Sunday, January 29, 2017

Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right and High Weirdness Part VI



Welcome to the sixth installment in my examination of the bizarre relationship the far right have to high weirdness. Over the course this series the far right has been considered through the prism of various NPOs and think tanks linked to the military-industrial complex such as the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) Mach I and the American Security Council (ASC). As for high weirdness, I am using this as something of a catch all for a host of arcane topics such as UFOs, psi, psychedelics, the occult and human potential.

The first part of this series considered the curious Sikh temple shooting of 2012 and the possible deep political implications behind it in addition to the divide between the traditional conservative establishment, personified by organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and other such long time bugaboos of the conspiratorial right, and their far right counterparts. With the second installment I moved along to the origins of the military-industrial complex. Therein we found that it was largely the creation of a cabal of middle managers linked to Secretary of War (and Bonesman) Henry Stimson and the emerging technocrat class, personified by the enigmatic Vannevar Bush.

Vannevar Bush
Part three considered the linkage of the far right to the military industrial complex. This was largely achieved by General Douglas MacArthur and the network of military officers that had served under/with MacArthur in the Pacific Theater of World War II and/or Korea. I also began to consider the extensive ties the MacArthur clique had to Roswell. With the four installment I continued in this vein, exploring the claims of Colonel Philip J. Corso presented in The Day After Roswell and weighed in on what was really behind the Roswell incident (or Working, as the great Christopher Knowles dubbed it).

Many of the MacArthur men played a key role in establishing the American Security Council, the premier think tank for the military-industrial complex throughout the Cold War. The ASC was also a vast private intelligence network linked to a host of outrages, including blacklisting, drugs and arms trafficking, terrorism, death squads, the Kennedy assassination (addressed here), Watergate (noted here), Iran-Contra and possibly even Project ARTICHOKE (noted before here and here). For those of you unfamiliar with the ASC, this blog has chronicled in depth before here. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics has an excellent article on the ASC as well.

Unsurprisingly, the ASC has many little-remarked-upon ties to the UFO question as well. In part five I began to consider these, noting the extensive, decades-spanning overlap between the ASC and National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), the premier UFO investigation network from the late 1950s until its dissolution in 1980.


Hangar 18 and Blue Book

After addressing the ASC's ties to NICAP I would now like to consider a few odds and sods related to UFOlogy where the ASC also crops up during the late 1960s and early 1970s. One of the more curious connections is in relation to the mysterious Hangar 18, reputedly the location of the debris recovered from the Roswell crash.

The origins of the Hangar 18 rumors appear to originate with the highly controversial Behind the Flying Saucers by Frank Scully. Despite being widely viewed as a hoax now, Scully's work originally linked alien bodies and recovered technology to Wright Patterson Air Force Base, reputedly home of Hangar 18. It was not until 1974, however, that Hangar 18 appears to have formally entered the lexicon. This was thanks to the claims of University of Florida professor (and former author for Weird Tales) named Robert Spencer Carr.

Robert Spencer Carr
Carr, who almost entirely based his allegations upon Scully's dubious claims, has alleged to have been a security guard at Wright Patterson for a varying degree of time. It was here that he apparently first learned of Hangar 18.

On the whole, Carr was a curious figure. He moved to the Soviet Union in 1932, apparently to take part in the "Utopian society" Stalin was creating. Disillusionment set in, and he returned to these United States in 1938. Despite having spent over half a decade living in the Soviet Union, he does not appear to have ever elicited serious scrutiny from the national security state. Given the political climate in these United States at the onset of the Cold War when McCarthyism was at its peak, this could indicate that Carr was carrying out some state-sanctioned function in the USSR. Certainly many lives were ruined during this era over far less dubious connections to the Soviets than spending six years in the USSR.

Carr would largely abandon his writing career in the late 1940s. He apparently took up UFOlogy around this time, but did not start making his extraordinary claims until the 1970s. In addition to spreading the Hangar 18 rumors, he would also play a key role in what would become the "alien autopsy" hoax many years later.


The ASC was not far behind Carr. It would appear that by 1975 at least one ASC luminary was dropping hints concerning Hangar 18 of his own.
"... Senator Barry Goldwater, former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, visited Wright-Patterson hoping to get permission from General Curtis LeMay to examine the UFO evidence stored there, but was refused. Copies of letters from Goldwater to various researchers (in my files) are worth quoting here. In a letter to Shlomo Arnon on 28th of March 1975, he wrote:
The subject of UFOs is one that has interested me for some long time. About ten or twelve years ago I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret. I have, however, heard that there is a plan underway to release some, if not all, of this material in the near future. I'm just as anxious to see this material as you are, and I hope we will not have to wait much longer. [Emphasis added]
"On 11 April 1979 Goldwater wrote to Lee Graham. 'It is true I was denied access to a facility at Wright-Patterson,' he confirmed. 'Because I never got in, I can't tell you what was inside. We both know about the rumors.' The room that the Senator tried to visit is called the Blue Room, and according to my information it contains UFO artifacts, but not craft or bodies. In another letter to Lee Graham, dated 19 October 1981, Goldwater wrote:
First, let me tell you that I have long ago given up acquiring access to the so-called blue room at Wright-Patterson, as I have had one long string of denials from chief after chief, so I have given up.
In answer to your question, one is essentially correct, I don't know of anyone who has access to the blue room, nor am I aware of its contents and I'm not aware of anything having been relocated. . . .
To tell you the truth, Mr. Graham, this thing has gotten so highly classified, even though I will admit there is a lot of that has been released, it is just impossible to get anything on it. [Emphasis added] 
(Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, pgs. 404-405)
Barry Goldwater
Nearly twenty years later Goldwater, a long time member of the American Security Council who was the Republican nominee for the US presidency in 1964, was still standing by these claims. The great Nick Redfern notes:
"On more than a few occasions, the subject of UFOs featured heavily on Larry King Live. On one occasion, specifically in 1994, the person that King had on his show to talk about UFOs was none other than Goldwater himself, who told King:
" 'I think at Wright-Patterson, if you could get into certain places, you’d find out what the Air Force and the government does know about UFOs. Reportedly, a spaceship landed. It was all hushed up. I called Curtis LeMay and I said, "General, I know we have a room at Wright-Patterson where you put all this secret stuff. Could I go in there?" I’ve never heard General LeMay get mad, but he got madder than hell at me, cussed me out, and said, "Don’t ever ask me that question again!" ' "
Curtis LeMay, another member of the ASC also linked to Roswell (noted in part three), has long been associated with Goldwater's claims. LeMay died in 1990 and never appears to have publicly refuted  Goldwater's allegations.

