Flying Saucers from the Kremlin

by Nick Redfern

  At this time, Adamski showed [source] and [deleted] a number of photographs which he has taken of what he purports to be flying saucers. [Source] commented that one of these photographs was published in the “San Diego Union” under the caption of “What is it?” Adamski stated he had first submitted this particular photograph to the Navy but when it appeared they were not interested, he, Adamski, released it for publication in the ‘San Diego Union.’

  According to [source] Adamski stated that the Federal Communications Commission, under the direction of the “Military Government” of the United States, has established communication with the people from other worlds, and has learned that they are so much more advanced than the inhabitants of this earth that they have deciphered the languages used here. Adamski stated that in this interplanetary communication, the Federal Communications Commission asked the inhabitants of the other planet concerning the type of government they had there and the reply indicated that it was very different from the democracy of the United States. Adamski stated that his answer was kept secret by the United States Government, but he added, ‘If you ask me they probably have a Communist form of government and our American government wouldn’t release that kind of thing, naturally. That is a thing of the future – more advanced [Authors note: Italics mine].

  This, of course, was all highly controversial for the FBI of the early 1950s; highly worrying too. It’s very easy to understand why the FBI would have taken such a deep interest in Adamski’s opinions on extraterrestrials and communism. Of greater concern, however, was the fact that Adamski’s followers - which reached six figures in number after his 1953 book, Flying Saucers Have Landed was published - were hanging on his every word. That included those words that were relative to the way of the life of the Russians. The FBI file continues:

  Adamski, during this conversation, made the prediction that Russia will dominate the world and we will then have an era of peace for 1,000 years [italics mine]. He stated that Russia already has the atom bomb and the hydrogen bomb and that the great earthquake, which was reported behind the Iron Curtain recently, was actually a hydrogen bomb explosion being tried out by the Russians. Adamski states this “earthquake” broke seismograph machines and he added that no normal earthquake can do that.

  Adamski stated that within the next twelve months, San Diego will be bombed. Adamski stated that it does not make any difference if the United States has more atom bombs than Russia inasmuch as Russia needs only ten atom bombs to cripple the United States by placing these simultaneously on such spots as Chicago and other vital centers of this country [italics mine]. Adamski further stated the United States today is in the same state of deterioration as was the Roman Empire prior to its collapse and it will fall just as the Roman Empire did. He stated the Government in this country is a corrupt form of government and capitalists are enslaving the labor.

  [Source] advised that when Adamski left the group for a brief period, one of the women working in the café came over and entered into the conversation. She stated that some of our servicemen who stopped there to have drinks during World War II and subsequent thereto, told “Professor” Adamski of the atrocities which they were forced to commit, murdering women and children on orders of their superior officers. [Deleted] exhibited a great deal of animosity against the United States, stating the United States committed more atrocities during World War II than did the Japanese but since the Japanese were the ones who lost the war, they were the ones who were tried as war criminals.

  This woman added that a friend of hers who recently returned from Russia stated he was very pleased with everything he found there. He stated to her that the people in Russia received seven tickets per month for the opera and cinema. These tickets are free, being issued by the government. The woman added “The people there (in Russia) don’t have to be worrying about where their next meal is coming from. Everything is fine in Russia and in the United States we have to fight for everything we get [italics mine].”

  And if that was not enough, there’s this:

  [Source] advised that Adamski returned to continue his conversation stating that the United States will soon be in the same condition that Europe was in during the last war. He added that, “It is a good idea to be quiet now. Right now if you talk in favor of Communism you will be spotted as a Communist and if you talk against Communism you will be spotted by the Communist, so it’s best to just shut up.” Adamski stated to [source] that, “The United States hasn’t a chance to win the war. Russia will take over the United States [italics mine].”

  This was all deeply vexing to the FBI, to the extent that Adamski was from thereon closely, and secretly, watched for the best part of a decade. And, it was very much a learning process for the FBI, who discovered that communism and the Contactee issue were not limited to just Adamski. To the consternation of the FBI, they quickly discovered that numerous other Contactees were rumored to have had Red leanings, and/or connections, as will soon become apparent. I asked Colin Bennett for his thoughts on the matter of Adamski, the FBI, and the Russian/communist issue. He said:

  “The FBI regarded Adamski as little more than a pop-eyed hippy nutcase – at first. He was, however, beginning to get a certain following, and he was watched as -- much later -- John Lennon, Timothy Leary, Andrija Puharich, and Wilhelm Reich were watched. We can assume all possible cult followers, right up to the present day are taken note of in a similar manner. To begin with, the flying saucer bit probably did not interest the FBI at all, even if they knew, cared, or understood anything about such things. Until, now we know, his book-sales skyrocketed and then someone in the FBI went back to the 1950 files on him and saw how he mixed saucers, Nazism and communism. Then, they did take notice. He did not make a big thing of such opinions, publicly, during the [Second World] War, but he certainly voiced them after the War, at a time when hundreds of thousands of American dead were fresh in the memory, and that could not have gone down well. He was ripe for investigation.

