The NSA Cash-Landrum UFO Document

UFO documents from the U.S. government are rare for events beyond 1969. In a collection of files hosted by the Central Intelligence Agency, one was recently discovered, notes on the Cash-Landrum UFO investigation discussed by the secret psychic spy program. 

Before examining the document, let’s look at the people and agencies involved. In the foreword to the 2014 edition of The Invisible College, Jacques Vallee talked about a group formed as a byproduct of his UFO research with Dr. J. Allen Hynek in the early 1960s:

“…a small cadre of dedicated researchers... began exchanging data and analysis on a regular basis.... Dr. Hynek called this informal network “the Invisible College”… In later years the movement started by this group became integrated in a larger, multi-nation volunteer research effort joined by many individuals... the questions we had raised have remained current: What is the nature of unidentified aerial phenomena?”

 

The Intelligence Community

In September 1972, Jacques Vallee was working as a computer scientist at the Stanford Research Institute in California. His journals (Forbidden Science Vol. II) reveal how Vallee met Dr. Harold “Hal” E. Puthoff, who also worked at SRI, and “invited me to visit his lab. He told me about paranormal experiments he was starting under government sponsorship…” Puthoff was a theoretical physicist with a background including engineering work and three years active duty as a Naval Intelligence officer with NSA. He and Russell Targ were developing a project to use psychics in intelligence gathering, later designated “remote viewing.” 

The next day, “Over lunch at SRI I found out that both Ingo [Swann] and Hal were keenly interested in UFOs and the secrecy attached to the subject.” In November, Puthoff introduced Vallee to a psychic he was testing, Uri Geller. Vallee was supportive of the parapsychology research, but was not convinced when, “Uri told me he himself had no power, everything came from the saucers.” 

SRI: Puthoff and Geller appear in the first minute of this video clip.

Puthoff continued to introduce Vallee to government contacts. In October, Vallee met Howell McConnell, who shared some similar interests (psychic phenomena, mysticism, UFOs) and monitored the SRI psychic project for the National Security Agency. McConnell told Vallee about the NSA’s skeptical approach. “I work for a bunch of bureaucrats… But an Agency like ours can take no risks. So we keep an eye on things. If something does happen, they'll be able to say they were aware of the situation, that one of their analysts was informed, his documentation up to date..."

In Nov. 1973, Puthoff told Vallee that he’d found “the leader of the CIA group that monitors the UFO field.” Recently, “a biologist, was put in charge. Hal says the new man doesn't want to see me yet.” In Feb. 1974, Puthoff called to “tell me that his main Intelligence contact was at his house... that I meet him…” Thus, 

Vallee met, “Dr. Christopher Green nicknamed Kit, a dynamic bespectacled young man of medium build with alert brown eyes. … Green had counterparts in every branch of the Executive. Like Howell McConnell they mainly operated ‘out of personal interest,’ with the blessing of higher-level managers. They occasionally exchanged data, but he claimed little was done with it.” 

Green worked for the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence, and a small part of his duties involved keeping an eye on reports of paranormal claims that might be of government interest. They met again in May 1974, and frequently discussed the UFO topic, but Vallee was frustrated that Green could provide no evidence of a cover-up of alien bodies and saucers. Meanwhile, Green was quietly making connections in the field. In an April 1975 entry, Vallee wrote, “Kit is now talking to every ufologist worth his salt.” (Despite this, Kit Green managed to keep his name out of print in ufology until the early 1990s). Two of Green’s 1970s contacts were in a team based in Houston, Texas.

Kit Green established friendly sources in two ufologists, Richard Niemtzow, M.D., and John F. Schuessler, a McDonnell Douglas employee contracted by NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Schuessler was a founding member and deputy director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), but he also launched his own elite organization in 1976. Schuessler’s Project VISIT (Vehicle Internal Systems Investigative Team) consisted of “professional members, doctors, aerospace engineers and scientists” focused “on the scientific and engineering study of the internal systems of Unidentified Space Vehicles (USV) and of the physiology of the beings which occupy these vehicles." (In plain language, flying saucers and aliens.) 

