The UFO Landing at Holloman Air Force Base

UFO historians often consider Eisenhower to be the last American President who actually had complete control over the UFO situation. Whether true or not, as the story goes, once Eisenhower left office and Kennedy entered the White House control of the UFO subject began to shift over to non-government entities and military contractors.

What is more certain is that Eisenhower’s rank as a five-star General made him accustomed to high level- secrets. This was clearly revealed in 1952 when Truman gave the newly elected Eisenhower the “comprehensive National Intelligence Digest prepared by the CIA” which contained, "the most important national intelligence on a worldwide basis,” Eisenhower would write in his memories a decade later that the digest "added little to my knowledge."[i]

What may go down as the most contentious part of the Eisenhower story is that Eisenhower had many rumored encounters with UFOs and aliens. Eisenhower could thus be labeled the contactee president.

The fact that there is a story about Eisenhower interacting UFOs or an alien does not make the story true. Most of the Eisenhower contact stories seem a little farfetched and may well be creations of the minds that first told them. This however does not change the fact that Eisenhower trumps all other presidents in such possibly made up stories.

Of the thirteen Presidents in power since UFOs first made their modern invasion, there are only eleven stories of Presidents actually having direct encounters with visiting aliens. Of these eleven stories, five involve Eisenhower.

Furthermore, most of the stories involving other Presidents have no real evidence supporting them, whereas many of the Eisenhower stories have multiple witnesses indicating at least a small chance that the story may actually have happened.

In addition to direct presidential alien contacts there are five stories of presidents having UFO sightings, Eisenhower is involved in one of these as well.

What is most important to this discussion is that three of the five alien encounters and one sighting by Eisenhower have a related possible nuclear connection.

The first of these extraterrestrial tales involved a sighting that Eisenhower was rumored to have been involved with just prior to becoming president.

The Eisenhower UFO Sighting

The story of Eisenhower’s UFO sighting appeared in the New York Post on June 18, 1997. It supposedly took place on the USS Roosevelt which was participating in a NATO exercise know as Operation Mainbrace.

This NATO exercise involved 80,000 men, 200 ships, and 1,000 planes. It was the largest NATO exercise held up to that time. Beside the Eisenhower story, there are many UFO sightings and photos have been documented by UFO researchers and TV documentaries that occurred during this NATO exercise, or involving the USS Roosevelt.[ii] The Eisenhower encounter was recorded as follows,

The USS FDR, Sixth fleet flagship, 1952, a crew member writes: "We were north and east of England with the NATO fleet in the North Atlantic. About 1:30 a.m., through the stormy rain and lightening, this big blue-white light appeared right off starboard bow. It came down to 100 feet of the water and just hung there as we cruised by it."

"This UFO was easy to see when the lightning flashed. It then rose straight and left. Four of us saw it. Here's the kicker! General Ike, who'd flown over by chopper with the Admiral, had just come out on the signal bridge wearing PJ's and robe, looking for coffee."

"We were sitting and making small talk when the bright light came on. We all watched it ten minutes, then just stood there staring at each other. After a while, Gen. Eisenhower said, he better go 'check this out' and left. He also told us to 'forget about it for now.'"

"Next day and ever after, nothing was ever said about it. I don't know what it was or why it was hushed, but I saw it."[iii]

What is significant about this rumored Eisenhower sighting is the less known nuclear connection. As the American nuclear stock piles grew in the late 1940s, a decision was made by military strategists to spread out the nuclear weapons. This would make it harder for the Soviets to target and track. It would also allow for forward basing of weapons so they could be moved quickly to battle fronts far from American shores. The decision was made to place nuclear weapons in other countries such as Great Britain and Germany. In addition bombs were flown in 24/7 operations on planes and carried on aircraft carriers.

The Eisenhower UFO sighting occurred on the USS Roosevelt. Just as Roswell was the first nuclear air force base to handle nuclear weapons, the USS Roosevelt was the first aircraft carrier to be armed in with nuclear weapons. This arming of the Roosevelt took place in 1950. Therefore, when the Eisenhower sighting occurred in 1952, the carrier was carrying nuclear weapons.

Eisenhower Alien Encounter Story #1 – No Date

One of the many tales of Eisenhower interacting with aliens was told on May 7, 2010, when a former State Representative from New Hampshire and State Federal Relations and Veterans Affairs committee member, Henry W. McElroy Jr., went public with the story of an encounter between Eisenhower and aliens. McElroy did not provide a date for the Eisenhower alien encounter.

In his public statement McElroy claimed to have been shown a document during his tenure referring to knowledge of a "benevolent" extraterrestrial visitation within the US and the possibility of setting up a meeting with President Eisenhower. In a video statement posted to the internet McElroy stated,

The document I saw was an official brief to President Eisenhower. To the best of my memory this brief was pervaded with a sense of hope, and it informed President Eisenhower of the continued presence of extraterrestrial beings here in the United States of America.

The brief seemed to indicate that a meeting between the President and some of these visitors could be arranged as appropriate if desired.

The tone of the brief indicated to me that there was no need for concern, since these visitors were in no way, causing any harm, or had any intentions, whatsoever, of causing any disruption then, or in the future.

While I can’t verify the times or places or that any meeting or meetings occurred directly between Eisenhower and these visitors—-because of his optimism in his farewell address in 1961, I personally believe that Eisenhower did, indeed, meet with these extraterrestrial, off world astronauts.[iv]

McElroy’s story would become one of many such encounter tales told about Eisenhower.

Eisenhower Alien Encounter Story #2 -1953

McElroy was not the only person to say that he reviewed a document that described Eisenhower meeting with aliens.