This is most interesting as their is absolutely no evidence that Hangar 18 existed. Wright-Patterson apparently has never even possessed a "Hangar 18" during its history. There was a "Building 18" that was used to conduct experimental research during the 1950s that is presumed to have been the inspiration for Hangar 18. There is no evidence of a "Blue Room" either.

And yet Goldwater, a one time presidential candidate and long serving US Senator, would continue to make these claims until practically right up until the time of his death. And General Curtis LeMay, long linked to Goldwater's claims, never refuted them either and this was a man who had served as Chief of Staff of the Air Force at one point. LeMay and Goldwater were very powerful figures within the deep state, in other words, and yet they never tried to distance themselves from what superficially appears to be a rather baseless claim originating from very dubious sources.

General Curtis LeMay
Was there more to these claims than meets the eye? Certainly there is compelling evidence that something was shipped to Wright-Patterson in the wake of Roswell and that it was overseen by General Nathan Twining, another ASC luminary (noted before in part three). Curiously Twining, who was close to LeMay and active in the ASC with Goldwater, was never brought into this conversation.

Wright-Patterson would have been a logical location for especially exotic technology. It is the home of the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, previously known as the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) and the Foreign Technology Division, the principal department of the Air Force tasked with analyzing foreign technology. And the Roswell debris, if they in fact existed, certainly would have constituted foreign technology.


Interestingly, the ATIC was the original agency tasked with investigating UFO reports. General Nathan Twining initiated the first wave of investigations at Wright-Patterson when he ordered the creation of Project Sign (noted before here). Project Sign would eventually morph into Project Blue Book, which appears to have remained under the direction of the ATIC until at least the 1950s. There may have been a shakeup after the ATIC became the Foreign Technology Division in 1961, but Blue Book was still based out of Wright-Patterson until the project was shuttered in 1968.

And it just so happens that the head of the Foreign Technology Division at the time of Blue Book's closure was another ASC member: Colonel Raymond Sleeper. Sleeper reportedly considered Blue Book to be a massive waste of resources and viewed the UFO question as baseless in general. And yet he would receive patronage from at least two powerful military officers with a keen interest in UFOs. One was Curtis LeMay, who Sleeper served under in the Pacific Theater of World War II.

Another was Admiral Arthur Radford. During the early 1950s Sleeper headed the Air War College at Maxwell AFB. While there he concocted Project Control, a plan for massive nuclear strikes against the Soviet Union. Radford, who would serve as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during Eisenhower's first term, was a major proponent of Project Control. He also reportedly encountered a UFO himself during this time and launched a Navy investigation into the phenomenon (noted before here). Radford also had dealings with Donald Keyhoe of NICAP and was likely one of his sources during this era as well. Naturally, Radford would end up with the ASC after retiring from the Navy in 1957.


Admiral Arthur Radford
Thus, Sleeper appears to have been surrounded by military officers with a keen interest in the UFO question both during his time in the Air Force and later while working with the ASC. And yet he remained a public skeptic throughout his life and apparently played a key role in shuttering Blue Book. Was Sleeper simply following his conscious, engaging in a cover-up, or was there something more at work?

Certainly it is is interesting that one ASC man, Nathan Twining, appears to have initiated the predecessor to Blue Book while another ASC man is the one who shuttered the project. Is it possible that Air Force opted to shutter Blue Book because its purpose had been served and TPTB were now poised to move on to the next phase of this hall of mirrors? But what was the next phase? To answer that, we must now turn to a legendary figure in UFOlogy.


Hynek, Vallee and Regnery

One of Colonel Raymond Sleeper's likely subordinates while heading the Foreign Technology Division was J. Allen Hynek, for years the personification of "scientific UFOlogy." Hynek was an astronomer educated at the University of Chicago who would later work for Ohio State, John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Northwestern University. He had been engaged in classified research during WWII (which will be addressed in a moment) and would serve as a civilian consultant to Sign, Grudge and Blue Book over the span of two decades. He was also a participant in the CIA's Robertson Panel that promoted an official campaign of disinformation concerning the UFO question by the Agency (this was addressed before here). 

Hynek was no quack, in other words, and had been engaged in highly classified research for years. He famously exposed the flaws in Blue Book's investigations in a letter to Colonel Sleeper shortly before the project was shuttered and which he later published. And yet there is much suspicion concerning Hynek's actual motives. He was, after all, one of the primary debunkers of UFOs throughout the 1950s and 1960s and only appears to have found religion around the time Blue Book was winding down. Many explanations have been put forth over the years concerning Hynek's reversal on the UFO question and the curious associates he kept for years. Here's a brief rundown of the controversy surrounding Hynek:
"... In the first place, Hynek was much more than a mere civilian scientist who helped out the air force. 1942 to 1946, Hynek took a leave of absence from Ohio State University to work at the Johns Hopkins University in Silver Springs, Maryland. While there, he was in charge of document security for the highly classified project sponsored by the navy to develop a radio proximity fuse. Along with radar and the atomic bomb, this is often considered one of the three great scientific developments of the war. The device was a radio-operated fuse designed to screw into the nose of a shell and timed to explode at any desired distance from target.
"Many scientists, of course, performed work for the defense establishment during World War Two. But Hynek's project was of considerable importance, and it does not appear that his main contribution was scientific: after all, he was an astrophysicist. Rather, one of his main efforts was in a security-related area...
"... rumors had abounded through the 1960s that Blue Book was a public relations facade, and that there was a 'secret study' of UFOs going on. Vallee, too, had his suspicions and broached the subject with Hynek every so often. Hynek inevitably rejected such opinions without reservation. Blue Book, Hynek maintained, was the real thing, albeit a project that was being done incompetently. Vallee was never quite convinced. He noticed Hynek's cagey attitude about UFOs, that he seemed to know much more than he usually let on about the subject, that he often appeared to be more interested in self-promotion than actual study of the problem, and that his personal records were in a state of near disaster. Then Vallee found the infamous 'Pentacle Memorandum' in Hynek's office. This was a highly classified document from January 1953, proving the existence of a separate study group of UFOs, and urging that the Robertson Panel be delayed until they had come to their own conclusions. Very strong stuff. In the mid-1960s, there was still no inkling among the wider public that there was any such study as this. Understandably, Vallee agonized before broaching this topic...
"During another conversation, Hynek mentioned to Vallee that the air force had sent him a new contract draft. He did not know whether or not he should sign it and gave it to Vallee to read. Vallee wrote:
The contract, I was surprised to read, was not really with the air force but with the Dodge Corporation, a subsidiary of McGraw-Hill. 'What's McGraw-Hill doing in the middle of all this?' I asked, without trying to hide my bafflement. 'Is that some sort of cut out?' 'Oh, they are just contractors to the Foreign Technology Division,' Hynek replied. 'By working through companies like McGraw-Hill, which is a textbook publisher, it's easier for them to hire professors and scholars to conduct some intelligence activities, keeping up with Soviet technology, for example. Many academics would be nervous saying they were working for the Foreign Technology Division.' The contract clearly puts Hynek under the administrative supervision of a man named Sweeney, who is not a scientist. And it clearly specifies Hynek's task as evaluating [original emphasis] the sightings of unknown objects to determine if they represent a danger for the security of the United States.
"Hynek's substantial air force money was passed to him through a third party. Thus, Hynek's relationship with 'security' continued right through the 1960s. We also learn from Vallee that Hynek, despite his monthly trips to Wright-Patterson AFB, almost never saw Blue Book chief Hector Quintanilla, but was received personally by the commander, who usually took him to lunch at the officers' club. When Vallee asked Hynek what they talked about, Hynek replied, 'innocently,' the weather and foreign cuisine."
(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pgs. 221-223)
J. Allen Hynek
On the whole, the actual agenda of Hynek appears to be murkier than many have imagined. Hynek is generally depicted as a genial, non-confrontational man who was led around by the nose by the Air Force until he finally found the courage to speak out concerning what he knew, or a super sleuth who duped many of his contemporaries, including the great Jacques Vallee.

