > authorized the research that led to the making of the first atomic
 > bomb in just such an informal fashion.

True enough, but the "Manhattan Project" was a real Top Secret
project that eventually involved many thousands of people.  "Project
Magnet" was a small-scale effort that was never highly-classified.

 > I learned this from Richard Rhodes's book, The Making of the
 > Atomic Bomb.

Another book you should try to find is _Ruin From The Air: The Atomic
Mission to Hiroshima_ by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts.  This is
a meticulously researched book that includes interviews with many of
the crew and personnel who worked on the Manhattan Project.  It's
unique in the history of books dealing with that period because it
also documents the activities of Japanese scientists who were
desperately trying to win the war by building their own A-bomb and
a 'Death Ray.'

"Ruin" documents the extraordinary levels of security that surrounded
the entire Manhattan Project.  For instance, when the A-bomb crew was
being assembled, prospective pilots, gunners, technicians, etc., were
formed into the 393rd Heavy Bombardment Squadron and sent to Wendover,
"just 125 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah." Apart from the salt flats,
rancid drinking water, termites, rats and heat, it was a pretty good
location for a Top Secret airbase.  The personnel of the 393rd
immediately took to the place, and within hours of their arrival
decided to christen the facility with a large sign: "Welcome To
Alcatraz".  Some spoil-sport MPs made them take the sign down.

When Col.  Tibbets arrived at Wendover he was met by a Manhattan
Project security officer who had a dossier on every single member of
the 393rd.  The officer, a Major Uanna, and his team had spent
thousands of man-hours tapping phones and intercepting mail.  No
expense had been spared in the gathering of information about the
extramarital affairs, sexual orientation and political affiliations of
393rd personnel.  Uanna and Tibbets believed the men who'd arrived at
Wendover could be trusted -- they thought.  They needed to know for
sure.

Within a few days of arrival the 393rd crew were assembled on the
parade ground.  Tibbets gave them a pep talk and told they'd been
brought together to take part in a special mission which could end the
war.  That was all, no details.  Then they were given two-weeks'
leave.

After being dismissed several of the keen-eyed crew noticed a nearby
hangar door, slightly ajar.  They could just make out what looked like
a large V-1 rocket.  Some of the men smiled to themselves.  That's why
they were at Wendover; Nazi missiles!

Soon the men of the 393rd had dispersed.  Some went into Salt Lake,
others made their way home.  Many of them couldn't believe their luck.
During their travels they met friendly NCOs and who bought them drinks
and asked them where they were based.  Wendover?  What goes on out
there?  Well, they were happy to tell their new friends about the
"secret missile" program they were going to be part of.  Other members
of the 393rd met-up with old school friends and people they'd enlisted
with.  Surely they could be trusted.  So they told them about the
"crazy set-up at Wendover" and mentioned strange code-words they'd
overheard.  They never knew what hit them.

Some men were quickly escorted away by security officers, others
arrived home to find telegrams ordering their immediate return to
Wendover.  Once they got back to base they were bawled out and posted
out of the squadron.  These ex-393rd personnel, who thought they could
trust their friends and fellow servicemen, saw out the rest of the war
in Alaska.

I've often wondered whether these elaborate "loyalty tests" still go
on.  Say in Groom Lake, Nevada, where plywood mock-up V-1s have been
replaced by back-engineered "UFOs" or documents alleging Human-ET
interactions?

 > I'm not saying that the Manhattan Project itself was authorized
 > so informally when it got underway, or that Project Magnet had
 > any great status.

Once the Manhattan Project commenced it was a massive effort.  At one
time there were over 6,000 people living and working at Los Alamos
alone.  Despite all the security, the Russians still managed to
infiltrate the facility and set-up a substantial espionage network.
We haven't heard any comparable stories about the Russian infiltration
of "Magnet" so possibly we can judge its status from that.  ;-)

 > About Allen's remarks about Robert Sarbacher, I'm not as sure.

 [...]

 > My impression, from talking to Jerry Clark, is that Sarbacher was
 > convincing, not least because of his modesty in talking about his
 > peripheral involvement.

His modesty may have been due to the very fact of his "peripheral"
involvement.  Sarbacher's knowledge of the alleged UFO/ET retrievals
came to him Nth-hand; "I remember in talking with some of the people
at the office that I got the impression..." etc.