In October 2012 Gordon Duff, Senior Editor of Veterans Today (VT), went public with another Eisenhower encounter story. According to Duff, 40% of the people who work at VT are professional intelligence officers. VT also has the former heads of four national intelligence agencies.

Duff’s information came from a document that he claimed to have seen in 1981 or 1982. The document, according to Duff, was a document from the Department of Naval Intelligence (a department who many researchers believe has been the key player in the UFO cover-up from day one). The document he claimed to have read was dated August 1977 shortly after President Jimmy Carter took office.

During an October 16 interview with Coast to Coast AM host George Noory Duff made the following fascinating statement:

"In 1982 I was put on the readers group for Majestic Twelve..., I received an original copy, slightly redacted.. done off a typewriter.. dated August 23rd 1977 from the Office of Naval Intelligence. That... ummm... about 12 pages long... I had copy number 5. Done on just plain flimsys, from the... you know that manual Remington typewriter years? ... Well, I read it once... and I was working for a Government agency at the time and had a very high security clearance. It took me 18 months to be cleared for the reading group. I read the documents once and... ahhh... put them back in the envelope... twisted the string around.. (laughs) Returned to sender. Sent them back and found that I could never live knowing what was on those. And then... Years later, lo and behold, almost everything that was in those documents... was later on the plot of the television show X-Files. ... I have been told that Chris Carter was put on the reading group of Majestic Twelve. "

Duff claimed that part of this MJ-12 document involved information stating that in 1953 President Eisenhower had made a deal with hostile group of aliens,

"The document covered the period from 1947 to 1977 when they were produced. They indicated that over this period we had two distinct treaties. There have been more since, I have been told. One [treaty] in 1947, initially with President Truman. One in 1953, with President Eisenhower… The 1953 treaty with President Eisenhower was an agreement, a coercive agreement against the USA on behalf of a hostile alien power that wished to be able to kidnap a number of citizens from the United States, which means of course that they had agreements with other nations as well."

"The numbers were unusually high. (The number mentioned later is 230,000) These were not people that were going to be detained, and probed, and returned. These were people that were going to be detained and butchered. They were very clear about that!" (Empahsis mine.)

Probably because Duff’s claimed aliens were butchering people his story received almost no support by anyone in the UFO research community. His claim that there were treaties with other countries, however, is interesting in light of a letter written by the head of the Canadian flying saucer investigation Wilbert Smith. In a letter dated February 23, 1959 Smith stated,

“For your information EVERY nation of this planet has been officially informed of the existence of the space craft and their occupants from elsewhere, and as nations they must accept responsibility for any lack of action or for any official position which they may take.” (empahsis mine)[v]

The idea of many nations negotiating with the aliens is also interesting in light of a statement made by American journalist Dorothy Killgallen in February 1954 shortly after Duff claimed Eisenhower had met with the aliens. Killgallen hinted that world leaders were involved and that they were planning to gather to discuss the flying saucer situation.

"Flying saucers are regarded as of such vital importance that they will be the subject of a special hush-hush meeting of the world military heads next summer."

Eisenhower Alien Encounter Story #3 -1954

The most prominent story that Eisenhower may have met with the aliens is the 1954 Muroc story. It remains one of the most discussed stories related to the U.S. Presidents and UFOs.

The short version of the story states that there was a meeting with live aliens and Eisenhower that took place at Edwards Air Force Base (then known as Muroc field) while the President and his wife were 110 miles away on a winter holiday at Palms Springs, California in February 1954.

The official records of the President’s trip to Palm Springs are held at the Eisenhower Library in Abilene Kansas, and have been reviewed by various researchers.[vi] "We've had so many requests on that subject,” Eisenhower archivist Jim Leyerzapf stated, “that we have a person who specializes in this."

Most researchers agreed that the trip to California appears to have come up rather suddenly, and that Ike had just returned from a quail shooting vacation in Georgia less than a week before leaving for Palm Springs.

All researchers also agreed on the basic story, that being that on the evening of February 20, 1954, during a weeklong trip to Palm Springs, Eisenhower disappeared from where he was staying at the Smoke Tree Ranch compound, owned by his business friend Paul Helms. The records do not show how this disappearance became apparent to the press corps but they did figure out the president was gone. In fact, the Associated Press had already gone on the wire with the story that the President had suffered a heart attack and was dead.[vii] Minutes later they withdrew the story.

The President’s Press Secretary James Haggerty, who was at a barbeque on the other side of town, was hurried back to meet with and calm down the press. Haggerty told the press that the President had damaged a tooth while eating fried chicken at dinner and had gone to the dentist to have the problem fixed. The White House Press core accepted the explanation and the whole story disappeared when Eisenhower appeared the next morning publically at the local Community Church, despite the fact he didn’t like to go to church.[viii]

Although the press dropped their interest in the disappearance, the UFO community never dropped the story and it has become a key part of UFO lore.

Many researchers have filed reports on the rumored encounter. The first came only days after the event stating that Eisenhower had been spirited off to meet with a group of aliens at Muroc.[ix] In this account the President turned down the alien’s diplomatic offer for technology in exchange for ending the nuclear weapons program, and that shortly thereafter Eisenhower ordered absolute secrecy about anything having to do with UFOs.

The story faded from this history books until the 1980s when research was presented supporting the idea that Eisenhower may actually have gone to Muroc arose. This happened when it was discovered that the story about the President breaking a tooth may have been a cover story given to the press to cover what had really occurred.

