Operation Trojan Horse: The Classic Breakthrough Study of UFOs

by John A. Keel

  Project Blue Book’s published record clearly illustrates the official attitude of genuine disinterest. In the 1955 Project Blue Book Special Report No. 14, the only accurate summary of AF statistics, 689 sightings were listed as “unknown.” Fourteen years later, the Air Force was claiming that a total of 701 sightings were “unidentified,” an increase of only 12 over the 1955 total. Air Force statistics were shamelessly juggled year after year, and even the columns of figures were incorrectly added.

  On December 17, 1969, Air Force Secretary Robert C. Seamans Jr., announced the termination of Project Blue Book, and Blue Book’s files were retired to the archives at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Thus ended an era of almost unbelievable irresponsibility, on the part of both the Air Force and the UFO enthusiasts who had set themselves up as critics of the Air Force’s noninvestigations.

  Because the phenomenon is partly reflective, it had played the censorship game in earnest and had worked to manipulate the cultists into believing that some great official conspiracy was under way. Mystery men appeared in flap areas and warned, even threatened, witnesses into silence. Some of these men appeared in Air Force uniforms, and when fragments of these stories reached the cultists, they howled even more about “suppression of the truth.”

  I have investigated many of these cases myself, and I quickly discovered, to my amazement, that these “Air Force officers” all looked alike. They were slight, olive-skinned men with Oriental eyes and high cheekbones. Some witnesses said they looked like Italians; others thought they were Burmese or Indian. I reported this to the Pentagon and found that other cases had been turning up, and that military intelligence, and even the FBI, were involved in investigating some of them. Early in 1967, I published a newspaper feature on these Air Force impersonators, and it was reprinted around the world.

  “Three men in black” have repeatedly driven up to the homes of witnesses in their shiny black Cadillacs to frighten the people into silence. In nearly every case, these men have been described as short, dark-skinned Orientals. For years many of the UFO cultists have believed that these men in black were CIA and Air Force agents, just as they believed that the government was tapping their phones and censoring their mail (much UFO mail seems to go astray). Recently New York’s District Attorney Frank Hogan revealed that it takes six men to maintain a full surveillance on a single phone. Phone tapping is a very expensive procedure, and we can seriously question the need or justification for the Air Force or CIA maintaining taps on the phones of teenagers and little old ladies involved in UFO research. But if the phenomenon itself is electromagnetic in nature, it might be able to manipulate our telephone systems just as it seems to manipulate automobile ignition systems.

  The real truth is that the UFO cultists have been played for suckers for years, not by the government, but by the phenomenon. Mischievous, even malicious, rumors and nonsense have been passed on to them through the contactees, and they have accepted this rubbish as fact. Other classic UFO stories had their beginnings as clearly labeled fiction in cheap men’s magazines. One such story told how a reporter saw officials conducting a hairy spaceman through the White House. A newspaper columnist wryly printed excerpts from it without comment, and it created a sensation among the UFO cultists for years. Irresponsible tabloid newspapers have cashed in on the temporary waves of UFO interest by publishing completely fictitious flying saucer stories as fact. The celebrated tale of a UFO crashing on the island of Spitsbergen in the early 1950s was spawned by such a newspaper and is still being republished as an example of “government suppression.” (The Norwegian government denied the story, naturally.)

  Situations have been engineered by the phenomenon to make the UFO cultists suspicious of the government and even of one another. The in-fighting between the various groups deserves special study by itself. Many cultists are living in genuine terror. Some no longer trust their own families. Several have suffered nervous breakdowns.

  Ironically, the UFO organizations have, themselves, suppressed and censored more UFO reports than the Air Force. When the National Investigation Committees on Aerial Phenomena received a report from one of their members on the sighting by Betty and Barney Hill in 1961, in which they suffered extraordinary effects after they saw human-like figures in the window of a UFO, they hid the full report in their office. The whole story would never have become public knowledge if author John Fuller had not stumbled across the Hills years later during his own independent UFO investigations.

  The demonological events discussed in this book have so baffled and confused the UFO organizations that they have dismissed most of them as hoaxes without any kind of investigation. In many cases, they have publicly branded the witnesses liars, publicity nuts, and mercenaries trying to exploit the subject.

  There’s no doubt that the UFO cultists themselves have thwarted effective research into these matters, and their antics have created the atmosphere of ridicule which surrounds the subject and makes qualified professionals wary of becoming involved.

  By early 1967, I had decided that the evidence for extraterrestrial origin was purely circumstantial, and I began to hint in print that perhaps a more complex situation was involved. To my astonishment, my rejection of the outer-space hypothesis focused the wrath and suspicion of the UFO cultists on me. Rumors were circulated nationwide that I was a CIA agent. Later, contactees began to whisper to local UFO investigators that the real John Keel had been kidnapped by a flying saucer and that a cunning android who looked just like me had been substituted in my place. Incredible though it may sound, this was taken very seriously, and later even some of my more rational correspondents admitted that they carefully compared the signatures on my current letters with the pre-rumor letters they had received.

