Few Americans know that in 1953 our super-secret Central Intelligence Agency turned a stack of Flying Saucer data over to a panel of five leading scientists. You'll find brief reference to this symposium on page 275 of the late Captain Ruppelt's book, "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects".

"By early January 1953 the scientists who were to be members of our panel of experts had been contacted and agreed to sit in judgment of the UFO. In turn, we agreed to give them every detail about the UFO. We had our best reports for them to read, and we were going to show them the two movies that some intelligence officers considered as the 'positive proof' -- the Tremonton Movie and the Montana Movie . . ."

For several days there in Washington Ruppelt did just that. His audience was: Lloyd V. Berkner, Associated Universities, Inc.; S.A. Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories; H.P. Robertson, Chairman, California Institute of Technology; Luis W. Alvarez, University of California; and Thornton Page, John Hopkins University. The jury was stacked. None of these scientists had ever seen a Flying Saucer. They had not felt the unpleasant, hair-raising thrill of being alone in a jet fighter cockpit, at 35,000 ft. on a dark night, and of suddenly seeing a blazing UFO come zooming at them out of the black void.

Prosecutor Ruppelt didn't believe in Flying Saucers either, but he was intellectually honest enough to face the facts of the best documented sightings by the Air Force's best observers and technical equipment. The best he could get from the 1953 panel was a negative conclusion from a positive base: "We as a group do not believe that it is impossible for some other celestial body to be inhabited by intelligent creatures. Nor is it impossible that these creatures could have reached such a state of development that they could visit the earth. However, there is nothing in all of the so-called 'flying saucer' reports that we have read that would indicate this is taking place."

After this Ruppelt thought Dr. Berkner and the others would recommend that Project Blue Book, the Saucer research project, be cut back or even discontinued; but to his surprise the scientists instead urged that UFO research be expanded tremendously with a nationwide network of tracking stations! Furthermore, they recommended that the security classification be taken off all Flying Saucer data and the whole thing be made available to the public.

"Two or three weeks after the meeting of the panel of scientists in [2] Washington I received word that Project Blue Book would follow the recommendations the panel had made. I was to start implementing the plan right away . . ."

One of the first things Ruppelt did was to write a news release about the Tremonton film of a group of Flying Saucers. "When the Pentagon got the release they screamed. 'No!' No movie for the press and no release . . . we had a new publicity policy as of now -- don't say anything."

Two years later, when Ruppelt was writing his book in 1955, he noted that the "silence policy" was still in effect. At the writing of this article in August 1962 the policy is still in effect; this in spite of the urgent recommendations of Dr. Berkner and the other scientists who examined the data in 1953. There is a good reason for this, though neither Berkner, Ruppelt nor the others were fully aware of it at the time. Full knowledge of the Flying Saucers and their presence here is too powerful an idea for our civilization. It will destroy society as we now know it. However, if we still have enough youth and vitality as a nation, we can make the necessary changes and adjustments to this powerful new idea; and the forward look of Space Age scientists like Dr. Berkner can help us to make UFOs and the Visitors a part of our national life.

NICAP AND THE CIA

One of the Special Advisers to Major Donald Keyhoe's National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena is ex-Marine Ralph Mayher. While still in the service and living in Miami, Mayher was lucky enough to obtain movies of a UFO over Miami. He actually won a $100 prize from a Miami TV station as the first person to show up with a genuine photo of a Flying Saucer. A couple of years later Mayher was out of the service and working as a TV news cameraman in Cleveland. There two CIA agents called on him, took the Saucer film from him and turned it over to the Air Force. They also told him to keep his mouth shut about the whole thing. But Mayher told Keyhoe, and Keyhoe wrote to the head of the CIA, Allen Dulles, in March 1958, asking for an explanation of the incident. In a return letter the CIA sidestepped the issue by stating "since this subject is of primary concern to the Dept. of the Air Force we have referred your letter to that Department for a reply." (NICAP's UFO Investigator, June, 1958.)

Keyhoe says he received a similarly evasive reply from the Air Force. Neither agency would admit, in writing, any connection with Mayher or his Flying Saucer film. Sounds to your BSRA editor as though they were running scared.

Strangely enough, though ignoring the Mayher incident, the Air Force reply to Keyhoe contained a summary of the CIA UFO panel investigation in 1953! Suddenly declassified after five years, without explanation or apology. It was only then that the identities of the five scientists became known. If the news item in Keyhoe's June 1958 bulletin had been picked up by the wire services and flashed across the country into the front pages of the papers it would have electrified the nation.