In preparing his book the “Roswell Incident” crash researcher Bill Moore came across a source in the Eisenhower administration who lived in Arizona and who was admitting to friends that Eisenhower had actually gone to Muroc.[x]

In 1989 Moore also tracked down and did an interview with the widow of Dr. Francis A. Purcell who was named as the dentist who repaired Eisenhower’s tooth. The widow, according to Moore, “was curiously unable to recall any specifics relating to her husband's alleged involvement in the affair--not even the time of day it had occurred. Yet her memory appeared flawless when asked to relate details of her and her husband's attendance (by presidential invitation) at a steak fry the following evening, where her husband was introduced as "the dentist who had treated the president".[xi]

Other records at the Eisenhower Library also hint that the broken tooth tale was probably a cover story used by the press secretary to cover for the real story. The Eisenhower files show no thank you letter to the dentist despite the records showing thank –you letters to people who brought flowers, people who met the plane, and many other smaller things. The only thing that appeared in the appointment calendar (a record of the President’s movements written after the fact, and usually describing the President’s actions down to the minute) stating “sometime between 8:00 and 10:00pm, the President broke cap off a front tooth and went to a dentist in Palm Springs to have it fixed.”

That same day the President had left his office that compound at 8:55, had arrived at the golf course at 9:10, and started golfing at 9:40. When it came to the dental accident later in the day they couldn’t get a time closer than a two hour window.

Those who came forward to claim Ike was at Muroc and met with aliens included Gerald Light, the head of a Southern California metaphysical organization. In May 1954 he wrote a letter to Meade Layne, the then director of Borderland Sciences Research Associates. In the letter Light actually claimed to have been at Edwards where he saw Ike, the saucers and the aliens. Light wrote,

“I have just returned from Muroc [Edwards Air Force Base]. The report is true -- devastatingly true! I made the journey in company with Franklin Allen of the Hearst papers and Edwin Nourse of Brookings Institute (Truman's erstwhile financial advisor) and Bishop MacIntyre of L.A. (confidential names for the present, please).[xii]

When we were allowed to enter the restricted section (after about six hours in which we were checked on every possible item, event, incident and aspect of our personal and public lives), I had the distinct feeling that the world had come to an end with fantastic realism. For I have never seen so many human beings in a state of complete collapse and confusion, as they realized that their own world had indeed ended with such finality as to beggar description.”

The reality of the ‘other plane’ aeroforms is now and forever removed from the realms of speculation and made a rather painful part of the consciousness of every responsible scientific and political group.

During my two days' visit I saw five separate and distinct types of aircraft being studied and handled by our Air Force officials -- with the assistance and permission of the Etherians!

I have no words to express my reactions. It has finally happened. It is now a matter of history. President Eisenhower, as you may already know, was spirited over to Muroc one night during his visit to Palm Springs recently. And it is my conviction that he will ignore the terrific conflict between the various 'authorities' and go directly to the people via radio and television - if the impasse continues much longer.

From what I could gather, an official statement to the country is being prepared for delivery about the middle of May.[xiii]

Another witness to this Eisenhower contact story comes from the son of a former Navy Commander who claimed that his father had been present at the Eisenhower event. According to Charles L. Suggs, a retired Sgt from the US Marine Corps, his father Charles L. Suggs, (1909-1987) was a former Commander with the US Navy who attended the event. In a 1991 interview with a prominent UFO Suggs stated that according to the father he,

“Accompanied President Ike along with others on Feb. 20th. They met and spoke with 2 white-haired Nordics that had pale blue eyes and colorless lips. The spokesman stood a number of feet away from Ike and would not let him approach any closer.” (Emphasis mine.)

“A second nordic stood on the extended ramp of a bi-convex saucer that stood on tripod landing gear on the landing strip. According to Charlie, there were B-58 Hustlers on the field even though the first one did not fly officially till 1956. These visitors said they came from another solar system.”

“They posed detailed questions about our nuclear testing.”[xiv]

Another witness Desmond Leslie, a former Royal Air Force pilot and co-author of an early book on UFOs, learned from a USAF officer “that a disc, estimated to be 100 feet in diameter, had landed on the runway…men returning from leave were suddenly not allowed back on the base. The disc was allegedly housed under guard in Hanger 27, and Eisenhower was taken to see it.”[xv]

Then there was the testimony of Gabriel Green, a UFO researcher who actually ran for President in 1960. He also claimed to have supporting testimony for the Eisenhower alien encounter. Green claimed to have talked to a military officer who claimed to have witnessed the arrival of the craft at the base. “At the time I was engaged in firing practice, under the command of a General,” the officer told Green. “We were shooting at a number of targets when suddenly five UFOs came flying overhead. The General ordered all the batteries to fire at the craft. We did so, but our fire had no effect on them. We stopped firing, and then we saw the UFOs land at one of the base’s big hangers.”[xvi]

Author Brinsley Le Poer Trench, also had talked to another witness claiming knowledge of the event. His information came from a USAF test pilot who stated that “two of the crafts that landed at the base were cigar shaped and three were saucer shaped. An immediate security blanket was thrown on all of Muroc. The crafts were placed in a hanger, and men returning from leave were not allowed back on base.”

The Colonel claimed that he was one of six people at the meeting and that the meeting had been requested by the aliens who “looked human-like, but not exactly.”

The aliens stated that they wanted to start an “educational program” to make the population “aware of their presence.”

Eisenhower, in reply, stated that he did not think the population was ready, to which the aliens stated they would continue to make isolated contacts with people. This upset Eisenhower greatly.[xvii]

Although none of the research done by anyone can confirm the meeting of the aliens and the President, it was an interesting event if the meeting did take place and nuclear weapons were part of the discussion.

As mentioned above the rumored discussion between Eisenhower and the aliens supposedly involved the stopping of nuclear testing by the American government.

