Government Lies and UFOs

February 26, 2005

by Richard M. Dolan

The lies and coverup regarding UFO phenomena by the American national security state is nothing new. Indeed, it is simply standard operating procedure. Our leaders lie about everything important, including UFOs. This is a three-part series. Notes are at the bottom.

“Absolute power,” Napoleon once said, “has no necessity to lie, it may be silent.” On the other hand, he added, “responsible governments obliged to speak, not only disguise the truth, but lie with effrontery.”

These days, the American federal government is somewhere between being “absolute” and “responsible,” as Napoleon put it.

We live in a society that is so filled with lies emanating from the top of our power structure, I now think that most of us simply no longer notice. Lying itself has become the norm. It’s what people expect of their government.

I recall not long ago some of my friends discussing the untrustworthiness of then-President Bill Clinton. This was during the unfolding of that great American scandal, known as The President and the Intern.

Ah, such days of wine and roses.

Today, the lies of the current administration are so blatant, it’s obvious our leaders just don’t care whether or not you know they’re lying.

We are told by the American Emperor and his handlers that:

1. Prior to 9/11, America’s national security leaders had no suspicion of an impending terrorist attack.

2. America invaded Iraq because it believed Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction.”

3. That neither the President nor Secretary of Defense had any idea that American soldiers were practicing torture (e.g. “prisoner abuse”) against Iraqi prisoners.

But if you bother to look, you can learn that:

1. The U.S. intelligence community issued 12 separate warnings of a forthcoming terrorist attack, including a 1999 warning saying that “suicide bomber(s) belonging to al Qaeda’s Martyrdom Battalion could crash-land an aircraft … into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the White House.” [1]

2. Immediately after 9/11, President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld began planning an invasion of Iraq, even before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, with no knowledge of so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Indeed, on September 16, 2001, just 5 days after the 9/11 attacks, according to CBS News, “Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq.” The following day, according to the Washington Post, President Bush signed a directive ordering the Pentagon to begin drawing up Iraq invasion plans. Then, on September 20, according to a report in the new edition of Vanity Fair, President Bush told British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he wanted an invasion of Iraq.

These reports dovetail with accounts by former Bush counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. What appears to be clear is that the President and his men wanted a pretext to invade Iraq, and that WMD seemed the most plausible argument that the public would accept.

The charade of Secretary of State Colin Powell presenting the WMD case before the UN appears, therefore, to have been a deliberate ruse. [2]

3. Despite official denials of any knowledge of prison torture, there is strong reason to believe that not only did the President and his associates know about what we euphemistically refer to as “prisoner abuse,” but that they encouraged it.

As reported by Newsweek, Bush, Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off on “a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door” to what happened at Abu Ghraim prison. In the words of the article, this was a deliberate attempt to “sidestep the historical safeguards of the Geneva Conventions, which protect the rights of detainees and prisoners of war.” The three men “left underlings to sweat the details of what actually happened to prisoners in these lawless places.” The system they created ensured that brutality would be the result, what the Red Cross concluded was ‘tantamount to torture.’”

Worse yet, experts have argued that the torture employed by American guards was almost certainly the result of deliberate and specialized training. For example, what is (so far) the most infamous of images – a hooded Iraqi prisoner forced to stand uncomfortably, with wires dangling from his body – has been shown to be an arcane torture method known only to veterans of the interrogation trade.

“Was that something that [an MP] dreamed up by herself? Think again,” said Darius Rejali, an expert on the use of torture by democracies. “That’s a standard torture. It’s called ‘the Vietnam.’ But it’s not common knowledge. Ordinary American soldiers did this, but someone taught them.”

The protestations of military leaders that this was an aberration, and those of soldiers that they did all this under duress, both ring hollow. If either claim is true, (a) why were so many pictures apparently taken, and (b) why do they clearly show that the participants treated this sadism like some family vacation? The quantity of photos indicates this was a matter of policy, and the happy American smiles do not lie.

