by Nick Redfern
Incredibly, Philcox told his FBI boss that “[Boyd] advised that it is not entirely impossible that the objects may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars.”
The CIA – inevitably – also expressed a great deal of concern in relation to this particular issue. The agency had secretly monitored the UFO phenomenon since 1947, the year in which the flying saucer phenomenon began and the CIA was created. Like the Air Force, the CIA chose to do their utmost to play down the seriousness of the situation. But, it wasn’t just UFO encounters that perturbed the agency. The CIA’s finest were particularly troubled by the scenario of the Russians spreading bogus tales of invading aliens and plunging the American people into a state of nationwide terror. And, on top of that, of the Russians’ actions leading to a potential jamming of U.S. emergency services – which could have been disastrous for the United States, had the Russians chose to launch a sneak attack. For months afterwards, the CIA debated on how best to try and prevent any such situation from occurring. It was on December 2, 1952 that the CIA’s Assistant Director H. Marshall Chadwell stated the following to the agency’s hierarchy: “Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.”
Chadwell did more than that; he prepared the following for the National Security Council:
The Director of Central Intelligence shall formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities as required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects.
Upon call of the Director of Central Intelligence, Government departments and agencies shall provide assistance in this program of intelligence and research to the extent of their capacity provided, however, that the DCI shall avoid duplication of activities presently directed toward the solution of this problem.
This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate.
The Director of Central Intelligence shall disseminate information concerning the program of intelligence and research activities in this field to the various departments and agencies which have authorized interest therein.
Two days later, the Intelligence Advisory Committee agreed with Chadwell’s plans and made a recommendation that “the services of selected scientists to review and appraise the available evidence in the light of pertinent scientific theories” should be employed. It was as a direct outcome of this development that what became known as the Robertson Panel was created; a group headed by Howard Percy Robertson, who was a highly respected consultant to the Agency. He was also a noted physicist, and the director of the Defense Department Weapons Evaluation Group.
It was Chadwell’s job to select a group of individuals who were deemed to be the right people to tackle the UFO problem – which included anxieties concerning Russian propaganda. The group included Luis Alvarez, physicist, radar expert (and later, a Nobel Prize recipient); Frederick C. Durant, CIA officer, secretary to the panel and missile expert; Samuel Abraham Goudsmit, Brookhaven National Laboratories nuclear physicist; and Thornton Page, astrophysicist, radar expert, and deputy director of Johns Hopkins Operations Research Office. In rapid time they plunged into the heart of the mystery.
There have been longstanding rumors in the field of Ufology that the CIA knows all about the truth of the UFO enigma, of the Roswell incident of 1947, and of what really goes down at Area 51. The Robertson Panel’s conclusions, however, suggested that UFOs did not have a direct, significant impact on the United States’ national security. Rather, the major worry of the panel was how the public mindset could, in theory, be affected by bogus tales of UFO encounters – and created and weaved by the Reds. On this very matter, the Robertson Panel recorded these words:
“Although evidence of any direct threat from these sightings was wholly lacking, related dangers might well exist resulting from: A. Misidentification of actual enemy artifacts by defense personnel. B. Overloading of emergency reporting channels with ‘false’ information. C. Subjectivity of public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare [italics mine].”
Clearly, when it came to UFOs, it was those matters concerning “mass hysteria” and “false information” that dominated the thinking of the Robertson Panel. The possible presence of real aliens in the United States seemed to be very much in the background for the CIA. There was also a recommendation that a number of the public UFO investigative groups that existed in the United States at the time should be “watched” carefully due to “the apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes.” For the CIA, “subversive purposes” meant the actions of the Soviets, or, worse, of home-grown-and-groomed communists. Maybe both. It’s entirely possible that at least some reports of fear-filled encounters with the so-called “Men in Black” in that era may have been provoked by such surveillance. Particularly so if UFO researchers were threatened by fedora-sporting and trench-coat-wearing government agents late at night – which typifies the appearances and actions of the MIB. I should stress that not all of the Men in Black can be said to come from the government. As I note in my 2018 book, The Black Diary, and as incredible as it may sound, at least some of the Men in Black may have unearthly origins. Let’s now address one example of how and why the CIA carefully watched UFO research groups in that era. An agency document of February 9, 1953 begins as follows:
Recently a member of the Los Angeles Office had occasion to hear Dr. Walter Riedel tell something of the activities of the California Committee for Saucer Investigations (CSI). His comments, as follows, may be of interest:
Dr. Riedel indicated he was formerly Chief Designer at the German Experimental Rocket Center at Peenemunde. He has been in the US as a “paperclip” scientist for some years. He is now a Project engineer in the Aerophysics Department (Guided Missiles) of the North American Aviation Corp. He gave every impression of being a competent scientist, especially knowledgeable on rocket matters. He seemed a balanced person, not given to fixations.
