by Dan Wright
February 5, 1958
On this day came the release of a revised Air Force Regulation 200-2. It ordered individual air base commanders to conduct initial investigations of all reported UFO sightings in their areas, adding the stipulation, “Air Force activities must reduce the percentage of unidentifieds [sic] to the minimum.”53
April 14, 1958
Air Force pilot D.G. Tilley was flying a C-47 transport near Lynchburg, Virginia, at about 1:00 p.m. when he spotted what he described as a gray-black rectangular object which rotated very slowly on its horizontal axis for four seconds before leaving the area.54
May 5, 1958
Three weeks later, a pilot well known in the local area was flying his Piper Cub near Pan De Azucar, Uruguay, when he had a brief encounter with a brilliant object he described as “top-shaped” (that is, shaped like a child's toy top). When the intruder drew near, the pilot felt intense heat within the cabin.55
May 9, 1958
A Philippine Airlines pilot was crossing Bohol Island (part of the Philippines chain) at 11:05 a.m. when he noticed an airborne object with a shiny metallic surface. It was continuously falling and spinning for a minute and a half before he lost sight of it below.56
May 15, 1958
A Venezuelan Air Force pilot observed a formation of circular discs as they moved rapidly to the northwest until lost from view.57
Mid-May 1958
At Malmstrom AFB, Montana, one night, an unknown approached from the north and hovered about 1,000 feet over the alert hanger. It appeared to be a round metallic object of indeterminate size—termed a flying saucer by guard personnel there. The base radar picked up the object as did FAA radar about five miles away at Great Falls. The object also hovered over the atomic missile and bomb storage building nearby. It then glided slowly down the length of the runway before heading away toward the municipal airport at Great Falls. There it hovered over the National Guard (F-89) parking ramp. Finally, it flew off into the darkness.58
June 20, 1958
At Fort Bragg, North Carolina, at 11:05 p.m., a battalion communication chief noticed a silver circular object above. Its lower portion was shrouded in a green haze. He watched for ten minutes as it hovered and oscillated before moving away at great speed.59
September 1, 1958
At 12:15 a.m., at Wheelus Air Force Base, Libya, a Philco technical representative employed at the USAF base observed a round, blue-white luminous object. As he watched, it flew at varying speeds in the distance. The object was twice in view, the first time for two minutes, then for 1.5 minutes.60
October 3, 1958
Beginning at 3:20 a.m., between Wasco and Kirklin, Indiana, five crew members on a moving Monon Railroad freight train had a close encounter with four disc-shaped objects over a period of 70 minutes. Periodically the crew aimed their flashlights at the objects, which maneuvered in response to them. The witnesses included the engineer, fireman, and head brakeman in the locomotive plus, in the caboose, the conductor and flagman. Due to the train's half-mile length one or the other group had a better sight line at a given moment. They all watched four “big, white, soft lights” in the distance. The trained nighttime observers knew these were peculiar by nature and were obviously moving across the sky. Abruptly the lights cruised down low over the track half a mile ahead of them momentarily. “They were moving pretty slowly, too, at no more than about 50 miles an hour.. .”61
The fireman continued relating the crew's account:
After the lights crossed the tracks in front of us, they stopped and came back. This time they were headed east. They shot off toward the east and were gone a few minutes—out of sight—but when they came back and we all saw them again, I turned on the microphone. We have radio between the engine and caboose. I told the boys in the caboose what we were watching.... [They] got the best look at the things. Especially when they came right down over the whole train.62
The conductor, who was in the caboose's cupola looking forward over the train, took up the account:
This time they came down over the train, a little way in back of the engine. They were coming toward the caboose.... I'd say they were only a couple of hundred feet above the train as they came toward the caboose. And they weren't moving very fast—maybe 30 or 40 miles an hour.... I think they were silent, or nearly silent, at least.
