The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations, Part Two

In part one, we saw how the Cash-Landrum case had been investigated by the US government in 1981 by officials from Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas, in 1982 by the Department of the Army Inspector General, and in 1983 by the nation’s defense team responding to the UFO-related lawsuit. In the conclusion, we’ll look at the subsequent secret investigation and how it relates to other agencies that may be covertly studying UFOs today.

ATP, The Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group

John B. Alexander has had a long involvement in the UFO and paranormal, and participated in the DAIG investigation mentioned earlier. Dr. Alexander’s publisher notes his lengthy interest and research into exotic studies: “life after death, mind over matter, UFOs, remote viewing, telepathic communications with animals, and more…” Chiefly known for his work in non-lethal weapons research, Alexander retired from the US Army in 1988 as a colonel, and along the way earned his Ph.D. in Thanatology at Walden University in 1980.

Dr. Alexander developed a network of friends and associates with similar interests, many of whom were also in the military, doing contract work for the government, the Intelligence Community, or professionals in private industry. One of those friends was Dr. Paul E. Tyler (1930 - 2013), a Captain in the US Navy, and medical consultant on the government’s remote viewing program. This circle of associates was valuable when Alexander put together the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group. The primary purpose of the group was to determine if there was a hidden UFO government agency, but their findings were negative. The team also studied a few UFOs cases, and the Cash Landrum incident was one of particular interest. 

Dr. Harold E. Puthoff was a key member of ATP, and he kept his colleague Jacques Vallee informed of the group’s activities. Vallee’s journals record several entries on ATP, which he called "the Secret Onion." From Forbidden Science - Volume III (2016), by Jacques Vallee:

Hyde Street. Wednesday 24 July 1985. (page 199)

"Hal (Puthoff) and I had a lot to talk about… There was a meeting on frontier subjects in Washington recently. When Hal 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 John Tyler. Kit (Green) had been invited but couldn't attend.
Two aspects of the meeting were ironic, Hal said. First, attendees were there because they ran programs that were impacted by unidentified signals but they were not necessarily interested in the UFO phenomenon itself.
Second irony: they came to the conclusion there must be a secret UFO project, somewhere else!"

ATP members included Ed Dames, Jack Houck, Bob Wood, Hal Puthoff and John Alexander.

Vallee provided a more detailed description of Alexander’s ATP in the endnotes:

"Notes and References" section for Part Eleven: Dark Science (pages 480-481)

"It has become known that the key meetings took place under DoE supervision on May 20-25, 1985 in the secure facility of the BDM Corporation in McLean, Virginia. The group called itself the 'Advanced Theoretical Physics Conference' or ATP. Alleged participants were Samuel Finch, Oke Shannon and John Kink of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Bill Wilkinson from CIA; Howell McConnell from NSA (whom I had met in October 1972); Hal Puthoff and Jack Houck; Ed Speakman of INSCOM (Army Intelligence); Bill Souder and Bob Wood of McDonnell Douglas; Jake Stewart of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering; Bert Stubblebine of BDM; Ron Blackburn, Milt Janzen and Don Keuble of Lockheed; Ralph Freeman, Gary Bright, radiologist Paul Tyler, Ed Dames and Lt. Col. Mike Neery. Ron Pandolfi of CIA also claims to have been involved."

In Jacques Vallee’s entries on the ATP over the years, it is clear that the project never received funding or became an official government program. Dr. Kit Green “refused to take part in the meetings as long as no budget had been allocated to give it an official status.” (Forbidden Science Volume III, 18 May 1986. P. 243)

John Alexander described ATP in June 2018, EdgeScience #34, "The Department of Defense and UFOs Redux," comparing his 1980s group with the AATIP effort from 2007:

"(AATIP) was just another in a series… of inadequate efforts to investigate one of the most perplexing issues to ever confront humanity… from 1984 through 1988, long before Senator Harry Reid was able to earmark funding for the DIA project, I ran a similar, albeit unfunded, effort... the name we employed for this project was Advanced Theoretical Physics (ATP)."

Dr. Alexander briefly discussed the group’s interest in the C-L incident:

"One disturbing case ATP looked into became known as Cash-Landrum, named for the victims, two women and a boy, who were inexplicably exposed to high levels of radiation. The source was an unidentified craft that appeared to be in trouble above a desolate country road just north of Houston. 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. The case was later dismissed."

