CHAPTER SIX: "SONDERBUERO"

A topic worthy of discussion is the alleged German agency called "Sonderbuero" or Special Bureau. Sonderbuero is sometimes also referenced by a sub-bureau working within it called "Operation Uranus" or "U-13". In the past, debate has centered around the reality of Sonderbuero. Discussion of Sonderbuero or Sonderbuero-13 have been made recently by Juergen-Ratthofer (1),and Zunneck (2).

There is no real record of Sonderbuero in official sources. Searches have been made in Germany as well as in the U.S.A. under provisions of the Freedom Of Information Act. All inquiries came back with negative results. This, however, may not be the final word on the subject. German sources may be classified or buried within another designation. The American Freedom Of Information Act is something less than advertised as anyone ever attempting to use these provisions knows full well.

Rather than get "official" about Sonderbuero, please let me relate what is said about it, its relation to this story and to the history of UFOs as a whole. With this information the reader can make up his or her own mind about the subject.

It is said that in Germany during the war there was a quest to make Germany independent of outside energy sources. An organization was formed to investigate things we would now call "alternative energy". This included, among other things, the making of synthetic fuel and lubricants out of coal using a special process which was perfected by the Germans during the war. But it may have, and probably did, included other, more exotic, research encompassing into such topics as nuclear energy and possibly even "free energy" or "new energy".

A spin off of this research was said by Juergen-Ratthofer to have yielded field propulsion. Research toward this end was said to have been conducted by Sonderbuero. About this time strange things were taking to the skies in Germany. To keep a lid on publicity, the following scenario is cited by Juergen-Ratthofer to have been employed (3).

Germany was surrounded by enemies and their agents permeated much of the German war effort. The Germans needed to get control over what was accidently seen by spies. To do this they enlisted the help of an unwitting German civilian population. An attempt was consciously made by Sonderbuero to "spin" reports of these sightings as they came in from civilian sources. A sub-department was set up within Special Bureau which sent out orders, countrywide, that all sightings of unusual flying craft be reported directly to that office and not discussed or publicized.

So while a German governmental agency is doing research and testing on unconventional aircraft, at this same time the same agency is gathering reports from the citizenry on sightings of unconventional aircraft. In order to confuse and disguise real testing from the Allies or their agents in Germany, a spin could be put on those sightings describing them as something other than what they were. Of course, all this time, the German civilians are believing the point is to observe and report Allied secret spy aircraft or other Allied secret weaponry. The Allied intelligence agencies may have even bought into this ruse. Remember, this was a German operation to fool its own people and so envelope Allied intelligence gathering organizations in this deception. This was done very subtly and very cleverly.

But what evidence do we really have that this actually occurred?After all, there is no official mention on Sonderbuero. Perhaps there is an overall picture. Let us see if we can find a pattern. After cessation of hostilities the Allies, especially the Americans, seized every piece of German technology they could lay their hands on. They also seized every scientist, manager,and technician having anything to do with the German scientific community, military, or intelligence service. The hardware was analyzed and the personnel interviewed. In some cases both we retaken to America for further study.

The technology was reconstructed and further developed. In America the latest German jet technology made its appearance five years later in the Korean War. America got its hands on the V-l which was further developed into the cruise missile. America got the v-2 which was further developed into intercontinental ballistic missiles and into our space program culminating in our landing on the moon. America got the V-3, the high pressure cannon, further developed by Dr. Gerald Bull into Iraq's super cannon, which, after being pointed at Israel was the real trigger for the Gulf War. And America got at least part of the German saucer program, the outcome of which was the Silver Bug Program,the Lenticular Reentry Vehicle project recently disclosed under pressure of the Freedom Of Information Act, and the UFO activity reported at Area 51. There are probably other examples which are,as of yet, undisclosed. Many other examples of technology transfer exist but the point need not be belabored.

America received more than just technical assistance from the Germans. For example, they received the services of General Reinhard Gehlen, former intelligence chief of the German Army General Staff on the eastern front. Gehlen turned over to the Americans his entire spy apparatus, giving a then blinded America an eye into Soviet military objectives. Further, he set up and modernized our intelligence apparatus, culminating in the C.I.A.,as a means to counter the Soviet threat. This spy effort was massive but please keep it in mind as we turn our attention to something smaller and seemingly less significant.

As mentioned, in the 1950s the United States Air Force was busy developing and testing flying saucers derived from captured German technology. Of course, the Air Force wanted it to remain a secret project, after all, we were involved in a Cold War.Given this problem might the Americans have asked the question as they always did: How did the Germans do this? If they did they would have formed, as an adjunct to the secret saucer programs, a program to gather material on all civilian sightings of strange unidentified flying objects, under the cover of national security, as if an external threat existed. This agency would have then been in a position to "explain" or spin the data so as not to alarm the populace while still maintaining secrecy concerning its own projects.

