Crashes in the Desert

UFO Crashes in the Desert

(chapter 4 of ALIEN MAGIC)

"Crashed and retrieved UFOs, I believe,

Is the only source of potential proof."

-Leonard Stringfield

My first interest in crashed saucers came to me in 1953 when I read Frank Scully's book, Behind the Flying Saucers. When the primary sources of information for Scully, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer were brought up on charges of land and oil fraud in Colorado in November of 1953, it seemed all but the end of the case for the UFO crash at Aztec or research into other reports of crashed disks. The little known Roswell case had died a quick public death in 1947 when it was purported that the Air Force had retrieved the debris of a mere balloon and rawinsonde. After all, if flying saucers were real, and were extraterrestrial spacecraft of advanced design, why would they be prone to failure and crash?

To reiterate what I wrote in my book, Cosmic Top Secret a simple review of our own history of air crashes involving technically sophisticated aircraft such as the F-16 or B-1B bomber refutes the idea that advanced technology is immune from failure. Highly complex electronic systems are prone to malfunction when subjected to radio, radar, or microwave emissions. Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) from a nuclear explosion can wreck havoc on electronic devices. Random noise can occur in transistors and other semiconductor devices. Any electric device, which must receive electromagnetic radiation, will pick up radiated random noise as well as signals. Filters must be included in such circuits to limit bandwidth detection and reduce noise that can overwhelm signal strength.

In a Los Angeles Times news article of November 9, 1987, it states that routine radio waves can knock the Army's most advanced battle transport helicopters out of the sky. Transmissions from radio antennas, radar, and microwave towers can interfere with the wiring and electrical components of the Army's UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters and generate potentially devastating false commands. One senior Army aviator said "EMI (electromagnetic interference) is causing these aircraft to flip upside down and crash and kill everybody aboard.". The article goes on to say that the Soviets were perfecting a radio-wave weapon to exploit this vulnerability.

It doesn't take much imagination to conceive why the U.S. pursued directed-energy weapons in its SDI program. Lasers were tested that could knock out an aircraft's control systems. Actually, a high-energy pulsed microwave MASER could knock airplanes out of the sky.

A memo written to the Director of the FBI from Guy Hottel of SAC, Washington dated March 22, 1950 states that an investigator for the Air Force describes three so-called flying saucers and their pilots, which had been recovered in New Mexico. The memo also states that a high-powered radar set-up in that area interfered with the controlling mechanism of the saucers. This memo was supposedly written after an FBI agent attended a lecture given by one Silas Newton on the UFO crash at Aztec.

Were C-band radar waves beamed at saucers to deliberately bring one out of the skies so we could retrieve and examine it? Saucers are known to generate powerful electromagnetic fields and the technology used to generate these fields could be susceptible to EMI. Electronic countermeasures are deliberately used by our military to jam signals and introduce noise into the enemy's electronic circuits. If the flying saucers were considered intruders, then there may have been a plan to develop a means to bring them down to earth.

The most famous of the UFO crashes is receiving a lot of publicity and the case for a UFO crash at Roswell and the recovery of crash debris and alien bodies is the strongest of cases, but does not stand alone. An investigation of the Roswell crash has been launched by Congressman Steven Schiff of Albuquerque, New Mexico who solicited the aide of the General Accounting Office (GAO) in ferreting out any documents found in the vast mound of paper archives. Nine months after this search for evidence began, the Air Force released its own report on the Roswell Incident suggesting that the debris found was the remains of a highly secret Mogul balloon.

Depiction of the Roswell craft

It couldn't have been a flying saucer. It was just a balloon, a favorite Air Force explanation that has haunted UFO watchers since 1947. General Roger Ramey announced that the wreckage found on the Foster Ranch wasn't the wreckage of a flying disk as announced earlier in the Roswell Daily Record, but the metallic remains of a radar reflector from a rawinsonde weather balloon. Major Jesse Marcel, the Air Force Intelligence Officer who was sent out to inspect the debris, had said that it was definitely not a balloon. The material was like nothing he had ever seen.