We have no record of the extent of the ATP’s study of the Cash-Landrum case, but we can get a hint of it by reading the comments on it by Dr. Alexander and his colleague, Dr. Paul Tyler. 

In a 1993 lecture at MUFON’s Albuquerque, New Mexico, group, Dr. Tyler discussed his work with the ATP. The NM MUFON News # 12 (Jan. 1994) featured an article summarizing his talk: 

Dr. Tyler was a consultant for the CIA and other agencies. “There were always people who were unofficially interested in UFOs... Was someone really looking at this? No one knew.”Dr. Tyler has a degree in radiology and was head of Aerospace Medicine for the Bureau of Medicine Surgery. He ran the program on electromagnetic radiation. He personally investigated the Cash-Landrum case in which UFO witnesses were burned by some kind of radiation. He studied the hospital records and concluded that it wasn't microwaves but had to be some sort of ionizing radiation. What was it? “Nothing that we have or had at the time.” Also, the reported helicopters didn't “fit into the military pattern.” There were not enough helicopters in Houston at the time nor people there to pilot them (it was Christmas week) -­ it wasn't a military operation. How does Dr. Tyler explain this case? “UFOs can do things we can't. Maybe they use holograms. If they want to confuse us they could put holograms into systems that we have.”

Dr. Tyler’s conclusions on the Cash-Landrum incident were in sync with what Alexander presented in UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, where he said it was “a very solid case, in which the observations and facts just don't make sense or support any prosaic hypothesis.” Alexander also speculated the helicopters were not physical, in a discussion of his precognitive sentient phenomena hypothesis, or PSP:

“One possibility would be that the UFO could employ holographic technology to create the UFOs. Another alternative is that the UFO was able to project that imagery directly into the brains of the observers, thus actually manipulating their perception of reality. It is interesting to note that the phenomenon would allow substantial physical injuries to the observers. Based on this case, and a number of others in which physical injuries have occurred, the PSP must not be mistaken as benign.”

Dr. Alexander’s ATP dissolved in 1988 after finding that no agency wanted to fund the project as an official government project. However, that didn’t exactly mean the end, as Alexander and many of the members remained interested in the UFO topic and moved on to other things.  

Dr. Alexander and Dr. Hal Puthoff went to become a player in Robert Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS). In 2004, NIDS was closed, but later replaced by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies (BAASS), with Puthoff and some of the team remaining. In 2007, AATIP contracted BAASS, with Puthoff directing the scientific studies. In 2018 Puthoff and Colm Kelleher of BAASS went on to join Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy (TTSA). 

The CIA? Remote Viewing, 1988

Before ATP, Dr. Hal Puthoff was one of the original SRI (Stanford Research Institute) team members and creators of the Remote Viewing program, which takes us to a final bit of trivia. The Cash-Landrum case was the subject of a remote viewing exercise documented in CIA files. In his article, Remote Viewing & UFOs at ATS, researcher Isaac Koi noted:  

As some of you know, the CIA released over 92,000 pages of material relating to "Star Gate" (and various other official remote viewing projects in the USA, such as "Gondola wish", "Grill flame", "Center Lane" and "Sun Streak") in around 2004… it should of course be recognised that most of the documents in the Stargate archive do not relate to UFOs.  

However, a few did, and one of the remote viewing documents recorded a session on 26 January 1988 looking into the “Cash-Landrum Object," where the remote viewer was “GP,” Gabrielle Pettingell, and the interviewer was “ED,” Ed Dames, who was part of Alexander’s ATP.

Link to Isaac Koi’s description of the Cash-Landrum Object session:
Remote Viewing & UFOs: Section F2: Cash-Landrum sighting

Link to complete 16-page session file:

Stage IV-V Training, Cash-Landrum Object, Viewer 95 26/01/88

Peeling the Onion

The “Secret Onion” nickname used by Jacques Vallee for ATP referred to the metaphor “peeling the onion,” which means getting a deeper understanding of something by examining it layer by layer. The irony is that the only thing behind the layers is more onion. John Alexander’s ATP group found no evidence that there was still a secret UFO investigation. His colleague Dr. Paul Tyler revealed in his 1993 Albuquerque, NM, lecture that the ATP searched, but, "In every agency, I ran into people interested in UFOs. But it wasn't their job and there was no money to look into it, so tidbits got filed into personal file cabinets!"

