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by A.J.S. Rayl
(Vol. 16, No. 7, April 1994,
pp. 48-59)
from
ThinkAboutIt Website
Contents
Introduction
In 1969,
Project Blue Book
-- the 16-year U.S. Air Force investigation
of UFOs -- came to an end, and so did the government’s interest in
extraterrestrial flying discs. Or so the American public has been
told. In recent years, numerous individuals and documents from
various agencies have emerged from behind the veil of government
secrecy to tell a different story. Their spin: that while the
government officially abandoned all interest in UFOs, a secret
military underground was hot on the trail of suspicious radar blips,
saucers, and even the aliens themselves.
What follows are the stories of three
individuals--two of whom come with impressive military credentials;
they say they have glimpsed what seems like evidence of a
decades-old cover-up cloaked in the guise of national security. The
third interviewee, a propulsion-system engineer, claims he was hired
by an independent military contractor to study the innards of an
extraterrestrial spacecraft being researched and tested on the
Nellis Air Range in central Nevada.
Omni cannot endorse the veracity of the stories told below. In fact,
we must emphasize that extraordinary tales like these require
extraordinary levels of proof certainly not furnished in our pages,
nor, we feel, anywhere else.
That said, we’ll get to the fun part.
In the pages that follow, you’ll find strange tales of alien
intrigue and UFO woe. Decide for yourself: Are these the ravings of
demented hoaxers and madmen or revelations of truth?
Their stories,
delivered in dossier format, have been edited from interviews
conducted by author A. J. S. Rayl during the past year.
Go Back
NATO
Meets E.T.
Name:
Robert O. Dean, retired Army
command sergeant major
Claim:
Back in the Sixties, NATO issued
a classified report stating that UFOs were real, of
extraterrestrial origin, and had visited the earth. This
extraordinary report was said to come out of NATO’s command
center, the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, Europe
(SHAPE), located then just outside of Paris, France.
Background:
Dean, a highly decorated
veteran, served on the front lines in both Korea and
Vietnam. In 1963, while assigned to the Supreme Headquarters
Operations Center (SHOC), SHAPE’s war room, headed up by
then-supreme allied commander of Europe, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, Dean claims he was able to read the detailed
12-inch-thick NATO report on UFOs.
The Story:
"SHAPE was one of those choice
assignments. You had to have a spotless record and pass
security background checks. I applied on a whim and got it.
I was very proud and pleased. At SHAPE, I was put through
more security checks, given a Cosmic Top Secret (yes, this
is a real term) clearance, the highest NATO has, and
assigned to the Supreme Headquarters Operations Center,
known as SHOC, the NATO war room. In those days, the
activity would run hot and cold and much of it would depend
on how the Soviets wanted to play it.
The most intriguing
thing to me was that we were continually having a problem
with large, metallic, circular objects that would appear
over central Europe; these were reported as visual phenomena
by our pilots and appeared on radar as well. Some flew in
formation, and most of the time we spotted them coming out
of the Soviet Union, over East Germany, West Germany,
France, and then they would often circle somewhere over the
English Channel and head north, disappearing from NATO radar
over the Norwegian Sea. These objects were very large,
moving very fast, at very high altitudes--higher than we
could reach at the time--and they seemed obviously under
intelligent control.
"I was told this had been going on for some time and that in
February 1961 there had been quite a scare. Fifty of these
objects were spotted on radar and headed in formation from
the Soviet Union toward Europe, flying at about 100,000
feet. The Soviets had closed all borders. Everybody went to
red alert. All hell broke loose. We really thought `The War’
had started. We scrambled. We knew the Russians were
scrambling. It was the largest number of these objects that
had been seen. Fortunately--and only by the grace of God--we
didn’t start bombing and neither did the Russians. In nine
minutes, they were gone.
"I was told that then-Deputy Supreme Allied Commander of
Europe, Sir Thomas Pike, had been repeatedly requesting
information from London and Washington about these objects,
but nothing would ever come. We found out later that the
Columbine-Topaz spy ring in Paris was intercepting
everything and forwarding it to the KGB, which often got
intelligence information even before we did. So Pike
decided, I was told, to develop an in-house study to
determine whether these objects were a military threat.
