Although Army R&D never conducted these studies because the medical issues surrounding space travel were subsumed by NASA under contracts with the military, indirect medical research was conducted years later. Studies surrounding the physiological effects on persons living near high-voltage power-transmission lines and persons using extendable-antenna handheld cellular telephones both proved inconclusive. While some people argued that there were higher incidences of cancer among both groups, other studies argued just the opposite or found other reasons for any incidences of cancer. I believe that a definitive piece of research on the effects of low-energy or ELM wave exposure still needs to be done because, ultimately, even more than atomic energy or ion drives, magnetic field generation will be the system that will propel our near planetary voyages from 2050 through the early twenty-second century. Beyond that, for humans to reach destinations beyond the solar system technology will require a radically different form of propulsion that will enable them to reach velocities at or beyond the speed of light.
Thus did my second report cover the opportunities for research presented to us by the autopsies of the EBEs and from the crash of their vehicle. To my mind, it was nothing less than a confirmation that the research into electromagnetics in the 1920s and the highly experimental saucer- and crescent-shaped development of aircraft by the Allies and Axis powers would have led to an entirely new generation of airships. I know that my reports were read by the higher-ups in the military because top-secret research has continued right through to the present on a whole range of designs and propulsion systems from the Stealth fighter and bomber to prototypes for a very high altitude suborbital interceptor aircraft, developed at Nellis and Edwards, now on the drawing board, which can hover in place and fly at speeds over seven thousand miles per hour.
Once I finished my report on the opportunities we could possibly derive from the EBEs and the craft, I turned my attention to compiling a short list of immediate opportunities I believed achievable by the Army R&D’s Foreign Technology Division from a reverse-engineering of items retrieved from the crash. These were specific things, not as theoretical as questions about the physiology of the EBE or the description of its craft. But, while some might call them purely mundane, each of these artifacts, as a direct result of Army R&D’s intervention, helped spawn an entire technological industry from which came new products and military weapons.
Among the Roswell artifacts and the questions and issues that arose from the Roswell crash, on my preliminary list that needed resolution for development scheduling or simple inquiries to our military scientific community were:
Image intensifiers, which ultimately became “night vision”
Fiber optics
Supertenacity fibers
Lasers
Molecular alignment metallic alloys
Integrated circuits and microminiaturization of logic boards
HARP (High Altitude Research Project)
Project Horizon (moon base)
Portable atomic generators (ion propulsion drive)
Irradiated food
“Third brain” guidance systems (EBE headbands)
Particle beams (“Star Wars” antimissile energy weapons)
Electromagnetic propulsion systems
Depleted uranium projectiles
For each of the items on my list, General Trudeau went into his human resources file and found the names of scientists working on government defense projects or in allied research projects at universities where I could turn for advice and some consultation. I wasn’t surprised to see Wernher von Braun turn up under every rocket-propulsion issue. Von Braun had gone on record in 1959 by announcing that the U.S. military had acquired a new technology as a result of top-secret research in unidentified flying objects. Nor was I surprised to see John von Neumann’s name next to the mention of the strange-looking silver-imprinted silicon wafers that I thought looked like elliptical-shaped crackers. “If these are what I think they might be,” General Trudeau said, “printed circuitry, there’s only one person we can talk to.”
Dr. Robert Sarbacher was an especially important contact person on our list of scientists because he had worked on the Research and Development Board during the Eisenhower administration. Not only had Sarbacher been consulted by members of Admiral Hillenkoetter’s and General Vandenberg’s working group on UFOs during the 1950s, he was part of the original decision General Twining made to bring all of the Roswell debris back to Wright Field for preliminary examination before farming it out to the military research community. As early as 1950, Sarbacher, commenting on the nature of the debris, said that he was sure the light and tough materials were being analyzed very carefully by government laboratories that had taken possession of the debris after the crash. Because he was already knowledgeable about the Roswell debris, Dr. Sarbacher was another obvious candidate for an Army R&D brain trust.
We also listed Dr. Wilbert Smith, who, in a memo to the controller of telecommunications in November 1950, had urged the government of Canada to investigate the nature of alien technology the United States had retrieved from crashed extraterrestrial vehicles and that was at that time being studied by Vannevar Bush. Dr. Smith, who had learned of the U.S. investigation from Sarbacher, said that regardless whether UFOs fit into our belief system or not, the fact was we had acquired them and it was important for us to harvest the technology they contained. He implored the government to make a substantial effort to utilize alien technology. General Trudeau joked that although Dr. Smith knew that we had acquired technology at Roswell, he didn’t really know what it was. “I can’t wait to see his face when you open your briefcase in front of him, Phil,” the general said, thinking about how his old friend had always wanted to know the specifics of what he had secreted away in 1947.
