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[UFO] Disclosure Conference at the National Press Club,
Washington, streamed live on CNN
10 am Pacific Time, Monday 27 Sept.
Robert Hastings: Declassified U.S. government documents and witness testimony from former or retired U.S. military personnel confirm beyond any doubt the reality of ongoing UFO incursions at nuclear weapons sites. When I say UFO, the witnesses have described these craft as disc-shaped, or cylindrical shape, or spherical. These objects are capable of both hovering and high-velocity flight, usually completely silently. Over the past 37 years, I have personally located and interviewed more than 120 of these former or retired military personnel, all of whom report UFO incidents at one or more of the following locations: nuclear missile sites, nuclear weapons storage areas, and nuclear weapons test sites in Nevada and the Pacific during the era of atomic atmospheric testing. I believe, these gentlemen believe, that this planet is being visited by beings from another world who, for whatever reason, have taken an interest in the nuclear arms race which began at the end of World War II. Regarding the missile shutdown incidents: my opinion, their opinion, is that whoever are aboard these craft are sending a signal to both Washington and Moscow, among others, that we are playing with fire, that the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons potentially threatens the human race and the integrity of the planetary environment.
Robert Salas (former USAF nuclear missile launch officer): Good afternoon. My name is Robert Salas. In 1967, I was a First Lieutenant stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana. I was a missile launch officer. And in March, on March 24th, 1967, I was on duty at what we called 'Oscar Flight'. It is a underground capsule, hardened site, about 60 feet underground. We had security guards topside. The main guard is called a 'Flight Security Controller'. My commander at the time was Lieutenant Fred Meiwald, now Colonel, retired Colonel Fred Meiwald. Sometime in the evening hours on March 24th, I received a call from one of my topside guards, the Flight Security Controller, stating that they had been observing strange lights in the sky making odd maneuvers and wanted to report it. I thought it was kind of strange report, but I took it seriously. You have to understand, we were protecting nuclear weapons and we... the reports we generally got were very professional. At any rate, I kind of dismissed the call. He called back about five minutes later. This time, he was screaming into the phone, saying they're looking at an object, a red glowing object hovering just above our front gate. This object was about 30 feet in diameter. He couldn't make out too much of the details of the object ... only that it was pulsating and he had all the guards out there. He was very frightened, wanted me to give him direction. I think I said something like, ‘Make sure nothing comes inside the perimeter fence.’ He immediately hung the phone up. We... I went to wake my commander, Fred Meiwald, who was taking a rest break, started to tell him about the phone call and just as I told him, our missiles began going into what's called a 'No-Go' condition or unlaunchable ... essentially they were disabled, while this object was still hovering over our site, our launch-control facility. At that point, we went through our procedures. He reported to, back to the command post, the incident. We also had some security lights, meaning security incursions at some of the launch facilities. So, I called the guard back upstairs and directed that a security team be sent out. At this point, the guard told me the object had left at high speed. Again, silent; no noise. The security guards got out to the launch facility and reported back that they were seeing this object again. They also lost radio contact. The... this incident terminated at that point. We reset the security alarms, but the missiles themselves were still disabled. We had to call in for maintenance ... maintenance teams to come out and bring them back up on alert. The main indication we got from our equipment was this was guidance and control system failure. I want to emphasize that the security people upstairs had no control authority over... they had no equipment up there, no ability to effect any kind of system shutdown on our missiles. All the control systems were underground. We were relieved the next morning and reported back to the command post ... I'm sorry, the base, Malmstrom. Reported to our squadron commander. He was white as a sheet, didn't know how to explain the event. I asked him specifically if it could have been an Air Force exercise and he assured me it was not an Air Force exercise. There was also a member of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in the room. He ordered us to not ever talk about this. I even signed a non-disclosure statement to that effect. This was ... and I didn't talk about it until 1994 I was able to come across a little paragraph in a book called Above Top Secret by Timothy Good, and on page 301 of that book there's a short paragraph about missiles being shut down while UFOs were overhead. At that point, with the help of Mr. James Klotz, my investigator, we requested the Air Force to send us documents about this shutdown, not mentioning the word 'UFO'. We did get the Air Force to declassify what we'll call the 'Echo Flight Incident'. Let me back up a little bit. During the report to the command post, my commander, Fred Meiwald, turned to me and said the same thing had happened at another site. At the time, I thought he meant that evening, but it turns out, the same thing happened a week earlier at another site, and he was probably referring to the Echo Flight. At any rate, at that point, when we got the Echo Flight Incident declassified, I was able, or I felt I was able, to come forward and start talking about it because I thought that's where I was. It wasn't until later I found out it was at Oscar Flight, and I realized that not only our flight had gone down –ten missiles– but the Echo Flight also went down about a week earlier on March 16th. We have extensive documentation on the Echo Flight Incident that we received from the Air Force under Freedom of Information Act. We have the testimony of Walt Feagle who was the Deputy Missile Crew Commander at Echo Flight. We have ... I have a couple letters from the commander, Eric Carlson. Colonel Meiwald has ... gave me a radio ... I'm sorry, a telephone interview about this in 1996, and I've got that on tape and he's given me permission to use that. So we've got audio recordings of some of these witnesses. We've got written statements. We've got documentation from the Air Force. All of this supporting what I just told you. I'll have more to say a little bit later about where I think we should go from here, but right now, I'll turn it over to the next speaker.
Dwynne Arneson (USAF Lt.Col. Ret., communications center officer-in-charge): Good afternoon. My name is Dwynne Arneson. I want to give a kind of an adjunct testimony to what Bob has already spoken about. After graduating from college with degrees in Physics and Math, I entered the Air Force, got a commission and served 26 years as a communication electronics officer in positions all over the world including Vietnam. My highest clearance held was Top Secret/Crypto/Special Compartment Information/Talent Keyhole. For those that know clearances, you gotta be almost squeaky clean to get that. Back in 1967, I was officer in charge of the communications center at the 20th Air Division in Great Falls, Montana. I was also the Crypto Custodian. I was a top secret control officer for the division and I passed out nuclear launch authenticators. In March of that particular year, I can clearly recall a message coming through my communications center which basically said what Bob has already talked about, that a UFO did in fact shut down several missile silos in Montana. Not being a missile type, I didn't know Oscar Flight from Echo Flight, so I couldn't relate to any of those details. But the fact was that a missile, missiles were shut down by them. Later on, in mid-70's, about 1975, I was commander of a radar site in Maine, which was adjacent to Loring Air Force Base. Periodically, my security cop and I met with the SAC [Strategic Air Command] security police. And on two occasions that I can recall distinctly, they told us that UFOs were seen over the nuclear weapons storage areas at Loring Air Force Base which was a SAC bomber base, as some of you may well know. I don't know what the details were. I don't know if any nukes were damaged or deactivated. I never saw a report on that, so I really can't say. That is history. After retiring from the Air Force, I went to work for Boeing as a computer systems analyst. Bob didn't mention this, but one of my first supervisors at Boeing was Robert Kaminski. He has since passed away. He was the engineer selected by Boeing to go out and investigate the UFOs that the missiles that were shut down. He, living close by where I lived in Washington State, we got together frequently on Saturday to discuss UFOs and other topics. And he says, ‘Arnie, those things were perfectly clean, and they did not go down by themselves.’ He then went on to say that halfway through the investigation, the Air Force sent Boeing a message which said, ‘Stop the investigation and do not, repeat, do not send us a report.’ He told me that personally on two or three different occasions and no hesitation at all. In conclusion, I've studied UFOs for over 60 years, believe it or not, and I am convinced that somebody out there is trying to send us a message. If I knew who they were, I probably would not be here. Thanks for your time.