Moreover, we now know that the President was informed of abuses during his winter vacation, and that the Pentagon has been in possession of a detailed report since February 2004. [3]

Of course, lies are nothing new. American Presidents and military leaders have been doing this all along:

John F. Kennedy and the Bay of Pigs in 1961; Lyndon Johnson and the Gulf of Tonkin resolution of 1965; the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1966 allegedly to “save American lives”; Richard Nixon and Watergate during 1972-74; the 1983 invasion of Grenada, supposedly to save the lives of American medical students on the island (an excuse proven false by the fact that when General Norman Schwarzkopf’s troops hit the beaches in Grenada, no one had told them the location of the students they were supposed to rescue); the Iran-Contra affair of 1986-87; the 1989 invasion of Panama, known to (American) history as Operation Just Cause, when President George Bush told the world that American nationals were being attacked by the Panamanian military (at best, a major distortion of the facts). Also that he was shocked, shocked that Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega was … a drug dealer.

As you can see, Americans have lied and bullied their way through the world, just like all imperial powers of the past. Moreover, these current woes are just another chapter of American history.

What makes this latest chapter different, however, is that this is an unambiguous, visual depiction of American depravity. It is a depravity seen by billions of people, and an indictment of America’s national security state itself.

Why bring all this up in an article with the word “UFO” in the title?

Well, I study UFOs, in particular the history of this phenomena as it intersects with the U.S. national security community. For nearly 60 years, the United States government and military has told us that UFOs are not a matter of national security.

This is a lie. UFOs are, and have always been, a matter of the highest levels of national security. It’s just one more longstanding lie among many that are handed off to us all the time. If we allow ourselves to be, we can be spoonfed such lies for as long as we live.

In my article next week, I will present a case indicating extreme levels of interest in the UFO phenomena by the most responsible members of the American national security community. I will describe cases and conclusions indicating the phenomenon:

- is real

- is technological

- and is NOT “ours.”

You can do the math from there.

Government Lies and UFOs – Part Two

Last week I wrote about the culture of lying and depravity among America’s ruling elite and military establishment. Look, it’s nothing personal. I come from a family with a proud record of military service. Among my friends and relations are people of integrity who have placed their lives at risk, and lost their lives, in the service of their country. We all have such friends. That’s not the point.

The point is we live in a society in which we are lied to about almost everything that is truly important. That is because whenever there is something important going on, money and power are at stake. Very simple, really.

Perhaps nowhere – repeat nowhere – has the lying been as pronounced as regarding the UFO controversy. This is because, once you delve into this subject, you realize that there is more money and power at stake here than probably anywhere else.

The official position of the United States government has always been that there are no “true” UFOs. Such was the case when the issue first arose publicly during the 1940s, and the government position has been consistent ever since.

If you were to ask the Air Force about UFOs, for instance, you would get the standard rap sheet. You would read that from 1947 until 1969, the Air Force investigated reports of UFOs under Project Blue Book. That the decision to discontinue the study was based on a report prepared by the University of Colorado (known to many as the Condon Report). That the Air Force concluded UFOs are not a threat to national security, do not represent anything beyond our current scientific knowledge, and do not represent anything “otherworldly.”

This is not merely incorrect, but a deliberate lie.

The Air Force is not unique in this regard, of course. Everyone in government lies; some seem to enjoy it. The CIA has a long history of telling inquiring citizens that it has “no interest in the UFO matter … no files or persons knowledgeable about the subject.” This was a little easier to do before the Freedom of Information Act era, which commenced in the mid-1970s, but they still do it. Spokespersons honestly don’t care what you think. They tell you what they tell you. You don’t like it, too bad.

The FBI hands out the same lies. It always has. A letter from 1973 from then-Director Clarence M. Kelly stated the investigation of UFOs “is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI.” A few years later, after many pages of FBI documents pertaining to UFOs were released (surprise!), Kelly conceded that “for a limited period of time” the FBI did assist the Air Force “in investigating alleged UFO sightings.”

