From: Gary <galevy@pipeline.com>
Date: Wed, 28 May 1997 02:34:47 -0400
Fwd Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:16:54 -0400
Subject: UFOSearch # 5 part 1/3 - Premonitions of The
This is the fifth of the series of essays by UFOSearch that
I am posting to UFOUpDates.
Several of these essays were posted in the past in the
alt.paranet.ufo USENET newsgroup. There are approximately
25 essays in all.
I am posting these with the permission of the author, Val
Germann. Unfortunately the author is not presently available on
the Internet. However, if you would like to correspond with the
author I have arranged a temporary internet email address that I
will use for forwarding the correspondence to him. This is not a
permanent email address. The address is:
ufosearch@pipeline.com
I hope you find these essays as interesting and thought provoking
as I did.
Commentary:
This essay is a long one so you might want to fire up your
printer and save yourself the eyestrain. Don't say I didn't warn
you. The length of this essay prevented emailing it in its
entirety, it has been divided into three parts, each is
idenitified in the subject header. If you would like the
undivided text please email me with your email address only.
Here is something for those with an interest in so called
beginnings of the "modern era" of the UFO phenomenon and Kenneth
Arnold's role in it . As a means of analysis the author of these
essays, Val Germann, originally wrote a chronology for his
research and then the essay. I have combined the essay and its
relevant chronology into one article for this posting to
UFOUpdates. I think that Val did some some insightful, original,
research in this essay.
Readers of "Alien Agenda" by Jim Marrs I think will find that
Marrs borrowed for his chapter on Kenneth Arnold from this essay.
Marrs does however pick up the ball and move it down the field in
his investigation of the involvement of the intelligence
services, in particular his investigation of Fred Crisman. Marrs
documents that he was an intelligence agent. Oh, and speaking of
intelligence, perhaps you are not aware that not only was Hoyt S.
Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff, but also on leaving that
position became the Director of Central Intelligence, DCI, from
January 23 to June10, 1946.
He was succeeded as the DCI by RAdm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, USN
who held the position of DCI from June 10, 1946 until 1 May 1947.
These dates were obtained from the www page of the Office of the
Director of Central Intelligence http://www.odci.gov an
excellent open source of information. This is the same RAdm.
Hillenkoetter who Donald Keyhoe was to recruit?? to the board of
directors of NICAP, and the same RAdm. Hillenkoetter who was to
sink, literally with this abrupt and unexplained resignation, the
arrangements that Donald Keyhoe was making for a Congressional
hearing on UFOs.
Those who argue that the intelligence agencies have not been
involved in the UFO phenomemon until the Robertson panel was
convened in 1953 are either innocently unaware of the history of
their own field of interest or guilefully contrive as the
debunkers do, to omit mentioning these historical facts (on the
sound theory that if YOU don't know it they won't inform you
because one is too busy or lazy to research independently, and
besides they claim to be an authority on the subject and the more
authoritative sounding the source the more difficult it is to
keep from being credulous).
By the way it was also Hoyt S. Vandenberg who ordered the
destruction of a report, the Estimate of the Situation, which was
produced by the first known governmental UFO investigation,
Project Sign which had concluded that the best evidence indicated
a extraterrestrial origin for UFOs. Certainly he was entitled to
his opinion, rejecting it on the grounds that the authors had not
proven their case. Yet months after the report was declassified,
all copies of it were ordered burned. Burning classified
materials is the norm but it is not the norm for materials to be
ordered to be burned after they have been declassified for
several months as this report was. No authenticated copy of this
document has been located to date. This reminds me of what Frank
Scully had to say in his preface to Behind The Flying Saucers:
It completely destroys American sportsmanship
standards when we, the people, stick to the rules
while an opposing team of censors who have usurped
our rights are permitted, by their own hand-picked
referee, to pull rabbit-punches on defensive play,
hamstring us from the rear if we seem to be running
well in an open field, and even machine-gun the
ball in mid-air if we are kicking an almost certain
field goal.
Or burning the report after it has been declassified, a real
smoking gun so to speak. Now on to the essay and its
accompanying chronology...