Robert Jamison (former USAF nuclear missile targeting officer): Good afternoon. My name is Robert Jamison. Between January 1965 and October of 1967, I was stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base as a combat missile targeting team commander. Our main job was to point the missiles in the right direction. Also, we would maybe dispatch from time to time to a restart, in case any missile goes off alert, we have to restart it and verify the targeting data. In March of 1967, I was on alert for dispatch. And that evening, I got a call from Job Control saying, ‘A missile's gone down in Oscar Flight. Go out and restart it.’ Which was nothing unusual up to this point. I called my team, and I went down into the hangar. As soon as I got to the hangar, some acquaintances of mine approached me and says, ‘Bob, do you know what happened?’ ‘No, I don't know what happened.’ And he says, ‘Well, a missile, a UFO was sighted over Lewistown, Montana.’ Actually over Roy, Montana, Lewistown is the nearest town of any significance. But over that Lewistown ... Roy, Montana which is the center of Oscar Flight, and when that UFO, at the same time that UFO was over there, all of Oscar Flight went down. Well, that was highly unusual. I went to Job Control to verify it, and yes, they confirmed it. And I was looking at the status board they have, where they have a map of the whole wing. I noticed that everything was green. All the lights –they have lights for the missiles sites– all the lights were green except one corner, and the upper right corner was all red. All of Oscar Flight was down. I mentioned to them, ‘That doesn't happen.’ And he says, ‘Well, it happened once before about a week before. A UFO was sighted over Echo Flight and about the same time, all missiles in Echo Flight went down.’ And he says, ‘Other than that and this, this is it. This never have happened before.’ Personally, I'm never aware of any two missiles going down at the same time, let alone ten. I also learnt UFO... the people in Job Control was telling me that earlier that day, a UFO was sighted over Belt, Montana, another town in Montana, a small town East of Malmstrom. And it went into a canyon. And immediately, they notified the Air Force. We sent a team out there to investigate it, and sure enough, there's a UFO apparently at the bottom of that canyon. Job Control told me, ‘Go over to the emergency command post they have set up in the Colonel's briefing room.’ I had access to that location. I went over there. The room was too crowded to really gain anything. I did hear radio contacts with a team out on the field mentioning lights at the bottom and everything, but I didn’t... couldn't get too close enough to really find out what was going to happen. I left the room and started wandering around, getting my team ready, went into debriefing. We always go, before a job, we go to debriefing. Here's where they give us information such as road conditions and weather conditions, things that you might expect out in the field. So I went over there and they went through the normal debriefing, and then they said to me, ‘Now, I want you to go to another table at the other end of the briefing room for a special briefing.’ I went over there and another NCO approached me. I knew him because he's sometimes our, was our debriefer or briefer. And he says, ‘Look, we have a problem. We have UFOs in the area. They've been messing with our missile sites. There are certain procedures we want you to do if you should see one out in the field.’ And he proceeded to tell me what to do. If we're out on a road, and we see a UFO, we do not go to the launcher, but instead to the nearest launch control facility, also, we call Job Control, and let them know what we're doing. If we're at a site and we're penetrating, then we have to stop what we're doing, remove ourselves from the site, call Job Control –we all have radio controls, radio contact with all these– call the Job Control and wait for further instructions. Now, if we're at the site and we're doing our work, I have to take myself, my team and the targeting tapes, go into the launcher, close the personnel hatch. Now, all the teams, before you go out into the field, will take ar... take with us an armed guard. That's just normal. We have to leave the one guard, armed guard, on top, all by himself, and he's supposed to report to Job Control or the launch-control facility, what he was seeing. And then he... and I says, ‘Okay.’ But then he says, ‘One another thing. Don't leave yet. We're going to hold everybody back until we're sure that all the activity out in the field has ceased, at least for the time being.’ So I waited around about an hour-and-a-half. We was all ready to go. Then they contacted me and says, ‘Okay. You can go now.’ So I went with my team. We went out to the field. We went, restarted. We had to go to Oscar Flight. That's not a very pleasant thing. Oscar Flight is a 120 miles. It's the furthest flight from the base. And in Air Force trucks, that's not the most comfortable ride. But nevertheless, we went out to Oscar Flight, and we restarted, I think, it's either three or four missiles. This is where Bob was at, at the time. We restarted three or four of their missiles. The startups were successful, and I saw no incidents in the field. When I came back, we have to go through debriefing. First things I asked him upon return to the base, ‘What about this missile out in Belt?’ And he says, ‘Soon as light, daylight came, we was going to send choppers over.’ It was night time when they first saw it, and no one's going to scale, have them scale down the mountain at night time, so they were going to send some choppers down and scale the mountain, scale the canyon, daylight time. But as soon as daylight time came up, this thing shot up right through the... everything, it just disappeared, more or less. So that... was that. Now, also, about a week later, I also heard that a UFO was sighted over India Flight and there was a partial shutdown. I think four or five missiles went... were shut down at India Flight, with the UFO overhead, not the whole flight, and I had to go out and restart at least two of them. And then the rest of my time at Montana I was involved in no more further UFO incidents. Nothing else happened. And then I went on elsewhere. Thank you.