Remaining just above the treetops, the vehicles tilted on edge, revealing shapes roughly 40 feet in diameter and 10 feet thick. The conductor also noticed the objects' coloration: bright white when moving fast, softening to yellowish at slower speeds, and rusty orange when very slow. Over an hour after they had first been spotted, the four vehicles swept over the length of the train in the opposite direction and continued to follow the railroad track until lost from view.63
Had the Agency made a concerted and continuous effort, using various among the government's best resources to determine the true nature of these pesky intruders, it might very well have concluded instead that the unknowns defied definition by the terms of our fundamental sciences. Overcoming gravity and, especially, inertia appeared to be nothing short of magic. Moreover, they left virtually no hard evidence behind. Whatever “factory” constructed them, they never dropped a muffler, as it were.
This (essentially foreign) intelligence service, having at times been caught up in these baffling episodes years before, certainly did not wish to repeat the experience. Tasked with investigating identifiable security threats from outside the nation's boundaries, the attitude remained: no security threat, therefore no interest. UFOs would remain one of the universe's great mysteries; there was no benefit to be gained from studying them. To borrow the essential line from Waiting for Godot, “Nothing to be done.”
Chapter 12
1959: Same Cast of Characters
The year began with a familiar figure rapping on the front door. On January 22 came a Memorandum from (redacted) to the Assistant to the Director, J. Arnold Shaw. NICAP's Major Keyhoe was “persisting” in his query concerning CIA agents allegedly silencing UFO witnesses, a charge from his original March 13, 1958, letter. Quoting Keyhoe in that letter, “... I am seriously concerned—as is our Board—with this apparent censorship ...”1
Five days later, the Agency underscored its position in communicating with Keyhoe. Executive Officer J. S. Earman was quite blunt, perhaps demeaning, in his response: The CIA did not normally release positive or negative information on an “inquiry such as yours.” Earman asked Keyhoe why he required such information.2
That attitude carried over to February in a letter on the 6th from Earman to George Popowitch, head of the citizens' group, The Unidentified Flying Objects Research Committee.3 Earman was replying to a January 21 letter from Popowitch asking how UFOs affect national security and whether information was withheld from the public. Earman made two points:
In 1953 a panel of experts concluded there was no threat; that assessment was made public in 1958.
Responsibility for answering such questions rested with the United States Air Force.
A February 6 buckslip from (redacted) to Frank Chapin, assistant to the D/CI, brought up an old concern. Donald Keyhoe had written to J. S. Earman requesting the full Robertson Panel Report. The Agency had long since deferred to the Air Force and its spokesman, Major Tacker, on all such matters and should again inform Keyhoe that the Air Force was the only qualified authority on UFO concerns. Attached was a letter from Keyhoe to Earman dated sometime in August 1958 (illegible date).4
A February 18 letter from Chapin to UFO enthusiast Fred Kirsch answered Kirsch's question whether the CIA objected to his group investigating UFOs and publicizing the results. “Since CIA has no jurisdiction over unidentified flying objects, we are not in a position to answer the questions you posed.” Kirsch had asked the same questions of the Air Force, and Chapin was confident the USAF response would be prompt and appropriate.5
In a February 22 four-page letter to CIA Director Allen Dulles, attorney Richard Ogden, on behal
f of contactee George Adamski, claimed that an FBI agent threatened him with arrest. Ogden had a December 7, 1953, radio interview with Adamski to support the allegation. A key question by the interviewer: “Was the real purpose of this visit a conspiracy to intimidate you into silence so as to discourage you from telling the American people the truth about flying saucers and the people who ride in them?” Adamski's reply: “Yes.” Ogden accused the CIA of attempting to discredit and silence authors and witnesses, of sending “men in black suits” to confront them, and of using the FBI to those ends.6 Note: If readers wondered about the origin of Men in Black, this mention may have been it.