A little research on weather balloons, not found in the aviation section of the library, but in the meteorological section, revealed that rawinsonde balloons lofted a radar reflector for the purpose of reflecting radar signals from a weather station to determine variations in wind speed. The Air Force was saying that the debris field was composed of the remains of the reflector, not the balloon. What happened to the balloon? A little thought questions why a weather station would try to send a rawinsonde aloft during or before a lightning storm. Surely the metallic reflector would be susceptible to lightning strikes. Of course, one has to ask what kind of material was used in this reflector. If aluminum foil, what kind of aluminum foil would not dent or mar, and then, when folded, unfold back to its original shape?

The balloon explanation was used to cover the debris field, not the crash site of the wreckage of a downed spacecraft.

Other weather balloons carry radio instruments aboard and are known as radiosonde balloons. Back in the forties, the National Meteorological Center received 980 radiosonde and 500 rawinsonde reports every 24 hours. There was nothing secret about these balloons. They were doing their job of sensing weather conditions before weather satellites were used.

John Keel, a critic of Ufology and Ufologists, who has expressed a negative opinions of Ufologists, advanced the idea that wreckage found on the Foster Ranch was the remains of a Japanese Fugo balloon, a device used by the Japanese toward the end of the war to carry incendiary bombs to distant targets. I guess it was hoped that prevailing winds would carry the balloons to their intended destination. These gas-filled balloons were made of laminated paper or rubberized silk, hardly fitting the description of the debris material handled by witnesses.

Balloons always popped up as an easy explanation for UFO sightings. The Air Force once declared that it was a weather balloon that Captain Mantell was chasing in his P51 above Godman tower in Kentucky in 1948. When it was found that no weather balloons were released in that vicinity on the day in question, then the official explanation for the large metallic object chased by Mantell was given as the planet Venus. Since these absurd explanations foreshadowed those contrived by Phil Klass, we might come to think that he received a grounding in Air Force methods of contriving explanations for the gullible public.

One would think that the balloon controversy would have been settled by now, using a careful analysis of reported facts just as one might expect in a court of law. But the outcry by Ufologists demanding an official release of documents on the Roswell Incident has caused the Air Force Department of Official Explanations to delve deeply into it's file of best cover stories and out popped another balloon. After all, if there were no crashes of alien spacecraft, and no secret autopsies of alien entities, perhaps the public's belief in UFO sightings and alien abductions would erode. After all, the authority of my grandmother was sufficient to convince me that ghosts did not exist!

The GAO prying started by Rep. Steven Schiff, R-N.M., opened the door on a long-locked stale-aired room that the Air Force surely wanted shut forever. The Air Force spokesman this time, a Col. Richard Weaver concluded in a 25-page report that the debris found on the Foster Ranch probably came from a once top-secret balloon designed to monitor the atmosphere for evidence of Soviet nuclear tests. This was known as Project Mogul. The sensing device (a generic blurry term) was most likely a Geiger Counter, an instrument that would have landed with the balloon. I'm sure Maj. Marcel would have recognized a Geiger Counter if he had found one in the debris field.

The breaking story now is that the 20-page GAO report of a records audit of events surrounding the Roswell crash indicates that many important records, such as the outgoing messages from Roswell Army Air Field, were destroyed without proper authority!

Note: This says that a balloon crashed, not a reflector. Do balloons crash? Big gas-filled balloons were made of rubber or plastic materials that are pliable. What happens to one when it crash-lands on earth? Would it fragment into thousands of little metallic-like fragments strewn over hundreds of yards? Does this mean that Col. Weaver is ignorant of balloons or ignorant of the descriptions given by witnesses. And what if some of that material is still in the hands of witnesses? And Weaver declares that our facts are undocumented, taken out of context, self-serving, or dubious. Where are the documents that prove it was nothing more than a balloon? Or is this a self-serving explanation for the Air Force? It certainly is a dubious explanation.