And yet Hynek appears to have deliberately leaked highly classified information to Vallee. Above, Richard Dolan indicates that Hynek was involved in highly classified intelligence work related to "security," and yet he would leave a Top Secret document laying around that Vallee ultimately turned up? Or that he would need to consult with Vallee as to whether or not to sign a contract with McGraw-Hill related with his intelligence work? Not only does Hynek appear to be leaking information to Vallee, but he does not appear to have suffered any real blowback from his deep state backers for these indiscretions. In point of fact, they appear to have rewarded him.

In 1972 Hynek would publish the landmark The UFO Experience which firmly established his bona fides as being at the forefront of "scientific UFOlogy" while also revealing the incompetency of Blue Book. He followed this up in 1975 with The Edge of Reality, co-authored with his close associate, Jacques Vallee. By this time Vallee had already been making quite a name for himself in UFOlogy circles. Beginning in the mid-1960s he had published Anatomy of a Phenomenon, Unidentified Objects in Space - A Scientific Appraisal and Challenge To Science; The UFO Enigma, both of which were well-received. His 1969 work Passports to Magnolia is easily one of the most groundbreaking works ever published on the subject.

By the late 1970s Vallee and Hynek had become bona fide celebrities even beyond UFOlogists. Steven Spielberg's 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind (which derived its name from Hynek's classification system) features a pair of scientists that are thinly disguised stand-ins for Hynek and Vallee. Hynek even appears in a cameo in the film. Needless to say, both men were institutions within UFOlogy by this point.


Hynek and Vallee (top) and Spielberg's stand-ins for them in Close Encounters (bottom)
They achieved this degree of notoriety due in no small part to their groundbreaking works of the late 1960s and early 1970s. And these works share a curious connection beyond the friendship that Vallee and Hynek maintained for decades: the publisher, which was Regnery Press.

And would you be surprised to learn, dear reader, that the founder of Regnery Press, Henry Regnery, was also a founder of the American Security Council and for years one of its major backers (much more information on Regency's links to the ASC can be found here)? Yes, the same American Security Council that Hynek's old boss, Colonel Raymond Sleeper later joined despite Hynek outing his indifference to Blue Book in a book published by Regency. The same American Security Council that featured among its ranks numerous military officers such General Nathan Twining, General Curtis LeMay, General Barry Goldwater and Admiral Arthur Radford that displayed a keen interest in UFOs over the years.


The ASC and the Framing of the UFO Question

It is of course widely known now that the Rockefeller family, especially Laurance, has invested a considerable degree of money in UFOs and other New Age related topics for decades now. One of the earliest ventures in this vein was Esalen Institute, which Rockefeller money helped finance from the get-go. By the early 1970s the Rockefellers had launched a host of similar organizations on the West Coast such as the Lindisfarne Association, the California Institute of Integral Studies and the Institute of Noetic Sciences. By the 1980s they had become heavily invested in UFOlogy as well and by the 1990s were omnipresent within the scene. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics notes:
"Laurance Rockefeller is primarily associated with UFO-related programs of the 1990s: the Rockefeller initiative to have Clinton open the books on UFOs and the financing of Dr. John Mack's alien abduction research, Colin Andrews' crop circle research, Steven Greer's Project Starlight, and ultimately the UFO Briefing Document: the Best Available Evidence, written by Marie Galbraith and Stanton Friedman's co-author, Don Berliner. The Human Potential Foundation, in which Laurance put a lot of money, financed a conference here and there, most notably the Cosmic Cultures event of 1995. Wonderfully reliable researchers as Zecheria Sitchin and Richard Boylan were invited here, not to mention John Mack."
Laurance Rockefeller
As I hope this series is beginning to reveal, the Rockefellers and allied families (i.e. the Bechtels) were not quite the only game in town. The ASC and related far right forces appear to have maintained a presence in such scenes from a very early date. They become involved with NICAP at practically its inception, as the ASC itself was getting off the ground, and by the late 1960s appear to have actively contributing to the zeitgeist of the times. The early works of Hynek and Vallee published by Regnery in the late 1960s and early 1970s had a profound and long-lasting effect on UFOlogy. Vallee in particular crafted what was arguably the most compelling explanation of the UFO phenomenon of the entire twentieth century, drawing heavily upon ancient accounts from mythology and the occult to explain the phenomenon.
"... Moving away from the stalemate between the extraterrestrial and null hypotheses, a number of innovative UFO researchers began to ask hard questions about the basic assumptions underlying current attempts to make sense of the phenomenon. The most influential of these 'New Wave' ufologists, Jacques Vallee and John Keel, argued forcefully that UFOs could not be pigeonholed into the slots reserved for our them by all sides in the debate since 1947.
"The works produced by these two writers could hardly be more different. Vallee, a successful computer scientist who worked closely with J. Allen Hynek for many years, provided a series of incisive analyses of the phenomenon that made it clear that the old assumptions could no longer be justified. His Passport to Magonia (1969) showed that UFO sightings could not be separated in any meaningful sense from accounts of apparitions and spiritual beings in the past. His more troubling Messengers of Deception (1979 broken even further from the UFO mainstream, tracing the uncomfortable links that united UFO sightings with alternative religious movements and military intelligence, proposing that UFOs might be used – and indeed might have been manufactured – as a way of shaping public opinion, by governments, secret societies affiliated with the occult, or some entirely nonhuman presence." 
(The UFO Phenomenon, John Michael Greer, pgs. 73)

Given where Vallee's early sponsorship came from, he was well placed to know. And indeed Vallee expressed concerns in both Messengers of Deception as well as Dimensions (1988) about the presence of the far right in the UFO community. I suspect that what he revealed in these works was only the tip of the iceberg of what he's encountered over the years. But lets us return now to Regnery for a moment.

