Similarly, the late Brigadier General Arthur E. Exon — who held the position of commanding officer at Wright-Patterson — confirmed that alien bodies, and the remains of their ship, were secretly transferred to the base after their recovery in Lincoln County, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. If anyone should know, it would surely be the base’s commanding officer, right?
Wright-Patterson
As Stringfield’s research into crashed UFOs and Hangar 18 continued, he secured the testimony of further sources who maintained that a secret, off-limits hangar or vault existed somewhere at Wright-Patterson, where the prized alien evidence could be found if one only knew where to look. One such source was a retired major who advised Stringfield — on the condition that his true identity never be revealed to anyone — that in 1952 he had attended a Top Secret briefing at Wright-Patterson on the UFO issue, after which he was given access to a hidden, underground chamber at the base where a number of extraterrestrial corpses were cryogenically preserved. The bodies, Stringfield’s Deep Throat told him, were gray-skinned, approximately 4 feet in height, and had large heads.
There was an even more amazing (many might say outrageous) story to come. And if Stringfield wasn’t the victim of some bizarre practical joke, cruel prank, or officially orchestrated leg-pull to try and demolish the credibility of his quickly expanding dossier of data, it’s a tale that takes the saga of Hangar 18 to a completely different level of cosmic controversy. If the story is true, it’s not just dead aliens that are held at Wright-Patterson; live ones are running (or shuffling) around too!
It was a weekend in 1965 when Stringfield’s informant, dubbed only “R.M.,” chose to visit the National Museum of the United States Air Force — formerly the United States Air Force Museum — located on the grounds of Wright-Patterson. While his wife was busy studying a captured Nazi V-2 rocket, R.M. wandered off, soon became lost amid the maze of corridors, and finally found himself confronted by a pair of doors adorned with two, large, ominous words: Off Limits. Faced with such a sign, I suspect very few of us would be able to resist the temptation to take a peek at what might be on the other side.
Indeed, the sign did not deter R.M. in the slightest, and he tentatively pushed the doors open. On the other side was a room containing a small, large-eyed, heavy-browed creature, clearly unlike any terrestrial life-form, that, in a somewhat comical fashion, shuffled towards R.M. and pointed one of its fingers directly at him. Unsurprisingly, all R.M. could do was stare, utterly dumbstruck, at the alien entity. Suddenly, alarms began going off all throughout the facility, and R.M., fearful that he might soon find himself being grilled by menacing, cigar-chomping generals, high-tailed it out of the room. He finally found his shaky way back to his wife, while military police proceeded to quickly usher everyone out of the building. The alien who gave R.M. the finger, so to speak, apparently elected not to follow and was not seen again.
R.M. told Stringfield that, in his opinion, the alarm was raised because the presumed alien creature had broken free of its confines on the base and was now on the loose, no doubt trying to make good its escape. Notably, R.M. later learned from a retired Air Force colonel that two living alien creatures were held at Wright-Patterson in the 1960s, military scientists having, supposedly, successfully created a suitable atmosphere in which to house the interplanetary pair.
As for Stringfield, although he conceded that R.M.’s story was an undeniably fantastic one, he added that, “The Wright-Patterson complex is vast and so are its underground facilities. It is conceivable, if truly live aliens exist, that one may have slipped by the guards into the passageways and surfaced in an upper chamber of the museum.”[18] A crazy tale, no doubt, but for Stringfield, nothing was ever too over-the-top when it came to Hangar 18, hence why he chose not to quietly file the story in his gray basket, but instead championed it widely.
As the 1960s became the 1970s, the tales of Hangar 18 continued to proliferate and circulate.
Sensitive Activities
Victor Marchetti, a former executive assistant to the deputy director and special assistant to the executive director of the CIA, went on record in the late 1970s that while he was serving with the CIA, UFO-related reports were filed under the heading of what he termed very sensitive activities. Far more significantly, Marchetti admitted that, from time to time, and via high-level sources and colleagues within the CIA, he was privy to accounts relative to alien bodies and at least one crashed UFO, held by Wright-Patterson’s Foreign Technology Division. Marchetti’s story is far less sensational than that of R.M., but it’s made far more important due to Marchetti’s prestigious — and provable — background. As was precisely the case with Senator Barry Goldwater, Marchetti was most certainly no tinfoil-hat-wearing wacko.
Hacking into Hangar 18
On October 27, 1992, Dateline NBC devoted a segment of its show to the subject of computer hacking, and chose to include certain Q&As with a number of self-confessed hackers. With one of the hackers talking about his ability to easily break into government and military computer systems, NBC flashed across the screen a variety of documentation that had supposedly been obtained by the hacker from Wright-Patterson’s computer system. In part it stated, “WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB/Catalogued UFO parts list, an underground facility of Foreign….”
At that point, to the disappointment of everyone watching, the camera flashed away and the rest of the document was not shown; however, it was later revealed that at least part of the material downloaded by the hacker was said to reference Top Secret alien-autopsy data stored on Wright-Patterson’s computer systems. That’s right: to the utter joy of UFO hunters everywhere, Hangar 18 was not dead.
In 1993, Dateline NBC broke its silence on this controversial issue, and Susan Adams, who had been the producer of that particular segment of the program, expressed considerable amazement at the incredible response that NBC had received following the airing of the episode.
Hang on a minute. Let’s see if we have that right: NBC broadcasts — on primetime television, no less — imagery of secret UFO files and data on alien-autopsies, obtained under circumstances that were wholly illegal, from Wright-Patterson’s secret computer banks, and Adams is amazed by the response? What, pray tell, did Adams and her bosses expect? The production team should have considered itself extremely lucky that the notorious Men in Black of UFO lore did not come knocking — or perhaps banging hard — on the doors of NBC.
Adams continued that the hacker desired to remain anonymous, primarily because his material had allegedly been acquired under circumstances that were hardly lawful, via delving into classified American governmental and military computerized files and archives. Hell yes, he wanted to remain anonymous! One can scarcely begin to imagine what fate — or Air Force security personnel — would have had in store for the unknown hacker if he had been chased down and caught. It wouldn’t have been good, that’s for sure.