[3]

"REPORT OF THE SCIENTIFIC PANEL ON UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS"

This report was dated 17 January 1953 and signed by the five scientists whose names we've already given above.

"1) The undersigned Panel of Scientific Consultants has met at the request of the Government to evaluate any possible threat to national security posed by Unidentified Flying Objects ("Flying Saucers") and to make recommendations. The Panel has received the evidence SS Presented by cognizant Government agencies, primarily the United States Air Force, and has reviewed a selection of the best documented incidents.

"2) As a result of its consideration, the Panel concludes: That the evidence presented on Unidentified Flying Objects shows no indication that these phenomena constitute a direct physical threat to national security. We firmly believe that there is no residuum of cases which indicates phenomena which are attributable to foreign artifacts capable of hostile acts and that there is no evidence that the phenomena indicate a need for the revision of current scientific concepts.

"3) In the light of this conclusion, the Panel recommends: That the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired. We suggest that this aim may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena."

The above abridged report leaves a lot of $64 questions about the UFO phenomenon unanswered; but be it said to the credit of the scientists, they urged that the public be fully informed of the matter. The fact that we haven't been so informed speaks volumes for the existence of the so-called "secret government" of the United States and other nations. It also indicates a distressing naivete on the part of the panel. We go into this in great detail in our "Flying Saucers On the Moon" talk, 41 pages, illustrated, mimeo, now available here at BSRA Hdq. We are grateful that as far back as 1953 this group of leading scientists should take such a straightforward approach to the Saucer problem.

Basically, the problem is one of understanding; or more specifically education. In 1953 Dr. Berkner was president of Associated Universities, Inc. This is the organization which managed our big atomic research lab on Long Island, Brookhaven. He was also a leader on the committees which organized and directed the International Geophysical Year. He is now a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee and Chairman of the Space Science Board of the National Academy of Sciences. What a comfort to know this man has had a thorough Air Force briefing on Flying Saucer data, and came out wanting to know more, much more about UFOs.

In the late 1950s a group of Texas millionaires became painfully aware of the fact that Texas needed more brainpower. Too many college grads were discouraged by the Bible-belt mentality of the Southland and were moving to the East coast or the West coast for a more stimulating intellectual climate. The Space Age industries of rocketry and electronics required intellectual brilliance. They tended to build up in the [4] areas close by the graduate schools of the northern universities. Ten years ago Stanford was surrounded by empty fields. Now it is surrounded by millions of dollars worth of industry. Oil and gas are basic industries in Texas. They might run out someday, or even be made suddenly obsolete by a radical new power source, such as the space drive of the Flying Saucer!

The man who sparked the drive for a center of graduate studies for Texas is Tom Jonsson, head of Texas Instruments, Dallas. He chose Southern Methodist University there. Several years ago he said, "Oil is finite. The thing we have to do is start mining men's minds." He knew Dr. Berkner. The atomic scientist was on his board of directors. He picked up the challenge from Jonsson and carried it a step further: build an advanced studies center for the whole Southwest, not just SMU alone. The Texas millionaires agreed to pick up the tab.

According to the Dallas Morning News of June 13, 1961, this is how Dr. Berkner "sees the objectives of the huge research center to be located somewhere in North Dallas County, which will employ at least 2,000 persons and take up at least 2,000 acres. The first step is to produce 2,000 PhDs a year by 1975 from the 17 colleges of the Southwest. The second step will be to organize a Central Research Facility for basic research. It will provide advanced laboratories accessible to the scientists of the faculties and of industry in the region."

Undergraduate schools teach knowledge. Graduate schools teach creativity, according to Dr. Berkner. "Creativity rarely appears unless it is trained. Thomas Edison would have a tough time today. He was limited in his education, but that was all the education he needed at the time."

Speaking at a graduate symposium in March of this year Dr. Berkner said, "The university is no longer a desirable appendage to community life; the university must be at the very center of community development; it must work as an integral part of the community if society is to survive as a productive and happy group of citizens."

He took note of the fact that the problem of national survival is even more important than that of community welfare, and referred to Russia's ambitious educational program which will graduate 190,000 science and engineering students this year, against our 90,000 and asked, "How long can we stay ahead?"

"We must recognize that in the world struggle against communism military force is at a standoff. Military power -- if kept effective -- can prevent military aggression, but by itself cannot win the struggle when fought on other levels. So, the Russians ask, 'If we cant lick 'em on the battlefield, where else might we win?' They turn naturally to the powerful new technology to capture its power for their side. This is the significance of Sputnik and its progeny.

