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

Welcome to the ninth installment in my epic examination of far right wing pursuits in high weirdness. Throughout this series I have been using high weirdness as a catchall for a host of arcane topics --psi, human potential, UFOs, the occult, Tesla weapons and so. As for far right, I have primarily presented this grouping through the lens of think tanks closely associated with the American military-industrial complex such as the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I (CPD) and the American Security Council (ASC).

The first installment briefly addressed the possible deep political implications behind the bizarre Sikh Temple shooting of 2012 as well as the general high weirdness present in the 2016 US presidential elections. Part two briefly considered the origins of the military-industrial complex and traced it to a group of middle managers brought into government by Bonesman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the emerging technocratic class personified by famed scientist Vannevar Bush, also long linked to the UFO question.

Part three addressed the emergence of the far right as a driving force behind the military-industrial complex. This rise was sparked by a group radical military officers who had served under General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific Theater of World War II and/or Korea. Many of these military officers have also been linked to the Roswell incident. The fourth installment continued in this vein as well as addressing my theory as to what was behind Roswell.

The fifth installment considered the ASC's extensive links to the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), for decades the premier civilian UFO agency, and the bizarre theories of Peter Beter, one of the most curious prophets of the conspiratorial right. Part six moved along to the role the ASC played in fostering the Hangar 18 mythos/disinformation, as well as the think tank's indirect patronage of Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek and other UFOlogist that developed rather mystical takes on the phenomenon.

J. Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallee (right)

Part seven was a bit of a digression, tracing the extensive influence that far right wing sugar daddy William Penn Patrick had on Werner Erhard's highly controversial est program, an offshoot of the Human Potential movement. With the eighth and most recent installment I returned to the ASC, and considered the bizarre exploits of one of its most enigmatic members, Stefan T. Possony, in the fields of UFOlogy, psi, mind control and Tesla weapons. As I was wrapped up I arrived at the 1980s and the ASC's longstanding obsession with weaponizing space. When its champion Ronnie Raygun came to sit in the Oval Office their dreams were made manifest in the form of the Strategic Defense Initiative, a project long linked to Tesla weapons that Possony is regarded as the chief visionary of.

"Red Rover, Red Rover, Bob Lazar's Coming Over"

While addressing Possony's longstanding involvement in various aspects of high weirdness in the prior installment, I also noted his seeming interest in "zero point" energy. While this fascination appears to have stretched over several decades, Possony became especially keen on it in the 1980s, along with a host of other curious characters, some of whom already addressed, some that have yet to be addressed. 

And that brings me to out next subject. During the late 1980s Ufologists began to buzz about alleged revelations concerning Area 51, a top secret facility in Nevada. I'm sure many of the readers of this blog are well aware of the mythos surrounding Area 51, so I will not delve into it here. For our purposes here, I am most interested in two of the men that played such crucial roles in establishing said mythos in the late 1980s. 

While Area 51 had occasionally be considered by Ufologists prior to the late 1980s, it was not until the efforts of John Lear that it became a staple of the lecture circuits and pop culture in equal measures. Unsurprisingly, Lear possesses a very deep background. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) notes that Lear came from an Air Force background (his father was the inventor the famous Learjet) and grew up around major deep state figures such as Generals Jimmy Doolittle and Hoyt Vandenberg. Both men were linked to both the far right and Majestic 12.

General Jimmy Doolittle (top) and General Hoyt Vandenberg (bottom)

Vandenberg and Doolittle were not as right wing as some of the military officers we've previously encountered in this series, and both of these men had extensive ties to the traditional conservative/eastern establishment as well. Specifically, both men appear to have been close to the CIA's Frank Wisner, he of the "Georgetown Set," a man much despised by many of the far right. Nonetheless, they had their ties to the gar right as well.