The government was not interested in fielding reports from civilians, just in sightings that could be military or national security matters. They shut down Blue Book, and what seems to have happened since is that any UFO incidents have been handled by the agency involved, from NORAD to the CIA. Whatever the US government may be doing in regards to UFOs, they are not interested in duplicating the public relations disaster problem of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book. 

The Cash-Landrum UFO case is unique in that it has involved the US government at several levels, from Congressmen to the Federal Court, and official investigations by two military branches, as well as an informal study involving the Intelligence Community. Unfortunately, the investigations shed no light on UFOs, but there’s much that can be learned about the Government’s response to the case. It harkens back to the early days of confusion about flying saucer sightings. The military branches assumed the UFOs were something real, and were asking each other, "It wasn’t us, but is this something you guys are up to?”

. . .

For further reading on the ATP UFO study, see the collection of information at Unidentified Aerial Phenomena - scientific research by Keith Basterfield, where he's interlaced data from sources such as John Alexander’s UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities and Jacques Vallee’s Forbidden Science Volume III, Jacques Vallee and the 'Secret Onion'.

The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations

The 2017 disclosure of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP)  renewed interest in the US government’s post-Project Blue Book investigations of UFOs. The Cash-Landrum incident of December 29, 1980, occurred about ten years after the Air Force study of UFOs came to an official close. Documents prove that there was an official interest in the Cash-Landrum case, so it provides a perfect subject to use in a search for evidence of further UFO investigations by government agencies. 

There were several known official inquiries into the Cash-Landrum case, from the local level to the federal government. Some are well-known, while there are others that are virtually unheard of. We’ll look at them all, and provide sources for further information.

Local Police… NASA?

The Cash-Landrum case was not reported promptly, but when Vickie Landrum did notify the local law a month later, but they did not investigate; Chief Waring referred her to NUFORC, the National UFO Reporting Center. After Vickie called NUFORC, the case was passed on to UFO groups, which eventually led to its investigation almost three months after the incident. For those needing a recap of the Cash-Landrum encounter, see Vickie Landrum's Phone Call to Report a UFO Encounter: The Call that Started it All. 

The UFO investigation was led by John F. Schuessler, an employee of McDonnell Douglas, a contractor working on the Space Shuttle project at the NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Schuessler was deputy director of the Mutual UFO Network, and also ran Project VISIT, his own elite organization of UFO hobbyists. Some of the people they interviewed for the C-L case were under the impression that NASA was investigating the sighting, due to the way the group introduced themselves. Project VISIT’s UFO Hotline cards stated they were “composed of NASA Aerospace Engineers.” Many people heard “NASA,” but ignored the part about them being a civilian and unofficial organization.

See Project VISIT takes a case for further details on Schuessler’s organization. 

Bergstrom AFB Inquiry, Aug. 1981

Betty Cash wrote to Texas senators, Lloyd Bentsen and John Tower describing her sighting and asking for help. The replies she received suggested that she go to the nearest Air Force base to file a damage claims form for her complaint of injuries related to the UFO incident. As a result, on August 17, 1981, Betty Cash, Vickie and Colby Landrum traveled to Bergstrom Air Force Base near Austin, Texas. They were interviewed by Captain John Camp, Acting Staff Judge Advocate, Captain Terry Davis, Claims Officer, and Miss Pat Wolfe, Assistant Claims Officer. The interview provides the best publicly available testimony directly from the witnesses, the closest we have to them being interrogated as if in a courtroom. The meeting was taped, and later transcribed. For more details on Bergstrom interview, see From their own lips: Betty, Colby & Vickie tell their story 

Captain John Camp told them that since Project Blue Book was defunct, there wasn’t much they could do for them. He said:

"My intentions are to hear what you had to say this morning and to try to get it into an agency of the Air Force or portion of the Air Force that could help you. I must be frank with you and tell you that I know of no such part of the Air Force that today investigates these complaints, but on your behalf, I will forward it on... we're an agency that has not investigated UFO sightings in almost eleven years. And then we were, in effect, told by the Congress and the President that we would not be doing that anymore."

