Ex-NASA Worker Says Space
Agency Knows About UFOs
By Michael Lindemann
© 1999 CNINews All Rights Reserved
7-21-99
Note - Thanks to Michael Lindemann for special permission to post this
remarkable story from CNI NEWS.
In the world of UFO research, whistle-blowers come and
go. Often they appear on the scene suddenly, as if out of nowhere, spouting
grand claims and grander resumes. Almost as often, such people turn out to be
complete frauds and hucksters. But not always. The late Lt. Col. Philip
Corso, for example, was exactly who he said he was -- a highly decorated Cold
Warrior with close ties to the Eisenhower administration and a demonstrated
penchant for championing unpopular positions both inside and outside the
military. When Corso said he knew for certain that an alien spacecraft had
crashed in New Mexico in 1947, it became necessary to examine his claims
seriously -- not because he could prove them true (he could not) but because
he was a credible witness.
The Corso example points up a vexing truism about
whistle-blowers as well as other UFO claimants. More often than not, the
value of the claim must be judged mainly by the inherent credibility of the
witness, because no irrefutable evidence is offered. But witness credibility
does count -- in a court of law, it can be the difference between an
acquittal and a death sentence.
Now comes another whistle-blower, one Clark C.
McClelland, who says that for more than three decades he worked at NASA's
launch facilities at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
During that time, he says, he saw plenty of evidence that NASA officials and
employees were exposed to unexplainable and sometimes quite alarming UFO
events. If McClelland is telling the truth, he could become one of the most
significant UFO witnesses in recent memory.
The July 1 issue of CNI News carried a story told by
Clark McClelland regarding a conversation he claims to have had with famed
rocketeer Wernher von Braun. McClelland says that von Braun, like Corso,
confirmed that a spacecraft of unknown origin crashed near Roswell, New
Mexico in 1947. When we ran that story on July 1, we were obliged to note
that "our initial efforts to confirm [McClelland's] NASA background have been
inconclusive." Needless to say, if McClelland's background did not check out,
his UFO claims would be worthless.
As in the case of Col. Corso, we still can't guarantee
that McClelland's UFO stories are true -- that would require a talent for
mind-reading that we do not possess. But CNI News can now offer assurance
that McClelland's NASA background checks out. He is, in our opinion, a
credible witness.
Walter Kollosch is retired now but still lives near the
Cape where he worked for years as a NASA subcontractor with the Martin
Company. Back in the early 1960s, Clark McClelland worked for Martin as well.
Clark was a draftsman then, and he worked with Kollosch on the Gemini
program. Later Clark moved to the Boeing Company, but he stayed at the Cape,
Kollosch recalls.
Kollosch remembers that Clark McClelland was outgoing and
well-liked. "Everybody knew him. He even got to know the Mercury astronauts
when we were working on Pershing [missile program]. When he was with Boeing,
... he was in with the Apollo astronauts... I don't know of anyone who didn't
like him," Kollosch told CNI News.
McClelland says that one reason he has decided to come
forward with his UFO information is that he has been somehow black-balled by
NASA and has been unable to get work in the aerospace industry since 1992.
"Clark has had some bad luck as far as his employment
goes. Clark is very talented. For him to be out of work for so long strikes
me as being very suspicious," Kollosch said. But he did not volunteer more
detail on McClelland's recent work problems.
Kollosch also knew that McClelland was very serious about
UFOs back in the 1960s. They talked about it from time to time, but Kollosch
said he wouldn't have wanted to bring it up with others at the launch
facility.
There was a lot of secrecy in the space program in those
days. The manned space program was, in effect, an integral part of the Cold
War. Workers knew they had to toe the line. "In the early '60s, the secrecy
aspect was horrendous... Some guys lost their marriage because of it,"
Kollosch said.
It may have been a problem with a security clearance, in
fact, that eventually caused McClelland's falling out with NASA.
By 1990, he worked directly for the space agency in the
shuttle program. He was then training to become a Spacecraft Operator (ScO),
meaning he would have hands-on responsibility for space shuttle maintenance
and ground operations. His trainer was shuttle ScO senior specialist Dennis
Bestwick.