Note2: A new controversy has erupted recently when Nick Redfern published his findings in a book titled Body Snatchers in the Desert. Nick has revived the explanation that the Roswell craft was an experimental Horten Brothers flying wing aircraft with a new twist: that the crew of the experimental craft were Japanese pilots to account for the report of alien bodies found at one of the crash sites. The leading Roswell researchers do not discredit Nick’s research, but have come forward with counter arguments which admit that possible experimental aircraft were being tested in 1947, but the eyewitness accounts of the Roswell craft and bodies do not accord with Nick’s explanation.

A little further research revealed that the first Soviet atomic test was detected in the South Pacific on September 3, 1949. This took America by surprise as the Finletter Commission had estimated this event would not take place until 1953. A B-29 detected the higher than normal radiation count, not a balloon. Why would we be sending up balloons in 1947 to detect such Soviet tests before any such test took place?

Just to add a little spice to all this speculation I will mention a document published by Len Stringfield that he believes has validity. It is dated 9 July 1947 and states that a preliminary investigation of a recovered "Flying Disc" and remains of a possible second disk concludes that they was not manufactured by another country on earth and goes on to say that the propulsion system was believed to be a bladeless turbine similar to a then current development at AMC (Air Material Command) and the Mogul Project.

Was the Mogul Project bigger than balloons? Was it also trying to develop a new and revolutionary type of propulsion system? Was it determined that national security required that such propulsion systems were to be kept a permanent secret?

Recently, Karl Pflock published a book presenting his case that the Roswell Incident was not a flying saucer, but the secret Project Mogul balloon. Pflock considers the case strong for the Mogul balloon explanation. Other researchers, notably Kevin Randle and Stanton Friedman still support the crashed saucer explanation.

I was taught cover stories when I served in Air Force Security Service. These are true lies. It is the way you word your story. There are some things that the public should never know. That's policy. The Air Force certainly has generated enough hot air to raise another one of those balloons.

Kent Jeffrey, a Roswell researcher, has authored the Roswell Declaration in an attempt to get an Executive Order to declassify any existing U.S. government-held information concerning UFOs or extraterrestrial intelligence. A copy of this declaration is available from the MUFON HQ in Sequin, Texas. Any member of the public who has an interest in seeing the declassification of UFO information should sign this declaration and send it to their representative in Washington.

To complicate the Roswell controversy even further, word got out that a producer by the name of Ray Santilli had obtained old 16-mm film footage from a retired military photographer by the name of Jack Barnett. This black-and-white footage allegedly shows an autopsy performed on alien life forms. When this film was viewed, in part, on May 5, 1995 in England, Roswell researchers were convinced that the film was a hoax. Santilli is not a UFO researcher, but is convinced the film is authentic. There is no doubt that supposed evidence of this nature should be subjected to the most critical analysis before a conclusion is reached. There is still a small contingent of researchers who believe this film is authentic while most feel that the film is a hoax.

I was quite content investigating close encounter cases, but something about the UFO crash cases beckoned to me. I wanted to find out for myself if witnesses told incredible stories that correlated in the same way that abductee cases correlate. There are specific details about military operations that are mentioned by independent witnesses. There are also specific details about the craft that are reiterated by independent witnesses. In other words, there's a good case for crash-retrievals.

In 1980 I talked to ex-Navy seaman Wayne Henthorne about his strange encounter on a road just outside of Globe, Arizona in January 1947. He was driving a jeep. An unnamed friend was with him. On the road in front of him was a military blockade. Beyond a cordoned-off perimeter they saw a large flying saucer with a transparent dome. It was sitting on tripod legs. It did not look as if it crashed. They were told to leave the area and say nothing about what they had seen. Unless Wayne was telling me a tall tale, he had encountered a retrieval before the Roswell incident if his recollection of the date is correct. No other witnesses have ever recalled a retrieval near Globe. This is a single witness case as are most of the ones I have had an opportunity to interview. This does not mean these cases are hoaxed. They are inconclusive. Others could come forward someday and confirm some of the events described by these witnesses. If documents are ever released, these events should appear in such documents if they are valid military retrieval incidents. The interesting aspect of these incidents are the bits and pieces of the technical puzzle they fill.

