The Real FBI X-Files
The FBI was created in the 1920s by J. Edgar Hoover to fight criminal acts like kidnapping and bank robbery across state lines; in time Hoover amassed immense power (he served under seven successive presidents, until his death in 1972), adding counterespionage and counterterrorism to the Bureau's duties. For a brief period between July 30 and October 1, 1947, the Bureau officially assisted the Army Air Force (later USAF) in their investigation of UFOS, then known as flying saucers or flying discs. (The USAF coined the acronym UFO around 1950.)
The modern UFO era began 51 years ago on the sunny afternoon of June 24, 1947, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold observed a formation of nine silvery high-speed objects crossing the sky between Mt. Rainier and Mt. Adams. The Arnold case was followed by a wave of sightings across North America and other continents, including the now-famous Roswell affair and a number of hoaxes, but also many sightings by pilots, military officers, and professionals.
The Air Force was overwhelmed with reports, and on July 9, 1947, Gen. George Schulgen asked an FBI official for help. Assistant Director Ladd was opposed to the idea but was overruled by Hoover, who scribbled in a July 15 memo, "I would do it [help the Air Force], but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the La. case [sic] the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."
Is this "blue gem" -- as Hoover's handwritten notes on FBI memos were later called -- proof of the Roswell crash? Some ufologists have made the point, but others disagree. The word "La.," where the Army supposedly grabbed a disc, makes no sense in the New Mexico context.
However, "La." is an abbreviation for Louisiana, and on July 7, a 16-inch aluminum disc with smoke coming out of it was found in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a crude hoax, but it was taken by the Army. In any case, Hoover was not a man to cross, so General Schulgen assured the FBI in a new meeting that he would give instructions to field commanders "that all cooperation be furnished to the FBI and that all discs recovered be made available for examination by the FBI agents."
Hoover gave the green light and an investigation
authorization was published on July 30 in the Bureau Bulletin No. 42:
"You should investigate each instance which is brought to your attention
of a sighting of a flying disc in order to ascertain whether or not it
is a bona fide sighting, an imaginary one or a prank... The Bureau should
be notified by teletype of all reported sightings and the results of your
inquiries." The FBI thus entered the UFO arena and began collecting all
kinds of reports.
Harmony and Dissonance
The first batch of declassified FBI files -- more than 500 pages of documents -- was obtained under the Freedom of Information Act in 1977 by Dr. Bruce Maccabee. According to Maccabee, 40 percent of the files are hoaxes and poor cases from Air Force files, but "roughly 40 percent are teletype reports and transcripts concerning reasonably to very good UFO reports." The remainder are FBI internal memoranda about UFO investigation, which shed additional light on the Air Force's policies and attitudes.
A memo from this period shows the discovery by the Special Agent in Charge (SAC) in Portland, Oregon, of a witness who saw a formation in the Cascade Mountains on the afternoon of June 24, 1947, the same day as Arnold's sighting. The Sept. 17, 1947, memo to Director Hoover is titled "Subject: Reports of Flying Discs -- Security Matter-X." An X File! Yet we must clarify that the "X" here denotes not alien activities, as in the TV series, but sensitive counter-intelligence. This was the beginning of the Cold War, and Hoover was famous for his aversion to "Communist infiltration." The FBI saw "Reds" everywhere, and gathered files on prominent writers, artists, jazz musicians, scientists like Einstein, pacifists, and others. It's not surprising that many UFO memos have headings of "Security Matter- X," "Internal Security," and "Sabotage."
In the Portland memo, the SAC described a prospector, 5,000 feet above sea level, in the Cascade Mountains, on the day of the Arnold sighting. "He noticed a reflection, looked up, and saw a disc proceeding in a south easterly direction," wrote the FBI agent, adding that the prospector observed one disc with a telescope and later noticed five more. "He said the object was about 30 feet in diameter and appeared to have a tail. It made no noise." The prospector had a combination compass and watch. "He noted particularly," added the agent, "that immediately before the sighted disc the compass acted peculiar, the hand waving from one side to the other, but that this condition corrected itself immediately after the disc passed out of sight." The SAC noted the "informant appeared to be a very reliable individual."
The era of Air Force-FBI harmony collapsed when the Bureau discovered a letter from Col. R. H. Smith of the Air Defense Command. It stated in part that "the services of the FBI were enlisted in order to relieve the numbered Air Force of the task of tracking down all the many instances which turned out to be ash can covers, toilet seats and whatnot." In other words, the military would go after the good cases and the Bureau was stuck with the garbage.