Charles I. Halt (USAF Col. Ret., former deputy base commander): Good afternoon. My name is Charles I. Halt. I retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1991 as a Colonel. During my military career, I was Base Commander at two large installations and at the time of my retirement, I was in the Department of Defense, Inspector General's Office with total inspection oversight of all services in all service agencies. In 1980, I was reassigned from the Pentagon to RAF Bentwaters as a Deputy Base Commander. At that time, Bentwaters was one of the largest tactical fighter wings in the world, with a two-base complex, Woodbridge and Bentwaters in England, and four FOLs in Germany and two additional standby bases. In December 1980, early in the morning, several of our security policemen discovered strange lights in the forest in East Anglia, just outside the back gate of RAF Woodbridge. Three patrolmen: Sergeant Penniston, Airman Borroughs and Airman Cabanasag, actually were dispatched into the forest and approached a craft. They reported it being triangular, approximately three meters on a side, dark metallic in appearance, with strange markings. They observed it for a period of time, and it very quickly and silently vanished at high speed. Initially, I was not aware of all the details. I was only told of strange lights and I was sure there was a logical explanation. Two nights later, at the family Christmas party, we were interrupted. The on-duty Flight Commander for the security police squadron, Lieutenant Bruce Englund, came and approached the Base Commander and I. He was white as a sheet. He said, ‘It's back.’ He said, ‘What's back?’ He said, ‘The UFO.’ Well, we still were, I should say, nonbelievers, at that point. Since my boss had to do the presentations, I was tasked, unfortunately, to investigate. So I went home and changed clothes. And I really expected to find a logical explanation. I took several security policemen with me. A disaster preparedness NCO, who took a APN-27, a Geiger counter, and a camera. I also had my small cassette recorder I carried everywhere when I was on duty. I was taken to the supposed site. We find indentations approximately an inch-and-a-half deep, approximately six to eight feet on a side, and radiation eight to nine times normal background radiation. Not enough to be dangerous to somebody, but significant. We also find broken branches on the trees. While we were milling around, trying to make sense of the whole thing, one of the individuals with me suddenly spotted something. Off through the forest was a bright, glowing object. The best way I can describe it, it looked like an 'eye', with bright red, with a dark center. It appeared to be winking; it would sort of 'wink'. It was shedding something like molten metal. It was dripping off it. It silently moved through the trees, avoiding any contact. It bobbed up and down, and at one point, it actually approached us. We tried to get closer. It receded out into the field beyond the forest and silently exploded into five white objects. Gone. So we went out into the field, looking for any evidence, because something had apparently been falling off it. We find nothing. But while we were searching around in the field, one of the people with me noticed some objects in the sky to the north. There were three or four objects in the north, brightly colored, changing from elliptical to round and moving at very high speed, and sharp angular movements, as though they were doing a grid search. While we were watching them, somebody else noticed to the south there were two objects just sort of hovering in the sky. One object approached us at very high speed. Best guess is three to five thousand feet – somewhere in that neighborhood. Stopped directly overhead and sent down a concentrated beam at our feet. It was about one foot in diameter. The best way I can equate it is sort of a laser beam. We stood there in awe. Was this a warning? Was this an attempt to communicate? Was this a weapon or just a probe? Just as suddenly as it appeared, 'click', it disappeared. We stood there, ah, really concerned. About that time, we noticed the other object to the south was sending down beams about a mile, mile-and-a-half away over Woodbridge Base. We had three different radios with us: the police radio, the security-police radio, and I had the command net. All three radios were functioning and we were talking to control centers. They were constantly breaking up and we had great difficulties communicating, but we were able to discern that the... on the police and security net, that some of those beams were either falling into or near the weapons-storage area, and there's a great deal of concern. It really bothered me at the time. Every time something of significance happened that night, I kind of clicked on my little tape recorder and recorded it, so I have a record of it for the next day. Unbeknownst to me, a copy of that was released by one of my co-workers several years later, and hence, there was a lot of publicity. My superiors at the time were informed what happened. I briefed my boss. I played the tape for him. He listened intently. He was aware of the incident because he was monitoring the night before on the radio – he and several others were. He took the tape to the Third Air Force staff meeting the following Wednesday –Third Air Force was the Air Force headquarters at the time in England– played it for General Bazley, the commander and staff. They all sat silently. The decision was that: it happened off the base, so it's a British affair. In other words, they were loath to get involved. So my boss came back and threw me the tape recorder, and I said, ‘Well, what do we do, boss?’ He said, ‘Get with Squadron Leader Moreland who is the British Liaison Officer and do a report. It's their problem, not ours.’ Gosh, here I am kind of caught in the middle, and I'm the junior guy here. Whoa, why did I ever get involved? Well, Squadron Leader Moreland was on vacation in Wales at the time. He came back and he was quite upset that he was in the middle of the thing too, so he said, ‘Write a memo.’ So I wrote a –how I shall call it– a 'cleaned-up' memo, just kind of... unexplained lights, just to kind of tickle their... get them to come out and investigate and look into the thing. Well, I gave it to Moreland and unbeknownst to me Moreland sent a copy to his superior at Third Air Force. I didn't know that at the time. The copy to MoD was apparently buried in the files. Days turned into weeks and weeks turned into months and I almost forgot about the incident, to be honest with you. Gave up. Several years later, one of my co-workers was playing a copy of my tape at cocktail parties, and caught somebody's ear. Somebody started asking questions and he said, ‘Oh, Halt wrote a memo.’ The next thing we know, there was a Freedom of Information request came in to Bentwaters. Of course, there was no official copy. We didn't have word processors in those days. We used typing manifolds in the old typewriters. We were just transitioning. And the only copy was an onion skin that I had in my desk. So my boss went back and said, ‘There's no official record of it.’ Well, somebody else found out that Third Air Force had a copy. Well, Pete Bent, a good personal friend of mine, was the acting Third Air Force Commander, called me, and he said, ‘Hey. Chuck, I've got a copy of this memo. We're going to have to release it.’ I said, ‘Please burn it. Your life and mine will never be the same. You and I don't need this.’ Well, need I say more? The tape came out, unbeknownst to me. And the memo came out and a lot of publicity. But the event certainly happened. Now, some things have happened since, and I was very innocent at the time and believed what I was told. I asked the OSI if they had an interest and I was told, ‘Oh no. Not at all.’ Wrong. I find out later that the airmen were –how shall I say– pretty harshly interrogated, that were involved. I have never been debriefed. I also found out later that the tower operator at the... both the tower operators at Bentwaters saw an object and picked it up under bright-tube radar and watched it. I found out that the tower operator in weapons storage area actually saw something, as did a comm man who was working there, and saw it go down into the forest near us. And also several other people around the base saw it. It's kind of interesting. What did we see? I have no idea what we saw that night. I do know it was under intelligent control. And in my personal opinion, it was either from another dimension or extraterrestrial.
Jerome Nelson (former USAF nuclear missile launch officer): Good afternoon. My name is Jerome Nelson. From 1962 to 1965, I was an Atlas-F ICBM Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander, assigned to the 579th Strategic Missile Squadron in Roswell, New Mexico. Sometime during the winter of 1963 through 1964, while I was on alert duty in the launch-control center at Atlas Site 9, west of Roswell, my topsides security guard called me on the telephone and reported a bright light –that is, a fully-illuminated round object– was hovering silently over the missile silo and shining a light down onto it. I could tell that he was serious and his voice revealed he was very frightened. After perhaps five minutes, the object left the vicinity. Even before it left, I called the base command post at Walker Air Force Base and reported the incident. I was concerned the object would somehow sabotage the missile. I was surprised by the response I received, being told that the command post would take the unauthorized excursion under advisement. I was never debriefed by my commander or anyone else, which I found quite puzzling and frustrating. Over the next month or so, this type of incident occurred several more times while I was on duty at Site 9. I would estimate the total number as more than three but fewer than ten. On each occasion, I would call the command post, but each time my report was met with the same apparent indifference. During each of these incidents our witness, the guard, would call the launch-control center and report the UFO. Several guards were involved over time and were all obviously frightened by the object hovering over the site. Their voices were actually trembling. Because of my duties in the launch control center, I could not go topside and look at the objects myself. Only decades later did I learn that at least one missile-facility technician, Bob Kaplan, had been ordered to report to the Office of Special Investigations on base and make a report about the similar incident he had witnessed at Site 9 during the period. At the time this development was kept from me and my missile commander. I do not know whether anyone else was interviewed by the OSI, but I wasn't. That's my report.