Also in 1980, a woman named Mary had told me of her contact with a producer who claimed to be in possession of a 17-minute segment of film showing a retrieved saucer and 5 alien bodies. Somehow, this segment was taken out of Air Force archives. He wanted to show it to some interested researcher, but feared being caught with stolen property. Supposedly, this person was associated with the production of the movie, "Hangar 18." At first, I tried to make a connection with researcher Wendelle Stevens to see if he could help, but later I made contact with Leonard Stringfield at the 1980 MUFON Symposium and asked for his help. I put him in contact with Mary and Mary put him in contact with the mysterious producer by phone. He talked long enough with Leonard for Len to be convinced that the man might be telling the truth. He was too frightened about negotiating with Len to show him the film. In the end, the man simply dropped out of sight and we will never know whether he had an authentic document.

Not directly related to UFO crashes, I interviewed a Captain Creighton when I lived in Arizona in 1981. Captain Creighton was a radar officer with the Air Force and told me about a radar sighting at his station in Wisconsin. A UFO appeared on the screen and hovered some 50 miles north of the station for a period of time. Then within one sweep of the scope, the blip representing an unknown object disappeared from its initial stationary position and reappeared 20 miles closer. As this unknown was hopping all over the radarscope, Captain Creighton wanted to film it. After filming the antics of this UFO, he took the film to his superior officer who accepted the film, then threw it in the round file saying that he did not want to get involved with UFO red tape.

In 1982 I interviewed a Ms. Sylvia whose daughter-in-law was stationed at Luke AFB near Glendale, Arizona. A formation of unknown objects flew over Phoenix one night and were tracked by radar at the base. Her daughter-in-law reported that communications were received by radio at the base from the UFOs and recorded on magnetic tapes. These tapes were immediately demounted from their drives and stored in a time-locked vault. The next day, a General arrived from the Pentagon, picked up the tapes and flew out.

My interest was increasing in military UFO stories. I knew the military could keep secrets. I kept a few of those secrets myself when I was a member of the Air Force Security Service reporting to NSA. Maybe the General staff at the Pentagon had some of the answers to the UFO mystery, but they sure were not sharing their knowledge with the public or civilian UFO organizations.

In April 1988, I took a vacation trip to New Mexico and intended to visit Aztec, Dulce, Albuquerque, and Alamogordo. New Mexico was indeed a land of mystery and beauty. While making all of these stops along the way, I encountered a man who had once been stationed in San Antonio, Texas while in the Army in 1948. One night, he said, a number of troops had been loaded on trucks and were driven to a remote site in the darkness of night. He had no idea where they were when they disembarked from the back of the covered trucks. They had been driving for hours. It is even possible that he had the date wrong, and the year was 1947 and the site was Roswell, but none of that was confirmed. He was assigned to pick up fragments of metallic material that was extremely lightweight. Later when he picked up a piece of titanium, he thought that it resembled the material they had picked up in the desert. The site of the crash was over 10 hours drive from San Antonio.

In 1988 I also talked with a psychologist who had been attending UFO meetings and support group meetings by the name of Perry. He revealed that he had participated in a retrieval of a "Class 3" vehicle from Great Falls, Montana in 1947. This unknown designation apparently referred to some early classification system. He flew the recovered craft in a transport plane to Wright field. He was not very forthcoming with additional information and I have not talked to him since.

On September 23, 1990 I was introduced to a man named Ozzie who related a detailed story of his participation in two crash-retrievals while he was in the Army stationed at Roswell in 1948 and 1949.* This is a single-witness story that has not been corroborated by other witnesses. He doesn't know the exact dates of the crashes, but believes the first one occurred in the desert near Socorro, New Mexico. His recounting of this incident took place inside of a locked car with rolled-up windows, which seemed a little paranoid to me. There was no doubt that he came across as sincere, answering all my questions without hesitation and to the best of his knowledge. His attitude was one of not caring whether he was believed or not as he claimed he had already been the butt of much ridicule. He currently held a job at a large aerospace company and did not want to publicly divulge his background. I found this to be the case with other witnesses I have interviewed.

*Note: I believe that Ozzie may have recounted each event 1 year later than it happened. The years that best fit these incidents are 1947 and 1948.

