COSMIC CONSPIRACY

SIX DECADES OF GOVERNMENT UFO COVER-UPS

PART ONE

Lightning flashed over Corona, New Mexico, and thunder rattled the thin
windowpanes of the small shack where ranch foreman Mac Brazel slept. Brazel was
used to summer thunderstorms, but he was suddenly brought wide awake by a loud
explosion that set the dishes in the kitchen sink dancing. Sonofabitch, he
thought to himself before sinking back to sleep, the sheep will be scattered
halfway between hell and high water come dawn.

In the morning, Brazel rode out on horseback, accompanied by seven-year-old
Timothy Proctor, to survey the damage. According to published accounts, Brazel
and young Proctor stumbled across something unearthly--a field of tattered
debris two to three hundred yards wide stretching some three-quarters of a mile
in length. No rocket scientist, Brazel still realized he had something strange
on his hands--so strange that he decided to haul several pieces of it into
Roswell, some 75 miles distant, a day or two later.

For all its lightness, the debris in Brazel's pickup bed seemed remarkably
durable. Sheriff George Wilcox reportedly took one look at it and called the
military at Roswell Army Air Field, then home to the world's only atomic-bomb
wing. Two officers from the base eventually arrived and agreed to accompany
Brazel back to the debris field.

As a consequence of their investigation, a press release unique in the history
of the American military appeared on the front page of the Roswell Daily Record
for July 8, 1947. Authored by public-information officer Lt. Walter Haut and
approved by base commander Col. William Blanchard, it admitted that the many
rumors regarding UFOs ``became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office
of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was
fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of
the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County.''

Haut's noon press release circled the planet, reprinted in papers as far abroad
as Germany and England, where it was picked up by the prestigious London Times.
UFOs were real! Media calls poured in to the Roswell Daily Record and the local
radio station, which had first broken the news, demanding additional details.

Four hours later and some 600 miles to the east in Fort Worth, Texas, Brig. Gen.
Roger Ramey, commander of the Eighth Air Force, held a press conference to
answer reporters' questions. Spread on the general's office floor were lumps of
a blackened, rubberlike material and crumpled pieces of what looked like a
flimsy tinfoil kite. Ramey posed for pictures, kneeling on his carpet with the
material, as did Maj. Jesse Marcel, flown in from Roswell for the occasion.
Alas, allowed the general, the Roswell incident was a simple case of mistaken
identity; in reality, the so-called recovered flying disc was nothing more than
a weather balloon with an attached radar reflector.

``Unfortunately, the media bought the Air Force cover-up hook, line, and
sinker,'' asserts Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist and coauthor with
aviation writer Don Berliner of Crash at Corona, one of three books written
about Roswell. ``The weather-balloon story went in the next morning's papers,
the phone calls dropped off dramatically, and any chance of an immediate
follow-up was effectively squelched.''

Ramey's impromptu press conference marks the beginning of what Friedman refers
to as a `` `Cosmic Watergate,' the ongoing cover-up of the government's
knowledge about extraterrestrial UFOs and their terrestrial activities.'' By
contrast, says Friedman, the original Watergate snafu and cover-up pales in
significance. In fact, if Friedman and his cohorts within the UFO community are
correct, military involvement in the recovery of a crashed flying saucer would
rank as the most well-kept and explosive secret in world history.

Of course, not all students of the subject see it that way. ``You have to put
Roswell in a certain context,'' cautions Curtis Peebles, an aerospace historian
whose treatment of UFOs as an evolving belief system in Watch the Skies! was
just published by the Smithsonian Institute. ``And the relevant context is the
role of government and its relationship to the governed. Americans have always
been suspicious, if not actively contemptuous, of their government. On the other
hand, forget what the government says and look at what it does. Is there any
evidence in the historical record that the Air Force or government behaved as if
it actually owned a flying saucer presumably thousands of years in advance of
anything on either the Soviet or U.S. side? If there is, I didn't find it.''

