Former astronaut Edgar Mitchell (left) claims that "since the Roswell incident in 1947 … there was a cover-up… That was a valid incident and that there have been … active investigation programme, reverse engineering programme and cover-up associated with that since that time." (1) Certainly Arnold’s sightings and the Roswell incident were not ‘one offs’ as further reports of UFO sightings continued unabated. In fact a US Air Force report of 30th July of that year made reference to 18 reported sightings of flying discs, although there was no further reference to other physical evidence (2). Clearly such sightings could not be simply logged, they would have to be investigated to identify their nature and establish if they posed a security threat the to United States. Inevitably this task would fall within the jurisdiction of the US Intelligence Community. Under the oversight of the Director of Central Intelligence, this intelligence community spans the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, as well as the perhaps lesser known military intelligence agencies and other governmental departments. Yet each of the major agencies has systematically denied having any interest or ongoing involvement in the UFO phenomenon.

The National Security Agency was established by President Harry Truman, on 4^th November 1952. With an annual reported budget of over $30billion per annum, the ‘NSA’ has the task of intercepting foreign government communications and breaking the codes that exist to protect such transmissions, in addition to diplomatic, commercial traffic, domestic telephone calls and fax messages.

With its headquarters at Fort George G Meade in Maryland, the agency employs tens of thousands of personnel and co-ordinates activities throughout the globe.

Not surprisingly the NSA has been considered a storehouse of UFO information. It was contacted on 20^th February 1976 by researcher Robert Todd and asked to reveal its UFO materials. Todd received the following reply:

"Please be advised that NSA does not have any interest in UFOs in any manner."

The Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) stance on UFOs was one of apparent similar disinterest. Its position on the phenomena was summarised in a letter it wrote to researcher Bill Spaulding in March 1976:

"In order that you may be aware of the true facts concerning the involvement of the CIA in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon, let me give you the following brief history. Late in 1952 the National Security Council levied upon the CIA the requirement to determine if the existence of UFOs would create a danger to the security of the United States. The Office of Scientific Intelligence established the Intelligence Advisory Committee to study the matter. That committee made the recommendations [in] the Robertson Panel Report. At no time prior to the formation of the Robertson Panel and subsequent to this issuance of the panel’s report [January 1953], has the CIA engaged in the study of UFO phenomena. The Robertson Panel Report is the summation of the Agency’s interest and involvement in this matter."

The FBI held a similar position, advising a correspondent in 1973 that "The investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects is not and never has been a matter that is within the investigative jurisdiction of the FBI." (70).

So if none of the ‘big three’ agencies held any interest, perhaps another agency outside the intelligence community was involved in the investigation of the phenomena.

The obvious choice would be NASA. Created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on 1^st October 1958 to "co-ordinate national space activities" and to "co-ordinate the administration of the civilian space program" the agency stated its position in the UFO phenomenon in a 1978 NASA information sheet:

"NASA is the focal point for answering public enquiries to the White House relating to UFOs. NASA is not engaged in a research program involving these phenomena, nor is any other government agency. Reports of unidentified flying objects entering United States airspace are of interest to the military as a regular part of defence surveillance. Beyond that, the US Airforce no longer investigates reports of UFO sightings."

The official line then appears to be that the major US intelligence agencies were and are not involved in the UFO phenomenon. Except they were - and the 1974 Freedom of Information Act proved it. This Act allowed members of the public the right to acquire documents from government files provided they could identify their subject and source with reasonable accuracy.

Armed with the powers of this Act, researchers went back to the National Security Agency (the agency that claimed that it "does not have any interest in UFOs in any manner") requesting that it divulge its UFO information. The NSA declined the release of any documents on the grounds of national security, however by doing so appeared to inadvertently confirm that they did actually hold UFO data. Numerous approaches were then made to get this information declassified, however NSA repeatedly refused, issuing an affidavit explaining why ‘UFO’ papers could not be released – however even this explanation was classified.

