Flying Saucers from the Kremlin

by Nick Redfern

  The more I observed these objects the more upset I became, as I am accustomed and familiar with most all objects flying whether I am close to the ground or at higher altitudes. I observed the chain of these objects passing another high snow-covered ridge in between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams and as the first one was passing the south crest of this ridge, the last object was entering the northern crest of the ridge. As I was flying in the direction of this particular ridge, I measured it and found it to be approximately five miles; I could safely assume that the chain of these saucer-like objects were at least five miles long. I could quite accurately determine their pathway due to the fact that there were several high peaks that were a little this side of them as well as higher peaks on the other side of their pathway.

  As the last unit of this formation passed the southern-most high snow-covered crest of Mt. Adams, I looked at my sweep second hand and it showed that they had travelled the distance in one minute and forty-two seconds. Even at the time this timing did not upset me as I felt confident after I would land there would be some explanation of what I saw. A number of newsmen and experts suggested that I might have been seeing reflections or even a mirage. This I know to be absolutely false, as I observed these objects not only through the glass of my airplane but turned my airplane sideways where I could open my window and observe them with a completely unobstructed view. (Without sunglasses.) Even though two minutes seems like a very short time to one on the ground, in the air in two minutes time a pilot can observe a great many things and anything within his sight of vision probably as many as fifty or sixty times.

  I continued my search for the marine plane for another fifteen or twenty minutes and while searching, what I had just observed kept going through my mind. I became more disturbed, so after taking a last look at Tieton Reservoir, I headed for Yakima. I might add that my complete observation of these objects, which I could even follow by their flashes as they passed Mt. Adams, was around two and one-half or three minutes -- although, by the time they reached Mt. Adams they were out of my range of vision as far as determining shape or form. Of course, when the sun reflected from one or two or three of these units, they appeared to be completely round; but, I am making a drawing to the best of my ability, which I am including, as to the shape I observed these objects to be as they passed the snow covered ridges as well as Mt. Rainier. When these objects were flying approximately straight and level, they were just a black thin line and when they flipped was the only time I could get a judgment as to their size.

  These objects were holding an almost constant elevation; they did not seem to be going up or coming down, such as would be the case of rockets or artillery shells. I am convinced in my own mind that they were some type of airplane, even though they didn’t conform with the many aspects of the conventional type of planes that I know.

  Although these objects have been reported by many other observers throughout the United States, there have been six or seven other accounts written by some of these observers that I can truthfully say must have observed the same thing that I did; particularly, the descriptions of the three Western [Cedar City, Utah] Air Lines employees, the gentleman [pilot] from Oklahoma City and the locomotive engineer from Illinois, plus Capt. Smith and Co-Pilot Stevens of United Air Lines.

  Some descriptions could not be very accurate taken from the ground unless these saucer-like disks were at a great height and there is a possibility that all of the people who observed peculiar objects could have seen the same thing I did, but, it would have been very difficult from the ground to observe these for more than four or five seconds, and there is always the possibility of atmospheric moisture and dust near the ground which could distort one’s vision.

  I have in my possession letters from all over the Unites States and people who profess that these objects have been observed over other portions of the world, principally Sweden, Bermuda, and California. I would have given almost anything that day to have had a movie camera with a telephoto lens and from now on I will never be without one - - but, to continue further with my story. When I landed at Yakima airport I described what I had seen to my very good friend, Al Baxter, who listened patiently and was very courteous but in a joking way didn’t believe me. I did not accurately measure the distance between these two mountains until I landed at Pendleton, Oregon, that same day where I told a number of pilot friends of mine what I had observed and they did not scoff or laugh but suggested they might be guided missiles or something new. In fact several former Army pilots informed me that they had been briefed before going into combat overseas that they might see objects of similar shape and design as I described and assured me that I wasn’t dreaming or going crazy.

  I quote Sonny Robinson, a former Army Air Forces pilot who is now operating dusting operations at Pendleton, Oregon, “that what you observed, I am convinced, is some type of jet or rocket propelled ship that is in the process of being tested by our government or even it could possibly be by some foreign government.” Anyhow, the news that I had observed these spread very rapidly and before the night was over I was receiving telephone calls from all parts of the world; and, to date, I have not received one telephone call or one letter of scoffing or disbelief. The only disbelief that I know of was what was printed in the papers.

  I look at this whole ordeal as not something funny as some people have made it out to be. To me it is mighty serious and since I evidently did observe something that at least Mr. John Doe on the street corner or Pete Andrews on the ranch has never heard about, is no reason that it does not exist. Even though I openly invited an investigation by the Army and the FBI as to the authenticity of my story or a mental or a physical examination as to my capabilities, I have received no interest from these two important protective forces of our country; I will go so far as to assume that any report I gave to the United and Associated Press and over the radio on two different occasions which apparently set the nation buzzing, if our Military intelligence was not aware of what I observed, they would be the very first people that I could expect as visitors.

  I have received lots of requests from people who told me to make a lot of wild guesses. I have based what I have written here in this article on positive facts and as far as guessing what it was I observed, it is just as much a mystery to me as it is to the rest of the world.