VISIT was stated to be an informal private effort, not associated with Schuessler’s employer or the U.S. Government. Vallee heard something to the contrary, that Dr. Green was tasked by the CIA to check on their UFO work:

October 15, 1978: “Kit has a friend [Dr. Richard Niemtzow] in Houston… McDonnell Douglas is continuing their quiet but well-funded study with John Schuessler, also monitored by the agency. They seem to be looking for exotic alloys.”  In an early 1979 entry, Vallee said he and Green had discussed the notion of a secret U.S. UFO program. Green told him he’d recently had a “conversation with John Schuessler, who thinks the secret project isn't at CIA but at NRO…”

The CIA had told Green the government was no longer interested in UFOs, but he continued his interest in the topic. Vallee wrote in May 1978, “Kit is in close contact with most of the UFO groups, so his interest is only confidential among the uninformed.”

1980s and the Cash-Landrum UFO Investigation

In the spring of 1981, news coverage began about a major UFO case, an incident near Huffman, Texas. It took almost two months for it to surface, but two women and a boy, Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum, and her grandson Colby, claimed to have been injured by a massive fiery object on Dec. 29, 1980. Their evening drive had been blocked by the terrifying UFO, and when it flew away it was followed by a flock of military helicopters. Cash became ill afterwards and spent much of the following weeks in the hospital. Their UFO report was not made until Feb. 2, 1981, but then the investigation was delayed until the end of the month, when John Schuessler started by interviewing the witnesses.

The C-L case received national publicity, and it was given a credibility boost due to the involvement of Schuessler, whom the witnesses and media regarded as a scientist from NASA. Since it was the most dramatic case in several years, ufologists found it fascinating. So did Dr. Kit Green, who was intrigued by the medical aspect, the reported physiological effects. There was nothing published at the time to document his interest, but Jacques Vallee’s, Forbidden Science Vol. III had an entry from 26 September 1981 that gives us an indication:

“Kit… spoke of the Cash-Landrum case in Texas that John Schuessler keeps studying: Three witnesses were exposed to radiation from a hovering object. For the first time a real medical study has been conducted. Kit is afraid two of the witnesses may die from the experience.”

1982-1983: The Army Investigation and the Lawsuit

In 1982, Department of the Army Inspector General (DAIG) ordered Lt. Col. George Sarran to determine whether Army helicopters were involved in the C-L incident, but his mission was not to investigate the UFO report. To be thorough, Sarran contacted several ufologists, John Schuessler, the primary investigator; his former VISIT colleague Capt. Richard C. Niemtzow; M.D., USAF; and Dr. Peter Rank, Radiologist. Although not named in the documentation, John B. Alexander says that both he and his friend U.S. Navy Captain Paul Tyler (medical consultant for the Remote Viewing program) were also consulted. In his report, Sarran eliminated the Army as a suspect, and he found no evidence of helicopters flying by any other U.S. government entity - or by anyone else. However, Sarran had interviewed both Mrs. Cash and Landrum, and he explicitly described them as “credible.” 

In December of 1982, the legal effort by the witnesses against the U.S. government began. They still insisted military helicopters were involved in the UFO, and felt their medical problems were the result of it. Their attorney filed a damage claim against the Air Force for a total of 20 million dollars. 

Tabloid coverage of the C-L legal effort.

1983 was a busy year for the case, with much media coverage of the incident, and of the $20,000,000 claim and potential lawsuit. Ufology was aggressively covering it as well, in newsletters and club magazines. But there was some U.S. government-related discussion of the C-L case that wasn’t revealed until about 30 years later. In 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency declassified a document about its remote viewing program. It contained handwritten notes about government-related ufologists involved in the investigation of a UFO case, and of sending a doctor associated with the program to examine the witnesses.

The “Star Gate” UFO Document

Few UFO-related documents were produced by the U.S. government in the 1980s. However, one surfaced when the CIA declassified some papers on December 1, 2011, as part of their “STARGATE” (Remote Viewing program) collection. It was an undated NSA document, 6-page long, handwritten, no author indicated, apparently notes during a conference. The topic for the first few pages was on people in the timeline of “Soviet Parapsychology Research. Halfway down page 5, the topic abruptly changed, recording the discussion of a UFO case in Texas, as if it were breaking news. The rushed notes are ungrammatical sentence fragments, and many of the words are illegible. Below is a transcription of some of the key excerpts:

Hot activity UF[O]
CE3 Texas much medical Data so good will go to Houston to see patient.
… low level radiation… 52 yr old [woman] neighbor & grandson…
Object… light… got out & 15 or 20 mins stopped…
Fleet of helicopters… Object so bright… becomes very ill burns blisters form…
talked to Vallee… GM [grandmother] retinal burn cataracts…
John Schuessler VISIT team investigating… hair on woman fell out…
Kit has permission to talk to her Dr & one of his physicians consultants.
Woman not getting better worse…
Kit is calling Dr look for blood - low level ionizing radiation.
lot of [screwy theory?] about this -
Kit offered to take [case if?] Schuessler can get $…

To view the document itself, see the PDF at the CIA FOIA Reading Room:
 Handwritten Notes on Soviet Parapsychology Research (1930s – 1970s) and on Remote Viewing Research in the U.S.