Doolittle, like many of the military officers previously addressed, served under MacArthur in the Pacific. Despite being blocked for a promotion by The Pipe during WWII, Doolittle does not appear to have had any hard feelings over it and later went into business with MacArthur in civilian life. And both Doolittle and Vandenberg were close to the infamous General Curtis LeMay (an American Security Council luminary addressed in parts three, four and six) while Vandenberg appears to have been extensively involved in an early version of what became Operation Gladio:

"The process of integrating ex-Nazi emigre groups into U.S. nuclear operations may be traced at least to early 1947, when General Hoyt Vandenberg became the first chief of staff of the newly independent U.S. Air Force. Vandenberg had commanded the Ninth Air Force in Europe during World War II, then been tapped to head the Central Intelligence Group, the immediate predecessor to the CIA, in 1946. Among the general's responsibilities at the air force was the development of the written plans describing strategies and tactics for the use of America's new nuclear weapons in the event of war...

"The army, air force, and CIA all began competing programs to prepare for the post-nuclear battlefield. This included creation of what eventually came to be called the Special Forces – better known today as the Green Berets – in the army and the air resupply and communications wings in the air force. The job of these units... was to set up anti-Communist political leaders backed by guerrilla armies inside the USSR and Eastern Europe in the wake of an atomic war, capture political power in strategic sections of the country, choke off any remaining Communist resistance, and ensure that the Red Army could not regroup for a counterattack...

" 'The Eastern European and Russian emigre groups we had picked up from the Germans were the center of this; they were the personnel,' according to the retire colonel. 'The CIA was to prepare these forces in peacetime; stockpile weapons, radios, and jeeps for them to use; and get them ready in the event of war....' "

(Blowback Christopher Simpson, pgs. 139-140)

As I'm sure many of my readers are well aware, Vandenberg is widely listed as being a member of Majestic 12 (likely a hoax with a basis in reality, as was noted before here) as well. Curiously, another military figure closely linked to the UFO question, Colonel Philip J. Corso, also appears to have had involvement in Gladio (noted before here). But moving along.

John Lear himself sought alliances with the extreme right of Ufology shortly after making the scene as well. For several years he was a close alley of former Naval Intelligence officer turned conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper. Lear and Cooper later broke with one another during the early 1990s, with Cooper branding Lear a disinformation asset, but more reputable Ufologists such as Jacques Vallee and Linda Howe described both men as being alcoholics, gun-obsessed, and generally unstable individuals. It is also highly probable they were both deeply involved in spreading disinformation in various alternative research communities.

the legendary William Cooper

Lear would also play a key role in bringing the highly controversial revelations of Robert "Bob" Lazar to the general public. Here's a rundown of those revelations:

"The Knapp interview of Robert Lazar had exploded like a bomb among the ranks of American ufologists. Here was a clean-cut, articulate, educated young man who knew physics and who casually claimed to have seen nine flying saucers inside hangars at Area S-4 in the vicinity of Groom Lake and Area 51. Not only had he seen them, but he had touched them and he had been hired to reverse-engineer their propulsion system, which was based on antigravity and used a stable superheavy element – specifically, element 115 – as part of this field. Lazar had handled element 115 and even had a piece of it at his house for a while. There were rumors that someone had tried to try to kill Lazar because of these revelations, and all kinds of bizarre speculation circulated about those advanced disks in Air Force hangars..."

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pg. 204)

A few paragraphs down, Vallee goes on to recount how Lazar was allegedly recruited into Area 51:

"... One day, in December 1987, he had been approached for a job under Naval Intelligence. He was interviewed at a facility of EG&G, a defense contractor, although there is no implication that the company is involved with the project itself."

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pg. 205) 

Lazar's apparent ties to Naval Intelligence is interesting. As noted above, William Cooper, who was then a close affiliate of John Lear, was himself an ONI veteran. And Lear is long reputed to have had ties to both the Air Force and the CIA. As such, this seems to strongly indicate that there was some type of intelligence agenda at work surrounding the network crafted by Lear.