Capt. Camp gave the witnesses their damage claim forms and suggested they get legal counsel. There was a brief Air Force investigation, but it was conducted by Camp and Captain Davison themselves following up on the interview. Their associate, Captain James H. Marburger wrote a report dated Aug. 20, 1981, with negative findings: 

"The sighting occurred approximately 13 miles from (Houston Intercontinental) airport… surveillance radar from the airport  would most likely have ‘seen’ the helicopters operating in the UFO sighting  area… the area would be easily observed by pilots arriving or departing... pilots would have seen and reported the incident since it lasted 15 to 20 minutes, and since the 9PM time of the UFO sighting is a fairly heavy commercial airline traffic period."

There were no such reports; nothing on radar, no sighting from pilots, from personnel in the air traffic control tower, or anyone else. The investigation found nothing to confirm the UFO report by Cash and the Landrums, but gathered and filed the information for Air Force files, and later shared with the Army.

Journalist Billy Cox submitted a FOIA on the resulting Cash-Landrum records, and on Aug. 22, 1983 it produced a lengthy file on documents relating both to the Bergstrom AFB visit and investigation (and the Army’s DAIG report which will be discussed below). The contents of that file show a different picture of the military’s involvement with the case than is typically portrayed in UFO literature. Instead of a cover-up, there were numerous instances of government officials expressing interest in the case, and of military personnel cooperating and sharing information. The case documents are found in pages 46 - 81 in the linked PDF below:  

Bergstrom AFB/DAIG FOIA Cash-Landrum file, 22 Aug. 1983

The Texas Department of Health, Sept. 1981

During the trip to Bergstrom AFB, Cash and the Landrums made another stop that led to a government investigation at the state level. The Texas Department of Health assigned their Radiation Control Board after Vickie Landrum visited the office of Representative Larry Browder. Browder ordered an investigation of the event and incident location, and Charles Russ Meyer headed the investigation. On Sept. 16, 1981 Meyer examined the roadway, took soil samples, and the subsequent laboratory analysis showed no residual traces of radiation. They did, however, extend an offer to have TDH doctors examine the witnesses and their medical records, an offer that was not accepted. The TDH files record no further contact, but they did continue to collect some subsequent news clippings about the case.

For further details and the The Texas Department of Health documents, see:

The Cash-Landrum Incident: The Suppressed Case Files

DAIG Investigation, March - May 1982

The Army’s inquiry has been previously discussed on BBL in John B. Alexander on the DAIG Investigation of the Cash-Landrum UFO Incident, but we’ll provide a brief recap.

As a result of the media attention given the case (the TV episode of That’s Incredible! in particular), Representative Ron Wyden from Oregon asked for an investigation into the US government’s alleged role in the C-L incident. Virginia Lampley was given the task at the Air Force, but after determining the helicopters in question were used primarily by another branch of military service, the job was passed on to the Department of the Army Inspector General (DAIG). Lt. Col. George Sarran was given the job, and his specific mission was to determine whether Army helicopters were involved in the incident, not investigate the UFO report. However, to prepare for his investigation, Sarran contacted several ufologists, John F. Schuessler, the primary investigator, his former colleague Capt. Richard C. Niemtzow, M.D., USAF, and Dr. Peter Rank, Radiologist.

John B. Alexander was not named in any of Sarran’s documents, but in his 2011 book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, Alexander described how he and his friend Dr. Paul Tyler were part of the investigation:

"George visited all the units that had similar helicopters... even checked with the U.S. Marine Corps... Being thorough, George made connections with the helicopter fleets of the oil companies that fly crews to the offshore rigs. The bottom line is that no helicopters could be located that could have been involved that evening.

George carried the investigation a step further asking for consultation from me, and two military medical doctors, U.S. Navy Captain Paul Tyler and Air Force Major Richard Niemtzow, both of whom specialized in radiation. Paul and I had worked together for several years in my interagency projects at INSCOM while Richard had prior experience with French UFO cases. Based on the physical evidence available, our conclusion was that the victims were telling the truth and had been exposed to high levels of radiation. However, this case simply defied any conventional explanation."

When I asked Dr. Alexander about the case in a 2013 email, he explained the problems with ionizing radiation from earthly technology as the cause of Betty Cash’s reported injuries, saying that such an exposure would have been lethal:   

“As far as I know, we had nothing that would produce the kind of radiation illness that followed.  My view was that given speed of onset and severity of symptoms, they should have been at LD 100 (at least the two women) from any radiation source that we had.”