"In the meantime, the UFO matter literally brought about the
establishment of direct communication between the East and
West in 1962, which I have always found interesting and
ironic. We had pretty well determined by that time that
these were not Russian craft, and the Russians had
determined they were not ours. So, we came to an
understanding, and a direct telephone line was opened
between SHOC and the Warsaw Pact Headquarters Command.
Of
course, a setup was always a possibility, so we had backup
ways of checking out whether the Russians were being
truthful. But since we were both armed to the teeth and
World War III was just ticking away, it was a logical step
in the right direction. That idea developed into the hotline
between the president of the United States and the soviet
premier, following the Cuban Missile Crisis.
"Well, by the time I arrived in 1963, everybody had been
talking about the study, and I had heard the rumors, seen
the blips on radar, witnessed the commotions, and some of us
occasionally even talked about the possibilities. But
nothing really prepared me for what I started to read in the
early morning hours one night in January 1964.
"It was about 2:00 a.m. and a relatively quiet night when
the SHOC controller on duty went into the vault and came out
with this huge document. `Take a look at this,’ he said. The
title was simply Assessment: An Evaluation of a Possible
Military Threat to Allied Forces in Europe. It was numbered,
#3, stamped Cosmic Top Secret, had eight inches worth of
appendices, dozens of photographs, and had been signed into
the vault by German colonel Heinz Berger, SHOC’s head of
security. I quickly learned that it was based on two and a
half years of research, was funded by NATO money, and that
only 15 copies were published--in English, German, and
French. Each one was numbered. All were classified and
ordered to be kept under lock and key.
"Every time I got the chance, from then until I left, I
would read a section or two in it. It was the most
intriguing document I’d ever read. It was put together by
military representatives of every NATO nation and also
included contributions from some of the greatest scientific
minds. These objects were violating all of our known laws of
physics, and the study team had gone to Cambridge, Oxford,
the Sorbonne, MIT, and other major universities for input on
chemistry, physics, atmospheric physics, biology, history,
psychology, and even theology, all of which were separate
appendices.
"I read about theories on Einstein’s sought-after
unified-field theory, the high radiation at various landing
sites, and UFO reports that dated back to the Roman era and
up to our own F105 pilots’ sightings and encounters, and on
and on. I had always been a skeptic, but this report,
well... it concluded that this stuff was not science fiction.
"I read about contact encounters. One incident that had just
happened in 1963 involved a landing on a Danish farm.
According to the report, the farmer went aboard with the two
little beings and two more human-looking men who spoke to
him in Danish. The report included parts of his
interrogation by government authorities and their
conclusions that he was telling the truth. In another
incident, according to the reports, a craft landed on an
Italian airfield and offered to take an Italian sergeant for
a ride. He wet his pants--that’s what it said--and was so
scared, he didn’t go.
"The appendix that really got to me was titled `Autopsies.’
I saw pictures of a 30-meter disc that had crashed in Timmensdorfer, Germany, near the Baltic Sea in 1961. The
British Army, according to the report, got there first and
put up a perimeter. The craft had landed in very soft, loamy
soil near the Russian border and so hadn’t destructed, but
one-third of it was buried in. We and the Russians, who also
quickly showed up, had both tracked it.
"Inside, there were 12 small bodies, all dead. There were
pictures of the bodies, which looked like the beings known
as the `grays,’ being laid out and then put on stretchers
and loaded into jeeps, and autopsy photos, too. Some of the
little grays appeared to not be a reproductive-capable
species. The autopsy guys concluded, according to the
report, that it looked as if they had been cut out of a
cookie cutter--clones with no alimentary tract. They did not
ingest or process food as we know it, nor did it appear that
they had any system for elimination.
"The craft itself was cut up like a pie into six pieces, put
on lowboys and hauled off. Scuttlebutt was that it was given
to the Americans and flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force
base in Ohio. I looked at these pictures and couldn’t
believe it. My skin got cold and I thought, My God. I had
never really believed we were all alone in the universe, but
this was hard to swallow.
"The major conclusions in the NATO report blew me away.
There were five:
-
The planet and human
race had been the subject of a detailed survey of
some kind by several different extraterrestrial
civilizations, four of which they had identified
visually. One race looked almost indistinguishable
from us. Another resembled humans in height,
stature, and structure, but with a very gray, pasty
skin tone. The third race is now popularly known as
the grays, and the fourth was described as
reptilian, with vertical pupils and lizardlike skin.