Patrick McDonough (former USAF nuclear missile site geodetic surveyor): Well, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Patrick McDonough. And I'm here today to relate an experience that happened to me in September of 1966. That's 44 years ago. But that experience was so significant, it was basically burned in my memory. I haven't forgotten about it at all. But I am getting older and I did want to put this experience and relate it on the record. A little background on me. I had enlisted in the Air Force in Berkeley, California in the first week of November, 1962 at the onset of the Cuban Missile Crisis that was going then. I felt patriotic. And up to that time, I had been studying engineering in college, I had three years of engineering. And the Air Force, considering my background, trained me to be a geodetic surveyor. And I was assigned to 1381st Geodetic Survey Squadron in Orlando, Florida. We basically... in 1965, we moved to Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming. On average, I would spend nine, ten months a year on temporary duty, surveying for latitude and longitude at our missile sites and aircraft bases for positioning missile and aircraft guidance systems. Basically, the squadron's mission was to provide precise geographical coordinates for a missile or an aircraft inertial-guidance system so that it would... the missile or aircraft know exactly, precisely where it was at when it takes off, while the intelligence agencies would provide the targeting information. In early September of 1966, myself and two other airmen, a Airman First Class Al Kramer and a Airman Third Class Charlie Coates, we were temporarily assigned to Malmstrom Air Force Base and were ordered to provide or perform the initial geodetic surveys for the last 50 missile sites there. There already was 150 Minuteman-1 sites and we were putting in the last 50 for the wing. And basically, we were assigned to the site-activation task force they call 'SATAF'. It was a... Boeing, really, the prime contractor. We were given a government truck, no radio. Anything in it, it... I was the Chief of Party. I was the observer on our small three-man team. Al was the recorder, Charlie was... we were trying to train him both in observing and recording. We arrive, normally we'd arrive at a missile site at about... in early evening. We'd set up our instruments. And basically, what I was doing was the star observation to provide precise latitude and longitude. On the night of this incident that happened, we were completing a series of what we call 'celestial astro-azimuth observations', southeast of Conrad. And I was doing the observing, Al was recording, and Charlie was assisting Al with the chronometer on the time hacks as I tipped on Polaris. The unusual thing about this missile site I was at was that the blast hatch of the silo was open. And that was very unusual. Normally, when I'd go to these missile sites, even though they were not activated yet with a missile, they were always closed. The monoliths were there. We do four monoliths and do a precise quadrangle. And... the work we did was very precise. It involved a lot of... it was basically all using star shots and... So, here is a site that we arrive at and the blast hatch is open. And we're nearing completion of the star observations. We had been to the other three monoliths and I was at the monolith at the... next to the hatch. And it was probably about one, one-thirty, and a unidentified flying object came from the north and stopped right over us. It... I would say it was probably about altitude of 300 feet or so. Maybe a little higher. It's a little hard to tell in the dark. It was round. It had... I would estimate its diameter at about 50 feet, kind of like a pretty large, you know, like a wing span of a B-52, something in that range. It's pretty large. And it seemed to have pulsating lights going around it. And it had a white light from the center looking down into the silo. There was no wind. There was no noise. It only stayed there maybe 20, 30 seconds at most. And then, I just remember, I'm staring up at the stars, right? I'm a pretty keen observer of, of what's above me here in the celestial sphere up there. And I just said to myself, what if this thing beams us up and takes us off to some distant place and never returned to Earth again? I mean, this is going through my head here while this thing is above me. And then from this dead stop, it shoots off to the east. Just like, now you see it, now you don't. It just... toogh. So after this UFO departs, I grab my instrument and jumped in the truck behind the steering wheel and off we went. And we weren't about to be there if it came back. We didn't have guards with us because there was no missile. We didn't have a radio because we're not really in contact with the Air Force base. I don't know any of this other stuff is even going on, and to be honest with you. I mean, this is... we're just kind of out there on our own, doing these, doing these sites and mailing our material back. It was a... I wasn't even aware there was a UFO problem, per se. But, as it turned out, the night's events weren't totally over with us at that point. As we sped away and on our way back to Conrad, and the Army Corps of Engineers had base-rocked all the roads to take the weight of these missiles they were bringing in. And of course, these are new sites, and they took down all the signs to make the roads wider. And I go over the hill, and come down. The headlights come down, there is no road there. It ‘Tee’d’. And, so I tried to make a... you either went to the right or left, I tried to go to the left to... towards Conrad and the truck flipped over and we ended up upside down. Fortunately, none of us were hurt. We walked probably about two hours to a nearby farmhouse, if you call that nearby. And I called the Montana Highway Patrol. The farmer drove us back to the accident site. And it was interesting when the Highway Patrolman arrived, because we told him how did this occur. He was asking us and told him that his dispatch had told him there had been over twenty reports to the... to his office that night in reporting a UFO in the area. I wrote instant incident reports to the SATAF, Boeing, Montana State, regarding the accident. But, you know, what was interesting was, I never heard anything from the Air Force, regarding the incident. And I never had to, there was no retribution or reimbursement required for me for rolling this truck. And this truck had 18 miles on it that afternoon. It was a new truck. Okay, so they... nothing. I heard nothing. So this is, this part was good, because I didn't really want to buy the truck. I... I went back to my headquarters at Warren Air Force Base, and about a month and a half later, I was discharged. I did not mention wrecking this truck up in Montana on one of my TDYs [temporary duty assignment]. They didn't ask me and I didn't mention it. I didn't want to buy it, and... But I must say now, in my four years that I had with this geodetic survey squadron, I had worked on the latest missiles and aircraft in the U.S. Air Force inventory. And I worked everywhere on these guidance systems. And we, or I, never saw anything in the Air Force inventory that could perform like this UFO did. It’s... I don't know what it was, but we sure didn't have any... I never saw anything like it. And I'd like to thank all of you for being here today and thank the National Press Club. Hopefully, someday, the... we'll know in the near future that... the government will perhaps release any information they have on UFOs. Thank you very much.
Bruce Fenstermacher (former USAF nuclear missile launch officer): Hello everybody. I'm Bruce Fenstermacher. I don't have any exciting stories like rolling a truck with 18 miles on it. From 1974 to 1976, I was a combat crew commander and a captain in the Air Force stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base at the 400th SMS and assigned to Romeo Flight. In the fall of '76, my deputy –who I'll call ‘Sam’ because he's not given me permission to release his name– we were on alert trying to stay awake. We were listening to the conversation between the flight security controller of the topside NCO and the strategic alert team, the security alert team, SAT. Kind of, that was one way to stay alert. Because SAT duty is moments of terror with hours of boredom. And suddenly, we heard the FSC call the SAT team and say, ‘Stop the vehicle. Get out of the vehicle and look around.’ And didn't tell them where to look or anything. And Sam and I looked at each other and then said, ‘What do you see?’ And he said, ‘Oh, I don't see anything. I don't see anything. Holy bleep! I do see a white pulsating light in the sky that's maybe seven or eight miles away.’ The FSC asked where it was. He said, ‘It's to the north.’ He said, ‘It's pretty close to where the launch-control facility is.’ So my deputy and I did a double-take. We called upstairs and we said, ‘What's going on?’ He said, ‘You're not going to believe this, Captain, but right above us there's a huge white thing, pulsating light, above us.’ And I had to call them to make sure I wasn't seeing anything. Upon prodding, he told us it was shaped like a fat cigar. I think he said, ‘A pregnant cigar.’ White pulsating light. Between the pulsations he saw red and blue lights. It was silent. Because I prodded him saying, ‘Is it some form of helicopter?’ He said, ‘No, it's very silent.’ We're talking to him for several minutes and he says, ‘It's starting to move away along our access road.’ So, we hung up. My deputy and I are saying, ‘What do we do? We gotta report this.’ He calls down, the FSC calls down shortly and says it's over one of our launch facilities, the missile silos. And it was the closest one along the access road. So I ordered the SAT team to go to that site. And they called in through the FSC and said they had to go back for batteries. And they were a little slow getting out so I was kind of ordering them, ‘Come on, get on, get going.’ And at the same time we contacted SAT command post at F.E. Warren. And the NCO answered and we told him the story and he laughed and said, ‘When it eats the SAT team, call me back.’ So, the SAT team never got to that LF. It silently moved again to another launch facility. We called the SAT team three or four times. I'm sorry, we called command post three or four times. The last time –and we got the same nonchalant attitude– the last time, I said, ‘Are you logging this?’ And they said, ‘No.’ So I said, ‘Give me the officer in charge.’ And he said, ‘Well, he's busy.’ I said, ‘Well, you either give me the officer in charge, or I'm going to wake up the base commander, the squadron commander, because there's something going on. Something's messing with my LFs.’ They were mine for that period. So, the officer came on, and I said, ‘You need to log this, or I'll wake everybody up.’ He said he would. He called up his NCO. A different NCO called us back a few minutes later, took the log of what had happened in a timely sequence. So, it went to another LF. The SAT team had to come back for gas. Then it said it had car trouble. It could only go five miles an hour. So, long story short, after several, you know, about an hour-and-a-half, the Flight Security Control said he could see it over another launch facility down, still down the road. And then he said, ‘It suddenly and silently just went away up to a star size and then disappeared.’ So that was it. It was exciting rest of the tour. The next day we were relieved by another crew to go back home. And I went upstairs and the FSC is lying, like, in a chair in almost a fetal position. And I talked to him and he was scared. He said, ‘I can't sleep. I can't get that thing out of my mind.’ I said, ‘What the heck was with the SAT team?’ He said, ‘Both my deputy and I were prior service, so we got along well with the enlisted guys.’ So he said, ‘If you promise not to tell anybody...’ They told me they were not going to go to any LF with that thing over it. No direct orders, no nothing. And in fact, they never left the launch control facility. We picked up the Quebec team on the way back. The Quebec crew, because Quebec was on the way to Romeo, and SAT liked to save a little gas, so we rode-share. And they told us that earlier that evening, they had the same sort of thing flying over several of their launch facilities. And I said, ‘What happened? You reported it?’ And they said, ‘Are you crazy? We didn't report it. We're not going to report it.’ I said, ‘Well, I did.’ He said, ‘Well, if you tell them about us, we're going to say it never happened.’ So, we went back home, I reported to my squadron commander. The next few... we always have departure meetings when you go out for alert, the next several departure meetings we had an unusual visitor. We had an officer in a uniform telling us that, ‘You may have heard rumors about this. It didn't happen. It's top secret.’ And I wanted to stand up and say, ‘Which is it? Didn't it happen, or is it top secret?’ So that's my event. I think Mr. Salas will be back. Thank you.
What you have heard here today is evidence of a phenomenon. It sounds fantastic and it is fantastic. We presented this evidence in the public interest of open government. Our signatures on affidavits in the press kit that you have attest to the truth of our statements. Our evidence is now public domain. The real question is what is the public going to do with it, this testimony? It has been a general practice of the media to scoff at these kinds of stories, make light of such testimony. We can only ask that you take the time to give some serious consideration, not only to our statements, but to the statements of other witnesses out there who have similar incidents. There is also documentary evidence that helps support what we have said. We hope you will take the time to at least take a look at those, research this a little bit. And if you do, I think you'll come to the same conclusions that we have. That is, that the UFO phenomenon is real, not imaginary. There is current excessive secrecy in our government surrounding this phenomenon. Unknown aerial objects have in fact been observed over many of our nuclear weapons bases and other nuclear facilities. And in some cases, the appearance of these objects coincided with compromising the operational readiness of our nuclear weapons. Although each of us might have different opinions about the meaning and intent of these incidents, I think we can all agree that the tampering with nuclear weapons is a national security concern. This is Air Force official policy on UFOs. This is dated 2005, but I believe it is current policy. I'll just read one part of it. It says, ‘No UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force was ever an indication of threat to our national security.’ That is clearly misleading. It is false, based on our testimonies. This statement, the decision to discontinue UFO investigations was based on an evaluation and report prepared by the University of Colorado in 1969. I believe this was the infamous Condon Committee Study. There is substantial evidence to show that study was superficial and biased. In particular, the Echo and Oscar incidents I spoke about were never investigated by the Condon Committee, even through their principal investigator was well aware of these incidents. Obviously, the testimony given here today conflicts directly with that Air Force policy statement. We ask that our government answer to the public about the obvious discrepancy between our testimony and that of the current statement. Indeed, we demand an answer. Based on the foundation of our democracy that says... I want to paraphrase Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President Roosevelt: ‘The people should be strong enough and well enough informed to maintain the sovereign control over its government.’ Finally, I want to say, I think I speak for every one of us here, I have the utmost respect for all the men and women in the U.S. Air Force. I graduated from the Air Force Academy. I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the Air Force, and I was honored to serve my country in that way. Our disagreement and challenge to the Air Force has nothing to do with the people of the Air Force. It has to do with official Air Force policy. And I think they are deliberately withholding the facts. Not just what you've heard here, but, you know, continuously since 1969. And by doing so, they are not allowing the people of this country to engage in the decisions regarding events that are clearly national security issues and of concern to all of us. We're simply asking for the truth. Thank you for your attention. At this time, we're going to take questions. Mr. Hastings will take it from here. If you would, if you would go to the microphone over here and tell us what media you represent. Thank you. When you ask a question, I would ask first that you identify yourself and your organization, and then direct your question perhaps to a specific individual. That person will have to find his way to the mike, so there'll be a bit of delay. Yes.
Pat McIan: Pat McIan, The Daily Trojan, University of Southern California. We just did a big event here and... LucasArts, Mr. George Lucas himself. I wanted to commend all of you; you guys are soft-spoken, but you carry a big stick and that's exactly the way to approach this issue. I remember when UFOs first got going, it was like a laughing matter, until they started revealing themselves in the deserts: Arizona, Colorado, and so forth and so on. I'm standing up here not only because, if I'm a resource to anybody, if LucasArts is, please let me know and I'm glad to do whatever I can to help you. As well, I wanted to point that my friend, Charles Stone back here, is something of a real authority on UFOs. He does quite extensive work on websites and all and is a real authority if you need some questions answered. That's it.
Jeff Schogol: Hello. Jeff Schogol, with Stars and Stripes. Two quick questions: Mr. Hastings, you had mentioned that this is an ongoing phenomenon. Is there an incident later than 1980 that you are aware of? And then also, are there any testimonies here today that are new that have not yet been documented or been in the public domain?
Robert Hastings: This is a cross-section of the witnesses who've come forward. The latest incident involving nuclear missiles was at Malmstrom Air Force Base in 2007. However, the person is still active-duty Air Force. I'm not going to elaborate on that until that person is separated from the Air Force. Another incident occurred at the Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, Area 2 Weapons Storage Area. A series of incidents, the latest being in April of '03, in which there were unidentified aerial objects maneuvering near the weapons bunkers at that facility. More recently, civilian sighting reports in Orange County, California, at the Naval, Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, a series of bunkers, again containing nuclear weapons. There were local media reports of multiple sightings in March of '09 and near this weapons storage facility. This is ongoing. This is the tip of the iceberg. We can only catch as catch can. I am of the opinion that for every incident that I'm aware of and for witnesses that we've got in hand, there could be ten, there could be a hundred, there could be many, many more incidents that I'll never know about because the people won't come forward. They'll wait years or decades to talk about what they know.
JS: And is anything that has been said here, not been in the public domain before?