Lt. Col. George Sarran’s mission was to investigate the helicopters, not the UFO, but he had taken an interest in it. He found no answers, but of the witnesses, Sarran’s report stated:

 “Ms. Landrum and Ms. Cash were credible. The DAIG investigator felt...,” but the following three and a half lines of his statement were redacted in the copy released by FOIA. A year later, Sarran was interviewed by Billy Cox for the Florida newspaper, Today December 6, 1983, and gave a statement that was probably very close to those redacted lines:

“I have no reason to believe that Vickie or the young man (Colby) or the policeman or John Schuessler or anybody else was lying to me. I didn’t get that impression from anybody or that they were crazy or mentally off balance or something.” 

Lt. Col. Sarran conducted a thorough investigation, and his DAIG report concluded that there was no involvement in the incident by any helicopters; not from any US military branch, government agency, or anyone else.

The Lawsuit Investigations, 1983 - 1984

The original legal move in the Cash-Landrum case was for a damage complaint filed in Dec. 1982 against the Air Force. They were seeking $10,000,000 for Betty Cash, $5,000,000 each for Colby and Vickie Landrum. As a result, there was some kind of investigation by the US government by the Air Force in its defense, but we don’t have the records to indicate the scope of their inquiry. 

The case was rejected, but the attorney Peter Gersten file an appeal. The response come on September 2, 1983, from Charles M. Stewart, Colonel, USAF, Director of Civil Law, Office of the Advocate General in Washington D.C.  The claim for damages was again rejected, and 

Col. Stewart stated, "Our investigation has revealed no evidence of involvement by any military personnel, equipment or aircraft in this alleged incident."

When a civil suit was attempted instead, there was apparently another the inquiry or investigation by the government. All we know is that in 1984 it produced statements from the Air Force, Army, Navy, and also the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The legal documents contain signed statements from each of these officials:

• Colonel William E. Krebbs, USAF, Chief, Tactical Aeronautical Systems Division, DSC Systems, Air Force Systems Command.

• Richard L. Ballard, Acting Chief, Aviation Systems Division, ODCSRDA (Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Research, Development and Acquisition), United States Army.

• Vice Admiral Robert F. Schoultz, United States Navy.

• Robert W. Sommer, Deputy Director Aircraft Management Office, NASA.

The statements indicated that each agency had no aircraft that resembled the description of the UFO. Maybe there’s some undiscovered documentation on the investigation. Each of these agencies may have some scrap of paper in relation to the C-L case, probably a request for the statements, but little else. The legal battle ended when the court case was dismissed for the final time in 1986.

We now know that members of some of the agencies denying knowledge of the Cash-Landrum event had members in a secret organization that was unofficially studying it and other UFO cases.

In part two, we conclude with the Cash-Landrum investigations by the Advanced Theoretical Physics Working Group, and how it relates to other UFO organizations and to the Pentagon’s AATIP.

Continue reading at:

The US Government’s Cash-Landrum UFO Investigations, Part Two

If you haven't read it, it's STILL news!

UFO News, Again!

I’m sure you saw it splashed over the news, the Air Force recently declassified and released Project Blue Book UFO files, and that for the first time ever, they are available for viewing on the Internet.

All the news that's fit to copy and paste.

This just in...

Never Mind. 

The files were released long, long, ago.
Here’s a news clipping from The Dispatch (Lexington KY)  Nov. 5, 1974 (UPI):

But they didn't languish in that Air force black vault forever. Die-hard UFO researchers worked with the files on microfilm, but a decade ago, they were presented digitally on your friendly neighborhood Internet. 

Here’s the UFO UpDates notice about the files going online from 2005:
Blue Book Archive Announcement

That site is still alive and well.

Project Blue Book Archive

In 2007, Ancestry.com's site devoted to military records, Fold3 presented scans of the Project Blue Book files. 

Fold3: Project Blue Book - UFO Investigations

Maybe it's just a remake 

How does the media get things so wrong? Part of it is that there’s a rush to report (or recirculate), and little fact checking is done. That, and some of the reporters were born yesterday. Sometimes, things like this happen; the media suddenly notices something and falls all over it to become an overnight success after 20 years. 

It can happen when an unknown book gets chosen by Oprah, or for a movie adaptation. Sometimes it comes on their radar when a box office bust of a film becomes a hit on video. Worse, sometime they mine a classic and issue a remake for a new generation.