As the reader may have surmised by now, this is exactly what the United States Air Force did so successfully in the form of Project Blue Book and its predecessors. The Air Force experimented on flying saucers on one hand while gathering reported sightings from civilians on the other hand, spinning and manipulating the information according to dictates of their agenda.

When viewed in this perspective, the similarity between Sonderbuero and Project Blue Book is striking. Is not the greatest evidence for the existence of Sonderbuero the American pattern of imitation which infiltrated all post-war intelligence work? The only real question is whether the Germans originated the term "swamp gas" or if this was an American embellishment.

Although not central to our discussion, one might ask why, if it was successful, why was Project Blue Book suspended? Remember that the Americans tried to further develop German ideas. In this case the solution was so imaginative and uniquely American that the Pentagon must have resounded with the reverberation of back-slapping and belly laughs at its implementation.

Remember Mark Twain's tale of Tom Sawyer whitewashing the picket fence? Instead of being compelled to an afternoon of drudgery,Tom pretended to his friends that this work was play. Not only did he enlist them to do the painting, but his friends were so eager to help paint that they paid Tom to do this work.

The United States Air Force followed this paradigm. They infiltrated an existing civilian intelligence gathering
organization researching UFOs. They did this at no cost to the United States Air Force or any other governmental intelligence service. There were no official records, and no accounting trail. And best of all those doing the work and volunteering the intelligence would pay for the privilege in the form of dues to maintain the organization. If there is any question in the reader's mind as to whether MUFON (Mutual UFO Network) has been co-opted, ask yourself this question: would the intelligence services of the United States government allow the largest civilian intelligence gathering agency in the world to operate within its purview without at least monitoring it? Of course the answer is a resounding "no". This is one reason why MUFON is allowed to remain in operation within the USA without attempts to discredit it.

Given this sophisticated government intervention, would it not be a simple matter not only to manipulate the incoming sightings data, but to spin and confuse the debate concerning the origins of UFOs, even setting the agenda for the entire inquiry? Perhaps this is the reason MUFON has taken such a negative view of terrestrially originating UFOs and of the German origin of UFOs in particular. In the early 1990s, this writer was told via telephone from his home in Texas by the head man of MUFON himself that: "We investigated that a long time ago and found nothing to it". The "that" referred to was German saucers.

As an aside, he further went on to say that the idea of a German origin would for UFOs would not even be on the table for discussion if it were not for one, Vladimir Terziski, who, "is the guy pushing it", to directly quote this individual. Mr. Terziski has formed his own ideas about German saucers which he has never been afraid to share, and, to his undying credit, he stood up and lectured on this topic to the faces of MUFON in the very temples of the alien world, UFO conferences, worldwide. Mr. Terziski, almost alone, forced these facts into those conferences and subsequently forced all those UFO magazines to deal with the subject of German flying discs. And although he never got credit for it, he also supplied the technical assistance for a world famous Japanese television producer to bring an hour of this German saucer story to Japan in prime-time. Mr. Terziski, almost single-handedly, opened up two continents to this UFO reality.

MUFON's successful existence is tied to their implicit and explicit assumptions of UFOs as alien machines. The greatest appeal the extraterrestrial hypothesis has for the government is that this hypothesis is simply not testable. MUFON does not even try to test anything. Instead, they chase sightings. They train their followers to take meaningless celestial measurements accompanying these sightings and then analyze this "data" into gibberish. MUFON then lends itself to endless rambling speculation involving increasingly more exotic alien scenarios.

It is not MUFON's rank and file membership which is to blame.The individuals I have met are honest and sincere as are 99% of all the participants in the quest to understand these mysterious flying objects. Their methods may stimulate UFO interest and UFO enthusiasts but it utterly fails to advance our quest for knowledge about these devices. This is perfectly alright with the behind the scenes government manipulators, however, since this result is their real goal. It is unknown to what extent the Americans have succeeded in improving and further developing the original German saucers. The extent to which they have succeeded in further developing Sonderbuero, however, should be apparent to all.

Sources and References

Zunneck, Karl-Heinz, 1998, page 125, Geheimtechnologien,Wunderwaffen Und Irdischen Facetten Des UFO-Phaenomens, CTT-Verlag, Suhl, Germany

Two photos taken by a barber named Ralph Ditter, in Zanesville, Ohio on November 13, 1966. Ditter was leaving home with his camera when he chanced to look back and saw the UFO over his house. He took two exposures within a short period of time of the helmet-like craft, with an apparent "canon" on the underside of the craft. Ditter did not seek publicity but put them in his shop window to stimulate business. Eventually a news service bought them and they were widely published. The object is similar to the "Heflin UFO" and is said to be an original German design with a Panzer Tank canon mounted beneath it. Such a craft at such a late date would tend to indicate that this was not a captured test craft but rather a "renegade craft" possibly from South America as late as 1966.

 

Above: Aerospace expert Stuart Nixon, executive director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), which was founded in Washington, DC, in 1956to conduct a civilian study of UFOs. Note the apparent "cannon barrel" beneath the craft.

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