"Command of this new technology requires post-graduate education to the doctor's degree and beyond -- not less than eight years beyond the high school diploma. And those communities that can produce and retain [5] men of education will have access to and control of the new technology, from which the industry and wealth of the future will flow."

His Graduate Research Center of the Southwest is doing just that. 85% of Texas electronics industry is concentrated in the and around Dallas. Varo Manufacturing Co. is in Garland, a Dallas suburb. This is the forward-looking firm that published the Gypsy Annotated edition of Jessup's "Case For the UFO". Even more significant for the belated intellectual development of the South is the choice of Houston as the administrative center for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

On balance, for the general health of the nation, this is a good thing. The ultra-conservative stranglehold on the economic and political life of the South is being broken and Space Age science will administer the final coup-de-grace. There's been a lot of Flying Saucer activity in and over Texas. Remember the Loveland landing of 1957? And the pilot who flew Mrs. Crabb and I to Los Angeles from Honolulu in 1957, saw a Flying Saucer on a Texas flight in 1953. He had radar confirmation of it.

With Dr. Berkner's background of Saucer briefings by the Air Force, and his graduate center in operation there at Dallas, there is the possibility of getting thorough and objective analyses of Saucer phenomena in that area, by a civilian agency. With the CIA watching, and the "silence policy" in effect, authoritative reports and graduate papers on the subject of UFOs may be watered down; nevertheless, the Space Age is generating a thirst for knowledge in the Bible belt; and the Graduate Research Center can organize and release that knowledge in an orderly way. Not revolution but evolution, Dr. Berkner says.

In 1953 he urged that Flying Saucers be stripped of their aura of mystery, and that UFO research be thrown open to the public. If his resolve still holds good nine years later, he now has the means of carrying it out. Look at the opportunity that lies before him as research plunges on into the invisible Ethers. The lowest three levels of matter are solids, liquids and gases. The first Ether is the fourth state of matter, fire. Science is now working with matter in the fourth state, pinch plasma for instance, ball lightning, and the fire ball of the atomic explosion. Space travel and the race to the moon will force Dr. Berkner and his cohorts to recognize the sex energies as matter in the fifth state, or the second Etheric world. Remember, the moon has been a sex symbol for as long as mankind has inhabited the earth.

As Dr. Berkner and the other space scientists come to understand these finer states of matter they will strip the Flying Saucers of their aura of mystery; just as the Mark Probert Controls did it for Meade Layne in 1947. We quote Control Lingford from page 11 of "The Coming of the Guardians": "When will you people learn that there are worlds within worlds -- the the Etheric worlds interpenetrate with your world and with each other . . . It seems impossible to get it through your heads that objects can pass from an etheric to another level of matter and then materialize there . . . The purpose of these Visitors is simply to compel your attention, to wake you up!"

References

  1. Ruppelt, Edward J. The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1956. Print. <http://amzn.to/1pk49v9> [Digital: <http://gutenberg.org/ebooks/17346>]
  2. Tremonton, Utah UFO film (1952). <http://www.ufocasebook.com/tremontonutah.html>
  3. Great Falls, Montana UFO film (August 15, 1950). <http://www.ufocasebook.com/greatfalls.html>
  4. http://www.bluebookarchive.org/ -- "The Project Blue Book Archive (PBBA) will contain all of the available documents of the Air Force investigations from the early AMC period through the end of PBB."
  5. "CIA EVADES, THEN DENIES CHARGE OF ATTEMPTED UFO CENSORSHIP; Air Force Releases Central Intelligence Agency Report Suppressed For Five Years." The U.F.O. Investigator June 1958: 4. Print. [Digital (PDF): <http://www.cufos.org/UFOI_and_Selected_Documents/UFOI/004%20JUNE%201958.pdf>]
  6. Crabb, Riley. Flying Saucers on the Moon: The Sixth Lecture in a Series. Vista, CA: Borderland Sciences Research Associates, 1960. Print. [Re-issue available through BSRF: <#B0040, "Flying Saucers on the Moon">]
  7. "The New Challenge: Chemicals, the Coming Southwest Colossus." Dallas Morning News 13 June 1961: n. pag. Print. <http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives/[...]the%20Coming%20Southwest%20Colossus>
  8. Jessup, Morris K. The Case for the UFO, Unidentified Flying Objects. Garland, Tex: Varo Mfg. Co, 1973. Print. <http://amzn.to/1qGblpd>
  9. Layne, Meade. The Coming of the Guardians: An Interpretation of the "Flying Saucers" As Given from the Other Side of Life. San Diego, CA: B.S.R.A, 1954. Print. [Expanded re-issue available through BSRF: <#B0016, "Coming of the Guardians">]