Regardless of its ultimate reality, however, Roswell symbolizes the difficulties
and frustrations Friedman and fellow UFOlogists have encountered in prying loose
what the government does or does not know about UFOs. Memories fade, documents
get lost or misplaced, witnesses die, and others refuse to speak up, either out
of fear of ridicule or, according to Friedman, because of secrecy oaths. Despite
a trail that lay cold for more than 30 years, UFOlogists still consider Roswell
one of the most convincing UFO cases on record. In 1978, for example, Friedman
personally interviewed Maj. Jesse Marcel shortly before his death. ``He still
didn't know what the material was,'' says Friedman, ``except that it was like
nothing he had ever seen before and certainly wasn't from any weather balloon.''
According to what Marcel reportedly told Friedman, in fact, the featherlight
material couldn't be dented by a sledgehammer or burned by a blowtorch.

Yet getting the Air Force itself to say anything about Roswell in particular or
UFOs in general can be an exercise in futility. Officials are either
bureaucratically vague or maddeningly abrupt. Maj. David Thurston, a Pentagon
spokesperson for the Air Force Office of Public Affairs, could only refer
inquiries to the Air Force Historical Research Center in Montgomery, Alabama,
where unit histories are kept on microfilm for public review. But a spokesperson
there said they had no ``investigative material'' and suggested checking the
National Archives for files from Project Blue Book, the Air Force's public UFO
investigative agency from the late 1940s until its closure in December of 1969.

Indeed, the dismissive nature with which U.S. officials treated Blue Book
research seemed to indicate they were unimpressed; on that point, believers and
skeptics alike agree. But according to Friedman and colleagues, that demeanor,
and Blue Book itself, was a ruse. Instead, far from the eyes of Blue Book
patsies, in top-secret meetings of upper-echelon intelligence officers from
military and civilian agencies alike, UFOs--including real crashed saucers and
the mangled bodies of aliens--were the subject of endless study and debate.
What's more, claims Friedman, proof of this UFO reality can be found in the
classified files of government vaults.

With all this documentation, Friedman might have had a field day. Unfortunately,
researchers had no mechanism for forcing classified documents to the surface
until 1966, when Congress passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The FOIA
was later amended in the last year of the Nixon administration (1974) to include
the Privacy Act. Now individuals could view their own files, and some
UFOlogists--Friedman included--were surprised to find that their personal UFO
activities had resulted in government dossiers.

Be that as it may, UFOlogists saw the FOIA as a means to an end, and beginning
in the 1970s, their requests and lawsuits started pouring in. Attorneys for the
Connecticut-based Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) and other UFO activists
eventually unleashed a flood tide of previously classified UFO documents. In
many cases, notes Barry Greenwood, director of research for CAUS and coauthor
with Lawrence Fawcett of The Government UFO Cover-up, most agencies at first
denied they had any such documents in their files. ``A case in point is the
CIA,'' says Greenwood, which assured us that its interest and involvement in
UFOs ended in 1953. After a lengthy lawsuit, the CIA ultimately released more
than a thousand pages of documents. To date, we've acquired more than ten
thousand documents pertaining to UFOs, the overwhelming majority of which were
from the CIA, FBI, Air Force, and various other military agencies. It's safe to
say there are probably that many more we haven't seen.''

As might be expected, the UFO paper trail is a mixed bag. Many of the documents
released are simple sighting reports logged well after the demise of Blue Book.
Others are more tantalizing. A document released by the North American Aerospace
Defense Command (NORAD) revealed that several sensitive military bases scattered
from Maine to Montana were temporarily put on alert status following a series of
sightings in October and November of 1975. An Air Force Office of Special
Intelligence document reported a landed light seen near Kirtland Air Force Base,
Albuquerque, New Mexico, on the night of August 8, 1980.

Another warm and still-smoking gun, according to Greenwood, is the so-called
Bolender memo, named after its author, Brig. Gen. C. H. Bolender, then Air Force
deputy director of development. Dated October 20, 1969, it expressly states that
``reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security .
. . are not part of the Blue Book system.'' Says Greenwood, ``I take that to
mean that Blue Book was little more than an exercise in public relations. The
really significant reports went somewhere else. Where did they go? That's what
we would like to know.''

