House Intel panel to hold first open UFO hearing in decades - United News  Post
Scott Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence, left, and Ronald Moultrie, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, right. Both testified at the first congressional hearings on UFOs in more than 50 years. In the center is a video of a so-called unidentified flying object. [Source: unitednewpost.com]

Coincidence? I Don’t Think So

On May 17, the U.S. Congress held its first hearings on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP)—the new official name for Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs)—in more than 50 years.

Less then two months earlier, President Joe Biden’s $773 billion budget request for the Defense Department for fiscal year 2023 included $24.5 billion for the U.S. Space Force and the Space Development Agency—about $5 billion more than what Congress approved in 2022.

The fortuitous timing was all but predicted by Wernher von Braun, a Nazi scientist recruited under Operation Paperclip, who served as the first director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from 1960 to 1970.

Before his death in 1977, von Braun said: “Weapons will be based in space—hence the need to create a psychological nexus whereby people will fear all things alien.”[1]

Wernher von Braun [Source: britannica.com]

As Von Braun Would Have Wanted

Von Braun’s spirit was evident in the opening remarks of André Carson (D-IN), the chairman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Counterintelligence, Counterterrorism, and Counterproliferation, who emphasized that UAPs “are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way.”

Carson further stated: “For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis. Pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. DOD officials relegated the issue to the backroom or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community. Today, we know better. UAPs are unexplained, it’s true. But they are real. They need to be investigated. And any threats they pose need to be mitigated.”

Dem lawmaker calls for hearings on UFOs | The Hill
André Carson [Source: thehill.com]

Scott Bray, Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence showed two videos at the hearing taken by Air Force pilots which showed white objects that looked like flying saucers in the air whose source could not be identified.

Bray said that, although the second object in particular could have been some kind of drone, he was not aware of any foreign adversaries who had technologies that resembled these objects.

Bray further said that, while some of the sightings could have been of airborne clutter, meteorological phenomenon, or U.S. industry or military technologies, of the 144 reports of UAPs documented between 2004 and 2021, 18 appeared to exhibit unspecified flight characteristics and lacked evidence of propulsion—even when they moved at excessive speeds—which made them intriguing.

A picture containing text, clock, gauge

Description automatically generated
An unidentified flying object captured by the U.S. Navy in video. [Source: cnet.com]

False Threat Inflation

Last December, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) succeeded with bipartisan support in inserting an amendment into the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that directs the Pentagon to work with the intelligence community to investigate the phenomenon of UAPs and to publicly report its findings.

Gillibrand—who has received huge campaign donations from Wall Street and consistently supports U.S. military interventions—said that “our national security efforts rely on aerial supremacy and these phenomena present a challenge to our dominance. The United States needs a coordinated effort to take control and understand whether these aerial phenomena belong to a foreign government or something else altogether.”

This is urgent': Bipartisan proposal for UFO office pushes new boundaries -  POLITICO
Kirsten Gillibrand [Source: politico.com]

At the May 17 hearing, Russia hawk Adam Schiff (D-CA)—who has received more than $100,000 in campaign contributions from Raytheon since 1999—echoed Gillibrand by emphasizing the significance of UAPs as a national security matter.

One of the greatest mysteries of our time': Congress to hold UFO hearing  next week - POLITICO
Adam Schiff [Source: politico.com]

Ronald Moultrie, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, emphasized the potential threat of UAPs to U.S. military bases and installations, which he vowed to protect.

When Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher (WI) challenged Moultrie, he called for investigation of an alleged 1975 incident in which a glowing red orb was witnessed above Malmstrom Air Force Base in rural Montana, eight years after ten nuclear inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) became inoperable there.[2]

Gallagher became angry when Moultrie said he had not heard of the incident, and asked him to investigate it—omitting that it had occurred decades ago, before Gallagher was even born.

Gallagher was not so subtle generally in advocating for greater vigilance by the government in protecting the nation from inter-galactic predators intent on destroying the United States—along with other foreign enemies.

Planning for Interplanetary War?

Dr. Steven Greer, who retired from the emergency room to pursue the hunt for aliens as the self-described “world’s expert on UFOs,” is among those horrified by the mindset that was on display at the congressional hearing.

The Official Site of Danica Patrick
Dr. Steven Greer [Source: danicapatrick.com]

As Greer sees it, aliens are here to help us and the military-industrial complex is hyping their danger and creating the U.S. Space Force to prepare for interplanetary war, arguing movies like “Independence Day” are part of “a false narrative created by covert groups striving to generate fear of ETs.”