-
These alien visitations
had been going on for a very long time, at least 200
years--perhaps longer.
-
The extraterrestrials
did not appear hostile since if that were their
intent they would have already demonstrated their
malevolence.
-
UFO appearances and
quick disappearances as well as the flybys were
demonstrations conducted on purpose to show us some
of their capabilities.
-
A process or program of
some sort seemed to be underway since flybys
progressed to landings and eventually contact.
"I wanted so badly to copy this
thing. I did take a photograph of the cover sheet, which
wasn’t in and of itself classified. But I didn’t want to
wind up in Fort Leavenworth. So instead I would go to the
bathroom and take notes--surreptitiously, very carefully.
"I have been through an awful lot in my life, but I’ve never
been able to just walk away from that report. I know that
I’m taking a chance by violating my oaths. But this is the
most important issue of our times--so damn important that I
can’t think of anything more important, and the public has
been deceived and completely kept in the dark about all of
this for all these years. It’s the biggest scientific,
political scandal ever. Besides, what have I got to lose?
I’m 64 years old now. Are they going to bump me off? I have
told the truth. My integrity and credibility stand. When is
our government going to tell the truth?"
Update:
After 27 years of military
service, Dean retired and began another 14-year career with
the Pima County Sheriff’s Department Emergency Services in
Tucson, Arizona. In 1990, he gave a lecture at the
University of Arizona in which he talked about UFOs. The
talk garnered local media coverage. Afterward, he was denied
a promotion at the Sheriff’s Department, because, he
alleged, he believed in UFOs.
Dean filed suit and won an
out-of-court settlement in March 1992. Now retired, Dean has
become a member of several UFO organizations and has begun
giving occasional lectures. He is working through "any and
all legitimate channels" to uncover a copy of the NATO
document and to gather witnesses for an open Congressional
hearing on the subject of UFOs.
Official Response:
"Our list of classified
documents generated by SHAPE at that time does not include
any with titles similar to that cited by Mr. Dean," says
Lt.
Col. Rainer Otte, German Air Force, deputy chief, media
section of the public-information office at SHAPE. "Files on
military personnel are in all circumstances kept under
national control. Information on the security clearance that
Mr. Dean held may--if ever--only be released by U.S.
authorities."
The Critics’ Corner:
"This is a fascinating story,
but fantastic claims like these need more than one man’s
testimony to be credible," says Jerome Clark of the Center
for UFO Studies. "Unless independent verification comes
forth, this remains only an intriguing anecdote, not unlike
many others that have circulated since the early UFO era."
Go Back
Project Galileo
Name:
Bob Lazar, independent contract
scientist and businessman
Claim:
To have worked as a
propulsion-system engineer in late 1988 and early 1989 on one of
nine extraterrestrial spacecraft being researched and tested on
the Nellis Air Range in central Nevada.
Background:
From 1982 to 1984, Lazar claims he
worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in the
Meson Physics lab with a Q-level security clearance. In 1985,
while on vacation in Nevada, he wound up buying into a legal
Reno brothel; the investment proved so profitable that he didn’t
have to return to full-time employment for a while.
He moved to
Nevada in 1986. In 1988, he wanted to get back into scientific
work and was hired, he says, to work on the top-secret Project
Galileo. Lazar passed a lie-detector test in 1989, arranged by
George Knapp, then an anchorman for KLAS-TV, the CBS affiliate
in Las Vegas, Nevada, for a special locally aired series, UFOs: The Best Evidence.
The Story:
"In 1988, I decided to reenter
the scientific community and sent resumes to various people.
Finally, I interviewed with a placement firm to work for the
Department of Naval Intelligence in a civilian capacity, and
in the fall of 1988, I was hired on an on-call basis to work
on a project involving advanced propulsion systems. At that
point, that’s all I knew.
"Not long after, I was flown along with several others out
to
Area 51 on the Nellis
Air Range. There, we were put on a bus with blacked-out
windows and driven about 15 miles south to the Papoose dry
lake bed, bordered by the Papoose Mountains, where there was
an installation they called `S4.’