John Lear

But I digress. For a much more in depth account of Lazar's revelations, check out one of the earliest and best by someone who knew/knows Lazar. For our purposes here, Lazar's alleged scientific background, or lack therefore of, provides some interesting links:

"...Born in Florida in 1959, Lazar is known to have taken courses in electronics at the Los Angeles-based Pierce College in the 1970s, and to have spent some time employed with Fairchild, a company founded in 1959 by Nobel Prize-winner and co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley. But that's only part of it. Lazar claims – and continues to claim – that he received an MS in electronics from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), and an MS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and also that he worked on some pretty classified stuff in the process."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 19)

Lazar's ties to Fairchild are most interesting. As was noted in part four, the Roswell crash (or Working, if you prefer) has long been linked to the discovery of the transistor. Many alternative researchers believe this is what facilitated said discovery rather than the much despised Shockley. William Shockley himself was not actually involved with Fairchild, but rather a group of researchers known as the "traitorous eight" defected from his Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in 1957 and went on to found Fairchild, which produced some of the first silicon transistors. As you may have guessed, this was a crucial development in the eventual emergence of Silicon Valley. Thus Shockey is the key link between Roswell and Silicon Valley and Lazar found himself employed in a company closely entangled in this legacy at one point.

Nor was Fairchild the only place Lazar worked prior to Area 51 linked to some curious technologies. He is also reputed to have worked at the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility, a part of the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Los Alamos National Laboratory of course grew out of the Manhattan Project, more than a few members of which have been linked to Roswell. Funny how incestuous these circles are, eh? And of course Los Alamos has its own links to Ufology, as well shall see.

But back to the matter at hand. Lazar's credentials have long been disputed, with no evidence of his alleged degrees ever turning up. We are on a bit firmer footing with his claims of employment with Los Alamos, however. Here's a breakdown of these controversies:

"...No convincing evidence of any sort has ever surfaced in support of Lazar's claims to have obtained degrees at Cal Tech and MIT. Critics and debunkers gleefully rub their hands together and cry: 'Foul, Bob!' Lazar's response? The government is trying to discredit him by erasing significant portions of his background and life history. On the other hand, it might reasonably be argued that the lack of credible data pertaining to Lazar's educational assertions would be enough to rule out the possibility of his ever having been considered for employment in the world of government-funded, cutting-edge science.

"Lazar's claims to have worked at Los Alamos were also disputed, and viewed with suspicion by certain elements of both the UFO research community and the mainstream media. In fact, his claims were outright refuted by spokespersons of Los Alamos itself. For a short while, at least. Soon, something came along the turn the issue on its head: KLAS-TV's George Knapp found Lazar's name in the October 1982 telephone directory of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. When the evidence was presented to grim, red-faced Los Alamos officials by Knapp, they quickly chose to modify their position. The new version of events was that Lazar had been employed by them after all, but under the umbrella of an outside contract company called Kirk-Meyer. They maintain that Lazar never, ever, not even once, worked on issues of a secret or sensitive nature. However, colleagues of Lazar had informed Knapp that Lazar worked at Los Alamos in matters relative to the highly sensitive Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – or 'Star Wars' program – that had been grandly envisioned by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pgs. 27-28)

Ah, that would be the same SDI that longtime ASC luminary Stefan Possony spent decades lobbying for (noted in the prior installment). And here we find Lazar potentially working on Possony's baby. But that's not Lazar's only indirect link to Possony. It just so happens that one of Possony's closest colleagues in the ASC would encounter Lazar during his time at Los Alamos.

"In June 1982, legendary theoretical physicist Edward Teller gave a lecture at Los Alamos, and Lazar attended. As Lazar approached the venue on the day in question, he was amazed to see Teller sitting casually outside on a wall, reading the aforementioned Los Alamos Monitor article on Lazar himself. This was highly fortuitous, so Lazar introduced himself and had a brief chat with the man who was one of the inspirations for the deranged Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 movie of the same name."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 20)

Edward Teller

As was noted in the prior installment, Teller had worked closely with Possony in the ASC ever since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1961. By the early 1980s, this collaboration was in full swing as the debate over the SDI was beginning to become a major national issue and both Possony and Teller were among the most vigorous proponents of it at the time. Whether Teller was involved in Possony's more arcane interests is unknown, however.

Still, it is likely Teller had been involved in fringe topics on his own accord for years by this point. He was, after all, a colleague of Vannevar Bush in the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and appears to have worked closely with Bush for years afterwards. What's more, Teller had been involved in official conferences concerning UFOs since at least the late 1940s. One of the most well known took place at Los Alamos almost thirty-three years prior to Teller meeting Lazar there in '82.