A picture containing graphical user interface

Description automatically generated
[Source: arkadincinema.com]

“Have We Visitors From Space?”

Public fixation with UFOs in the U.S. goes back to at least the 1920s when science fiction writers featured stories of scientific geniuses who developed super-weapons that helped save the U.S. from alien invaders.[3]

UFOs in fiction - Wikipedia
This 1929 cover of Science Wonder Stories, drawn by notable pulp artist Frank R. Paul, is one of the earliest depictions of a “flying saucer” in fiction. [Source: wikipedia.org]

On April 7, 1952, Life magazine published an article entitled “Have We Visitors From Space?” which purported to offer scientific evidence verifying the existence of interplanetary saucers.

Life Cover
Life magazine issue with story of interplanetary saucers listed on the cover. [Source: project1947.com]

The article mentioned numerous UFO sightings, including one in 1947 by a pilot named Kenneth Arnold who said he saw nine saucer-like things flying like geese near Mount Rainier, Washington, in a diagonal chain-like line at speeds estimated to be 1,200 miles per hour.

Kenneth Arnold
Kenneth Arnold with saucer-like object he reportedly saw. [Source: wired.com]

At that time there was still some thought that Mars or Venus might have a habitable surface. People thought these UFOs were Martians who had come to keep an eye on Planet Earth now that the U.S. had nuclear weapons.

Project Bluebird

Such attitudes prompted an Air Force study out of Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio called Project Bluebird, which collected and analyzed more than 12,000 UFO reports from 1952 to 1969.

A few years before the project was initiated, Lt. General Nathan Twining, the commander of Air Materiel Command (later to become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), sent a secret memo on “Flying Discs” to the Commanding General of the Army Air Forces at the Pentagon, stating that “the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.” The silent, disc-like objects demonstrated “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.”

Nathan F. Twining - Wikipedia
Lt. General Nathan Twining [Source: wikipedia.org]

Project Bluebird, however, concluded that most of the UFO sighting reports were misidentifications of natural phenomena (cloudsstars, etc.) or conventional aircraft.

Lights photographed in 1952 over a Coast Guard air station in Salem, Mass., part of the Blue Book archive.
Lights photographed in 1952 over a Coast Guard air station in Salem, Massachusetts as part of the Project BlueBird investigation. [Source: nytimes.com]

A number of the reports could be explained by flights of the formerly secret U-2 and A-12 reconnaissance planes, though some remained unexplained.

Alien investigation series 'Project Blue Book' shows more weird encounters  in Season 2 | Space
Scene from a Netflix series recreating Project Bluebird. [Source: space.com]

CIA’s Robertson Report

In the early 1950s, the CIA weighed in with its own investigation, headed by a Cal Tech physicist Dr. H.P. Robertson, which concluded that low-grade, unverifiable UFO reports were overloading intelligence channels, with the risk of missing a genuine conventional threat to the U.S.

Photo
Dr. H.P. Robertson [Source: history.aip.org]

The Robertson Commission recommended that the Air Force de-emphasize the subject of UFOs and embark on a debunking campaign through the mass media to lessen public interest and ridicule those who believed in UFOs.[4]

The committee’s final report specified that civilian UFO groups “should be watched because of their potentially great influence on mass thinking…The apparent irresponsibility and the possible use of such groups for subversive purposes should be kept in mind.”

UFO photographs
Amateur photo of flying saucer in 1952. [Source: history.com]

These latter comments have fueled belief in a huge CIA/government cover-up. They were echoed at the May 17 congressional hearings by Ronald Moultrie, who implied that amateur UFOlogists were advancing conspiracy theories.

A big difference today, however, is that the Pentagon is now encouraging UFO sighting in order to validate the weaponization of Outer Space—and secure U.S. domination of Planet Earth.

Historian Jack Manno, author of Arming the Heavens: The Hidden Military Agenda for Space, 1945-1995 (New York: Dodd Mead, 1984), told space expert Karl Grossman that “control over the Earth” was what those who have wanted to weaponize space seek. “The aim is to…have the capacity to carry out global warfare [using] weapons systems that reside in space.”

Roswell

The name Roswell was never invoked at the May 17 hearing—except in passing—though it might have been if the Pentagon were savvier in its public relations.