One night in 1948 he was called out of his barracks to climb aboard a bus that looked like an old school bus with darkened windows. After hours of riding through the desert on a generally westward course, the bus came to a stop during the very early hours of the morning and he could see a disk standing on the desert sands illuminated by floodlights. It was like a movie set, but there were no movie cameras or directors barking orders. The disk was silvery and about 30 feet in diameter. He learned that two aliens were recovered from the disk. One was alive. White-coated doctors walked the live alien around the site. It lived for 12 hours. The disk had one compartment with a shaft running up the center of the compartment. The exterior hull of the craft felt smooth and slippery to the touch. Ozzie said that only 3 men lifted the lightweight craft onto a flat bed truck. Men went ahead and scouted a back roads transport of the truck away from the site. Ozzie accompanied a scientist who caravanned along the back roads until they reached their ultimate destination at a little auxiliary airfield on the edge of Groom Lake in Nevada. There were only five buildings at this airfield and they arrived at night. The truck drove up to one of the buildings and Ozzie saw two living aliens standing by this building. One of the doors of the building opened, he could see that six other disks had already been retrieved and placed inside the building.

The whole recovery team was taken into a room in another one of the buildings and debriefed. Ozzie saw pictures on the wall of the room that depicted six different types of aliens. He remembers that one of the aliens looked human. Short grays were also in one of the pictures. He did not say whether these were photos or drawings, but he called them pictures so I assume they were photos. At one point during the debriefing, a small alien appeared to pass through one of the walls of the room. He was holding a small black box that Ozzie called an "augmenter."

Ozzie made some interesting detailed observations, but it is admitted that his story has bizarre elements to it. But, when we compare some of these bizarre elements to stories told by abductees they seem less bizarre by far. We find it hard to believe that the military had such a high degree of involvement with aliens as early as 1948.

Ozzie claims that he was called out on a second retrieval in 1949 at close to the same site as the first retrieval. The second disk was 100 feet in diameter and ten dead crew were found at the site. Their skin had turned a purplish color. These beings were about 5' 8" in height. Ozzie had to carry one of the aliens and estimated its weight at only 55 pounds. He was very emotional about this incident. The aliens were dressed in one-piece coveralls that have a Velcro-type fastener at the back. Of course, velcro-type fasteners did not exist in 1949 and Ozzie is only comparing what he saw to what we know today. The big disk had a conveyor on the floor that transported the crew from one control center to another. There was also an instrument that contained colored fluids. A central column ran through the center of the craft, which had multiple rectangular compartments. When inside the control room of the craft, Ozzie said you could plainly see through the sidewall of the craft and the desert was plainly visible even at night. The metal of the craft could not be marred with any of our tools. This disk was also transported to the site at Groom Lake.

That ended Ozzie's involvement in crash-retrievals though he has kept in contact with others he had met during his involvement. He also claims that he has a photo of the second retrieval locked in a vault for safekeeping. He does not know when it might become safe enough to bring out this photo as evidence. So we are left with another story and no corroborating evidence, but a pattern begins to emerge from the details as we talk to other witnesses.

A man named Frenchie was stationed at Edwards AFB in 1951 when he was called out of his barracks along with others because something had crashed just south of the air base. When he got to the site, he was not allowed to get any closer than an outer established security perimeter, but could see men lifting up large chunks of metal. Sheets of metal were all over the crash site, but no engine or fuselage was visible. Frenchie said they had to cut out a piece of a C-47 to enlarge its door to fit a large piece of the retrieved material into the plane for transport. The large piece was lightweight and was lifted by two men. Frenchie never found out what the object was.

A lot of this crash debris was supposedly transported to the Air Material Command at Wright Field. However, craft recovered in one piece were probably shipped elsewhere, perhaps Groom Lake. The engineering division at Wright Field called T-3 had already concluded that the UFOs were advanced aircraft or spacecraft, which used nonconventional methods of propulsion and were constructed from composite layers of lightweight material. It was the opinion of the General staff that the unidentified objects were interplanetary spacecraft.