The works by Hynek and Vallee were not the only ones issued by Regnery during this era that would profoundly shape the UFO question. Other landmark works included Charles Bowen's The Humanoids, another staple of scientific UFOlogy that featured accounts from Bowen, Vallee and Aime Michel (one of the first researchers to link the concept of "ley lines" to UFOlogy) and which was mined heavily by John A. Keel for his early work on "ultraterrestrials"; several of the early works by W. Raymond Drake, a Fortean who published several of the earliest works on "ancient astronauts," predating the more well known work of Erich von Daniken by several years; and several works by famed parapsychologist Hans Holzer.

These works arguably had quite a significant influence on the development of UFOlogy. For one, many of these titles were written by profession scientists, which added an air of competency lacking from early UFO accounts that were largely published by laymen. For another, they prepared the American public for some very revolutionary concepts that were later popularized by such celebrated works as Chariots of the Gods?, The Sirius Mystery and the general works of Keel and Robert Anton Wilson.



What's most striking to this researcher is the rather mystical take on UFOs presented by many of the Regnery books from this era. This is in stark contrast to the "nuts-and-bolts" school that dominated UFOlogy during the late 1950s and from the 1980s on up until the last decade or so.To be sure, parallels between the occult and UFOlogy had existed from almost literally the onset of the modern UFO era. Many of the early contactees such as George Adamski and George Hunt Williamson (who had ties to Silver Shirt founder William Dudley Pelley, as noted before here) had a keen interest in the occult and one finds ample references to Ouija boards and other forms of divination in the early literature. The Morning of the Magicians (1960) linked UFOs and the occult with a hipster sheen. But Vallee, a respected scientist, was the one who gave such notions legitimacy via his careful research.

The "nuts-and-bolts" school, which defines UFOs as space crafts piloted by extraterrestrial entities, was the view point that characterized NICAP throughout the Keyhoe era. But even then there appear to have been dissenters. As was noted in the prior installment, one of NICAP's most prominent early members, Admiral Herbert B. Knowles, appears to have developed some rather unorthodox views concerning UFOs by the early 1960s. His views would likely be more consistent with those expressed by Vallee several years later than Keyhoe.

This researcher can't help but feel that by the late 1960s the ASC had adopted a very esoteric view of the UFO phenomenon and was actively engaged in filtering certain aspects of this view to the general public through the UFO-related titles published by Regnery during this era. Certainly this is the only real point when Regnery appears to have been active in New Ages topics. The publisher made its money off of highly conservative political manifestos such as Buckley's God and Man at Yale. Drake, Hynek and Vallee were certainly quite uncharacteristic of the staple of authors typically promoted by Regnery.


Was this then why Hynek appears to have kept receiving support from the deep state despite his incompetency in "security" concerns? Did they have a more important task for J. Allen, such as redefining UFOlogy? Hynek may not have been quite up to this task, but his close associate Jacques Vallee surely was and Vallee's theories are still at the forefront of much of the cutting edge of UFOlogy to this day.

But there has certainly been ample resistance to Vallee's theories and it appears to have largely come from the Rockefeller branch of UFOlogy. On the whole, the Rockefellers appear to favor a more secular explanation to New Age topics and UFOs were no exception. After a decade of highly innovative theories concerning the UFO phenomenon the nuts-and-bolts school made a vigorous comeback in the 1980s just as Rockefeller money appears to have begun flowing like water into the coffers of various UFOlogists and organizations.

In The UFO Phenomenon, John Michael Greer compellingly argues that the nuts-and-bolters whether further bolstered by an unlikely source: the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). CSICOP has of course long been the absolute pinnacle of the debunker and skeptic community and they were especially hostile to the theories of Vallee and like researchers from very early on. CSICOP, which features several prominent members that have received funding from the Rockefellers over the years, further polarized the UFO debate and made it even more difficult for more esoteric explanations of the UFO phenomenon to gain traction for years.

Nor was Vallee the only fringe researcher the Rockefellers appear to have unleashed the skeptics upon. As was noted before here, Andrija Puharich suffered the same fate. But back to the matter at hand.

While the skeptics inevitably raked Vallee over the coals, he also appears to have endured several attacks from UFOlogists over the years as well. Steven M. Greer, who received much patronage from Laurence Rockefeller (noted in part one), took a thinly veiled swipe at Vallee in his best selling Hidden Knowledge, Forbidden Truth:
"In the mid-90s, I was invited by the Board of Directors of Noetic Sciences to do a briefing for their board. The founder of Noetic Sciences was there along with a number of very prominent people. I presented what we were doing, what our findings were, what the evidence was. They also had a few disinformation people present who, at one time, had done good work in the field, but who had since been bought off by the intelligence interests.
"One such asset of the Shadow Government made a presentation saying, 'This is all a mythology, and there are these little balls of light occasionally seen.' He completely whitewashed all the hard evidence that he once wrote about. It was a very interesting thing to watch. I then stood up and politely said, 'Well, on the contrary...'
"Also, he was proposing, 'Of course, these things don't actually exist in the physical world because they're inter-dimensional.' "
(Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, Steven M. Greer, pg. 142) 

If one is familiar with the utter bullshit Steven Greer has spewed over the years, one can't help think of the old kettle when he hints at Vallee being a disinformation agent. His faux outrage over Vallee's inter-dimensional theories is as unhinged as one would expect.

It would appear then that Vallee's theories were an early point of contention between the ASC and the Rockefellers interests. By the 1980s these differences would become more crystallized, with the Rockefellers attempting to demystify the whole phenomenon while applying a coat of Space Brothers claptrap to give everyone a warm and fuzzy feeling. This was increasingly in contrast to the ASC, which alternated between mystical and nuts-and-bolts explanations, but which always viewed the UFOs through the prism of a national security threat.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. With the next installment we'll consider how another power broker of the far right helped shape the Human Potential Movement before moving on to the ASC's continued involvement in UFOlogy and other fringe pursuits in the 1980s. And be assured dear reader, it was not until the 1980s that these pursuits became truly strange and terrible. Stay tuned.


Sunday, January 22, 2017

Fringe: The Strange and Terrible of the Far Right and High Weirdness Part V --Updated



Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of high weirdness among the far right. For my purposes here I am using "high weirdness" as a catchall for a host of arcane and fringe topics including UFOs, the occult, psi, psychedelics and "human potential." As for "far right," this network is being examined through the prism of several NGOs and think tanks largely driven by the military-industrial complex (the chief patrons of the American far right). This shall be elaborated upon in just a moment.

