With MJ-12, the documents were sent to people with limited or no experience, they had limited resources, claimed that “They” were responsible without explaining who they were, had conspiracy theories as evidence, and that those releasing the documents had committed treason. In other words, we could learn more by exploring the sources of the information on true leaks such as Watergate but we were left with nothing to corroborate the MJ-12 leaks.
So, we had two sides of the issue. One with new documents and new testing, and one with interesting questions that have yet to be answered. What this told us all was that the MJ-12 debate would rage for some time.
When Wood concluded, Nick Pope, who worked in the British Ministry of Defence and who had worked the UFO desk for three years, talked about what was in the British Ministry’s “X-Files.” Over the next several years, all the files will be released into the British National Archives that can be found at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. Pope warned that there would be no “smoking gun” in the files and he should know because he was responsible for creating many of them and had certainly reviewed most. There are, however, interesting items in those files and one of them is illustrative. It provides us with a glimpse on how these things work and this insight might help in understanding MJ-12, though Pope certainly didn’t suggest that.
In the batch of files most recently released, Pope said, “…I discussed in my various media interviews was that of Milton Torres, a United States Air Force pilot who stated that on 20thMay 1957 he was ordered to open fire on a UFO that was being tracked on radar. He was based at RAF Manston in Kent [England] and was scrambled to intercept a UFO that had been tracked over Kent. He claims that he came within seconds of firing off a salvo of 24 rockets when the UFO accelerated away at a speed of about Mach 10. Torres stated that he was subsequently warned t stay silent about the incident and only mentioned it years afterwards, at a reunion.”
All well and good, but the problem with this released file is that the information came from neither the USAF nor from the MoD. Instead it was a transcript of an interview taken years later by a UFO researcher. So, it comes from the MoD, but it is not an official document. That, according to Pope is a real but subtle difference.
Pope was followed by Jim Marrs who wanted to talk about the Rise of the Fourth Reich and what he thought of as “The Nazification of America.” He did provide a link to UFOs, suggesting that the Nazis had developed the craft and he suggested that the Nazis had created an atomic weapon and were preparing to attack New York using it. When the Third Reich fell, some of the material that would have been used in the German atomic weapons was transferred to the United States, according to Marrs, who then referenced his upcoming book. That allowed us to finish work on our atomic bomb.
He did point out how the equipment, especially the helmets of the American Army have changed to look more like those of the Nazi Army of World War II. I had been struck by that as well, but the explanation seems to be more rooted in protecting our soldiers with the new Kevlar helmets than a move to a Nazi tradition. The American helmet is undergoing a new design, one to offer protection but that will allow soldiers to fire from a prone position without the body armor pushing on the back of the helmet, forcing it down over the eyes. The new helmet doesn’t resemble the old Nazi one quite so much.
Linda Moulton Howe led off the afternoon session with her discussion of the Bentwaters case of 1980. She provided a look at the history of the base and into various radar operations there. This in an attempt to learn if there might be an electromagnet, or rather, a terrestrial explanation for what happened in 1980.
At Bentwaters, over the Christmas holidays of 1980, lights, and possibly an object was seen over the base and on the ground in the woods outside the perimeter. Air Force security police and Air Force officers responded. John Burroughs, one of those security policemen wrote, in 1980, “The lights were red and blue, the red one above the blue one and they were flashing on and off. Because I never saw anything like that coming from the woods before, we decided to drive down and see what it was.”
Later a letter written by the then Lieutenant Colonel Charles Halt would detail some of this. Halt, interviewed a number of times made it clear that he was as far forward as anyone, meaning closest to the lights with the exception of Burroughs and one other airman.
I met Burroughs once in Phoenix as the both of us were to be interviewed on a radio station. He offered me a ride to and from the station and we had time to discuss the case. He told me then that he had seen some strange things but didn’t go into great detail. Had I known then what I know now, I might have pressed for more information.
Burroughs, under hypnotic regression, and according to Howe a very trouble man, told more of what he had seen that night. He talked of communication with the lights, suggesting that the lights spoke to them. According to Burroughs, the light was the life from the craft.
Howe also had hypnotic regression sessions with Jim Penniston. He too reported communication with the lights and talked of them being travelers from the far future. They were attempting to gather chromosomes to prevent the race from dying.
Nick Redfern followed Howe and he revisited the Tunguska explosion of 1908, looking at the theories surrounding the event. He talked about it being caused by a comet, an asteroid, or an alien spaceship. He did mention that it was clearly an air burst. The devastation photographed by scientists in the 1920s resembled that of an atomic attack.
I had the opportunity to talk to the late Dr. James A. van Allen about this event. Redfern had said there was no crater or meteoric debris left and this was a point I raised with van Allen in the 1970s. He told me that the object, he believed it to be a comet, had virtually disintegrated so there would be no crater and that some meteoric material had been found that was consistent with a comet but the area is swampy. That might account for the lack of great chucks of debris.
Redfern left it in the hands of the audience, though my impression here was that he preferred the spacecraft scenario. I think it was a natural event and that we were lucky it hadn’t happened over a large, populated area.
Richard Dolan, author of UFOs and the National Security State, talked about his next book, providing an outline of the chapters. He added some detail as he worked through his presentation and much of it sounds intriguing.
The evening presentation and the keynote address was given by KLAS-TV investigative reporter George Knapp. Knapp had investigated the May 14, 2008 UFO crash near Needles, California. This case had everything from a UFO sighting and obvious crash retrieval, Men in Black, to mysterious government agents and disappearing witnesses.
Knapp, an entertaining speaker came prepared with video reports and witness testimony. He told of an object that fell at about three in the morning and a strange fellow he described as “Bob on the river,” meaning that he bobbed around like a boat. Bob told of a cylindrical-shaped object that fell with an audible shock. He said that five helicopters arrived within twenty minutes, recovered and carried the still glowing thing from the crash site.