The NSA notes unquestionably refer to the Cash-Landrum UFO incident of 1980. The author of these notes has been identified as Howell McConnell of the NSA, based on comparison with his other documents in the Stargate collection. His notes were probably made during a Remote Viewing meeting where Hal Puthoff or an associate read or summarized a Cash-Landrum report to the program participants. In the discussion, Jacques Vallee was referenced, but the central figure was “Kit,” who was interested in the medical aspect and might personally investigate. That was Dr. Christopher “Kit” Green.

What prompted a discussion of the C-L case in 1983, and why was there a sense of urgency? Aside from the mainstream media, possibly the most important items were by John Schuessler, and one by Richard C. Niemtzow, M.D. in the MUFON UFO Journal, January 1983, “Radiation UFO Injuries.” There’s no indication of any government follow-up to the NSA notes. What little official documentation relating to the C-L case all pertains to the (ill-fated) legal case.

There’s no direct evidence that Dr. Kit Green became involved in investigating the case due to the discussion recorded in this NSA note. However, it documents the strong interest by Green, Puthoff, and other players in the Remote Viewing story, people who continued to discuss and examine the Cash-Landrum case from then on.

Further Studies, 1985 to Present

The connection Hal Puthoff made with Jacques Vallee back in 1972 blossomed into a permanent expansion of the Invisible College, uniting an elite set of proponents of Remote Viewing, UFO studies, and the paranormal. They regarded the Cash-Landrum incident as not only genuine, but as the premier UFO injury case, and worthy of further study.

1985-88: The Advanced Theoretical Physics Project

In 1985, John B. Alexander put together the Advanced Theoretical Physics project. Dr. Hal Puthoff was a key member of ATP, and he kept his colleague Jacques Vallee informed of the group’s activities. Vallee called ATP, "the Secret Onion," and Forbidden Science Volume III (2016), has his entry for July 24, 1985:

"There was a meeting on frontier subjects in Washington recently. When Hal [Puthoff] arrived he discovered the topic was UFOs, and the overall project was structured in multiple layers, like an onion. The meeting was classified above top secret, under a codeword. Fifteen attendees reviewed cases like Kirtland AFB, Cash-Landrum and Tehran. They included Howell McConnell and [Paul] Tyler. Kit [Green] had been invited but couldn't attend.”

The Advanced Theoretical Physics project.

Alexander wrote in UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, “We explored the Cash-Landrum case in depth because of lawsuits initiated against the U.S. Government under the assumption that the incident was caused by an experimental craft of ours that had caused the serious injuries.” 

McConnell, the author of the NSA C-L document was part of the group, and several other players had ties to the psychic spy program. Ed Dames was a relative newcomer. Alexander intended to use remote viewing in the ATP’s UFO investigations. 

While not officially related, the Star Gate files have a document dated 26 January 1988, on the remote viewing session of “GP,” Gabrielle Pettingell. The interviewer was “ED,” Ed Dames and their target was the “Cash-Landrum Object." It produced a vague drawing and description of a black glossy object in a hangar - somewhere.

Around the same time, Kit Green and John Schuessler reviewed the medical data on the witnesses in the C-L case. They co-wrote a paper, later referenced by Dr. Green as: “Green & Schuessler, unpublished findings of a pair of well-documented human cases…Cash-Landrum 1987.”

1995-2004: NIDS 

In 1995, Robert Bigelow created the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), “a privately funded science institute engaged in research of aerial phenomena, animal mutilations, and other related anomalous phenomena.” Under chairman Dr. Kit Green, their all-star science advisory board included Colm Kelleher, Hal Puthoff, John B. Alexander, Jacques Vallee, and John Schuessler. 