RH: I'm sorry?
JS: Anything that has been said here I know I've heard Mr.... the incident that Mr. Halt referred to. I've seen Mr. Salas. Is there anything here...
RH: The other people that you've heard here today, I reckon you have not heard about. The testimony of the majority of these people have not hit the national airwaves, so to speak, or the national media. There have been websites, I've written articles and so on, but the majority of these witnesses have not received national or international exposure. I think if we could, maybe limit one question per person so we can get everybody accommodated. Yes.
Steven Smith: Gentlemen, Steven Smith, KSHE Radio, St. Louis. I commend you all for being here. What an incredible panel. And Robert, you and I have always spoken over the phone. I'm still editing the book. I was at Naval Headquarters in Communications during the Carter Administration, and I can affirm what you're all saying. This phenomenon is incredibly real. And one day, a gentleman came into our comm station, came up to me –I had never seen him before in my life– and said, ‘Do you know that we have aliens on ice?’ And I was just taken back and speechless. I didn't pursue with any questioning. And he turned around and walked away, and walked out. I have been a contactee twice in my life. Both times in Santa Monica, California. One in 1986, one in 1997. Incredible experiences that I won't go into detail right now. But I just want to say, ‘Bravo, gentlemen.’ Thank you.
Spencer Ackerman: Spencer Ackerman with Wired. Mr. Hastings, could you elaborate on why you've speculated that the unidentified flying objects that all of you have described were... possessed the agenda of trying to tell us to turn away from our path of using nuclear weapons? Are there other potential explanations that you've considered and found less plausible? Is there a possible offensive threat to the world from these UFOs?
Robert Hastings: As I said in my introductory remarks, that's speculative on my part. However, given the available evidence, that is a plausible scenario. We can clearly say, based on radar data which are empirical, not anecdotal, that these objects have been tracked since the early 1950's if not earlier, traveling up to 7,000 miles per hour, making right-angle turns at high rates of speed, instantaneously hovering, reversing course. If we or the Russians or any country on Earth had those kinds of craft in the early 50's, why have been spent the last several decades developing fixed-wing aircraft of far inferior abilities? These are clearly, in my view, a technology from somewhere else piloted by beings from obviously another world or another dimension. Moreover, the fact that missiles have been tampered with here and in the former Soviet Union, and on one occasion, in each country, about which I am aware, actually activated, I think that we can rule out that these are the Americans attempting to start World War III, or the Russians attempting to start World War III. Again, the technology involved is so superior and we cannot conceive of a logical scenario whereby either of our countries would attempt to activate nuclear missiles for any reason under the sun. Now, our opinion is that, whoever these beings are, they are indeed attempting to send a signal that we are playing with fire, that we are gambling with the human race's future. There are other possible scenarios. I have half-jokingly said from time to time, ‘Maybe they're planning to invade Earth, and they don't want to inherit a radioactive environment when they do.’ Now, I don't believe that's what's going on by any means. I don't think humankind is in jeopardy from whoever they are and what their intentions are, except we will have our minds expanded. There will be a paradigm shift. Traditional institutions such as religions, governments, other social institutions may indeed by threatened... be threatened by what is coming. That is just a logical consequence of what is about to occur. But, if indeed, this Earth is being visited by other races, and if those races are, one or more races are, in fact, repeatedly monitoring and sometimes tampering with our nuclear weapons, that secret, in our view, should not be kept from the citizens of this planet any longer.
SA: But you don't think there's an offensive element to their contact?
RH: I don't think there's any potential hostility except, again, to closed-minded people.
Robert Salas: Can I add something?
RH: Sure.
RS: This is to the question of hostility. What you've heard up here, especially in my case, they could have done a lot more damage and permanent damage to our weapon systems, and they did not. All of these weapons, in my case, were brought back up on alert. It took a day or so, but everything was fine. If they wanted to destroy them, with all the powers they seem to have, I think they could have done that job. So, I personally don't think that this was a hostile intent.
Charles Stone: Hi. I'm Charles Stone with the Tiger News Service. I didn't ask my friend to come up and make that statement for me but I appreciate your patience. I've published internationally in the history of weapons of mass destruction, including going back to the 1940's. And these incidents go back to at least that period of time that U.S. government military facilities that were doing high-tech development in that period of time also, reportedly at least, had UFO visitors of various types. And that there are rep... there is archeological evidence that there have been what we would call ... that there's evidence of what's almost certainly atomic warfare in ancient history at least twice. And also that I'd like to mention that one of our biggest and most powerful government agencies was founded, in part, to monitor the UFO activities. That was the National Security Agency in the late 1940's.
Robert Hastings: Did you have a question, sir?
CS: Are you aware that the NSA was partially founded to monitor UFOs?
RH: I've heard rumors to that effect and also the Central Intelligence Agency. In my view, those rumors aren't supported by any authoritative documentation at this point. I would not be surprised, at the same time, if that were ultimately proved true by historians. But, that's as far as I think we can take it at this point.
CS: Right, yeah. Thank you.
RH: Thank you.
John Kelly: Hi. My name is John Kelly. I'm a columnist at The Washington Post. Colonel Halt, you mentioned that when you went out, you had a .. a cassette recorder, a Geiger counter. You said a camera?
Charles Halt: Camera, 35 millimeter camera.
JK: Did, so... First of all, did you take any photographs and second, how does a cassette tape made by you, presumably, for official purposes, end up at a cocktail party entertaining guests?
CH: Okay, two questions. Let me answer the first one. The disaster preparedness individual I took along, Tech Sergeant Monroe Nevels, also worked for the base newspaper part-time. He was a professional photographer on the side, had a degree in photography, had his own dark room. In fact, when he left the base, we had serious problems because he painted one of his rooms with flat black paint, and we had to redo the paint about four or five times. He took numerous pictures, pictures of the indentations, pictures of the broken branches. He tried to take pictures of the objects in the sky. He took the film back home, and it all came out fogged, unfortunately. Now, he did it in his own dark room. I used to have a dark room and dabble in photography too. He could have done it himself. It could have been the radiation, which I have doubts about, or something could have happened that we don't know about. But anyhow, the film all came out fogged. Sergeant Pennison had a camera. It was not uncommon for the security police on the perimeter to carry cameras because the British have a lot of... we call them birdwatchers, people that catch tail numbers and follow the history of airplanes and climb over the fence from time to time. Not to do any damage or any harm, but curiosity and trying to get close. It's a part of a game. So if they did that, we would photograph them inside the fence, and turn them over to the British police. Sergeant Pennison took his film to the photo lab and turned it in and they told him it disappeared. I can't answer that. The other question, what was the other question you asked about the...?
JK: So did you personally have a camera and were taking... pictures?
CH: I did not.
JK: These two...