Gary Alevy
--------------------------------------------------------------
UFOSearch
Val Germann
Columbia, Missouri 65203
Premonitions Of The Future,
Support For "New Revelations" In Early UFO Material:
The Arnold Case
First, A Little History
The last few years have been a period of extreme turmoil in
the world of the ufologist and ufology, whatever they are. Ideas
and concepts that had been laughed out of the field forty years
ago have returned, with an absolute vengeance. UFOs, which a
short time ago were just "things in the sky," albeit with an
occasional back-channel reference to "crashed discs" or "little
men," and with a slight nod to the "abduction" problem, have now
taken on an aura of unprecedented threat, at least to some. These
are not happy times for those people studying the UFO. A monster
is out of the closet, looking around the room, and everyone wants
to put it back out of sight.
For most of us this era can trace its roots back to the mid-
1960s when the Hill story and the so-called Snippy Case brought
abductions and animal mutilations to the public record. But the
"threat" level was kept low. Then in 1973 the cattle deaths began
to be reported, in the thousands. But no one was ready to accept
what these might mean and mainstream ufology (almost a
contradiction in terms) went on pretty much as before. Donald
Keyhoe had worked overtime to quiet the "scare stories"
(including what he called "rape stories") that had begun to
appear in 1965. By 1980 and the success of Close Encounters the
crisis had passed.
But in the mid-1970s Raymond Fowler and Leonard Stringfield
had gone back to the future and had begun to put "crashed discs"
and "little men" back into the public record. Reports of this
type had been hooted out of court way, way back in the 1950s, in
the wake of Scully, Adamski, Fry & company. Fowler and
Stringfield were ridiculed for what they reported, their sources
almost always refusing publicity and most of the stories just too
strange for the main body of keep-them-flying Ufologists. Never
mind that if we were being "visited" by another intelligence the
chances of that visit NOT seeming strange were just about nil.
In 1980 The Roswell Incident saw print and fell like a rose
petal down the Grand Canyon. Few seemed to care. Ditto for Linda
Howe's television program Strange Harvest, concerning the cattle
deaths in the West. At this same time Raymond Fowler went one
step further with The Andreasson Affair, which should have
started some things rolling. But that book did not seem to
"resonate," nor did Fowler's follow-up effort, Phase Two, in
1982. In between these two Fowler published his Casebook Of A UFO
Investigator which outlined CIA machinations in Donald Keyhoe's
NICAP as well as, significantly, both the author and his family's
UFO experiences. These were hints of things to come.
Another harbinger was Jacques Vallee's much criticized late-
1970s book Messengers of Deception. In this work the author
claimed that all UFO groups were shot full of intelligence
operatives and that there was a secret agenda behind the "UFO
Phenomenon," an agenda that he, Vallee, did not like at all. Of
course, he did not mention that his mentor and good friend Allen
Hynek had about as many "intelligence connections" as anyone.
No, Vallee was worried about the "anti-science" and
"reactionary" activity behind some of those involved with the ufo
and indicated that there was much more to be read between the
lines. But Vallee could not or would not spell out what he meant.
His book didn't resonate, at least not immediately.
As the 1980s went on Stringfield continued to self-publish
what he was receiving from mainly military sources. The obvious
conclusion from these accounts was a kind of government/alien
cooperation. In one case the military were said to have had
medical personnel waiting for a "crashing disc" and then wisked
the strange little crewmen away as soon as their craft hit the
ground. Another incident told of an alien trying to break INTO a
military installation and being shot down by a guard. But
Stringfield published no speculation and did not extrapolate at
all upon what the secret sources had given him. This writer had
the pleasure of speaking with Stringfield several times over the
last few years and found him to be a great gentleman. He will be
missed by all of us investigating this phenomenon.
In 1984 the book Clear Intent put the government's involvement
in UFOs out in the open for all to see. But this material did not
"resonate" either and it was left to a bestselling author and a
famous airline pilot to finally blow the lid off the story.
Things were never going to be the same again.
