GENESIS (Projekt Saucer)

by W. A. Harbinson

  the Pentagon issued Air Force Regulation 200-2. AFR 200-2 was

  drafted purely as a public relations weapon in that it prohibited the

  release of any information about a sighting to the public or media,

  except when the sighting was positively identified as natural

  phenomena. In addition, while the previous regulation had stated that

  sightings should not be classified higher than restricted, the new

  regulation insured that all sightings would be classified as restricted.

  Then, even worse, in December 1953 the Joint Chiefs of Staff followed

  AFR 200-2 with Joint Army-Navy-Air Force Publication 146, and this

  made the releasing of any information to the public a crime under the

  Espionage Act, punishable by a one to ten year prison term or a fine of

  ten thousand dollars. And the most ominous aspect of JANAP 146 was

  that it applied to anyone who knew it existed – including commercial

  airline pilots. Needless to say, that regulation effectively put a stop to

  the flow of information to the public. To all intents and purposes – and

  contrary to public Air Force pronouncements – the UFO project had

  been plunged into secrecy.’

  Stanford thought of Albuquerque, of what Gardner had told him,

  of himself at the top of the stairs, dazed by incomprehension. That

  feeling was with him now, a growing fear that had no shape, and he

  began to understand that the facts were rarely what they appeared to be.

  He stared at O’Hara, his old CIA friend, wondering how such men

  managed to flourish without guilt or shame.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Stanford said. ‘I’m getting a bit confused here.

  You say that the CIA virtually directed the Robertson Panel, but that

  their main concern was national security – not a belief in the UFOs.’ ‘No,’ O’Hara said, now returning Stanford’s gaze. ‘I’m saying that

  our superiors hoodwinked us.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Listen,’ O’Hara said. ‘According to our superiors, the reason they

  wanted the interest in UFOs killed off was that the UFO reports were

  deemed a threat to national security: first, because a deliberately

  confused American public might think attacking enemy aircraft were

  merely UFOs; second, because a foreign power could exploit the UFO

  craze to make the public doubt official Air Force statements about

  UFOs and thereby undermine public confidence in the military; and,

  third, because in terms of psychological warfare, particularly in 1952,

  the communications lines of the whole country could be saturated by a

  few hundred phone calls, and such calls – which always came after a

  rush of UFO sightings – were putting the defense network in jeopardy.

  Those were the reasons they gave us for the need for suppression.’ ‘But you thought they were bullshit,’ Stanford said.

  ‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘If national security was the issue, then the

  suppression had a certain amount of logic. However, if national security

  was the only concern, why were we humiliating so many UFO witnesses

  and harassing our own ground and air crews into keeping their mouths

  shut? The only logical explanation was that the higher echelons of the

  Air Force were more concerned about the phenomenon than they were

  willing to admit, that they possibly knew more about it than they were

  willing to admit, and that for reasons of their own they were actively

  encouraging their most competent personnel from investigating the

  subject.’

  ‘Ruppelt seems to be the perfect example of all this.’

  ‘Right,’ O’Hara said. ‘It seemed to me that the more proven

  unknowns Ruppelt came up with – and most of his unknowns were

  unknowns – the more nervous the Air Force became. I first realized this

  when the CIA told us to lie to him about the recommendations of the

  Robertson Panel. I was even more convinced when they neglected to

  replace him when he went to Denver, and when they stripped Blue

  Book of its staff in his absence.’

  ‘Still,’ Stanford said, ‘that doesn’t necessarily mean too much. As

  you said, if they were genuinely worried about the sheer number of

  UFO reports clogging their communications network, they would have

  wanted those reports reduced to the minimum.’

  ‘Let me give you a better example,’ O’Hara said. ‘Shortly after

  scaring the hell out of the Air Force with the evidence presented to the

  Robertson Panel, Ruppelt came up with a couple of cases that virtually

  confirmed that the UFOs were intelligently controlled.’ He returned his

  gaze to the notes in his file. ‘The first was a sighting that occurred over

  Haneda AFB, now Tokyo International Airport, in Japan. This UFO

  was initially observed by two control tower operatives who saw a large,

  brilliant light in the northeast over Tokyo Bay. The light, which was

  moving, was observed through seven by fifty binoculars; it had a

  constant brilliance, was circular in shape, and appeared to be the upper

  half of a large, round, dark shape that was about four times the diameter

  of the light itself. Then, when it moved, the tower operatives saw a

  second, dimmer light on the lower edge of the dark, shadowy portion.

  This particular UFO was simultaneously tracked by radar and observed

  by intelligence officers as it flew back and forth across the central part

  of Tokyo Bay, sometimes almost hovering, then abruptly accelerating to

  three hundred miles an hour. It was pursued by, and deliberately eluded,

  an F-94 airplane.’

  ‘Deliberately?’