"One 16 February 1949 a secret conference was held at Los Alamos to discuss the UFO phenomenon, in particular the so-called 'green fireballs' which were then being reported in the area. Among the scientists and military officials present where the nuclear physicist Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, an astronomer from the University of New Mexico whose expert opinion was called on throughout the conference..."

(Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, pgs. 265-266)

In Lazar's account, it was Teller himself who helped the alleged scientist procure a job at Area S-4, near Area 51:

"Now let's fast-forward to 1988. At that time, Lazar was running a photo lab in Las Vegas, but he was on the lookout for far more gainful employment. He sent out a resume to Teller, who remembered Lazar and his beefed-up Honda. This was very good news. It got even better when Teller agreed to use his contacts to see about getting Lazar back into the world of physics. As a result, Lazar was approached by a representative of Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. (EG&G), a U.S. defense contractor. Thus began a strange saga filled with many a cloak, dagger, and hall of mirrors."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 21)

As was noted above, EG&G was allegedly being used as a front for the ONI, who were actually the ones offering Lazar his job at Area 51. Let us then consider the implications of this series of events: Lazar meets Edward Teller, one of the most well-connected deep state players in the scientific field to ever live, at Los Alamos. Despite official claims that Lazar only performed minor functions there, Teller is sufficiently impressed with Lazar to remember him nearly half a decade later when Lazar is trying to get back into scientific-related work. Teller then makes some calls and sets in motion a chain of events that will end up with Lazar working at a facility related to the highly classified Area 51, apparently at the behest of Naval Intelligence.

Despite the fact the officials at Area 51 have long denied Lazar's allegations, Teller himself left open the possibility that Lazar's claims may have been true based on comments he made to journalists in the wake of Lazar's revelations:

"Let's go back to the beginning, to Lazar's claims that he was offered the job of a lifetime as a result of having approached Dr. Edward Teller. When questioned after the murky matter began to take shape within UFO research circles as well as the mainstream media, Teller did not deny having met Lazar. Nor did Teller deny having referred Lazar to additional sources that may ultimately have led him to area 51. In fact, Teller actually squirmed, with distinct uneasiness apparent in his voice, manner, and appearance, when he uttered the following words, after being put on the spot by an enterprising television journalist: 'I probably met him. I might have said to somebody I met him and liked him, after I met him, and if I like him. But I don't remember him.'..."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 27)

Just what exactly the purpose of the Lazar revelations were is difficult to say. Assuming Lazar's story is true, it is difficult to believe that he was brought to Area 51/S-4 for actual scientific purposes. For one, Lazar seems to have spent a good chunk of his time there studying the alleged history of the extraterrestrials and their contact with humanity rather than actually doing scientific research. And when he did do actual scientific research, he did not seem to have the capabilities to perform any type of serious investigation. Consider the comments made during an interview with Jacques Vallee, a computer scientist:

" 'What kind of work were you doing?'

" 'We were back-engineering the propulsion system. They gave me briefings on that. A lot of it didn't make sense.'

" 'What do you mean?'

" 'Well, for one thing, there was no theoretical work at the facility. And much of the physical research was inept. They told us that a team had cut up one of the reactors by sawing it off in two. When they tried to run it, the thing exploded in their faces. That took place in May 1987, before they expelled the Russians from the project.

"Indeed, that was absurd. No one in his right sense would have done this; a project manager would have stopped it. Lazar agreed: it did not make sense. Nor did his own presence there makes sense. He said: 

" 'I'm no research physicist. If those were really alien disk, they should have had the best scientists in the country working on them. Instead they gave us these briefings and just told us to try anything we liked. Nothing was written down. 

 " 'What did you have in the lab, on your workbench?

" 'I had a digital voltmeter,' said Lazar.

" 'That's all?' exclaimed one of my friends.

" ' I also had an oscilloscope. That's it.'

"Where were the x-ray inspection systems, the multichannel analyzers, the signal generators that are the standard tools of the high-tech trade?"

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pgs. 205-206)

Bob Lazar

Needless to say, it is not especially credible that Lazar would have been tasked with back-engineering a UFO and only given a digital voltmeter and a oscilloscope to work with. Clearly, Lazar's work at Area 51 or wherever he was at was a piece of theater, pending Lazar is remembering his time there accurately (Lazar has claimed memory loss and was threatened with behavior modification techniques by the security staff).