If true it happened only days before the Americans tested the biggest nuclear explosion that has ever been conducted by the American government. It was also a test that went very bad causing the greatest nuclear contamination event ever caused by a weapons test.

The test was called Castle Bravo. It was part of a series of six Operation Castle atmospheric blasts testing thermonuclear weapons small enough to be carried and dropped by aircraft – as compared to the first thermonuclear bomb test in November 1952 which was 82 tons and which Oppenheimer comically stated could only be delivered by “oxcart or ship.”

The test took place on February 28, 1954 at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. This was almost exactly a week after the reported Eisenhower alien meeting.

It involved the first test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb. Added to this test was a layered flask containing two chemicals tritium (heavy water) and lithium-6-deuteride. It was the “first real test of the ‘Teller-Ulam configuration’ intended to hold the bomb together for an extra hundred millionth of a second, and thus allowing fusion to take place within the tritium and lithium-6-deuteride.” [xviii]

The test went totally out of control, being 250% more powerful than expected and resulting in a bomb 1,000 times the power of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima. The crew in charge of the detonation had to be rescued from a nearby island twenty miles away when radiation detectors told them something serious had gone wrong and their lives were now at risk. Like giant ghosts at Halloween they covered themselves with bed sheets, with holes cut out so they could see, to protect themselves from the radioactive fallout. They ran to a nearby landing pad where helicopters from the command ship rescued them.

The test ended up causing the most significant radiological contamination accident ever caused by the United States government. ($250 million has been paid to try and clean up the mess) The original projection of the size of the test was 4-6 megatons, but the calculations were completely off. The test ended up being 15 megatons.

A total of 5,000 sq miles were contaminated and two islands had to be evacuated because the hundreds of residents were sick from the radioactive fallout. Those evacuated have never returned. There was suddenly a change in the world’s view of nuclear tests, and there was an international call for the end of atmospheric nuclear testing.

Did the aliens know this, and was the meeting a warning? We will probably never know.

1954 found similar documented alien encounters with high level officials in America, Canada and the United Kingdom. In April the Soviet Union indicated that they might also be in contact when they publicly announced that they had set up a “permanent interdepartmental commission for interplanetary communication”, headed up by leading Russian physicist and later Nobel Prize winner Pyotr Kapitsa.” [1]

1954 – Other High Level USA Extraterrestrial Contacts and the Mystery Satellites

(The interest would take on a very serious turn in 1959 when Swan taught one of two visiting CIA Intelligence officers to channel one of the commanders of one of the two spacecraft named AFFA. Robert Nisham, the officer in question, would race to the highly secret CIA – National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), where the Director Arthur Lundahl, rumored to be the man who briefed the President on UFOs, would supervise a channeling where they got a flying saucer to fly by the window.) [3]

The reason that officials may have taken Swan so seriously may have been that they had been tracking two large objects circling the Earth since the fall of 1953 just as Swan was claiming. In addition, reports had started to emerge about large objects were being spotted over Washington D.C. Then months later a Chicago radio station would try and communicate with the two satellites, and the entire CIA would go to great lengths to recover and then cover-up the audio tape that resulted from that experiment.

Major Donald Keyhoe, the head of the biggest UFO research organization at the time called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena ( NICAP), reported that huge objects were tracked by radar over Washington on May 5, 6, and 13. In June a giant UFO was again detected over Washington and Baltimore which caused officials to put the entire “east coast on full alert.”

In May, Keyhoe announced in an interview with national broadcaster Frank Edwards that the one and possibly two artificial satellites had been detected by Air Force radar at White Sands in late 1953 and that scientists were working hard to figure out what the satellites were and where they came from.[4] Keyhoe also stated that Canadian scientists had put out an alert to all sky watchers to report any unusual objects.

On August 23, things got worse for Eisenhower’s officials when the premiere aviation magazine in the country Aviation Week broke the same story in their August 23, 1954 issue. They basically confirmed Swan’s claim that there were two large objects orbiting the earth – one at 400 miles and one at 600 miles above the Earth.

Pentagon scare over the observance of two previously unobserved satellites orbiting the earth has dissipated with the identification of the objects as natural, not artificial satellites. Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, expert on extraterrestrial bodies from the University of New Mexico, headed the identification project. One satellite is orbiting about 400 miles out, while the other track is 600 miles from the earth. Pentagon thought momentarily the Russians had beaten the U.S. to space explorations.[5]

A couple days later, and then again in October 1954, the New York Times also printed an article about the two mysterious satellites. The story of the discovery was becoming public.

Wilbert Smith, who was running the Canadian investigation into UFOs, was in contact with Swan and knew that the Pentagon had tracked two large objects backing up Swan’s claims. His correspondence showed him writing letters to researchers asking them to visually search for the objects in the sky and report back to him.

Other media outlets also picked up the story of the satellites. One story published by the Washington Evening Star stated there were many more than two unknown objects in orbit around the Earth.

They referenced the work of an electrical engineer John P. Bagby who disclosed his findings in a paper he delivered at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Bagby reported that there were “more than fifty objects, some of which glowed dull red occasionally.” He calculated that the objects were orbiting at “about 475 miles from the earth…perhaps moving in an elongated elliptical orbit,” and that he had made his first observation of the objects in February 1954.[6] (The same month as Eisenhower’s rumored meeting with the aliens at Edwards)

The story of the satellites was printed by many publications but none caused more concern for Eisenhower’s White House than the story published on May 25, 1955 concerning the mystery objects.