In 1987 Whitley Strieber's Communion hit like a bomb. Your
humble servant, who had put his UFO interest on hold for several
years, walked into a local book store and saw the cover of
Communion on the rack. I was well, stunned, for some reason and
immediately bought and read the book. Communion was a catylst for
me even though I do not believe I am an abductee or any such
thing. Anyway, at this same time the so-called "MJ-12" material,
spoken of in hushed terms by the authors of The Roswell Incident,
was finally released in document form (in England!) by the author
of Above Top Secret, Timothy Good. By now the pot was boiling
hard and an explosion was on the way.
It happened late in 1987 when John Lear, whose father founded
Lear Instruments, and who himself was a pilot extraordinaire,
published his first "letter" detailing some sort of
government-alien "deal" including genetic experiments, technology
transfers and even some terminations of inconvenient people.
Then, in 1988, Strieber's Transformation came out with a section
reinforcing some of Lear's contentions and speaking of mysterious
leaks about government-alien deals in the early 1980s. The stage
was set for the second Lear Letter of October, 1988, which
outlined some of the programs set up by the military to handle a
"deal," one that had been worked out in the early 1960s and which
by 1980 or so HAD GONE BAD.
About this time a widely seen television special called UFO
Coverup featured government employees speaking of little men
living in Nevada and telling our government about their
civilization. They were small, with large heads and lived 350 of
our years. They liked ice cream. There was a hint of some kind of
cooperation in this program but the unpleasant elements were
nowhere to be seen. The show could be viewed, and was so viewed
by many, as an anti-Lear innoculation since the general tone was
almost, well, friendly, with friendly little "visitors" here to
help us out and fill us in on how the Universe was doing. Hmmm.
Early in 1989 Linda Howe published Alien Harvest which once
and for all showed the cattle mutilations to be something totally
out of the ordinary. Here in Boone county (MO) there had been a
truly horrific run of animal deaths late in 1988 and so Howe's
book hit us very hard. For us the "threat level" was now reaching
high heights indeed and there was little out there that might
bring it down. The debunkers, Klass and Oberg, both with heavy
Pentagon connections, were working hard but it hardly mattered,
things were moving so fast.
Fall, 1989, saw Majestic, Strieber's third book, hit print.
This was a novelization of something like the Lear scenario and
it contained a shocker--the "greys" were in fact altered human
fetuses! But, of course, this was pure fiction, thank God, though
if it were true it certainly would explain a few things. During
this same time period Bill Cooper published his Secret
Government, setting out a different view of a government/alien
deal, one that postulated an "end of the world" scenario and a
sort of "blackmail" on the part of "them" against our economic
and social betters. We could sort of get into this since we
thought that if "others" were here from the great beyond they
were likely not hanging around for our benefit. And, anyway, this
(believe it or not) smacked of what Donald Keyhoe had been
writing, circa 1953! Finally, in September of 1989 the TV show
Unsolved Mysteries exposed millions of Americans to the so-called
Roswell Scenario. The sober tone of this show (and the use of
eyewitnesses whenever possible) set in motion events that are
still rolling forward today. I believe that Unsolved Mysteries
has done more to raise the credibility of the UFO with the
general public than any other single factor, ever, period.
But Unsolved Mysteries was not talking about the single
element that united all the new revelations -- planetary
disaster. Strieber, Cooper, Fowler, Jacobs and others all were
getting and publishing information (or disinformation, if you
desire) which depicted the end of either the current social
dispensation and/or the whole human world. This came against a
background of the end of the Cold War and the turning down of the
nuclear threat, a nightmare that all of humanity had been living
with for nearly two generations. But in its place was coming
another bad dream, environmental disaster, driven by human
populations that had nearly tripled during the lifetime of this
writer, who is not old. Stacked on top of this were things like
the so-called "Fatima Prophecy" which had been said for decades
to be concerned with the end of the world, and the current
"apparition" in Yugoslavia, which was said to be about the same
sort of thing. For this writer, a Catholic with close relatives
giving me running commentaries on what was happening in
Yugoslavia, it all was more than a little disturbing.
