Thursday 5 November 2015

There is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers - LIFE Magazine April 7, 1952


LIFE article of April 7, 1952

 

[NICAP Comment:  Although the Monroe picture no doubt attracted a lot of  readers it also had the tendency to make the UFO subject seem somewhat frivolous.]




This is a scrupulously accurate eyewitness painting of a mysterious green fireball rushing through the night  sky over New Mexico. It was done by Mrs. Lincoln LaPaz, wife of an authority on meteors. Both she and her husband have observed the fireballs at first hand.

[NICAP Comment:  Although this claims to be "a scrupulously accurate eyewitness painting" the picture is a bright green whereas Dr. Lincoln LaPaz repeatedly stressed that one of the key unusual features of the fireballs was that they were bright YELLOW-green, NOT bright green.  Did LIFE incorrectly calibrate the color on its reproduction of the painting, which seems unlikely given LIFE's world-renowned expertise in photography, or was Mrs. LaPaz strangely in error in her painting despite the on-site input of her husband?]

HAVE WE VISITORS FROM SPACE?
The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation; here LIFE offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.

LIFE Magazine, April 7, 1952
by H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna


For four years the U.S. public has wondered, worried or smirked over the strange and insistent tales of eerie objects streaking across American skies. Generally the tales have provoked only chills or titters, only rarely, reflection or analysis.  

Last week the U.S. Air Force made known to LIFE the following facts:  
  • As a result of continuing flying saucer reports the Air Force maintains constant intelligence investigation and study of unidentified aerial objects. 

  • A policy of positive action has been adopted to find out, as soon as possible, what is responsible for observations that have been made. As a part of this study, military aircraft are alerted to attempt interception, and radar and photographic equipment will be used in an attempt to obtain factual data. If opportunity offers, attempts will be made to recover such unidentified objects. 
[NICAP Comment:  These new efforts at instrumented investigation of UFO's, note even the phrase "unidentified objects," stem from the initiative of the deputy to Maj. Gen. John A. Samford, the Director of AF Intelligence, beginning in January 1952.  The deputy, Brig. Gen. William M. Garland, was Samford's Assistant for Intelligence Production.  Both had received a series of briefings on UFO's from AF staff.]
  • Already all operational units of the Air Force have been alerted to report in detail any sightings of unidentified aerial objects. Other groups -- scientists, private and commercial pilots, weather observers -- all trained observers whose work in any way concerns the sky, and what happens in it, are urged to make immediate reports to Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio of any unidentified aerial objects they sight. 

  • Further, for the first time since Project "Saucer" was changed from a special-type project to a standard intelligence function, in December 1949, the Air Force invites all citizens to report their sightings to the nearest Air Force installation. All reports will be given expert consideration and those of special interest will be thoroughly investigated. The identity of those making such reports will be kept in confidence; no one will be ridiculed for making one. 
[NICAP Comment:  This was the critical phrase in the entire article, the AF for the first time "invites all citizens to report their sightings to the nearest Air Force installation."  This was part of the plan approved by Gen. Garland to give civilian and anecdotal cases one more chance to prove they had any intelligence value at all, at a time when AF Intelligence under Garland's leadership was in the process of downgrading or rejecting all anecdotal reports on any intelligence subject, Soviet aircraft, missiles, radars, UFO's, etc.  Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) UFO Project Grudge chief Lt. Edward J. Ruppelt had told Garland that if they could only get enough civilian reports from a given area they could get triangulations of UFO size, altitude and speed, and if they announced interest in public reports this "publicity plan" might yield scientific data.  But when the UFO wave of July 1952 struck, this "invitation" by the AF was blamed for the avalanche of UFO reports.  Then ATIC at Wright-Patterson AFB tried to deny they had ever sponsored or approved any such "publicity plan."]
  • There is no reason as yet to believe that any of the aerial phenomena commonly described as flying saucers are caused by a foreign power or constitute a clear and present danger to the U.S. or its citizens. 

[NICAP Comment:  This seems to suggest the AF was discounting at present the ET possibility but then a few paragraphs later the ET explanation is all but asserted, perhaps as LIFE's own interpretation.]

These disclosures, sharply amending past Air Force policy, climaxed a review by LIFE, with Air Force officials, of all facts known in the case. This review has resulted from more than a year of sifting and weighing all reports of unexplained aerial phenomena -- from the so-called flying saucers to the mysterious green fireballs so often sighted in the Southwest. This inquiry has included scrutiny of hundreds of reported sightings, interviews with eyewitnesses across the country and careful reviews of the facts with some of the world's ablest physicists, astronomers, and experts on guided missiles. For the first time the Air Force (while in no way identifying itself with any particular conclusions) has opened its files for study. 

Out of this exhaustive inquiry these propositions seem firmly shaped by the evidence:  
  • 1. Disks, cylinders and similar objects of geometrical form, luminous quality and solid nature for several years have been, and may be now, actually present in the atmosphere of the earth. 

  • 2. Globes of green fire also, of a brightness more intense than the full moon's, have frequently passed through the skies. 

  • 3. These objects cannot be explained by present science as natural phenomena -- but solely as artificial devices, created and operated by a high intelligence. 

  • 4. Finally, no power plant known or projected on earth could account for the performance of these devices. 
[NICAP Comment:  Points 3 qand 4 all but assert the ET origin of UFO's, but apparently represent LIFE or its staff writers' own conclusions, perhaps unofficially encouraged by the AF.]

Let us first review some widely known facts. 


The shapes and inscrutable portents of the flying disks first broke upon the skies of the world in the early months of 1947, with several sightings reported to the Air Force. The story first reached the nation on June 24, 1947, when a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying from Chehalis to Yakima, Wash. Some 25 miles away, Arnold saw nine "saucer like things ... flying like geese in a diagonal chainlike line," approaching Mount Rainier. They swerved in and out of the high peaks at a speed Arnold estimated to be 1,200 mph.  

Arnold told the whole story to his hometown newspaper, and like summer lightning it flashed across the country. Within a month, saucers had been reported by people in 40 states. For the public (as LIFE itself merrily reported in its issue of July 21, 1947) he saucers provided the biggest game of hey-diddle-diddle in history. Any man, woman, or child with talent enough to see spots before his eyes could get his name in the newspaper.  

Nevertheless in serious moments most people were a little worried by all the "chromium hubcaps," "flying washtubs" and "whirling doughnuts" in the sky. Buried in the heap of hysterical reports were some sobering cases. One was the calamity that befell Air Force Captain Thomas F. Mantell on Jan. 7, 1948. That afternoon Mantell and two other F-51 fighter pilots sighted an object that looked like "an ice-cream cone topped with red" over Godman Air Force Base and Fort Knox, Ky. Mantell followed the strange object up to 20,000 feet and disappeared. Later in the day his body was found in a nearby field, the wreckage of his plane scattered for a half mile around. It now seems possible that Mantell was one of the very few sighters who actually were deceived by a Skyhook balloon, but the incident is still listed as unsolved by the Air Force files.  

There was no such easy explanation for the strange phenomenon observed at 2:45 a.m. on July 24, 1948 by two Eastern Air Lines pilots. Captain Clarence S. Chiles and Copilot John B. Whitted were flying in bright moonlight near Montgomery, Ala. when they suddenly saw "a bright glow" and a "long rocket like ship" veer past them. They subsequently agreed that it was a "wingless aircraft, 100 feet long, cigar-shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29, with no protruding surfaces, and two rows of windows ... From the sides of the craft came an intense, fairly dark blue glow ... like a fluorescent factory light." They said the weird craft "pulled up with tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds at about 800 miles an hour," rocking their DC-3 with its "prop or jet wash."  

Just as inexplicable was the experience of Lieut. George Gorman of the North Dakota Air National Guard. On Oct. 1, 1948 Gorman was coming in at dusk to land his F-51 at Fargo, when he saw an intense, bright light pass 1,000 yards away. Curious, Gorman followed the light and saw that it seemed to be attached to nothing. For 27 hair-raising minutes Gorman pursued the light through a series of intricate maneuvers. He said it was about 6 inches in diameter and going faster than his F-51 (300-400 mph). It made no sound and left no exhaust trail. After Gorman landed, the light having suddenly flashed away in the upper air, he found support for his story -- the chief of the control tower had followed the fantastic "combat" with binoculars.  

