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ABSTRACT
This erosion of
Presidential/executive oversight in the form of ultimate
control of the ET presence being gradually taken away from
elected Presidents and/or their congressionally approved political
appointments appears to have all the characteristics of a 'political
coup'. Presidents, in the case of Republicans, have been reduced to
rubber stamps for those controlling political management of ET
issues; or, in the case of Democratic Presidents, to political
irrelevance.
I conclude by identifying how political management of the ET presence has been conducted in a way that represents a threat to the principles of democracy and liberty in the US.
He has a PhD in Government from the University of Queensland, Australia, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is the author of The Hero's Journey Toward a Second American Century (Greenwood Press, 2002) and co-editor/author of three other books, and authored more than seventy articles, chapters, and book reviews on peace, ethnic conflict and conflict resolution. He has conducted research and fieldwork in the ethnic conflicts in East Timor, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Sri Lanka. He has organized a number of international workshops involving mid to high level participants from these conflicts.
He has an academic website at http://www.american.edu/salla/ .
This erosion of
Presidential/executive oversight in the form of ultimate control of
the ET presence being gradually taken away from elected Presidents
and/or their congressionally approved political appointments appears
to have all the characteristics of a ‘political coup’.
[2]
Presidents, in the case of Republicans, have been reduced to rubber
stamps for those controlling political management of ET issues; or,
in the case of Democratic Presidents, to political irrelevance.
The third phase
was a comprehensive effort by the Eisenhower administration to manage the ET presence
through improved policy coordination between different clandestine
organizations embedded within military/intelligence and national
security branches of government, and introducing more prominent
roles for Corporate America and foreign policy elites in the
political management of the ET presence.
I conclude by identifying how political management of the ET presence has been conducted in a way that represents a threat to the principles of democracy and liberty in the US.
There is evidence from ‘whistleblower’ testimonies from clandestine government organizations that an ET craft crashed off the coast of California in 1941, and its secret retrieval was what initially set off efforts by the Roosevelt administration to politically manage the ET presence. [5] Furthermore, a famous incident in 1942 occurred where there was a naval bombardment in response to what at first perceived to be a Japanese air raid, but which closer evidence suggested was an intelligently piloted UFO. [6]
US participation in the Second World War from 1942 meant that these
astonishing events involving ET piloted spacecraft craft had to be
politically managed in the context of a global military conflict
requiring coordinated policy responses that involved the national
survival of the US.
There is no evidence that the Roosevelt administration developed any special organizational structures for dealing with the ET presence, other than simply subordinating the whole ET issue to the Department of War that was conducting the war effort. As Commander in Chief, Roosevelt and his most senior advisors would be extensively informed and played the key role in exercising the necessary executive oversight for military projects utilizing technology and intelligence gained from ET sources.
Most importantly, the Second World War meant there would be no congressional oversight of the ET presence since the latter’s existence and military significance required the utmost secrecy due dire national security implications it had for the War effort.
Since the US military exercised complete operational and logistical control over all aspects of the ET presence during the emergency conditions of the war, there needed to be a process for deciding how to politically manage the extensive policy implications of such a presence. Undoubtedly, the first policy issue to be confronted was the extent to which the ET presence should be disclosed to Congress and the general public.
More importantly, there needed to be an institution
created for ensuring policy coordination between the different
military and intelligence units that were working on different
operational aspects of the ET presence; and, critically, a means of
ensuring that the President and his principal advisors would be
sufficiently well informed to maintain executive oversight of the
entire military-scientific-intelligence community that interfaced
with the ET presence.
Titled Majestic 12 (MJ-12), this group initially comprised 12 senior individuals from the military, intelligence and civilian sectors who formed an ad hoc committee. MJ-12 was therefore a clandestine political entity created to politically manage all aspects of the ET presence in order to provide the best policy advice to the President. Significantly, MJ-12 was embedded within the National Security Council which was formed at the same time to coordinate policy recommendations from different government, military and intelligence departments into a coherent set of policy recommendations from which Presidents could choose.
The way in which
policy advice would be gained was through a series of ad hoc
committees that would be formed to investigate specific aspects of
the ET presence to make policy recommendations. One of the more
famous was an ad hoc committee comprising Albert Einstein and
Robert Oppenheimer
who released a top secret report on
“Relationships with Inhabitants of Celestial Bodies”
in
June 1947, that outlined a number of recommendations for responding
to the ET presence in terms of their foreign policy implications.