Eventually, and after repeated Court hearings, the NSA was forced to release some of their documents. However of the 582 lines of type so released, 412 had been blacked out by a censor and a further eleven pages of text had disappeared altogether. The reason that the NSA gave for this, however, has legitimacy.

Essentially the NSA argued that their work involved intercepting foreign communications. Regardless of the content of the information, disclosure of the records could identify communications that had been successfully intercepted, thus giving foreign intelligence information on which to base countermeasures against the NSA’s intelligence gathering techniques.

However, it is clear that the NSA had attempted to mislead, as had the CIA, whose position that "The Robertson Panel’s Report is the summation of the Agency’s interest and involvement in this matter" was severely doubted by researchers.

And these researchers proved to be right. Largely due to the efforts of Todd Zechel together with Bill Spaulding, the recipient of the CIA reply detailed above, almost 1000 pages of CIA UFO-related documents were released into the public domain in 1978 under the Freedom Of Information Act. (However, it is believed that a further 10,000 documents are still withheld at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia.)

The FBI also proved to be untruthful in their statement that "the investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects is not and never has been a matter that is within the jurisdiction of the FBI." Just three years later, the agency was forced through the courts to release 1,100 pages of UFO-related documentation dating back to the Second World War. You can almost hear an embarrassed official in court muttering "Oh, you mean those UFO documents."

Yet, although each of the major agencies had covered-up their involvement in the investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the documents they were eventually forced to release appear to show that none of these agencies actually knew what was going on, nor could they account for the range and multitude of sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena.

They also show that each major agency didn’t even know what each other was up to.

For example, on 10^th July 1947 a FBI Memorandum from E. G. Fitch to D. M. Ladd, entitled ‘Flying Discs’ stated "General Schulgen [deputy Chief of Air Intelligence in the Pentagon] assured Mr --------- that there are no War Department or Navy department research projects presently being conducted which could in any way be tied up with the flying disks."

This memo ended with a recommendation from its recipient that the FBI not get involved with investigations into ‘flying disks’, however FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, held a different view. In a hand-written note on the bottom of the letter he wrote (above) "I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the SW case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination."

Within weeks this certainty became less convincing. A further memo to Ladd (left) dated 8^th August 1947 stated "Certainly the Bureau has no way to determine what experiments the Army and Navy were conducting and whether such [flying saucer reports] might be arising out of experiments being conducted by them." Equally unreassuring is that this memo was a reply to a request by the US War Department for the FBI "to conduct investigation to determine the origin of flying discs" (3). They didn’t know what was going on either.

Further evidence that each agency did not know what the other was up to was exemplified in another FBI memorandum dated eleven days later on 19^th August 1947. This memo read "Special Agent … of the Liaison Section … expressed the possibility that flying discs were, in fact, a very highly classified experiment of the Army or Navy. Mr … was very much surprised when Colonel … not only agreed that this was a possibility, but confidentially stated that it his personal opinion that such was a possibility … he based his assumption on the following: He pointed out that when flying objects were reported seen over Sweden, the "high brass" of the War Department exerted tremendous pressure on the Air Forces Intelligence to conduct research and collect information in an effort to identify these sightings. Colonel … stated that, in contrast to this, we have reported sightings of unknown objects over the United States, and the "high brass" appeared to be totally unconcerned. He indicated that this led him to believe that they knew enough about these objects to express no concern." (4)

However, the following month the Air Force appeared to deny that their activities were behind the UFO sightings as a letter from General Schulgen, deputy Chief of Air Intelligence in the Pentagon, to the Director of the FBI dated 5^th September confirms: "In answer to a verbal request of your Mr S. W. Reynolds, a complete survey of research activities discloses that the Army Air Forces has no project with the characteristics similar to those which have been associated with Flying Discs."

However, the issue was being taken very seriously and certainly not being dismissed as nonsense as later became official policy as recommended by the Robertson Panel, of which more later.

Indeed later that month, a letter from Lieutenant General Nathan F. Twinning (left), Commander of Air Material Command, Wright Field (later to become Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the location of the alleged Roswell debris), Ohio dated 23^rd September 1947 stated:

"[T]he considered opinion of this Command concerning the so-called ‘Flying Discs’" is that "the phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious," and that it was possible "that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely."