But to what purpose?  Why would someone like Edward Teller recruit Lazar, subject him to a onslaught of disinformation, then stand back and allow him to "expose" the doings of a highly classified facility that was not on most people's radar prior to his revelations? Clearly something was afoot, but I don't pretend to know what exactly the purpose was.

Before wrapping up, its interesting to note that Teller's presence in the Lazar story clearly links the ASC to both the mythos of Area 51 as well as Hangar 18 (discussed in part six). Both mythos revolve around claims of reverse-engineered flying saucers and alien bodies involving highly secretive facilities. Either these revelations represented a very elaborate, decades-spanning disinformation campaign, or (more likely) some type of "limited hangout." In either case, it is most curious that the ASC was the organization tasked with such endeavors.

"They are the essence of true political power..."

Or maybe not, in light of some of the individuals linked to the think tank by the 1980s. Let us now consider a profile of one such individual:

"[Michael] Aquino is bright and 'well educated.' He graduated with honors from Santa Barbara high school in 1964 and was the National Commander the Eagle Scout Honor Society of the Boy Scouts of America 1965-66. He received a Department of the Army scholarship to the University of California and after graduation served his country as a psyops officer in Vietnam where he received the Army Commendation Medal, Air Medal, Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry from the Vietnamese government, an Oak Leaf Cluster to the Army Commendation Medal, and a second Oak Leaf Cluster in 1980.

"Not only is a Aquino a citizen in good standing with the U.S. military (now the reserves), he's a member in good standing in academia. He is, in fact a doctor having obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1980. His dissertation was entitled The Neutron Bomb. His resume says he's qualified in International Relations, Comparative Politics, American Government and Political Theory. For several years he was a consulting faculty member of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He's a member of the National Advisory Board of the American Security Council, a member of the World Future Society and the L5 Society and the Academy of Magical Arts, Inc. (the 'Magic Castle' of Hollywood.)"

(Operation Mind Control, Walter H. Bowart, pg. 162)

No doubt Colonel Michael Aquino is a familiar figure to many of my readers. A long time bugaboo of the conspiratorial right, Aquino began his occult odyssey in the late 1960s when he became a member of Anton LeVay's Church of Satan (CoS). LaVay was greatly impressed with the highly intelligent, clean-cut Aquino, and by the early 1970s Aquino was made a High Priest in the Church of Satan. By the time he left the CoS, Aquino was a Magister IV, only one grade below LaVay in the CoS's hierarchy. LaVay further honored Aquino by allowing him to craft the "Call of Cthulu" ritual, based upon the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, that were incorporated into the CoS.

Anton LaVay

But by the mid-1970s a growing rift was emerging between Aquino and LaVay. LaVay had become disaffected by Aquino's egotism and "over intellectualism" while Aquino was fed up with LaVay's refusal to relinquish administration powers and his practice of selling priesthoods. Aquino felt that such things should be based upon merit rather than the amount of money one could pay. Needless to say, he also found the professed atheism of the CoS to be sterile as well.

This led Aquino to perform a ritual in 1975 that would set him on the path to founding his own secret order.

"On the eve of the North solstice, June 21, 1975, Aquino performed a magical 'Working' and Satan purportedly appeared to him in the image of Set – the oryx-headed god of death and destruction that Aquino claims is the earliest manifestation of the Christian devil, dating back to 3000 BC. The result was a document, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, in which Set declared the dawning of the 'Aeon of Set.' According to the document, the origins of the new era can be traced back to 1904, when Set appeared to Aleister Crowley in Cairo in the guise of his guardian angel, Aiwass, and declared Crowley the herald for the dawning 'Aeon of Horus.' In 1966, LeVay ushered in the Aeon of Satan, an intermediary phase that symbolized indulgence and that was to prepare the way for the Aeon of Set, which would bring forth enlightenment."

(Satan Wants You, Arthur Lyons, pgs. 126-127) 

This spurred Aquino to break with the Church of Satan and found his own Temple of Set (ToS) the same year. Aquino was followed to the ToS by some CoS defectors, including his wife Lilith Sinclair, though the charismatic LaVay maintained the bulk of the CoS's membership. The Temple of Set's membership was never more than a few hundred members in its peak years, hence it never came anywhere near obtaining the degree of public notoriety as the CoS, at least not until scandals rocked the organization in the late 1980s. But more on that in a moment.

