by Nick Redfern
As I listened, Pflock told me that his idea was, essentially, to make the book a biography on Newton, but with the Aztec affair being the main thrust of it all. I thought it was a very good idea. Pflock suggested that he prepare a synopsis for his literary agent, Cherry Weiner (this was around a year before I first met my longstanding agent, Lisa Hagan), which is exactly what he did. The book was going to be called Silas the Magnificent: A True Tale of Greed, Credulity, and (Maybe) Government Chicanery and Cover-up in 1950s America. Sadly, the idea collapsed when Pflock fell seriously ill with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. He unfortunately died from the effects of ALS on June 5, 2006, at the age of just sixty-three. Pflock is gone, but the synopsis still exists, as do several chapters, including one on the matter of the Psychological Strategy Board aspect of all this. It would have made a good book. And, very possibly, it just might have revealed more of the fabricated story of how – and with the help of Silas Newton - American intelligence led the Russians on a wild goose chase and had them believing that U.S. scientists were secretly studying a recovered UFO and its advanced technologies and weapons-systems. If such a plot successfully terrified Soviet intelligence, for the U.S. government it was a job well done.
There’s one more thing that needs to be highlighted on this controversy-saturated saga of a crashed UFO and Silas Newton. On June 24, 1964, Frank Scully, whose 1950 book, Behind the Flying Saucers, placed the alleged incident firmly under the spotlight, passed away. As the New York Times noted in its obituary on Scully, one day later: “Mr. Scully was labeled a Communist by Congressman Martin Dies, head of the House Un-American Activities Committee. After a stormy two-hour session with the Committee, Mr. Scully was cleared of the charge.”
Yes, Scully was exonerated. It is a fact, though, that sometimes – to use a U.K. term – “mud sticks.” For some, including those in the intelligence community, Scully was still seen as a closet communist, regardless of the fact that he had been completely absolved of any kind of guilt. Maybe, those spooks and spies who paid Silas Newton a visit in 1950 were concerned by the possibility that Scully was in cahoots with the Russians. This is, admittedly, speculation and nothing more. But, yet again, we see flying saucer enthusiasts, communism, and secret government activity rolled into one.
Nineteen-forty-eight was not just notable, in UFO terms, for the twisted tale of the supposed Aztec UFO crash. It was also the year in which a very intriguing novel was published. Its title was The Flying Saucer and its author was Bernard Newman. In some respects, the story that Newman weaved in 1948 closely mirrored the claims of Alfred O’Donnell in 2011, as they related to the Roswell controversy of July 1947. In the 250-pages of The Flying Saucer, we are treated to a tale of cover-ups, conspiracies, and fabricated tales of Martians and UFOs. The story revolves around a group of scientists who decide that the people of Earth need to be united under one banner. A one-world society. But how could such a thing be achieved? By creating a faked alien threat, that’s how. (See what I mean about the O’Donnell parallels and his claims of a bogus UFO threat that led to the incident at Roswell, New Mexico just one year before Newman’s novel was published?)
In The Flying Saucer, those aforementioned scientists decide to fake a trio of UFO crashes, as a means to convince the world that aliens have reached the Earth, and that those same scientists have the priceless evidence in their hands. One of those three incidents occurs in the heart of New Mexico, no less. Another UFO crashes in the Soviet Union, and a third slams into the ground in the U.K. Of course, the crashes are actually nothing of the sort. Rather, they are ingeniously staged events designed to make the world believe that the Martians are among us. Scientists create the futuristic aircraft, making them appear to have unearthly origins. The team even stages a bogus alien autopsy, as a means to even further convince people that we are not alone in the universe. The plan is to unite the human race under one friendly benevolent government. I’ll let you learn for yourselves how the story develops and reaches its climax. It’s not just the story that is intriguing – given that we now know such machinations were already afoot in the real world – but the author, Bernard Newman, himself, too.
Philip Taylor, a researcher who has dug deeply into the life and career of Bernard Newman, says: “In his unrevealing autobiography Speaking From Memory [Newman] describes how from 1919 onwards he was apparently employed in an undemanding Civil Service job in the Ministry of Works. Somehow he seemed able to take extremely long and, for those days, exceedingly adventurous holidays, including lengthy stays in Eastern Europe and Russia. His destinations invariably seemed to include areas of particular political interest: for example several extended holidays to Germany in the 1930’s.”
Taylor also reveals that in 1938 Newman put together a paper for British Intelligence on the then-current state of German rocketry at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. It was overseen by the German Army Weapons Office. It so happens that none other than the Horten Brothers - who, as we have seen, played a huge role in Alfred O’Donnel’s claims concerning Roswell – witnessed a number of test-flights of the Messerschmitt ME 163 Komet aircraft at the Peenemünde Army Research Center. Yet another curious thread, then, is weaved into the story. But, things don’t end there.