The occurrences, jarring though they must have been to the participants, left the official calm of the Air Force unruffled. The project set up to investigate the saucers ("Project Sign," known to the press as "Project Saucer") seemed to have been fashioned more as a sedative to public controversy than as a serious inquiry into the facts. On Dec. 27, 1949, after two years of operation, Project Saucer wrote off all reports of unidentified aerial phenomena as hoaxes, hallucinations or misinterpretations of familiar objects -- that is, all but 34. These stubborn 34, seemingly unexplainable, were briskly dismissed as psychological aberrations.  

While these assurances appeased most of the press and pacified the public, some elements in the Air Force just about this time began to worry a bit more seriously. Saucer reports continued to come in a rate of about one a day and were handled under the code name of "Project Grudge." Officers at policy level began to show concern. "The higher you go in the Air Force," conceded one Intelligence officer, "the more seriously they take the flying saucers."  

There was good reason to be serious. As review of all records has shown, these years have produced literally dozens of incidents defying simple explanation -- and provoking the most incredible questions.  

Checked and rechecked, 10 cases out of the formidable list on record are here presented in essential detail. Of these, three were discovered in the course of LIFE's own investigation and are reported for the first time.  

The Lubbock Lights, flying in formation, are considered by the Air Force the most unexplainable phenomena yet observed. These photographs (only one shown above) were made at Lubbock, Texas, on August 30th, 1951 by Carl Hart, Jr. Scientists say lights were not natural objects, but they traveled too fast and too soundless for known machines.

INCIDENT 1

At 9:10 p.m. on Aug. 25, 1951, Dr. W. I. Robinson, professor of geology at the Texas technological College, stood in the back yard of his home in Lubbock, Texas and chatted with two colleagues. The other men were Dr. A. G. Oberg, a professor of chemical engineering, and Professor W. L. Ducker, head of the department of petroleum engineering. The night was clear and dark. Suddenly all three men saw a number of lights race noiselessly across the sky, from horizon to horizon, in a few seconds. They gave the impression of about 30 luminous beads, arranged in a crescent shape. A few moments later another similar formation flashed across the night. This time the scientists were able to judge hat the lights moved through 30 degrees of arc in a second. A check the next day with the Air Force showed that no planes had been over the area at the time. This was but the beginning: Professor Ducker observed 12 flights of the luminous objects between August and November of last year. Some of his colleagues observed as many as 10. Hundreds of nonscientific observers in a wide vicinity around Lubbock have seen as many as three flights of the mysterious crescents in one night. On the night of Aug. 30 an attempt to photograph the lights was made by 18-year old Carl Hart Jr. He used a Kodak 35-mm camera at f 3.5, 1/10 of a second. Working rapidly, Hart managed to get five exposures of the flights. The pictures exhibited by Hart as the result of this effort show 18 to 20 luminous objects, more intense than the planet Venus, arranged in one or a pair of crescents. In several photographs, off to one side of the main flight, a larger luminosity is visible -- like a mother craft hovering near its aerial brood. 
 
 


Carl Hart, 18-year-old student, photographed the Lubbock Lights with Kodak 35.
  

Professors at Texas Tech who saw Lubbock Lights (left to right), Dr. Oberg, Prof. Ducker, and Dr. Robinson, discuss them with Dr. E. L. George.

EVALUATION

The observations have been too numerous and too similar to be doubted. In addition the Air Force, after the closest examination, has found nothing fraudulent about Hart's pictures. The lights are much too bright to be reflections, and therefore bodies containing sources of light. Since Professors Ducker, Oberg, and Robinson could not measure the size and distance of the formations, they could form no precise estimate of their speed. However they calculated that if the lights were flying at an altitude of 5,000 feet they must then have been traveling about 1,800 mph. The professors, along with other scientists, agree that in order to explain the silence of the objects, it must be assumed that they were at 50,000 feet in the air; in which case they were going not 1,800 but 18,000 mph. [Note: See follow-up letter from professors at end questioning authenticity of Hart's photos.] 

INCIDENT 2 

On July 10, 1947 at 4:47 p.m., one of the U.S.'s top astronomers was driving from Clovis to Clines Corners, N. Mex. [Note: Later revealed to be Dr. Lincoln La Paz -- see Incident 10, green fireballs, which La Paz investigated.] His wife and his teen-aged daughters were also in the car. (For professional reasons he has asked LIFE to withhold identity.) It was a bright sunny day, but the whole western half of the sky was a "confused cloud sea." All at once, as the car headed toward these clouds, "all four of us almost simultaneously became aware of a curious bright object almost motionless" among the clouds. Instantly, from long habit in dealing with celestial phenomena, he began to make calculations. with what crude materials he had at hand. He held a pencil at arm's length, measured the size of the object against the windshield of the car, measured the distance between his eyes and the windshield, etc. His wife and two daughters did the same, each making independent calculations. The object, says the scientist, "showed a sharp and firm regular outline, namely one of a smooth elliptical character much harder and sharper than the edges of the cloudlets... The hue of the luminous object was somewhat less white than the light of Jupiter in a dark sky, not aluminum or silver-colored.... The object clearly exhibited a sort of wobbling motion ... This wobbling motion served to set off the object as a rigid, if not solid body." After 30 seconds in plain view, the ellipsoid moved slowly behind a cloud (273 degrees azimuth, elevation 1 degree) "and we thought we had lost it." But approximately five seconds later it reappeared (275 degrees azimuth, elevation 2 degrees). "This remarkably sudden ascent thoroughly convinced me that we were dealing with an absolutely novel airborne device." After reappearing, the object moved slowly from south to north across the clouds. "As seen projected against these dark clouds, the object gave the strongest impression of self-luminosity." About two and a half minutes after it first came into view, the thing disappeared finally behind a cloudbank.  

EVALUATION

The astronomer vouches for the approximate accuracy of his observations and computations. He determined that the object was not less than 20 nor more than 30 miles from his viewing point; that it was ellipsoidal and rigid; that it was 160 feet long and 65 feet thick, if seen at minimum distance; or 245 feet long and 100 feet thick if at maximum; and that its horizontal speed ranged between 120 and 180 mph and its vertical rise between 600 and 900 mph. He also observed that the object moved with a wobble, no sounds, and left no exhaust or vapor trail. His wife and daughters support his observations, and their computations were in accordance with his own, though slightly less conservative. The object's appearance and behavior answer no known optical or celestial phenomenon. No known or projected aircraft, rocket or guided missile can make such a rapid vertical ascent without leaving an exhaust or vapor trail. 

INCIDENT 3

On April 24,1949 at 10:20 a.m., a group of five technicians under the general supervision of J. Gordon Vaeth, an aeronautical engineer employed by the Office of Naval Research, were preparing to launch a Skyhook balloon near Arrey, N. Mex. A small balloon was sent up first to check the weather. Charles B. Moore Jr., an aerologist of General Mills Inc. (pioneers in cosmic ray research) was tracking the weather balloon through a theodolite -- a 25-power telescopic instrument, which gives degrees of azimuth and elevation (horizontal and vertical position) for any object it is sighted on. At 10:30 a.m. Moore leaned back from the theodolite to glance at the balloon with his naked eye. Suddenly he saw a whitish elliptical object, apparently much higher than the balloon, and moving, in the opposite direction. At once he picked the object up in his theodolite at 45 degrees of elevation and 210 degrees of azimuth, and tracked it east at the phenomenal rate of 5 degrees of azimuth-change per second as it dropped swiftly to an elevation of 25 degrees. The object appeared to be an ellipsoid roughly two and a half times as long as it was wide. Suddenly it swung abruptly upward and rushed out of sight in a few seconds. Moore had tracked it for about 60 seconds altogether. The other members of his crew confirmed his report. No sound was heard, no vapor trail was seen. The object, according to rough estimations by Moore and his colleagues, was about 56 miles above the earth, 100 feet long and was traveling at seven miles per second.  

EVALUATION

No known optical or atmospheric phenomenon fits the facts. A natural object traveling at seven miles per second has never been seen to make a sudden upward turn. There is no known or projected source of silent, vaporless power for such a machine. No human being could have borne the tremendous "G" load brought to bear on the craft during its abrupt vertical veer. 