The article called “Debate on the Satellite” was written by Steward Alsop.[7] Steward and his brother were two of the most prominent political journalists of the 1950s writing for the New York Herald Tribune, the Saturday Evening Post, and Newsweek. At one point in their career their column was the most heavily syndicated in the United States. In his article Alsop wrote,

“The possibility that the Soviets will launch a satellite is taken so seriously that a satellite detection project has been established at White Sands, New Mexico and at Mount Wilson, California. A tremendous flap was caused not long ago in the Pentagon when the project identified not one but two satellites. It turned out that both were natural satellites, never before detected.”[8]

Even though the story about the Pentagon tracking program picking up orbiting objects had already been made public, the Alsop article sent Robert Cutler, National Security Advisor to Eisenhower, into a rage. Keyhoe reported that Cutler was so angry at the publication of the article that people at the NSC were afraid to be around him. (Cutler would later become a well know name in Ufology when researchers Bill Moore and Jamie Shandera would recover a memo Cutler had written in government archives. The memo[9] dated July 14, 1954, was written just weeks after the series of large objects were tracked over Washington D.C. In the memo Cutler identified an upcoming Special Studies Project briefing to be given by the NSA and MJ-12 which were the groups controlling the UFO subject)

The Alsop article also described the rage that Cutler went into over the satellite story, but they kept his name out of the story till three weeks later. In that article they detailed the fallout that ensured from the satellite article in an article titled “Censorship Warning.”

The initial article described how the “Administration was practicing a widespread censorship, which is no less effective in slanting the news because it is insidiously indirect.”

The Alsop article reported that two close friends of Joseph Alsop had cancelled attending a party he had set up just after the satellite article appeared. Joseph was told bluntly that “their official positions (on the NSC) would be compromised if the party were to be held as planned.”

The Alsops learned that the day after the satellite article appeared, that the White House NSC meeting broke into a “prolonged outburst of righteous indignation” led by Cutler. “Here once again,” wrote the Alsops, “the American people were being told facts of the utmost national importance – but facts which the NSC wanted to cover up.”[10]

It became clear that Cutler had told the two NSC employees to cancel the party Joseph Alsop was attending. Speaking of Cutler the Alsops wrote, “he did not fear any improper disclosure (by the two employees, but he greatly feared the attack that would develop on his agency, if it became known that important subordinates of his dared to continue an old friendship with persons who dared to write about facts of highest national importance.”

What ensued next was an attack on the Alsops by the White House. In a series of four articles on censorship the brothers wrote how they had become the target of a security investigation. They accused the Eisenhower White House of tapping their phones, bugging their houses, dropping hints of arrest and prosecution and ensuring that “official acquaintances and friends are subject to the most shameful harassment.” [11]

So why was there such a negative reaction to the story of the two satellites and how could they be considered “facts of highest national importance?”

As mentioned above many of the key agencies rumored to be involved in UFOs were carefully monitoring “the odd case of the lady from Maine who, while in a hypnotic trance, had allegedly communicated with a starship.” This according to Victor Marchetti, a former assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, was once of the rumored UFO stories that he heard had ciculated at the highest levels of the CIA.[12]

The fact that Mrs. Swan was describing two large alien spacecraft orbiting the Earth at the same time the Air Force was tracking two newly discovered Earth satellites seemed to tie the two together as items of high national security importance. This would especially be true if the 1954 story of a communication between Eisenhower and visiting extraterrestrials was true. It would have meant there was communication along with the tracking of the satellite objects.

What made the 1955 Alsop article about the mysterious 1954 satellites so important is that Mrs. Swan was not the only one claiming an ET contact experience with the satellites.

In November 1954 there would be another claim about the two orbiting satellites that would drag the Air Force, the CIA, and its director into a messed up covert operation that almost cost them the UFO cover-up.

It is a story that the CIA even spent part of a 1997 study paper on UFOs telling their distorted version of the story. Not surprisingly the 1997 CIA version conveniently leaves out the fact that the story centered on the two 1954 mysterious satellites.

The CIA and the Orbiting Satellites

On the evening of November 28, 1954, at radio station WGN in Chicago, the two orbiting satellites were the main topic of conversation. The host Jim Mills, and his guest for the day UFO researcher John Otto, got an idea to try and communicate with the two satellites. The plan of action was carefully planned and kept secret until the day of the plan.

At exactly 11:15 during the radio show, Mills made an announcement that they were going to attempt to send a signal to the orbiting satellites, and get the aliens to send back a message for the radio listeners. Mills announced that in ten minutes - at 11:25 they would prompt the aliens to send their message with the words “Come in outer space.” Only 10 minutes warning were given to prevent someone in the audience from getting a truck with the proper radio equipment and broadcasting a signal.

Once they had prompted the space men to talk they would shut off the microphones in the studio for fifteen seconds. They would, however, continue to broadcast their signal to the Chicago audience. The aliens were expected to tap into the WGN transmitter, and send their signal to the radio listeners. All the radio listeners were encouraged to run and get a tape recorder so they could record the signal if it did come through.

When 11:25 arrived, Mills uttered the words “Come in outer space” and turned off the microphones. The two men had a radio in the studio so they too could hear the alien message. They sat and waited the appointed fifteen seconds but heard nothing coming over their own radio. The show ended and the two men left the studio.

Mills and Otto were therefore away from the studio when the calls began to come in. There were four calls in total coming from people who claimed that they had heard the alien message. They were from varying places around the radio listening audience. Later CIA documents revealed that five Chicago ham radio operators also claimed to have taped these wired coded messages from outer space. (One listener in Wisconsin stated they too had made a tape recording of the message but it was never recovered.)

One of the calls claiming a message came from two older sisters who lived north of the studio. The two sisters, Marie and Mildred Maier, phoned in and were upset about the joke the station had just played on the listeners. They stated that it was not funny to be playing jingle bells pretending it was a message from space.

