by Nick Redfern
NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, was the brainchild of a somewhat-maverick physicist named Thomas Townsend Brown, and was established in 1956, the very same year that saw the publication of Gray Barker’s They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers. For the most part, the members of the group were staunch advocates of the theory that UFOs have alien origins. NICAP was known for utilizing science and clear thinking with respect to UFO investigations, and was certainly the most well-respected public UFO research body in the United States from its beginnings to the mid-1960s. At least part of that respect was borne out of NICAP’s prestigious board of governors, which included Vice Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, who was the first head of the CIA, and Rear Admiral Delmer S. Fahrney, chief of the U.S. Navy’s guided-missile project.
There are those, however, who believe that certain NICAP investigators significantly overstepped their bounds on a number of occasions when interviewing UFO witnesses. The result was that they may very well have come across as genuine Men in Black. Moseley, for example, is absolutely sure that just such a scenario occurred at the height of the NICAP days: “Doesn’t a name like that—the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena—sound like an official government group, to you? They weren’t official, of course; they were just UFO researchers, like me and you, really. But, if you’re some yokel out in the sticks who has seen a UFO, and maybe it gets mentioned in the press, and someone comes to your door and flashes a NICAP ID card and says ‘I don’t want you to talk about this,’ you might think it’s the government, or those Men in Black that people talk about. And some of the NICAP people would say that because what every saucer group wants is the exclusive on the story.”
Jim Moseley’s perspective is echoed by Brad Steiger: “I’m quite certain that in some cases—and I actually accused some of the officials of this organization face-to-face—NICAP were responsible for some of the Men in Black tales. I know that some of their pimple-faced teenagers were coming up to people’s houses, ringing doorbells, and saying: ‘I’m from NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena from Washington, D.C.’” Steiger continues, “You wouldn’t have to push it too far when people heard the words ‘from Washington’ and the person flashes a little identity card, to think you have been visited by the Men in Black. And there’s no field of paranormal research that is more jealous than the UFO field. So, if these pimpled teenagers are thinking, ‘This is my case; this one belongs to me,’ then they might have taken—or confiscated—photos and evidence from the witnesses and warned people, ‘Don’t talk to anyone else.’ So, I think that definitely accounted for some of the Men in Black stories.”
The scenario of researchers being perceived as Men in Black occurs across the pond as well. Back in 1958 an author named Gavin Gibbons penned a science-fiction novel titled By Space Ship to the Moon, the subject of which was the landing of an alien spacecraft on the Berwyn Mountain Range in North Wales, Great Britain. Some might say that Gibbons was a true prophet: On the night of January 23, 1974, an event occurred in the Berwyns that has come to be known within the UFO research community as the British Roswell. It confounded the locals and provoked a cascade of rumors and stories to the effect that an alien spacecraft had crashed on the mountains. Further rumors suggested that a secret military operation was put into place to recover the UFOs and its unearthly crew, and then transfer the remains to secure governmental establishments for study. Since that fateful night, the issue of what did or did not occur in the Berwyn Mountains has been the subject of several books, intense controversy, heated debate, and, at times, fury. That something happened at around 8:30 p.m. on the night in question is not in doubt, however.
Tales of strange lights in the sky, explosions in the Berwyns, cordoned-off mountain roads, and government conspiracies to hide the dark, alien truth abound, and have done so for decades. Researcher Andy Roberts, however, takes a more down-to-earth approach to the story. He believes that the UFO-crash scenario was nothing more than the misperception of a meteorite shower and a localized earth tremor, poachers at work on the dark mountainside armed with powerful lamps, and paranoia and rumor run rampant. Others believe that a military aircraft carrying Top Secret equipment crashed on the Berwyn range. But whatever the truth of that strange January 1974 affair, it also gave rise to an MIB legend.
During the course of his intense research into the case, Roberts learned that, at the height of the controversy, sensational rumors were flying around at a local level. They were rumors—spread in hushed tones—of mysterious officials descending on the scene to investigate the curious series of events. One person, Val Walls, told Roberts, “There were people staying at the local pub who didn’t bother with anybody. There were two guys staying there but they never came into the pub. They slept there. They didn’t communicate with anybody; they definitely kept themselves to themselves” (Roberts 2010).
Roberts rightly notes that these strangers have been elevated in the Berwyn Mountain UFO legend to the status of government officials gathering information about the UFO crash, or—worse still—Men in Black sent to silence witnesses. But is either scenario true? No; probably not. Roberts believes he has the answer to the MIB of the Berwyns. Having reviewed the now-available official documentation on the incident, he believes the perceived Men in Black were, in reality, personnel from the Institute of Geological Services who were on-site looking into the earthquake angle of the riddle, and who, records show, did indeed take accommodation in local hostelries during the course of their brief stay. Sometimes, a meteorite shower is just a meteorite shower, an earth tremor is just an earth tremor, and a mysterious group of MIB is demonstrated to be nothing of the sort.