"I'm not at liberty to say a lot" about McClelland's
dismissal, Bestwick told CNI News. "His work was fine, but something in his
security check didn't quite check out. Nothing illegal, but something about
the dates didn't match. You need a secret clearance," he said. It could have
been as simple as a clerical error in McClelland's records, Bestwick
conceded. But whatever it was, McClelland lost his clearance and was
subsequently dismissed from the shuttle program.
Bestwick seemed sorry to see McClelland go. "Clark was
well liked. He had an outgoing personality. He's a little bit eccentric, but
he's knowledgeable about a lot of things. He was willing to learn anything we
threw at him," Bestwick said.
Asked if he'd heard any stories of UFO contact during his
time at NASA, Bestwick said, "That has been rumored for a long time, but I
can't clarify that. The astronauts don't say anything... They're very
tight-lipped.
"Myself, I'm not saying I do or don't believe in it, but
having some science background... there's got to be other creatures out
there. And we can't be the smartest creatures in the universe," Bestwick
added.
But for McClelland, there was no doubt that UFO events
were occurring around the launch facility. Starting in the early 1960s, he
kept records and filed reports as head of the Cape Canaveral (later Cape
Kennedy) Subcommittee of NICAP, the National Investigations Committee on
Aerial Phenomena, then the nation's best known and most influential civilian
UFO research organization.
One person who was privy to McClelland's UFO reports from
the Cape was Richard Hall, then acting director of NICAP. More recently, Hall
was Chairman of the Fund for UFO Research and is also the author of several
respected books on UFOs. Hall is known for his dim view of many self-styled
UFO researchers, but he gives Clark McClelland a big thumbs-up.
"I've known this guy for a lot of years and I've dealt
with him extensively," Hall told CNI News. "And I've never had the slightest
clue of anything other than an honest, conscientious, forthright person. So I
endorse him strongly. He should be given the fairest audience and listened to
carefully. I think he's going to check out. He's not a fantasizer, not an
embellisher. He's laid back and conservative and careful, and I respect that
highly."
Halls says that McClelland sent a number of impressive
case reports to NICAP founder Major Donald Keyhoe and himself. Some of those
cases remain secret even today. "I'm still keeping secrets that will probably
go to the grave with me -- things that people have told me privately --
because that's the way I feel about it, unless they give me the green light,"
Hall explained. But he gave one example of a case that McClelland sent in.
It occurred in 1961. "A rocket was launched and radar was
tracking it. And a UFO came in and the radar locked on to the UFO. You can
put this out under my name now, if you wish," Hall said. "His [McClelland's]
subcommittee sent to us a report by Pan American airways, which was then the
operating subcontractor at the Cape. And they had a quarter-inch thick
technical report on this UFO tracking, radar lock-on.... In order to protect
them [Pan Am and the witnesses], we were very vague about it." Hall says he
made a brief reference to this case in his book, "The UFO Evidence." But the
full report has never been published.
Clark McClelland says he has now decided to publish what
he knows about NASA's history of encounters with UFOs. Samples of
McClelland's information can be found at his new website,
http://www.stargate-chronicles.com/trinity.html.
At the request of CNI News, McClelland offered the
following exclusive report of one significant UFO encounter:
FOUR GUESTS WITH GEMINI
By Clark C. McClelland c. 1999 All Rights Reserved
On April 9, 1964, the Gemini-Titan I was launched from
complex 19 at the Cape Canaveral USAF Missile Test Range in Florida. It was
unmanned yet drew a lot of attention by "other intelligence's". Who or what
were they? Your guess is as good as any.
I was a young Designer working for the Titan II Launch
Operations Team in Hangar "U". I was assigned to work with a bright engineer
called Chuck. We had a problem happening with the first stage of the Titan
and called it "POGO". Several previous test flights were flown and the effect
showed up at lift off. It acted like a POGO stick (up and down motion) as the
vehicle rose into the sky. NASA and the USAF determined the effect to be
dangerous for any of the astronauts chosen to fly in the Gemini capsule. The
booster would not meet Man Rated restrictions by NASA and the USAF.