Of course there are objections to such a literal interpretation. ``As I
understand the context in which it was written,'' says Philip Klass, a former
senior editor with Aviation Week and Space Technology and author of UFOs: The
Public Deceived, ``the Bolender memo tried to address the problem of what would
happen with UFO reports of any sort following the closure of Project Blue Book.
Bolender was simply saying that other channels for such reports, be they
incoming Soviet missiles or whatever, already existed.''

Greenwood counters that the original memo speaks for itself, adding that ``the
interesting thing is that sixteen referenced attachments are presently reported
as missing from Air Force files.''

Missing files are one problem. Files known to exist but kept under wraps, notes
Greenwood, are another. To make his point, he cites a case involving the
ultrasecret National Security Agency, or NSA, an acronym often assumed by
insiders to mean ``Never Say Anything.'' Using cross references found in CIA and
other intelligence-agency papers, CAUS attorneys filed for the release of all
NSA documents pertaining to the UFO phenomenon. After initial denials, the NSA
admitted to the existence of some 160 such documents but resisted their release
on the grounds of national security.

Federal District Judge Gerhard Gessell upheld the NSA's request for suppression
following a review (judge's chambers only) of the agency's classified 21-page In
Camera petition. ``Two years later,'' Greenwood says, ``we finally got a copy of
the NSA In Camera affidavit. Of 582 lines, 412, or approximately 75 percent,
were completely blacked out. The government can't have it both ways. Either UFOs
affect national security or they don't.''

The NSA's blockage of the CAUS suit only highlights the shortcomings of the
Freedom of Information Act, according to Friedman. (See the sidebar ``Freedom
Fighters Handbook,'' beginning on page 36.) ``The American public operates under
the illusion that the FOIA is some sort of magical key that will unlock all of
the government's secret vaults,'' he says, ``that all you have to do is ask.
They also seem to think everything is in one big computer file somewhere deep in
the bowels of the Pentagon, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
Secrecy thrives on compartmentalization.''

In recent years, UFOlogists have found an unusual ally in the person of Steven
Aftergood, an electrical engineer who directs the Project on Government and
Secrecy for the Washington, DC-based Federation of American Scientists, where
most members wouldn't ordinarily give UFOs the time of day. ``Our problem,''
says Aftergood, ``is with government secrecy on principle, because it widens the
gap between citizens and government, making it that much more difficult to
participate in the democratic process. It's also antithetical to peer review and
cross-fertilization, two natural processes conducive to the growth of both
science and technology. Bureaucratic secrecy is also prohibitively expensive.''

Aftergood cites some daunting statistics in his favor. Despite campaign promises
by a succession of Democratic and Republican presidential administrations to
make government files more publicly accessible, more than 300 million documents
compiled prior to 1960 in the National Archives alone still await
declassification. Aftergood also points to a 1990 Department of Defense study,
which estimated the cost of protecting industrial--not military--secrets at
almost $14 billion a year. ``That's a budget about the size of NASA's,'' he
says, adding that ``the numbers were ludicrous enough during the Cold War, but
now that the Cold War is supposedly over, they're even more ludicrous.''

Could the Air Force and other government agencies have their own hidden agenda
for maintaining the reputed Cosmic Watergate? Yes, according to some pundits who
say UFOs may be our own advanced super-top-secret aerial platforms, not
extraterrestrial vehicles from on high. Something of the sort could be occurring
at the supersecret Groom Lake test facility in Nevada, part of the immense
Nellis Air Force Base gunnery range north of Las Vegas. Aviation buffs believe
the Groom Lake runway, one of the world's longest, could be home to the
much-rumored Aurora, reputed to be a hypersonic Mach-8 spy plane and a
replacement for the recently retired SR-71 Blackbird.