  In no time at all, the U.S. military and the FBI swung into action. Answers were needed. Not many came. But the Russians did, in a strange and unforeseen way.

  2. “The achievement of national objectives”

  As well as investigating what appeared to be legitimate, mystifying UFO encounters in the summer of 1947, the FBI also studied the possibility that the Russians were recruiting communists within the United States to provoke fear – and were using aspects of the UFO enigma to heighten that fear. Barely a month after the Kenneth Arnold situation erupted and caused worldwide amazement, FBI Special Agent S.W. Reynolds had a face-to-face chat with Brigadier George F. Schulgen, of the Intelligence Branch of the Army Air Corps Intelligence. The reason was, in part, to address that controversial matter of potential Russian manipulation of the UFO issue. In fact, it was this theory – rather than matters relative to aliens or to highly classified U.S. military programs – that was at the forefront of Brigadier Schulgen’s thinking. FBI records show Schulgen informed Reynolds that “the first reported sightings might have been by individuals of Communist sympathies with the view to causing hysteria and fear of a secret weapon [italics mine].” Schulgen’s team suspected that many flying saucer sightings were not what they seemed to be. Rather, they were completely fabricated tales – with no real UFO component attached to them at all, but driven by a Soviet operation to maximize deep concern in the United States. The Russian program had begun.

  On August 14, 1947, the FBI got word – via newspaper articles contained in “the Los Angeles papers” of the day – that, to quote the FBI, “Soviet espionage agents had been instructed to de
termine the facts relative to the flying discs. The article carried a Washington date-line and indicated that Red espionage agents had been ordered to solve the question of flying discs, the Russians being of the opinion that this might be some new form of defense perfected by the American military.” It should also be noted, however, that the FBI was worried that those same Russian agents cited in the L.A. press were actually in the United States for other reasons. Namely, to determine how effectively they - the Soviets - were disrupting the U.S. by conjuring up bogus tales of unidentified flying objects. When questioned by the media on this matter, the FBI stated that it had no information relative to such a story. Uh-huh.

  FBI Special Agent D.M. Ladd, of the Bureau’s Domestic Intelligence Division, said that “in the event any inquiries were made concerning such a story, that the story should be flatly denied in so far as the FBI was concerned.” Nevertheless, behind closed doors elements of the FBI were still speculating on the astounding theory that many UFO reports were complete fabrications; fanciful tales put together at the behest of influential and powerful figures in the Moscow Kremlin - to give it its full name – which is the official residence of the President of the Russian Federation.

  While addressing the same timeframe - the latter part of the 1940s - we see evidence that the U.S. Government chose to follow the lead of the Soviets when it came to the matter of manipulating the UFO controversy. That’s to say, U.S. Intelligence realized that if the Soviets could theoretically use bogus UFO tales as a means to try and keep the American people in a state of concern, then why couldn’t Uncle Sam do exactly the same – but with their operations aimed at the citizens of the likes of Moscow and Saint Petersburg? Evidence that the U.S. intelligence community entered into the very same realm of mind-games that the Russians initiated, can be found in the pages of a Project Grudge “Technical Report” on UFOs; Grudge being one of the early UFO projects of the U.S. military. The report was prepared by the U.S. Air Force in August 1949. The writer of the lengthy Project Grudge document states in part the following: “Upon eliminating several additional incidents due to vagueness and duplication, there remain 228 incidents, which are considered in this report. Thirty of these could not be explained, because there was found to be insufficient evidence on which to base a conclusion.”

  It’s the following words, however, that really stand out. The military made a recommendation that “[the] Psychological Warfare Division and other governmental agencies interested in psychological warfare be informed of the results of this study [italics mine].” Quite possibly, it was this document - more than any other of that particular era - that led the U.S. Government to initiate a highly secret program to manipulate the flying saucer phenomenon and mess with the minds of Soviet Premier, Joseph Stalin, and his goons. Take a look at how the Pentagon defines psychological warfare. It is, in the military’s own words, “The planned use of propaganda and other psychological actions having the primary purpose of influencing the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of hostile foreign groups in such a way as to support the achievement of national objectives [italics mine].”

  This demonstrates that the earliest U.S. military-controlled UFO research programs weren’t just about investigating sightings of strange things in the sky. The operations were also focused on creating utterly bogus flying saucer-themed stories; amazing yarns born out of psychological warfare operations and ingenious propaganda. The Russians were doing it to our people, and we were doing likewise to theirs. What a strange and twisted game it all became.

  3. “Russian writing” and Roswell

  If the words of a man named Alfred O’Donnell are to be trusted (and, admittedly, it’s a very big if), then the Russians were behind the biggest and most well-known UFO case of all: Roswell. We’ll come back to O’Donnell and his controversy-filled claims shortly. There’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever that something very strange occurred on the huge, sprawling Foster Ranch in Lincoln County, New Mexico in the first week of July 1947. On the day in question – the precise date of which is still not entirely clear – ranch foreman William Ware “Mack” Brazel came across a huge field of silvery debris on that very same ranch. It stretched across an area of around six hundred feet. Brazel’s sheep made it very clear to him that they had no intention of trying to make their way through the mass of foil-like material. Clearly, something had plummeted from the skies on the night before. But what was it?