At the onset of this series I briefly outlined the bizarre Sikh temple shooting of 2012 and its possible deep political implications as well as the two principal factions amongst the American ruling elite, namely the "traditional conservative establishment" of Wall Street and assorted organizations (i.e. the Council on Foreign Relations and many of the other long time bugaboos of the conspiratorial right) and the far right.

With the second installment I moved on to the origins of the military-industrial complex, which resided with a cabal of middle managers and technocrats of the traditional conservative establishment. Chief among these was legendary scientist Vannevar Bush, who co-founded the Committee of the Present Danger Mach I (the first military-industrial complex lobbying group) and played a crucial role in enshrining the modern national security state.

With part three I considered Douglas MacArthur and the military officers surrounding him who played a key role in driving the far right out of their post-WWII "isolationism" and who, along with the CPD, would form the linchpin on the emerging military-industrial complex. As I was wrapping up with that installment I also began to consider the extensive ties the MacArthur boys had to the Roswell incident.

General Douglas MacArthur
With the fourth and most recent installment I continued on with Roswell, noting that compelling evidence exist to suggest that it was a game charger. In the years leading up to Roswell and afterwards a clique of far right wing military officers and technocrats emerged with tremendous power in American society on the whole and at the very heart of the deep state in particular. Also addressed was the possible overlap between Roswell and the later Project ARTICHOKE, nominally a Pentagon/CIA behavior modification program that brought together the same technocratic and far right wing elements in a series of bizarre experiments, at least one of which appears to be based upon what the great Christopher Knowles dubbed the "Roswell Working."


The Rise of the ASC

Having pretty thoroughly covered the early years of the national security state in the prior three installments, it is now time to fast forward a few years. By the mid-1950s much of the military-industrial complex and far right had rallied behind one particular think tank: the American Security Council (ASC).

The ASC still exists to this day but is now largely a shadow of its former self. But during its heyday it appeared frequently in many of the darkest intrigues of the deep state. While officially described as a lobby group, the ASC, from its inception, was always intended as a private intelligence network. Initially its primary concern was with blacklisting. As was noted before here, it maintained files on millions of Americans suspected of "subversive" activities that it shared with both its corporate clients as well as its patrons with the Pentagon, CIA and FBI.

As time went on the ASC became even more ambitious. Its members and affiliates have been linked to arms and drug trafficking, state-sanctioned terrorism, death squads, the Kennedy assassination (noted before here), Watergate (noted before here), Iran-Contra and even the Pentagon/CIA behavior modification experiments (noted before here and here). Much more information on the dark legacy of the ASC can be found here. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics also has an excellent article on the ASC and its significance.


With so many intrigues cropping up in its murky history, it should come as little surprise to the reader that the ASC also appears to have been extensively involved in the UFO question and other fringe pursuits. Some of this was already hinted at in part three and four when it was noted that several of the military officers linked to the Roswell incident (most notably General Curtis LeMay and General Nathan Twining) would later turn up in the ASC. But this was not the extent of the ASC's involvement in the UFO question, not by a long shot.

Some other obvious links reside with the ASC's scientific advisers. At least three of them were veterans of the Manhattan project overseen by Vannevar Bush: Samuel T. Cohen, Eugene P. Wigner and the infamous Edward Teller. As we've seen through out this series (as well as here), the scientist who worked with Bush in the National Defense Research Committee and the Office of Scientific Research and Development would go on to participate in some very strange and highly classified work for the deep state throughout the Cold War. Edward Teller in particular shows up in some very strange places and has in fact been linked to Roswell and other aspects of UFOlogy. Teller was close to Bush and would join his former mentor in cheer-leading the military-industrial complex through out the Cold War.

Edward Teller (left) and Vannevar Bush (right) sharing a laugh in between their congressional testimonies
Naturally, conspiracy theorists have rarely, if ever, made this connection, and even less so UFOlogist. Still, there is one especially bizarre reference to the ASC in the annuals of Internet-era UFOlogy. It derives from a bizarre document entitled Fire From the Sky.

When this post was originally published, I had been unable to determine who it originated with and from what year. Typically it is either credited to "The One Who Knows" or the "Committee of Twelve." I have been unable to turn up much about the former, but the latter are closely linked to "Commander X," an alleged former military intelligence officer. Rumors have circulated for years, however, that Commander X is actually a group that included the late conspiracy researcher Jim Keith or solely Keith himself having a bit of fun.

Jim Keith
A reader, Sinny Osborne, was kind enough to point out in the comments that was an erroneous guess on may part. In point of fact, the document appears to have originated from an individual known as Calvin Burgin. And Burgin in turn based it upon the musings of one Peter Beter, especially those from the early 1980s.

This is most interesting. Beter was a Washington D.C.-based attorney whom JFK had appointed as general counsel Export-Import Bank of the United States, where he served from 1961 till 1967. He then ran in the Republican primary for the governorship of West Virginia in 1968, but lost. Then, in 1973, he published Conspiracy Against the Dollar: The Spirit of the New Imperialism. As the title indicates, this was the standard Bircher claptrap linking the Rockefellers to an elaborate conspiracy with the Soviet Union to impose world government.

By the late 1970s Beter stepped up his game. At this point he unveiled his theories of "robotoids," technology used to create organic copies of famous people. Naturally, Beter alleged that much of the ruling elite were comprised of these beings. Their brains were allegedly copied before they shed their mortal coil and then the copy was transferred to one of the robotoids. Or something along those lines.

apparently Beter's "robotoid" theories have been making a comeback in recent years...
Regardless, Beter appears to have been the first individual who linked the ASC to the UFO question in a conspiratorial fashion. Fire From the Sky is ripe with such lines as:
"General Keegan and Carter’s Secretary of Defense Harold Brown did not see eye to eye - could the fact that Brown’s father was a Russian Jew (I forget his real name) have had anything to do with it? As a military officer, Keegan was forbidden to say anything to the public, so in January 1977 Keegan resigned and set up the civilian American Security Council and began traveling over the country giving speeches to try to awaken everybody. He failed."
This was the second reference to the ASC in part one of this piece, the first being another offhand reference to Keegan founding the ASC in addition to Beter (or whomever is writing in this part) actually claiming to be a member of the ASC's National Advisory Board. While Keegan does appear to have had ties to the ASC, the dating here is way off as the ASC had been around for almost twenty years by 1977. And there is no evidence that Keegan played a key role. Curiously, in a later section of the piece the author seems to acknowledge the slip up in time frame when referring to the ASC being active when NICAP was going through another shakeup in the late 1970s.