"I was introduced to my supervisor and a co-worker and then
given a stack of briefings on various projects, including
Project Galileo, which was devoted to the study of nine
disc-shaped extraterrestrial craft that were somehow
acquired by the U.S. government.
"I was assigned back engineering tasks on the reactor and
gravity-propulsion system of one of the discs--essentially
to help figure out what made it work. I don’t know whether
it was a crash retrieval, although I doubt it, because the
disc didn’t appear damaged in any way. In the briefing
reports, there were pictures of several discs along with
some of the information they had already obtained from back
engineering research.
"I was stunned and exhilarated at the same time. But there
were well-armed guards everywhere, and this place wasn’t
exactly the kind of environment where you could just start
asking any and every question you had. Security, in fact,
was oppressive. You were escorted everywhere, even the
bathroom. And if your I.D. badge was just the slightest bit
out of place, you would be tackled by a guard and held with
a gun to your head until your supervisor arrived. And the
guards lived for that.
"At times, the whole thing seemed just surreal. There was a
poster of the disc I was working on, which I dubbed the
Sport Model, on several walls. It read, They’re here.
"I dealt with only the power sources and propulsion systems
on one of the discs, and I did enter that one disc on
several occasions. The disc was approximately 15 feet tall
and about 52 feet in diameter. It had the appearance of
brushed stainless steel or brushed aluminum. I didn’t run a
test on it, so I don’t know if it was metal, but I did run
my hands down the
side of it getting in, and it felt cold, like metal, and it
looked like metal. It had no physical seams, no welds or
bolts or rivets, and it looked as if it were injection
molded.
"Inside, there were tiny little seats, much too small to
comfortably handle an averaged-sized human. I bumped my head
on the ends of the craft, so I concluded that the ceiling
curved down to below five feet, 11 inches inside. There was
not a right angle cut anywhere in the craft. Everything had
a smooth curve to it.
"The reactor, which produced antimatter and then reacted it
with matter in an annihilation reaction, was only about 18
inches in diameter and 12 inches tall and was located in the
center of the disc. It operated like a tiny ballet, where
everything that happened relied on the effect before it. The
way it accelerated protons inside of it, the way the heat
was converted to electricity, was totally smooth without any
wasted heat or latent energy. It was phenomenal, approaching
a 100-percent dynamic efficiency. Now that seems impossible
when you consider the laws of thermodynamics. All I can say
is
that this technology is well beyond anything that we now
know with our twentieth- century knowledge.
"The reactor is fueled with an element that is not found
here on Earth. Part of my contribution to the program was to
find out where this element plugged into the periodic chart.
Well, it didn’t plug in anywhere, so we placed it at an
atomic number of 115. It has been theorized for some time
that elements around 113, 114, and 115 may become stable and nonradioactive, and this is apparently what we were seeing.
Element 115 is a stable element, but one with some
interesting properties. It can be used inside the reactor as
a fuel, but also as the source of an energy field accessed
and amplified by the craft’s gravity amplifiers. In other
words, the craft was both fueled and propelled by virtue of
element 115.
"There was a storage of silver-dollar-sized discs of element
115 from which triangular wedges were cut and put into the
reactor. It was a copper-orange color and extremely heavy.
While it was not radioactive, we assumed it was a toxic
material and consequently handled it as such.
"In all the discs at S4, there were three gravity amplifiers
positioned in a triad at the base of the craft. These were
the propulsion devices. Essentially, what they did was
amplify gravity waves out of phase with those of the earth.
The craft operated in two modes--omicron and delta, which
indicated how many gravity amplifiers were in use. In the
omicron configuration, only one amplifier was used; the
other two were swung out of the way and tucked inside the
disc. In omicron mode, the crafts can essentially rise and
hover but do little else. To leave the atmosphere, however,
all three gravity amplifiers have to be powered up and
focused on the desired location. Finally, the crafts do not
travel in a linear mode.
Rather, we determined that the discs produced their own
gravitational fields in order to distort time and space and
essentially pull their destinations to them.
"One afternoon, my colleagues and I walked out onto the dry
lake bed. The disc on which we had been working, the Sport
Model, had already been moved out of the hangar and was
beginning to lift off. Except for a slight hissing, it made
no noise. It lifted to about 30 feet off the ground. The
hissing stopped, and it just hung silently in the air,
moving to the left, then
right. It was absolutely amazing.