Each of these scientists had maintained existing relationships with any number of defense contractors during the 1950s. General Trudeau also had relationships with the army contractors who were developing new weapons systems for the military within one part of the company while another part was harvesting some of the same technology for consumer products development. These were companies—Bell Labs, IBM, Monsanto, Dow, General Electric, and Hughes—that General Trudeau wanted to talk to about the list of technological products that we’d compiled from our R&D Roswell nut file.
“You begin calling our scientist friends,” General Trudeau announced. “And make whatever appointments you want.”
“Where are you going to be, General?” I asked.
“I’m going to be taking some trips, too,” he said. “First to the chief of staff to make sure we have the discretionary budget we’re going to need. Then to some of the people I want you to talk to once you have the backing from the scientific community for the projects on your list.”
“Where to first?” I asked.
“What do you like?” the general shot right back to me.
“We’ve been working with image intensifiers for some time,” I said. “We even got our hands on devices the Germans were working on at the end of the war.”
“Well then, why don’t you make a very preliminary trip over to Fort Belvoir,” General Trudeau said. “They’ve had a night-vision project in the works for the past ten years, but it’s got nothing over what you have in your file.”
“I’ll get over there first thing,” I said.
“Yes, Phil, but you get out of that uniform and into a real lawyer suit,” the general ordered. “And don’t take your staff car.” He saw me raise my eyebrows. “All you’re going to do is feed a project,” Trudeau continued, “that’s been under way since right after the war. They’ve got stuff, but you’re going to give them a giant leap. Once you’ve fed them, you’ll disappear and I’ll assign a night-vision project manager here to see the development through.” I prepared to leave his office. “No one will know, Phil,” he said. “Just like you thought, the Roswell night viewer will put a seed of an idea in someone’s mind over at Fort Belvoir and it will become part
of a long project history. It will disappear just like you into the history of the product development.”
“Yes, sir,” I said. I was beginning to realize just how lonely this job could be.
“You still have a suit that fits?” the general asked.
“I think so,” I answered. “Maybe what I wore over at the White House is a little out of style, but it’ll pass.”
“Good luck, Phil,” General Trudeau said. “Make sure no one knows where you’re going and I’ll make sure you have all the budget you need.”
This was the beginning. I saluted, but the general just stuck out his hand and I shook it. We both realized in that moment, as we were striking out on our own, just how momentous this was about to become. A lieutenant general allocating money for his development budget and a lieutenant colonel looking for someone to develop an innocuous-looking eye shield an unknown GI had picked up out of the sand near a UFO crashed into a rock in the lonely desert outside of Roswell in a lightning storm fourteen years ago.
What a pair we must have made.
CHAPTER 9
Hostile Intentions and the Other Cold War
The project had officially begun.
General Trudeau marched down the hall to his boss at the Pentagon to begin the process of funding the new items we’d identified in our Foreign Technology budget, and I went home that evening and tried on my official White House three-piece suit. President Eisenhower once told me that he always trusted a man who wore a vest, and I never forgot it. Although there were times when the President asked me to wear my uniform for special meetings when I had to look military, I usually wore suits every day to work. But after my years at the Red Canyon missile base and in combat uniform in Germany, I lost the knack of wearing civilian clothes. Nevertheless, here I was again, after all those years, wearing a suit just like any other nine-to-five commuting Joe as I headed toward Fort Belvoir, perhaps the army’s most important base in the entire Washington Military District.
Fort Belvoir was one of those military posts where the mundane activity of training and weapons testing was an effective cover for what came to be known as the secret life of Fort Belvoir. It sat comfortably within thirty minutes of the Pentagon, and it was where some of the army’s most top-secret research into UFO technology was also taking place. Belvoir housed the Army Engineering School and, for former artillery and missile officers like myself, maintained a vital information database about ballistics testing and the development of new weapons. But on the secret side of the ledger, Fort Belvoir was home to the Signal School where officers for the National Security Council who had top-secret crypto clearance were trained.
Even years after I retired from active duty, stories lingered about the records of UFOs that were stored at Fort Belvoir, including photos and even motion pictures of military retrievals of downed extraterrestrial craft. What very few people knew was that an elite secret air force unit operated out of Fort Belvoir—ostensibly an army base—that was responsible for retrievals of downed UFOs. That was how Fort Belvoir became a repository of classified UFO footage. Those secrets remained at Fort Belvoir over the years and were closely guarded while the installation remained shrouded in mystery. For those who suspect what information was kept at the base, Fort Belvoir remains a central part of the legends surrounding the official military cover-up of UFOs.