William Steinman had discovered that Dr. Robert I. Sarbacher of the Washington Institute of Technology had some involvement in the scientific study of crashed disks. He wrote a letter to Sarbacher in 1983 asking for verification of the involvement of individuals in a list that he enclosed in his letter. Sarbacher replied that John von Neumann was definitely involved as was Dr. Vannever Bush and Robert Oppenheimer, the scientific leader of the Manhattan project. Sarbacher also mentioned Dr. von Braun.

Dr. Robert Sarbacher

Consider the involvement of top scientists in the investigation of the recovered saucers when we read the contents of a document, faded with age, given to Leonard Stringfield by a credible source. The document is a report on the preliminary investigation of a flying disk and indicates there was a presidential directive dated 9 July 1947 to carry out such an investigation. It also mentions the remains of a possible second disk. The data in the report is said to be furnished by the engineering staff of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division T-3. The scientific personnel of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CIT, and the Army Air Forces Scientific Advisory Group headed by Dr. Theodore von Karmen furnished additional data. Von Karmen was an expert in aerodynamics and founder of Aerojet General Corporation.

Dr. Theodore von Karmen (Founder of Aerojet and alleged member of MJ-12 Science team)

The report mentions that the disk was circular and did not resemble anything in the design stages or under known military development. No external propulsion system, power plant, intake, or exhaust ports were found on the craft. German scientists from Fort Bliss and White Sands could not identify it. A compartment containing a possible atomic engine was discovered. Dr. Oppenheimer and Dr. von Karmen were consulted regarding this engine.

A description of the power room follows: "A doughnut shaped tube approximately thirty-five feet in diameter, made of what appears to be plastic material, surrounding a central core. This tube appeared to be filled with a clear substance, possibly a heavy water. A large rod centered inside the tube, was wrapped in a coil of what appears to be of copper material, ran through the circumference of the tube. This may be the reactor control mechanism or a storage battery. There were no moving parts in the spaces examined."

The report goes on to say, "The activation of an electrical potential is believed to be the primary power to the reactor, though it's only a theory at present."

The report also describes a ball turret underneath the power plant. This turret was about ten feet in diameter. It was believed that the air outside the craft was ionized, propelling the craft forward. Coupled with the circular airfoil for lift, the craft would presumably have an unlimited range and airspeed. This may account for the reported absence of any noise. There is a flight deck located inside the copula section atop the craft. The absence of a canopy, observation windows, or any optical projection led to the belief that the craft was guided by remote control. The craft had no weld marks, rivets or soldered joints. It appeared as if the components were molded and pressed into a perfect fit.

The reference to ionized air refers to a principle in electroaerodynamics where electric charges are applied to high-speed vehicles such as supersonic aircraft or B-2 bombers to reduce air drag or eliminate sonic booms. High-speed ions are projected forward from the leading edges of the craft. This coronal discharge repels air molecules away from the aircraft's leading surfaces.

Researcher Clifford Stone has compiled stacks of government documents in his search of verifying the government's continuing interest and involvement in UFO incidents. One of these documents refers to Project Moondust. Moondust may have been the code name for retrieval operations that not only involved U.S. or foreign satellites or space debris returning to Earth, but also the recovery of remains or debris of alien spacecraft.

There have been reports of many alleged UFO crashes. Most of these reports have never been thoroughly investigated and, as Kevin Randle has suggested in his book, A History of UFO Crashes many will turn out to be false reports. I am still not absolutely positive that the Aztec crash was a complete hoax. We may still find out that there was something to this story, but I do not think it was some kind of distortion of the Roswell Incident. In August 1952 a disk purportedly crashed near Ely, Nevada and 16 bodies were recovered. There are no further details or listed sources of this report. A cursory check could be made to see if such a report is worth pursuing. There are more such reports. This includes a crash near Holloman AFB, New Mexico on June 12, 1962. I did talk to a man who saw lightweight metallic fragments inside a building at Holloman. No more is known about this.

There have been recent crashes reported in Canada, South Africa, and other places. All of these reports are of dubious origin. Several of these have been denounced by UFO investigators. No one has yet come up with a smoking saucer.