They were told that jingle bells had not been played, and arrangements were made to visit with the ladies. John Otto met with the women to get their story, and was able to make a copy of the tape they had made. The tape was then played a number of times over the air. It apparently did sound like jingle bells with some sort of strange telex noise in the background.

In early 1955 the Maier sisters reported on their UFO experiences, along with the story of the message from space in the Journal of Space Flight. The Office of Scientific Investigation at the CIA saw the article and quickly contacted the Scientific Contact Branch to recover the tape.

Two men from the Chicago Contact Division, George O. Forrest and Dewalt Walker, met with the sisters to recover the tape. Because the CIA was on the record claiming that they had no involvement in the UFO phenomena, beyond their short involvement with the 1953 Robertson Panel, they could not tell the Maier sisters they were from the CIA.

What they did to overcome this problem was to dress up as Air Force officers to make the Maier sisters believe they would be dealing with the Air Force. They did this as the Air Force was publicly known to be working on UFOs.

Their first attempt to recover the tape from the two women was unsuccessful. The women were impressed that the government was interested in their tape, but they would not part with it. In the second visit the two intelligence officers were able to get a copy of the tape. They forwarded a copy to CIA headquarters.

Agent Forrest reported that he felt the case was not a hoax. “In all seriousness,” he wrote to CIA headquarters. “We don’t think that the sisters themselves are trying to fake anything.” He then wrote that he hoped the Chicago office would be informed if there should be an answer.

The story rested until 1957, when NICAP researcher Leon Davidson, talked to the Maier sisters and decided that he would like to talk to the Air Force officer who had recovered the tape. Furthermore, he was very interested to see the analysis that the Air Force had done on the tape.

Davidson wrote to the address that Dewalt had given the sisters, and received a reply from Walker stating that he had forwarded the tape to the proper authorities and had no further information.

Not satisfied and now assuming Walker might actually be CIA he wrote to the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles demanding the results of the tape analysis, and the real identity of Dewalt.

Dulles did is what the CIA often does in such cases. Firstly, he reported Davidson to the FBI as a possible subversive, and secondly he created a new lie.

The Air Force was contacted by the chief of the Chicago Contact Division and told to write a letter to Davidson falsely telling him that Dewalt was in fact an Air Force officer and that the tape had shown only identifiable Morse code from a known U.S. -licensed radio station.

Next J. Arnold Shaw, assistant to Allen Dulles, wrote Davidson on May 8, 1957 with a carefully worded statement deflecting involvement away from the CIA to the Air Force. “A survey of the intelligence community has resulted in the determination that the tape in question was analyzed by another agency of the government,” wrote Shaw. “We believe you will receive another communication shortly from the Air force which will answer your query as to the nature of the recording.”

Armed with this new information Davidson again contacted the CIA demanding to know the identity of the Morse code operator and the name of the agency that had done the analysis claimed by the Air Force. As the CIA had claimed the tape was not analyzed they were in a situation where they didn’t know what to do.

CIA officers under cover contacted Davidson and promised to try and get him the name of the Morse operator and the identification of the transmitter if possible. This, of course, was just a stall tactic.

When this did not pacify Davidson, the CIA again dressed up an intelligence officer in an Air Force uniform who met with Davidson in person in New York City, and this officer tried to talk Walker out of pursuing the case any longer. He told Davidson that the Air Force could not “disclose who was doing what.” Davidson understandably would not accept the argument and pressed on. The officer told Davidson he would see what he could do.

With the situation going from bad to worse the CIA chose to “keep lying till you get it right.” When confronted with a letter from Congressman Joseph Karth related to Davidson’s claims that he was being lied to by the CIA, the CIA chose to lie outright to the Congressman. Karth was told that other than a brief involvement with the Robertson panel, the “CIA has not participated in any flying saucer activities and has referred all correspondence to the Air Force.” As to Mr. Davidson’s charges the CIA wrote to the congressman;

Mr. Davidson’s belief that this agency is involved in the “flying saucer furor” and is using this as a tool in psychological warfare is entirely unfounded. His indication that CIA is misguiding persons in leading them to believe in Flying Saucers is also entirely unfounded.

Next the CIA again tasked an agent to again impersonate an Air Force officer and phone Davidson to tell him that a thorough check showed that the signal had been of U.S. (not outer space) origin, and the tape and notes had been destroyed to conserve space.

Knowing now that he was getting the runaround by the CIA, Davidson warned the agent that “he and his agency, whichever it was, were acting like Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamster Union in destroying records which might indict them.”

This threat by Davidson caused panic inside the CIA. People dealing with Davidson were warned that he had already been given too much information, and too many names. No one was allowed to answer anything from Davidson unless the letter was registered. They were reminded that they were under no legal obligation to answer questions from the public.

Strangely, this new strategy of simply ignoring Davidson actually worked. Eventually, Davidson seemed to give up on the case, and the tape from outer space was forgotten until the CIA told their distorted version of the story in a 1997 UFO report initiated by then CIA Director James Woolsey in 1993 who requested “another review of all Agency files on UFOs.” The report was titled A Die-Hard Issue: CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90” and it was published in a CIA publication called “Studies in Intelligence” .[13]

Note: This author has spent over two years trying to recover the documents used to tell the satellite story in “A Die-Hard Issue: CIA’s Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90."

• The first FOIA gained a couple documents from the numerous footnotes in the article
• An appeal produced a number of new documents not referenced in the paper.
• Searches on the CIA website searching "Davidson" and "radio code" turned up others that had not been released to me.
• I then filed for the entire CIA file on the Maier sisters which brought an end to CIA cooperation that I had received to that point.
• The CIA now demanded that I pay search fees as a few search would be required, and because they had concluded that the material would not add to understanding about how the government operated.
• An appeal was filed which was ruled against by the CIA.