NASA, too. A typical information sheet from that most superfluous of tax dollar hogs tells us that: “NASA is not engaged in a research program involving [UFOs], nor is any other government agency. Reports of unidentified objects entering United States air space are of interest to the military as a regular part of defense surveillance. Beyond that, the U.S. Air Force no longer investigates reports of UFO sightings.”

Classic Orwellian doublespeak. The military doesn’t investigate UFOs, but it does look into reports of “unidentified objects” entering American air space.

This just about puts the U.S. on par with the old Soviet Union. The Soviets were great at lying, too. Back in 1968, Pravda, the official mouthpiece of that nation’s ruling elite, stated tersely that “no UFO was ever recorded over the USSR.” This is funny, because in fact, there had just been a major wave of UFO sightings in that country. Indeed, according to Marina Popovich, a distinguished Soviet test pilot and scientist, at least 14,000 UFO sightings took place in the Soviet Union from the mid-1960s until that country fell in 1991.

Every now and then, statements and information surface that expose the official statements as lies. Looking back, it appears that UFO-related information often comes out during periods of political stress and change. Much of what we know, for instance, came to us during the 1970s, a period when counter-cultural and anti-authoritarian tendencies in the western world peaked. As a result, even some people in power were willing to talk a little.

This was the case in 1974, when France’s Minister of Defense, Robert Galley, confirmed that his department was very interested in UFO reports. In the records of the Ministry, he stated, “there are accounts of some baffling radar/visual incidents.” The UFO phenomenon, Galley said, was of a massive nature and “pretty disturbing.”

This also happened in Spain following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1976. A journalist there was able to receive nearly 300 pages from the Air Ministry documenting their most outstanding UFO cases. The documents were not given “officially,” but the journalist was allowed to publish them. He wrote that “when you read and analyze these files … it becomes definitely and categorically clear that the UFOs exist and, quite evidently, are a matter of the deepest concern to the governments of the whole planet.”

In 1977, the Chief of Staff of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Lt. General Akira Hirano, said, “we frequently see unidentified objects in the skies. We are quietly investigating them.” His staff immediately countered this claim and denied that he mentioned any official investigation.

In the United States, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) wrote privately in 1975 that he had tried “about ten or twelve years ago” to visit “the building in Wright-Patterson Air Force base where the [UFO] information is stored.” Although Goldwater was a Senator and General with the Air Force Reserves, his attempt was blocked by Air Force General Curtis LeMay. “It is still classified Above Top Secret,” Goldwater wrote.

The 1970s also gave us the expanded Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Thus, at the same time government agencies were telling people they didn’t know nuthin’ about no UFOs, thousands of pages of UFO-related documentation were released, thanks largely to President Jimmy Carter’s insistence that federal agencies be responsive and reasonable to citizen requests for information. While none of these documents are a true smoking gun of UFO reality and concealment, several are pretty close. Many of them confirm that UFOs are a serious matter to responsible military and intelligence authorities.

Several CIA memos from 1976, for example, confirmed that the Agency continued to monitor UFOs, but not officially (whatever that means), that the agency had “UFO experts,” and that its Domestic Collections Division (DCD) was “receiving UFO related material.” Why was the agency collecting UFO related material? What did they have? We still don’t know.

The document JANAP 146(E), released in 1977, a military directive that provides reporting instruction to pilots on a range of air encounters and situations. It is in effect to this day, and includes “unidentified flying objects” as something which must be reported. It distinguishes UFOs from unidentified aircraft, missiles, and vehicles of “unconventional design.” What does that leave you with?

Interesting as these documents are, it’s the military reports that are most compelling. There are so many of these, it is impossible here to do more than mention a few of them in passing.

