by Nick Redfern
Angelucci – admittedly scared out of his wits by the fact that the FBI was onto him, even though he hadn’t really done anything wrong – blurted out just about all that he could. The group had first approached him, in an overly friendly fashion, at a lecture in New York, he told the special-agents. No names were ever given to him, but all four were well-dressed, all seemed to be around the forty-mark, and all had overseas accents. No money ever crossed hands. They invited Angelucci to dinner, which he accepted, admittedly intrigued by the prospect of developing new contacts. It was over dinner that the matter of communism surfaced its head.
Angelucci, knowing it was useless to try and deceive the FBI, admitted to the G-Men that he listened to what the group had to say about those mysterious characters with a supposed love of communism, but made it very clear that he had no time for the Russians and their way of life. The tone then became noticeably disturbing, with a suggestion from the mysterious men that things just might become extremely difficult for Angelucci if he didn’t go along with their plans. Angelucci told Moseley that he never really knew what that meant, only that it “upset me” and he quickly left. Angelucci further told the FBI that the same group attended a lecture he gave – also on the East Coast – a week or so later. Once again, the conversation began cordially, but certainly did not remain that way: it was filled with threats and worrying innuendo. The four, seemingly by now extremely frustrated by Angelucci’s stubborn stance on politics, abruptly vanished into the night leaving him decidedly shaken and stirred.
Incredibly, and as time went on, Angelucci wondered if the mysterious group were aliens themselves, human-like beings visiting the Earth from a world faraway and with a communist-like government. Had Angelucci chose to step back for a moment, taken a deep breath, and cleared his head, he just might have come to the conclusion that his strange visitors were really from right here on Earth. But not from the United States. You know from where.
The third and final meeting with these strange figures occurred in 1956, at a lecture given by Angelucci in Los Angeles. He told the story of his 1952 encounters, received significant applause, and signed a few books for eager fans. And there was that same group, too: looming and lurking, speaking to many of the attendees, and keeping distinctly eagle-eyes on Angelucci. As the night came to an end, once again they made an attempt to bring Angelucci into their fold. But, to his credit, he was having none of it. Interestingly, one of the men, who Angelucci described to Moseley as “the boss,” told Angelucci that should he, Angelucci, change his mind, he could contact them by calling the manager of Cincinnati, Ohio’s Sheraton Gibson Hotel. Angelucci chose not to. And, in essence, that was the story he told to the FBI.
The two FBI agents thanked Angelucci, assured him that he was not in any kind of trouble (he was clearly an innocent pawn in a far bigger picture) and left. We do not know how, or even if, things proceeded further with regard to the FBI, Angelucci, and that certain hotel in Ohio. There is a very good and potentially mysterious reason for that: on October 24, 2017, the FBI informed UFO researcher John Greenewald that Angelucci had indeed been the subject of a Bureau file, but that it was destroyed on October 30, 2009.
Evidently, the meeting with the FBI shook Angelucci severely; in fact, so severely he decided to release the following statement, probably to ensure that the FBI fully understood that he was not someone with communist leanings: “Communism is the negation of all that is honest and good in the world and in humanity. They would enslave the human mind. Their obstructiveness is willful and planned. We must eventually meet this murderous element at Armageddon; when it will be victory for one side or the other. Good will triumph, or evil! Every entity in the world and the adjoining planes is now aligned definitely upon one side or the other. No matter what the outcome of the conflict, the positive element of good will ultimately attain a greater life and progression; whereas the negative will meet death, destruction and a new beginning in a more hostile environment. As you have made your choice, so be it!”
There is an interesting, additional piece of data that deserves to be shared: In 1954, a group of West Coast-based Contactees – including Truman Bethurum and George Hunt Williamson – gave a series of lectures in Cincinnati. As this was also the home-city of famed UFO researcher Leonard Stringfield, paths inevitably crossed. Hoping to get Stringfield to endorse their talks, Bethurum, Williamson and their flock called at his home and introduced themselves. Stringfield flatly refused to lend his support; although he did invite the group into his home. It was while in the company of the Contactees that Stringfield had an intriguing experience, as he noted in his 1977 book, Situation Red: The UFO Siege:
“After their departure I began to wonder about their causes. At one point during the evening’s many tête-à-têtes, I chanced to overhear two members discussing the FBI. Pretending aloofness, I tried to overhear more. It seemed that one person was puzzling over the presence of an ‘agent’ in the group. When I was caught standing too close, the FBI talk stopped. Whether or not I had reason to be suspicious, it was not difficult for me to believe that some of the Contactees behind all this costly showmanship were official ‘plants.’” Planted by the Russians? We shouldn’t ignore such a possibility.
Interestingly, the lectures in question were held at the Sheraton Gibson Hotel, two years before Angelucci was told that his communist sources could be contacted at that very same hotel. Was it once the temporary “home” of a group of Soviet agents? Or of Russia-loving Americans brought into a weird program to manipulate the world of Ufology? Answers elude us. The hotel was demolished in 1977, its staff of the 1950s are likely all dead now, and, as we’ve seen, any and all FBI documentation on Angelucci was relegated to the shredder or the furnace around a decade after this book was published. But it’s not quite “case closed.”
We now come to the finale. And what a finale it really is.
It wasn’t just the FBI keeping watch on Orfeo Angelucci; fears he may have been in cahoots with Soviet agents or assets circulated. Others within the government were doing likewise, too. In correspondence with Jim Moseley, Angelucci said he that had previously been visited – back in 1954, and a year before the FBI began looking into his activities in fifty-five – by what he termed “Army boys.” They were interested in his claims of alien contact, which, at the time, were largely not in the public domain (it was to be around another year before The Secrets of the Saucers surfaced), but which Angelucci had discussed with many while attending a California-based UFO convention. Critically, and at that same convention, Angelucci loudly discussed his thoughts on the issue of extraterrestrial politics. Unfortunately, Angelucci did not expand on what he meant by this to Moseley, but it may well have led government plants in the audience to make a decision to keep an eye on Angelucci – and to find what they could on matters relative to his relationship to politics and flying saucers. Such a thing is not at all impossible. For example, the FBI’s declassified files on yet another of the early Contactees - one George Van Tassel, who put on yearly events out at Giant Rock, California - reveal that Bureau agents regularly attended Van Tassel’s presentations, incognito of course.
On one particular night in December 1954, and while still working in Twentynine Palms, California, Angelucci headed out to a local eatery. That’s where things got strange. Angelucci recorded: “I felt a strangeness in the air. There is a cosmic spell over the desert most of the time, but tonight the mystery was less distant and intangible; it was close and pulsating.”
Angelucci was soon deep in conversation with a man who identified himself only as “Adam,” a customer who claimed to be thirty-something and suffering from a terminal illness. Death was said to be just around the corner for the man. In an odd and synchronistic fashion, Adam claimed that he had read Angelucci’s book, The Secret of the Saucers, that he considered their meeting to be beyond just an amazing coincidence, and that he wished to share his thoughts with Angelucci before time ran out. As in
quite literally. But, said Adam, before their conversation could begin, Angelucci had to swallow a pill; of what kind Angelucci didn’t know. That didn’t stop him from doing exactly what Adam demanded from him, though. Angelucci took a gulp of water and the “oyster-white pellet” went down. For Angelucci, there was now no turning back. It didn’t take long before he felt weird, odd, and out of this world. Spaced out. Fucked up. In short, Angelucci had been drugged. It was almost like one of the most famous scenes in the 1999 movie, The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves. But this was the world of the real, not of Hollywood.
Angelucci said: “…I took the pellet and dropped it into my glass. Immediately the water bubbled, turning slowly into the clear, pale amber contained in [Adam’s] own glass. I lifted the glass a few inches from the table, looking into it with a feeling that this might be the drink I dared not hope for. The exhilarating aroma rising from it could not be mistaken…I thrilled from head to foot as I took the glass, lifted it to my lips, and swallowed twice from it. At that instant, I entered, with Adam, into a more exalted state and everything around me took on a different semblance. No longer was I in Tiny’s café in Twentynine Palms. It had been transformed into a cozy retreat on some radiant star system. Though everything remained in its same position, added beauty and meaning were given to the things and people present there.
“…Among the patrons dining that evening were two marines from the nearby base. Sometimes they glanced our way as they talked and drank beer following their meal [italics mine].
Angelucci said that Adam seemed oddly obsessed with the glass and was “fraught with expectancy.” Suddenly, the sounds of music filled Angelucci’s ears. Incredibly, the music seemed to be coming from the glass itself. Or, rather, that’s how it seemed to Angelucci. The reality is that he was now stoned to a significant degree. Angelucci stared at the glass and saw the figure of “a miniature young woman” who was dancing in that same glass! That’s right: the drugs were now kicking in to a serious degree. Of the small woman, Angelucci said, “her golden-blond beauty was as arresting as the miracle of her projection in the glass. Her arms moved in rhythmic motion with the graceful thrusts of her dancing body.”
What began as a pleasant meeting between like-minded souls soon became a drug-driven interrogation. By Angelucci’s own admission, he spilled the entire beans to Adam: the nature of his encounters, and the words of his alien friends. There was even a debate on politics, which is rather telling. Angelucci staggered home, his mind hardly his own for the next few hours.
When it comes to the matter of this suspicious saga, it’s important to note the timeframe: the Cold War era. This was the period when research into “mind-control” was at its height. Over the course of several decades, the United States’ intelligence community, military and government established and sponsored a number of programs relative to mind-control; many of those programs were focused on creating chemical cocktails designed to interrogate Soviet agents. The most notorious of the lot was Project MK-Ultra. It was a top-secret project overseen by the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and which had its origins in the Cold War era of the late 1940s and very early 1950s. To demonstrate the level of secrecy that surrounded Project MK-Ultra, even though it had kicked off years before, its existence was largely unknown outside of the intelligence world until 1975. That was when the Church Committee and the Rockefeller Commission finally began making their own investigations of the CIA’s mind-control-related activities. The story that unfolded would prove to be both dark and disturbing. The scope of the project was spelled out in an August 1977 document titled The Senate MK-Ultra Hearings that was prepared by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Committee on Human Resources.
The author of the document provided these words:
“Research and development programs to find materials which could be used to alter human behavior were initiated in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These experimental programs originally included testing of drugs involving witting human subjects, and culminated in tests using unwitting, non-volunteer human subjects. These tests were designed to determine the potential effects of chemical or biological agents when used operationally against individuals unaware that they had received a drug.”
Was Angelucci drugged by someone posing as a likeminded friend, but who, in reality, was a ruthless figure seeking answers to what was motivating Angelucci to get involved in the controversial fields of the Contactee and alien politics? A case can certainly be made that this is exactly what happened. We have Adam, the mysterious man who wished to learn more of Angelucci’s thoughts on matters flying and saucer-shaped. Adam made sure that Angelucci took the mind-bending pill before matters began in earnest. And, we have a pair of marines sitting close by and “intently” watching the whole process – possibly ready to intervene if Angelucci had an adverse reaction to whatever it was he had knocked back.
We can argue endlessly over whether Orfeo Angelucci was indeed subjected to mind-altering substances or wasn’t. It’s important to note, however, that accounts like his don’t stand alone. In fact, there are more than a few almost identical ones to choose from – and from the very same time as well. As an example of just one of many, I’ll focus on the story of a man named Stanley Glickman. Salon.com notes: “Until his death in 1992, Glickman insisted that a CIA agent, who for 40 years he consistently described as having a clubfoot, had slipped him a mind-bending mickey in a glass of Chartreuse liqueur at a bar in Paris in 1952, driving Glickman mad and destroying his life.”
The story of Glickman is, ultimately, a tragic and turbulent one. At the time of his strange encounter, Glickman, an American, was living and working in Paris, France. He was in his mid-twenties and life was good: he spent time at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere and got to hang out with modernist painter and sculptor, Fernand Leger. Then, one night, things changed. In the latter part of 1952, Glickman met with a friend in the Paris-based Cafe Select. It was while the pair was hanging out and drinking coffee that something very weird happened. Two American men came into the cafe and soon engaged Glickman in a deep debate. Hank Albarelli’s 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, chronicles the history of MK-Ultra in detailed fashion and addresses the Glickman affair. Albarelli notes that “the two strangers fell into a heated debate with Glickman about politics, power, and patriotism [italics mine].”
The confrontational debate finally came to an end, at which point the two men offered Glickman a drink. Unwisely, he accepted it. Just as Angelucci did. As history has shown, it was just about the worst move that Glickman could have ever made. He soon found himself plunged into the hearts of a psychedelic nightmare. Glickman felt as if he was floating above the table. His perceptions, said Albarelli, “became distorted.” The mysterious men watched on “intently,” as Glickman’s hallucinations became evermore graphic and terrifying. The odd pair soon thereafter exited the café. It was a situation that affected Glickman’s whole life from thereon: delusions and a sense of going insane gripped him for weeks after he was hit by the mind-bending cocktail. Glickman was finally given shock-treatment at the American Hospital of Paris, but he was never quite the same again. Glickman gave up painting, moved back to the United States (New York), and ran an antiques shop for the rest of his life.
Notably, Glickman stated that one of the two men who engaged him had a very noticeable limp. This has given rise to the genuinely intriguing theory that the limping man was one Sydney Gottlieb. He was a chemist, and one of the key figures in the CIA’s “mind-control” program, MK-Ultra. Gottlieb just happened to have a clubfoot. In Gottlieb’s 1999 obituary, the U.K.’s Independent newspaper stated: “Gottlieb’s contribution was to oversee MKUltra. From the early 1950s through most of the 1960s hundreds of American citizens were administered mind-altering drugs. One mental patient in Kentucky was given LSD for 174 consecutive days. In all the agency conducted 149 mind-control experiments. At least one ‘participant’ died as a result of the experim
ents and several others went mad.”
The Alliance for Human Research Protection states that, in 1977, Glickman “…learned about Gottlieb and CIA’s LSD experiments on unwitting involuntary subjects from the Kennedy congressional hearings. Glickman sued in 1981, but the trial was delayed 17 years on technical grounds, by which time Glickman had died in 1992.”
There are undeniable parallels between the story of Orfeo Angelucci and the sad saga of Stanley Glickman. Both were dosed in cafes/diners. Both incidents occurred in the 1950s. Glickman’s two characters debated him on his politics. Angelucci, in a curious way, had a tie to communism. And both Glickman and Angelucci were watched “intently,” a word which both Angelucci and Albarelli used when telling their respective stories. All of which strongly suggests that, despite the known portions of the incredible story of Orfeo Angelucci and a mysterious group of communists, there may very well be far more to it than we will ever know. The government most definitely knows how to bury its secrets. It certainly did that when it came to the official – ultimately shredded – FBI dossier on Angelucci.
11. “It crusades for the suspension of the H-bomb tests”
“The Aetherius Society is an international spiritual organization dedicated to spreading, and acting upon, the teachings of advanced extraterrestrial intelligences,” its members state. They continue: “In great compassion, these beings recognize the extent of suffering on Earth and have made countless sacrifices in their mission to help us to create a better world. The Society was founded in the mid-1950s by an Englishman named George King shortly after he was contacted in London by an extraterrestrial intelligence known as ‘Aetherius.’ The main body of the Society’s teachings consists of the wisdom given through the mediumship of Dr. King by the Master Aetherius and other advanced intelligences from this world and beyond. The single greatest aspect of the Society’s teachings is the importance of selfless service to others.”