INCIDENT 4

One night in the summer of 1948 Clyde W. Tombaugh, the discoverer of the planet Pluto, was sitting in the back yard of his home at Las, Cruces, N. Mex. With him were his wife and his mother-in-law. It was about 11 p.m. and they were all sitting quietly, admiring the clarity of the southwestern sky, like any proper astronomical family. All at once they all saw something rush silently overhead, south to north, too fast for a plane, too slow for a meteor. It seemed to be quite low. All three of the witnesses agreed that the object was definitely a solid "ship" of a kind they had never seen before. It was of an oval shape and "seemed to trail off at the rear into a shapeless luminescence." There was a bluegreen glow about the whole thing. About half a dozen "windows" were clearly visible at the front of the ship and along the side. They glowed with the same blue-green color as the rest of the ship, only the glare was brighter, and had a touch of yellow in it.  

EVALUATION

The object bore a resemblance to the craft seen by Pilots Chiles and Whitted. It bore resemblance to no aircraft known to be in operation on earth. 

INCIDENT 5

In this case LIFE's informant is an Air Force officer who holds a top military post at a key atomic base. Since his assignment and whereabouts must be kept a secret he has asked LIFE to withhold his name. He has the highest security rating given. Before he took his present assignment, this officer was in command of the radar equipment that keeps watch over a certain atomic installation. One day in the fall of 1949, while watching a radarscope that covered an area of sky 300 miles wide and 100,000 feet deep, he was startled to detect five apparently metallic objects flying south at tremendous speed and great height. They crossed the 300-mile scope, in less than four minutes. The objects flew the whole time in formation.  

EVALUATION

There is no dead-certain explanation of this phenomenon -- radar is as full of tricks as an old-maid's imagination. However, the officer involved is an experienced observer, well aware of the eccentricities of the instrument. He believes that in this instance he made a legitimate radar contact. If so, it can be said that the only natural objects known to travel at such a speed are meteors, but meteors do not fly in formation. If the officer picked up machines, they were performing in a manner that rocket experts agree is still beyond the capabilities of earth's most advanced weapons. 
 
 

"Civilian Saucer Investigations" was organized by Sighter Ed J. Sullivan (standing), who urges other sighters to write to P.O. Box 1971, Main Post Office, Los Angeles. CSI includes Dr. Walter Riedel (behind Sullivan), who was chief designer at great German rocket laboratory at Peenemunde.

INCIDENT 6

On May 29, 1951 at 3:48 p.m., three technical writers for the aerophysics department of North American Aviation's plant at Downey, outside Los Angeles, were chatting on the factory grounds. They were Victor Black, Werner Eichler and Ed J. Sullivan. All at once they stared at the sky. Sullivan describes what they saw: "Approximately 30 glowing, meteor like objects sprayed out of the east at a point about 45 degrees above the horizon, executed a right-angle turn and swept across the sky in an undulating vertical formation ... that resembled a tuning fork on edge. It took each of them about 25 seconds to cross 9O degrees of the horizon before performing another right-angle turn westward toward downtown Los Angeles.... We estimated their diameter at 30 feet and their speed to be 1,700 mph. Each appeared as an intense electric blue light, round and without length. They moved with the motion of flat stones skipping across a smooth pond."  

EVALUATION

No known natural or optical phenomenon, makes the peculiar light, in bright day, attributed to these objects by Sullivan and his colleagues; nor can any natural object, hurtling at such a speed, execute a right angle turn. As in the Moore theodolite sighting, the execution of such a turn would have crushed any human crew under the impact of "G" forces. Finally, of course, no known machine travels at 1,700 mph without making a sound or leaving an exhaust or vapor trail. 

INCIDENT 7

On Jan. 20, 1951, at 8:30 p.m., Captain Lawrence W. Vinther of Mid-Continent Airlines was ordered by the control tower at the Sioux City airport, to investigate a "very bright light" above the field. He took off in his DC-3 with his copilot, James F. Bachmeier, and followed the light. All at once the light dived at the DC-3 almost head on; it passed silently and at great speed about 200 feet above its nose. Both pilots wrenched their heads back to see where it had gone, only to discover that the thing had somehow reversed direction in a split second and was now flying parallel to the airliner heading in the same direction. It was a clear moonlight night and both men got a good look at the object. It was as big or bigger than a B-29, had a cigar-shaped fuselage and a glider type wing, set well forward, without sweepback and without engine nacelles or jet pods. There was not exhaust glow. The white light appeared to be recessed in the bottom of the plane. After a few seconds the object lost altitude, passed under the DC-3 and disappeared. A civilian employee of Air Intelligence was a passenger on the flight, saw the object and confirms the description by the pilots.  

EVALUATION

The conditions for observation were excellent. One fact alone -- the astonishing reversal of direction performed by the object -- suffices to classify it as a device far beyond the known capacities of aeronautical science. Although its shape is different, the soundlessness of the object and the absence of observable means of propulsion relate it to the saucer class of phenomena. 

INCIDENT 8

At 6:45 a.m., just before sunup on Feb. 18, 1952, a photographer named C. E. Redman was driving through Albuquerque, N. Mex. on his way to photograph a wedding. Stopped for a traffic light, he noticed two bright things in the sky. "They were hovering above Tijeras Canyon.... The one to the north was on its edge. The other was lying horizontally. They were bright, bluish white.... It was probably the most astonishing thing I've ever seen. Those things were soundless. They were not jets or vapor trails. I've seen hundreds of jets and vapor trails." Redman was questioned later the same day by a LIFE reporter and a prominent scientist, working together. From his testimony, and from the lay of the land, it was estimated that the disks were 20 miles away and four miles in the air, and that they had a diameter of about 136 feet. Another witness saw the same objects Redman saw, and at the same time, but from the other side of town. W. S. Morris, a retired master sergeant of the Air Force who is now a news dealer in Albuquerque, was out to drop off his morning papers when he saw two strange objects over Tijeras Canyon. "I watched them for 12 minutes. They were a blinding silver, long and thin, gleaming all over. They hovered, one kind of above the other to the right. They seemed brighter than the sun, which wasn't yet over the Sandia mountains. It just touched their bottoms and they glowed red. They didn't flutter or move. They just hung there. It must have been 20 miles away. Then they just suddenly dropped down behind the mountain, and the upper one tilted so that I could see its profile. It looked like a bell pepper-with a bump on top, that is."  

EVALUATION

Kirtland AFB acknowledged that there were no aircraft in that area at that time. The observations reinforce each other and point to several striking facts. First, one disk proved itself three dimensional when it tilted, to descend. Second, the suddenness of the disk's descent indicates that the bodies contained a source of power. Third, the power that can suspend a three-dimensional body, of the size Morris describes and in the position he indicates, without turning a blade or roaring a jet, is unknown. 
 
 


How discs looked in relation to each other is shown by C.E. Redman of Albuquerque.


INCIDENT 9

On Jan. 29, 1952, just before midnight, a B-29 was on solo mission over Wonsan, Korea. It was flying at a speed somewhat less than 200 miles an hour, at an altitude somewhat above 20,000 feet. Simultaneously the tail gunner and the fire-control man in the waist saw a bright round orange object in the sky near the plane. Both said it was about three feet in diameter, flew with a revolving motion on a course parallel to theirs, and wore a halo of bluish flame. It also appeared to pulsate. The object followed the B-29 for about five minutes, then pulled ahead and shot away at a sharp angle. On the same night a similar globe was seen by the tail gunner and waist man of another B-29, 80 miles away over Sunchon, but flying at about the same height. The globe followed the plane for about a minute, then disappeared.  

EVALUATION

Theoreticians in the Air Force believe the fireballs were not natural phenomena but propelled objects. They bear some similarity to the balls of fire called "fireball fighters" or "foo fighters" -- which flew wing on Allied aircraft over Germany and Japan during 1944-45 and which have never been satisfactorily explained. In the Korean incidents, the fireballs seem -- on the evidence of their sharp acceleration, their blue light and their abrupt, angular swerve -- to resemble the saucers described earlier. 
 
 


The same disks sighted by Redman were seen by W.S. Morris, ex-Air Force master sergeant.