Less than 15 pieces of flare.

Even in the UFO topic, some things become news, over and over. Like the FBI’s memo on the Aztec hoaxed flying saucer crash. In its latest exhumation, it was passed off as proof of Roswell.  

Like Dracula, it won't stay down.

Is this just bad reporting, or a case of them using anything and everything shiny that catches the notice of their open minds? I'd like to blame the Twitter age of news media, but this kind of thing is not new itself. There’s one that goes back to the coming of the flying saucers.

Good Evening, Mr. and Mrs. America, and All the Ships at Sea

We forget the incredible influence radio once had. Radio commentators such as Walter Winchell (and Frank Edwards) had their finger on America’s pulse sometimes reporting the news, other times making it. They also did a lot to introduce and propel the UFO story. Winchell’s show was printed as a newspaper column, and in this story from the July 7, 1947 San Jose News, he said, “The mystery of the ‘Flying Saucers’ is not new.” Then goes on to cite a recent book by R. DeWitt Miller, Forgotten Mysteries.

San Jose News July 7, 1947

R. DeWitt Miller’s book was chiefly a collection of articles on phenomenon from Coronet magazine, and one chapter focused on strange aerial objects. It enjoyed the flying saucer spotlight, but only for about a day. Someone finally noticed that he cited Charles Fort as his inspiration.

Miller noted that there had been speculation "That conscious beings from other worlds have actually reached this earth and navigated our skies in space ships." That speculation was chiefly from Charles Fort, who had collected accounts of strange flying things and speculated that they were interplanetary. 

Fort died in 1932, and had little to do with the Fortean Society, which Tiffany Thayer created in his honor. Thayer kept the torch burning by publishing the Fortean Society’s Doubt magazine.

Snazzy modern edition

It wasn't long before Walter Winchell was quoting R. DeWitt Miller but we know he could have done better than that. As it turned out an Associated Press reporter made the discovery in Chicago's Newberry Library. There the reporter claimed to have discovered a "rare unknown” book, the scarlet colored volume titled The Book of the Damned.

 Thayer howled with laughter when he read about the “great discovery.” Awhile after this "discovery” the news agencies tracked Thayer and the Forteans to their lair to ask: "Who was this guy Fort?" And: "Can we quote such and such?" This was the high- point of the whole history of the Fortean Society and it was sad Fort himself was not alive to take a well-earned bow.  (From UFOs: A History Vol. 1: 1947 by Loren Gross)

Fort provided the backstory!

Major Donald Keyhoe used the Fort foundation to build his article and later book, Flying Saucers are Real, and thereafter, every so often a reporter would “discover” Charles Fort and report that 
“The flying saucer story, you know, is by no means a new one.”

Star-News - Aug. 7, 1952

Anyway, the news has a long history of getting things jumbled, even when they are really trying. Sometimes it's corrected, but those notices reach far fewer eyeballs. What's news, will yet be news again... someday.

World's oldest newspaper

If you haven't read it, it's STILL news!

Science Fiction and UFOs: Buck Rogers

The relationship of Science Fiction to UFOs is a complex one. Debunkers are too quick to blame fantasy for influencing Flying Saucer reports, and proponents are too quick too deny it. Old time SF fans wanted nothing of flying saucers, and FS fans felt the same way about SF. 

There's a relationship, to be sure, with ideas form one camp influencing the other. Sadly, most of the discussions of this tend to be heavily biased. The UFO/Science Fiction topic needs further examination.

Buck Rogers

Science fiction, at its best, is examining how new ideas and inventions affect mankind. In effect, it's shining a flashlight into our future. 

If Science Fiction has a name, it's Buck Rogers!

Many people around the world were introduced to science fiction in the form of an enormously popular newspaper comic strip that began in 1929. Science fiction writer, Philip Nowlan teamed up with artist Dick Calkins to create Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. It literally defined science fiction. There was a shorthand term for advanced technology, and it was "Buck Rogers." 

C.R. Smith

C.R. Smith, president of American Airlines:

“When we endeavor to envision the future of aviation, we come to the conclusion that Jules Verne was a conservative man and that Buck Rogers more closely approximates the role of a realist. Some of the potential developments in aviation are so far reaching that they might easily amaze and confuse the hero of the Sunday supplement.”
(American Aviation magazine, 1941.)