On July 3, 1947, a cattle rancher named Mack Brazel uncovered debris from a downed plane in the remote New Mexico town of Roswell, which had lightweight wood that would not burn and metal beams filled with writing that bore some resemblance to Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Barney Barnett, a civil engineer, uncovered another crash site nearby with the bodies of four beings whose heads were larger than their bodies and whose eyes were slanted.

Roswell
Brigadier General Roger M. Ramey, Commanding General of Eighth Air Force, and Col. Thomas J. Dubose, Eighth Air Force Chief of Staff, identify metallic fragments found near Roswell, New Mexico. [Source: history.com]
A group of military vehicles driving through a field

Description automatically generated with low confidence
Debris in field after Roswell crash. [Source: unsolvedmysteries.fandom.com]

The U.S. Army claimed that the aircraft was a weather balloon and tried to silence Brazel, though a top secret army report leaked in 1984 pointed to a cover-up.

Roswell UFO crash: what really happened 67 years ago? | News | The Week UK
[Source: theweek.co.uk]

Unsolved Mysteries host Robert Stack concluded in a 1989 episode on Roswell: “The military declared that the remnants found in that remote field [in Roswell] came from a downed weather balloon. But the people who actually saw and held the wreckage disagree. Perhaps it was an experimental aircraft that the military wanted to keep top secret at all costs. But perhaps, just perhaps, it was something else.”

Robert Stack [Source: dinosaurdracula.com]

Concealing Military Experiments

Text

Description automatically generated
[Source: abebooks.com]

Perhaps it was, but journalist Annie Jacobsen interviewed an engineer with EG&G Company, who worked at Area 51—a top secret military testing base in Nevada—who said that the Soviets stirred up the Roswell UFO incident by sending flying discs into New Mexico with child-size aviators on board as a warning that they could spark a UFO panic if they wanted to.[5]

Jacobsen’s source believes that the Soviets dispatched flying-disc drone aircraft—which they had developed during World War II—from a mother ship flying near Alaska. Intermittent radar signals were picked up by U.S. installations, but the discs were able to enter U.S. airspace and come down near Roswell.

The child-sized aviators were about 13 years old and surgically or biologically altered to give them enlarged heads and eyes. Jacobsen quotes her source as saying he was told that the alien look-alikes were the result of experiments conducted by Nazi mad scientist Josef Mengele.

Josef Mengele [Source: independent.co.uk]

When Jacobsen asked the engineer—who had a top-secret security clearance—why President Harry Truman did not report all this in 1947, she said the source replied, “because we were doing the same thing.”

NBC News suggested that the “UFO” was indeed a flying disc, but that it was a U.S. rather than a Soviet experimental craft. In this scenario, the alien-looking bodies might have been dummies designed to create a preposterous cover story.

If the latter is true, the cover-up at Roswell had nothing to do with aliens, but was designed to cover up secret and unethical U.S. military experiments.

The Pentagon’s latest invocation of the UAP “threat” similarly aims to divert public attention from the military’s new Frankensteinian projects, while triggering concerns about a phenomenon that exists only in science-fiction stories and in people’s imaginations.


  1. Quoted in Dr. Steven Greer, Hidden Truth: Forbidden Knowledge (Crozet, VA: Crossing Point, 2006), 37.

  2. According to a report in the Sun (a British tabloid), a CIA aircraft gave chase to a mysterious aircraft near the base, which then vanished before reappearing, and one hurtled into the sky at rapid speeds. Brigadier General William D. Barnes signed off on a document that specified that the encounter was “unknown.”

  3. See H. Bruce Franklin, War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008).

  4. In 1966, fitting with the CIA’s mandate, Walter Cronkite sponsored a CBS News special “UFO: Friend, Foe or Fantasy?” which focused on debunking UFO sightings.

  5. See Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base (Boston: Little & Brown, 2011).


CovertAction Magazine is made possible by subscriptionsorders and donations from readers like you.

Blow the Whistle on U.S. Imperialism

Click the whistle and donate

When you donate to CovertAction Magazine, you are supporting investigative journalism. Your contributions go directly to supporting the development, production, editing, and dissemination of the Magazine.

CovertAction Magazine does not receive corporate or government sponsorship. Yet, we hold a steadfast commitment to providing compensation for writers, editorial and technical support. Your support helps facilitate this compensation as well as increase the caliber of this work.