I met Sergeant Charlie S. in 1994. Charlie was a member of a special operations group in the U.S. Marines during the early Vietnam era. He was stationed on the aircraft carriers U.S.S. Oriskany and the Valley Forge. Their team went in to recover a landed disk in the hills of Vietnam just east of Hue. Charlie says the craft landed and two aliens emerged and walked away from the craft. Some native farmers saw the aliens and took up pitchforks in fear. They stabbed the aliens to death. The disk was about 30 feet in diameter. Charlie calls it an IRC-10, which translates into Interplanetary Reconnaissance Craft of 10 meters. In retrospect, Charlie says that the IRC-10 was an old model. It did not have the electromagnetic mind-link panel used to control the craft, but a touch-control panel by the seats. This touch-control panel is similar to that described by Russell. The craft was lighter than a VW bug and could be lifted easily by a few men. This is what Ozzie said concerning the disk in New Mexico. Charlie said the disk was transported to the flight deck of the aircraft carrier. Ultimately, it was stored on the flight deck cushioned between mattresses and covered by a tarpaulin.

Examining the craft, Charlie says the entrance hatch was found on the bottom of the craft. The craft was supported by three landing legs. When the hatch was closed, it fit into the hole so tightly that no seam could be detected. Between the three landing gears there were three drive amplifier pods that fit flush against the undersurface. Charlie felt that this craft descended from an orbiting mothership. He did not say how he obtained this impression. The control cables from the flight deck to the avionics on the top deck were composed of fiber optics embedded in the hull. These fiber-optics signals could not be affected by the electromagnetic flux of the ship. He feels that when openings closed, such as the hatch, they molecularly bonded with the shell of the craft.

The craft was transported on the carrier back to San Francisco where it was unloaded. The captain of the carrier used the cover story that the tarpaulin covered saucer was a new water tank they were bringing into port for maintenance and it was covered to protect it from storms at sea.

Charlie mentioned tidbits he had heard about the Roswell craft that were shared with members of the inner circle of involved people. Charlie continually networks with some of these people. He said that the metal fragments were found to be a strange alloy of beryllium (Atomic Number 4/Atomic Weight 9.013). This was different from ordinary beryllium in its atomic structure, which was in a very tight matrix giving extraordinary strength to the material; it could bend but not break. He said the ceiling of the craft had another metal, that when energized, lit up and glowed. It used a wave-guide operating in the microwave S-band that confirms contactee Calvin Girvin's information that the central column is a magnetron. The Aeroshell was only .75 to 1.25" in thickness and was put together in compressed laminations. Perhaps our advanced technology stealth aircraft that use composite skin structures with compressed laminations derived their inspiration from interstellar or interspatial craft. Charlie went on to say that all the disks he had knowledge of, the IRC-10 and IRC-16 (referred to as the Sports Model by Bob Lazar) seem to have six wedge-shaped side support members bonded to the aeroshell itself. The instrument used to study the metal fragments was a spectrochromatograph.

As I have not seen exactly this type of structure analysis in print, I am reproducing parts of Charlie's conversations with me to elicit further corroboration. Charlie has had technical training in electronic engineering and is very precise in his speech. He also freely admits when he doesn't know anything about a particular topic.

I had first heard of Charlie from a friend and heard that he was writing a letter to OMNI magazine concerning their articles on UFO cover-up. I obtained his address and wrote him a letter. Within days I received a letter in return, but not from Charlie. Someone intercepts Charlie's mail and after testing this a few times, I am convinced he receives little in the way of mail at his home address and circumvents this by using another address. The letter I received was from someone in a veteran's association who stated that material in OMNI was peppered with deliberate disinformation, and that those who had hands-on experience with alien technology were stupid for breaking their oaths as loyal Americans. It was stated that the high level of security involved at the UFO level is not under a 30-year minimum expiration limit, but is permanent. I was warned to not try to contact Charlie again. It was stated that, "Any unauthorized individuals who break into this security mutually protecting our visitors and our governments, would likely be terminated, along with their associates." It goes on to say that by interfering in matters beyond my understanding and none of my business, would only make things more difficult. One cryptic sentence reads, "We need the assistance of one of their Federations to protect us from the expansionism of another." It was signed: R. Quinlen (almost indecipherable).