1997: The Sturrock Panel

In 1997, Physicist Peter A. Sturrock of Stanford University directed an independent scientific review of UFO cases conducted by an international panel of scientists. Three of “the usual suspects” participated, Hal Puthoff, John Schuessler, and Jacques Vallee. Sturrock published a paper on it in 1998: “Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop Held at the Pocantico Conference Center, Tarrytown, New York, September 29 – October 4, 1997.” The Cash-Landrum case was presented in “Physiological Effects on Witnesses,” which was later presented as chapter 15 (pp. 100-104.) of Peter Sturrock’s 1999 book on the study, The UFO Enigma: A New Review of the Physical Evidence.

Getting back to NIDS, they undoubtedly discussed the Cash-Landrum case, as Schuessler published his book on it in 1998. Additionally, their website hosted two papers mentioning the case, and the NIDS-associated 2005 Knapp-Kelleher Hunt for the Skinwalker book included a review of the C-L story. NIDS came to an end when Robert Bigelow announced that NIDS was being deactivated in Oct. 2004. As we shall see, history suggests instead that it was closed for remodeling. 

2007-2012 BAASS - AAWSAP - AATIP

In 2007, Robert Bigelow’s NIDS was reborn as Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), evidently created to secure the contract for the Advanced Aerospace Weapon Systems Applications Program (AAWSAP), known better today by the nickname AATIP. In their 2021 book, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, the authors “acknowledge the extraordinary intelligence, vision, and decades of knowledge of UAP history that Christopher Green, Hal Puthoff, Jacques Vallee, Eric Davis, and John Schuessler contributed by advising both BAASS and DIA on designing the multiple projects that constituted AAWSAP.” 

Puthoff, Vallee, and Schuessler in Jan. 2009, working on AAWSAP subcontracting.

The BAASS-AAWSP contract was camouflaged as conventional aerospace research using vague language also applicable to UFO studies, including: “propulsion… power generation…human effects… armament (RF [radio frequency]) and DEW [directed energy weapons]). BAASS was contracted to produce scientific papers in 12 technical subjects for use as Defense Intelligence Reference Documents (DIRDs). 

Puthoff contracted Dr. Kit Green, who delivered, “Anomalous Acute and Subacute Field Effects on Human Biological Tissues” in 2009. When later disclosed, the paper became infamous for being the only DIRD to specifically reference UFOs. It mentioned the Cash-Landrum encounter on 7 occasions, and was treated as a benchmark case for UFO injury studies. John Schuessler’s 1996 booklet, UFO-Related Human Physiological Effects, was a key reference for Green's paper. The 2009 “BAASS Ten Month Report” for AAWSAP reportedly cited the Cash-Landrum case in its discussion of key historical cases, and their plans to create a “medical physiological UAP effects program.”

AAWSAP was terminated in 2012 after the government funding to Bigelow was not renewed. Exactly how the DIRD relating to the C-L case was used has not been disclosed.

2018-Present: UAPTF – AARO and NASA?

The current U.S. investigation of UFOs began as the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Tack Force (UAPTF) in 2018 but has evolved into the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). Participants are said to include “representatives with all relevant and appropriate security clearances from" across branches and agencies, including the CIA and NSA. To date, the program has only indicated an interest solely in contemporary military cases. However, NASA is also conducting an independent study of their own, which will include significant historical cases in their review of “data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources.” Though they are not tasked to investigate, their study will surely include the Cash-Landrum UFO case. 

. . .

For additional information, see my previous Blue Blurry Lines articles on these topics: 

The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations (2019)

AATIP's UFO Medical Study and the Cash-Landrum Case (2020)

For further information on the players and events, see the epic examination by Isaac Koi:

Remote Viewing & UFOs: Stargate, Galactic Federation + the Aviary (2015) 

A Special Acknowledgement

Thanks to the friend who pointed the NSA document to me, then helped identify its author. Best wishes to you in your related research.

UFO History: The Saucers from Atlantis

Many of the articles at BBL and STTF begin with a question, and this piece is no exception. Ufology inherited much about exploring the unknown from those who had gone before, from Forteans, science fiction fans - to mystics and spiritualists. When asking how a UFO-related concept originated, it’s often a bit like the chicken or the egg conundrum. The topic in question was prompted by a high-profile UFO interview.