 > As I remember, Sarbacher didn't say the aliens were insects.
 > He said (quoting from Clark's UFO Encyclopedia: "I remember in
 > talking with some of the peole at the office that I got the
 > impression these 'aliens' were constructed like certain insects
 > we have observed on earth,

None of the established saucer crash literature makes the "insect"
connection, but it was a major aspect of Gerald	Heard's 1950 book, _Is
Another World Watching?_  The "insect-like" nature of advanced ETs was
reprised in the popular 1958 BBC mini-series 'Quatermass & The Pit'
and the subsequent 1968 movie remake, 'Five Million Years To Earth'.

 > About the supposed contradiction between knowing and not knowing
 > the people involved in the alleged UFO recoveries, here's a fuller
 > quote from Sarbacher.  He's answering specific questions Williman
 > Steinman asked him.

 [...]

 > "My association with the Reseach and Development Board under Doctor
 > Compton during the Eisenhower adminstration was rather limited so
 > that although I had been invited to participate in several
 > discussions associated with the reported recoveries, I could not
 > personally attend the meetings.  I am sure that they would have
 > asked Dr.  [Wernher] von Braun, and the others that you listed were
 > probably asked and may or may not have attended.  This is all I
 > know for sure.

Sarbacher is "sure" that they "would" have asked von Braun (he's not
positive), and the "others ...  may or may not have attended." Not
exactly conclusive.  But then it wouldn't be surprising since people
like Bush, von Neumann, etc.  were involved with various missile
programs and so was Sarbacher.  The question is whether these
distinguished scientists were directly involved in any saucer
retrievals.

 > "3.  I did receive some official reports when I was in my office at
 > the Pentagon but all of these were left there as at the time we
 > were never supposed to take them out of the office."

 > All this indicates less of a contradiction -- and more knowledge
 > of what was going on -- than Allan conveys to us.

Sarbacher was in charge of the National Scientific Laboratories, a
private company which supplied engineers and scientists for various
projects, secret and otherwise.  According to an interview with
Sarbacher in the September 1985 issue of _JUST CAUSE_:

  At the time of the R&DB meetings (Research and Development
  Board), Sarbacher was closely involved in an attempt to set up a
  radar monitoring system near the North Pole to detect missiles
  launched from the Soviet Union.  Sarbacher's company supplied
  300-400 people, mostly engineers, to General Electric for their task
  of putting the system together.  As various problems arose along the
  way, Sarbacher would be in touch with the engineers from his
  Washington office to solve the problems.  ...  Sarbacher's role with
  the R&DB was as Chairman of the Guidance and Control Panel of the
  Guided Missile Committee of the R&DB.

  The R&DB meetings were not necessarily UFO meetings per se but were
  part of their regular schedule and UFOs came up among other subjects
  under discussion.  Sarbacher told me [CAUS] that since he did not
  attend the meetings, he had only heard snippets of stories which
  others more closely involved in the meetings had heard.  This
  included the information in his 11/29/83 letter to Steinman.  The
  crash retrieval data originally came from Wright Field, as Sarbacher
  recalls.

Sarbacher's only involvement with the UFO retrievals was as someone
who'd heard "snippets" many times removed from the source.

 > Bruce Maccabee, according to Clark's encyclopedia, was struck by
 > how little Sarbacher knew about UFO history.  That, if true, would
 > make it unlikely that he strung together scraps in the way Allan
 > suggests.

I don't agree that it's unlikely.  The "insect" story has a direct
connection to the Heard book and Sarbacher's descriptions of the
alleged UFO materials match those in the Schulgen '47 EEI memo.
Sarbacher's employees were working at Wright Field at the time so I
don't see this as a stretch at all.  Sarbacher was remembering
"snippets" of office chit-chat from nearly 40 years before.  It was
the UFO researchers who put the "scraps" together in a way to support
their belief that Sarbacher had first-hand knowledge of a saucer
retrieval.

 > This said, I'm glad to see someone looking into the
 > Wilbert-Sarbacher business.  It's always struck me as a straw in
 > some kind of wind, but which wind?  We need to know more.

CAUS spent some time looking for Sarbacher's old files but without
success -- so far, at least.  Sarbacher told CAUS he'd lost track of
his files after the National Scientific Laboratories were sold.

Based on the available evidence, there's probably a lot less to the
Sarbacher-Smith saga than we've been led to believe.

 - John


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