Was this letter a hoax? If it is, it uses serious language to deter me from visiting with Charlie. I really do not think that Charlie has told me enough to be a threat to our national security or the security of the visitors. Charlie never knew I received this letter and I had to provide him with a copy. He fears interrogation and threats, but they also anger him. Since we have openly shared information, he has received one direct threat. Charlie is not the only person that I know who has been threatened by mysterious agents. I do not think that we can just shrug off these incidents as a practical joke. There is more substance to these threats than I will go into in this work.

As for the philosophy behind the sentiment expressed in the letter, we are at odds. Researchers intend to make discoveries and report those discoveries to others. Security is in place to thwart our making discoveries. Security is antipathetic to the scientific process. If the security oath regarding the alien presence is permanent, then we are battling against an implacable barrier in trying to penetrate the security shielding that is meant to keep us in the dark. The philosophical problem contained in this dilemma is one that has confronted many leaders involved in making decisions that will affect populations. Is the threat to our existence and welfare on this planet of such a nature that just revealing the truth would be enough to bring down retribution so secrecy protects the people. The problem with secrecy is it divides us from one another. Ultimately, it is communication that makes a people a civilized society and a breakdown in free communication ultimately leads to a disintegration of society. If the cells in your body started to erect security barriers and ceased to communicate among one another, the body would die. Though individuals are more autonomous than cells, the cohesion of a group is fundamentally based on communication and consensus. Would the truth make us free or bring down the sky on our collective heads?

What do we have to gain by learning advanced alien technology and would we understand it to the degree that we could duplicate it after a fashion?

We could learn:

1) New Physics -- Energy sources such as antimatter; solar; zero-point; etc. and methods of electro-gravitational propulsion.

2) Materials Science -- New composites; new atomic and molecular matrices; sandwich or laminated construction; organic growth technology; use of new kinds of metals and plastics.

3) Weapons -- Beam weapons; neutral particle beam; antiproton beams; microwave beams; and ultrasonic beams. Also stealth technology including optical invisibility.

4) Electronics -- Transistors; ICs; Organic molecular; superconducting; etc.

5) Optical -- Enhanced laser; diffuse lighting; bending light beams; etc.

6) Communication -- Gravitational wave; neutrino; space-time; telepathy

7) Computing -- Electro-optical; holographic; parallel processing; artificial intelligence; intelligent machines; etc.

8) Biological -- Genetic engineering; cloning; evolutionary development; terraforming; etc.

9) Psychic -- Telepathy; out-of-body; remote viewing; telekinesis; precognition

10) Exotic – Time travel; teleportation; reality engineering; dimensional shifting

This list is just an estimate of some of the technologies that could be used by aliens, and from which we could benefit, but there may be more that we could not even guess at, technologies that do not even fit our frame of reference.

The February 1987 issue of Gung-Ho magazine had a very interesting article discussing projects called "Unfunded Opportunities" (UFO). It said that these programs were dealing with technology levels so advanced that one Air Force officer involved in SR-71 development said: "We are flight testing vehicles that defy description. To compare them conceptually to the SR-71 would be like comparing Leonardo da Vinci's parachute design to the space shuttle."

"We have things that are so far beyond the comprehension of the average aviation authority as to be really alien to our way of thinking," says one retired colonel. Rumor has it some of these systems involve force-field technology, gravity-drive systems, and "flying saucer" designs. Rumor further has it that these designs are not necessarily of Earth human origin. "Lets just put it this way," explained one retired Lockheed engineer, "We have things flying around in the Nevada desert that would make George Lucas drool."

The latter statement seems to be a veiled reference to the Groom Lake or Papoose Lake locations at the famed Nevada Test Site designated Area 51. Do we have deep black projects based on past studies of alien technology? Have we developed our own flying saucers? That is a possibility I will explore further in a later chapter.

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