He recommended that "a detailed study" be carried out, noting "due consideration must be given" to the possibility flying saucers were "the product of some high security project" project, the chance "some foreign nation has a form of propulsion, possibly nuclear, which is outside our domestic knowledge," and "the lack of physical evidence in the shape of crash recovered exhibits which would undeniably prove the existence of these objects."

This letter has been taken as proof that no crash took place at Roswell or elsewhere, however the letter could simply be a straight forward lie. While sitting on a crashed UFO, the Air Force had no idea what to do with it, how it worked, nor what threat it potentially posed. To keep quiet and recommend a detailed study seemed the best course: allay public concern and attempt to find other crashed disks that might throw light on how they worked.

This was certainly the view of researcher William Moore. He noted that if a disk or disks had crashed, the Twinning would have needed to set up a project to collate all available information. As Timothy Good notes, "it would hardly have been appropriate to let those on the other end of the data collection line know why such data was needed (5)." Moore adds, "It might have been best to maintain that there was no crashed disc to allay suspicion." (6)

Good goes on to note that there is evidence that the Air Intelligence Requirements Division under Brigadier General Schulgen, (the recipient of Twinning’s letter), was aware of crashed disk material and that this information could only have come from Twinning’s office. This evidence takes the form of an AIRD ‘Draft of Collection’ memorandum dated 30^th October 1947 which detailed much of Twinning’s Air Material Command data, including the comment "While there remains a possibility of Russian manufacture, based on the perspective thinking and actual accomplishments of the Germans, it is the considered opinion of some elements that the object may in fact represent an interplanetary craft of some kind." (7)

Good further notes that a former US military scientific and technological intelligence specialist studied Schulgen’s intelligence collection tasking order and concluded "that it could not have been written in the language it contains unless a drafter (a Lieutenant Colonel Garrett of Schulgen’s staff) had already inspected a captured flying saucer." (8)

By this time President Truman had acted swiftly to reorganise the US governmental agencies. Within weeks of Roswell (26^th July 1947), although not necessarily because of it, he had signed the Armed Forces Unification Act, creating a Department of the Air Force, coequal with Army and Navy and creating a National Military Establishment under the Secretary of Defence.

By the end of the year the CIA had been formed out of the Office of Strategic Services and the Central Intelligence Group. (Its first Director Vice Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter later confirmed the existence of extraterrestrial UFOs in a signed statement to Congress.)

The UFO puzzle continued to develop and as a result ‘Project SIGN’ was initiated on 23^rd January 1948 to collect, collate and evaluate all information relating to UFO sightings (9). SIGN was based at the Technical Intelligence Division of the Air Material Command (AMC) at Wright Field, again, the home of the alleged Roswell wreckage.

Two months later (17^th March) Colonel Howard M McCoy Chief of T-2, Air Material Command’s Intelligence Division, (home of Project SIGN) advised the new Air Force Scientific Advisory Board that "This can’t be laughed off … We are running down every report. I can’t even tell you how much we would give to have one of those crash in an area so we could recover whatever they are (10)." Again the phenomena was being taken seriously, but this letter further suggests that no crash saucer existed unless it was disinformation or any wreckage was held by another agency.

On 7^th October 1948 McCoy asked the CIA for help in "learning whatever they [UFOs] are." In a letter of that date he wrote, "To date, no concrete evidence as to the exact identity of any of the reported objects has been received. Similarly the origin of the so-called ‘flying discs’ remains obscure (11)." Then, later that month, Project SIGN, headed by Captain Robert Sneider, prepared its famous ‘Estimate of the Situation’ (classified ‘Top Secret’) in which it concluded that the flying discs were of extraterrestrial origin. However Air Force Chief of Staff Hoyt S Vandenberg sent the report back without his approval on the grounds that it lacked solid proof and he ordered it destroyed (12).