One of ufology’s most prominent figures was awarded the title “UFO Researcher of the Year” in February 2017, and the following October, he was interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience. Rogan asked where the alien Greys come from, and the guest replied: 

“I don’t know. I do know that there’s connections to -umm, eh, you won’t even f***ing believe it... Atlantis... There’s a connection... a very advanced group that left after a catastrophe and hung around in a small outpost here, and throughout time would push civilization forward, and that’s who the Greek gods were... and that’s why it’s very interesting when the Roswell wreckage, there’s Greek writing... It’s online, type in Roswell wreckage... Roswell I-beam, you’ll see it, and it’s got these Greek markings...

Kevin Randle wrote about the source of the visual evidence:

“... about Greek writing found on the Roswell wreckage... The photo they bring up at that point is a shot of the I-Beam... created by Spyros Melaris as part of the alien autopsy hoax.” - A Different Perspective, Oct. 31, 2017

The Greek inscription was part of a hoax, but what about the rest - was it based on any better evidence? Even some scientists have given some support to a hypothesis that there is a connection between UFOs and Atlantis.

Dr. Eric Davis works with Dr. Hal Puthoff at EarthTech, formerly a sub-contractor to Robert Bigelow for the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program run by the DIA, often referred to as the “Pentagon UFO Study.” On June 24, 2018, Eric Davis was interviewed on the radio show Coast to Coast about his role in the project. Host George Knapp asked if the study found the answer to the “big questions” about UFOs. Dr. Davis replied:

We know what they are not... They’re not made here, George, but we don't know where they come from. Hal (Puthoff) has a favorite hypothesis, he calls it the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis. They could be advanced technology - aerospace technology that are produced by a group of evolved hominins that split off from the main human race and they might be that fourth unidentified hominin that was discovered and announced in the news over the last couple years, they are the fourth one after the Denisovans. So yeah, you have Homo Sapiens, Neanderthals, and you have the Denisovans, and there's the genetic evidence of a fourth hominin, and so maybe they split off and they became very advanced, they could be the basis or the foundation for the legend of Atlantis, for all we know. And they saw the human race arising, they didn't like our warlike nature and they probably went underground and shielded themselves with their advanced technology to protect themselves from us, and they're the ones who have the Tic Tacs and other UFOs. ...that’s a hypothesis.

That ultimately set the question in motion, and I wondered:

How did flying saucers get connected to Atlantis?

The myths and arguments about Atlantis itself are not the question; we’ll just be looking at how it was tied into UFOs. In The Coming Race, the 1871 novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, there was a hidden race who were descended from people who in ancient times, escaped “the flood,” by taking refuge in mountain caverns which led to “the bowels of the inner earth.” They created a technological utopia, and their greatest achievement was  mastery of the force, the “Vril,” an energy that could be used as a weapon or to heal. The story has been incredibly influential and laid the foundation for much since, from science fiction to spiritualism and ufology.

As to Atlantis itself, Ignatius Donnelly is to blame for reviving and popularizing it. A passage from his presentation of Plato's History of Atlantis from The Antediluvian World, 1882 by Ignatius Donnelly:

“Now, in the island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire... shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind; for she was the first in courage and military skill...”

The Atlantean civilization was said to have art and science beyond the rest of the world, and as the legend was retold, it was updated with more miraculous technology to keep ahead of the present day.

Atlantis was embraced by mystics, and they were the ones to connect Atlantis to outer space, but in a dreamy, quasi-religious sort of way. Gareth J. Medway wrote that Madame Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical Society, in her

“...key work Secret Doctrine was taken up with the theory (derived in some obscure way from Hindu scripture) of the seven "root races" of humanity, of which we are the fifth. The fourth race had lived on Atlantis, and the Third on Lemuria, these two being lost continents of the Atlantic and Pacific respectively. Atlantis, whose legend goes back at least as far as the time of Plato, had recently been publicised in a book by Ignatius Donnelly... 

In 1883-6 Frederick S. Oliver, then a teenager living with his parents near Mount Shasta in northern California, penned a lengthy manuscript entitled A Dweller on Two Planets... an entity called Phylos the Tibetan had dictated it to him... More than half the narrative concerned the author's past life as Zailm, an Atlantean, with many details of that civilisation. They had developed "vailxi", aerial ships of torpedo shape which could travel at hundreds of miles an hour (an incredible speed in the 1880s)."

"Beyond the Reality Barrier, Part One: Many Mansions,” Magonia 94, January 2007

Atlantis and Space Ships

 There was a widespread interest in Atlantis without the spiritualism, and it was assimilated into popular culture. The immensely popular newspaper comic strip Buck Rogers by Philip Nowlan and Dick Caulkins featured a serialized that began in 1930, the “Sunken City Of Atlantis.” 