For instance, a March 1975 report sent to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. This was from the American embassy in Algiers. The Algerian Ministry of Defense wanted to know if the Americans could “shed any light on strange ‘machines’ which had been maneuvering over Algerian airspace.” These were seen several times near military installations – visually by multiple witnesses and tracked on radar – as a very bright, maneuvering object that had landed and taken off. The American embassy said in effect, “not ours,” but nonetheless privately checked with Kissinger. Unfortunately, we don’t know what the answer was. Why not? What’s the big deal?

Here’s something that was a very big deal. Later in 1975 there were a series of awesome air space violations took place at American Strategic Air Command bases along the northern US border. Unknown intruders were having their way, quite easily, with American air defenses. These objects could hover like helicopters and accelerate like jet fighters, and they could do it silently.

Loring AFB in Maine was actually at the point of chaos. A memo from the base said an unknown object “demonstrated a clear intent in the weapons storage area.” A similar event took place soon after at Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan. An aircraft was vectored to intercept the object and gave chase. One of the crew members later told a base historian, “I know this might sound crazy, but I would estimate that the UFO sped away from us doing approximately 1,000 knots.” The crew was advised by their commanders not to discuss the incident.

Another inexplicable event took place a week later, at Malmstrom AFB in Montana. Electronic sensors detected a violation of missile site security, and a Sabotage Alert Team (SAT) was ordered to investigate. As the SAT approached the site, members reported by radio that they could see a brightly glowing orange disc, as large as a football field, hovering over the missile site.

Understandably, they refused to proceed any closer. They watched the object rise until it reached the altitude of 200,000 feet, at which point it disappeared from NORAD radar. Intercepting F-106s arrived too late to see it. The missile at the UFO site showed indications that its computer targeting system had been tampered with. It had to be removed.

The following night, five areas of the base reported UFOs at low altitudes, and two F-106s again were scrambled to intercept. Military witnesses on the ground reported that the UFOs turned off their lights and became invisible as the intercepting jets approached, and turned their lights back on after the jets departed.

The FOIA documents show us this type of activity continued at other military bases throughout the following year. What were these things?

The same question applies to the amazing encounter in September 1976 by the American-equipped Iranian Air Force, when it attempted to intercept an extremely advanced vehicle. This vehicle performed well beyond any capabilities of our best aircraft even today. Officially, that is. The encounter involved two F-4 pilots, radar-visual confirmations, and electrical system failures when the planes got too close. The weapons systems themselves of the aircraft were disabled, presumably by the UFO.

The report on this spectacular case went to the White House, Secretary of State, NSA, and CIA. The DIA evaluator listed this as “an outstanding report.” It was said to be “a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon.”

What was that object?

The very same night, the American embassy in Morocco forwarded a message to the State Department of UFOs over Morocco. People in widely separated locations described a silvery, luminous, and circular object. “Absolutely no sound,” said the baffled embassy. After suitable stonewalling, Henry Kissinger suggested the object was a meteor, and referred them to the Condon report, which had dismissed UFO some years before. But the object certainly did not look like a meteor to the witnesses, and it traveled far too slowly.

I imagine that Henry Kissinger knows a great deal about this subject.

Government Lies and UFOs – Part Three

Freedom will always be a concept that is impossible to encapsulate cleanly. Like a house with many sides, there are many ways to look at freedom, and some of these ways are entirely subjective. You may not have much say in how your greater society is managed, but then again, if you don’t care, you can feel quite free. If you’re allowed to pursue your personal interests, follow your favorite television show or sports team, why would you feel oppressed?

Much of our recent history has involved such a dumbing down of our political desires. You can decide for yourself if this is part of a grand scheme by our rulers, or simply the result of market forces in a post-modern age. Either way, what we have today is a country – excuse me, a world, more or less – filled with people who, when they’re not as work feeding the machine, generally sit on their asses watching T.V. or surfing the net in the endless quest for entertainment.

“We the People” have long since ceased to rule in any meaningful sense. Who elects our supposed “representatives” in Congress and the White House, those citizens whom we expect to act in the name of the people? Who rules? Do you rule?