Into this supercharged atmosphere of mid-1990 came Raymond
Fowler's book, The Watchers, a blockbuster which marked, for this
writer, the beginning of a new era. The continuation of the human
race was in doubt and the mechanism was to be, not nuclear war,
not disease, but reproductive failure! What a shocker that was.
But it has since been backed up by reports from scientists
worldwide on a 50% decline in human sperm counts since 1940, half
a decade before the world began to be flooded with clorinated
hydrocarbons. Was this what the fuss had always been about? If it
was, then a few things actually made some sense, or seemed to, in
a new and frightening way. More later.
But no matter, the question was and is -- how much of this UFO
material could be accepted even as a basis for a hypothesis? Was
it all horsehockey, on its face, as many would say, or were there
enough connections to the known world to support further work in
this area? We wanted to know and in pursuit of some answers to
these questions we began a literature search and went back and
looked at some of the very earliest works concerning the flying
saucer. The goal was to assemble a complete chronology of events
and to address a follow-up group of questions, ones that we hoped
would get at the heart of the matter. They questions included:
1) Was the early UFO era strictly a "nuts & bolts"
affair, as we had been led to believe, or were there
strange references to little men, crashed discs and
communication with "others" from the very beginning?
We had every reason to suspect that the earliest
information would in many ways be the best since it
would represent views relatively uncontaminated by
later and very well known books and movies, radio and
TV shows.
2) Were there strange "psychological/paranormal effects"
observed early in the UFO era or were these later
additions?
3) What, if any, was the involvement of the uniformed
military and the intelligence community at the very
beginning? If there was very little or none then one
could make a case for their involvment only as a result
of public hysteria and its feared effects on the morale
of the American people in the Cold War.
Upon the answers to the above questions would depend our final
read on the "new revelations." In pursuit of these answers it was
only appropriate that we began at the beginning, that is, with
the Arnold case.
What do you remember about Kenneth Arnold? That his sighting
set off the so-called "modern era?" That he was a private pilot
who saw several objects over the mountains in Washington state
and said they skipped "like saucers across a pond," thus the name
"flying saucers? That he was involved in the Maury Island
incident, a hoax perpetrated by the infamous Crisman, Dahl and
Palmer? Is that what you remember?
That is all you probably know about Kenneth Arnold because
that is about all most widely available UFO literature will tell
you. Ufology is not an academic discipline and there are no
archives. Each researcher is on his own, re-inventing the wheel,
so to speak. This writer was lucky enough to have a friend from
the Chicago area (Palmer's home town) send him Arnold's 1952
book, The Coming Of The Saucers, published with Ray Palmer.
Reading this book opened my eyes in a big way. I realized that
there was much, much more to the so-called "Arnold sighting" and
the Maury Island affair than I had been told. They were both
truly bizarre and deserved to be looked at again in the light of
what we now know now. I was shocked at what Arnold had written.
Who was Kenneth Arnold? Well, he was an Eagle Scout, no mean
feat in his day or any other day. He was a field representative
for the American Red Cross for many years. He was an All-State
Football player in 1932 and 1933 in his home state of North
Dakota. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota in the
mid-1930s with the dream of becoming a football coach but a
serious knee injury put an end to that. He left school in 1936
with $57.00 in cash and a Model-T Ford car.
He took up selling and by the beginning of World War II was
combining a boyhood interest in flying with his job. He began
selling fire control equipment throughout the Northwest, flying
from small town to small town to do it. By 1944 he was flying
over 1,000 hours per year and was a member of an "aerial posse"
for the Ada County, Idaho, Sheriff. He was also a relief Federal
U.S. Marshall and occasionally flew Federal prisoners to McNeil
Island Federal Penitentiary. He was an interesting fellow.
First and foremost, Arnold was a pilot and a good one. He
regularly flew into and out of tiny, dangerous airfields.
Sometimes he flew into a field that was just a field, literally.
He depended upon a small, single-engined plane for his very life.
He was meticulous, careful and alert. The overwhelming
impression one gets from his book is of a solid citizen, honest
and unafraid. Arnold was brave enough to not be overly concerned
about what people thought of him, something rebounding much to
his credit today.