INCIDENT 10

On the night of Nov. 2, 1951 a ball of kelly-green fire, larger than the moon, and blazing several times more brightly, flashed eastward across the skies of Arizona. It raced, straight as a bullet, parallel to the ground, and then exploded in a frightful paroxysm of light --- without making a sound. At least 165 people saw the incredible thing; hundreds more witnessed the similar flight of countless other fireballs that since December 1948 have bathed the hills of the Southwest in their lunar glare. In the last year they have been seen as far afield as Pennsylvania, Maryland and Puerto Rico. The chief Air Intelligence officer for the Albuquerque district saw one. Colonel Joseph D. Caldara, USAF, attached to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saw one in Virginia. Hundreds of pilots, weather observers and atomic scientists have sighted them. Reports came so thick and fast during 1948 that in 1949 the Air Force established "Project Twinkle" to investigate them. Project Twinkle established a triple phototheodolite post at Vaughn, N. Mex. to obtain scientific data on the fireballs. Day and night, week in, week out, for three months, a crew kept vigil. Ironically, while fireballs continued flashing everywhere else in the Southwest, they saw nothing until the project was transferred to the Holloman Air Force Base at Alamogordo, N. Mex. There, during another three-month siege, they saw a few but were unable to make satisfactory computations because of the fireballs' great-speed. Search parties have had no better luck. They have combed in vain the countryside beneath the point of disappearance; not a trace of telltale substance has been found on the ground.  

EVALUATION

The popular Southwest belief that a strange meteor shower was underway has been blasted by Dr. Lincoln La Paz, mathematician, astronomer and director of the Institute of Meteoritics at the University of New Mexico. He points out that normal fireballs do not appear green, they fall in the trajectory forced on them by gravity, are generally noisy as a freight train, and leave meteorites where they hit. The green New Mexican species does none of these things. Neither do the green fireballs appear to be electrostatic phenomena -- they move too regularly and too fast. 

If the fireballs are the product of a U.S. weapons project, as some Southwesterners believe, it is a very secret one indeed: the Atomic Energy Commission and every other government agency connected with weapons development has denied to LIFE any responsibility for the fireballs. 

Could they be self-destroying Russian reconnaissance devices? Not likely. While the U.S. believes the Russians have an intercontinental guided missile, there is no intelligence that indicates they have developed silent power plants or objects capable of moving nearly as fast as meteors (12 miles a second). Yet -- for whatever it may be worth -- the only reports of green fireballs prior to 1948 came from the Baltic area. 

If the fireballs do not respond to gravity, they could only be explained as lighter-than-air craft or electrical phenomena -- but they have characteristics which rule these out. Therefore they must be propelled. If propelled and not natural phenomena, they must be artificial. The extreme greenness of the fireballs has impressed most witnesses. When asked to indicate the approximate color on a spectrum chart, most of them have touched the band at 5,200 angstroms, close to the green of burning copper. Copper is almost never found in meteorites; the friction of the air oxidizes it shortly after the meteor enters the upper atmosphere. However, a curious fact has been recorded by aerologists. 

Concentrations of copper particles are now present in the air of Arizona and New Mexico, particularly in "fireball areas." These were not encountered in air samples made before 1948. 
WHAT THEY ARE NOT -- AND WHAT THEY MAY BE

What are the flying saucers, the luminous fuselages, the foo fighters and the green fireballs? The answer -- if any answer at this time is possible -- lies in the field of logic rather than of evidence. What the things are may be adduced partially by reviewing what they are not.  

THEY ARE NOT PSYCHOLOGICAL PHENOMENA. Although the Air Force cheerily wrote off its 34 unexplained incidents with this pat theory, the explanation does not hold up. There is no evidence, beyond textbook speculation, for such a supposition, and there is the direct evidence already cited against it. To doubt the observers in the foregoing cases is to doubt the ability of every human being to know a hawk from a handsaw.  

THEY ARE NOT THE PRODUCT OF U.S. RESEARCH. LIFE investigated this possibility to exhaustion. Not fully satisfied by the public denials of President Truman, Secretary Johnson and others, the investigators put the question directly to Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. He said: "There's nothing in our shop that could account for these things, and there's nothing going on that I know of that could explain them." Still unconvinced, LIFE checked the whereabouts and present business of every scientist who might have anything to do with the development of super aircraft. All were accounted for in other ways. Careful feelers through the business and labor world encountered no submerged projects of the immensity necessary to build a fleet of flying disks. And there is still the conclusive fact: U.S. science has at its command no source of power that could put a flying machine through such paces as the saucers perform.  

THEY ARE NOT A RUSSIAN DEVELOPMENT. It is inconceivable that the Russians would risk the loss of such a precious military weapon by flying a saucer over enemy territory. No man-made machine is foolproof; sooner or later one would crash in the U.S. and the secret would be out. Nor is there any reason to believe that Russian science, even with German help, has moved beyond not only the practical but the THEORETICAL horizons of U.S. research. 

THEY ARE NOT DISTORTIONS OF THE ATMOSPHERE RESULTING FROM ATOMIC ACTIVITY. To quote the answer David Lilienthal, former AEC commissioner, once made to that suggestion: "I can't prevent anyone from saying foolish things." Nor are they aberrations of the northern lights. Magnetic disturbances cannot account for them and neither can a notion (recently fathered by Dr. Urner Liddel, the Navy physicist) that they are "vertical mirages" -- reflections from a vertical (instead of a horizontal) layer of heated air.  

THEY ARE NOT SKYHOOK BALLOONS. This was the, original Liddel explanation, and in a few instances it may have been correct. But not many. They could scarcely be "fireflies in the cockpit," as one Air Force colonel suggested, since most of the observers were not in a cockpit when they saw their saucers. And it is hard to believe that saucers could be the reflections of automobile headlights on clouds, when they are seen in daylight under cloudless skies. These being the dead-end alleys of negative evidence, is there hope of an explanation on the open avenues of scientific theory? The answer is yes.  

The rank of science has taken the saucers far more seriously than the file of laymen and, after five years of close watch on all reports, a number of scientists were ready with some conclusions. One of these was Dr. Walther Riedel, once chief designer and research director at the German rocket center in Peenemunde, now engaged on secret work for the U.S. Dr. Riedel has never seen a saucer himself, but for several years he has kept records of saucer sightings all over the world. He told LIFE: "I am completely convinced that they have an out-of-world basis."  

Dr. Riedel has four points to his argument: "First, the skin temperatures of structures operating under the observed conditions would make it impossible for any terrestrial structure to survive. The skin friction of the missile at those speeds at those altitudes would melt any metals or nonmetals available.  

"Second, consider the high acceleration at which they fly and maneuver ... In some descriptions the beast spirals straight up. If you think of the fact that the centrifugal force in a few minutes of such a maneuver would press the crew against the outside, and do likewise to the blood, you see what I mean.  

"Third.... There are many occurrences where they have done things that only a pilot could perform but that no human pilot could stand.  

"Fourth, in most of the reports there is a lack of visible jet. Most observers report units without visible flame ... and no trail. If it would be any known type of jet, rocket, piston engine, or chain-reaction motor, there would be a very clear trail at high altitude. It is from no power unit we know of ..."  

Dr. Riedel's arguments are reinforced by those of Dr. Maurice A. Biot, one of the leading aerodynamicists in the U.S. and a prominent mathematical physicist. From an aerodynamical viewpoint, says Dr. Biot, the saucer shape makes very little sense if the machine is to travel in the atmosphere. A disk has a high drag and is a poor airfoil unless stabilized; when whirled at high speed through the air, it "wobbles" distressingly -- a movement observed in several of the saucers sighted. However, for space travel, where there is no atmosphere to oppose, the disk has significant advantages. The sphere, theoretically better, presents several difficult problems of construction and utilization. The disk, easier to build, has almost all the virtues of the sphere and some of its own. Reviewing the evidence presented here, Dr. Biot said: "The least improbable explanation is that these things are artificial and controlled ... My opinion for some time has been that they have an extraterrestrial origin."  

WHO? WHAT? AND WHEN?

There, at least, is a plausible explanation of the disk shape. But the real depths of the saucer mystery bemuse penetration, as the night sky swallows up a flashlight beam. What of the other shapes? Why do the things make no sound? How to explain their eerie luminosity? What power urges them at such terrible speeds through the sky? Who, or what, is aboard? Where do they come from? Why are they here? What are the intentions of the beings who control them?  

Before these awesome questions, science -- and mankind -- can yet only halt in wonder. Answers may come in a generation -- or tomorrow. Somewhere in the dark skies there may be those who know.  