CH: I had the microcassette recorder. We –keep in mind– we were just in the process of transitioning to word processors in those days, still using the typewriter. Our secretaries were very resistant to getting involved in modern technology. And so, what I would I do, I carried one in my pocket, a little Lanier, and we had the big Lanier machine in the office, and when I went around the base, I'd note, you know, the fence is damaged here, this needs to be painted, whatever was going on. And I'd come back and give her the tape, and she'd type it up for the staff meeting the following week. So I just thought, Well, I'll take the tape recorder along, because I don't want to take notes. It's cold and windy, dark. So, I took my tape recorder along. It was a little microcassette, one of those little tiny ones. I still have it, by the way. I came back, and after the tape was played at Third Air Force and I played it for Squadron Leader Moreland and several other people, Ted Conrad, my boss, said, ‘Make me a copy.’ So I made him a copy. He put it in a desk drawer, in his desk drawer. He moved on and was replaced. And the gentleman that replaced him thought it was hilarious to play the tape –I didn't know this at the time– at cocktail parties. So he was playing a copy. A copy of that copy somehow or other got to a gentleman by the name of Harry Harris, a British banister or a lawyer. Harry was a amateur UFOlogist. He and a guy by the name of Mack... Mike Sachs. I traced this down years later. And a couple of ladies named Brenda Butler, Dot Street and Jenny Randals, who were writing a book at that time, all got involved and my tape got out into the public domain, a copy of my tape. What's on the internet now is probably a fifth, sixth or seventh generation, but it's out there. So, does that answer your question?
JK: Thank you.
Robert Hastings: Let me interject that Robert Jamison, the missile targeting officer from Malmstrom in '67 does need to catch a plane. And so, if anyone wants to direct a question to him, you'll need to do it in the near-term here.
Ledge King: Hi. Ledge King with Gannett, Washington bureau. I have three questions, two of which can be answered by raising a hand. The first is, have any of you been contacted in the last month, I guess, whenever this event was being planned, by a government official telling you not to show up or trying to dissuade you? Any of them? Any of you? No. Second question is, Mr. Hastings alludes to the fact that there's a message being sent here that we ought to get rid of nukes. How many of you subscribe to that theory? [some raise their hands] That the theory... that you support getting rid of nukes, first of all.
Bruce Fenstermacher: I don't think he said that.
Robert Hastings: Well, that, what you're being asked is, Bob and I are of the opinion that the bottom line is the best explanation for what has taken place at our nuclear weapons sites, is that whoever in the UFOs are, in effect, sending a message, perhaps getting rid of nukes, expressing displeasure or concern, but certainly indicating an interference with the weapons. You're being asked whether you subscribe to that or not.
LK?: Do you support it?
BF: Not quite, not quite that... to that degree. I think they're monitoring us to make sure we don't mess things up.
RH: Do all of you support getting rid of nuclear weapons?
RS: I'm...
RH: Show of hands. One. Okay.
RS: Can I just add?
RH: Sure.
RS: With regard to... the reason that I came to the conclusion that this was a message. Simply again, they could have done a lot more destruction, I think, to our weapons systems, and they didn't. It was simply shining a light on our nuclear weapons, literally. Literally shining a light on nuclear facilities. This has happened all over the world. I can point to other instances where UFOs came over, shone a beam down on the weapons storage area where nukes were stored. To me, it's pretty clear. This is just, you know, ‘We're shining a light on this. We're pointing it out. What are you people doing with nuclear weapons?’
LK: And my final question, which does require somebody to speak, is, you know, you've talked about how society and the mainstream media are sort of, are very dismissive of all this. Can one or two of you talk about, sort of, the personal journey you've come to in terms of, you know, approaching family or friends or others about this, when people may think that it's 'kooky' to talk about this? Can one or two of you talk about how, you know... Was it difficult? How difficult was it, that sort of thing? Thank you.
Bruce Fenstermacher: Well, as a person who is very, very skeptical about this, what I called 'UFO nonsense', when that happened that night, and I thought through the process of what the logical explanations are, after that, I was very careful about who I told what, because some of my friends, when I started on this, just laughed. So, I got ridiculed. I was used to the ridicule from the Air Force, except for the dual standard. We're going to ridicule, but it's secret and don't talk about it. And coming out was... was my... I came out a little bit. I talked to Robert. I gave him a little bit of the story. I didn't want my name to come out. I was concerned. I don't want to be considered a kook. I don't want to, you know... because I consider, not so many anymore, but I consider some of the extremists a bit kooky, but I think it's more important that we come out and tell our story rationally and see that we aren't kooks. And this is what happened and make your own judgment. But, I am, one of my concerns is that you all think I'm a kook! And I'm old enough that I don't really care that much... because it happened. So, is that okay?
LK: How old are you?
BF: Sixty-eight...
LK: Okay. Thank you.
BF: ...going on ninety-five.
Robert Hastings: I would briefly add to that that I made a decision decades ago that no matter who laughed at me or threw things at me, I would speak what I knew to be the facts. The world is filled with self-appointed UFO experts, persons who have all the answers, even though they've studied none of the facts. The scientific community is chock full of those folks. Journalism, frankly, is chock full of those folks. We're presenting credible witnesses for open minds, people who have an objective sense of their duty to inform the American public about the reality of this situation. We're providing you not only these witnesses, but many other witnesses who can testify as to the reality of all of this and you may draw your own conclusions.
Lisa Pham: I'm Lisa Pham from Epoch Times newspaper. My question's towards Mr. Arneson. You mentioned someone over there trying to send us a message. I wonder what kind of a message. Do those aliens consider our Earth people have a threat to them, or they just try to defend or they try to come here to occupy, take over Earth? What kind of message, you think?
Dwynne Arneson: If I knew that answer, I wouldn't be here. I really don't know. But they're, they're trying to tell us something, without a question. Whether it's, ‘Don't go much further. Get rid of the things,’ I don't have any idea. Are they from the extraterrestrial? Who knows? Are they from other dimensions? Who knows? Are they from underneath the Earth? Who knows? Your guess is as good as mine, and I can't answer that question. Anything else?
LP: The government are trying to conceal this information, the fact actually, for many of... for all those years. Do you think this will do good for the society's stability, or it's a kind of a prevent for some advance or further research... for our society?
DA: Oh, that's a, that's a big one, We have been lied to for so many decades about the truth of the matter. And I think we need to have more openness in society as far as what these things are. Recently, in the last year or two, the Catholic Church has said publicly, you know, ‘It's okay. ETs can exist. They're our brothers.’ And they are ... theologically saying it's okay to believe in extraterrestrials. And if the Catholic Church says it, it's got to have a big stick, I would think, as far the western world is concerned, anyhow.
LP: Do you think right now, it's a time for human beings to admit there are other spiritual beings in the universe besides the human race?
DA: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I think that's the... The thing is, people are so wrapped up nowadays in their own world. They're worried about jobs. They're worried about mortgages. They could care less about UFOs and ETs and paranormal events and what not. That isn't even on their radar scope. Unfortunately. That's...
[unidentified woman; unclear]: and not your high school concept [unclear].
DA: I understand that. I haven't spoken to college students that much myself, but I understand that that is a fact. Yeah. And that's healthy! I think that's goodness.
[unidentified woman]: We have the Church alone, the last bastion...
DA: Oh, yeah. I just wonder... I just wonder what some of the archives in the Vatican, as far as UFOs and things like that are concerned, if that could be released. Wow, I bet it would blow the socks off a lot of people. That would be interesting.
[unidentified woman]: Hey, let's just write the Pope. Let's write.
Robert Hastings: Okay. Let...
DA: Sorry.