In 1982 Aquino performed an even more bizarre ritual at the notorious Wewelsburg Castle in Germany that came to be known as the "Wewelsburg Working." This ritual would go on to have a great deal of significance in neo-Nazi circles in later years. Wewelsburg was allegedly the location selected by Heinrich Himmler to serve as the cultic center of the SS. In recent years much speculation has emerged concerning the rituals that were performed there. A lot of this centers around the infamous sun wheel located in the North Tower that has been likened to the Black Sun in post-WWII Nazi occultism. It should be noted however, that the origins of said sun wheel are uncertain, though there is no evidence of it in the castle prior to the Nazi era. On the flip side of the coin, there have only been a handful instances in which something resembling the Wewelsburg sun wheel have been found on Nazi paraphernalia.

the Wewelsburg sun wheel to the left

Aquino does not appear to have specifically addressed the sun wheel until much later (now appears to wear an variation of it as a necklace), but he did provide one of the first accurate accounts of the north tower.

"... Aquino was interested in National Socialism as a case study in rhetorical, symbolic and psychological warfare and had wanted to visit Wewelsburg ever since first reading popular accounts about it... After conducting extensive research, he concluded (similar to the present author) that writers were all reproducing the same descriptions of the castle taken from Schellenberg (1956) and Hohne (1967). Aquino first visited Wewelsburg in October 19, 1982 and immediately realized that all previously published descriptions of the castle's interiors and furnishings were widely inaccurate. He sent a detailed account of his visit in a letter to the ToS priesthood dated November 8, 1982... which was subsequently published in the February 1983 issue of Scroll of Set. Aquino's description of the North Tower was among the first accurate accounts published; he was unaware of the groundbreaking volume of Huser (1982) which it appeared earlier that year. At that time security arrangements at Wewelsburg were considerably more lax than they are today an elderly museum guide left Aquino alone in the North Tower for an extended period of time... 

"Aquino remained in the Gruft from 3:00 – 4:30 PM and performed a magical rite that has come to be known as the 'Wewelsburg Working.' The purpose of the ritual was three-fold: 1) to aid in understanding an ongoing crisis in the ToS dating to June/July of that year, 2) to energize the upcoming year and 3) to summon the Powers of Darkness at this powerful locus. Before leaving the museum, Aquino signed the visitor's log providing tangible evidence of his visit to Wewelsburg (reproduced in... 2011...). Aquino came away from the ritual feeling rejuvenated and inspired to reform the ToS Order of the Trapezoid on a new theoretical basis in order to explore the National Socialist magical current. News of Aquino's ritual spread throughout the worldwide occult community spurring interest in Wewelsburg and its mysterious sun wheel. Occultists in increasing numbers began visiting Wewelsburg. In 2010 the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg contacted the ToS concerning the inclusion of a narrative about the Wewelsburg Working and the Order of the Trapezoid in a new exhibit."

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pgs. 55-57)

the infamous North Tower of Wewelsburg

Aquino certainly appears to have become quite obsessed with National Socialism in the wake of his experience at Wewelsburg (and while still remaining deeply involved with the US Army). Soon he would be making such brazen proclamations as:

"We are fortunate that the Auschwitz taboo prevents people from looking too closely at. . . Nazi Germany, or from experimenting with any of its regular governmental doctrines. Because they work. They are the essence of true political power. Anti-Semitism is irrelevant to them... It is ironically true that a right-wing backlash in the United States – which is what the neo-Nazis are hoping for – would wipe them out first. If an American Fuehrer does appear, he won't be wearing a uniform with a swastika armband. He will wear a business suit, and he will be calling popular attention to the patriotic virtues in 1776." 

