Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel (15 page)

Various amateur UFO organizations have long accused the Air Force of “covering up” by accepting lame explanations for these events. But anyone who knows how the government and the military really work can see that officialdom was actually taken in by these deceptions and manipulations. The source of the UFO phenomenon – whatever or whoever it may be – is extremely clever, and very skilled in the use of psychological warfare. To them, it was desirable for the Air Force and government to reject and ignore the UFO phenomenon. This was accomplished in a long series of “hoaxes” throughout the 1940s and early 1950s until, by 1955, the official investigators became totally disgusted and negative. Once the ufonauts got the government off their backs, they could operate with impunity. The Air Force “investigations” became superficial public relations efforts after 1955. They had “bought” the phony evidence dumped on their doorstep.

If an officer of the U.S. Air Force had visited the UFO site near Madrid, he would have undoubtedly classified the whole affair a hoax. The presence of the nickel tubes would have been his proof. He would not ask, of course, how rare and precious missile nose-cone material could turn up in Spain.
These tubes might have ended up in some Spanish basement, or the local garbage dump, if the mysterious Mr. Dagousset had not deliberately called attention to them and offered a large reward for their recovery.
The detailed circulars distributed in the area were probably designed to focus attention on the tubes.

It’s quite possible that Antonio Pardo (a name as common in Spain as “John Smith” is in the U.S.) and Dagousset were either working together or were one and the same man. There is no way of knowing if the tube Pardo sent to author Lieget was, in fact, one of the tubes that actually turned up at the landing site. The printed pamphlet may have just been a ploy to make the Pardo tube seem authentic. Obviously, whoever printed the pamphlet already knew what the tubes looked like and had one in his possession. So why offer a reward for the recovery of the others?

Finally, such an elaborate and expensive hoax makes no sense at all. Why go through all that trouble to excite and baffle a handful of Spanish ufologists?

The overflight and landing of the object had too many witnesses to easily discredit it. But, as in other incidents, it was possible to create an aftermath of confusion that would generate doubts in official minds. At the same time, the symbol clearly seen on the object could be used to reinforce a new game with the ufologists.

Since 1965, various ufologists in Spain have been receiving letters and phone calls from persons claiming to be spacemen – visitors from the planet Ummo. The letters bear a stamp or seal identical to the symbol seen on the Madrid object. They contain warnings about the CIA (an American agent identified as “Mr. W. Rumsey” is supposed to be working in Spain, trying to track down the Ummoans). Spanish investigators have been in an uproar over the Ummo affair for years. It is even the subject of a book,
UMMO: Otro Planeta Habitado
by Fernando Sesma.

These “spacemen” hoaxes are a worldwide phenomenon. The author has received many strange letters and phone calls of this sort here in the U.S., sometimes related to material that was then in his typewriter and not shared with anyone! Other investigators in scattered parts of the world have experienced the same things. The implication is two-fold: ufologists are being watched – kept under surveillance by some mysterious group – and large numbers of “spacemen” are already living among us and freely using our mails and telephones.

Because these “hoaxes” are so widespread, and often so complicated and expensive, it is unlikely they are the product of a few juvenile practical jokers. Rather it seems to be a very well-organized and well-financed effort. When you cut through all the nonsense, the only apparent purpose seems to be to create and sustain belief in “spacemen” and, incidentally, to keep the ufologists wallowing in paranoid confusion. Many American ufologists have fallen for these games and convinced themselves that the U.S. Air Force or the CIA is behind it all. And a number of amateur investigators have even suffered nervous breakdowns and committed suicide.

The belief that “alien” parahumans are living among us is not confined to ufology circles. Numerous religious and occult groups have claimed for hundreds of years that angels and devils
that look and act exactly like us
have been in our midst since the dawn of man – shades of
The Exorcist…
Various UFO contactees claim the “spacemen” have told them that anywhere from 10 to 10 million interplanetary visitors are now residing in our cities. The late Dr. James McDonald, a meteorologist from the Univ. of Arizona who became embroiled in the UFO controversy, privately discussed, in his last years, the possibility that “aliens” were not only present on this planet, but were systematically taking over top posts in the government and military.