A U.S. rocket is launched from a proving ground. Neither this nor any known U.S. missiles fit the descriptions of the sighted saucers and fireballs.



Visitors From Space?

April 28, 1952: Letters to the Editor
Sirs:  

"Have We Visitors from Space?" (LIFE, April 7) is the most comprehensive report I have read on the subject. I was very closely associated with Projects "Twinkle" and "Grudge" at Alamogordo, N. Mex. where I was chief of the technical photographic facility at Holloman Air Force base. I have seen several of these objects myself, and they are everything you say they are as to shape, size and speed. 

Daniel A. McGovern 
Captain, USAF 
Alexandria, Va.  

Sirs: 
I first learned about the green fireballs from Marine Corps night fighter pilots while I was an aviation intelligence officer in Korea.  

Pilots often reported seeing strange bright green objects in the skies, unlike anything they had ever seen before, and moving too fast and regularly to be explained or identified or analyzed by the pilots themselves or the intelligence officers.  

Edward A. Kolar 
Captain, USMCR 
Tenafly, N.J.  

Sirs: 
LIFE has again rendered a distinct service to its readers. The authors' painstaking work in compiling and evaluating known data has made a case for interplanetary space ships which is entirely logical and sensible. 


Donald J. Falvey 
Deep River, Conn.  

Sirs: 
As observers of the Lubbock lights, we feel the record requires that we point out that the groups of objects shown in the Hart photographs are, in these respects, essentially different from any of the 12 or more groups that we sighted.  

1) All but three of the groups we sighted had no geometric form; those three were smooth arcs, not V-shaped.  

2) Those three could not be conclusively determined to be composed of individual lights, but certainly they were not made up of two distinct rows of alternately spaced lights.  

3) None of our sightings was either bright enough, nor in view long enough (3 seconds) to offer any possibility of being photographed.  

4) Even if the lights we saw had been particularly rich in nonvisible ultraviolet light, they could not have been photographed without special equipment.  

5) All of our sightings were close to the same speed of 30 degrees per second, at which speed it would be impossible to follow them with a camera accurately enough to obtain an unblurred image.  

W. I. Robinson 
A. G. Oberg 
W. L. Ducker 
E. F. George 
Lubbock, Texas  

  • Air Force experts had considered these objections of Professor Ducker and Doctors Oberg, Robinson and George. But they are still convinced that Hart was able to get exposures of the two groups he saw (4 seconds for each to cross the sky, 1-1/2 minutes apart) and found no reason to repudiate his pictures. -- ED. 

Sirs: 
Your article overstates the strangeness of the fireballs it describes... 
You imply that the 1951 fireball display in the Southwest was not a meteor shower. We obtained and photographed approximate paths for 11 fireballs reported as falling Oct. 30 to Nov. 9 inclusive. The plot showed that all came from a small area in and near the constellation Taurus. This indicates a shower, perhaps related to the well-known shower whose members are seen falling away from Taurus in October and November. 

C. C. Wylie 
Professor of Astronomy 
University of Iowa 
Iowa City, Iowa  

  • Although there were meteor falls during this period, Dr. La Paz says: "Almost all of the green fireballs observed in the Southwest between December 1948 and December 1951 radiated from the circumpolar region of the sky. They came from points 35 to as much as 105 degrees distant from the Taurid fireball radiant, and therefore obviously were not related to this radiant." -- ED. 

Sirs: 
It is rather chilling to see that our plans for hospitality include interceptions and recover. It would be tragic indeed if the harmless and friendly behavior of these crafts from elsewhere were met with military destruction. Not only would the morals of such a course be a regrettable indication of man's immaturity, but the practical consequences might include drastic reprisals.... 

Mason Rose 
Los Angeles, Calif.  

Sirs: 
... The only reason the preponderance of this saucer-fireball-cigar activity is taking place in the American Southwest is that this is the area which has brought itself to interplanetary (or perhaps I should say, intergalaxial) attention. It was done so by virtue of the fact that it was the site used for the original A-bomb experiments....  

Bill Ryan 
San Diego, Calif.  

    The Air Force, which has attempted to correlate the frequency and location of saucer reports with the testing of atomic weapons, has found no significant relationships. -- ED. 

Wednesday 4 November 2015

Capstone


"At midnight a helicopter will fly into the site and, hovering in a starburst of lasers and spotlights, will place a gigantic gilded capstone atop the Great Pyramid --all to the accompaniment of what is expected to be an unprecedented Jarre crescendo of electronic music. The gold cap, approximately 28 feet high (about the size of a two-story house) is being especially constructed to protect the pyramid structure. In place, it will catch the first light of the new millennium as the sun rises over Egypt. Capping pyramids with gold and timing important events to the setting and rising sun are very much part of the ancient Egyptian pharoanic tradition, making this piece of Jarre theatre particularly meaningful."




THE GREAT PYRAMID AND THE FREEMASONS. Why did the Egyptians cancel the most dramatic ceremony of the Millennium?

Amid accusations of bizarre 'Zionist' plots and strange 'Masonic' machinations, the Egyptian government cancelled the placing of a golden capstone on top of the Great Pyramid which was scheduled to take place at midnight on on the eve of the new millennium. Curiously, the story has its origins in France when, in May 1998, a golden capstone was ceremoniously placed on top of the Egyptian obelisk which stands at the Place de la Concorde in the heart of Paris with guests of honour Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni and the Antiquities' chairman Dr. Ali Gaballah. This Paris obelisk, which was taken from the temple of Luxor in Upper Egypt in 1831, had been commissioned by Charles X and was raised in the Place de la Concorde in 1836 amid massive celebrations attended by a crowd of 200,000 people. Charles X was a Freemason and historians have suspected that the secret Brotherhood was behind the idea of bringing the Egyptian obelisk to France. Other obelisks which were also taken out of Egypt by the Freemasons in the late 19th century included the two famous "Cleopatra's Needles", which today can be seen at the Victoria Embankment in London and in New York's Central Park. The London obelisk was commissioned and paid for by a prominent Freemason, Sir Erasmus Wilson, and the raising ceremony in London was attend by hundreds of British Freemasons in September 1878 under the auspices of the Prince of Wales who also was Grand Master of United Grand Lodge, Freemasonry's regulating body in Britain. That same year the 'New York' obelisk was noticed by US President Ulysses S. Grant and General William T. Sherman during a visit to Egypt, who felt that America should also have an ancient Egyptian obelisk of its own. Henry W. Gorringe, a prominent Freemason, was selected for the task of bringing the obelisk to New York. The obelisk was raised in October 1880 outside the newly built Metropolitan Museum, with over ten thousand Freemasons attending the ceremony in Masonic regalia. The important symbolic aspect of an obelisk is not its tall stem but mainly its top which is shaped like a small pyramid. Pyramids, especially with the 'eye of providence' in them, feature very prominently in Masonic rituals. The symbol can be seen on the face of the US one-dollar bill and also on the Great Seal of the United States. In Freemasonry the glowing pyramid and eye represents the so-called Great Architect of the Universe or the Supreme Being, both epithets for God. This Masonic symbolism was used prominently in France during the 1789 Revolution and was embossed on the front of The Declaration of Human Rights. The first celebrations of the French Revolution that took place in 1793 saw many makeshift 'pyramids' raised in the heart of Paris and in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum, causing many historians to suspect a Masonic involvement. Today a glass pyramid with the same geometrical proportions as the Great Pyramid of Giza adorns the courtyard of the Louvre.

During the May 1998 celebrations in Paris, when the obelisk at the Place de la Concorde was crowned with a golden pyramid, the Egyptian culture minister announced that a similar ceremony would take place at the Great Pyramid of Giza for the millennium celebrations:




"We cannot rebuild the pyramids stone by stone," said Farouk Hosni, "so we have chosen a symbolic event like the ancient Egyptians did when they used to cap obelisks like what the French did at the Place de la Concorde".