 A letter to Astounding Science Fiction 

Spaceship by Paul Orban
Astounding Science Fiction Dec. 1948 

In the February 1949 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, editor John W. Campell printed a letter from an avid fan, W. H. Entrekin Jr. It serves as good examination of the intersection of UFO and science fiction ideas at the time.  The latter half of the letter deals strictly with comment on earlier magazine stories, but I've included it for the sake of completeness. (Note: STF stands for Scientifiction, an elegant and archaic term for science fiction.)

Dear John,

At last technological development has caught up with the science- fiction artists and illustrators. I am not referring to anything else but Paul Orban's' spaceships. Note illos for “The Rull,” et cetera. 

 illustrated by Paul Orban

Also the filler cut of the multi-windowed ship you use frequently. The only sad thing about this development is that evidence lends support to the extra-mundane origin theories of Charles Fort and other dubious adherents, among them members of our own genre of stf authors—needless to say, with the recent crop of wacky theories.

First came the “flying saucers”, or “disks”. Perhaps Phil Nowlan and Dick Calkins could be credited with the idea and cartooned version of the flying disk much, much earlier in the Buck Rogers strip. 

Dick Calkins art from Buck Rogers

Well, Kenneth Arnold of Boise brought science-fiction up-to-date with the first observation of the flying disks. And finally, stf has been caught up with in the form of Orban's ubiquitous, eternal spaceship. 

On Saturday, July 24th, two EAL pilots, Captain Clarence Chiles and Co-pilot John Whitted, on the Houston-to-Atlanta-to-Boston flight, at 2:45 am.(CST), in their DC-3, reported a wingless aircraft that passed them at tremendous speed. They were flying at five thousand feet in the regulation CAA designated airway when they spotted the aircraft, it being almost in their line of flight, headed in the opposite direction, towards Mobile and New Orleans. The DC-3 was about twenty miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama. 

Dick Calkins art from Buck Rogers

Captain Chiles related: “I hate to say this, but it looked just like a Buck Rogers rocket ship. If I see anything else like this, I think I’ll have to quit flying. We were flying along on the regular airway when we saw ahead and slightly above and to our right what appeared to be a tremendous jet of flame. It flashed down and we veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about seven hundred feet to our right and about seven hundred feet above us. Then as if the pilot wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds. Its prop-wash or jet-wash or rocket-wash, take your pick, rocked our DC-3." The pilots describe the ship as about one hundred feet in length, and about four times the circumference of a B-29 fuselage. It had no wings. 

A twenty-five-to-fifty foot red flame was shooting from the rear, and there was a blue, fluorescent glow under the whole length of the fuselage. Captain Chiles further related, “It had two rows of square windows, apparently from an upper and lower deck, and the interior was brilliantly lighted. We saw no occupants. I’d say it was going between five hundred and seven hundred miles an hour." 

The following Sunday morning the story appeared in various Georgia papers, the Atlanta Constitution carrying sketches of the ship by both men. The singularly remarkable thing about the incident, is that the sketches were remarkably similar to Orban's ships.

Well, these things happen every day so to speak. The alarming fact is that no matter what the theory that explains the phenomenon, as infinite numbers of theories do as long as it is a workable theory, the PHENOMENON STILL REMAINS. 

Whitted, Chiles and their sketches of the UFO

I guess I’ll have to go back through Charles Fort again.

UFORTology's father

(The rest of the letter is about the Aug. 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.)

 As for the contents of the August issue. The cover takes my breath. Canedo is too, too utterly para- or hyper-symbolic. And no story titles to mar the front either. I guess yon J have finally decided that ASF sells itself on its own merits rather than having to resort to standard pulp tactics. Psycho-dynamics applied to the masses. 

Your editorial — simply superb!

Let’s have one tying in Non-Newtonian system of action-by-contact, and the standing confused controversies over quantum mechanics giving us readers the low-down latest discovered subatomic particles and and their relation to our present systems, with probable effect on classical set-up. Oh well, such an evaluation would be quite a thesis for a graduate work much less asking it for the price of two-bits.