"The way information is compartmentalized, that’s all the
hands-on information and experience I was allowed to have
access to, though we were given the chance on occasion and
only for short periods of time to read briefing reports that
detailed other aspects of this project. The reports I read
that dealt with power and propulsion systems were accurate,
and I proved that to myself by working on the system. Still,
I draw a hard line between what I know to be true and what I
read in the other briefing reports.
"With that understanding, I did read reports about the
origin of this disc. According to one of the briefings, it
came from the Zeta Reticuli star system. Now obviously I
didn’t fly in a craft or go to that star system, so I don’t
really know if it came from there. I didn’t speak to any
aliens or see any, so I don’t know if they exist or not.
That report also said that contact
was made at a certain date; however, all the dates were in
code. Also, according to the report, these beings told our
officials that they had been coming here for 10,000 years,
that humans are the product of externally corrected
evolution, and that they were integral to the accelerated
evolution of man.
"My tolerance for the intensive security rapidly diminished.
Because of the 24-hour telephone surveillance, they found
out I was having marital problems and told me the situation
had made me a candidate for `emotional instability.’ They
then took my security clearance and told me I could reapply
in six months.
"Well, I knew the test schedule, and I couldn’t resist, so
one night I decided to show some friends from a distance
what I had been working on. We all caravaned out into the
desert where we watched a test flight. We got away it with
it that time, so we started coming back again and again.
"Anyway, the third time we got caught by the
Wackenhut
Security guards out on the Bureau of Land Management land
that surrounds the range. They turned me in. Needless to
say, officials at Nellis weren’t happy. I went through a
debriefing and was threatened at that time. I was scared and
felt that I needed to break away from this before I
couldn’t.
"Not only did I believe this technology should be given to
the greater scientific community, but I also believed my
only protection was to get the story out. A friend convinced
me to talk to George Knapp at KLAS-TV. I figured if they
killed me, then it would simply prove that what I was saying
was true.
"There are many scientists who theorize that there simply
cannot be extraterrestrial discs here, that aliens could not
possibly have come here specifically, because the distance
traveled is too great and the energy required too awesome,
and that there’s no relatively quick way to go that distance
even at the speed of light. What I reported is what I
experienced,
though in some respects I regret going public. If I had it
to do over again, I might be more inclined to stay on as one
of the boys."
Update:
In 1990, after Lazar says he was
released from Project Galileo, he accepted a freelance job
setting up a database and surveillance system for an illegal
Las Vegas brothel. That gig eventually garnered him six
felony counts, including aiding and abetting a prostitute,
running a house of prostitution, and living off the earnings
of a prostitute. The charges were quickly dropped to a
single felony count of pandering. The one good thing that
came out of the resulting trial, Lazar says, is that he’s
not being followed anymore--at least not to his knowledge.
"I guess they figured the pandering conviction discredited
me," he comments.
Lazar currently earns a living from his two small companies,
an independent contracting firm that repairs nuclear
devices, and a photo lab. He also
builds and races jetcars. And, every year since 1984, on the
weekend before July 4, he has staged Desert Blast, which he
says is the "the largest illegal fireworks show in the
West." This annual pyrotechnic extravaganza features huge
fireworks and assorted gas bombs made by Lazar and friends
as well as jetcar demonstrations and a little semiautomatic
weapons venting. Lazar recently sold his movie rights and is
working on a new home video.
Official Response:
"The Air Force comment is that
there is no comment on anything that goes on at the Nellis
Range," says Air Force Master Sgt. J. C. Marcom of Public
Affairs. Meanwhile, according to Technical Sergeant
Henderson of Public Affairs, "The Air Force has no record
that Lazar ever worked at Nellis Air Force Base, though we
have compiled an extensive list of inquiries as to his
status."
The Critics’ Corner:
"We’ve pretty well determined
that Lazar did work at Los Alamos, but it’s been impossible
to verify exactly what he did," says Mark Rodeghier,
scientific director of the Center for UFO Studies. "As for
element 115, physicists admit that such an element is
theoretically possible, but we don’t know how to manufacture
it or where to get it.