CSI has been in operation some years, composed of private individuals intrigued and scientifically interested in finding an explanation for “saucer” phenomena. To date, they have received some 1570 letters relating to reported sightings. Of this number, they have been able to immediately or quickly eliminate 75% as not worth follow-up. The great proportion of this 25% has been discarded upon further investigation. What was somewhat surprising to the writer was the exhaustiveness with which these investigations are being made. Not only are very careful calculations made, if the data exists, to check the possibility of the report being physically possible (e.g., in terms of lines of sight), but the individual reporting the sighting is investigated privately at his place of residence to establish a general background of reliability and credibility.
Of the 25% investigated, perhaps 25 or so sightings have been established as “reliable” in the sense that no known existing explanation exists for them. Apparently, most of these have been forwarded to Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, although there appears to be a time lag of some duration while CSI is making its own check and calculations. Dr. Riedel’s description of one reported sighting by a TWA pilot and crew, and the follow-up with respect to it, was impressive to the writer in the thought applied, the pains taken, and the very careful application of scientific method. So serious is CSI with respect to its investigations that Dr. Riedel indicated that they are going to execute a planned “hoax” over the Los Angeles area, in order to test the reaction and reliability of the public in general to unusual aerial phenomena. (The sightings reported over Malibu in its Los Angeles papers of 30 Jan 53 could possibly be this hoax.) From this experiment, they hope to ascertain how man
y people report an aerial visual phenomenon which had been conducted so as to be clearly visible to a large number of people in the area. They will also, of course, be able to test the variation of report details, etc. This experiment is designed to give a better background against which future sightings can be evaluated.”
Apparently, an eye and interest are also directed toward the USSR for reactions to sightings as reported in the PRAVDA are observed [italics mine]. This interest is also evident in the paper entitled “Rockets Behind the Iron Curtain,” presented before the annual convention of the American Rocket Society in New York City on 4 December 1952, by George P. Sutton, also of Aerophysics Department (North American Aviation, Inc.) and associated with CSI.
Of incidental interest may be the fact that NAA (National Aeronautical Association) suggested politely and perhaps indirectly to Dr. Riedel that he disassociate himself from official membership on CSI.”
Now, we get to the heart of the Robertson Panel’s concerns: the Russian angle of it all. One of the panel’s chief recommendations was for the creation of “a public education campaign” that should be undertaken on matters relative to UFOs. Specifically, agreed the members, such a program would…
…result in reduction in public interest in “flying saucers” which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories that had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the “secret” is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda.
In this connection, Dr. Hadley Cantril (Princeton University) was suggested. Cantril authored “Invasion from Mars,” (a study in the psychology of panic, written about the famous Orson Welles radio broadcast in 1938) and has since performed advanced laboratory studies in the field of perception. The names of Don Marquis (University of Michigan) and Leo Roston were mentioned as possibly suitable as consultant psychologists.
Also, someone familiar with mass communications techniques, perhaps an advertising expert, would be helpful. Arthur Godfrey was mentioned as possibly a valuable channel of communication reaching a mass audience of certain levels. Dr. Berkner suggested the U. S. Navy (ONR) Special Devices Center, Sands Point, L. I., as a potentially valuable organization to assist in such an educational program. The teaching techniques used by this agency for aircraft identification during the past war [were] cited as an example of a similar educational task. The Jam Handy Company, which made World War II training films (motion picture and slide strips), was also suggested, as well as Walt Disney, Inc. animated cartoons.
We see that the Robertson Panel’s recommendations were driven not by the presence of real extraterrestrials, but by a fear of “clever hostile propaganda.” By now, you know only too well who the panel thought was behind such propaganda. David Goodman, at Oxford Scholarship Online, says the following of The War of the Worlds broadcast and Hadley Cantril: “Intense anxiety about propaganda on the radio in the late 1930s created a cultural and intellectual climate that placed the credulity and intelligence of the American population under scrutiny as never before. Aspects of the civic paradigm proved divisive in practice. The panicked listeners to the Mars broadcast were repeatedly and aggressively blamed for their failure as citizens to listen correctly; they in turn argued back that of course they expected truth from radio. Social psychologists such as Hadley Cantril were central to the interpretation of the panic, elaborating rather than abandoning public concerns about intelligence and civic capacity.”
As for how the Walt Disney Corporation and Ward Kimball became a part of the equation, Robbie Graham, the author of Silver Screen Saucers, states: “The panel’s singling-out of Disney made sense given the animation giant’s then firmly established working relationship with the U.S. government: during World War II Disney made numerous propaganda shorts for the U.S. military, and in the 1950s corporate and government sponsors helped the company produce films promoting President Eisenhower’s ‘Atoms for Peace’ policy, as well as the retrospectively hilarious Duck and Cover documentary, which depicted schoolchildren surviving an atomic attack by sheltering under their desks.”
