Larry Hancock's Blog, page 26

Updates and NID 2017

I will return to posting on Unidentified in a bit but I would encourage those currently reading the book to either post questions here or to contact me at larryjoe@westok with questions or simply to chat about the book.  The topical index is still in progress but I expect it to go up on http://www.larry-hancock.com next week. Also, if you are reading it and like it so far its always nice to have positive reviews on Amazon.  If you would take the time for that it would be much appreciated.

The news at the moment is that we are making good progress preparing for the JFK Lancer November in Dallas conference. We have a very solid line up of speakers and this year’s focus will primarily be on the disconnects between what we can now see in the released documents, post JFK Records Act, and what was presented in the Warren Commission Report. It becomes increasingly clear that the WC Report was a “construct”, developed with a specific mission of public reassurance rather than being anything close to an open ended, objective inquiry – and something not even close to an acceptable criminal/murder investigation.

You can find a listing of speakers and a rough schedule at:

http://jfklancer.com/Dallas2017/2017welcome.html

If you have questions about the conference I’m happy to take them here or at the above email.  As always our focus is on critical, real history – with presenters who are exceptionally experienced with the subject and at the cutting edge of ongoing research. The speaker list not totally finalized yet, as speaker chair I expect to be adding another four or five participants and we will be fleshing out and adding details on their presentations during August.

The good news is that with the now ongoing releases of JFK records, several of the speakers are already hard at work on them and in particular the ground work done by John Newman, Bill Simpich, Malcolm Blunt and Jeff Morley allows us to read them at a level undreamed of even a few years ago. We can now reconstruct operational CIA activities in a fashion never dreamed of by the first and second generation researchers – so come on down to Dallas and take advantage of that progress.

As for myself, I’m currently working on and hope to present  certain of the ramifications of SA Hosty’s remarks to Secret Service Agent Patterson about Oswald having been recently observed in the company of two subversives – and what this may tell us in conjunction with some recent ground breaking work by others which appears to suggest that the Paine residence had been the object of an ongoing local Central Office telephone tap “before” the assassination – something intentionally obfuscated after the fact during committee testimony.

 

JFK 101 #5 in the series

We just finished the fifth two hour discussion in this series; focused on the work and final report of the Warren Commission. The link to the program is below.  For those that have not followed any of the earlier programs with Chuck, Carmine and I, these discussions do not involve the presentation of any particular agenda or conspiracy view but are intended as a tutorial for those who would like to understand the entire context of this subject.

I will say that while we spar with each other at times in terms of being balanced and objective, some attitude does show at points and this is not just a recitation of facts. There is also some complaining about how many “myths” still circulate on the subject and how easy it is to get sidetracked onto less than credible leads – all of us are skeptics when it comes to vetting sources.

With that advisory notice, the series has been a lot of fun for me and its a chance to talk about larger issues rather than getting mired down in too many details (we do some of that, but we talk broader concerns as well).  Here’s the link to our most recent discussion (did I say there was some attitude, yep I did, full transparency zone here).

https://ochelli.com/jfk-assassination-101-wc-files/

 

 

What’s in the book?

Hopefully the previous posts on Unidentified have given those interested a good idea of the general goals and content of the book.  I’m always happy to take more specific questions but before I return to posting on other areas of interest I thought I would provide some further detail on Unidentified content.

To that end the following is an excerpt from the topical index. It provides a listing of the service/agency studies, the security incidents/investigations and the researcher studies/papers discussed in the book.  This should give some idea of the data which went into the actual analysis and indications analysis studies which constitute the meat of the book.  From that perspective other critical source data is found in the NICAP, Sparks and NARCAP incident databases.

Service and Agency Studies/Reports:

A Note on Pyrotechnic Activity over Germany

Enemy Defenses Phenomena

Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe (SHAEF)

Scientific Intelligence Advisory Section

Japanese Air Defense – Balls of Fire

Swedish Ghost Rocket committee

Central Intelligence Group

Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the U.S

Joint Research and Development Board

Midland/Grebe study

MIT incident/study

Analysis of Flying Saucer Incidents in the United States

Initial Report on Unidentified Flying Objects Project Sign

Flying Object Incidents in the United States

Air Force press memorandum, Project Saucer

Air Force Scientific Advisory Board

Anomalous Luminous Phenomena/Sixth Report

Battelle Memorial Institute

Special Report #14

Central Intelligence Agency

Intelligence Advisory Committee (NSC)

IAC Report

NSCID

Joint Intelligence Committee (Joint Chiefs)

Scientific Advisory Panel

Robertson Panel

Durant report

 

Security Incidents/Investigations:

Atomic Energy Commission

FBI

Office of Special Investigations

AFOSI

OSI

Army the Counter Intelligence Corps

CIC

AEC Security

Los Alamos

Oak Ridge

Hanford

Killeen Base

Monzano

Sandia Base

Washington National

Loring

Ellsworth

Fairfield Suisan

Westover

Pease

Hamilton field

Harmon Field

Pantex

Kirtland

Savannah River

Hampton Roads

Elmendorf AFB

Great Falls AFB

Davis-Monthan

Malmstrom

Northern Tier

Altus AFB

Carswell AFB

Whiteman AFB

Minot AFB

Wurthsmith AFB

Research Papers:   (Authors and sources cited in text and end notes)