Oh yes— the stories. “The Monster” takes first place with the tag van Vogt placed well before the denouement — "This race has discovered the secrets of its nervous system." "Time Trap" grabbed second, I like Harness' new words - Hardtimes (sterechronia).
"Dreadful Sanctuary” has to show. I just couldn't resist his description of the rockets' lifting for their maiden voyage. Thank you Eric and John. After all,  everyone didn't get to see the lift of a Vr-2 at White Sands. Or maybe I'm just a dreamy-eyed fool. (I'll bet I have company on this one.) 

“Smaller Than You Think" was fourth, with "Dawn of Nothing" hitting fifth. Quite an issue. The liquor ads have been bounced and the fans are now happy with the new program of the Fan-ad. 

When do we get some of the unwritten Future History series or does Bob like three to five cents a word better than honor and tradition? However, ya’ gotta eat!

To A. E. van Vogt— "Let's have in Asimov-type yarn concerning corruption of the Galaxy with the unique system of Null-A." 
Time for a Kuttner serial. 

(Address) Unknown. Unknown. UNKNOWN.—W. H. Entrekin Jr., Americus, Georgia

- - - 

A bonus Buck Rogers tidbit from the files of Project Sign, a note about Kenneth Arnold.

Area 51, the CIA and Cold War UFOs: TD Barnes

In the 2010 Mirage Men book, Mark Pilkington discusses how Dr. Leon Davidson thought some UFO radar appearances were man-made, created for covert counterintelligence purposes. Pilkington discussed a CIA program that created radar "ghosts," Project Palladium, and how it might have been used to also spoof UFOs.

CIA Saucers?

TD Barnes, president of Roadrunners Internationale, was kind enough to answer some of my questions about his work at Area 51 and the purpose and capabilities of the CIA radar program known as Project Palladium.

TD Barnes

Q: What can you tell me about Project Palladium?

A: Gene Poteat was a fast-rising star in CIA who headed up the project. As you will see, the CIA Project OXCART at Area 51 was the purpose and need of Project Palladium to determine if we would be able to safely overfly Russia with the Mach 3 A-12 Blackbird intended to replace the U-2. We were very hot in the arms race at the time and didn't have a clue what the Russians were up to. 

Eugene Poteat and TD Barnes

Q: Was Palladium or another radar spoofing system used on China in the early 60s? I'm wondering if the "ghost planes" it could generate explain the story told in Above Top Secret by Timothy Good:

"Miles Copeland, former CIA organizer and intelligence officer, related an interesting story to me involving the Agency's attempt on one occasion to use fictional UFO sightings to spread disinformation. The purpose, in this case, was to 'dazzle' and intoxicate' the Chinese, who had themselves on several occasions fooled the CIA into sending teams to a desert in Sinkiang Province, West China, to search for nonexistent underground 'atomic energies.' The exercise took place in the early 1960s, Copeland told me, and involved launching fictional UFO sighting reports from many different areas. The project was headed by Desmond Fitzgerald of the Special Affairs Staff (who made a name for himself by inventing harebrained schemes for assassinating Fidel Castro). The UFO exercise was 'just to keep the Chinese off-balance and make them think we were doing things we weren't,' Copeland said."

A: I'm not sure the project name of the spoofing action in China. We were doing a lot U-2 overflights of China and losing a lot of planes in the process. I recall our training a group of Taiwan Chinese at Groom Lake in 1969 in a C-130E to drop motion and light sensors in the desert of northwest China to gather intelligence on the Chinese nuclear weapons development program. These were palletized sensors that looked like ordinary rocks that they dropped out of the back of a C-130 over Locknor and Zhang Sinzu area. 

"TALL KING" parabolic shaped radar antenna

Though I have no first-hand knowledge of UFO disinformation, I don't doubt for a minute that we did it. Our U-2 and Blackbird flights were UFO sightings that we really didn't want to occur, especially the CIA A-12 whose existence we wanted to keep secret. In the A-12 alone, we flew 2850 flights out of Area 51 and many of them were responsible for UFO sightings. The Air Force Bluebook investigators having to make up stories to cover for us caused a lot of the skepticism that exists today. Psy-Ops by all parties were a major component of the Cold War, but in our case we preferred to be undetected.  

A-12, CIA plane built by Lockheed.

Thanks to Mr. Barnes for answering my questions. For more information on him and his work, check out http://roadrunnersinternationale.com/

For more information on Project Palladium, see Gene Poteat's article, 
Stealth, Countermeasures and ELINT 1960-1975 pdf