Later in October 1998 the Farouk Hosni announced that French composer Jean-Michel Jarre was to organise this event at Giza. The official Egyptian Tourist Authorities announced that Jean-Michel Jarre would compose a 12-hour opera titled "The Twelve Dreams of the Sun" for the sum of 10 million US dollars and that,




"At midnight a helicopter will fly into the site and, hovering in a starburst of lasers and spotlights, will place a gigantic gilded capstone atop the Great Pyramid --all to the accompaniment of what is expected to be an unprecedented Jarre crescendo of electronic music. The gold cap, approximately 28 feet high (about the size of a two-story house) is being especially constructed to protect the pyramid structure. In place, it will catch the first light of the new millennium as the sun rises over Egypt. Capping pyramids with gold and timing important events to the setting and rising sun are very much part of the ancient Egyptian pharaonic tradition, making this piece of Jarre theatre particularly meaningful."

In 1989 Jean-Michele Jarre had organised a quasi-similar event in Paris for the Bicentennial of the French Revolution when he set up a large metal-framed pyramid as a stage for his band in front of the Grande Arche at La Defense in the western end of the Champs Elysees. Another show by Jarre also took place a few years later in London's Canary Wharf which is topped by a glowing glass pyramid apparently having the same geometrical proportions as the Great Pyramid in Egypt, and as the one that stands in the courtyard of the Louvre Museum in Paris, built by the American architect Ming Pei. It would appear that the idea of a new golden capstone for the Great Pyramid originated with Dr. Zahi Hawass, Under-secretary of State for the Giza Monuments. In early 1998 Dr. Hawass unearthed two limestone blocks with ancient inscriptions and drawings depicting workers moving a golden capstone for a royal pyramid amid scenes of dancing and celebrations and proposed that Egypt should celebrate the millennium in a similar way. At first 3 million people were scheduled to attend the event free of charge but the Egyptian authorities put a limit of 250,000 for 'security reasons'. Huge promotional events were organised in various capitals of the Western world, including New York, Los Angeles, Sydney and various cities in Europe. Preparations then began for a huge stage in the desert south of the Great Pyramid, intended to have seating capacity for 25,000 people at the price of $400 per ticket. Cheaper tickets of $15 were also sold for 'standing' places in the nearby desert. All was apparently going to plan until September 1999, when senior members of the Egyptian Parliament began to complaint of the costs involved and also that the millennium celebrations coincided this year with the Islamic month of Ramadan, when devout Muslims in Egypt fast from dawn to dusk and foreigners are asked to refrain from drinking alcohol or eating in public areas during the hours of fasting. To counteract such criticism, culture minister Farouk Hosni stated that a ban would be placed on alcohol during the celebrations and that no music would be played until after the official end of the fast was announced. To add fuel to this political fire, the radical Egyptian press, notably the newspaper Al Shaab (The People) found out that Jean-Michel Jarre intended to project the so-called 'eye of Horus' on the Great Pyramid with laser lights, and immediately denounced the organisers of staging a 'Masonic' stunt. The Al Shaab claimed that the 'eye in the pyramid' blatantly evoked the well-known Masonic symbol on the US one-dollar bill. Freemasons are also known to harbour ancient Hebrew Rituals related to Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, which also fired accusations of 'Zionist' infiltration in the Arab newspapers. These accusations were hotly denied by culture minister Farouk Hosni. "The suggestion is groundless", also stated Dr.  Hawass, the official in charge of the Pyramids. "The celebration has nothing to do with Masonic beliefs. The design on the US dollar is a faulty imitation of the Pyramids of the Middle Kingdom."

Adding to the growing hype was another twist to this strange story. This involved the so-called 'prophecies' made by American Psychic Edgar Cayce known as the 'Sleeping Prophet'. Cayce, who died in 1945, foretold the placing of a gilded capstone on the Great Pyramid which, according to him, would act as a 'symbol' for the rediscovery of the legendary 'Hall of Records of Atlantis' under the paws of the Great Sphinx and the events of the second coming of Christ:




"The apex, the crown or apex (or capstone) was of metal; that was to be indestructible, being of copper, brass, gold with other alloys… it became very fitting that there should be the crowning or placing of this 'symbol of the records' by one who represent the old and the new… Hence there has arisen from this ceremony many of the things that may be seen as present… the sounding of the New Year… 1998 from the death of the Son of Man…"

Oddly, Cayce also associates the event with the establishment of a sort of New World order based on Masonic principles:




"For with those changes that will be wrought, Americanism with the universal thought that is expressed and manifest in the Brotherhood of man into group thought as expressed in the Masonic Order, will be the eventual rule in the settlement of affairs in the world. Not that the world is to become a Masonic Order, but the principle that are embraced in the same will be the basis upon which the new order of peace is to be established…"
Cayce claimed that Jesus and John the Baptist (regarded as the 'patron saint' of Freemasons who celebrate their New Year on St. John's Day on the 24th June) "took those last of the Brotherhood degrees" in the Great Pyramid of Giza. Since 1973 the Edgar Cayce Foundation has been involved in various expeditions at Giza to find the 'Hall of Records'. The first official exploration was with the Stamford Research International in early 1978. In 1996 two prominent members of the Edgar Cayce Foundation caused a huge controversy by claiming to have located with radar a large man-made cavity under the paws of the Sphinx where Edgar Cayce had indicated. Further explorations took place in the course of 1997-8 but no excavation permits were granted to the Americans. But in August 1999 during a conference at the Edgar Cayce Foundation, Dr. Zahi Hawass announced that a new license had been granted to the Americans for more thorough radar soundings to find the Hall of Records under the Sphinx. Dr. Hawass also announced that a small trap "door" discovered in 1993 at the end of a narrow tunnel inside the Great Pyramid suspected by many to lead to a secret chamber, will be opened in the year 2000 by the National Geographic team from the USA. The Americans had planned to be at Giza on the 7th December 1999 to start their search at the Sphinx but this, like the capstone, was cancelled. 

The team hopes to be back in February this year. Much controversy has surrounded the precise relationship of the Edgar Cayce Foundation and the Egyptian Antiquities Organisation, with allegations that the latter or some of its prominent members arranged for the university education of some high ranking officials in Egypt involved with the Giza Pyramids. In early December 1999, under heavy pressure by the Egyptian newspapers, the Antiquities Organisation took a face-saving position by deferring the decision of placing the golden capstone to a scientific committee. Dr. Zahi Hawass stated that the capstone, which apparently was to be made from an 8 m high light metal frame and covered in gold sheets, could not be lowered by a helicopter 

"…because it will hurt the pyramid. Therefore if we find out that that putting this capstone will hurt the pyramid, then, we will not do it." 

But some critics rightly pointed out a lightweight capstone on the 6 million ton stone pyramid would be like placing a flea on an elephant's back. Finally the Egyptian minister of culture caved in and, at the eleventh hour, admitted that due to public outrage over the 'Masonic' implications and to avoid any disturbance the golden capstone ceremony would be scrapped. 

Ironically on the night of 31st December a thick fog settled over the Great Pyramid which would have made it impossible for a helicopter to lower the capstone on its summit. Jean-Michele Jarre did, however, manage to project some images on the smaller of the three Giza Pyramids including 'eyes' until it, too, was engulfed by the fog and the thick smoke caused by huge firework display. It now remains to be seen whether the Egyptian authorities will, as promised, open the "door" in the Great Pyramid and reveal what is behind it in the course of the year 2000. And will they also allow further explorations at the Sphinx to search for the Hall of Records? 

The eyes of the world are watching.

Back to the Collective Unconscious


" Well it’s curious; I’ve been talking about how modern quantum physics is getting more and more Joycean, and ethology is confirming a lot of Joyce’s insights into anal-territorial behaviors and so on.  

And Joyce was also a major influence on Marshall McLuhan, as McLuhan always admitted.  Every book McLuhan wrote, he talks about how much he learned from Joyce.  And the whole McLuhan view of how media affect the mind - Finnigan's Wake has a whole history of media in it, from sign language up to television, which didn’t exist then.  

That’s another of the precognitions in Finnigan's Wake, the television set in the bar, and there were no television sets in bars until eight years after FW was published, and no television sets in Irish bars for about twenty years later.  

And yet Joyce has a television set in the bar!  But McLuhan got the whole idea of the global village and the effect of media on mind, and the evolution of mind reflected in and being fed back to by the evolution of media.  All that’s in Finnigan's Wake.  

Joyce developed that out of Vico, the sociologist who studied how language is - how songs, in Vico’s theory, songs lead to languages and languages lead to war, and every war is really a dance that people have agreed to do without quite realiziing how they get into it, because they’re hypnotized by their language, and they don’t quite realize what they’re doing, but they’re going through this evolutionary pattern that’s more intelligent than they are.  