In 1945 the New York Times ran an article on Newman who, by that time, was a well-respected, prestigious author on matters relative to the world of espionage. Indeed, his books that were published before the New York Times article appeared included The Secrets of German Espionage; Ride to Russia; Woman Spy; and Spy Catchers. As for that same article, it addresses, in part, claims that Newman worked as a “double-agent” during the First World War, infiltrating the German military and securing some of the Germans’ most prized secrets. This is not impossible, since Newman was fluent in German. He was, however, only eighteen at the time, which admittedly stretches credulity to a degree. On this matter, in February 1968, when Newman died, the U.K.’s Times newspaper suggested that this part of Newman’s life should be relegated to “the realm of fiction.”
We may never know for sure all that Bernard Newman learned during his life as a prestigious writer on the world of spying, espionage and counterintelligence. But, we do know that in 1948, only one year after the events outside of Roswell, New Mexico occurred, Newman wrote a novel - The Flying Saucer – which contained just about all of the key ingredients that comprise the primary themes of the book you are now reading: faked UFO crashes, a bogus alien invasion, and the manipulation of the mindset of the populace. One has to wonder if Newman - who cultivated numerous colleagues and friends in the intelligence community - heard and learned something akin to Alfred O’Donnell’s claims and decided to turn startling fact into captivating fiction.
Now, let’s jump four years forward.
For decades, tales have circulated suggesting that in 1952 a flying saucer crashed on the island of Spitsbergen, Norway. And, that under circumstances not dissimilar to those that supposedly occurred at Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948, the unearthly craft was supposedly recovered, along with its deceased alien crew. It transpires that a reference to this case can be found in a UFO-themed document that has surfaced under the terms of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act from the National Security Agency. It’s a reference that adds yet further weight to the idea that government operatives have carefully and clandestinely used the UFO subject for manipulative, mind-warping purposes.
The NSA’s copy of this previously-classified document is very slightly different to copies of the same document that have been declassified by the U.S. Air Force, the Department of State, and the U.S. Army. Someone in the NSA – unfortunately, we don’t know who – identified the Spitsbergen story in the document as being a “plant.” As for who secretly seeded the story, and why, well, that’s another matter entirely. Maybe, U.S. intelligent agents planted the story to try and further have the Russians believe that the U.S. government was back-engineering extraterrestrial spacecraf
t when it really wasn’t. On the other hand, the “planters” may have been the Soviets themselves, trying to achieve something almost identical, but aimed squarely at the heart of the White House and the Pentagon.
Jack Brewer, who runs The UFO Trail blog, says of all this amazing chicanery concerning the Spitsbergen saucer saga of 1952: “It should be a forgone conclusion at this point that the UFO topic was exploited by the global intelligence community for a variety of purposes from one operation and era to the next. The consequences might indeed be significant and far-reaching.”
From 1947 to the early years of the 1950s, we have seen prime evidence of how the East and the West used the UFO phenomenon – the “mythos” might be a more appropriate word to use – as a means to put the wind up the opposition. As will become clear in the following chapter, not only did these programs continue; they also resulted in the creation of some seriously weird, and highly influential, belief-systems concerning extraterrestrials. In some quarters, they still continue to be championed to this very day.
5. “The Exploitation of superstitions”
Briefly moving matters away from UFOs – but still in connection to issues of both a supernatural and a paranormal type – there is another example of how both the Russians and the United States, in the early 1950s, came to realize how the world of the unknown could be used for military gain and psychological manipulation. The story is found in the pages of a fascinating document written on April 14, 1950. The author was Jean M. Hungerford, of the RAND Corporation. Her report was prepared for the U.S. Air Force. For those not acquainted with the work of RAND, there is the following from the corporation itself:
“In May 14, 1948, Project RAND—an organization formed immediately after World War II to connect military planning with research and development decisions—separated from the Douglas Aircraft Company of Santa Monica, California, and became an independent, nonprofit organization. Adopting its name from a contraction of the term research and development, the newly formed entity was dedicated to furthering and promoting scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the public welfare and security of the United States.
“Almost at once, RAND developed a unique style. It blended scrupulous nonpartisanship with rigorous fact-based analysis to tackle society’s most pressing problems. Over time, RAND assembled a unique corps of researchers, notable not only for their individual skills but also for their commitment to interdisciplinary cooperation. By the 1960s, RAND was bringing its trademark mode of empirical, nonpartisan, independent analysis to the study of many urgent domestic social and economic problems. In later years, RAND extended its focus beyond the United States with the goal of making individuals, communities, and nations safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous.”
The title of Jean M. Hungerford’s 1950 document for RAND was: The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare. Running to thirty-seven pages, Hungerford’s paper reveals – in brilliant fashion – just how easy it really was to use paranormal phenomena to affect the enemy to an extraordinary degree. Hungerford wrote: “Recently a series of religious ‘miracles’ has been reported from Czechoslovakian villages. In one instance the cross on the altar of a parish church was reported to have bowed right and left and finally, symbolically, to the West; the ‘miracle’ so impressed the Czechs that pilgrims began to converge on the village from miles around until Communist officials closed the church and turned the pilgrims away from approaching roads.”