  ‘So it seemed,’ O’Hara said. ‘That sighting was thoroughly

  investigated by the FEAF intelligence officers in the area, then later

  investigated just as thoroughly by Ruppelt. Both agreed that it was

  definitely not a weather target, that it definitely wasn’t a star, that both

  visual and radar lock-ons had proved that it was solid and moving. They

  also proved that each turn the UFO made was constant, and that the

  straight “legs” between the turns were about the same length. Indeed,

  Ruppelt later wrote that the sketch of the UFO’s flight path reminded

  him very much of the crisscross patterns he used to fly during World

  War Two – and that the only time the UFO had seriously deviated from

  this pattern was when the F-94 tried to pursue it.’

  ‘And the second sighting?’

  ‘The second sighting was one that occurred on the night of 29

  July, 1952, when an F-94 attempted to intercept a UFO over eastern Michigan. This sighting was even more interesting in that there was a definite reason for every move the UFO made. First, it made a one hundred and eighty-degree turn because the F-94 was closing in on it. Next, it alternately increased and decreased its speed – but only increase its speed when the airplane was closing in on it, and always slowed down when it was just out of range of the airplane’s radar. Then, adding weight to his argument that such moves could not have been random, Ruppelt submitted a third report – the one he called the best unknown ever – of an F-84 pilot who chased a visually and radar located object right across Rapid City. According to the pilot and the radar operatives, that target accelerated and decelerated so that there was always precisely three miles between it and the F-84 – and it kept this up u
ntil the F-84 ran out of fuel. Later, both the pilot and the tower controller told Ruppelt that the UFO seemed to have some kind of automatic

  warning radar linked to its power supply.’

  ‘Okay,’ Stanford said. ‘Let’s assume the UFOs were intelligently

  controlled… But what has this to do with the CIA?’

  ‘Think,’ O’Hara said, studying his dwindling cigar, forming his

  lips into an O and blowing a thin steam of smoke. ‘If, as the CIA

  claimed, national security was their only concern, such sightings should

  have scared the hell out of them and made them want to know more.

  That, however, was not remotely the case. Instead of encouraging

  Ruppelt or utilizing his information, they went all out to stop him in his

  tracks – and they put him under surveillance.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that they claimed to be concerned with

  national defense, yet they didn’t want people watching the skies – a

  contradiction in terms.’

  ‘That’s right,’ O’Hara said.

  Stanford sighed and rubbed his eyes, feeling weary a slightly

  unnerved, convinced that he was getting out of his depth and

  approaching a danger zone. The contradictions were now obvious:

  national security did not explain them. It was clear that the Pentagon,

  the CIA and the Air Force were more concerned with the UFOs than

  they admitted and were still trying to hide that fact. He sighed again and

  studied O’Hara. His old friend’s blue eyes were clear. Stanford shook

  his head wearily from side to side and wondered if he was dreaming. ‘Keep going,’ he said.

  ‘Okay,’ O’Hara said. ‘I’ll stick to Ruppelt for the moment.

  Because what Ruppelt did, and how the Air Force reacted, are

  representative of the whole shady story and might tell you a lot.’ He

  stubbed his cigar out, put his hands behind his head, then leaned far

  back in his chair, now ignoring his notes. ‘I had in fact been watching

  Ruppelt from about August the previous year, 1952 – and the order to

  report his movements simply intrigued me. Bear in mind that at that

  particular time there was a sudden rash of UFO sightings. Now, those

  sightings were mainly the build up to the beginning of September, when

  every morning for about two weeks there were half a dozen or so new

  reports from the southeastern United States, notably Georgia and

  Alabama, a lot of them from the vicinity of the new, top secret Atomic

  Energy Commission complex at Savannah River, many more over

  Brookley Air Force Base near Mobile, Alabama. That same month the

  NATO naval forces were holding maneuvers off the coast of Europe,

  namely, Operation Mainbrace. On 20 September an American

  newspaper reporter and a group of pilots and flight deck crew on board

  an aircraft carrier in the North Sea observed a perfectly clear, silvery

  sphere moving across the sky just behind the fleet of ships. The object

  was large and appeared to be moving rapidly, and the reporter shot

  several pictures of it. The pictures were developed straight away and

  immediately studied by the intelligence officers aboard the carrier. The

  pictures were excellent, and the object looked like a large balloon – but

  no balloons were in the area and an analysis of all the photos proved

  conclusively that the object had been moving very fast. Then, the

  following day, six English Air Force pilots flying a formation of jet

  fighters over the North Sea saw a shiny, spherical object coming from

  the direction of the NATO fleet. They took after it and lost it, but when

  they neared their base one of the pilots noticed that the UFO was

  following them. He turned back toward it, but the UFO then turned

  away and outdistanced the RAF airplane in a matter of minutes. Finally,

  on the third day, a UFO was observed near the fleet, this time over the

  Topcliffe Aerodrome in England. A pilot in a British jet was sent in

  pursuit and managed to get close enough to describe the object as,

  quote, “round, silvery and white” and to note that it , quote, “seemed to

  rotate around its vertical axis and sort of wobble.” Then, when he tried

  to get closer, the UFO shot off…’

  O’Hara sat forward again, removed his hands from behind his

  head, propped his elbows firmly on the desk and cupped his chin in his

  hands.