On June 24, 1947 Kenneth Arnold was flying over Mineral,
Washington, at 9,000 feet when he saw a procession of very
strange objects flying from north to south in front of his plane.
He was amazed at their speed and made very reliable estimates
of that speed and also of their size and altitude. They were very
reflective and flew slightly erratically. One of the objects was
very different from the others. It had a strange double curve at
the rear and a light-colored spot on top. The objects together
made a powerful impression.
When Arnold arrived at his destination of Yakima, Washington,
he told the airport manager and several other people about his
sighting. One of them said, "Ah, it's just a flight of those
guided missiles out of Moses Lake." Arnold's next stop was at
Pendleton, Oregon, and when he got there he had a committee of
interested people waiting for him. Before long he was telling a
large group of airfield hangers-on all about his sighting. But he
did not mention that one of the objects was different.
Arnold ended his day by talking to the editor of the East
Oregonian newspaper and it was he who put the story on the wires.
Both Arnold and the editor agreed that the government had taken
this way of introducing the world to a new method of flight. In a
matter of hours Kenneth Arnold was known to the entire country
and the "flying saucer" craze of 1947 was under way. His story
was, for some reason, picked up by newspapers and radio stations
all over the USA and around the world. Three days later Arnold
would say that there would soon be a flying saucer in every
garage in the United States.
When Arnold arrived back at his home in Boise, Idaho, the
editor of the Idaho Statesman newspaper came to call. After this
conversation Arnold began to wonder if the objects he saw were
really military after all. The editor seemed to doubt Arnold's
story and told him that there was nothing in the possession of
the United States that could do what Arnold said these objects
did. We now know that this editor, David Johnson, was supplying
information to the Air Force and other arms of government.
Johnson told Arnold that he had sent a report to Wright Field
in Ohio. But he didn't tell him that he was in fact assembling an
intelligence dossier on Arnold, one that included what amounts to
the beginnings of an FBI check. He provided both the Air Force
and whomever was behind "Project Sign" with information about the
character and background of Kenneth Arnold. He was an
intelligence agent. His name is to be seen, barely, at the bottom
of a document released in 1969 when the Air Force terminated
Project Blue Book.
On July 3rd a good friend of Arnold's called. This was Colonel
Paul Wieland who had just returned from Germany where he had been
a judge at the Nuremburg trials and had investigated the Malmedy
massacre. (Interesting, is it not, the friends this free-lance
pilot and fire equipment salesman had?) But no matter, Arnold and
"Colonel Paul," as Arnold called him, discussed his sighting at
some length on a fishing trip they took to Sekiu, Washington. But
the fishing was horrible as thousands of salmon were dying in the
area from a mysterious "red tide." Arnold flew over the area and
said, "it looked as if a gob of something had fallen from the
sky, a jelly-like substance that was sticking to the salmon,
poisoning them." Those were strange times. Arnold and the Colonel
flew home.
Then on July 5th Arnold and the Colonel were at Boeing Field,
Seattle, when they heard about Captain E.J.Smith and his co-pilot
who had made a spectacular sighting the day before. In the papers
that day there was also a photograph taken by a Coast Guard
Yeoman of a flying object virtually identical to the ones Arnold
had reported. It had been taken in the Seattle area. Arnold went
to the offices of the newspaper to see the original of the photo
and there met Captain Smith and his co-pilot. They hit it off
well.
The photos must have been pure dynamite because on the 10th of
July a nationwide ban would be said to have been placed on them.
These photos are reproduced in Arnold's book but the country at
large never got to see the Coast Guardsman's flying saucer, which
was identical to eight of those Arnold had seen.
On July 15th Arnold got a letter from Ray Palmer. He says that
if he had known at this time who Palmer was he would not have
answered the letter. He thought that the kind of material Palmer
published was a gross waste of time for anybody to read. Ray
Palmer and his Amazing Stories were still running a series of
yarns that began in the mid-1940s and were called the Shaver
Mysteries, concerning two groups of aliens living on and under
the Earth with man. That should sound vaguely familiar to anyone
current in what passes for ufology today.