[9]
Thus executive oversight of the ET presence occurred through the
President, his advisors and appointed officials who would steer US
policy on the critical policy issues concerning the ET presence on
the basis of policy advice gained from top secret ad hoc committees.
The most famous of these
was the
1947 Roswell incident which has spawned numerous books
and testimonies from various individuals and officials. [11]
This led to the decision of the Air force to launch an official
public examination of the UFO presence. Project Blue Book
began in 1952 and was the official public successor to earlier Air
force investigations of UFOs from 1947-48 (Project Sign),
and 1948-52
(Project Grudge).
[12]
Forrestal, who was a member of the MJ-12 committee,
was thwarted by President Truman, his principal advisors and
others on the MJ-12 committee, who decided that the
whole ET presence had to be politically managed in a way that
maintained strict secrecy, thereby denying the general public and
Congress the truth about the ET presence. Forestal was
dismissed due to what was officially claimed to be a ‘nervous
breakdown’ and later ‘committed suicide’ from the 6th
floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
[14]
According to several military ‘whistleblowers’, Forrestal was
murdered.
[15]
MJ-12 would provide policy recommendations for coordination and oversight of clandestine organizations embedded in military and intelligence departments, and the military funded scientific laboratories that pursued reverse-engineering programs and communication with ETs.
Eisenhower had been supported in his Presidential campaign by
the Rockefeller family and it was therefore no great
surprise that he chose Nelson Rockefeller to be in charge of
reorganizing the government. Rockefeller from 1953-59 was Chairman
of the President’s ‘Advisory Committee on Government Organization.’
In addition, he became the President’s Special Assistant in Cold War
Strategy (1954-55) and was critical in shaping the Eisenhower’s
views and responses to the ET presence.
In asking
Nelson Rockefeller to advise him and reorganize government in
general and the policy making infrastructure concerning the ET
presence in particular, Eisenhower was giving Corporate
America a prominent role in the way in which government attempted to
address policy issues – a view consistent with the ideological
underpinning of the US Republican party.
These laboratories now received corporate funding through contracts awarded by military organizations, rather than being directly funded by the military as was the case during the Second World War and the Truman administration. Including Corporate America provided the important benefit of introducing a further layer of secrecy that could effectively keep prying Congressmen away from the truth about the ET presence. The Congressional oversight that was, in theory at least, possible for government/military funded scientific laboratories working on reverse engineering ET technology, would be impossible with corporations nominally in charge of the scientific laboratories working on the same clandestine military projects, using the same personnel, resources and funding.
With
Project Blue book
underway and Congress attempting to discover what was really happening
concerning the ET presence, a through re-organization involving a
prominent role for Corporate America, in
Rockefeller’s view,
was needed if secrecy was to be maintained. The ‘sleight
of hand’ involving Corporate America provided an important means of
politically managing the ET presence – total secrecy could be
maintained by simply invoking the mantra of private sector market
forces, thereby ensuring
immunity from congressional investigation.
The Rockefeller Family became important benefactors in the establishment of the Council of Foreign Relations in 1921 by making significant yearly donations of $1,500; making a large donation of $50,000 for the Council’s new headquarters in 1929; donating the building that became the headquarters of the Council in 1945. [19] A measure of the Rockefeller influence could be seen in their support for individuals being appointed to powerful positions. In the early 1970’s, for example, David Rockefeller, who eventually became Chairman of the Council, went against the wishes of a nominating committee to appoint William Bundy to the editorship of the influential journal, Foreign Affairs. [20]
By bringing the Council of Foreign Relations to the center stage of
how the Eisenhower administration would gain
recruits for clandestine organizations
designed to make policy recommendations concerning the ET presence,
Nelson Rockefeller had maneuvered himself and his family to the
center stage of how the ET presence would be politically managed.
MJ-12’s earlier existence as an ad hoc committee appointed by executive authority, was now transformed into a permanent sub-committee institutionally embedded within the most secret of all the National Security Council’s committees. Evidence from whistleblower testimonies suggest that Truman’s ad hoc committee, MJ-12, was reorganized so as to now comprise two layers. [21]
The outermost layer was a group of up to 40 individuals who would
form a
Study Group
(hence the names
PI-40 and
Special Studies Group also attributed to MJ-12)
whose function was to provide specialized studies and policy
recommendations concerning ET issues for a smaller decision making
group (MJ-12) that would actually make official policy
recommendations for implementation after gaining executive approval
by Eisenhower.