So, Lazar’s claim to have worked with
this element is not necessarily insane, but it’s completely
unverifiable. Finally, he seems to know enough to have
really worked at Area 51 or Dreamland where secret aircraft
are tested, but his story remains a murky mystery. The
bottom line: It’s impossible to verify. So far, we have not
found anyone to corroborate the essentials of what Lazar
says."
Go Back
Baffled at
Bentwaters
Name:
Col. Charles I. Halt, U. S. Air
Force, retired
Claim:
In late December 1980, while
serving as deputy base commander at Bentwaters Air Base in
southern England, Halt witnessed and investigated several
anomalous objects in the skies over the Rendelsham Forest,
which separates the American installation from its twin
Royal Air Force base, Woodbridge. The sightings occurred on
two separate nights during the week after Christmas. Two
weeks later, Halt sent a report about the strange encounters
to the British Ministry of Defense.
Background:
Career Air Force officer, Halt
served in Vietnam and on various bases before arriving at Bentwaters in 1980. He was promoted to base commander in
1984. Halt later served as base commander at Kunsan Air
Base, Korea, and as director of the inspections directorate
for the Department of Defense inspector general. He retired
in 1991. Halt is the first USAF officer since
Project Blue
Book ended to have filed a memo on unidentified flying
objects and gone public with the details.
The Story:
"Just after Christmas, about
5:30 a.m., December 26, 1980, I walked into police
headquarters and the desk sergeant started to laugh. He said
a couple of the guys had been out chasing UFOs. Nothing,
however, was in the blotter. I told him to put it in.
"When our base commander came in, we both chuckled. Neither
of us believed in UFOs, but we did decide to look into it.
Before we had the chance, two nights later, the duty flight
commander for the security police unit rushed in to a
belated Christmas party white as a sheet. `The UFO is back,’
he said.
"I was asked to investigate. I changed into a utility
uniform, then headed out in a jeep to the edge of the
forest. About a dozen of our men were already there. Our
light-alls (large gas-powered lights) wouldn’t work, and
there was so much static and constant interference on our
radios that we had to set up a relay. There was increasing
commotion. I was determined to show them this was nonsense.
"I took half a dozen of the men and headed into the woods on
foot to a clearing where the initial incident had supposedly
taken place. We found three distinct indentations in the
ground equidistant apart and pressed well into the sandy
soil. They were supposedly caused by the object seen two
nights before, but I didn’t see anything sitting there that
night. Neither
did anybody else there.
"Inside the triangular area formed by the indentations, one
of the men got slightly higher readings on the Geiger
counter than he did outside. He photographed the area, and I
took a soil sample. Meanwhile, I recorded this activity on
my microcassette recorder.
"We knew the Orford Ness lighthouse beacon beamed from the
southeast. All of a sudden, directly to the east, we saw an
unusual red, sunlike light--oval shaped, glowing, with a
black center--10 to 15 feet off the ground, moving through
the trees. Beyond the clearing was a barbed-wire fence,
farmer’s field, house, and barn. The animals were making a
lot of noise.
"We ran toward the light up to the fence. It shot over the
field and then moved in a 20- to 30-degree horizontal arc.
Strangely, it appeared to be dripping what looked like
molten steel out of a crucible, as if gravity were somehow
pulling it down. Suddenly, it exploded--not a loud bang,
just booompf--and broke into five white objects that
scattered in the sky. Everything except our radios seemed to
return to normal.
"We went to the end of the farmer’s property to get a
different perspective. In the north, maybe 20 degrees off
the horizon, we saw three white objects--elliptical, like a
quarter moon but a little larger--with blue, green, and red
lights on them, making sharp, angular movements. The objects
eventually turned from elliptical to round.
"I called the command post, asked them to call Eastern
Radar, responsible for air defense of that sector. Twice
they reported that they didn’t see anything.
"Suddenly, from the south, a different glowing object moved
toward us at a high rate of speed, came within several
hundred feet, and then stopped. A pencillike beam, six to
eight inches in diameter, shot from this thing right down by
our feet. Seconds later, the object rose and disappeared.
"The objects in the north were still dancing in the sky.
After an hour or so, I finally made the call to go in. We
left those things out there.