On 3^rd November 1948 General Cabell, Director of Air Force Intelligence at the Pentagon, wrote to Air Material Command: "The conclusion appears inescapable that some type of flying object has been observed. Identification and the origin of these objects is not discernible to this Headquarters. It is imperative, therefore, that efforts to determine whether these objects are of domestic or foreign origin must be increased until conclusive evidence is obtained." He requested that a new report be compiled discarding the rejected conclusions from the original ‘Estimate of the Situation’. A day later the USAF announced the formation of the Rand Corp., (successor to Project RAND), to assemble most advanced scientific, technical, industrial and military knowledge available and bring it to bear on major Air Force decisions.

McCoy wrote back to General Cabell on 8^th November; "Although explanation of many of the incidents can be obtained from the investigation described above, there remains a certain number of reports for which no reasonable everyday explanation is available. So far, no physical evidence of the existence of the unidentified sightings has been obtained … The possibility that the reported objects are vehicles from another planet has not been ignored. However, tangible evidence to support conclusions about such a possibility are [sic] completely lacking…" The letter also contains the paragraph (10c) "Although it is obvious that some types of flying objects have been sighted, the exact nature of those objects cannot be established until physical evidence, such as that which would result from a crash, has been obtained."

Cabell then advised the US Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal (below), on 30^th November that "we must accept that some type of flying objects have [sic] been observed, although their identification and origin are not discernible."

This view was confirmed on 10^th December by a study prepared by Air Force Intelligence with the concurrence of the Office of Naval Intelligence which stated that UFO "identification and origin are not discernible," but strongly suggests the possibility that if they are of foreign origin; possibly Soviet developments of German designs (13).

In February of the following year, Project SIGN issued its final report. It had initially stated that it considered that the objects might be Soviet in origin, however finally concluded that almost all reported sightings stemmed from either mass hysteria, hallucination, hoax or misidentification of know objects. Despite these conclusions, or more likely knowing that these public findings were inaccurate, the report recommended continued military intelligence control over the investigation of all sightings, and did not actually rule out the extraterrestrial hypothesis (14).

This conclusion, however, did not appear to reflect the views of the American President, who on 4^th April 1950 stated publicly "I can assure you the flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on Earth." Nor was it the real view of the American authorities, for on 21^st November 1950 Canadian Senior Radio Engineer Wilbert Smith advised his government that he had made enquiries through Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who had advised him that not only did flying saucers exist, but the matter was the most highly classified subject in the US with Dr. Vannevar Bush (left) leading the US enquiries.

The CIA were watching all this activity and became alarmed at a wave of sightings over the United States in 1952. It reacted by forming a special study group within the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) and the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) to consider the situation (16).

It appeared a two-pronged tactic was emerging; public denial and behind the scenes investigation. In 1952 the US Air Force set up the public ‘Project Blue Book’ to investigate unexplained aerial sightings and later than year, during 14^th-15^th August, senior officials of the CIA were briefed on the subject of UFOs by the Air Force. During this briefing they were advised that "no debris or material evidence has ever been recovered following an unexplained sighting (17)."

However President Truman continued to be concerned and on 4^th November 1952 the US National Security Agency (NSA) came into existence with the task of intercepting foreign government communications. The following month, on 2^nd December, a CIA memorandum from Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) to the Director of Central Intelligence, Walter Bedell Smith, (right) stated "Recent reports reaching CIA indicated that further action was desirable and another briefing by the cognisant A-2 and ATIC personnel was held on 25 November … At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention … Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and travelling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defence installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles."

Shortly after this memorandum, the CIA proposed to the National Security Council that UFOs should be given the status of ‘priority project’ and the CIA assembled, with the US Air Force, a group of top level scientists who come to be known as the Robertson Panel (after its chairman) to publicly be seen to consider the matter.

The Panel held twelve hours of meetings, during which time it was shown film clips of UFOs, case histories of sightings prepared by the ATIC and intelligence reports relating to the then Soviet Union’s interest in US sightings. The Panel also reviewed numerous charts depicting frequency and geographical location of alleged sightings.