Americans like to call themselves free. In fact, they have joined the ranks of the unfree. I am still trying to trace this processes historically – I have little doubt that it is related to the poisonous Armor of Empire being worn on the body of this old republic. But the main thing is that it’s happened, and that neither our alleged leaders, nor our alleged public watchdog media, ever acknowledge this publicly.

The basic problem of any kind of representative democratic system is that, to succeed, it must have an informed citizenry. The founders of the American republic understood this problem well – read the Federalist papers to get an idea. But despite our so-called Information Age, I would submit that the typical American citizen is less informed of the world around us than our great-grandparents were one hundred years ago.

This is entirely in line with what our media leaders want. Consider the attitude of the late Katharine Graham, long-time publisher of the Washington Post. In 1988 she stated matters quite clearly: “there are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.”

Well, Ms. Graham can rest easy in her eternal slumber knowing that what the general public doesn’t know grows by reams and reams every year.

America’s classified world is removed almost entirely from public control. In the early 1990s, Herbert Foerstel, Head of Branch Libraries at University of Maryland and board member of the National Security Archive, reported that the Pentagon alone had about 10,000 classification compartments, often called Special Access Programs (SAP) and Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI). More recently, author James Bamford (Body of Secrets) likened the classified system to “an endless spiral, [with] secret classification systems within secret classification systems.” We number our classified documents by the trillion, and the number continues to grow.

An unknown, but surely significant, part of that secrecy is concerned with the topic of exotic aerial phenomena. We know this from the history of FOIA documents we have received, a small sampling of which I discussed in the previous article of this series. Plus, every now and then, a mainstream publication actually tells us something useful.

The 3/18/96 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology, for instance, stated that the U.S. Air Defense Operations Center at Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado – an integral part of the North American Air Defense system (NORAD) – tracks and identifies thousands of “vehicles” in near and deep space.

The article stated that “these regions monitored about seven thousand aircraft tracts per day in 1994, and labeled approximately 880 of them as ‘unknowns’ within the allotted two minutes required for identification….Others (unidentified contacts) warranted intercepts by fighters scrambled from airfields around the continent’s periphery.” [1]

In other words, American pilots continue to chase UFOs. What do these pilots see when they get close enough to one? In some cases, it’s drug traffickers. Of the 880 unknowns for 1994, for instance, “about 90″ were correlated with suspected drug activities, according to Brigadier General Raymond P. Huot, commander of the Cheyenne Mountain complex. That still leaves a lot of unidentifieds flying into the U.S. Against which nation is America defending itself when it scrambles all these interceptors? What country, in 1994 or today, has an air force that is constantly harassing us in this way?

We don’t know the answers because NORAD is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

The now-deceased Imperator Ronald Reagan, currently being deified as per the requirements of our national security dominated mass media, had a few things to do with our current difficulties in obtaining information from the government.

Reagan helped to get pesky citizens off government’s back when he emasculated the Freedom of Information Act. This was Executive Order #12356 in April 1982. A year later, he authorized a National Security Decision Directive that extended the use of secrecy contracts among federal employees and enacted lifetime censorship over them.

As a result, a president can now lie about something – oh, let’s say, an important foreign policy matter – and a Senator who knows the President is lying is not allowed to contradict him using classified information.

But I digress, and besides, Reagan doesn’t deserve all the blame anyway. He didn’t start this mess, and since his time we’ve gone far deeper into the woods. Just a few years ago, Attorney General John Ashcroft urged federal agencies to resist most Freedom of Information Act requests made by American citizens.

“When you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part,” Ashcroft told them, “you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions unless they lack a sound legal basis or present an unwarranted risk of adverse impact on the ability of other agencies to protect other important records.” Can you imagine such a statement being made during the Carter Presidency?