Chuck and I were to attach measurements to the booster
and determine how or what could be done to stop the POGO effect. Several
modifications had been made and this flight would prove if we were
approaching the correction of the difficulty. The capsule had a "canned man"
-- which is sometimes called a "black box" -- inside the astronaut
compartment to help solve the problem by collecting data.
The rocket lifted off and began to return data which
indicated that the modifications Chuck and I had designed had reduced the
POGO effect significantly. Everyone was delighted to receive the preliminary
information.
As the Gemini Capsule entered orbit, the RCA world
tracking team began to realize that "our" capsule was not alone as viewed
through their incoming telemetry, visual theodolite and other high powered
optical data. Our capsule had four "visitors". The RCA team was ordered to
run a recheck of the situation to be certain ghost images were not the cause.
The Titan II stages were also excluded as causing the images.
NASA, the USAF and Martin-Marietta [then Martin Company?
- ed.] who built the Titan II were all puzzled and just about scratching
their heads in unison. After much huddling and discussion the intelligent
determination was that we had other physical objects up there with our Gemini
capsule. Total silence filled the launch control area. A few whispers were
heard but nothing else.
Then a brash young member of the team said the words that
caused faces to turn to horror. I said, "What about UFOs?" It was as if I had
taken the Lord's name in vain. The silence deepened as almost everyone
present was staring at me. I felt like a child caught with his/her hand in
the cookie jar. Cold stares came at me from the NASA Brass and USAF Officers.
Actually, the only obvious answer was what I had so blatantly stated -- they
were UFOs! I slipped back into my assignments and remained a very interested
and quiet observer.
Several hours after the objects departed their single
orbit rendezvous with the Gemini capsule, a strange shadowy group of
personnel arrived on scene. They were not faces of those who had worked at
Cape Canaveral for any length of time. Cape workers like myself knew a
stranger when one showed up in our work area. Who they were, no one seemed to
know -- or if they did know, did not identify them. I made an attempt to I.D.
them and ran into a brick wall of silence. One thing was for certain, this
group was at the Cape for no other reason than the Gemini Titan mission and
its guests.
A week or so later, I was talking to an old friend called
Vince. He was a Pan American Security guard at the Cape and got around to all
launch complex areas. Vince told me that he transported several men to the
Cape Canaveral Skid Strip (aircraft runway) at the time all the Gemini
activity had taken place. He heard a younger man call another older person
Colonel. Vince had a good pair of eyes when he wore his glasses and told me
they had top secret security clearance badges he had only seen once before.
The badges appeared to have letters and a number on them. He observed them
from across the car roof as they entered his security cruiser and did not
observe the badges close up. They wore no uniforms yet acted as if they were
military. They spoke of returning to Washington, DC. Vince also noted that
they wore matching lapel pins that may have been similar to those worn by
secret service officers during the several visits by President Kennedy and
Eisenhower in past years.
To make a long story short, NASA, USAF, Pentagon, White
House, NSA etc., all determined that it had to be eventually explained as
normal activity. The hungry dogs of the mass media who ate broken glass and
razor blades to sharpen their questions were awaiting the NASA news
conference eagerly willing to slash away. The official NASA determination was
that the objects were the torn particles or remains of the Titan upper stage
that apparently entered orbit with the Gemini capsule.
I was at the news conference and I nearly began to laugh.
How could a broken stage overtake the capsule and stop slightly ahead of the
capsule to accompany it an entire orbit around the earth? But I held my laugh
to save my job. A NASA Public Information Officer held his breath hoping my
mouth would stay shut. It did, and I remained in my job to record other
astounding events that will be in my book.
[NOTE: See "Interfering with Atlas -- UFO Disables ICBM"
at McClelland's website for another incident that also happened in 1964.]
____________
CNI News is a twice-monthly electronic news journal
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and related issues, including the cultural and political impacts of contact
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