"The film turned out to be fogged; nothing came out. But a
staff sergeant later made plaster castings of the
indentations, and I had the soil sample.
"Around New Year’s Eve, I took statements and interviewed
the men who had taken part in the initial incident. The
reports were nearly identical.
"Basically, they reported this: In the early morning hours
of December 26, one of the airmen drove to the back gate at
Woodbridge on a routine security check. He saw lights in the
forest, specifically a red light, and thought maybe an
airplane had crashed. He radioed a report, which was called
into the tower, but the tower reported nobody was flying.
"Eventually, a group headed out to the forest. They reported
strange noises--animals, movement, like we heard two nights
later.
"As they approached the clearing, they reported seeing a
large yellowish-white light with a blinking red light on the
upper center portion and a steady blue light emanating from
underneath. The tower again reported nothing on radar.
"A few of the men moved to within 20 or 30 feet. Each said
the same thing independently--a triangular-shaped metallic
object, about nine feet across the base, six feet high,
appeared to be sitting on a tripod. They split up, walked
around the craft. One of the men apparently tried to get on
the craft, but, they said, it levitated up.
"All three of the guys hit the ground as the craft moved
quickly in a zigzagging manner through the woods toward the
field, hitting some trees on the way. They got up and
approached again, but the object rose up, and then it
disappeared at great speed.
"Finally, on January 13, 1981, I wrote a memo to the British
Ministry of Defense. Despite my efforts, to my knowledge, no
one from any intelligence or government agency ever came on
base to investigate.
"I have never sought the limelight, nor have I hidden. I
stand to receive no financial benefit from this interview
but consented because it’s time the truth came out. I don’t
know what those objects were. I don’t know anybody who does.
But something as yet unexplained happened out there."
Update:
In 1983, a copy of Halt’s memo
to the British MOD was released through the Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA). Shortly thereafter, a copy of the
18-minute audiotape of the investigation Halt conducted was
given to a British UFOlogist by, Halt says, another Air
Force officer. Both have made the rounds within the UFO
community.
As a result, Halt says he has been "harassed" by UFOlogists
and fanatics. While half a dozen men assisted Halt’s
investigation and dozens of others were near the scene, only
a handful of witnesses have come forward. At least one of
them, Halt says, is spreading disinformation; consequently,
media coverage has been inaccurate at best. For instance, he
says, "The stories about holographiclike aliens emerging
from their craft are pure fiction."
Official Response:
"The Air Force stopped
investigating UFOs in 1969 when Project Blue Book was
completed," says Air Force spokesman Maj. Dave Thurston,
based in Washington, DC.
The Critics’ Corner:
"The UFO you hear described on
the audiotape was almost certainly the lighthouse beacon in
my opinion, because the peak interval between their
descriptions of it getting brighter, then dimmer, is the
time of rotation of the beacon, which was about ten miles
away," says UFO skeptic Philip Klass.
"Even though they said they saw
numerous lights in the night sky, one of every three UFOs
reported turns out to be a bright celestial body."
"Bentwaters is a case of magical thinking--a situation where
a bunch of people got excited about different things they
correlated in their mind,"
says UFO investigator James McGaha,
technical consultant to the Committee for the Scientific
Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal and a retired Air
Force pilot, who traveled to England, surveyed the area, and
interviewed various people.
"Consider these facts: On the
night of December 25 to 26, at 9:10 p.m., Russian satellite
Cosmos 746 reentered the atmosphere over England and
appeared as a bright object. At 2:50 a.m., a fireball
entered the atmosphere over Woodbridge. At 4:11 a.m., a
British police car with a blue strobe light on top and other
lights attached to the undercarriage responded to a
telephone report and was driving on the dirt roads through
the forest.
"Halt’s memo reports that on the second night, they saw two
objects in the north, one in the south. On that night, three
of the brightest stars were visible -- Vega and Deneb in the
north, Sirius in the south. And clearly, the strange red
light mentioned on the audio tape is the Orford Ness
Lighthouse beacon.
Beyond that, the morning after the first
night, British officers identified the indentations as
rabbit diggings. The Geiger counter readings were of
background radiation. Nothing appeared on radar that night,
either, and no one in either base tower reported anything
unusual. Furthermore, no civilians reported seeing or
hearing anything."
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