The FOIA isn’t dead. It is still somewhat amenable to the public. A few interesting UFO reports continue to come out, such as an interesting report from January 1994, from the U.S. Embassy at Dushanbe, Tajikistan. This was sent to the Secretary of State, CIA, DIA, as well as U.S. embassies in Moscow, Beijing, and elsewhere. A pilots and his crew reported an object traveling at a great rate of speed and at a much higher altitude than their own aircraft. They watched the object for some forty minutes as it maneuvered in circles, corkscrews and made 90-degree turns at rapid rates of speed and under very high g’s. The captain took several photographs. The report stated, “on the basis of its speed and maneuverability, [Captain] Rhodes expressed the opinion, which his crew seemed to support, that the object was extraterrestrial and under intelligent control.” [2]

Interesting as this report is, we should not deceive ourselves that the FOIA will provide the single smoking gun proving ET is here. It is my belief that we are permitted to see only the tiniest portion of an enormous body of information. In all likelihood, most of this data will remain deeply classified.

Precisely because ordinary citizens are unable to examine this significant part of our reality, we need honest and strong journalists to fight for us. But apart from a noble few, the journalistic profession and industry is busy in service to the State.

Back in 1977, journalist Carl Bernstein revealed that the CIA had used more than 400 journalists to carry out assignments over the past quarter of a century. This included but was not limited to planting disinformation and propaganda. These were covert, paid arrangements which helped many a journalistic career. Today, the CIA blandly says, in effect, “we don’t do that anymore.” To which the appropriate response is “B.S.” Not only does the CIA have cozy working relationships with journalists around the world (and certainly the Internet), but why would one think the rest of the American national security establishment doesn’t? Can anyone seriously believe otherwise?

How many commentators in television, radio, print, and Internet media have a Top Secret clearance unknown to most of us? I personally know of such cases, and have little doubt this is a major area warranting further investigation.

Within such a culture of denial, it is easy for the powers-that-be to say whatever they want. They know full well they will get away with it. Curious Senators and Members of Congress are given the same old song and dance, that “no UFO reported, investigated and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security.” The public is given official reports on UFOs by officers who are experts in disinformation, as was the author of the 1994 Report on Roswell, Col. Richard Weaver (little known fact: Weaver taught courses on the uses of disinformation for Air Force personnel). And the CIA can state in 1997 that it has “paid only limited and peripheral attention to the [UFO] phenomena.”

America’s national security apparatus is beyond public control. Its pervasiveness has corrupted our society. It is permeated with an arrogance that only the very powerful can possess.

And it is precisely this culture that dominates information pertaining to the UFO phenomenon. The sooner you disabuse yourself of the notion that your government is responsive to your interests in this matter – or even telling you the truth – the better.

—

Notes

Part One

[1]

“National Security Advisor Holds Press Briefing,” 5/16/2002, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/05/20020516_13.html

“Report Warned Of Suicide Hijackings,” CBS News, 5/17/2002, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/18/attack/main509488.shtml

“As Rice Testimony Nears, Tone Remains a Question,” New York Times, 4/07/2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/07/politics/07PANE.html?ex=1085457600&en=4620b93ae6fc5fe4&ei=5070

“9/11: For The Record,” Washington Post, 03/22/2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp_dyn/articles/A13881_2004Mar21.html

[2]

“Report Details Bush-Blair Meeting on Iraq,” Associated Press, 4/4/04 (link gone)

“U.S. Decision On Iraq Has Puzzling Past,” Washington Post, 1/12/03,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp_dyn/A43909_2003Jan11http://www.latimes.com/news/

“Doubts cast on efforts to link Saddam, al-Qaida,” Knight-Ridder, 3/2/04,

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/8089829.htm “Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11,” CBS News, 9/4/02,

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml

[3]

“The Roots of Torture,”

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4989422/

“Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba,”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4894001/

“Accountability at Issue in Abuse of Prisoners,” LA Times, 5/5/04,

http://www.latimes.com/news/;