(Michael Aquino, taken from Arthur Lyons' Satan Wants You, pg. 174)

Certainly Aquino's musings in the 1980s seem eerily prophetic in these United States in 2017, amidst the era of The Donald. Aquino was of course an intelligence officer specializing in psychological warfare in the US Army for many years and there are a host of speculations revolving around what type of psyops he was involved in and to what extent they were used in the United States. In 1981 he co-wrote the infamous "From PSYOP to Mindwar" paper with Colonel (now General) Paul E. Vallely that effectively argued that America's defeat in Vietnam had been brought about by the inability of psyops to condition the public for victory.

"Incidentally," Vallely has come out as a Trump backer of late. He's also a member of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), in many wars the true post-Cold War continuation of the ASC network. Unsurprisingly, the CSP has been playing a key role in the infant Trump administration, as was noted before here.

General Paul E. Vallely

Of course, a psychological warfare barrage by Aquino is hardly the extent of conspiratorial musings concerning the colonel. I'm sure many of you are well aware of the Presidio day-care child abuse allegations that have dogged him for decades after first being exposed in 1987.

"... A three-year-old girl, reportedly molested at the Army's Presidio day-care Center in San Francisco, had fingered Aquino as the same 'Mikey' who photographed her in the nude and sexually abused her in a black-painted room with a cross on the ceiling. On August 14, 1987, Aquino's home was raided by police detectives, FBI agents, and members of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Several carloads of 'evidence' were seized and what Aquino called a 'modern witch-hunt in the most classical sense,' but no charges were ever filed against Aquino or any member of his church. In April 1989, Aquino filed formal complaints against to SFPD detectives involved in the raid, and police commissioners sustained the complaints in November 1990. Detective Sandi Gallant was 'counseled' to avoid derogatory comments on Aquino's church or lifestyle, while Detective Glen Pamfiloff got a written reprimand for his conduct on the 1987 raid."

(Raising Hell, Michael Newton, pgs. 19-20)

There have also been longstanding allegations that Aquino was deeply involved in running disinformation in the New Age and UFOs communities as well. Some have even are argued he played a key role in crafting the mythos surrounding Roswell and birthing the modern UFO movement that emerged from its rediscovery during the early 1980s (special thanks to "V" for point out these allegations to me). Just how credible these claims are is highly debatable as they're based solely on heresy, but I can not totally dismiss them in light of Aquino's alleged presence on the ASC's National Advisory Board. As was noted before here and here, many members of said board were closely linked to Roswell while other members would repeatedly turn up in the UFO field.

Certainly Aquino would be in the presence on many key figures linked to the UFO question in national security circles had he been a member of the National Advisory Board. As I have demonstrated throughout this series, the ASC's National Advisory Board appears to have been quite obsessed with the UFO question, among other arcane topics. The real question, however, is if Aquino was in fact a member of the ASC.

Aquino and the ASC?

Aquino has been linked to the ASC since the 1980s, but it appears by the 2010s he was hotly contesting the extent of his membership. The great ISGP was able to contact Aquino and seek clarification on these points. Aquino's responses can be found here and here for the curious.

Colonel Michael Aquino

ISGP did not find Aquino's responses to very believable and neither does this researcher. Beyond the points raised by ISGP, there's also the question of why the ASC would arbitrarily list Aquino in its National Advisory Board if he had only signed up for a newsletter. Its not like Aquino --then only a major --would have brought the organization any real prestige. Whatever recognition Aquino had by that point came from his exploits with the CoS and ToS. And such affiliations wouldn't exactly have been to warmly received by the ASC's rank and file.

In fairness to Aquino, I tend to find many of the more extreme allegations commonly leveled against him such as his involvement in pedophilia to be rather dubious. Aquino never attempted to hide his occult exploits and does not ever seem to have shied away from publicity. His profile just seems far too high profile for something life a pedophile ring, which surely would be carried out in the strictest secrecy by individuals avoiding the limelight at all costs.

Aquino playing mind war games on various alternative communities seems far more plausible. He has been involved on the fringes of various New Age-centric groups since the late 1960s and seems to have embraced the allegations leveled at him by the conspiratorial right with ample gusto over the years.

But was there something more to Aquino's connections to the ASC than disinformation and psyops? Another military man linked to the ASC who would later befriend Aquino may indicate that there were some very strange projects being perused by the National Advisory Board indeed by the 1980s. This figure shall be considered in the next installment. Until then, stay tuned dear reader.

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.