The late zoologist, Ivan T. Sanderson, one of the best-known observers of the UFO scene, offered an even more interesting hypothesis. In his book
Invisible Residents,
he suggested that maybe an elder race developed in the world’s oceans while our ancestors were still climbing trees. This race has remained apart from us, but they account for innumerable sightings of unidentified submarines, ships, and flying saucers (which have been seen entering or leaving bodies of water). Since biologists and evolutionists are convinced that life began in the oceans, Sanderson speculated that it would be logical for an advanced race to have its beginnings there. Maybe these “aqua-people” remained at the bottom of the ocean and developed a whole supercivilization there, regarding us as contemptuously and disinterestedly as we do ants.

These theories remain intellectual exercises, since no real evidence has been uncovered to support them. They are in the same category as the devil theories of earlier religious groups.

Still, we have the many perplexing reports on mystery men of the pre-CIA era, and the staggering problems presented if we accept the popular extraterrestrial (interplanetary) explanation for UFOs. How, for example, would people from another planet come by nickel tubes of polyvinyl fluoride?

If, on the other hand, some UFO enthusiasts have been right in accusing the CIA and Air Force of all these puzzling hoaxes, what would be the government’s motive for spending so much time and money on seemingly profitless enterprises? How could they justify such expenditures to congress? And why is it that after 25 years of this, not a single employee or former employee has blown the whistle on the whole project? The government has a hard time keeping anything secret these days. We can probably exclude the government as the culprit. They may have been victimized by the phenomenon (or private interests), just like all the rest of us.

Year after year, the same foolish charade is played out in countries all over the world: a UFO is seen by reliable witnesses. It releases or dumps materials that are eagerly collected by local UFO enthusiasts. They, in turn, give the material to a reputable testing laboratory, often at considerable cost to themselves. The report comes back. The material is nothing but aluminum or tin. Disgustedly, the UFO enthusiasts file away the report and go on with their search for “real evidence.”

In Jan. 1971, a blinding light appeared at treetop level over Kuusamo, Saapunki in northeastern Finland. Snow at the spot where the object had hovered was found to have melted and refrozen into strange, dark green crystals. An engineer, Ahti J. Karivieri, collected samples of the ice. An expensive chemical analysis revealing nothing aside from the presence of a small amount of aluminum – unusual in snow. Prof. Hulvio B. Aleixo of Belo Horizonte, Brazil has systematically analyzed the substances left at several UFO landing sites. His findings were equally disappointing to the ET believers.

A crumbling black powder with an acrid, unpleasant smell was found on a football field at Baleia, Brazil, where a UFO allegedly landed on Sept. 14, 1967. The central institute of Geo-Sciences of the Federal University of Minas Gerais performed an analysis that included radiation tests. They found the powder consisted of iron, aluminum, magnesium, and silica. Similar material found at a landing site near Villa Constitucion contained magnesium, iron, carbon, aluminum, nickel, and copper. At Campo Grande, Brazil, Otaviano Souza Bueno said he saw a luminous object land on a stream bank, and three beings climb out and dig up samples of soil. This was back in 1948... A sample of the same soil was taken and analyzed by the Institute of Technological Research at Sao Paulo. Their findings: silica, 61 percent; aluminum, 19 percent; magnesium, 11 percent.

Thousands of miles away, on Oct. 27, 1954, a formation of glowing objects appeared over a crowded football stadium in Florence, Italy. A shower of shining flakes fell on the crowd from the sky. When these were analyzed by the Chemical Institute of Milan, they were found to be composed of magnesium, iron, silicon, and calcium.

Silica is ordinary sand. Heat it and then cool it, and you have glass.
Silicon
can be made into all kinds of plastic objects. An almost endless variety of silicon objects and substances have been found at UFO landing sites during the past 25 years. It most often appears as a purplish liquid that resembles ordinary fuel oil. Indeed, it is sometimes mistaken for oil. When a fertilizer salesman named Reinhold Schmidt reported seeing a UFO land near Kearney, Nebraska in 1957, investigating police officers found a puddle of this fluid at the site and accused Schmidt of putting it there himself.