The Agency's Executive Officer J. S. Earman wrote to Donald Keyhoe on March 5. Acknowledging Keyhoe's letter of February 12, Earman said he still had insufficient information to answer questions about alleged silencing of UFO witnesses by CIA operatives. Earman's earlier reply to Keyhoe's March 13, 1958, letter, he remarked, included all the information available to the Agency.7
While all this intrigue was playing out, a report of actual aerial activity arrived sometime in March, referencing a January 20 news article in a Stockholm daily. Sometime “recently,” eight reliable individuals had observed an unknown over Stigsjoe in the Vaesternorrland Province of northern Sweden. The object approached slowly to within 300 meters of the witnesses. It was disc-shaped, 6–8 meters in diameter, “surrounded by a luminous ring about 2 meters wide. The underside emitted reddish- yellow light. It was visible for three minutes before departing and was reported afterward to military authorities.8
Beginning about 8:10 p.m. on an unstated evening in March 1959, several individuals near the town of Bergen, Norway, observed a series of five bright lights cross the sky north to south, minutes apart. As reported by the Oslo daily Cibservation Aftenposten, each anomaly crossed the sky in about two minutes. In size and appearance, they were remindful of Sputniks. No sound was heard, and employing binoculars added no insights.9
In 2004 the Agency released a May 28, 1959, Journal entry by the Office of Legislative Counsel (OLC). Of the four topics contained therein, three were redacted. The fourth had information on retired Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter. It was learned that the admiral and retired USMC Major Donald Keyhoe had been classmates at the United States Naval Academy, both graduating in 1919. That partly explained their connection on the UFO subject and why Hillenkoetter was on the NICAP board of governors. Of late, he had needled USAF General Thomas White, saying the Air Force was withholding UFO information that the public had a right to know. The writer in the OLC said, “This information should be handled very carefully in discussing the matter with the Air Force.”10
On the 2nd of July, 1959, OSI Assistant Director Herbert Scoville wrote a one-paragraph letter to a George Wyllie, a Tennessee resident. Wyllie had sent a book to Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles titled They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers. Dulles had forwarded it to Scoville with a note to return it to Wyllie when he was finished with it. Presumably without turning a page, the AD/SI was enclosing the book and thanked Wyllie for the loan.11
On July 21, 1959, a James Maney, describing himself as deputy director of the civilian Interplanetary Intelligence of Unidentified Flying Objects, wrote to CIA Director Allen Dulles. Maney posed four questions:
“Is the CIA responsible for the official secrecy on UFOs?”
Did the Agency cancel a planned showing of motion pictures of UFOs taken by US Navy Warrant Officer D.C. Newhouse on July 2, 1952?
Did CIA files disclose that CIA personnel communicated with (redacted)?
George Adamski was allegedly visited by a CIA agent on December 17, 1953, warning him not to mention the government again. Was this true?
On behalf of Mr. Dulles, assistant Frank Chapin enclosed the letter with a buckslip to (redacted) which read, “Before I refer this on to the Air Force which is our normal procedure, will you please check and see if any of your people have ever had contact with any of the individuals named in the last few paragraphs of this letter?” The handwritten reply on the returned buckslip was, “Frank, no record of contact here.”12
The chief of the Contact Division sent a buckslip to Frank Chapin, Assistant to the Director, on October 2: “Keyhoe's insistence in pursuing this matter re-enforces my conviction that it would be (illegible) ... Ultimately we may have to give in (illegible).”13
An Information Report distributed October 22, 1959, redacted 12 of 13 subjects. Number 11 stated that in late August or early September in Ukraine a luminous orange ball seen in flight seemingly vanished. No other details were given.14
On November 3, a C.H. Marek Jr. wrote to the Agency on the subject of airplane accidents. He raised “a possibility that the unidentified flying objects is the cause of many of these accidents.” He referenced two commercial airline crashes; in the first, in 1955, the pilot allegedly reported a fireball in the sky just before the plane went down. The writer also mentioned two recent accidents, one involving a USAF jet fighter. In replying, (redacted—Frank Chapin, Assistant to the Director) remarked, “This is a subject which is not within the purview of the Central Intelligence Agency.. .” He suggested Mr. Marek contact the Department of the Air Force.15
In a November 25 letter to Dr. Thornton Page, Wesleyan University, OSI Deputy Assistant Director Philip Strong referred to Page's November 19 letter regarding “freshman papers” on the subject of UFOs.