In any event, Palmer wanted Arnold to write down his
experiences for him and offered to pay. Arnold did not
particularly care about the money and sent Palmer a copy of what
he had sent the Army Air Corps at Wright Field. About a week
later came a letter asking Arnold to investigate a strange
incident said to have occurred in the Seattle area. Fragments of
a flying disc were said to have fallen. Arnold put the letter
aside.
Then, about the 25th of July, two representatives from A-2,
Military Intelligence, Fourth Air Force, visited Arnold. They
were Lt. Frank Brown and Cpt. William Davidson. They took Arnold
and his wife Doris out to dinner and were very kind and
considerate of Ken's position. They said they did not know what
the so-called flying saucers were. Arnold then mentioned that
Captain Smith was due in at Boise airport later in the evening
and it wasn't long before the Arnolds and the two officers were
on their way to the airport.
When they got there they found David Johnson, the newspaper
editor who had first de-briefed Arnold, waiting for them. Just a
coincidence, you understand. Arnold learned that the two
intelligence men had flown over in an A-26 bomber specially to
talk to him that evening. Just a coincidence. Arnold and his new
friends spoke to Smith and his co-pilot for a few minutes and
then left for the Arnolds' home. There Ken gave them his account
of his sighting complete with drawings. But he did not tell them
that one of the objects he saw was different from the others. He
held this one item back.
Arnold had not even told his wife about this "different"
object. For some reason he thought it would diminish the story
and anyway, it was probably not that important. Wrong.
Then the intelligence officers left, asking Arnold not to
discuss the sighting with "outsiders." The next day Arnold was
visiting again with David Johnson, who said that he had been
asked to supply a report to Wright Field. Arnold asked him if he
should take up Palmer's offer. Johnson said he had never heard of
Palmer but it would be silly not to take his money. Johnson said
that Arnold should write and ask for $200 and see what happened.
Arnold wrote, and Palmer sent him $200, to the surprise of both
Arnold and Johnson. In 1947, $200 was not trivial. Thus did
Arnold turn investigator, at the insistence of an acquaintance
known to be supplying intelligence information.
On July 29, 1947, Kenneth Arnold took off for Tacoma,
Washington, to look into the Maury Island incident. He did not
file a flight plan. No one but his wife knew he was going. His
plane did not have a radio transmitter. Half way there he stopped
in a cow pasture to refuel. He had left on the spur of the moment
as only a true independent businessman can do.
Over Union, Oregon, he saw a strange group of "brass colored
objects that looked like ducks" coming straight for him. He tried
to photograph them with a movie camera. They appeared to be
round, rather rough on top and with a "spot" on the upper surface
of each one. They were moving at a speed of several hundred miles
an hour. Arnold later found that several people on the ground
near Union had seen these same objects.
Late that afternoon Arnold arrived at Chehalis, Washington, and
after some thought decided to fly on to Tacoma. He told no-one of
his plans. Here, in chronology format, is an account of Arnold's
"investigation."
July 29 - Arnold arrives and tries to get a hotel room in
Tacoma, is at first unsuccessful. Finally, in desperation, calls
the most expensive place in town. Finds that there is already a
room reserved for "Kenneth Arnold!" After some discussion with
the clerk he accepts the room. Later he cannot find the clerk who
he talked to when he accepted the room.
July 30 - Arnold calls one of the men mentioned by Palmer,
Harold A. Dahl. His name is in the book. This Mr. Dahl tells
Arnold to go home, says that he, Dahl, has had nothing but "tough
luck" ever since this business began. Says that it would be
better if everyone forgot it. But finally agrees to talk. Dahl
comes to Arnold's room, is 6'2" tall, a lumberjack. He is not at
all anxious to talk. Says that since he saw the flying discs on
June 21, 1947, he had lost his job, his wife had become ill, he
had lost much expensive property, his boat had sprung mysterious
leaks and its engine would not start. Dahl made his living in
part scavenging lost "booms" of logs in the waters near Tacoma.
But Dahl had been master of a Harbor Patrol Boat at the time he
had his sighting. Dahl tells his story.
UFOSearch # 5: part 1 of 3, continues in part 2
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