Unsurprisingly, Beter appears to have had ties to both the ASC and the John Birch Society (of which there was much overlap in membership), though I have been unable to reliably confirm this. It would appear that Beter's theories became so unhinged in the last decade or so of his life that many of his former allies began to distance themselves from him, hence firm linkage is rather scarce. While virtually everything in the Fire From the Sky document is bogus concerning the ASC (and practically everything else), it's linkage of the Council to NICAP is very perceptive and little remarked upon by researchers of either organization. Let us now consider this overlap.


The Council and NICAP

The ASC appears to have possessed an early interest in the UFO question. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing on until the 1970s, the ASC's hierarchy would stealthy work their way into the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon (NICAP), the premier civilian UFO organization from the late 1950s until its demise in 1980. The actual history of NICAP is arguably even more interesting than the phenomenon it was established to research. Here's a bit more about this checkered history:
"The air force's monopoly on UFO information could not last forever. Although other civilian UFO groups had emerged in the 1950s, none challenged the authority of the air force to have the final word. NICAP did. Founded on August 29, 1956, by Townsend Brown in Washington D.C., it soon developed into an organization dedicated to ending UFO secrecy. 
"Brown's leadership was brief... he had been conducting experiments in electromagnetism and gravity. In 1956, he joined an informal flying saucer discussion group and immediately envisioned a larger organization to collect, analyze, and disperse information about UFO reports, and also to promote his own research. He soon appointed an acting treasurer, acquired a secretary, and obtained office space. When NICAP's corporate charter was approved on October 24, 1956, Brown appeared ready for business. However, NICAP quickly ran into financial trouble. At a meeting in January 1957, Brown and NICAP member Donald Keyhoe argued open;y about Brown's leadership, and Brown resigned from the organization. Keyhoe became the new director. 
"From the outset, NICAP was packed with navy men. Brown and Keyhoe both had strong navy connections and both recruited board members. As a result, NICAP started its existence with three admirals on its board of governors: Rear Adm. Delmar Fahrney, known in the navy as the 'father of the guided missile;' Vice Adm. Roscoe Hillenkoetter, better known for having been the first director of the CIA; and WWII submarine commander Rear Adm. H.B. Knowles. Other early governing members were Dr. Earl Douglas, Maj. Dewey Fournet, J.B. Hartranft, Col. Robert B. Emerson, Frank Edwards, Prof. Charles A. Maney, Rev. Albert Baller, Dr. Marcus Bach, and Rev. Leon C. Le Van. Soon after, NICAP added such people as Leonard Springfield, who served as public relations director until 1972, and Delbert Newhouse, of Utah film fame. This board of governors remained remarkably stable for most of the organization's existence.
"Keyhoe, however, was the driving force. Unlike Brown, he was no scientist; his interests were far more political. Under Keyhoe, NICAP continued to define itself as a collection center for UFO reports, just as Brown had wanted. But the scientific impetus that Brown had given NICAP was now replaced by the force of Keyhoe's personality, and the organization took on a new mission: to end UFO secrecy once and for all.
"An interesting twist to the history of NICAP was that it was not merely the home of many former navy men. Unknown to other members, a number of 'ex-CIA' people were also involved in the formation of NICAP. Count Nicolas de Rochefort, a Russian immigrant and scriptwriter for the Voice of America, was NICAP's first vice-chairman. He was also a member of the CIA's psychological warfare staff. Bernard J. Carvalho, connected to the Fairway Corporation, one of the CIA's dummy companies, was another early member; he later chaired NICAP's membership committee.
"Links to the agency continued over the years. Rochefort's boss at CIA was Col. Joseph Bryan, who joined the NICAP board in 1960. A bit later, former CIA briefing officer Karl Pflock joined, chairing NICAP's Washington. D.C., subcommittee in the 1960s. Over the years, Pflock denied that the CIA ever asked him for information on either UFOs or NICAP. During NICAP's decline in the late 1960s and the early 1960s, more individuals associated with the CIA became involved in the organization. Several of these were central in replacing Keyhoe as director, just as he began to focus on the CIA instead of the air force as the source of the UFO cover-up."
(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pgs. 190-191)

There's a lot to take in here. CIA infiltration of NICAP at the founding is so well known now that it hardly warrants commentary. And yet many researchers still give the early NICAP, headed by Donald Keyhoe, the benefit of the doubt. As indicated above by Dolan, the prevailing perception is that it was essentially a benevolent organization set up by former Naval officers with a genuine desire to explain the UFO phenomenon, but was subverted over the years by the persistent efforts of the CIA. It was only after Keyhoe was ousted in 1969 by a CIA coup that the organization lost all legitimacy.

There are some major issues with this perspective. For starters, let us consider the backgrounds of NICAP's founder, Thomas Townsend Brown, and Keyhoe, the man who turned it into the nation's premier civilian UFO research group. Brown is curiously little remarked upon by researchers despite the fact he had years of experience in highly classified projects.
"One of the pioneers in gravitational theory, and a man whose career also intersected with the UFO, was Thomas Townsend Brown. Born in 1905, he studied physics at Caltech and Denison University. In 1930, he joined the navy and conducted advanced research in electromagnetism, radiation, field physics, spectroscopy, gravitation, and more. After joined the reserves, he worked for Glenn L. Martin, then returned to active service in 1939. With the rank of lieutenant commander, he was assigned to the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and later its successor, the Office of Scientific Research, headed by Vannevar Bush. For several years, Brown also served under Adm. Arthur Radford. In 1944, following an illness and discharge from military service, he worked is a radar consultant for the advanced design section of Lockheed-Vega Aircraft Corporation in California."
(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pg. 175)
Brown appears then to have directly worked under Vannevar Bush in the OSRD, and the NDRC before that. While the Majestic 12 documents are almost surely a hoax, Bush does appear to have been involved in a group studying UFOs by the 1950s (noted before here). What's more, several of his former subordinates in the NDRC and OSRD also appear to have been active in Project ARTICHOKE by then. Brown was also reputed to have been involved in the Philadelphia experiment, but this is no solid evidence of this and the Philadelphia experiment itself is also surely a hoax.

Thomas Townsend Brown
Brown's work on electromagnetism and radiation are especially interesting for our purposes here. Brown has recently been rediscovered in the Internet Age and is now considered something of a pioneer in "free energy," which in some accounts is said to be derived from electromagnetic radiation. This is said to be what powers UFOs. By the 1980s it would become something of an obsession with individuals linked to the ASC network. Even during the 1950s ARTICHOKE would tentatively investigate such things (noted before here).