  With all the talk of flying saucers that had been going on for the past two weeks or so, it was practically inevitable that Brazel and his neighbors would ponder on the amazing possibility that just such a craft had come down. Right in their very neighborhood. Brazel contacted the local police, who then put in a call to the relatively nearby Roswell Army Air Field. It wasn’t long before the military descended on the ranch, setting up road-blocks, and warning people to keep away from the ranch. There were chilling rumors of death-threats made to those who dared to speak out about what they had seen, of the discovery of small, decomposing humanoid bodies strewn about a rugged second site, and of a semi-intact vehicle discovered at a nearby third site.

  Incredibly, the base’s public information officer, Walter Haut, put out a press release stating that a “flying disc” had been recovered. He had the full permission of the higher-ups to circulate that very same press release. Other media outlets referred to a “flying saucer.” Did a UFO slam into the ground on the huge ranch? Was a huge cover-up put into place to hide the incredible truth? That very much depends on who you care to ask. One day after the Haut release caused so much amazement, personnel at the Roswell Army Air Field claimed that the whole thing was nothing but a big mistake; a most embarrassing one, some might say. What had really come down, the military was now insisting, was a weather-balloon. And that was all. There wasn’t even a word about bodies. It would be decades before the military would tackle the thorny body controversy. This was far from being the end of the story, though. The mystery was resurrected in the mid-1970s by researchers Bill Moore and Stanton Friedman. In 1980, Moore’s book, The Roswell Incident – co-written with Charles Berlitz - was published and added more to the story. Tom Carey, Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt added further to the case, writing their own books on the still-mystifying event. By the 1990s, just about everyone had heard of Roswell.

  In early 1993, the then-Congressman for New Mexico, Steven Schiff, began to take an interest in the Roswell controversy. His attempts to get to the heart of the mystery, which involved approaching both the U.S. Air Force and the National Archives for answers, failed. Completely. Time and again he was stonewalled. Schiff quickly realized he was being given a definitive runaround. He was far from happy and was not the kind of person to cross swords with. After initially asking for answers, Schiff soon demanded them. Schiff approached the Government Accountability Office (at the time, it was called the General Accounting Office), and requested that they look into the matter. The GAO was up for the challenge. Was the truth of what happened all those years earlier on the Foster Ranch about to surface?

  When the Pentagon learned of Schiff’s attempts to get the GAO to uncover the facts surrounding Roswell, U.S. Air Force staff hastily began working on their own investigations into the case. They also came quickly to an answer. As the GAO noted in 1994: “The Air Force report concluded that there was no dispute that something happened near Roswell in July 1947 and that all available official material indicated the most likely source of the wreckage recovered was one of the project MOGUL balloon trains. At the time of the Roswell crash, project MOGUL was a highly classified U.S. effort to determine the state of Soviet nuclear weapons research using balloons that carried radar reflectors.”

  It’s very important, however, to note that all of this was simply the Air Force’s opinion. In fact, not even a single, solitary, military document has ever surfaced showing that a Mogul balloon was recovered at the crash site. The Air Force’s opinion was exactly that: an opinion. It should be
noted, too, that no documented evidence has ever been found supporting the weather-balloon and flying saucer theories, either. And, what of the claims of strange bodies having been found on the ranch? Back in 1994, the Air Force dismissed all the claims that bodies of any kind - animals, aliens or people – were found. The Air Force’s reasoning was to the point: Mogul balloons didn’t carry crews, so, how could any bodies be found? Three years later, in 1997 – which was Roswell’s 50th anniversary – the Air Force reversed its stance and said that bodies, of a sort, were found, after all. But, they were crash-test dummies used in high-altitude, parachute-based programs. When the mainstream press quickly discovered that the “dummy program” didn’t actually begin until the early 1950s, and were not up and running in 1947, the Air Force seethed and squirmed. No wonder that the Roswell case continues to provoke such interest. The incident hit the media big-time yet again; this time it was in 2011. It was as a result of the research and probing of an investigative journalist named Annie Jacobsen.

  Over the years, Annie Jacobsen has written a number of books on the matter of government secrecy. They include Surprise, Kill, Vanish; The Pentagon’s Brain; Phenomena; Operation Paperclip; and Area 51. It’s the latter title that we need to focus our attentions on. Jacobsen’s Area 51 is a solid, insightful and illuminating study of the history and secret world of Nevada’s infamous, impenetrable base. When Area 51 was published, what really caught the attention of both the UFO research community and the nation’s media was the testimony that Jacobsen had received on Roswell. It all came from a solitary whistleblower. In the pages of her book, Jacobsen’s source for the Roswell story is not identified (although he does appear, by his real name, in other sections of the book that specifically don’t deal with Roswell). We know, though, thanks to the digging of UFO researcher Tony Bragalia that the man in question was one Alfred O’Donnell, who died on April 9, 2015, then in his nineties. He was described as “one of the elite engineers from EG&G.” And why might EG&G be? As Bragalia noted: