Flying Saucers from the Kremlin

by Nick Redfern

  There’s another, equally weird, story that might be connected to all of this. Jacques Vallee says: “The name UMMO may be hiding an inside joke. In 1970 a company called UMO Plant Hire, Ltd, was incorporated in Great Britain. It turned out to be a Soviet spy front. In September 1971, 105 Soviet officials were expelled from Britain for espionage, and UMO was closed down.”

  This is indeed a fact. On September 25, 1971, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper ran an article that, in part, stated: “Britain is to expel 90 Soviet diplomats who have been engaged in active espionage, the Foreign Office announced last night. Another 15 Soviet officials, at present overseas, will not be allowed to return to this country. Many of these men are suspected of involvement in planning acts of sabotage. The expulsion order – affecting nearly 20 per cent of the 550 Soviet diplomats in Britain – is unprecedented in size and scope. It follows months of intensive investigation by the intelligence services, and the defection of a top KGB officer from the Soviet Embassy in London.

  “The KGB man, who had the rank of major, proved the catalyst for the ‘clearing’ operation against Soviet espionage. He gave the security services a comprehensive breakdown of his country’s espionage apparatus in Britain – and also supplied details ‘…of plans for infiltration of agents for the purposes of sabotage”, the Foreign Office said. In the opinion of Mr. Heath [the then-Prime-Minister] and Sir Alec Douglas-Home [who worked in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office] this crisis over diplomatic espionage by Soviet officials is so serious that the British Government cannot, and will not, enter into preparations for the European Security Conference proposed by the Soviet Union until the crisis is resolved.”

  The crisis was ultimately brought to an end, but for a long time, relations between the Soviet Union and the British Government were decidedly frosty.

  As incredible as it may sound, in 1967 – which, bear in mind, was still the height of the Cold War – British authorities made a secret approach to the former Soviet Union’s military. It was an approach that revolved around nothing less than UFOs. In fact, the British Government came straight to the point: they wished to clandestinely discuss the possibility of establishing a joint UK-Soviet UFO study-program. Sounds near-unbelievable? Yes, it does. But, it’s one hundred percent verifiable. Thanks to the provisions of the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), documentation has surfaced from the Defense Intelligence Agency that reveals at least significant parts of the story. According to the DIA: “In early 1967 (exact date believed to be 10 Nov) Moscow TV presented a program on Unidentified Flying Objects. On 12 Nov 67 a Reuters release in the U.K. (believe article was in Daily Telegraph) reported the TV program.”

  The essence of both the Soviet television show and the Reuters story, noted the DIA, was that “…the Russians had recently set up a commission to study UFOs.” The chairman of the commission, the DIA learned, was a retired Soviet Air Force (SAF) Major General A.F. Stolyarov, a former Technical Services Officer. Not only that, the project had at its disposal no less than 18 astronomers and SAF officers and “200 observers.”

  A couple of days after the television production aired, the DIA learned, the Reuters correspondent paid Major General Stolyarov a visit. The general, recorded DIA personnel, “was very polite, confirmed the information about the commission, the 18 astronomers and SAF officers and the 200 observers. In addition, he said five positive sightings had been made.”

  One week later, however, things had changed significantly, as the DIA’s files make very clear: “…the Reuters correspondent went back to see General Stolyarov. However, this time the correspondent could not get past the General’s secretary, [and] was politely but firmly told the General was no longer available for interview.”

  But, then, there was a dramatic development in the story – and, probably, a wholly unforeseen development. The DIA uncovered information to the effect that, “…on 12 December 1967, the British Embassy was directed by London to further investigate the subject with a view to cooperating with the Russians in observation teams for UFOs.” There may have been a very good reason for the actions of the Brits: between 1959 and1966, documentation now declassified by the British Ministry of Defense reveals, British authorities received a combined total of 446 UFO reports. In 1967, alone, however, the MoD was inundated with no less than 362 reports – averaging almost one report per day.

  The DIA added that the Scientific Counselor of the British Embassy visited the Soviet Union’s State Committee for Science and Technology and inquired about two things: (a) the status and nature of the Soviet UFO commission and; (b) the possibility of “British-Russian cooperation in observation of UFOs.” According to the DIA’s sources, “…the British counselor was politely received and the Commission was freely discussed. The British were told they would receive a reply to their request about cooperation.”

  DIA records reveal that the Brits did not receive a reply from the Soviets and “did not pursue the subject.” But, the British Government did have its own opinions on the nature of the Soviet UFO program, however. The DIA documentation shows that, “The British Scientific Counselor believes that the original announcement of the work of the Commission on TV was an oversight on the part of the censors because the commission has not been reported or referred to anywhere else. Mr. [Censored] believes the Commission has not been disbanded, but will continue under cover. This information was sent to London.”

  Intriguingly, the DIA records also show that the relevant data had been provided by a source that had “read confidential British files on this subject.” It is a pity that the DIA report – which was prepared by a Colonel Melvin J. Nielsen – did not expand upon the reference to these secret documents of the Brits. Nevertheless, that the British Government chose to make a stealthy approach to the Soviets – and directly in the wake of a significant wave of UFO activity in the skies of the UK – is more than notable. It suggests an undercurrent of concern and unease within certain British-based corridors of power.

  Even though the Soviets chose not to take matters further with the Brits (and vice-versa), the very fact that the latter made the approach – at all – is notable. In 1991, I was informed in writing by the British Ministry of Defense that, with regard to UFOs, “…we do not co-operate with other Governments on this subject.” That stance, however, did not seemingly prevent British authorities from at least attempting to work with the Soviets on the UFO problem – and practically a quarter of a century before I was assured there was no such cooperation at all!

  Based upon what we have seen thus far, and how agencies of government have used the UFO phenomenon to dazzle and disturb potential enemies, I strongly suspect that the Brits were seeking to find a way to use the UFO phenomenon as a means to cause problems and worries for the Soviets. And vice-versa too. Time-wise, there is evidence that suggests this scenario is indeed the likely one. As we shall now see. It all revolves around a woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon.

  To understand how and why the Brits – alongside their American counterparts – secretly decided to make use of the UFO phenomenon in the late 1960s, and for reasons relative to counterintelligence, disinformation programs, and Russian destabilization, we have to begin with a sensational saga that surfaced in November 2005. That was when a source using the term “Anonymous” came out of the shadows and told an incredible story. Some said it was too incredible to be true. It just might have been exactly that. It’s a story surrounding what became known within Ufology as “The Serpo Documents.” As for “Anonymous,” he or she was said to have been a government insider with a wealth of information on some of the biggest UFO-themed secrets of all time. Here’s what “Anonymous” shared with the UFO research community on the Serpo controversy:

  I am a retired employee of the U.S. Government. I won’t go into any great details about my past, but I was involved in a special program. As for Roswell, it occurred, but not like the storybooks tell. There were two crash sites: one southwe
st of Corona, New Mexico and the second site at Pelona Peak, south of Datil, New Mexico.

  The crash involved two extraterrestrial aircraft. The Corona site was found a day later by an archaeological team. This team reported the crash site to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s department. A deputy arrived the next day and summoned a state police officer. One live entity was found hiding behind a rock. The entity was given water but declined food. The entity was later transferred to Los Alamos.

  The information eventually went to Roswell Army Air Field. The site was examined and all evidence was removed. The bodies were taken to Los Alamos National Laboratory because they had a freezing system that allowed the bodies to remain frozen for research. The craft was taken to Roswell and then onto Wright Field, Ohio.

  The second site was not discovered until August 1949. Two ranchers found it. They reported their findings several days later to the sheriff of Catron County, New Mexico. Because of the remote location, it took the sheriff several days to make his way to the crash site. Once at the site, the sheriff took photographs and then drove back to Datil.