It seems to be some kind of - Burroughs would call it a virus, Vico calls it divine providence.  

Some people think Vico is very sarcastic; he was writing while the Inquisition was still in full force. "

Robert Anton Wilson

Monday 2 November 2015

US Army Control of Sinai Airspace


Elephant in the Room : Russian A320 came down in highly restricted strip of ceded Egyptian airspace under the exclusive control of a US Army Colonel commanding a force of 715 Army Rangers/guardsmen, plus several hundred civilian Observer Corps personnel, all issued w. high-powered field binoculars.

"Why, who's so gross,
That seeth not this palpable device? 
Yet who's so blind, but says he sees it not?

Bad is the world; and all will come to nought,
When such bad dealings must be seen in thought."

- Richard III

"Why are those who emulate Bin Laden called terrorists and the people who kill children, rebels? Where is the logic?

Because certain political circles in the West want to weaken Russia just like the Romans wanted to destroy Carthage.

But we will not allow this scenario to come to pass."

- Vladimir Putin

Neither the Egyptian military, nor Police are allowed to enter Sinai Zone C, under the enforcement protocols of the 1979 Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, on the basis that it may provided a pretext or cover for a potential invasion - the entire area is patrolled by US Army Rangers, and all movement within the airspace is under the exclusive control of Canadian Military Air Traffic Controllers.

April 1986

The Australian contingent, consisting of staff officers and a helicopter squadron who were members of the initial deployment, withdrew in the course of their government's reduction of its peacekeeping commitments. They were replaced by the CCMFO Canadian Rotary Wing Aviation Unit, equipped with nine CH135 Twin Hueys, staff officers and flight following. The CCMFO was operational at El Gorah on March 31, 1986. Canadian tactical helicopter units rotated to El Gorah for six-month tours of duty. The primary units providing military personnel were 408, 427 and 430 Tactical Helicopter Squadrons and 403 Squadron Helicopter Operational Training Squadron.


"The MFO has its main headquarters in Rome, where it is headed by the Director-General. It also has two regional offices, in Tel Aviv and Cairo, while the Force itself is based in Zone C on the Sinai Peninsula, under the command of the Force Commander.

The Force Commander is responsible for the military elements of the MFO, which comprise:

Headquarters
Three infantry battalions (FIJIBATT, COLBATT and USBATT)
1st US Support Battalion (Formerly the Logistical Support Unit)
Coastal Patrol Unit (CPU)
Rotary Wing Aviation Unit (AVCO)
Fixed Wing Aviation Unit (FWAU)
Transport and Engineering Unit (TREU)
Military Police Unit (FMPU)
Flight Following (Air Traffic control) Unit

The Observer contingent of the MFO is made up entirely of US civilians. The observers are either seconded from the US State Department or retired US military personnel."



"So, what really happened that day? Let's just for a moment speculate, shall we? 

We have the epileptic seizure distracting the police and allowing the shooters to get into place. The epileptic later vanished, never checking into the hospital. 

The A-team goes to the sixth floor of the Depository. They were refurbishing the floors of the Depository that week allowing unknown workmen in the building. They move quickly into position, minutes before the shooting. 

The second spotter, talking by radio to the other teams, has the best overall view. The God spot. B-team, one rifleman and one spotter with access to the building moves into a low floor of the Dal-Tex building. 



The third team, C-team, moves in behind the fence above the grassy knoll where the shooter and the spotter are first seen by the late Lee Bowers. They have the best position of all. Kennedy is close and on a flat, low trajectory. 

Part of this team is a coordinator who flashed security credentials at people, chasing them from the area. 

Probably two to three more men are in the crowd on Elm. 

Ten to twelve men. Three teams. Three shooters. 

The triangulation of fire Clay Shaw and David Ferrie discussed two months before. 

They've walked the plaza. They know every inch. They've calibrated their sights. Practiced on moving targets. 

They're ready. "



Department of Defense Press Briefing by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook in the Pentagon Briefing Room

Press Operations

September 8, 2015




Q: All right. On a separate subject, the -- there were four U.S. military service members who were injured last week in an attack in the Sinai Peninsula. Can you update us on their condition?

And is there an ongoing review by DOD and the interagency about the status of maintaining U.S. military presence at (off-mic)?


MR. COOK: I don't have the exact characterization of their injuries at this point, whether the -- I know that there were -- let me double- check here -- in all, there were seven soldiers, not just U.S. forces, but that were evacuated by air to a nearby hospital. They were described with non-life-threatening injuries.

We continue to support the role being played by the multinational forced observers in supporting the treaty at peace between Israel and Egypt.

We are concerned over security conditions in that area of the northeastern Sinai, where Egyptian security forces, as well as civilian and military elements of the MFO, including U.S. military forces stationed at the MFO north camp, are exposed to potential risk.

And in light of the security situation there, we are, again, considering additional measures to bolster their protection going forward, taking steps to try and enhance their protection.

But in terms of any sort of change in outlook for the MFO overall, I've got nothing for you on that.

Q: Would that bolstering involve the -- the sending of additional forces?

MR. COOK: We're considering several steps to bolster force protection there, and -- and I can tell you, Louis, that this is something that's been in the works for several weeks now, not necessitated by what happened with this particular IED incident.

This is something that's been a concern for the secretary and others, bolstering force protection, and so it's going to be something that you're going to see some movement on in the -- in the short term and something that we'll continue to keep an eye on. 

Safety and security of American forces, top priority for this secretary and this department.

And with that everyone...

(CROSSTALK)


Q: Can you just clarify one point?

Phil's question about the 5,400 trained Syrian rebels by year's end, you said you may have to adjust that. But I'm just wondering...


MR. COOK: This is a constant review from the start.

Q: Just doing the math, I'm just wondering how you can possibly reach 5,400 by year's end, given that there's a second class now, maybe a third class, and, you know, there's, what, 54 on the ground now.

How do you -- how do you get there by year's end...

(CROSSTALK)

Q: ... six-to-eight-week class? How...

MR. COOK: 
These are the -- these are the hard questions being asked, Tom, right now about this program, about ways to alter it, adjust it, enhance it.

Are there other means by which we can, again, support moderate Syrian forces on the ground in Syria? These are the questions being asked.

At the same time, this T&E program is going forward. It may not look exactly as it -- we first hoped when it was first initially unveiled, and part of that is lessons learned on our part. Hard lessons, to be honest.

Q: Is sending U.S. troops in one of those options being considered?

MR. COOK: Sending U.S. troops in right now is not one of the options being considered.

Q: But you're not ready to adjust that 5,400 figure yet, correct?

MR. COOK: I'm -- I'm not going to adjust what was the target initially. There are people above my pay grade making hard decisions, evaluating this program, and again, when we've got -- if there's a new target number, we'll provide that for you as well.

It was always a target. It was -- and, you know, this is a program that we'll have -- we're going to continue to -- to evaluate every single aspect of this program, from the finances to the training portion of it to the equipment and to who we're -- who we're talking to, who we're vetting and who we're not.

So with that, everyone, I -- I gotta go. I got another meeting. So thanks very much. We'll see you guys, those of you going on the trip, and otherwise be back here on Thursday.



Arrow Air May Be Tied To Iran-contra Mystery
November 12, 1989|By KEN CUMMINS, Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- The Reagan White House called it a tragic accident four years ago when 248 soldiers, heading home for Christmas, died in the fiery crash of a plane chartered by Arrow Air of Fort Lauderdale.

Today, the air disaster is another of the many mysteries surrounding the Iran-Contra affair.

Recent evidence prompted U.S. Rep. Robin Tallon, D-S.C., to press to reopen the Arrow Air inquiry to determine whether the crash was a case of terrorist retaliation for a botched, secret U.S.-Iran arms deal. The House Crime Subcommittee opened an investigation last month and may hold hearings soon.

One hundred five House members, including Rep. Larry Smith, D-Hollywood, have signed a letter to President Bush asking for a full-fledged government investigation.

``We request that you initiate a formal United States investigation to explore all possible crash theories,`` the congressmen said in the letter. ``We feel it is the very least we can do for the brave soldiers of the Army`s 101st Airborne Division who perished.``

The crash -- the worst peacetime U.S. military accident -- is only one of many puzzling incidents fueling suspicions of a massive government cover-up to obscure what really happened in the wide-ranging Iran-Contra affair.