In fact, the Air Force routinely denies the existence of Aurora. And with Blue
Book a closed chapter, it no longer has to hold press conferences to answer
reporters' questions about UFOs. From the government's perspective, the current
confusion between terrestrial technology and extraterrestrial UFOs could be a
marriage of both coincidence and convenience. The Air Force doesn't seem to be
taking chances. On September 30 of last year, it initiated procedures to seize
another 3,900 acres adjoining Groom Lake, effectively sealing off two public
viewing sites of a base it refuses to admit exists.

By perpetuating such disinformation, if that is, in fact, what's happening, the
Air Force might be using a page torn from the Soviet Union's Cold War playbook.
James Oberg, a senior space engineer and author of Red Star in Orbit, a critical
analysis of the Soviet space program, has long argued that Soviet officials
remained publicly mum about widely reported Russian UFOs in the 1970s and 1980s
because such reports masked military operations conducted at the supersecret
Plesetsk Cosmodrome. ``Could a similar scenario occur in this country? It's
conceivable,'' concedes Oberg. ``On the other hand, should our own government
take an interest in UFO reports, especially those that may reflect missile or
space technology from around the world? Sure. I'd be dismayed if we didn't. But
does it follow that alien-acquired technology recovered at Roswell is driving
our own space technology program? I don't see any outstanding evidence for it.''

Friedman's counterargument is not so much a technological as a political one.
``Governments and nations demand allegiance in order to survive,'' he says.
``They don't want us thinking in global terms, as a citizen of a planet as
opposed to a particular political entity, because that would threaten their very
existence. The impact on our collective social, economic, and religious
structures of admitting that we have been contacted by another intelligent life
form would be enormous if not literally catastrophic to the political powers
that be.''

Whatever its reason for holding large numbers of documents and an array of
information close to the vest, there's no doubt that the U.S. government has
been less than forthcoming on the topic of UFOs. Historically, the government's
public attitude toward UFOs has run the gamut of human emotions, at times
confused and dismissive, at others deliberately covert and coy. On one hand, it
claims to have recovered a flying disc; on the other, a weather balloon. One
night UFOs constitute a threat to the national security; the next they are
merely part of a public hysteria based on religious feelings, fear of
technology, mass hypnosis, or whatever the prevailing psychology of the era will
bear. To sort through the layers of confusion spawned by the government's stance
and to reveal informational chasms, whatever their cause, Omni is launching a
series of six continuing articles. In the following months, we will take the
long view, scanning through history to examine UFOs under wraps in the decades
following Roswell. In the next installment, look for our report on official
efforts to squelch UFO mania and keep tabs on UFO researchers in the
McCarthy-era landscape of the Fifties.



FREEDOM FIGHTERS HANDBOOK: THE OFFICIAL FREEDOM OFINFORMATION ACT HOW-TO FOR
INVESTIGATING UFOS

*
Many people think the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), passed by Congress in
1966, gives an American citizen automatic access to any government document. Not
so. UFO researchers have found that it gives them the right to request, but
government agencies retain the right to deny--as they often do.

*
In fact, applicants find, FOIA requests may be stymied by any number of
exemptions. When information is related to criminal investigations, pending
policy deliberations, national security considerations, or when it violates an
individual's privacy, the FOIA application is denied. The applicant can appeal,
of course, and if he or she loses, may take the case to federal court--but who
has the money? On top of that, FOIA requests are not a priority with the
government, so some agencies have backlogs that won't be acted upon for years.
On other occasions, UFO investigators suspect their petitions are acted upon too
quickly and end up in the circular file.

*
Yet thousands of pages of UFO documents have been pried loose over the past 20
years. None clinch the case for a government cover-up of UFO activity, but they,
along with the cross-referencing of other documents and insider tips, hold out
the intriguing possibility that the government is clinging to hundreds of
thousands of pages of files for the diligent or lucky to unearth. Hoping to
satisfy our readers' fascination for government secrets new and old, the
following handbook details some of the most tantalizing FOIA requests and
provides tips on tapping the government for more.