According to William Cooper, who served on the Naval Intelligence briefing team for the Commander of the Pacific Fleet, this smaller group was headed by the President’s Special Representative for Foreign Affairs, and its composition was determined according to the following formula.
The President’s Special Representative for Cold War Strategy (aka National Security Advisor - Nelson Rockefeller); the Director of Central Intelligence (Allen Welsh Dulles); Secretary of State (John Foster Dulles); Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Admiral Arthur Radford); Director of the FBI (J. Edgar Hoover); six men from the executive of the Council on Foreign Relations (‘Wise Men’) and six men from a secret scientific organization called the JASON group (led by Dr. Edward Teller) that were all members of the Council of Foreign Relations. [25]
It is likely that among the main organizational rules governing
membership of MJ-12/PI-40 were that all appointments had to be
approved by MJ-12; that individuals could not belong
to both MJ-12 and
PI-40; term limits applied to how long individuals could
stay on the policy making body, MJ-12; and no term limits applied in
the case of the PI-40.
As the architect of the institutional reorganization that led to the expansion of MJ-12, and as the President’s Special Advisor, Rockefeller assumed the critical role of head of MJ-12. Furthermore, Rockefeller through his family’s connections, also could influence the selection of appointments from the Council of Foreign Relations and the JASON Group for PI-40. Accordingly, Rockefeller played a critical role in influencing the strategic principles and imperatives that would subsequently govern policy making on the ET presence.
Rockefeller’s influence gradually led to his
estrangement with Eisenhower as a result of the latter
realizing that executive oversight of the ET presence was being
eroded due to Rockefeller’s reorganization. Eisenhower’s concern
resulted from two main ways in which executive oversight was eroded:
the role of Corporate America, and the way information was provided
by MJ-12/PI-40 in dealing with the ET presence.
This was immortalized for the general public by Eisenhower’s famous warning in his January 1961, departure speech of the danger of the ‘military-industrial complex’:
At the end of his administration, Eisenhower evidently felt that the military-industrial complex had grown too powerful and had slipped out of the control of him and his principal advisors in how the ET presence was to be politically managed. Essentially, clandestine military projects with Corporate America receiving funding through contracts awarded by the military, meant that the President and his principal advisors, had lost control of what was occurring in the clandestine projects and organizations that formed an elaborate ‘military-industrial complex’ weaving through the various military and intelligence organizations that worked on different aspects of the ET presence.
The loss of control of what was happening
in military-corporate laboratories carried with it a loss of control
of over the quality and accuracy of the intelligence information
that found its way back to the President and his senior advisors.
The ‘military-industrial complex’ evidently was able to frame policy
issues and contingencies concerning the ET presence in ways that
dictated government policy to the extent that Eisenhower and
his advisors felt frustrated and alarmed. This suggested that the
MJ-12
and/or PI-40 had been compromised by the
military-industrial complex, and was framing policy issues and
imperatives in ways that eroded executive oversight of these
clandestine organizations.
What Eisenhower was alluding to in his departure speech was that, at least as far political management of the ET presence was concerned, a political coup had occurred. [27] Eisenhower had been maneuvered into a role that merely gave constitutional validity to policy recommendations that were crafted on information that the President had no independent means of confirming.
That Eisenhower felt this way is evidenced in reports by one of the military officers who directly served under Eisenhower, Brigadier-General Stephen Lovekin who wrote:
The Kennedy administration marked an important milestone in the erosion of executive oversight of the ET presence. Kennedy was made aware of the ET presence when, as a young Senator serving on the Foreign Relations Committee, he was informed of the ET presence. Like his Republican predecessor, the new Democratic President, Kennedy, found that the political management of the ET presence was dominated by the clandestine military and intelligence organizations, in concert with MJ-12/PI-40, that released information on ETs in a way that was biased towards a particular outcome, the most obvious being the need for continued funding of their respective programs.
If an information ‘spin’ was indeed occurring, and certainly that is what the Eisenhower experience suggests, then the ET presence would permanently remain in the category of a national security threat that required strict secrecy, with minimal government oversight and extravagant funding levels.
The involvement of Corporate America
in fulfilling military contracts meant that executive oversight
would not succeed in discovering the true ramifications of the ET
presence and what clandestine organizations were really up to. This
problem of having no way of checking and confirming the information
supplied by clandestine organizations that was suspected of being
‘spun’ in a way that supported particular outcomes was certainly
what concerned Eisenhower, and was a problem that Kennedy
also confronted.