Here is a more recent, and wholly innocent example of how mistaken identity and misinterpretation have played central roles in generating and nurturing certain tales of the Men in Black. The case at issue is that of an Asheville, North Carolina investigator of all things weird, and the author of the acclaimed book Magic, Mystery and the Molecule: Micah Hanks. He has a thought-provoking tale to relate: “In my early days of research, I was mistaken for a Man in Black. Really! Almost a decade ago, I investigated a famous haunting here in Asheville that became known as the Pink Lady. This was a female ghost seen in town at the Grove Park Inn.” So the legend goes, in 1920—seven years after the inn was opened—a female guest fell, or was deliberately pushed, to her death from a room in which literary legend F. Scott Fitzgerald stayed during a visit to Asheville in the 1930s. Today, her spectral form, bathed in eerie pink smoke (hence the name) is believed by many to haunt the rooms and corridors of the old inn.
“Years ago,” Hanks continued, “when I would go to the Grove Park Inn, because it’s such a high-society establishment I always thought it was appropriate to dress a little nicer, in a black suit. And every now and again, I’d take an electromagnetic field detector, or a Geiger counter, and I’d try and discreetly bring these out when no one was around, to see if anything would register—the Pink Lady, I mean.”
Then something unusual happened: Rumors and reports began to surface around Asheville of a strange, black-clad character roaming the corridors of the Grove Park Inn, asking unusual questions and displaying an array of strange-looking devices. Who was this mysterious visitor? Was the inn now playing host to a Man in Black, as well as a Lady in Pink? Well, not quite, as Micah Hanks now reveals: “When I heard these stories about the Man in Black from other people that had investigated the haunting at the Grove Park Inn, I began to think, That sounds very familiar, and just like what I was doing. But then I realized these stories were about me!” Hanks stresses that there was never any intention his part to deliberately create MIB mythology at the Grove Park Inn, but he readily admits, “I guess when you’re wearing a black suit and carrying gadgets, and asking questions about the paranormal, the connotations are going to be made. So, I think this is a part of the MIB mystery, but not a significant part.”
A further story come
s from Jenny Randles, a longtime researcher and author of the UFO phenomenon who resides in the British Isles. In January 1997, when, somewhat ironically, she had just completed writing her own book on the Men in Black, Randles paid a visit to her bank in the town of Buxton, where she was living at the time. As she left the bank, Randles was startled by the sight of an old, dark Jaguar displaying a 1962 license plate. A smartly dressed man in a suit stood by the vehicle, and had his eyes firmly fixed on the astonished UFO author. That Randles had personally investigated a number of British MIB cases in which the mystery men were driving black Jaguars only increased the tension.
Was Randles about to be silenced by a British-based Man in Black? Not at all. She elected to approach the man, and learned that he was simply a devotee of vintage cars.
Just occasionally, as this chapter has demonstrated, a Man in Black is merely an innocent party who happens to be dressed in dark clothes.
18
G-Men
In rare instances we can definitively prove that the secret hand of officialdom was at work. I am talking, of course, about those cases in which the Men in Black originated not from outer space, the depths of the human mind, some unfathomable netherworld, or as a result of mistaken identity, but from within the bowels of government itself. Granted, such 100-percent verifiable cases are very few and far between, but they most assuredly do exist—although most of them seem to date from decades past, rather than from the modern era.
In 1968, British UFO researcher John Harney wrote an article on the Men in Black that referenced a UFO case that contained more than a few MIB elements. Harney said that in February 1960, a man named Joe Perry, a resident of Grand Blanc, Michigan, took a photograph of an alleged UFO, and was soon thereafter visited by two mysterious, dark-suited men posing as FBI agents who duly confiscated his presumed otherworldly evidence. The words of Harney strongly suggest that if Perry’s visitors were posing as agents of the FBI, then they clearly had to have had very different origins, correct? Wrong. The Freedom of Information Act has allowed us to dig further into the Perry saga, and doing so has demonstrated that Perry’s Men in Black really were FBI agents!
Now-declassified FBI files tell an intriguing story: Perry, who at the time of his UFO experience operated a pizza restaurant in Grand Blanc, Michigan, had, recorded the FBI, “been a professional photographer for 30 years,” and often took pictures of the moon with his homemade telescope. At around 1 a.m. on February 21, 1960, Perry told two visiting FBI agents, after his story was published in the pages of the local Flint Journal newspaper, that on the night at issue he took a number of photographs of the moon, duly developed them in his very own darkroom, and while looking at them later, was astonished to notice that one showed what appeared to be nothing less than “a flying object somewhere between the end of his telescope and the surface of the moon” (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1960).
A highly excited Perry quickly had the picture blown up, which made the unidentified object much clearer. As he carefully scrutinized the new version of the photograph, he could see that it appeared to show a clearly delineated, structured vehicle that was oval-shaped, had a flat bottom, seemed to be surrounded by a fluorescent glow, and even appeared to have “a vapor trail running behind it.” The FBI agents noted in their report that Perry “has taken over one thousand pictures of the moon and has never seen anything resembling this object” (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1960).