1954 – A High Level British Contact

In 1954 the United Kingdom also had a high level government contact with extraterrestrials. Unlike the Eisenhower contact the government individual in the UK went on the record to tell the whole story.

Like in the Eisenhower contact nuclear weapons were a key component in the UK extraterrestrial story. The UK had just gotten into the nuclear race with their first atomic test in October 1952 and then two more nuclear tests in October 1953. In 1954 they had their visit from an extraterrestrial.

The reported UK alien contact was made with Air Marshall Sir Peter Horsley who had been Deputy Commander-in-Chief, RAF Strike Command. In this key position Horsley would have had a key control role related to the nuclear weapons held by the British. At the time of the alien contact he was in the employ of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, as equerry.

Part of Horsley’s job was to receive UFO reports at the main operations center at the Department of Defense. He reported that gave some of these reports to the Prince Philip who had developed an interest in the subject.

It was late in his life that Horsley related that his involvement with UFOs involved much more than reports. He told researchers about what he believed to be a 1954 direct alien encounter. He recounted the experience in his autobiography Sounds from Another Room.

The meeting was set up by a mysterious General Martin who told Horsley he believed “the aliens were here to warn us of the perils of nuclear war.” The General told him that a Mr. Janus had a “message of the utmost importance” that needed to be discussed with Horsley in person.

When Horsley arrived at the appointed meeting spot General Martin was not there but there was a Mrs. Markham at the apartment who welcomed Horsley and introduced him to a Mr. Janus.

Janus asked Horsley what he knew about UFOs and after many questions Horsley asked Janus what his interest was. “I would like to meet the Duke of Edinburgh,” came the reply.

As Horsley began to tell Janus that this would not be easy he became convinced that the man seated across from him was able to read his mind which disturbed him.

Asked why he wanted to meet with the Prince, Janus replied that the Prince “is a man of great vision…who believes strongly in the proper relationship between man and nature which will prove of great importance in future galactic harmony.”[14]

Janus went on to tell Horsley that mankind was “now striving to break his earthly bonds and travel to the moon and the planets beyond…the earth is going through a Dark Age at the moment where material possessions count more than a Man’s soul…”

Janus spoke of the “dreadful specter of (mankind) blowing up his world” which was the other thing that really disturbed Horsley. In conversations with Tim Good Horsley recalled that this extraordinary man “knew all Britain’s top-secret nuclear secrets,” and “by the end of the meeting, I was quit disturbed, really.”[15]

Horsley prepared a verbatim report of the meeting and presented it to Buckingham Palace. Prince Philip’s private secretary thought it was a joke, but the prince had an open mind about the event. The fact that Janus knew all Britain’s nuclear secrets made the Palace consider the situation a security risk and Horsley was sent back to talk to Janus again. When he arrived at the flat where the meeting had been the flat was abandoned, which really disturbed Horsley. Horsley never saw General Martin, Mrs. Markham, or Janus again. It led Horsley to conclude the man he had met with was an alien.

Although Horsley recorded the incident in his autobiography, the official file of the event remains classified and unavailable.

1954 – High Level Canadian Extraterrestrial Contacts

In 1954 the Canadians had their own encounter with aliens who had made contact with Wilbert Smith who was running the Canadian flying saucer program. Smith was, according to his wife, also in direct contact with Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent.

An important consideration in the Canadian story is that Smith was a contactee who claimed to be in contact with aliens named AFFA, PONNAR, and TYLA. These were the same aliens that Francis Swan in Maine claimed contact with.

These aliens carried messages against the continued building and testing of nuclear weapons. In answer to a question why the flying saucers were here Smith stated, “I think that these people from elsewhere are concerned with our playing with atomic energy, and about our plans for space travel and interplanetary exploration and conquest. I am sure that they do not hold us in very high esteem, and are worried about what we might do if we ever got loose in space armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.”[16]

AFFA stated that the nuclear tests were creating areas of reduced binding, which were causing airplane crashes from flying through the areas. Smith actually filed a report with the government on these areas of reduced binding. TYLA, on the other hand stated that part of his job was as a “dustman.” It was his job to fly around and clean up the mess created by open air nuclear testing.

A significant difference between the 1954 Eisenhower encounter and the 1954 Canadian encounters is that the Canadian government actually admitted that their incidents had occurred.

The first Canadian alien contact came on August 8, 1954. Weeks earlier Smith had been down to visit Mrs. Swan and according to the FBI document filed on the meeting Mrs. Swan was arranging for AFFA to fly over the flying saucer observatory outside the nation’s capitol that Smith had built as part of the official government flying saucer investigation known as Project Magnet.

The flyover was planned for August 1^st but for some reason it did not occur until the 8^th. The alarms went as the gravimeter showed a large and unexplainable deflection on the graph paper. Smith and his staff raced out to see what had set of the gravimeter. It was overcast and the object was not visible. Smith however, spelled out to the press that the object did not have the signature of any known object.

The Canadian government was now on record having successfully arranged for an extraterrestrial to fly over the nation’s capitol. It was written up in all the major Canadian newspapers.

Two days later the government shut down Project Magnet stating “no definite conclusion had been reached.” Smith was allowed to continue to use the equipment, but there was no be no expense to the government, and Smith could no longer make statements on behalf of the government.

That was the well known extraterrestrial encounter. The less know encounter was much more dramatic and involved the Canadian government actually trying to land an alien at a Top Secret Canadian base in 1954. Surprisingly, the initial announcement of the attempted landing came not from some researcher leak, but from the Canadian government itself.