Science fiction to millions of readers, was Buck Rogers. In the story, the Atlanteans had advanced technology, even flying machines, but after surviving the sinking of the island they lived in secret, but sent expeditions out monitor and influence civilizations on the surface world. The Atlantis serial can be read at the Roland Anderson site, Old Comic Strips: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

The story was adapted into a Big Little Book in 1934 as Buck Rogers in the City Below the Sea, and also part of a Buck Rogers game, as “Search for the Secrets of Atlantis.”

Peeling the Aquatic Onion

Frederick G. Hehr was a Fortean and “deeply learned in occult matters.” Using his initials as F.G.H., he was a frequent contributor to Meade Layne’s Round Robin, the journal of the Borderland Sciences Research Association (BSRA) which accepted “a great mass of psychic and occult data as factual, as established...”

Hehr was talking about spaceships, Atlantis and extraterrestrial seventeen years before the big Kenneth Arnold story broke in July of 1947. Here’s a portion of his letter of criticism to the early science fiction magazine,  Air Wonder Stories, May 1930, edited by Hugo Gernsback.

"Then your space flying stories, every one of them is based on cheap excitement raised by the introduction of war. As it is self evident that the rulers of the universe would never permit the knowledge necessary to conquer space to get into hands morally unfit to hold them. Please read up on the legends about the flood and Atlantis and about former visitors from space and you may detect a certain law pertaining to the distribution and use of power. 

May I add for the peace of mind of timorous souls that a malevolent incursion from space is an impossibility and that benevolent incursions will come as soon as we are morally fit to entertain visitors, from space. I wish I had the writing ability as I would like to write a story based on actual conditions on the planets of our solar system. "

Hehr was not alone in this type of thinking. In 1943, Richard Shaver wrote to Amazing Stories magazine with “Mantong,” a lost ancient alphabet and language, which was supposed to be “definite proof of the Atlantean legend.” From there, Shaver wrote "A Warning to Future Man," and editor Ray Palmer rewrote it and published it as “I Remember Lemuria.” Thus, "The Shaver Mystery" was born, which was the stepping stone between Theosophy and the imaginative side of Ufology. Shaver’s story was about ancient extraterrestrials, the Titans and the Atlans who had lived under the surface of the earth in Lemuria. The backdrop for Shaver’s stories were a virtual blueprint for tales of ancient aliens.

When the flying saucer wave hit, Frederick G. Hehr was ready with an explanation. He sent a letter to Meade Layne who relayed it to BSRA members in a postcard on July 13, 1947. As F.G.H., Hehr stated that the flying saucers were flown by: 

“an old Atlantean Arcane Order, which has held them in caches; their present mobilization is for trial and for training of crews; they will be used for emergency rescue craft and to gather key personnel and material. They have gravity control, and a speed up to 4000 mi./ hr. above the atmosphere. They become invisible by bending the light rays around them, and are invulnerable to attack by our own forces." As quoted in The Mystery of Unidentified Flying Objects: 1896—1949, Loren Gross (1971) page 308. 

The BSRA opinion only circulated amongst their members, but early ideas of an Atlantis-saucer connection were mentioned in the newspapers, but as just one of many ideas circulating.

“Utahns sure sky saucers no delusion”The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, Utah), July 6, 1947, p. 8A:"Flying saucers" continued to confound sky-gazing Utahns... Explanations for their strange and fleeting appearances ran the gamut from “Atlantis” to “atomic”... 

Putting it into the Mainstream

Desmond Leslie (1921 - 2001) was a British writer who went on to co-author Flying Saucers Have Landed with George Adamski in 1953. In an advertisement from the British Book Centre he was described as “Desmond Leslie, Historian,” and it states that, “He spent years in research gathering information about flying saucers from ancient times to present." Leslie said he was inspired by finding a copy of The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria by William Scott-Elliot, which described “airships” that he thought sounded like flying saucers. See the clip from UFOs: The Contacts – The Pioneers of Space by Michael Hesemann, 1996.