A Historical and Physiological Perspective of the Foo Fighters of World War Two

            Guided Missiles and UFOs: A Tangle of Fear – 1937-53

            Report on the UFO Wave of 1947

            The Midland Fireball: Dow Chemical’s Early Involvement with UFO’s

            The White Sands Proof

            The Oak Ridge Sightings

            Technical Approaches to the Problems of UFOs.” /Detection of Radiation  

            Major Fournet’s Motion Study

            Civilian Saucer Investigation

Secret History of the 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron

B-52 & Gnd Radar / Radar Visual / Radar Freqs From UFO

RB-47 case, July 17, 1957, Mississippi – Louisiana-Texas-Oklahoma

UFO Over Titan Missile Silo; Oracle, Arizona; August 7, 1962

Minot Tracks Object, B-52 Sees & Tracks UFO

Roads Not Traveled

The press release for Unidentified refers to the “study the government did not do” and that might sound it bit mysterious – it’s supposed to since it is an effort to get attention. In reality we could have taken it further and talked about “studies” plural, since there are actually several types of intelligence related studies that were not done, by the Air Force, by its consulting groups and by the larger national intelligence community. The book explores that issue in considerable detail, highlighting the fact that even though senior Air Force officers were very much aware of specific patterns within the UFO reports of the first years, and actually proposed certain focused technical collections field studies, those studies were never conducted. In the earliest post war years that was simply because resources such as radar systems, radar operators and even interceptors were not available. Later those resources were tied up by both the Korean war and the urgent priority of setting up a continental air defense network to intercept what was assumed to be an imminent, preemptive Soviet attack on the nation.

Few UFO books make mention of those limitations and in the early years certainly the Air Force never made a point of them since it was constantly concerned about exposing the limitation of its air defense capability. Continental air defense was virtually nonexistent when the first flying saucers were reported in 1947 and remained extremely limited until 1951/1952.  At that point in time matters became even more embarrassing – and more concerning from a security standpoint – because the defenses which had been put into place proved largely ineffectual in responding to UFO reports. Even with radar tracking and interceptor scrambles and actual intercepts, the unknown targets could either evade or simply leave the interceptors behind at will.  That was not something the military wanted touted in the media, it was bad enough to have newspaper headlines about UFOs repeatedly being tracked over Washington DC with interceptors responding only after delays of up to two hours.

Following that fiasco the CIA was brought into the picture, internally elevating certain concerns that Air Force intelligence was aware of but had not itself elevated as a true national security concern,

“Sightings of unidentified flying objects at great altitudes and traveling in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such a nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.”

 

Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director, Office of Scientific Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, December, 1952

 

You can imagine what sort of issues that sort of assessment raised within the Air Force – beginning with the fact that not only were its then current defensive measures unable to cope with those incidents but that the same might well apply to its proposed computerized, automated air defense network (later named SAGE). Even the specifications for that new capability would leave it far short of coping with the speeds and maneuvers being reported. The same would apply to the new Century series interceptors under development and to a variety of new anti-aircraft missiles.  Those weapons could deal with the anticipated Russian bomber attack, but certainly not the most anomalous unknowns being reported. A broader inquiry  might also have shown that air defense exercise against the nation’s own strategic bombing force, SAC, were demonstrating a consistent failure to intercept and stop low level jet bombing strikes, bringing into question the entire, massive military spending program (far greater than the atomic bomb project of WWII).

 

What happened following that OSI assessment is indeed a fascinating story, with its own unanswered questions. And there are other study mysteries. For example, the Air Force was well aware of the patterns in UFO reports, patterns which pointed to targeting of specific types of military installations and in particular atomic warfare complex facilities. And in 1952 it contracted for a statistical analysis of UFO reports. Not surprisingly that turned into an extended project, yet when the study was finally released to the public (or when some version of it was released at least), the maps and charts used to show geographic distribution of sightings in no way reflect known concentrations in regard to actual military or strategic targets. That part of the study appears to be useless in terms of the patterns we know both Air Force Intelligence and the CIA were seeing, clearly raising questions of incompetence, mis-communication, mis-management – or obfuscation in the released version of the report.

 

And in the 1960s we see a total lack of strategic/military focus in the final study contracted by the Air Force, the study which produced a report (known as the Condon Report) whose summary and conclusions ignores much of its own investigative work and the data which it collected. In itself the lack of a military focus in any study paid for by the Air Force seems a bit strange when you think about it. On the other hand if the key objective for Air Force was transition the whole problem to the scientific community – divesting itself from an intelligence (and defense) challenge that had defeated it, perhaps it makes a great deal of sense, at least from a pragmatic point of view.