  Sandia Army Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico was then notified. A recovery team from Sandia took custody of all evidence, including six bodies. The bodies were taken to Sandia Base, but later transferred to Los Alamos.

  The live entity established communications with us and provided us with a location of his home planet. The entity remained alive until 1952, when he died. But before his death, he provided us with a full explanation of the items found inside the two crafts. One item was a communication device. The entity was allowed to make contact with his planet.

  Somehow, I never knew this information, but a meeting date was set for April 1964 near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The Aliens landed and retrieved the bodies of their dead comrades. Information was exchanged. Communication was in English. The aliens had a translation device.

  In 1965, we had an exchange program with the aliens. We carefully selected 12 military personnel; ten men and two women. They were trained, vetted and carefully removed from the military system. The 12 were skilled in various specialties.

  Near the northern part of the Nevada Test Site, the aliens landed and the 12 Americans left. One entity was left on Earth. The original plan was for our 12 people to stay 10 years and then return to Earth.

  But something went wrong. The 12 remained until 1978, when they were returned to the same location in Nevada. Seven men and one woman returned. Two died on the alien’s home planet. Four others decided to remain, according to the returnees. Of the eight that returned, all have died. The last survivor died in 2002.

  The returnees were isolated from 1978 until 1984 at various military installations. The Air Force Office of Special Investigations (AFOSI) was responsible for their security and safety. AFOSI also conducted debriefing sessions with the returnees.

  That, basically, is the story of Serpo, which continues to circulate to this very day – although certainly not to the large extent that was seen in 2005. A few months after the story became widely known, an allegedly retired U.K. Ministry of Defense source came forward and shared certain data that suggested the Serpo story was not what it appeared to be. Using the alias of “Chapman,” the highly talkative informant said the following of the statement from “Anonymous”:

  Interesting reading. However, these are NOT real events that are being described here, although the document they come from IS REAL. I saw this information in 1969 or ’70 in Whitehall [London]. Originally it was a CIA document authored by a lady named Alice Bradley Sheldon. Its main purpose, if you will pardon the phrase, was to “scare the crap out of the Soviets” in response to them scaring the crap out of us. In the ‘60s, during the warmer part of the Cold War, the KGB successfully led the U.S. Government to believe that a number of nuclear devices had been concealed in disused mines and caves close to four (4) large American cities. These bombs could be detonated by sleeper agents at any time Moscow wished. It was not completely disproved that this was fake until 1980.

  The “Project SERPO” report was part of the CIA’s riposte to this and an attempt to trump the Soviets. Its aim was to make them believe that we had acquired lethal extraterrestrial energy devices and that we had a cozy friendship with these all-powerful EBENs [EBEN is allegedly a classified term used by American Intelligence to describe aliens. It is said to derive from the term “Extraterrestrial Biological Entity”] who would be very unhappy if Moscow attempted to harm the United States in any way. To a degree I believe this effort was effective to begin with.

  However, it came unstuck when the CIA tried to overreach the information by ADDING PHOTOGRAPHS and also trying to spook allies such as ourselves who were better equipped to analyze the information and bugged to the hilt by the KGB.

  Why this information is being released again now I do not know. Possibly in the past the DIA could have BEEN FOOLED BY THE CIA into believing that “Project SERPO” was a real event and the ANONYMOUS source may genuinely want to release this information. Alternatively the DIA may have got it direct from the KGB most likely with a few choice modifications added by them.

  It’s most unfortunate that “Chapman” chose not to go public with a real name. There are, however, very good reasons as to why we should buy into the story of the Snowden-style informant. Alice Bradley Sheldon – who “Chapman” claimed wrote the Serpo papers decades ago – would certainly have been the ideal person to put just such a story together. Why so? Because she was both an employee of the CIA and a skillful writer of alien-themed science-fiction. A better person to employ – when it came to matters relative to both espionage and UFOs – it would have been hard to find. Let’s take a look at the life and career of this fascinating character.

  Alice Bradley was born in 1915 and, in the immediate aftermath of the horrific events that occurred at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in December 1941, chose to do whatever she could for her government. It wasn’t long before she was working in the heart of U.S. military intelligence. She ultimately rose to the rank of Major. In 1945, Alice Bradley became Alice Bradley Sheldon; that was the year in which she married Huntington D. Sheldon. The two decided to relocate to Washington D.C. and both accepted new and exciting careers in the CIA. Alice took part in espionage operations and worked on photo-analysis projects, such as studying imagery of Soviet military installations and then-new Russian aircraft. She remained with the CIA until 1955. As for Huntington, he rose to the position of the Director of the Office of Current Intelligence of the CIA. He held that same position until 1961.

  In 1967, Alice decided to turn her hand to an area that she had a great love for: that of science-fiction. She did so, however, under the alias of James Tiptree, Jr. In 1973, a collection of her short stories hit the stands. It was entitled Ten Thousand Light Years from Home. Then, in 1975, Warm World and Otherwise were published to high acclaim. More books appeared: 1981’s Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions and 1985’s Brightness Falls from the Air. Barely a handful of people knew, during her lifetime, that Alice and Tiptree were actually one and the very same.

  The final years for Alice and her husband were sadly not good; not at all. Both were suffering from ill-health. Huntington finally became bed-ridden. The end was getting closer and closer. It finally arrived. On May 19, 1987, Alice shot and killed her sleeping husband, and then took her own life. Her secrets from that time spent in the employ of the CIA went with her. Unless there is a significant development in the matter of Alice Bradley Sheldon, the Serpo papers, and a plot designed to terrify the Russians, we may never get to see the full picture. But, I cannot think of a better, and more qualified, source than Sheldon –a sci-fi writer and a CIA employee – to whip up the saga of Serpo, as a means to freak out the Soviet Union.

  It’s eye-opening that “Chapman” claimed to have seen the Serpo files in 1969 or 1970. The reason? Nineteen-sixty-nine was the year in which an elaborate UFO-themed Soviet ruse was put into plac
e. This one was highly sophisticated and revolved around a crashed UFO and the autopsy of an alleged alien creature. The story itself is undeniably fascinating – which is what the Russians were surely counting on – as the “evidence” is an old piece of film-footage that reportedly chronicled the whole thing. While the crash of the UFO is said to have occurred in March 1969, the story – and the attendant film – did not surface until 1998, almost three decades later. That was the year in which a television production, The Secret KGB UFO Files, was broadcast in the United States and elsewhere. A great deal of money was put into the over-sensationalized production and it was hosted by the late Roger Moore, the star of seven of the phenomenally successful James Bond movies. The documentary covered a wide body of UFO-based data (some of it blatantly hoaxed); however, there’s no doubt that it was specifically the film of the supposed crashed UFO and its deceased crew-member which caught the attention of most of those who bothered to watch it.

  Certainly, a great deal of effort went into the production of the film: this was no amateur, half-hearted operation. The footage is grainy, appears old, and was filmed by someone with a hand-held camera. It shows around fifteen-to-twenty men wearing Russian uniforms, thick coats and hats; they are all armed and are guarding a small, circular-shaped craft which appears to have slammed into the ground in a wooded, frosty area. The location was said to have been Sverdlovsky, Russia. The trees are largely bereft of leaves and everything points to the incident having occurred in very cold bleak weather. Only around a half of the saucer-shaped vehicle protrudes out of the soil, in an angled fashion. The inference is that the military unit found the craft shortly after it hit the ground and, at the time of the filming, were in the process of guarding the site from any and all onlookers that might have come along. To this day, we don’t know where the film came from, and how it reached the producers of The Secret KGB UFO Files. We’re told that the production company had to pay $10,000 U.S. dollars to secure it, after it was smuggled out of KGB archives. Supposedly.