  “Another level of Intelligence interest,” opined Bennett, “might have been aroused concerning possible observation of unusual airborne devices which might well have been advanced secret surveillance craft of some kind, possibly launched from Russian submarines off the West Coast. There was also another good reason for suspicion. In the 1950s, myriad tests were being carried out on jets, rockets and missiles in the Mojave Desert where Orthon appeared originally. Many of these tests were carried out by imported Nazis rocket-scientists and technological experts, secretly smuggled into the U.S. by means of Operation Paperclip. Intelligence surveillance in this area was therefore high, for by 1953, the race for the moon had just commenced. Reports of exotic airborne vehicles may well have leaked from the Mojave area and created all kinds of ‘alien craft’ rumors.”

  Bennett continued with the following:

  “Yet another reason for surveillance of Adamski was that security agencies of any and every kind operate on the principle that cults can turn political very quickly, and often in a very nasty way. As we know, countless assassins and terrorists arise from cults of many kinds. Official interest, to my mind, was therefore a passing criminal interest, not an esoteric one; although Adamski in his semi-paranoid act as a rather comical anarchist tried to make it so, implying all kinds of motivations to even minimal gumshoe levels of official inquiry. It must be remembered that before he became a famous author with a best-selling book, he was the kind of guy who sounded off about anything and everything. His murky ‘occult’ involvements with the esoteric underground on the wild West Coast between the time of his youth in World War One and the 1950s marked him out as a very odd character indeed.

  “I asked myself: why should we – and the FBI - be so alarmed by a man who says he met a supposed extraterrestrial being who stepped out of a so-called flying saucer? Why should such a man be regarded as a threat and be ridiculed for his trouble?”

  Bennett answered his own questions:

&
nbsp; “It appears that certain kinds of fantastic claims, no matter how apparently ridiculous and plain stupid, somehow get to the core of our belief system – and they can change conventional belief-systems, which the FBI knew and feared most of all. Claims push aside momentarily all plain practical rationalizations and thoroughly disturb our iron-bound consciousness. Most structured, factual arguments just do not have this kind of power.”

  Bennett signed off with these words:

  “Adamski, whether he really realized it or not, had immense power. Potentially. The FBI, while not believing his tales and adventures of Orthon, recognized that potential power; a power to manipulate the masses in a way that suggested Communism was not a thing to fear [italics mine]. It appears that all things out of the ordinary are potential mental dynamite – and, for [J. Edgar] Hoover, that included Adamski’s claims of Red spacemen dabbling in our affairs, and Russian superiority.”

  8. “Mass hysteria and greater vulnerability”

  Moving on from matters relative to George Adamski, aliens and communism, it’s now time to take a look at the strange saga of flying saucers, the CIA, the Soviets, and the Walt Disney Corporation. Yes, you did read the correct. And, no, it’s not April Fools’ Day. Ward Kimball was a significant figure in the Walt Disney Corporation. His biggest claim to fame? Kimball created none other than Mickey Mouse, in the form he appears today. Kimball came on-board with Disney in the mid-1930s and worked on a number of timeless, acclaimed movies, including Peter Pan, Pinocchio, and Snow White, to list just a few. That’s not all: for a while Kimball had a secret life; it was one of almost cloak-and-dagger proportions. Back in the 1950s, he and a number of his colleagues at Disney worked on a CIA-driven operation, the goal of which was to try and diffuse the Russians’ attempts to use the UFO phenomenon to create mayhem in the United States. To understand how and why this very weird affair came to fruition we have to go back to the summer of 1952.

  On the weekend of July 19-20, 1952, Washington, D.C. was swamped with squadrons of what can only be termed as UFOs: they were seen by both military and civilian pilots, reported by police officers, and tracked by astounded radar operatives at several airports in the D.C. area. Strange and fast moving lights dominated the airspace of the U.S. capital. Mystifying aerial acrobatics filled the night sky. It wasn’t exactly The Day the Earth Stood Still come to reality, but it was pretty damn close all the same. Such was the sheer scale of the “invasion,” the U.S. Air Force took swift and decisive action to try and resolve the matter. They had barely begun to try and figure out what had happened – and who or what had intruded on that dark night – when the UFOs were back, exactly a week later. The USAF’s Major General John A. Samford wrote in a classified document the following: “We are interested in these reports in that we must always be on the alert for any threat or indication of a threat to the United States. We cannot ignore these reports but the mild hysteria subsequent to publicity given this subject caused an influx of reports which since the 19th of July has almost saturated our ‘Emergency’ procedures [italics mine].” Yet again, we see concerns regarding “hysteria” when it comes to UFOs in the early years of the Cold War. And also worries about endless UFO reports swamping emergency communications.