From The Saucers That Time Forgot:

“Desmond Leslie, George Adamski, and Ancient Aliens”

Leslie began researching the connection and asked Meade Layne if he had seen the

“... detailed occult account of the VIMANAS or ancient aircraft in Scott Elliott’s “ATLANTIS”: the exciting Sanskrit reference to an ‘airlift’ to evacuate Atlantis in (Helena Blavatsky's) SECRET DOCTRINE Vol III,  their use in war in the ancient Indian poems such as the RAMA BHARATA,  also an account of a working drawings seen in James Churchward in his MU books.” 

The Meade Layne - Desmond Leslie Correspondence by Håkan Blomqvist, Dec. 1, 2017

Leslie went on to say that he’d been obsessed with the subject, "for over two years ever since I first read a flying saucer report and realised it was synonymous with accounts of the VIMANAS as the 
disks were called in the Sanskrit.”

Leslie’s discovery led him to write Flying Saucers Have Landed, and title a chapter, “Saucers in Atlantis.” The connection made in Desmond Leslie’s mind of flying saucers to Atlantis is directly responsible for giving us the “Ancient Aliens” version of ufology. It might not have mattered if it hadn’t appeared in a best-selling book, but it was a tremendous influence.

Leslie’s use of the term, “Vimanas” for saucers was embraced by many followers and the notion of ancient ET visitations became a given, a canonical UFO belief, and later popularized by Erich von Däniken. Leslie’s connection of Atlantis to saucers, however, was less widely accepted, but there were some notable converts.

George Hunt Williamson and Daniel Fry

George Hunt Williamson’s 1953 book, Other Tongues, Other Flesh, shows that he was an early adopter.

“...during the catastrophes that struck both Lemuria and Atlantis, groups of people were evacuated from the Earth and taken to other planets. Especially Mars and Venus.”

Williamson also said, “The Vril Stick was used in Atlantis and later in Egypt.” 

Daniel Fry, author of The White Sands Incident, told his story at the first annual international Flying Saucer Convention in 1954, how he’d taken walk in the desert one night and encountered a landed flying saucer. A voice from it spoke to him, the voice of a spaceman operating it by remote control from a parent ship. The Herald-Express reported:

The spokesman, whose name was A-Lan, told Fry his ancestors originally came from earth. They got away in a hurry after the big battle in which Atlantis and Mu destroyed each other with weapons that would make the hydrogen bomb look sick. Now A-Lan’s people were figuring on another descent to earth. They needed samples of our air and the bacteria it contains to see if they could take it.
- The Los Angeles Herald-Express, June 5, 1954, “Space Pilots Give L.A. Smog Wide Berth”

Gavin Gibbons’ 1956 book, The Coming of the Space Ships, covers the flap of UFO sightings that began in June of 1954 in the UK and he was on board with Leslie’s notions of saucers from Atlantis. As his title suggests, Gibbons regarded flying saucers as extraterrestrial space ships, and like Leslie, Gibbons preferred the Atlantean/Sanskrit term “vimanas” (chariots of the sky) for disc-shaped scout craft, and notes:

In 30,000 B.C. Lemuria was destroyed... The few survivors of this cataclysm founded Atlantis. Some survivors from the Atlantis disaster are believed to have escaped disaster by fleeing in machines to another planet, from whence they now send out their patrols to scan the Earth for signs of further atomic activity.

In 1957, The Case for the UFO, M.K. Jessup said: 

"The traditions agree that "Atlantis" or its equivalent, was destroyed about 9,000 years or so BC. ...we are interested in showing that such an antiquity did exist, and that it is conceivable that some very early race, 200,000 years ago or so, may have developed space flight, and after the cataclysm of 12,000 years ago may have chosen to stay in space, thinking it a safer habitat than this uncertain planet.” 

The Atlantis-UFO meme was transmitted to and from such figures as Harold T. Wilkins, George Van Tassel, Brinsley Le Poer Trench Ruth Norman of Unarius, and even Charles Berlitz, the mainstream best-selling author, connected Atlantis to UFOs - and the Bermuda Triangle. Today, it’s mainly up to the Ancient Aliens camp to keep up the Atlantis-UFO connection vital.

. . .

Epilogue: Another Warning to Future Man

In the September 1946 Harper's Magazine, William S. Baring-Gould took a look at science fiction and its fandom in “Little Superman, What Now?” He highlighted a passage from Thomas S. Gardner’s article in Fantasy Commentator, bringing the criticism to a much wider audience. It was a scathing condemnation of proto-Ufology, of Ray Palmer’s “Shaver Mystery” in Amazing Stories - and of the readers who bought it.

