Clifford E. Stone
February 16, 1990
THE UFO RECOVERY OPERATIONS
On 2 July 1947, a crash of a UFO in the Roswell, New Mexico area brought home to the American Intelligence Community and the world an undeniable fact. That fact was that the . earth was being visited by an intelligence outside the earth. The big questions now facing the American Intelligence Community were where do the flying saucers come from, what is their purpose on earth, and how should this discovery be handled? To compound matters, the American Press picked up on the story that the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) had in its possession a “Flying Saucer” and ran that story on 8 July 1947, nation wide.
What the people at Roswell Army Air Field could not have known at the time was that Kirtland Army Air Field also had a “Flying Saucer” in its possession at the same time. However, secrecy had been maintained on the object recovered by Kirtland.
On 3 July 1947, elements from Kirtland Army Air Field, White Sands, and Ft. Bliss recovered a crashed saucer from the San Augustin Flats area of New Mexico. This object was tracked on radar and the military knew its location. Washington was notified of the crashed saucer and Major General Twining was immediately sent to Kirtland to take charge of the r ocove ry operations. Dr. Vannevar Bush was also immediately dispatched to Kirtland to head up the scientific team that was to do a study of the find.
The decision was made to keep all information concerning the recovery of the crashed saucer “Top Secret” by MG Twining and Dr. Vannevar Bush. This decision was upheld by the 303 Group or 40 Committee. However, the people at RAAF were not aware of the top secret decision and MG Twining was not aware of the second flying saucer crash recovered by RAAF until after the story broke in the national media on 8 July 1947.
The biggest problem now facing the Intelligence Community was how to effectively dismiss the Roswell Incident to the press. To accomplish this task, Major General Twining, chief of the Army Air Force’s Material Command, telephoned General Ramey, Commander of the Eighth Air Force, and demanded that his office come up with an effective cover story for the press.
General Ramey called a meeting of his intelligence staff and they came up with the effective cover story of stating
the object was nothing more than a weather balloon. General Ramey then telephoned the Commander at RAAF and informed him that RAAF was not to make any further statements concerning the recovered object, the debris was to be flown to Wright Field with a stop at Carswell Army Air Field, and that all future statements concerning the debris would be made by his (General Ramey’s) office. It should be noted here that the debris was never flown to Wright Field after its stop over at Carswell. The debris was transferred to a waiting C-54 and flown to Kirtland so that it too could be studied by the scientific team already at Kirtland.
One of General Ramey’s officers who was on his intelligence staff expressed concern that if all the news media did not “buy” the balloon cover story, it might be desirable to have some outside agency involved so as not to give the appearance that the military was attempting to cover anything up. General Ramey agreed with this accessment.
The intelligence officer from General Ramey’s staff requested and received the assistance of the FBI through the FBI’s Cincinnati Field Office. The teletype message sent by the agent in charge from the Cincinnati Field Office to FBI Headquarters in Washington, D.C. clearly indicates that neither General Ramey’s Office nor the people at Wright Field believed the balloon story. The teletype read in part, “(censored) further advised that the object found resembles a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector, but that telephonic conversation between their office (Eighth Air Force) and Wright Field had not borne out this belief.”
Once the FBI had assisted in insuring the acceptance of the balloon cover story, they were no longer given additional information concerning this incident. After all, it was the intend of those who knew the full story to keep it within as small a group as possible.
From that day on the information concerning the Roswell Incident and similar cases to follow, would be classified Top Secret, compartmented, and placed under a strict-need-to-know basis.
General Twining now knew, as did others at the top of the American Intelligence Community, that Flying Saucers were something real, under intelligent control, and that they did not originate on earth. The next logical step would be to orchestrate an operation for the recovery of any other crashed saucers or unknown debris that might fall to earth, as well as information on sightings of valuable military intelligence interest. It would also be necessary to set up a domestic public relations unit to quell public interest in the phenomena.