Me, I was on my way there to talk about the night-vision project to see what German World War II files they were keeping on the infrared viewfinders the Nazis were trying to deploy for their night-fighting troops. These were cumbersome, unwieldy devices that left infantry hampered and weighed down. They were never effective in the war but held out the enormous promise of opening up the night as a battlefield where an army could maneuver around its blind and helpless enemy. That was the promise that tantalized both the Soviets and American forces as we closed in on Germany’s most secret weapons facilities during the final months of the war.
Our forces secured all of the German records on mountable weapons night viewers and headpieces, but it wasn’t until we looked inside the crashed Roswell vehicle and saw a hazy daylight through the view ports that we realized just what the potential of night viewing could be. We understood in those few moments after the vehicle was brought back to Wright Field and General Twining made his initial report that we were the blind and helpless enemy through the eyes of the EBEs. These creatures controlled our night skies, observing us with an ease that we didn’t enjoy until we had deployed our own night-viewing goggles years later and leveled the playing field against them and the Soviet client forces arrayed against us.
My very proper-looking deep blue Oldsmobile might not have been a secret weapon in America’s arsenal, but it was carrying a description of one of the tiny components of what would be one of our most effective Cold War weapons. Guerrilla armies used the night itself on their familiar home territory as a tactical weapon that allowed them to move right past enemy positions without being spotted. They could secure a battlefield advantage as if they were invisible. But equip a patrol with night viewers, mount night viewers on tanks and observation vehicles, hover over a battlefield at night in helicopter gunships equipped for night vision, and suddenly the night becomes day and the invisible enemy appears in your gunsights like prey for the hunter.
To the EBEs, we were that prey, and we knew they were monitoring our defenses, surveilling the aircraft we scrambled to chase them, and hovering above the experimental satellites we launched. We could see them with our radar, I had seen them on our scopes with my own eyes, and we knew their presence wasn’t benign. But they had an advantage over us that we couldn’t overcome unless we acquired the technological ability to put up enough of a defense to make their cost too high to engage in any large-scale warfare. Not only was it an advantage that forced us to scrape whatever technology we could off the edge of our encounters with them; it was one of the many factors that forced us into a silence about the alien presence. If there was no public enemy, there would be no pressure from the public to do anything about it. So we simply denied all extraterrestrial activity because no aliens meant no military responsibility to counter their threat. But all the while we were still planning, measuring their hostile intentions, and pushing through weapons development that might reduce their advantage.
It would have been next to impossible to stage a military buildup that would help us fight extraterrestrial enemies had we not had a lot of help from our old adversaries, the Soviets and the Chinese. The Soviets made no bones about their intentions to dominate the world through Communist revolutionary coups and set about immediately to challenge us even before World War II ended. By 1948, the Iron Curtain had dropped over Eastern Europe and the Soviets were trying to back us into a position of appeasement. In 1949, Mao Tse-tung drove Chiang Kai-shek out of mainland China to the island of Taiwan, and the United States had another major Communist adversary trying to impose its will upon its Asian neighbors. We first tasted their blood in Korea and would soon almost choke on it in Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia.
Those were hard times, made even harder because the U.S. military also knew that not just the free world but the whole world was under a military threat from a power far greater than the combined forces of the Soviet Union and the Republic of China. We didn’t know what the EBEs wanted at first, but we knew that between the cattle mutilations, surveillance of our secret weapons installations, reports of strange abductions of human beings, and their consistent buzzing of our unmanned and manned space launches, the EBEs weren’t just friendly visitors looking for a polite way to say “Hello, we mean you no harm.” They meant us harm, and we knew it. The problem was we couldn’t do anything about it at first, and anything we did try to do had to be done in complete secrecy or it would set off a worldwide panic, we believed.
This was where the Cold War turned out to be a tremendous opportunity for us, because it allowed us to upgrade our military preparedness in public to fight the Communists while secretly creatin
g an arsenal and strategy to defend ourselves against the extraterrestrials. In short, the Cold War, while real enough and dangerous enough, was also a cover for us to develop a planetary tracking and defense system that looked into space as well as into the Soviets’ backyard. And the Soviets were doing the exact same thing we were, looking up at the same time they were looking down.
In an only tacitly acknowledged cooperative endeavor, the Soviets and the Americans, while each one was explicitly using the Cold War to gain an advantage over the other, both sought to develop a military capability to defend ourselves against extraterrestrials. There were very subtle indications of this policy in the types of weapons both countries developed as well as in our behavior toward one another every time one side came close to pushing the button. I can tell you definitively because I was there when we avoided nuclear war because both military commands were able to pull back when they stared over the cliff into the flaming volcano of war that threatened to engulf all of us at least four times between 1945 and 1975—the Berlin airlift, the Chinese invasion of Korea, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Yom Kippur War—and probably many more.
The Day After Roswell Page 15