The year was 1967, and it was the 100^th anniversary of Canada as a country. Many cities and towns built special buildings and tourist attraction to celebrate the centennial. In St. Paul, Alberta, their idea was to build a UFO landing base. When the day came for it to be opened, none other than the Canadian Minister of Defense showed up to cut the ribbon.

During his speech at the opening Defense Minister Paul Hellyer would tell a story that would go down as one of the best UFO stories ever. Through a defense department official (identified by Hellyer as the Department expert on UFOs) Hellyer told a story to the people gathered for the UFO landing pad opening that would turn out to be pretty accurate.

In the Canadian government version of the story a Top Secret Project had been set up, in which UFOs would be allowed to land at the Defense Research Board experimental Station at Suffield, Alberta. The base is the Canadian equivalent to Area-51. Here in a one thousand mile restricted tract of land the Canadian carried out chemical weapon tests and all other forms of secret things. The base was completely isolated and like Area-51 had a restricted no fly zone over it. As it was on flat ground there was no worry of people getting up in top the mountains to look down at what they were doing.

There was according to the official government story, as told by Minister Hellyer, a special committee attached to a Top Secret UFO project. This was a revelation, as Smith’s Flying Saucer Project Magnet was always seen as the official top government program, but was only classified at the “secret’ level. It appeared that the committee referred to by Hellyer had to be independent and superior to Magnet.

The actual identity of the committee will probably always remain as mystery, as the Canadian government claimed the committee records were destroyed in 1957.

Then, despite the 1967 announcement of the attempt to land an alien at Suffield, even the story itself disappeared. Yurko Bandarchuk, a Canadian researcher, was told in 1979, “we have no record of any such project and… from the information I have, we never had one.”

The Canadian government version of the story as related by Hellyer was as follows.

“Several groups became convinced that some unknown beings were trying to make contact with the Earth. One group made a strong representation to the committee . . .because there had been attempts made by Canadian and U.S. Air forces planes to shoot down the UFOs the flying saucers were reluctant to land.”

“It was argued if there was ever to be any contact, the hazards had to be removed. The UFOs had to be provided with a safe place. Accordingly, in an effort to give the ‘believers’ a chance to demonstrate the existence of the flying saucers trying to make contact with the earth, the defense Research Board was designated as a landing area. The step brought no results . . . insofar as the committee was concerned no evidence had been produced to prove their existence.”

The story was printed in many newspapers across the country in July 1967. The revelation brought almost no reaction from the UFO community. Not until the late 1970s did people start to chase down the story.

I picked up on the story and began to put the story in front of Smith inner circle members as well as writing to Paul Hellyer. Unknown to me was the fact that Arthur Bray, the researcher who was in possession of the Smith files at the time, was also writing Hellyer asking him for a full explanation of what had occurred.

Of the many people that I put the story to, only Mrs. Smith knew the story fully and was prepared to talk about what had really happened.

During my 1978 interview of Mrs. Smith I showed her the Winnipeg Free Press article telling of the statements that had been made by Minister Paul Hellyer at the UFO base opening in St. Paul in 1967. I asked Mrs. Smith if Wilbert had been involved.

She read the article over carefully and then said, “Yes, Wilbert was involved.”

In her version of the story this is what happened. Smith had always wanted a chance to convince the government that the aliens existed, and he believed strongly that the government should talk to the aliens face-to-face to learn all the elements beyond the simple reality of the aliens, such as where they are from and what they are doing here.

Smith believed that if the government would stop shooting at the objects he might be able to get AFFA to land for a meeting. As described above he had already exhibited that he could get an object to fly over his observatory.

The arrangement to land at the Suffield base initiated by Smith who was negotiating the landing with what Mrs. Smith described as “the government.” The three agencies representing the government, according to Mrs. Smith were the R.C.M.P., the Defense Department, and the Prime Minister. This may have been the Top Secret committee referred to in Hellyer’s speech.

In contacts that were made through Mrs. Swan, AFFA would land at Suffield provided that there was no attempt to shoot him down. This request for protection by AFFA is actually mentioned in the August 1954 FBI memo, where AFFA is promising to fly near the flying saucer observatory and make a visible appearance.

According to Mrs. Smith, Wilbert Smith put this demand to the government or committee, and the committee agreed no one would shoot AFFA’s ship down. Up to this point both sides were telling the same story, and there are documents to prove these events did occur.

Following this AFFA, through Mrs. Swan, demanded that once he had landed and talked to whoever was there to meet him, he would be allowed to take off without any interference. According to Mrs. Smith the R.C.M.P. and Defense Department agreed to this, but when Smith approached what was described to me as the “government” a cabinet meeting was held to discuss AFFA’s demand. When the meeting was over the “government” could not give a 100% guarantee that AFFA would be allowed to take off once he had landed at Suffield. Smith immediately called off the planned landing. That is the story Mrs. Smith told.

I placed many requests to the R.C.M.P. and the Defense Department requesting information or documents on the Top Secret UFO committee. All requests came back that they had no information. I requested a ministerial inquiry from parliamentary representative Lloyd Axworthy. Axworthy never did spell out what actions he had taken to force action, but stated to me on two occasions, “I can’t help you.”

That ended the 1954 alien encounters in Canada. The government story was true. Nothing landed at the base. They just left out the part of the story as to how the alien was to know what square mile out of the 3.8 million square miles of the country he was to land in.

Last Updated on Sunday, 25 November 2012 20:41

SOURCE: http://www.presidentialufo.com/dwight-d-eisenhower/473-eisenhower-and-his-alien-contacts-part-2