  A two-page Air Force summary of what had gone down on the second weekend provides significant insight into the disturbing intrusion:

  This incident involved unidentified targets observed on the radar-scopes at the Air Route Traffic Control Center and the tower, both at Washington National Airport, and the Approach Control Radar at Andrews Air Force Base. Mr. Bill Schreve, flying a/c NC-12 reported at 22:46 EDT that he had visually spotted 5 objects giving off a light glow ranging from orange to white; his altitude at time was 2,200’. Some commercial pilots reported visuals ranging from ‘cigarette glow’ to a “light.”

  ARTC crew commented that, as compared with returns picked up in early hours of 20 July 52, these returns appeared to be more haphazard in their actions, i.e. they did not follow a/c around nor did they cross scope consistently on same general heading. Some commented that the returns appeared to be from objects “capable of dropping out of the pattern at will.” Also that returns had “creeping appearance.” One member of crew commented that one object to which F-94 was vectored just “disappeared from Scope” shortly after the F-94 started pursuing. All crew members emphatic that most returns have been picked up from time to time over the past few months but never before had they appeared in such quantities over such a prolonged period and with such definition as was experienced on the nights of 19/20 and 26/27 July 1952.

  Further data concerning the invasions can be found in a recorded conversation of July 26, between staff at Washington National Airport and radar operators at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland:

  Washington: Andrews Tower, do you read? Did you have an airplane in sight west-northwest or east of your airport eastbound?

  Andrews: No, but we just got a call from the Center. We’re looking for it.

  Washington: We’ve got a big target showing up on our scope. He’s just coming in on the west edge of your airport – the northwest edge of it eastbound. He’ll be passing right through the northern portion of your field on an east heading. He’s about a quarter of a mile from the northwest runway – right over the edge of your runway now.

  Andrews: This is Andrews. Our radar tracking says he’s got a big fat target out here northwest of Andrews. He says he’s got two more south of the field.

  Washington: Yes, well the Center has about four or five around the Andrews Range Station. The Center is working a National Airlines – the Center is working him and vectoring him around his target. He went around Andrews. He saw one of them – looks like a meteor…went by him…or something. He said he’s got one about three miles off his right wing right now. There are so many targets around here it is hard to tell as they are not moving very fast.

  It wasn’t just the Air Force who was getting antsy and worried by the invasions. The FBI was determined to get the facts, too. It was pretty much inevitable that word would trickle down to the office of J. Edgar Hoover. As we have seen, the FBI played a significant role in the flying saucer saga in 1947, and just a few years later with regard to George Adamski and his pro-Russia words. Hoover wasted no time in ordering the FBI’s USAF liaison representative – N.W. Philcox – to secure all of the salient facts on the D.C. penetrations. On July 29, Philcox contacted the office of the Director of Air Intelligence - who at the time was Major General John A. Samford - to arrange a face-to-face discussion with Commander Randall Boyd, who was attached to the Current Intelligence Branch, Estimates Division, Air Intelligence, on the matter of “the present status of Air Intelligence research into the numerous reports regarding flying saucers and flying discs.”

  Given the fact that the media and the public quickly learned of the incredible scale of the two “weekend waves,” the Air Force put out a statement to the effect that it was nothing to be concerned about. Of course, that was just a diversionary tactic on the part of the military; an attempt to avoid creating public concern on a large scale. Behind the scenes, however, the situation was very different. At the very same time that the press were being encouraged to move along and forget those strange, few nights of craziness, the Air Force was privately displaying a high degree of unease. In a classified meeting Philcox was told that, “at the present time the Air Force has failed to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion in its research regarding numerous reports of flying saucers and flying discs sighted throughout the United States.” He was also advised that staff at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio were busy “coordinating, correlating and making research into all reports regarding flying saucers and flying discs.”

  It was also explained to Philcox that there were three definable categories of flying saucer reports. The first was that which revolved around encounters that “are reported by citizens who claim they have seen flying sa
ucers from the ground. These sightings vary in description, color and speeds. Very little credence is given to these sightings inasmuch as in most instances they are believed to be imaginative or some explainable object which actually crossed through the sky.”

  As for category two, the following statement was made to Philcox: “Sightings reported by commercial or military pilots. These sightings are considered more credible by the Air Force inasmuch as commercial or military pilots are experienced in the air and are not expected to see objects which are entirely imaginative. In each of these instances, the individual who reports the sightings is thoroughly interviewed by a representative of Air Intelligence so that a complete description of the object can be obtained.”

  Then, there was the third group. Commander Boyd admitted to Philcox that the Air Force had highly credible reports on file; ones which involved sightings of UFOs that were seen by pilots and tracked by radar operators – and at the same time and in the same location. In his write-up to J. Edgar Hoover, Philcox wrote: “Commander Boyd advised that this latter classification constitutes two or three per cent of the total number of sightings, but that they are the most credible reports received and are difficult to explain. In these instances, there is no doubt that these individuals reporting the sightings actually did see something in the sky. Sightings have also recently been reported as far distant as Acapulco, Mexico, Korea and French Morocco…the sightings reported in the last classification have never been satisfactorily explained.”