  Let’s not underestimate the skill of our intelligence organizations. Let’s assume that they have been competent enough to collect and assimilate the same kinds of data dealt with in this book. I think we can safely assume that they figured all of this out many years ago and that they are coping with it in their own way as quietly as possible. The huge National Security Agency building outside of Washington, D.C., is filled with James Bond-type electronic gear, and the organization’s annual budget exceeds the gigantic budget of our space program. I don’t think all that money is going into bureaucratic ratholes. I don’t think all those computers and supersophisticated gadgets are sitting there collecting dust. The NSA has orbited ELINT (electronic intelligence) satellites equipped with delicate sensing devices which can instantly detect electromagnetic disturbances on the earth’s surface. Other satellites carry infrared detection devices, and still others are designed to eavesdrop on all forms of communication. In 1960, Project Saint was announced; this was a plan to orbit special satellites designed to pursue and investigate unidentified satellites. No further information was ever released on this interesting project.

  Even Howard Menger, the contactee, had a few kind words for the CIA (which is merely a subsidiary branch of the National Security Agency) when he said, in 1967, “…Around this great country of ours is a jungle, whether you know it or not, and there are specialized men who know how to deal on the same level with these people on the outside trying to get in and conquer us. These people are trained to deal with these other people on their level. That’s the only way we will ever survive, so don’t knock the CIA, please.”

  It is probable that some small group within the U.S. government first began to suspect the truth about UFOs during World War II. There is curious evidence that Adolf Hitler and his inner circle had some knowledge of the ultraterrestrials and may have even made an effort to communicate with them. Perhaps there were even “men in black” episodes of sabotage and subversion that brought the phenomenon to the attention of the wartime Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and other intelligence groups in the United States and elsewhere. At least we do know that the “Foo Fighters,” the World War II name for UFOs, caused considerable concern both in Europe and the Pacific. Subsequent ev
ents in the United States in 1945, including the still-unexplained disappearance of six airplanes off the coast of Florida on a single, clear day, probably led to serious and secret investigations.

  If the top leaders of the Royal Air Force, such as Sir Victor Goddard, are aware of these incredible facts, then we must certainly admit that the American intelligence community must also have stumbled onto this many years ago. The official anti-UFO position now makes a great deal more sense.

  Because our long-haired Venusians are only mischievous impostors, they dare not land on the White House lawn. If a marvelous flying saucer should sweep over crowded Times Square on New Year’s Eve and land with its brilliant lights flashing and its antennas rotating, and an awe-inspiring Michael Rennie type should strut down the ramp in a tight, metallic spacesuit, in front of the crowds and TV cameras, it is very probable that he would be whisked off to the Pentagon, never to be heard from again, and a general—or the President—would hold a press conference and soberly reveal that the whole thing was merely a publicity stunt for a new science-fiction movie. It is the nature of the game that such a movie would probably even be in the can, and the wonderful flying saucer would actually be an exact duplicate of the prop used in the film. We have actually been subjected to a long series of hoaxes of this type for the past twenty years, although somewhat less dramatic than this example.

  No responsible government could really attempt to explain this bizarre situation to the general public. Our military establishment has therefore been forced to follow a simpler policy, denying the reality of the phenomenon without trying to explain it. If flying saucers are a cosmic hoax, then it follows naturally that many of man’s basic beliefs may be based on similar hoaxes. No government is willing to expose these beliefs or become involved in the terrible controversies that would result from such exposure.

  The Air Force studies of the early 1950s, and my own recent independent investigations, proved that when the sighting data alone is reviewed quantitatively, it automatically negates itself. The individual sightings are not part of a whole but are part of something else. They form the point of the needle that the ultraterrestrials choose to show us. There are undoubtedly many objects in the sky that we never really notice, but which are a part of all this: strange clouds, weird birds and winged creatures, conventional-looking airplanes. They constitute the real phenomenon. And there are other objects, invisible to human eyes, but discernible, on occasion, to radar and to those people who are more attuned to receiving the signals from those unknown electromagnetic radiations around us.

  Sir Victor pointed out that he believed that most UFO sightings were made by people with psychic abilities, and by non-psychics who were standing in the auras of the real percipients and were, therefore, temporarily tuned in. There seems to be some merit to this hypothesis, incredible though it may seem.

  However, it would be very dangerous for us to exclude the possibility that a very small residue of sightings may be very real. Most scientists agree that there is a chance that there may be billions of inhabitable planets within our own galaxy, and there is always a chance that living beings from those planets might have visited us in the past, are visiting us now, or are planning to visit us in the future. To regard all UFO sightings as illusions, hallucinations, and paraphysical manifestations would expose us to a potentially volatile situation—an invasion from another world.

  There have been many apparently physical sightings and landings which produced markings on the ground and other evidence that the objects were solid machines. But if those events represent the presence of true manufactured spacecraft in our atmosphere, then the overall evidence suggests that they are following a long-range plan—a covert military-style buildup—which will culminate in hostile action.