From practically its inception in the mid-1950s Lockheed was one of the most generous supporters of the American Security Council. Brown, however, appears to have left Lockheed by 1950. His patronage from Admiral Arthur Radford, however, is another link to the ASC. Radford would later join the ASC's National Strategy Committee (where he was joined by fellow military men such as Curtis LeMay and Nathan Twining) after retiring from the military. By the early 1950s Radford had become a major proponent of Brown's work. This was around the same time that he and Secretary of the Navy Dan Kimball apparently had a UFO encounter in 1952:
"... While flying to Hawaii, Kimball saw two disc-shaped objects moving at about 1,500 mph. The UFOs circled his plane twice, then headed to another navy plane, which was carrying Radford, fifty miles east. The objects circled Radford's plane and zoomed up out of sight. Upon landing, Kimball sent a report of the encounter to the air force. But despite repeated inquiries, he received no information on his case. Instead, he learned the air force was aggressively demanding all copies of UFO reports from navy and Marine Corp witnesses, even before preliminary navy investigations had been made. Kimball therefore decided to initiate naval intelligence reports on UFOs --independent from Blue Book. He told the Office of Naval Research to start a special investigation 'to be kept separate from the air force project.'.."
(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pg. 99)
Allegedly this investigative project was soon scuttled once the Air Force got wind of it. But the source for these reports was Keyhoe, which automatically puts the legitimacy of the accounts in question. And would you be surprised, dear reader, to learn that Radford was also close to Keyhoe? In point of fact, Radford maintained contact with Keyhoe even after he had become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
"Donald Keyhoe had an eventful fall of 1953. He learned of AFR 200-2 in September, then he met with Adm. Arthur W. Radford, Chairman of the JCS, for an article on national defense. Years before, Keyhoe and Radford had trained together, and Keyhoe had served under him in Washington during the war. During this meeting, UFOs were not mentioned, although it will be recalled that Radford had his own UFO sighting in 1952..."
(UFOs and the National Security State, Richard Dolan, pg. 139)
Admiral Arthur Radford
Clearly Keyhoe had longstanding ties to Radford. It is unknown if Radford personally had any involvement in NICAP, but it is certainly curious that both the organization's founder and longtime director had ties to Radford in the years leading up to the establishment of NICAP. In this context it is also interesting that Keyhoe ultimately forced Brown out of NICAP.

Remember that Brown had wanted to take NICAP in a more "scientific direction." It is possible that this may have involved examining the relationship between UFOs and Brown's own research into "anti-gravity." This may well have proven to be a more fruitful direction that Keyhoe's crusade to "expose" government secrecy.


The Admirals

Just how serious Keyhoe was in this regard is highly debatable. In addition to Radford, Keyhoe also had a longstanding relationship to former CIA director Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter. Hillenkoetter was involved with NICAP from a very early date and yet was allegedly unaware that the organization was being infiltrated by lower level CIA personnel at its literal inception.

Or so the story goes. But it seems inexplicable that Hillenkoetter could have been this clueless as to what his former subordinates were getting up too. Hillenkoetter had been the DCI at a crucial time and had been the first director to authorize covert operations. More importantly, however, he was also the DCI to officially launch Project BLUEBIRD in 1950. BLUEBIRD would eventually become ARTICHOKE. Hillenkoetter joined the CIA from the Navy in 1947, just as Project CHATTER was getting off the ground. By 1949 the CIA was well on its way down the path trailblazed by the Navy. This researcher suspects that Hillenkoetter played a far more crucial role in the early days of the Pentagon/CIA behavior modification experiments than he is often credited with.

It is also interesting to note that Hillenkoetter appears to have had ties to the MacArthur family as well. During the early 1940s Hillenkoetter was detached to Vichy France while serving with the ONI. As was noted before here, Douglas MacArthur II (the nephew of General Douglas MacArthur) was also attached to the French embassy at this time and appears to have also been carrying out some intelligence functions. MacArthur II became close to Admiral William D. Leahy in Vichy France. Hillenkoetter was also close to Leahy, who was also his commanding officers at the time. Thus, the possibility exists that both MacArthur II and Hillenkoetter were working for the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) together under Leahy. Hillenkoetter also had dealings with Admiral Franois Darlan during this time as well. At one point Darlan was close to the synarchist underground in France, as noted before here.

Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter
Hillenkoetter would later became the chief of intelligence for Admiral Chester W. Nimitz during WWII. Nimitz was the supreme commander of the US Pacific Fleet during WWII and worked frequently with Douglas MacArthur (who directed much of the entire Pacific Theater of the war). It is quite possible then that Hillenkoetter worked with MacArthur or his intelligence staff during WWII. Later he would serve along side MacArthur in Korea. How close Hillenkoetter ultimately became to Douglas MacArthur is debatable, however, as MacArthur shunned Hillenkoetter's intelligence estimates while he headed the CIA.

Regardless, Hillenkoetter clearly had connections. As such, it is simply not credible that he was unaware of CIA infiltration of NICAP. Thus, Hillenkoetter either neglected to inform his old friend Donald Keyhoe (they had attended the Naval Academy together) of this or Keyhoe was aware of this fact and simply pressed on. Regardless, either scenario indicates that NICAP was some type of intelligence operation from the get go.

Donald Keyhoe
But what was its purpose? To track the civilian UFO community? To discredit legitimate researchers like Brown? To allow the Navy to study UFOs outside of official channels (keep in mind that Admiral Radford appears to have advocated that the Navy run its own UFO project)? For the CIA to keep track of what the Navy was up too, or vice versa? Or some combination of all of the above?

The waters are further muddied by the presence of another curious admiral in NICAP. This would be Rear Admiral Herbert Bain Knowles, yet another veteran of the Pacific Theater of World War II. The possibility thus exists that he was friendly with Hillenkoetter (whom he'd later end up on the board of NICAP with) or the fascist clique surrounding Douglas MacArthur. Regardless, Knowles would turn up in some of the strangest corners of the early UFO scene in the post war years.

Admiral Knowles was friendly with both Wilbert Smith, a Canadian researcher who headed Project Magnet and whose "Smith memo" famously exposed Vannevar Bush's involvement in a UFO group (noted in part two), and Frances Swan, a medium who claimed to be in contact with an alien race called "Affa." Knowles, who was the medium's neighbor, apparently encouraged Swan's contacts with "Affa" and even kept the ONI appraised of these developments. Reportedly other elements of the US intelligence community was also curious about the musings of Swan/"Affa." Eventually, Smith would also get into the act, leading to the ruin of his career.

Wilbert B. Smith
Another neighbor of Knowles' were the Hills, Barney and Betty. They were famously the first UFO abductees to gain national attention. To this day their encountered remains shrouded in mystery and controversy. Knowles was of course at the forefront of bringing their story to the masses as well.

Despite being on the board of NICAP, Knowles' private views on UFOs appear to contradict NICAP's public interpretation. Under Keyhoe, NICAP exclusively promoted the idea that UFOs were physical, nuts-and-bolt flying saucers piloted by extraterrestrials. On the whole, Knowles was reported to have had quite a mystical take on the UFO question. He appears to have had an interest in the occult and had even introduced the Hills to such circles. The great Christopher Knowles (no relation) of The Secret Sun has an outstanding rundown of Knowles' curious associates here.