Certain that he had captured something truly anomalous on film, Perry duly furnished the two FBI agents with the original, priceless photograph, and they then sent it to the Office of Special Investigations at Selfridge Air Force Base. The photo was never seen again—at least, not outside of official channels. Notably, when this particularly conspiratorial aspect of the story reached the media, the Flint Journal chose to quote the words of a spokesperson for the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), who had informed Perry, much to his justified concern as it later transpired, that, “From past experience with photographic evidence we consider it unlikely that you will ever see your picture again” (Wilhelm 1960).
An angry Perry responded by contacting the FBI, which merely commented that the picture was now in the “proper hands,” to which Perry responded, “The only way I will be satisfied if I don’t get it back is if the government tells me it is top secret” (Wilhelm 1960). In the weeks and months that followed, a considerable file was built up by the FBI with respect to Perry’s photograph, much of which dealt with his concerns about trying to retrieve his personal property from officialdom.
Matters were resolved, to the satisfaction of the FBI and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations at least, when, according to the official documentation on the affair, Perry was duly advised that “what appeared to be a flying object in this slide is actually a part of the negative which was not properly developed.” Naturally, this statement did very little to satisfy those who insisted that the photograph genuinely showed some form of structured vehicle that had its origins on another world—and particularly so Joseph Perry, who viewed the whole situation through mystified and suspicious eyes (Wilhelm 1960).
Possibly recognizing that this controversy was only going to continue unless quick steps were taken to curb the situation, the FBI insisted to all inquirers that this was a matter for the Air Force, and only the Air Force, and thus duly steered all incoming letters in their direction. In time, the controversy surrounding the matter of Joseph Perry’s missing photograph faded away—but not before, as a formerly classified FBI document reveals, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ominously wrote with respect to the involvement of the Flint Journal in promoting Joseph Perry’s story: “It was necessary for this Bureau to straighten the record with that newspaper” (Federal Bureau of Investigation 1960).
This story contains all of the central facets of countless Men in Black incidents: There was Perry’s initial photograph of a UFO that kicked off the controversy; then there is the fact that the same photograph subsequently vanished into oblivion after being handed over to two characters flashing government identity cards who, given that they were FBI agents, were likely dressed in dark suits and Fedora- or Homburg-style hats; and there was the veiled allusion to the possibility that the local media may even have been intimidated into silence about the case. If today we did not have open access to the FBI’s files on Joseph Perry’s 1960 UFO experience, this case might justifiably be placed within a Men in Black context. That we do have the files, however, is evidence that at least some MIB do indeed originate within the world of officialdom.
Acclaimed UFO expert Brad Steiger has said, “There were definitely people—military, FBI, or whoever—who did come around in the early years of flying saucers to check things out, because I had a journalist friend who thought all of this—UFOs—was nonsense.”
Steiger’s friend soon learned that UFOs were certainly not nonsense. One night, while in his office, Steiger heard what sounded very much like someone creeping up the outside stairs. He was not wrong: Upon opening the door, Steiger saw it was his friend. “He was a tough guy,” recalls Steiger, “but that night he was on the verge of tears. He had spotted what he thought was a UFO—in his mind, ‘those crazy things that Brad was talking about all the time’—and he had taken some pictures. And earlier that night, at his hotel room, there were three men, which he swears were Air Force officers. And they told him he must deliver the film and hand everything over. Of course, as a journalist who earns his living with a camera, he refused. Finally, they got rough and they said, ‘This is for your good and the good of your country, the good of your world and the good of the universe.’ It was straight out of the Men in Black. So, his question to me was along the lines of, ‘Is all this stuff real?’ He did surrender the film.”
And as Steiger admits, “Some military people may not have polished up on their manners and did come across as a little brusque.”
For yet another example that proves some Men in Black are govern
ment operatives, we have to leap forward two years after the Joseph Perry affair. We also have to make a quick trip across the pond.
Between 1991 and 1994, Nick Pope, a now-retired employee of the British Ministry of Defense who was attached to an outfit of the MoD called the Secretariat of the Air Staff, spent approximately 20 percent of his working week officially investigating UFO sightings and encounters, specifically from within the confines of his office. In other words, Pope never conducted on-site investigations of UFO activity, nor did he ever visit the homes of UFO witnesses to conduct personal, face-to-face interviews. Although a firm believer in the notion that some UFOs have extraterrestrial origins, he takes a very dim view of the idea that some Men in Black might be clandestinely operating from within certain British government and military departments and traveling the country silencing witnesses.
Pope solidly related his opinions to me on such matters:
Men in Black stories? From what I understand, at some of these UFO conferences, the front rows are taken up by Walter Mitty–type characters who dress in black with sunglasses and take notes on everything. If there was one thing that anyone who was trying to be unobtrusive would not do, it would be that. I think any allegations about people turning up on someone’s doorstep and wanting to know about UFO sightings, what you’re dealing with is either people who are lying, and saying it happened when it didn’t, or, perhaps more likely, people who have genuinely been visited by someone, but where that someone is some Walter Mitty–type character who likes to think he’s some sort of James Bond secret agent. If anyone’s going around saying “You must keep quiet about that,” it’s the exact opposite of what we do at the Ministry of Defense. So, it’s nothing to do with us.