The domestic public relations unit was an easy task for the
Air Force. It has been known by such project names as Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. Its missions was to explain away as many of the UFO sightings as possible that were reported to the Air Force by the public, military sightings that became public knowledge through the media and to reassure the public that there was nothing to fear because flying saucers did not exist. Since these projects were in fact public relations, they were, for the most part, made available to the public and the media. This was not to be the case with the recovery project(s).
The recovery project, for the most part, was given to Air Force Intelligence. However, every branch of the American Intelligence Community was to become involved with the recovery project to insure timely information. The receipt of timely information was important to insure that recovery teams could be sent to any place in the world, recover the the object or debris, and to do so without drawing any attention to what was going on.
The 4602d Air Intelligence Service Squadron (AISS) was given responsibility for the recovery operations. The 4602d AISS had three missions as part of its participation in the recovery operations. Those missions were (1) Unidentified Flying Objects (not to be confused with the Project Blue Book mission), (2) Project Moon Dust, and (3) Operation Blue Fly.
The 4602d AISS was responsible for the collection of UFO reports within the United States and those sightings in foreign countries made by military personnel. They collected only those cases considered to be of great technical intelligence interest. Also, the Department of State assisted in these cases of great technical intelligence interest as we shall see later in this report.
Project Moon Dust was a specialized aspect of the over-all material exploitation program of the United States Air Force. The mission of Project Moon Dust was to locate, recover, and deliver descended foreign space vehicles, objects of unknown origin, and debris of such items.
Operation Blue Fly was established to facilitate expeditious delivery to the Foreign Technology Division (FTD), and other locations, of Moon Dust or other items (including UFO’s) of great technical intelligence interest.
These three programs were eventually turned over to the 7602d Air Intelligence Group where they remain to this day.
When questioned about these three programs, the Air Force replied that the only UFO program they were aware of was Project Blue Book which ended its operations on December 17, 1969, that the Air Force terminated Project Moon Dust
in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s, and that the Air Force has no knowledge of an Operation Blue Fly ever existing even when confronted with the evidence of the existence of this operation under their control. However, the Air Force can not explain why documents released under the Freedom of Information Act going into the 1980’s making reference to Moon Dust and referring to objects of unknown origin were still being sent to the 7602d Air Intelligence Group.
A Department of State document released under the Freedom of Information Act had this to say about Moon Dust. “The designator ‘MOONDUST’ is used in cases involving the examination of non-US space objects or objects of unknown origin.” The document further stated, “Based on the information provided by the post, the Department of State in conjunction with other interested agencies will determine subsequent action required.”
Once the term Moon Dust was made known to the ufology community the Defense Intelligence Agency considered their Moon Dust material classified and refused to release it even on appeal. The Department of State started to refer to a message number on teletype Moon Dust reports as opposed to the term Moon Dust. Later the Department of State would change the message number to the term “initiative” thereby they could state that all these reports were unsolicited and submitted on the “initiative” of the people assigned to the post making the report. After all, this tactic did seem to work for the CIA.
The reader of this report should keep in mind that UFO’s have not gone away. They are still with us. Also, the Department of State, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and the various military intelligence agencies still require their people in posts around the world to continue to report UFO sightings as routine procedure as these reports present a potential source of great technical intelligence interest to the US Government. The US Government still maintains thousands of UFO Reports that remain classified in the interest of national security, while maintaining that UFO’s do not present a threat to the national security of the United States.
Based on my own investigation of UFO’s, I am certain that UFO’s are real, under intelligent control, and do not originate on this earth. I am further certain that the United States Government is a party to an ongoing cover-up of UFO information and not telling the American public the truth about what it knows concerning UFO’s. After all, if UFO’s are not something real why require transmission of UFO reports as a potential source of great technical intelligence interest to the United States Government?
It makes me wonder if the CIA really believes its own Credo. The last paragraph of the CIA Credo contains this
quote, “And Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall
make you free.”
February 16, 1990
SUPPORTING GO