There's not much more I can add that Chris Knowles has not already covered concerning the admiral, except for one curious associate he may have had. It would appear that during World War II Admiral Knowles had served with Marine Corps General Lemuel Shepherd. Knowles was primarily tasked with transporting troops, especially Marines, in the Pacific Theater, so it is quite possible he developed an extensive working relationship with General Shepherd.

Admiral Herbert B. Knowles (left) and General Lemuel Shepherd (center) during WWII
At some point in the 1960s Shepherd appears to have become an initiate of the mysterious secret society known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ) noted in the prior installment. SOSJ has been linked to a host of intrigues over the years. Another of its members was none other than Colonel Philip J. Corso, who famously published The Day After Roswell shortly before his death. The significance of this was addressed in the prior installment.

Both Shepherd and Corso were active in the SOSJ at the same time. Both men were members of its "Military Affairs Committee." Shepherd was also listed as a "Associate Justice" of the SOSJ's "Supreme Court." Here he served with other such luminaries of the far right as fellow Marine Corps General Pedro del Valle, another ASC man as well as a vigorous supporter of the Liberty Lobby and the American Nazi Party.

Was Admiral Herbert B. Knowles also a part of this far right clique? I've found no indication of such as his post-war years appear to have been far more focused on metaphysics than politics and thus Knowles does not appear to have been a member of any major think tank or NGO. But he certainly would have been exposed to the American Security Council via NICAP.


More NICAP and the ASC

Naturally the far right's involvement with NICAP came from a very early date. While Arthur Radford lingered in the background of NICAP during the early days, another ASC luminary would sign up shortly after the founding. This would be none other than General Albert Wedemeyer, who was first linked to NICAP in 1957 or 1958. Wedemeyer had spent time in Nazi Germany during the late 1930s and had become close to the military during that time. He would later be accused of leaking Allied battle plans to the Nazis.
"...On Dec. 4, 1941, the pro-fascist Chicago Tribune and its sister publication, the Washington Times Herald, printed the plans for the top-secret Rainbow 5 Plan.
"Rainbow 5 was the battle plan developed by the military in case war broke out. Publishing the plan or leaking information about it would be the equivalent of publishing or leaking the battle order of the Pentagon during the Cold War – unquestionably, an act of treason. In Hitler's speech declaring war against the United States on Dec. 11, 1941, he cited the final straw: 'With no attempt at official denial there has now been revealed in America, President Roosevelt's plan by which, at the latest in 1943, Germany and Italy are to be attacked in Europe by military means.'...
"The author of the report on Rainbow 5 was Col. Albert Wedemeyer, who had been educated at the German War College. While in Berlin, he rented an apartment with a member of the Nazi Party. Wedemeyer became a close friend of Gen. Ludwig Beck, Chief of the German General Staff. He was friendly with Lindbergh and acted as his interpreter when the aviator toured Germany. He was also close to Gen. Robert Woods, president of America First. Wedemeyer attended several America First meetings. 
"Hoover strongly believed that Wedemeyer leaked the plans to Wheeler. Of special note, Reagan resurrected Wedemeyer's career as a special military adviser in the 1980s, yet another of the many seemingly innocent connections between Reagan and the Nazis... 
"Wedemeyer's career deserves scrutiny. He was part of a military circle that was anti-Jewish. A few years after the war, Wedemeyer wrote in a letter to his close friend, retired Col. Truman Smith, that Zionists, the British and communist made America's entry into the war certain. Later, Wedemeyer stated that 'most of the people associated with communism in the early days were Jews.'
"He further claims that Roosevelt's Jewish advisers did everything possible to spread venom and hatred against the Nazis. He stated that during his attendance at the German War College in 1936, his eyes were open to the number of Jews in the American government by reading the Die Frankfurter Zietung and Die Berliner. The Nazis controlled both papers.
"In 1937, Wedemeyer linked the shortage of food in Germany to the Jewish question. Using the embassy's attaché stationery, Wedemeyer wrote to friends dismissing the food shortage as caused by poor weather and crop failures. He claimed that Jews in other countries had bought up the enormous quantities of foodstuffs and intentionally diverted shipments from Germany.
"As late as 1958, Wedemeyer was still voicing pro-Nazi opinions. He ignored the Nazis' racial ideology, describing Lebensraum as merely a national movement to when living space. Wedemeyer used the same historical analogies as the Nazi propagandist, comparing the German invasion and expansions eastward with the American expansion westward."
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pgs. 242-243)  
General Albert Wedemeyer
Thus, Wedemeyer's unabashed support of Nazism apparently continued right up to the time he signed on with NICAP. And NICAP apparently had no real concerns as to whether or not Wedemeyer would damage the infant organization's credibility.

Unsurprisingly, Wedemeyer was also close to MacArthur despite the fact the two men never served together. Both were major backers of the Nationalist Chinese interests. Wedemeyer would also have a decades spanning association with the ASC.

The presence of Radford and Wedemeyer in the early NICAP strongly indicates that the ASC had designs on it from the get go. This is hardly surprising given the extensive involvement that ASC had in the murky netherworld of "industrial security." As no doubt a fair amount of UFO reports are of classified aircrafts, NICAP would provide the ASC with an effective way of stealthy tracking such leaks. But was there more at stake?

Certainly it is curious that a new crop of ASC men signed up with NICAP in the wake of the ousting of Keyhoe, which some sources describe as a CIA coup. Two of these most notable additions were General Robert Richardson III (1971) and John Fischer (1978). Richardson was a longtime member of the ASC's National Strategy Committee while Fischer was the public founder of the ASC and longtime president. Another ASC heavyweight to sign on in 1974 was Senator Barry Goldwater, a former Air Force general and a candidate for president of the United States in 1964. Goldwater, as we shall see in a future installment, had a longstanding interest in the UFO question.

Barry Goldwater
As for those CIA men, an especially interesting one is Karl Pflock. Pflock originally started out a reservist in the Marine Corps and Air Force before joining the CIA as briefing officer in 1966. During this time frame he also joined NICAP. Upon "leaving" the Agency in 1972 he signed up with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank that brought together elements of the traditional conservative establishment as well as the far right. From there Pflock ended up working on the staff of ASC luminary Senator Jack Kemp in the early 1980s. Eventually he became an Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan regime.  Pflock was thus never a member of the ASC, but he appears to have traveled in many of the same circles. Interestingly, Pflock would later become a major Roswell debunker.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I'll consider more of the ACS ties to the UFO movement. They ended ended up supporting some very curious takes on the phenomenon, in stark contrast to Rockefellers, their chief rivals in such circles. This dispute will also be considered. Stay tuned.