YOUR EYES ONLY

OMNI'S TOP TIPS FOR ACCESSING CLASSIFGIED MATERIAL ON UFOS

ON THE DOCKET

UFOlogists list the most dramatic attempts to pry loose documents still marked
classified.

The Big Fish. The most important FOIA UFO case ever, according to UFO
researcher Stanton Friedman, was filed in 1979 against the CIA. Citizens Against
UFO Secrecy (CAUS), an Alexandria, Virginia, organization headed by Larry
Bryant, joined with others, including Friedman, to go after all UFO documents in
the possession of the CIA. The CIA responded that it could do nothing because
the documents it had were issued by other agencies and could only be released by
them. Of those, CAUS went after 18 National Security Agency (NSA) documents, but
the NSA would not release them, claiming they would reveal ``sources and
methods.'' CAUS filed an administrative appeal with the NSA and lost. It then
went to federal court, and the judge ordered NSA to search its files for UFO
documents. Surprise: 239 documents showed up--79 from other unnamed agencies, 23
from the CIA, and 137 unexpected NSA bonus documents. Still, the NSA refused to
release them, and the judge, after reading the NSA's justification, agreed.
Under a later FOIA action, the CIA released 9 of its 23 documents, mostly
unimportant abstracts of Eastern European press stories on UFOs. Adding the
original 18 NSA documents that CAUS sought to the newly uncovered batch of 137
shows that the NSA held on to 155 while the CIA retained 11. In addition, 79
documents from other agencies never saw the light of day--proof, according to
Friedman, that the government can keep a secret.

Project Moon Dust. Projects Moon Dust and Blue Fly are purportedly efforts
aimed at retrieving manmade space objects that reenter the atmosphere and crash.
Clifford Stone, a retired U.S. Army sergeant with an interest in UFOs, has been
trying to get the military to admit that it runs these projects and that it also
recovers downed UFOs. Stone claims that the 696th Intelligence Group at Andrews
Air Force Base, Maryland, makes these retrievals, and he has even submitted an
FOIA request for the group's UFO files.

Records from Roswell. The Roswell case, in which a UFO is said to have crashed
near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947, continues to haunt researchers and to
draw numerous FOIA requests. In one of these, Don Schmitt, a researcher from the
Center for UFO Studies in Illinois and coauthor with Kevin Randle of the 1991
book UFO Crash at Roswell, has filed an FOIA request on behalf of the family of
Mac Brazel, the rancher who found the purported UFO wreckage. ``Specifically, we
wanted to see the results of a medical examination allegedly given to Brazel by
the United States Army after he made his discovery,'' Schmitt explains. ``The
Army denied that it had records on Brazel of any sort, even though Brazel served
in the Army during WWII.''

Secret Sins. Is there a secrecy oath signed by military personnel involved
with UFOs? Many UFO investigators, including Don Schmitt, claim to have
active-duty and retired military witnesses who will talk privately but not
openly about UFOs and the government for fear of losing pensions. Schmitt awaits
the results of an FOIA request submitted to the Army, Navy, and Air Force on
whether or not an oath of secrecy actually exists.

X Marks the Spot. Another facet of the Roswell case concerns a United Press
International (UPI) reporter who supposedly told Schmitt that in the early
1960s, a public-information officer (PIO) at Holloman Air Force Base showed him
a map of the Roswell crash site and even drove him out to look at it. Schmitt's
FOIA asks for the name of the PIO and seeks to learn whether he ever worked with
a UPI reporter in the early Sixties.

Name, Rank, and Serial Number. Schmitt would also like to obtain the records
of and ultimately locate 30 military personnel who allegedly worked at Roswell
Air Force Base in 1947. He submitted an FOIA with their names and serial
numbers, asking for access to their complete records. The Air Force responded
that it had no records on those individuals.

Operation Majestic. The MJ-12 documents--short for Operation Majestic--turned
up in microfilm form in the mailbox of Jaime Shadera, a UFO investigator, back
in 1984. Although most UFO researchers now believe the documents are phony, some
say they may be evidence of a top-secret briefing given to president-elect
Dwight Eisenhower in November 1952 by Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter,
then-director of the CIA.

After spending considerable time and money trying to verify these documents,
Stanton Friedman put in an FOIA request in 1989. He thought he could study the
authenticity of the controversial MJ-12 documents by comparing them to other CIA
briefings of Ike. Friedman learned the times and dates of these additional
briefings in archival research and using that specific information requested the
documents from the CIA. Two years later, the CIA responded that it could not
find any such briefing documents. Friedman appealed but was told he was number
390 on the list. He is still waiting for a response.

FOIA Wannabes. Fred Olsen III would like to submit an FOIA request to the Air
Force that asks for the gun-camera photos of UFOs that former military pilots
claim were taken during the 1940s and 1950s. Don Schmitt would like to submit an
FOIA request to the Air Force on the contents and purpose of a mysterious
military transport plane said to have departed from Roswell Air Force Base under
tight security on July 9, 1947.

FOIA TIPS

For those sturdy souls who wish to buck the tide, it is sometimes possible to
successfully wield the Freedom of Information Act to dredge up information
buried deep. To help the uninitiated work the system and uncover as much as
possible, FOIA pro Don Schmitt of the Center for UFO Studies provides three
useful tips:

• UFOlogists believe petitions may be screened for buzzwords like UFO, which
tip officials off to give the request prejudicial treatment, so researchers try
to be creative. ``We never refer to Roswell by name,'' says Schmitt, ``and in
the last five years, I have not made an FOIA request in which I specifically
referred to UFOs.''

• Schmitt and other FOIA experts often request paragraphs, even sentences,
not in classified documents just to see whether the agency has any information
on the topic at all. The technique also confuses officials, preventing them from
pigeonholing the request as UFO related, thus encouraging them to give it a
higher priority and push it through.

• Hoping to stop the government in efforts to pull the wool over their eyes,
UFO researchers often request documents they know for a fact exist. ``We often
try to trip them up,'' Schmitt explains. ``We send in our request; they deny it.
Then we send copies of specific documents that refer to the documents they claim
they don't have.''

SIDE-STEPPING THE FOIA

The frustrations of filing an FOIA being what they are, a number of UFO
researchers have now evolved alternative strategies for prying documents from
government vaults. A couple of the most prominent efforts are detailed below.

Moon Dust II. Cliff Stone's requests to the Air Force and Defense Intelligence
Agency for projects Moon Dust and Blue Fly information were unsuccessful, so
he's making similar requests through the office of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New
Mexico who is working with the Pentagon's Congressional Liaison Office on this
issue. Remember, you are part of a constituency; your representative can help.

Operation Right to Know. In 1992, Operation Right to Know was formed by three
Mutual UFO Network members who felt political action was the only way to wrest
secrets from the government. They passed out UFO literature on the ellipse
behind the White House in 1992, picketed in front of the White House in 1993,
and demonstrated outside the United Nations building in New York in November
1993. Operation Right to Know now has more than 200 members, is growing with
European chapters, and will probably picket for access to government UFO
information in a city near you.