 

Unidentified explores what the Air Force did and did not do in the way of UFO studies but beyond that it moves on to the subject of what the national intelligence community should have done, might have done, most definitely didn’t do – and that proves even more interesting than what the Air Force failed to do. There were patterns, far more extensive and subtle ones than those being discussed by Air Force Intelligence and the CIA/OSI in 1952.  And those patterns evolved and became far better defined during the following three decades. But that requires a great deal of context and involves several chapters – which means you really need to read the book.

Mind Games

Once you begin to really appreciate the extent to which unidentified aerial objects were seriously considered as a potential military/security threat, certain things become less mysterious and the  activities of a number of government agencies much more understandable – although far more intrusive than most of us might have imagined at the time. That is just one of the aspects to the national security problem of UFOs which surface throughout the studies in Unidentified. The documents now available leave no room for doubt that both Soviet psychological warfare and technical espionage were very active concerns of the official UFO investigations.

 

Those who have been interested in the subject of UFOs for any extended time are likely familiar with the earliest discussions of mysterious investigators in civilian clothes, even more mysterious “men in black” and in later years actual military personnel who moved from routine UFO investigations into much more aggressive and even damaging interactions with witnesses. Certain of those activities ultimately appear to have generated many of the outright hoaxes and myths that continue to frustrate serious citizen inquiry into the subject – and yes, in terms of full transparency I’m talking about the constantly expanding volume of Majestic 12 documents and even worse grays, reptilians, underground bases, interstellar treaty agreements, secret scientific teams and human “harvesting”.

 

If you are interested in UFOs and have never heard any of those topics mentioned – congratulations.   If you have I would strongly suggest that you do a reality check by reading Project Beta by Greg Bishop, and even better Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington. You don’t have to bring aliens into the subject to find some really nasty things going on.

 

The reality of the covert intelligence activities is deadly serious, albeit less sensational than that of mysterious men in black (those movies were late to the party, the MIB had been discussed for decades before they hit the screen). And those activities are totally understandable in the context first of post WWII America and later of the ongoing Cold War.

 

As early as 1946, the brand new Central Intelligence Group advised President Harry Truman that it appeared the Soviets were actively involved in the use of rockets and related devices as a form of psychological warfare in Scandinavia.  The assessment was that the Soviets were covertly demonstrating potential weapons based in adapted German ballistic and cruise missile developments as a means to intimidate neutral nations from moving into the American sphere of influence, either military or economic.

 

From that point on first the Army Air Force, later the newly independent Air Force and ultimately the CIA focused on the likelihood of mysterious aerial devices being related to potential Soviet psychological warfare.  When the “flying saucer” wave of 1947 hit the United States in 1947 the Air Force immediately enlisted the FBI in a search for potential Soviet agents as being a source for flying saucer reports. Over the years both the FBI and military intelligence groups covertly investigated individuals filing UFO reports (especially reports from military or national security installations). That was during an era of anti-communist concern in which loyalty oaths became common in government jobs and even for teachers.

There were concerns that communist agents, Soviet fellow travelers and even saboteurs might be involved in UFO reports. Official studies and assessments consistently discussed the danger represented by waves of false reports – such reports could undermine public confidence in the nation’s military,  create morale problems or in the worst case even divert attention from an actual preemptive Russian strike.

 

Were there people in civilian clothes and men in dark suits investigating people who made UFO reports, especially reports that involved any type of physical evidence – most definitely. Was there a perceived threat related to UFOs – absolutely.  But it wasn’t extra-terrestrial, it was most definitely earthly, and most likley Russian. Documents now available suggest that the suspicion of Russian involvement was so great that the initial Air Force UFO inquiry definitely expected to quickly identify the objects and connect them to Russian adaptation of German advanced technologies – and were frustrated and shocked when that didn’t happen.

 

By the time that attitude had become adjusted, the United States itself was on the way to developing its own advanced high speed and stratospheric aerial aircraft and balloon systems, under the highest levels of secrecy. At that point the second phase of the Russian fear kicked in – that of Soviet agents actually using UFO witnesses and most especially UFO interest groups as intelligence sources.  Initially the worry was that Russian agents would use the groups to spread rumors and fears and possibly trigger diversionary waves of sightings. Later, as groups began to actively scout for signs of UFOs, that fear evolved.

 

In the earliest years UFO groups were specifically called out as an intelligence threat and identified for special monitoring. Later as the groups became more organized and even began to deploy their instruments for their own observations a new concern was that they would observe secret aircraft and secret weapons systems under development. That could lead to disclosure of details pertaining not to alien craft but on classified projects – providing “open source” intelligence for the Soviets.

 

When evidence was discovered suggesting that Soviet agents were indeed following certain UFO groups, and that members of those groups were unknowingly collecting information on some of the most highly classified national weapons and communications projects, things got nasty. Counter intelligence moved to planting disinformation and sensationalizing discussions among the UFO community. Both types of mind games were carried out against the various individuals, very effectively. The net result certainly muddied the water in terms of foreign intelligence collection but it did so in a manner as to poison the information being circulated within the community for decades.