[3]

The CIA at Work in South America

By Walter Buhler, M.D.

(BSRA has received some of Dr. Buhler's UFO reports in years past but we have to thank "Saucer Scoop", St. Petersburg, Florida and Carol Honey's "S.P. Newsletter", Box 2431, Fullerton, California for bringing this one to our attention. RHC.)

It was on April 19, 1966 when I received the unexpected visit of Christian Vogt, leader of an important UFO research group in Argentina. He announced his visit by telephone and arrived at my flat within a quarter of an hour.

Vogt is a tall, good looking fellow, healthy and muscular. His black eyes have a piercing look. As he is Swiss by origin we had our conversation in German. Years ago -- for some very concrete reasons -- I had ceased to trust Christian Vogt in matters of UFO research. However, I was careful not to show this fact at once and received him in a friendly way. I asked him if he had met Dr. Olavo T. Fontes who also lives in Rio; and he answered, "Well, it's just him I hoped we could ask to take part in this conversation at your flat. We are all short of time." I consented, of course, and in less than a quarter of an hour Dr. Fontes rang my doorbell. I did not feel good to have them both unexpectedly with me because I was not prepared, but I decided to come to the point with them.

I may add that in former years Fontes and I had worked together but after a while we had strong differences of opinion and we separated. At the time of our separation I had not hidden my suspicions that he was working for another agency which he kept secret. On this April day, however, we put ourselves at ease, took off our jackets, and started a friendly conversation. Vogt and Fontes did not try to interrogate me. The latter told me about his visit to the United States where he had met APRO in Phoenix (Dr. Buhler here probably means Jim and Coral Lorenzen's Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in Tucson, Arizona) and NICAP in Washington, and also Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The latter, he said, was working with the UFO research department of the USAF.

Then Fontes told me very spontaneously that Hynek was on the payroll of the Air Force. He added: "It is our wish that you should join our ranks and exchange your research with ours. Hynek is in a position to pass on your information. He is very keen in getting information from private sources. That's what the Air Force wants him to find."

As he got no immediate answer from me, he told me that all I would have to do in their research program would be to fill in the questionnaires and keep to a certain scheme of questioning my witnesses and registering my interviews. I would, of course, receive [4] financial aid to help pay for my work and expenses. (ED NOTE: could this and the next few lines be referring to aid from the CIA?) I did not show any special interest in this proposition because I wanted him to be more specific. And indeed, in the course of the conversation, I learned that the financial aid which I would get through Hynek would be quite substantial, even to the point where I could make a full-time job of it if I so desired.

SELL YOUR SOUL TO FASCISM?

As I am a medical doctor, I hid my astonishment but pointed out that through my bulletins Hynek would get all the news I could give him and it would cost him nothing! Finally, I got impatient and said that in working for Hynek I would be working for the military and I did not want to do this. I made it clear that as a University-trained Doctor of Medicine I thought it slightly beneath me to work for any military body. I asked Dr. Fontes laughingly if he did not think the intelligence quotient of a medical doctor slightly above that of the military. His answer: "That is why they engaged a scientist, Dr. Hynek. We could influence the military through his opinion and show them the new way to a correct research."

Both visitors told me that there were two reasons for this wish: (1) The number of landings, sporadically before, which had recently taken on a systematic character. (2) The famous BLACKOUT over the New York area, which was believed to have been generated by UFO disturbances, and the belief that the UFO activity would take on an accelerated crescendo in the future.

I told them I had not yet forgotten how, in 1958 and 1959, certain members of the "silence group" had tried to intimidate me, and how degrading their behavior had been. Fontes, who apparently knew the story quite well, asked me to which personalities I made allusion but I did not give him any names. Again and again Vogt (and) Fontes tried to convince me that only in cooperation with them could I get a maximum of information to which nobody else had access.

I told then frankly how Fontes' group was scaring people out of their wits instead of giving them confidence to tell their stories openly. One co-worker of Fontes, Commander Aurofebus B. Simoes, was out to frighten people into silence, those people who had made contact claims. His manner of putting questions and threatening those questioned was systematic and it showed a certain pattern behind which I suspected a plan from a higher agency. His being in close relation.(i.e., Fontes) with the United States consulate general in Sao Paulo could not help to deny such stories. (And every U.S. consul abroad has its CIA office and staff. RHC.)

In ending my first interview with Vogt and Fontes in April, I made it clear that my own position with the contactees would be spoiled and worthless if they learned that I was working with Dr. Fontes and his group of silencers. They were not so silly, these simple people, and they soon found out the difference in tactics between Fontes and myself. I added, "And I am interested in [5] getting the truth and nothing but the truth from these people, and I want to keep their confidence. Once it is lost you are out."

I had no other visit since then, neither from Vogt or Fontes. I am glad they were without too much tension, frank and honest, despite the touchy subject. I still have no intention whatsoever to join the ranks of Professor Hynek and the United States Air Force.

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CIA LABEL FOR UFO SIGHTERS: PSYCHOLOGICAL LIARS

Dr. Buhler only hints at the kinds of questions asked by official investigators, but Ray Palmer gave a clearer analysis in his editorial in "Flying Saucers" magazine for March 1967.

"The other night we received a telephone call from Kenneth Arnold, the man who started all the fuss about flying saucers in 1947 with his famous sighting of nine unidentified objects near Mt. Rainier. He had several things to discuss, one of them being his plan to go to Australia. . . another was his appearance at a flying saucer convention in New York City. . . a third the $300,000 grant to the western university to investigate flying saucers on a scholarly and scientific basis, and settle for once and for all what is really going on. . . The impression everybody has is that it is an investigation into the reality of flying saucers, and into their origin (interplanetary?) and whether or not they constitute a menace to our national security. This impression is false. The grant is designed to give an answer to one question -- what kind of people see (and report) flying saucers and why do they do it? In brief, the research is psychological -- an investigation of sighters, not saucers. . .

"They are going right back to the beginning and starting with Ken Arnold. He has been interrogated by telephone several times, in one instance a total of three hours. . . What annoys Ken is the fact that it is Ken they are investigating! Questions like: 'What makes you think flying saucers are real?' Instead of 'What did you see?'. . . The investigation now being carried on is not a duplication of the investigation of sightings, which the Air Force has carried out with astounding thoroughness during the past nineteen years; it is a brand new investigation of the people who have made these reports. Not having tracked the saucer to its lair, they are trying to track the report to its liar.

"No, they aren't going to call sighters liars, they are going to try to call them psychological liars, deluded, hysterical, psychopathic, victims of group or mob hysteria of the infections kind hoaxers, or fanatics. They aren't going to get anywhere! . . (Ken) believes that there is good reason to have little faith in the scientific integrity and ability of any of these investigators in view of the fact that they are prejudicial -- this prejudice being very simply, saucers do not exist. . . "

(Flying Saucers, Amherst, Wis. 54406, 6 issues a year, $2.50)