  ‘Naturally, those sightings disturbed NATO,’ he said. ‘In fact,

  according to an RAF intelligence officer in the Pentagon, it was the

  Mainbrace sightings that finally forced the RAF to recognize the UFO

  phenomenon – a fact they have denied to this day. However, Ruppelt

  investigated the case and assessed all those sightings as unknowns.

  Unfortunately, this encouraged him to believe that he could now pin

  down the UFOs for good… and it was this very enthusiasm that led to

  the destruction of the most important system ever devised for UFO

  research.’

  ‘Don’t look so pleased,’ Stanford said. ‘Just tell me what

  happened.’

  ‘Okay. For a long time Ruppelt and Brigadier General Garland,

  then chief at the ATIC, had been looking for a way of getting concrete

  information about the UFOs. What they finally came up with was a plan

  for visual spotting stations to be established all over northern New

  Mexico – an area that had consistently produced more UFO reports than

  any other area in America. The visual spotting stations would be

  equipped with specially designed sighting devices, all of which would

  be linked with an instantaneous interphone system: any two stations

  could then track the same object and, from their separate readings,

  compute the UFO’s altitude and speed. Also at each visual spotting

  station would be instruments to measure the passage of any body that

  was giving off heat, any disturbance in the Earth’s magnetic field, and

  any increase in nuclear radiation at the time of the sighting.’ ‘I never heard of it,’ Stanford said, ‘but it sounds pretty

  impressive.’

  ‘It was,’ O’Hara said. ‘In fact, it was the first time that a proper,

  scientific system had been designed and submitted to the Air Force. It

  was virtually foolproof and if it had been adopted, we could have

  tracked, photographed and measured UFOs with unprecedented

  precision.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me the Air Force killed it off.’ ‘Right.’

  ‘Why?’

  O’Hara shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. All I know is that in December of

  that year – when Ruppelt’s plans went to Washington, DC, for approval

  – the US Navy was going to shoot the first H-bomb during Project Ivy,

  and some folks in the Pentagon, remembering the unidentifieds over

  Operation Mainbrace, directed Ruppelt to fly out to the test area and

  organize a UFO reporting team.’ O’Hara grinned laconically, spread his

  hands out in the air, then gently kicked his chair back, his legs lazily

  outstretched. ‘As it is with the CIA, so it is with the Pentagon: there are

  wheels within wheels and somewhere there’s a wheel you can’t reach.

  What I mean by this is that the order for Ruppelt to fly to Project Ivy

  came down in November, but by December his plans for
the visual radar

  sighting network were received in Washington… and shortly after that I

  received a phone call from the Pentagon, suggesting that I axe Ruppelt’s

  trip – which, naturally, I did.’

  ‘So what you’re suggesting is that certain people in the Pentagon

  are genuinely concerned with the UFOs, but that others, for some

  unknown reason, don’t want the UFOs to be investigated.’

  ‘What a bright boy you are.’

  Stanford stared past O’Hara’s head and saw the tops of the

  skyscrapers, the sun a silvery ball in the clear sky, the white clouds

  drifting languidly.

  ‘So,’ he said eventually, ‘were UFOs seen over Project Ivy during

  the shooting of the H-bomb?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ O’Hara said, ‘and neither did Ruppelt. Shortly

  after Project Ivy came the Robertson Panel and its consequences, and a

  few months later, in August ’53, Ruppelt, doubtless feeling bitter, left

  the Air Force for good. By the end of that year, Project Blue Book had a

  mere three staff members left, its investigating authority had been

  handed over to the 4602d – the inexperienced Air Intelligence Service

  Squadron – and most of its projects had been strangled systematically

  through a reduction in funds. Ruppelt, Fournet and Chops were no

  longer involved, and General Garland, once a strong Ruppelt supporter,

  never again raised his voice in defense of any UFO investigation.’ Stanford sat there saying nothing, not knowing what to say. He

  thought of Ruppelt and Gardner, of the deceptions and suppression,

  then he thought of Irving Jacobs in the desert and wondered what it all

  meant. The Air Force was covering up. The Pentagon was involved. The whole of Washington, DC, was concerned with the UFOs, but didn’t want them investigated. Stanford didn’t understand it. Nothing seemed to add up. The mystery deepened and swirled there before him

  like a black hole in space.

  ‘It just doesn’t make sense,’ he finally said. ‘What was the purpose

  of all that?’

  ‘I kept asking myself that question,’ O’Hara said. ‘The only thing I

  came up with was the thought that maybe there was something in the

  UFO phenomenon – and, more intriguing, that maybe the Air Force

  actually knew what the UFOs were and therefore wanted to keep the lid

  tight on the matter.’