Mysterious deaths and strange occurrences surrounding the affair continue to dog Bush administration appointees, preoccupy members of Congress and haunt some citizens who think that they or their relatives are victims of the complex, secret deals.

Some of the unexplained incidents, recent developments and strange connections to Iran-Contra include:

-- A dissenting report by four of the nine members of the Canadian Aviation Safety Board that pointed to evidence in the Arrow Air crash suggesting terrorist sabotage by the Islamic Jihad in retaliation for a secret U.S. shipment of missiles that were not the kind requested.

-- The deaths of eight major figures and several lesser-known participants in the Iran-Contra affair since the secret arms-for-hostages deals and the clandestine Contra supply operation began unraveling in mid-1986.

-- Suspicions within Congress that the Bush administration appointed Iran-Contra figures to government posts as rewards for continued silence about high-level White House participation in the secret dealings.

-- Circumstantial evidence suggesting a secret deal between the Ayatollah Khomeini`s government and Ronald Reagan`s 1980 campaign staff to keep the 52 Americans taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy from being freed before that year`s presidential election.

-- Efforts by people around the country, including in Florida, to confirm strongly held beliefs that they or their relatives were caught in the web of Iran-Contra dealings and to find out why.

Invariably, those people, who are spending much of their time and money in search of answers, say their biggest obstacles are government officials and agencies that seem intent on shielding facts and events from public view.

Those sentiments run especially strong among about 120 families of Arrow Air crash victims who have formed Families for the Truth About Gander, led by Zona and James Douglas Phillips of St. Petersburg. They are pressing for a U.S. investigation of the Dec. 12, 1985, crash near Gander, Newfoundland.

Although the Arrow Air plane carrying U.S. soldiers home from the Middle East had been chartered by the Pentagon, investigation of the crash was left to the Canadian Aviation Safety Board, which sought input from some U.S. agencies.

``We`ve got 256 people dead (including the plane`s eight crew members) and no reason. And nobody seems to care why,`` said Zona Philips, whose stepson perished in the crash.

Supporters of the sabotage theory point to the dissenting report by members of the Canadian safety board and to statements by purported members of the Islamic Jihad shortly after the crash taking credit for the disaster. These theorists also point to memos by former national security aide Oliver North -- who was convicted for his role in the Iran-Contra affair -- warning of a possible retaliatory strike.

Those memos, uncovered in the Iran-Contra investigations by the Tower Board and by Congress, were written after Iranian officials became angry because 18 missiles shipped to them on Nov. 24, 1985, were ineffective for use in the Iraqi war. If another shipment was not made, North wrote in a Dec. 9, 1985, memo to then-Adm. John Poindexter, the ``U.S. reversal now in midstream could ignite Iranian fire.``

The subsequent congressional investigation of the Iran-Contra affair tied Arrow Air to the covert network shipping weapons to Iran.

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The Gander families have run into similar obstacles.

``You can`t get into the government`s files,`` Zona Phillips said. ``They (government officials) send you an FBI report that is all blacked out.``

Others who think they were caught in the tangled web of the wide-ranging scandal report similar experiences.

When Orlando recreational-vehicle salesman Bob Fletcher wrote to the FBI recently requesting the bureau`s file on him, he got back a letter saying that all of his records had been classified for national security reasons.

Fletcher found the letter amusing because the FBI, along with the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and congressional committees, have shown little interest in pursuing his allegations.

``At the onset, they`re very cooperative,`` Fletcher said of federal and congressional investigators. ``Then it ends up where they say, `Well, the consensus of opinion is we can`t go after this.```

Tallon`s recent inquiries to the FBI, the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the Army requesting their files on the Arrow Air investigation have produced responses suggesting that he contact Canadian officials for those records.

The Gander families have run into similar obstacles.

``You can`t get into the government`s files,`` Zona Phillips said. ``They (government officials) send you an FBI report that is all blacked out.``

Others who think they were caught in the tangled web of the wide-ranging scandal report similar experiences.

When Orlando recreational-vehicle salesman Bob Fletcher wrote to the FBI recently requesting the bureau`s file on him, he got back a letter saying that all of his records had been classified for national security reasons.

Fletcher found the letter amusing because the FBI, along with the office of Iran-Contra independent counsel Lawrence Walsh and congressional committees, have shown little interest in pursuing his allegations.

``At the onset, they`re very cooperative,`` Fletcher said of federal and congressional investigators. ``Then it ends up where they say, `Well, the consensus of opinion is we can`t go after this.```

``It`s such a successful number of high-level people doing the cover-up that interested congressmen and senators are just screwed,`` Fletcher charged.

Fletcher suspects that his defunct Atlanta-area toy company somehow is connected to the ``toyco`` reference in Swiss bank account records detailing the diversion of funds from the Iranian arms sales to Nicaragua`s Contra rebels.

He said he sold his company in early 1985 to Gary Best, an import-export businessman who subsequently failed to make the promised payments. Instead of exporting toys, Fletcher said Best soon began using the toy company as a ``front`` to peruse arms deals to Iran and Central America and missions to Southeast Asia in search of soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam war.

Best has denied Fletcher`s allegations to federal investigators.

One of the most persistent suspicions about the Iran-Contra affair is that it began in October 1980, before Ronald Reagan was elected president and months before he took office. Former Reagan campaign aides, who later became top U.S. national security and intelligence officials, have denied vehemently that they made a secret deal to supply weapons to Iran in exchange for delaying the release of the 52 American hostages until after the 1980 presidential election.

But the issue will not go away. The allegations were reviewed most recently in the Nov. 3 broadcast of ABC-TV`s Nightline program, commemorating the 10th anniversary of the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and the seizure of its staff.

Gary Sick, top national security adviser to President Jimmy Carter at the time, appeared on the program and pointed to evidence uncovered in the Iran-Contra investigations that secret U.S. weapons shipments to Iran began soon after Reagan took office in January 1981.

``The fact that the Reagan administration would come in and, as one of its first actions, approve really very substantial arms deliveries to Iran, apparently without asking any questions, strikes me as very strange,`` Sick said.

The controversy did not go away with the departure of the Reagan administration in January. Several members of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees and their aides have speculated that the Bush administration has handed appointments to Iran-Contra figures as rewards for their silence.

Sen. Alan Cranston, D-Calif., voiced those suspicions on the Senate floor in September.

IRAN-CONTRA DEATHS

Some of the key figures in the Iran-Contra scandal who have died or been killed:

-- WILLIAM CASEY: The CIA director and key figure in the scandals. As the scandals were unfolding in December of 1986, Casey was hospitalized for an operation to remove a brain tumor. He died in May of 1987, as congressional hearings into the scandals were getting underway.

-- GUSTAVO ALVAREZ MARTINEZ: Honduran Armed Forces Chief who was a close ally of the Reagan White House in secret operations setting up and financing the Nicaraguan Contra rebels. Gen. Martinez, who was retired, was slain by a band of gunmen in January.

-- BARRY SEAL: A pilot for the Colombian cocaine cartel who became a government informant and reportedly knew about the trading of guns to the Contras for drugs bound for the United States. Seal was gunned down in a parking lot in Baton Rogue, La., in February of 1986.

-- AMIRAN NIR: A key Israeli middleman in the secret shipment of U.S. arms to Iran, died in a mysterious plane crash in Mexico last November.

-- DONALD FORTIER: Deputy national security affairs adviser to Reagan who administered the secret Swiss bank accounts into which money from the Iranian arms sales was deposited. Fortier, 39, died in August of 1986, just before the scandal became public. Liver cancer was listed as the cause of death.

-- GLENN SOUHAM: A French businessman with White House ties who was part of a scheme by Oliver North to steal Soviet weapons from Poland and give them to the Contras. Souham, 34, was gunned down outside his Paris apartment in September of 1986.

-- CYRUS HASHEMI: The Iranian weapons dealer who approached U.S. intelligence officials with the original proposal to swap arms for American hostages. Hashemi died of a rare cancer disease in the summer of 1986.

-- STEVEN CARR: A 27-year-old mercenary who was prepared to testify about secret weapons shipments out of Fort Lauderdale to the Contras. Carr, considered a key witness at the time, died of a suspicious drug overdose in December of 1986.