According to a former steward aboard Air Force One,
Bill Holden, he and Kennedy had the following
conversation when flying to Europe in the summer of 1963: " What do
you think about UFOs, Mr. President?” Kennedy became quite
serious for a moment, and replied, "I'd like to tell the public
about the UFO situation … but my hands are tied."
[29]
Rockefeller’s institutional reforms made it impossible for one
individual, even a sitting President, to take control of the policy
making process concerning the ET presence.
Documents have been found
supporting this idea that Kennedy desired greater cooperation with the Soviet Union, and
that this was opposed by the military-industrial complex.
Furthermore, it has been claimed that Kennedy issued an
ultimatum to Majesty 12, that “he intended to
reveal the presence of aliens to the American people within the
following year [1964], and ordered a plan developed to implement his
decision.” [31]
Those responsible could have come from any of the clandestine
organizations that felt their operations threatened by Kennedy’s
policies. An outcome of the crisis involving the Kennedy
administration would have been that the formal policy making
group,
MJ-12, would have begun making policy choices without
necessarily gaining Presidential approval. This marked a departure
from the
Eisenhower administration where, at least, Eisenhower
had to give formal approval for major MJ-12 policy
recommendations to be implemented.
Eisenhower became aware later in his administration that he had lost control, and that a ‘silent political coup’ was occurring. Kennedy’s unsuccessful effort to reestablish control and assassination marked a turning point in the erosion of executive oversight. The kind of executive oversight achieved under the Roosevelt and Truman administrations where the President and his senior advisors were fully informed and exercised firm control over the political management of the ET presence was now a distant memory.
Real control
over how to politically manage the ET presence had slipped into the
hands of the clandestine military and intelligence organizations
that operated secretly, with no executive oversight and lavish
budgets. It is therefore understandable why, at least from a
bureaucratic perspective if not a national security stand point,
that clandestine organizations had a strong interest in maintaining
the status quo and opposing efforts to yield to greater transparency
and executive oversight.
MJ-12/PI-40 could play its policy coordinating role with little real interference or scrutiny from Presidents and their policy advisors who simply did not have the means of confirming or challenging the information provided to them by the various clandestine organizations involved in dealing with the ET presence; and/or the policy advice provided by MJ-12/PI-40.
The inability of Presidential administrations to gain independent and accurate information on the ET presence meant that MJ-12/PI-40 could put its own spin on the available information to produce policy outcomes inline with MJ-12/PI-40’s priorities and needs. One of these needs was to ensure a degree of autonomy that minimized executive interference in affairs that MJ-12/PI-40 probably decided were outside of the experience and abilities of Presidential administrations that were at best only temporary players in the need to politically manage the ET presence. The loss of executive oversight meant that MJ-12/PI-40 became the main player in determining how the ET presence was to be politically managed. [33]
This led to the fourth phase in the political management of the ET presence – The Era of Autonomy and Impunity for Clandestine Organizations.
The first was the various clandestine organizations embedded in the different military services that were part of the military-industrial complex involved in reverse engineering ET technology for weapons production. The second constituency was the intelligence organizations that attempted to gather information on ET activities; the ET agenda; establish channels of communication with the ETs; and which were embedded in the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and the Defence Intelligence Agency.
The third constituency was
the President and his senior advisors who while not fully aware of
the scope of the ET presence, were at least aware of the existence
of these clandestine organizations and of the policy coordinating
role played by MJ-12/PI-40.
[35]
The fourth and last
constituency was Congress and the general public who were most out
of the information loop, and simply unaware of the extent of the
clandestine programs set up to deal with the ET presence.
The organizational function of MJ-12/PI-40 can be likened to that of a chess player who has to manage a whole range of pieces with different functions, values and strengths in order to achieve an ultimate goal – victory.
This meant that MJ-12/PI-40’s primary role was that of developing a grand strategy to deal with the ET presence in terms of the variety of ET races, their varying agendas and activities, and foreign national governments and clandestine governments on one side of the chess board (the opponent); and on the other side, the four different constituencies that made up the pieces of one’s own side of the chess board. The architect of this strategic role for MJ-12/PI-40 was Nelson Rockefeller and the Council of Foreign Relations who essentially designed the institutional rules by which MJ-12/PI-40 would interact with other constituencies involved in various aspects of the ET presence.
There is strong evidence from whistleblower sources that the master strategist of the Special Studies Group that made up the outer layer of MJ-12/PI-40, was a key Rockefeller protégé, Dr Henry Kissinger whose experience in managing the ET presence went further back than is commonly appreciated. [37]
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