"The crackpots, as they are usually called, number at least a million in the United States.  ... A great many harbor seriously delusions of ancient civilizations superior to ours, believe in pyramidology and the like. Indeed, there are today in this country several esoteric societies based on Lemuria, Mu, Atlantis... In fact, these groups are in a way semi-religious... and some have gone so far as to state that they abhor mathematics and allied modern sciences because they disprove their beliefs…Nevertheless, these crackpots constitute a large potential buying-power... To capture these readers it is only necessary to publish... stories which propitiate these crackpots’ views...  Palmer has instituted this very trend.”

Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1946

Ray Palmer left Amazing Stories shortly thereafter, but went on to create Fate with Curtis Fuller in 1948, a non-fiction magazine devoted to just the stew of esoteric topics that Gardner had railed about. In Fate, ghosts, telepathy, reincarnation and Atlantis were regarded as scientific fact, right along with flying saucers. Seventy years later, not much has changed.

. . .

Sources and Further Reading 

Frederick G. Hehr, for more information see:

 https://www.joshuablubuhs.com/blog/frederick-g-hehr-as-a-fortean)

“Of Biographical Interest,” by F.G.H., Round Robin April 1947

https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/03/n04/Variorum.html

BSRA Principles (Letter to Roger Graham, Oct. 1946)

https://borderlandsciences.org/journal/vol/31/n02/Meade_Layne_Principles_of_BSRF.html

Many of Ufology's concepts had their origins in 19th century mysticism. Here's a discussion of those occult ideas from Astounding Science Fiction, May 1947, "Pseudoscience in Naziland," by Willy Ley. https://archive.org/stream/Astounding_v39n03_1947-05_AK#page/n89/mode/2up

Desmond Leslie, “Desmond Leslie, George Adamski, and Ancient Aliens”

https://thesaucersthattimeforgot.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-contact-ancient-aliens-and-george.html

On Atlantean airships and ancient astronauts: “How to Write a Bestseller” by Gareth J. Medway, Magonia 81, May 2003

“When Atlantis became popular in the late nineteenth century...”

http://magoniamagazine.blogspot.com/2014/01/bestseller.html 

Coast to Coast, Dr. Eric Davis interview, "Pentagon UFO Study,” June 24, 2017.

https://youtu.be/FM_OrhoSKVI?t=32m

Also, a special thanks to: 

Roberto Labanti,  author of “Totò e i dischi di Atlantide”

UFO - Rivista di informazione ufologica No. 43, Sept. 2017 pps. 38-43

https://www.academia.edu/34826056/Tot%C3%B2_e_i_dischi_di_Atlantide

Isaac Koi, for his preservation of UFO documents.

http://www.isaackoi.com/

Claude Falkstrom, co-author of The Saucers That Time Forgot

. . .

Bonus: A Book Review of Venus Speaks

From Uranus Vol. 1 No. 2, Oct. 1954, edited by E. Biddle, a review of Venus Speaks by Cyril Richardson, Regency Press, 1954:

It is claimed that the contents of this little book were obtained by direct telepathy from the Chief Scientist of the planet Venus! It is a book which will appeal to some, while others will be strongly repelled by it. 

The Venusians, we are told, were originally natives of Earth and lived here in the days of' Atlantis and the old Inca civilisation of S. America. Until one day strangers filled with greed came to the land of the Incas (we are not told who the strangers were but it was evidently long before the days of the Spanish conquistadores). Where upon the Incas took to flight in spaceships and after finding the Moon unsuitable, went on to Venus, where they settled and lived in peace and harmony, despite what must have seemed a very trying climate. From time to time they kept an eye on the Earth and of late have been very active in the Flying Saucers. Their motives are wholly friendly and they promise us instant and decisive help should an atomic war start. If, however, their help is on a par with their scientific knowledge as expounded in this book, we should do well not to rely too much on it! 

The latter part of the book contains interesting remarks on Diet, Sound Vibrations, the Power of Thought etc. 

Quite fantastic and entirely contrary to elementary scientific facts, however, are many of the statements regarding the origin and end of worlds, conditions on other planets (including Venus!), the past history of the Earth, etc. 

Indeed, I find it impossible to take this part of the book seriously, though others may think differently, of course. If you have an inclination towards the hazier forms of Theosophy, Occultism, Spiritualism, etc you may be glad to have this book. If, on the other hand, these things are anathema to you, you will do better not to listen to the voice of Venus....  

E.B.