Graham had more to say: “That the Robertson Panel highlighted Disney is significant in that the Panel’s general recommendation to debunk UFOs through media channels is known to have been acted upon in at least one instance: this being the CBS TV broadcast of UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy? (1966), an anti-UFO documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. In a letter addressed to former Robertson Panel Secretary Frederick C. Durant, Dr. Thornton Page confided that he ‘helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions,’ even though this was thirteen years after the Panel had first convened. In light of this case alone, it seems reasonable to assume that the government may at least have attempted to follow through on the Robertson Panel’s Disney recommendation.”
Ward Kimball largely kept his and Disney’s ties to the CIA and UFOs a secret until 1979. Perhaps the bodies of dead aliens really are hidden in a fortified, well-guarded bunker deep below the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Maybe, the CIA even has a crashed UFO stored away; the remains of the alleged extraterrestrial spacecraft said to have been found in the blisteringly hot wilds of New Mexico in the summer of 1947. Possibly, the CIA knows all about an alien presence on our planet. It has to be said, however, that the vast majority of the available data and documentation from the CIA that links the agency to flying saucers, does not revolve around real E.T.s. The truth of the matter is that it points in a very different direction. It’s a direction that leads us to the realm of Russia-manufactured tales of E.T.s, created and used to try and frighten Americans in the early years of the Cold War.
Now, we come to a very strange aspect of the Robertson Panel story, one filled with mystery and intrigue. And Russians. And a former communist who believed the Soviets were using UFO-driven psychological warfare tactics to destabilize people of the United States.
Nineteen-fifty-five was the year in which the late L. Ron Hubbard’s Church of Scientology released a publication with an eye-opening title: Brain-Washing: A Synthesis of the Russian Textbook on Psychopolitics. It was said at the time that Brain-Washing was an overview of the activities of a man named Lavrentiy Beria. The Atomic Heritage Foundation says of Beria: “In 1938, Stalin summoned Beria to Moscow and appointed him as deputy to the chief of the Soviet secret police, the NKVD. Within the course of a couple years, Beria orchestrated the execution of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov and then assumed his predecessor’s position.”
Beria was executed, in December 1953, for treason.
It has been said that Brain-Washing was inspired by a lecture that Lavrentiy Beria gave at the dawning of the 1950s. The subject of that same lecture was the ways and means by which psychiatry could control the mindset of significant numbers of people. L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. has gone on the record as saying of Brain-Washing: “Dad wrote every word of it. Barbara Bryan [an assistant to Hubbard] and my wife typed the manuscript off his dictation.”
It’s eye-opening to note that the introduction to one particular version of Brain-Washing was written by a man named Kenneth Goff (several versions are in circulation and have been for years). It just so happens that Wisconsin-born Goff was a former communist who spent much of the 1950s and 1960s warning people of the threat that the Russians posed to the United States. Notably, Goff – whose FBI file is huge - believed that the Soviet Union was using the UFO subject as a means to exert control over the West. One of Goff’s lectures was titled “Traitors in the Pulpit, or What’s Behind the Flying Saucers – Are they from Russia, Another Planet, or God?” In his 1959 booklet, Red Shadows, Goff wrote the following words:
“During the past few years, the flying saucer sc
are has rapidly become one of the main issues, used by organizations working for a one-world government, to frighten people into the belief that we will need a super world government to cope with an invasion from another planet. Many means are being used to create a vast amount of imagination in the minds of the general public, concerning the possibilities of an invasion by strange creatures from Mars or Venus. This drive began early in the 40’s, with a radio drama, put on my Orson Welles, which caused panic in many of the larger cities of the East, and resulted in the death of several people. The Orson Welles program of invasion from Mars was used by the Communist Party as a test to find out how the people would react on instructions given out over the radio. It was an important part of the Communist rehearsal for the Revolution.”
You will recall that the Orson Welles production of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds is referenced in the pages of the Robertson Panel report. In some respects, Goff’s concerns and worries mirrored those of the Robertson Panel. This is made all the more significant by the fact that, in his communist days, Goff had connections to a long-forgotten UFO researcher of the early 1950s. That man was Karl Hunrath, who vanished under very mysterious circumstances in November 1953, along with a colleague in UFO research, Wilbur Wilkinson. They did so after taking to the skies from a California airport. Neither man was ever seen again. Like Goff, a Wisconsin native, Hunrath, in the early 1950s, was suspected of being in league with the Russians. It was a story that Goff shared with the FBI, and which Contactee George Hunt Wiliamson confirmed hearing from Al Bailey, of George Adamski’s circle. A file was opened on Hunrath by the FBI, chiefly because, in 1953, he claimed to have developed a strange contraption – to which, oddly, he gave the name “Bosco” – that could bring down American military planes.