Hoover was not amused and immediately pulled the
plug. He wrote a letter to Maj. Gen. George McDonald at the Pentagon on
Sept. 27, 1947, quoting the "toilet seat" paragraph from Colonel Smith.
"In view of the apparent understanding by the Air Force," wrote Hoover,
"I cannot permit the personnel and time of this organization to be dissipated
in this manner. I am advising the Field Divisions... to discontinue all
investigative activity regarding the reported sightings of flying discs."
The new instructions were duly published in Bureau Bulletin No. 57
on Oct. 1.
Subversive Saucers?
Another reason the FBI was losing interest was a lack of evidence of Communist subversion in the saucer incidents. A memo from Assistant Director Ladd noted, "The results of the investigation conducted by the Bureau Field Offices in this matter have failed to reveal any indications of subversive indi viduals being involved in any of the reported sightings." Few UFO documents were collected by the Bureau in 1948, but by 1949 the situation began to change. Although the FBI was never again officially involved, it continued to monitor certain UFO sightings and personalities (contactees and researchers) until the mid-1960s.
Many of these cases fell under the Bureau's "Protection of Vital Installations" mandate to ward off potential spies and saboteurs. When UFOs were reported at top secret facilities like the Los Alamos National Laboratories in New Mexico or the Oak Ridge nuclear complex in Tennessee, the Bureau conducted background checks on witnesses to determine the danger of subversion or propaganda. None was found, but the authorities seemed worried.
In 1950, the FBI was busy with a UFO flap at Oak Ridge. A Bureau log shows a total of 16 unidentified radar targets and visual observations by security patrols and other witnesses at Oak Ridge. Fighter aircraft were scrambled, witness depositions taken and scientific experts consulted, but in the end no "adequate explanation" was found. Similar incidents occurred that year at the Hanford AEC Plant in Washington state and in 1952 at the Savannah River plant in South Carolina. UFOs were seen but no evidence of subversion was found.
The Bureau kept dossiers on some UFO personalities, again looking for a subversive angle. I have memos on the Hollywood society columnist and leftist politician Frank Scully, author of the first UFO book, Behind the Flying Saucers (1950); and on the noted ufologist and author Maj. Donald Keyhoe, founder of the now-defunct but once influential UFO group NICAP. A 1958 FBI memo indicated that "Keyhoe has been known to the Bureau since 1935" (he was an aviation writer who became interested in UFOs in 1949), and that Hoover had ordered in 1951 that "we should not get involved with him."
One of the early UFO figures who preoccupied the Bureau in the 1950s was the famous contactee George Adamski. I have more than 50 pages of declassified FBI memos on Adamski. They mostly deal with meetings and complaints that started on March 17, 1953, when FBI and USAF agents visited Adamski at his home in Palomar Gardens, California. Adamski was asked to sign a statement saying that neither the USAF nor the FBI "have approved material used in my speeches." But Adamski turned the tables later, using that meeting and waving the document as proof of government interest in his contacts with the "space brothers." This bothered the Bureau greatly, so in December 1953, Adamski was visited again by two FBI agents and one agent from the USAF's Office of Special Investigations.
According to a Telex from the FBI office in San Diego, "Adamski was emphatically admonished that he was immediately to cease and desist in referring to the FBI or OSI as having given him approval to speak on flying saucers... Adamski was advised that legal action would be taken against him if he persisted in inferring or making these statements." Yet other documents from 1956 show that Adamski continued to make similar statements.
Another reason the Bureau kept an eye on Adamski and other contactees was their anti-nuclear philosophy, which they claimed was given by the "space brothers." Opposition to nuclear weapons was considered potentially subversive, so when a small Detroit UFO group sponsored lectures by Adamski in 1954, the local SAC opened a file marked "Detroit Flying Saucer Club: Espionage- X." Hoover, unimpressed, ordered the SAC to stop obtaining "from captioned club or its members, material concerning flying saucers."
We could go on citing more scattered UFO documents from the 1960s and beyond, although there are very few. By then the Bureau was losing interest in the subject. Public attitudes about the Cold War were changing. And besides, the simple fact remains that UFO watching or research was not and is not a crime.
This information was taken from Parascope web
site.
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