  In psychic phenomena and demonology we find that seemingly solid physical objects are materialized and dematerialized or apported. There are many baffling cases of houses which appeared and disappeared mysteriously. In religious demonic possession, well documented by attending priests and doctors, the victims regurgitated impossible quantities of stones and even sharp steel needles. Apparently these foreign objects materialized in their bodies. Some victims have levitated to the ceiling and had to be forcibly tied to their beds to keep from floating away.

  Ufologists have constructed elaborate theories about flying saucer propulsion and antigravity. But we cannot exclude the possibility that these wondrous “machines” are made of the same stuff as our disappearing houses, and they don’t fly—they levitate. They are merely temporary intrusions into our reality or space-time continuum, momentary manipulations of electromagnetic energy. When they “lower their frequencies” (as the contactees put it) and enter a solid state, they can leave impressions on the ground. But to enter that state, they need some atoms from our world—parts of an airplane, an auto, or blood and matter from an animal or human being. Or, in some cases, they need to drain off energy from the human percipients or from power lines and automobile engines. This may seem like a fantastic concept, but we have wasted twenty years trying to simplify all this, trying to find a more mundane explanation. The fact is, all of the evidence supports our fantastic concepts more readily than it supports the notion that we are receiving visitors from Mars or Aenstria.

  But if we want to be properly cautious and objective, we find ourselves facing a double-barreled dilemma. On the one hand, all the real facts of the situation, the manifestations and physical effects of the phenomenon, seem to point to a negative, paraphysical explanation. The UFOs do not seem to exist as tangible, manufactured objects. They do not conform to the accepted natural laws of our environment. They seem to be nothing more than transmogrifications tailoring themselves to our abilities to understand. The thousands of contacts with the entities indicate that they are liars and put-on artists. The UFO manifestations seem to be, by and large, merely minor variations of the age-old demonological phenomenon. Officialdom may feel that if we ignore them long enough, they will go away altogether, taking their place with the vampire myths of the Middle Ages.

  On the other hand, suppose that some other world, either from another planet or from a region composed of different frequencies and a different kind of physical matter, had designs on this world. Suppose that their time cycle was radically different from ours, and they could launch a plan for take-over that could require thousands of our years to complete? While they were making preparations for this invasion, it would be necessary for them to divert us, just as we planted all kinds of false evidence to convince Adolf Hitler that the invasion of Europe was going to take place far from Normandy. It would then be logical for them to instrument a plan of psychological warfare to keep us confused and even to convince us that flying saucers don’t really exist at all. The few thousand people who took a real interest in the UFO reports could be deftly diverted by contacts which assured them that the flying saucers were really being operated by “nice guys,” by Big Brothers from outer space who had our best interests at heart.

  Contactee Howard Menger reported, “They use people not only from this planet, but people from Mars as well.[15] And also other people of your own planet—people you don’t know about. People who live unobserved and undiscovered as yet…”

  What kind of “undiscovered people”? Could he have meant the elementals?

  The late General Douglas MacArthur, a man who must have been privy to much secret information, repeatedly made public statements asserting that the next war would be an interplanetary conflict with mankind uniting to combat “evil forces” from some other world.

  Having been trained in psychological warfare during my stint as a propaganda writer for the U.S. Army, I have been particularly conscious of this double-barreled threat and particularly concerned over the obvious hoaxes and manipulations apparently designed to foster both belief and disbelief in the reality of the flying saucers. I have tried objectively to weigh all of the factors, pro and con, throughout my investigations and in this book. Frankly,
I have gone through periods when I was absolutely convinced that those Trojan horses were, indeed, following a careful plan designed to ultimately conquer the human race from within. The physical Trojan horse concept seemed alarmingly valid to me for a long time.

  But I am now inclined to accept the conclusion that the phenomenon is mainly concerned with undefined (and undefinable) cosmic patterns and that mankind plays only a small role in those patterns. That “other world” seems to be a part of something larger and more infinite. The human race is also a part of that something, particularly those people who seem to possess psychic abilities and who seem to be tuned in to some signal far beyond our normal perception.

  Perhaps the U.S. government was equally concerned with the Trojan horse possibility in the 1940s, and perhaps that explains the peculiar official machinations of the early years. Nobody in Washington has been inclined to confess to me that this is so, but at a press conference in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower told reporters that flying saucers were hallucinatory and existed only in the minds of the observers. In 1966, then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara called them illusions. So it seems probable that, after a period of paranoia in the 1940s and early 1950s, the government settled upon a negative hypothesis based, undoubtedly, on the same kind of material I have outlined here.

  If intelligent beings actually do exist on Ganymede or Andromeda, it is even very possible that they, too, have been observing and wondering about the same kinds of unidentified flying objects that haunt our planet. Our astronauts and cosmonauts have frequently sighted mysterious objects deep in space—objects which appeared and disappeared just as enigmatically as the things flitting about the highways and farm fields of earth. The UFO phenomenon may be universal. And it may be unsolvable.