Please make a donation by clicking on the donate logo above and enter the amount and your credit or debit card information.

CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization and your gift is tax-deductible for federal income purposes. CAI’s tax-exempt ID number is 87-2461683.

We sincerely thank you for your support.


Disclaimer: The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of the author(s). CovertAction Institute, Inc. (CAI), including its Board of Directors (BD), Editorial Board (EB), Advisory Board (AB), staff, volunteers and its projects (including CovertAction Magazine) are not responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. This article also does not necessarily represent the views the BD, the EB, the AB, staff, volunteers, or any members of its projects.

Differing viewpoints: CAM publishes articles with differing viewpoints in an effort to nurture vibrant debate and thoughtful critical analysis. Feel free to comment on the articles in the comment section and/or send your letters to the Editors, which we will publish in the Letters column.

Copyrighted Material: This web site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. As a not-for-profit charitable organization incorporated in the State of New York, we are making such material available in an effort to advance the understanding of humanity’s problems and hopefully to help find solutions for those problems. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. You can read more about ‘fair use’ and US Copyright Law at the Legal Information Institute of Cornell Law School.

Republishing: CovertAction Magazine (CAM) grants permission to cross-post CAM articles on not-for-profit community internet sites as long as the source is acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original CovertAction Magazine article. Also, kindly let us know at info@CovertActionMagazine.com. For publication of CAM articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: info@CovertActionMagazine.com.

By using this site, you agree to these terms above.


About the Author

9 COMMENTS

  1. Richard’s comment about the deep psychopathy infecting the US establishment is so true. In the 1980s, so many people far away here in Aotearoa/NZ could see the nuclear-missile rattling of the Reagan Administration as if they were peering into a mad-house. We responded by proclaiming ourselves nuclear free, despite American efforts to subvert our democracy.

    However, today, ever so lamentably, we have our internationally praised Prime Minister (PM) Jacinda Ardern snuggling up in the US to the openly and unashamedly self-proclaimed “aggressive” Biden Administration. With outrageous hypocrisy, we join heartily in NATO’s warmongering advance into Ukraine in an effort to try and destabilise Russia, while at the same time wringing our hands over the diplomatic and aid forays of China into the Pacific, an ocean which PM Ardern calls “our region”!

    So far as overshoot into space and space warfare is concerned, we suffer the nefarious military-industrial complex presence of Rocket Lab, which actually started up as a NZ company. Multiple other militarist ties bind us to the war machine via Lockheed Martin, etc. So very sadly then, we also live now in the madhouse, which is getting more and surreal. Meantime, the shadow of nuclear war hovering over us all seems to be rapidly gaining substance . . .

    It is imperative that we work together internationally to escape and create a survivable future!

  2. […] Talvez tenha sido, mas a jornalista Annie Jacobsen entrevistou um engenheiro da EG&G Company, que trabalhava na Área 51 uma base de testes militares ultra-secreta em Nevada que disse que os soviéticos provocaram o incidente com o OVNI de Roswell enviando discos voadores para o Novo México com crianças. aviadores de tamanho grande a bordo como um aviso de que eles poderiam desencadear um pânico OVNI se quisessem. [5] […]

  3. […] Quando o congressista republicano Mike Gallagher (WI) desafiou Moultrie, ele pediu a investigação de um suposto incidente de 1975 no qual uma esfera vermelha brilhante foi testemunhada acima da Base Aérea de Malmstrom, na zona rural de Montana, oito anos após dez mísseis balísticos intercontinentais nucleares (ICBMs) ficou inoperante lá. [2] […]

  4. I will add that the use of alleged UFOs by the military as another way to scare the public into passively accepting even more money being spent for space weapons is yet more proof of the deep-seated psychopathy infecting the U.S. establishment. Disgusting.

  5. You are wasting your time looking for UFOs. I worked as an analyst for the federal government for 32 years, including for NASA on the space shuttle program, and there has never been any verifiable evidence of UFOs. There are those who would have you believe in them, just as another way to sow confusion and demoralization among the populace, but this is not proof. In fact trying to make a big deal about putting UFOs on the public agenda only discredits those who are seeking truth and justice in other ways. Things are bad enough without complaining about a non-existent UFO cover-up. I do believe in angels, but this is another matter altogether. Angles are not UFOs and don’t need flying saucers to move around.

Leave a Reply