RH: Let me, let me... You asked what would the potential changes be for society, would this be good? Let me briefly summarize and say. In 1975, a former CIA official, Victor Marchetti, wrote a best-selling book called The CIA and Cult of Intelligence. The CIA took him to the Supreme Court to attempt public... block publication of that book. Ultimately, a redacted version of it was released. It was the first book in American history to be censored by the U.S. government. The same Victor Marchetti, in 1979, wrote an article for Second Look magazine. The title, I believe, was How the CIA Views the UFO Phenomenon. He said, among other things, ‘This subject was so sensitive that you did not talk about it in the Agency unless you had a need to. Nevertheless, there were rumors floating around at the highest levels of CIA about recovered crashed UFOs and the bodies of their crews.’ Thirdly, Victor Marchetti said, in his opinion as an intelligence analyst with CIA for, I think, eleven years, he was of the opinion that no government on Earth will voluntarily release this information because it would jeopardize the status quo, i.e., their power. Even if there's no hostile intent or implication to the visitation of these beings, if indeed these are extraterrestrials, even if they're not meaning us any harm whatsoever, governments have nothing to gain and everything to lose by admitting the reality of this and Victor Marchetti's opinion is that this will probably come out, you know, by some action on the part of the phenomenon itself, which will leave no doubt in anyone's mind, but don't expect Washington or Moscow or any other government to volunteer the reality of all of this. Thank you.
Jim Canan: I'm Jim Canan. I'm a defense writer of long standing, in this town, for Gannett Newspapers' BusinessWeek magazine, and I was a senior editor of Air Force magazine. I'm going to ask a question, but I want to contribute something. When I was on Air Force magazine, I was told by an Air Force Colonel of long acquaintance that this was real, and that we were actually dealing with the aliens. I never had the guts to write... He said, ‘You won't have the guts to write this. I said, No, because I have to confirm it. And if you can't tell me how to confirm it...’ He did give me a couple names, but it didn't pan out. I was like all the rest of the press. You know, I didn't have... If I couldn't confirm it, I wouldn't write it. Now, that may mean that we're somewhat cowardly, but at the same time, it means that we're also very careful. I do sympathize with the members of the press who do not write about this, even though I myself am convinced of it by now, because I was one of them once. But now, I have a question, contemporary. Two years ago, the Air Force Chief of Staff and the Secretary of the Air Force were dismissed by the Secretary of Defense for, among other reasons, being sloppy in their management of nuclear weapons. We transported an armed one somewhere. We sent components overseas and so forth. This shook up the Air Force. I want to ask you gentlemen, in the aggregate
Robert Salas: Can I speak to this gentleman?
[someone]: Sure.
RS: I don't know about ranking, but it points out the dangers of nuclear weapons. The fact that these accidents have occurred, serious accidents with nuclear weapons. And... And... it's just, it just points out how dangerous it is that we have them. I don't know how to compare that with the cover-up. I have done an analysis of the cover-up and I'd be glad to give to any of you guys that are interested. But I think it's related and the fact that... the cover-up of the fact that UFOs did intercede with our nuclear weapons is extremely important.
JC: May I add something? This Air Force Colonel who talked to me about all this, he did so in result of my questioning about it after a Japan Airlines freighter over Alaska was trailed by a UFO in 1987. I called all over Elmendorf, FAA, the Pentagon. And then I was approached by this Colonel whom I have known, who said, ‘I understand you are interested in UFOs.’ And I said, ‘Yeah’. You know. ‘Well, I have something to tell you.’ And since he had known me a long time, that's why he got into this. It was... it had no great enterprise on my part and I still don't know what to believe, but...
RH: Would you comment on... JC: He also said, though, that we have a lot of misconceptions about what they are here for. He said they basically don't give a damn. They don't care what we do. They are here for their own purposes and that any notion that they should land and say, ‘Take us to your leader’ boggles the imagination because they don't care about that kind of thing. And I said, ‘Well, do you have any idea why they are here?’ He said, ‘No.’ And he didn't anybody else in the Air Force or anywhere else did either. I just have...
RH: Let me interject. Regarding the... the November '87 radar tracking incident that you alluded to.
JC: Right and the...
RH: In recent years, you may know that the number-five guy in the echelon at FAA, John Callahan...
JC: Right.
RH: ...has gone public and said that shortly after that happened, CIA agent, two agents, I believe, and some other government types, convened a meeting at FAA headquarters, and said, ‘We want all the radar tapes, all the voice tapes, and this never happened. I wasn't here.’ John Callahan said, ‘How come we can't tell the people about this?’ According to this FAA administrator, the CIA agent said, ‘The people would panic. The public would panic.’ John Callahan, to his immense credit kept some of the data...
JC: Yes.
RH: ...down in his office. The CIA agent said, ‘Give me all of this.’ He gave him everything that was on the table, didn't tell him about what was downstairs, and when he left the agency, John Callahan released that to the public. So, CIA is still quite involved in all of this.
JC: Leslie Kean's great book includes that again.
RH: I think regarding... well, to follow up on the other part of your question about, you know, ‘What are they up to? Why are they here’, and so on. No one knows. Maybe the people at the CIA and the Pentagon and the Kremlin don't even know. However, these very simplistic scenarios of, ‘If they're real and they're here, why don't they land on the White House lawn?’ Well, if they're anthropologists and this is a classroom experiment, you don't interject yourself into the experiment...
JC: Exactly.
RH: ...experiment, you observe. Or, an alternate scenario. If this backwards planet is on the verge of a nuclear holocaust, maybe on a limited basis you intervene in a way that the Pentagon knows what's going on, the Kremlin knows what's going on. Except for troublemakers like us, the public at large in either country does not know what's going on. So in effect, you send a signal, in my opinion, to governments about nuclear weapons without alarming the general populace. The late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who was a UFO skeptic, he worked for Project Bluebook for so many years, he eventually believed, ‘I've been wrong. Science has been wrong. These are real and we should check into it.’ When asked why, you know, the aliens, if that's who they are, do not visit us, he said, ‘You know, a zoo is a nice place to visit, but you don't communicate with the lizards.’ So, you know, there's any number of plausible scenarios to explain why we have not had open contact. I am of the opinion that whoever they are have enough sense to know that if they interject themselves into our reality in one fell swoop, there could be very dire repercussions. Whereas, on the other hand, if they engage in an on-again, off-again, cat-and-mouse behavior, that allows a slow psychological conditioning of humankind to the reality and the presence of their... their... themselves, then, when open contact, if that indeed is in the cards, occurs, there will be far less trauma.
JC: Thank you. I wasn't meaning to contest your point of view, by the way, merely pointing out what I had heard.
RH: It's all right.
Michael Rank: Michael Rank from Lancaster County. Al and I came down this afternoon, and we were talking about the fact that we are now able to combine human and non-human genetic materials by our medical sciences. And, I don't know whether any of you have had a chance to read Doctor... Professor Jacobs's book, The Threat. He's a tenured professor at Temple University and he has been doing regression therapy with abductees for years, and he has quite a body of knowledge there. My... one of my reasons for asking this is, being an old district attorney, the definition of 'murder' is the unlawful killing of another human being, but nowhere does it say, ‘Does it have to be 100 percent human? Can it be one percent human?’ I'm waiting for someone to play that card. I'm out of the business now, but that might be fun. The other issue is the toadies in government who are following their orders to lose the files in Freedom of Information Acts, I think, might take a totally different view, as to their attempt to preserve their jobs if they realize that there might be an argument made that there is a First Amendment violation by suppressing the truth about these things that have been found and seen and so forth. The suppression works to favor certain religions versus other religions.
Robert Salas: Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you for coming. Again, all of us will be available for one-on-one interviews for some period of time. Thank you.
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Bill Ryanbill@projectavalon.net |