As Hungerford also revealed, rumors were flying around those same areas that the Virgin Mary had been seen confronting an unknown communist - and, in the process, whacking him to the ground! From Western Bohemia, another story surfaced: that the Virgin Mary had been seen proudly flying the flag of the United States, while American soldiers and tanks dutifully followed her. There’s no doubt at all that this was a well-crafted piece of U.S.-created mind-manipulation, designed to try and convince those of a communist nature that the Virgin Mary was on the side of the Land of the Free. That was not the end of the matter, though.
Jean M. Hungerford added in her RAND document that U.S. intelligence took a very careful note of what the Russians’ and the Czechs’ responses were to these incredible claims. The American military quietly – and very carefully - listened in on radio-based broadcasts and quickly got all the data they needed to know. That the Russians and the Czechs were mightily angry with those claims of the Virgin Mary being pro-American. Hungerford added: “According to the Foreign Broadcast Information Services’ daily reports of Soviet and Eastern European radio broadcasts, there were nine broadcasts concerning the ‘miracles’ between February 28 and March 19, seven from Czech transmitters and two from Moscow (including a review of a New Times article on the subject).”
The CIA, Hungerford revealed, translated a Prague-based on-air broadcast about the controversy-filled situation. Obviously, the CIA was as keen as the U.S. Air Force to see just how successfully the program was working. In part, the translation read as follows: “It is obvious at first sight that this apparition bears the mark made in the United States. These despicable machinations only help to unmask the high clergy as executors of the plans of the imperialist warmongers communicated to them by the Vatican through its agents.”
In this case there was not a UFO in sight. What there was, however, was an impressively- created tale of a supernatural entity – the Virgin Mary – that was designed to disrupt the Russians. Which it did. To ever-growing degrees, agencies were coming to see just how far they could go when it came to blending intelligence operations, propaganda and espionage with the world of the paranormal. Now, let’s take a look at another portion of Hungerford’s report which most assuredly does have a connection to UFOs – and also to how the phenomenon could be used for highly alternative reasons.
In one part of The Exploitation of Superstitions for Purposes of Psychological Warfare, Jean M. Hungerford discusses a book that was written in the previous year, 1949. The title of that book was Magic: Top Secret. Its author was a man, magician and military figure named Jasper Maskelyne. The Magic Tricks website says this of Maskelyne: “Jasper Maskelyne, grandson of John Nevil Maskelyne, was an invaluable resource to his native Britain during World War II. Maskelyne became an integral part of a special unit focused on the action along the Suez Canal. With his great knowledge of illusion, Maskelyne was able to devise ingenious- and very large scale- illusion systems that virtually made tanks invisible from the air, hid whole buildings full of ammunition and supplies, and even made an entire city vanish and reappear several miles away.”
Hungerford, in her RAND paper for the U.S. Air Force, made an eye-catching quote from Maskelyne’s book. That same quote reads as follows: “Our men…were able to use illusions of an amusing nature in the Italian mountains, especially when operating in small groups as advance patrols scouting out the way for our general moves forward. In one area, in particular, they used a device which was little more than a gigantic scarecrow, about twelve feet high, and able to stagger forward under its own power and emit frightful flashes and bangs. This thing scared several Italian Sicilian villages appearing in the dawn thumping its deafening way down their streets with great electric blue sparks jumping from it; and the inhabitants, who were mostly illiterate peasants, simply took to their heels for the next village, swearing that the Devil was marching ahead of the invading English.
“Like all tales spread among uneducated folk (and helped, no doubt, by our agents), this story assumed almost unimaginable proportions. Villages on the route of our advance began to refuse sullenly to help the retreating Germans, and to take sabotage against them; and then, instead of waiting for our troops to arrive with food and congratulations of their help, the poor people fled, thus congesting the roads along which German motorized transport was struggling to retire. The German tankmen sometimes cut through the refugees and this inflamed feeling still more, and what began almost as a joke was
soon a sharp weapon in our hands which punished the Germans severely, if indirectly, for several critical weeks.”
It’s important to note that the description of Jasper Maskelyne’s giant, sparking scarecrow sounds astonishingly like a famous alien monster that surfaced in the woods of West Virginia on the night of September 12, 1952. The glowing-eyed thing has become known in Ufology as the “Flatwoods Monster,” after the small town where the creature was briefly seen by a terrified band of locals. Both Maskelyne’s contraption and the creature of Flatwoods were around twelve-feet in height. Frank Feschino is the acknowledged expert on the Flatwoods Monster. The cover-art on his 2004 book – The Braxton County Monster: The Cover-Up of the Flatwoods Monster Revealed – shows a huge robot-like thing looming over a terrified group in a menacing fashion. Beams of light shoot out of its eyes. Maskelyne’s machine was said to have emitted “frightful flashes and bangs” and had “great electric blue sparks jumping from it.” Both “creatures” were seen in the vicinities of small towns, which would have made it easy for the military – in Italy during the Second World War and at Flatwoods in 1952 - to keep a stealthy watch on the situations and judge just how successfully, or not, the deceptive operations were working. The parallels between both accounts are as clear as they are blatantly obvious.