I have checked with my people here who have followed this subject and they would be very much interested in having a chance to look these papers over.... I would suggest that, if you mention the papers being sent to Washington, you not identify the agency, but simply indicate that they are being reviewed by a part of the national defense establishment.16
Two weeks later, Philip Strong's secretary, Alnora Belt, wrote back to Dr. Page, acknowledging receipt of fourteen UFO-related freshman papers. “[W]e will return the essays and our comments as soon as possible.”17
While you were away from your desk . . .
While no one at the Central Intelligence Agency seems to have paid attention, a number of intriguing and important UFO cases and circumstances arose in the United States and abroad over the course of 1959.
The foremost pioneer in rocketry, Dr. Wernher von Braun, commented (date unclear) on the deflection from orbit of an American Juno 2 rocket:
We find ourselves faced by powers which are far stronger than we had hitherto assumed, and whose base is at present unknown to us. More I cannot say at present. We are now engaged in entering into closer contact with those powers, and in six or nine months' time it may be possible to speak with some precision on the matter.18
February 24, 1959
Near Williamsport, Pennsylvania, American Flight 139, piloted by Captain Peter Killian and First Officer James Dee, was on its way from Newark to Detroit in a DC-6B. They were 13 miles southwest of Williamsport when they noticed three lights in the south-southwest direction at 30-degree elevation. The lights changed their relative position, separation, and color (yellow-orange to brilliant blue-white), drawing the pilots' further attention.19
Project Blue Book's J. Allen Hynek assessed the Williamsport case as radar-visual (RV). Thus, a radar installation somewhere had captured the unknowns on screen. Jacques Vallee classified the case as MA2, defined as a UFO observed traveling in a discontinuous trajectory—vertical drops, maneuvers, or loops. Also, a physical effect was caused by the UFO.20
June 26 and 27, 1959
In Bosinai, Papua New Guinea, on the evening of the 26th and again on the 27th, an Anglican priest, Father William B. Gill, saw an anomalous airborne disc with “humanoids” at the top, one of whom communicated via gestures in response to signals by the locals. Joining Rev. Gill were some 25 New Guinea residents as witnesses, including teachers and medical technicians. Their encounters involved one large vehicle and two or three others that hovered beneath overcast skies. Their reports were among some sixty UFO sightings around the island over a few weeks. The cas
e was investigated by Dr. Hynek, USAF Project Blue Book consultant.21
June 30, 1959
Along Maryland's Patuxent River, at 8:23 p.m., US Navy Commander D. Connolly observed a gold oblate-shaped object, nine times as wide as it was thick. The metallic intruder had a sharp round edge. It was in sight for 20–30 seconds, flying straight and level.22
August 10, 1959
From Goose AFB, Labrador, a USAF Strategic Air Command base, at 1:28 a.m., a Royal Canadian Air Force pilot on the ground observed a large star-like light move across more than 50 degrees of the sky in 25 minutes.23 About 3:00 a.m. a resident of Newfoundland employed at the
Goose motor pool was driving two USAF pilots to a nearby lake for fishing when a “BIG” UFO of indeterminate shape emerged from treetops and moved extremely slowly 100–200 feet overhead, blocking the sky and taking most of a minute to cross the road with a light humming sound. The men turned around and headed back to the base as the driver alerted the control tower. After several minutes the huge intruder finally passed from view low over the forest. The Newfoundlander reported his experience to MUFON many years later.24
September 13, 1959
At 4:00 p.m., at Bunker Hill AFB, Indiana, at least two tower control operators and the pilot of a private airplane witnessed a pear-shaped object, white, cream, and metallic in coloration. A trail was seen underneath. The unknown showed little movement over three hours. An attempted intercept by a T-33 trainer failed.25 Note: No celestial comet appeared in the sky in 1959.26