Another outstanding case took place on Aug. 19, 1965 on a farm outside Cherry Creek, NY. Harold Butcher, 16, was milking cows at 8:20 p.m. when the portable radio in the barn was suddenly drowned out by static and the tractor running the milking machine abruptly stopped. Outside, a Holstein bull chained to a steel bar by a ring through its nose began to bellow. Young Butcher ran to the window and looked out. He saw a large, egg-shaped object trailing a reddish vapor and emitting a steady beep-beep sound as it touched down in a nearby field. A few moments later it flew away, Butcher said, leaving behind a strange smell and several globs of a shimmering, purplish liquid. The Kawecki Chemical Company later performed a chemical analysis and found the liquid was composed of silicon, aluminum, and iron.

Another popular UFO dropping is a distinctive
silver
sand. It has been found in England (1965), and in Iowa (1972). It was also discovered at the site of the famous Socorro, NM landing in April 1964. Of course, Air Force investigators dismissed it as common silica.

Perhaps the most widespread of all UFO substances is the combination of aluminum and silicon that the people of West Virginia have labeled “space grass.” This comes in the form of tiny strands that resemble finely shredded Christmas tinsel. (Incidentally, Christmas tinsel was made of
lead
until a 1972 health law outlawed it.)

When radar first came into use in WWII, bomber pilots learned to befuddle it by dumping boxes of tinfoil out of their gun ports as they flew over enemy territory. In time, this “chaff” became very sophisticated. It was cut to lengths equaling the wavelength of the enemy radar. Today it is fired out of tubes mounted on a plane’s wings. The common practice is to fire the short chaff (less than six inches long) in combination with “rope” (as long as 20 feet). Both materials are made of aluminum and are specially treated so the pieces won’t stick together. They are used occasionally on Air Force training missions over the U.S., and are released at high altitude in the vicinity of radar stations. The places naturally scatter over a very wide area, as they are meant to do.

Space grass, on the other hand, often drops to Earth in a big lump. “Rope” is never found near it. In fact, there is not a single case in which “Rope” has been recovered by civilians. Furthermore, while space grass closely resembles Air Force chaff,
it is chemically different.
The chief ingredients of space grass are, of course, aluminum and silicon. Unlike chaff, it has a tendency to stick together. When freshly dropped space grass is handled, it causes a rash that itches.

Back in 1967, the author asked the Pentagon to furnish samples of chaff for some comparative studies. At first, the request was refused because chaff was supposedly classified. But later, a box of unused chaff (fresh from the manufacturer) was forwarded together with an Air Force map showing all the locations in North America where it is dispersed on training exercises. Interestingly, none of these locations was anywhere near the places where space grass has appeared.

Analyses performed in 1967 produced another puzzle. While space grass was perfectly ordinary in composition, the Aluminum Association had no idea who made the stuff, or for what purpose. Basically, it is very close to the aluminum foil sold in sheets in supermarkets, but it is much thinner and, like chaff, is cut to precise lengths.

Time and again, witnesses have seen space grass coming from saucer-shaped objects. It has also been found piled up in fields where UFOs have been seen hovering. In 1966-67, quantities of this material were found repeatedly in West Virginia in the wake of UFO sightings. Other outstanding cases include Sagetown, NY (1956); Chosi City, Japan (where hundreds of people saw a circular flying object discharge the stuff over the city in 1956); Merion, PA (1957); and Puerto Garibaldi, Argentina (1965).

Even more odd is the fact that space grass sometimes turns up on porches and
under
trees where it could
not
possibly have fallen from the sky! It has also been found neatly scattered over
underground
telephone lines and draped over power lines.

The controversial Air Force-sponsored UFO study conducted in the 1960s by Colorado University, under the direction of Edward U. Condon, made a superficial study of the “physical evidence” so lovingly collected by UFO enthusiasts, including space grass. Instead of obtaining and studying a recent sample, they examined a 1957 sample found at Manhattan Beach, CA. It had turned up on the property of a witness 24 hours after a sighting. It was nothing but Air Force chaff, but how did it appear where it did, and so soon after a UFO sighting? Who dropped it, or
planted
it? Where did they obtain it? The Condon committee never addressed itself to such cases. Their conclusion was, “It is certain that this sample of ‘space grass’ had a quite earthly origin, and was not deposited by vehicles of extraterrestrial origin.”