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On Sunday I flew out to Minneapolis to meet up with Tom Tulien where we made plans to interview more individuals for the Sign Oral History Project, a vast undertaking to interview and preserve the recollections of government officials, witnesses and prominent investigators in the UFO field. To date the SOHP has produced and archived over 200 interviews.
Tom also gave me access to his collection of documents, among which was a summary of North Dakota sightings collected by Donald Flickinger, NICAP North Dakota Subcommittee Chairman and others, along with contributions by Tom and Jim Klotz. We also reviewed some radar cases which Richard Greenwell, Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization (APRO) assistant director, had in his files.
After outlining possible future research trips and projects, we loaded up our camera equipment and departed.
Our first stop was a visit with Richard Thieme. Richard, who is a recognized authority on issues of the computer age, was one of the contributors to UFOs and Government, a scholarly look at the history of the US government's involvement with UFOs over the years. He and his wife fed us a snack while we discussed philosophical and ufological matters. Suitably fortified after this pleasant interlude, we resumed our journey to our first interview, Jerome Clark.
Jerry has just completed writing his 40th book, the third update to his The UFO Encyclopedia. The third edition of the UFO Encyclopedia includes articles by Dr. Thomas 'Eddie' Bullard, William Chalker, Brad Sparks, Thiago Luiz Ticchetti and Thomas Tulien. Subjects include NORAD unknowns and how the various agencies filtered their UFO data. The NORAD article by Brad Sparks stands out as one of the best written on the subject. Thiago Luiz Ticchetti writes on many Brazilian topics including a 20-page article on "Operation Plate" 1977-78.
We spent four hours interviewing Jerry Clark, asking him about his time as editor of Fate magazine, his relationship with Fate's publishers, Curtis and Mary Fuller, and his time with CUFOS and as editor of the International UFO Reporter. Jerry and Loren Coleman were close friends and wrote two books together on cryptozoology. Tom's favorite was Strange Skies: Pilot's Encounters with UFOs, which he brought along for Jerry to sign.
Next we moved south to Iowa to interview Dr. Herbert Strenz who wrote his doctoral dissertation on US press coverage of UFOs, and also worked briefly for the Condon Committee.
Dr. Strenz's version of the rediscovery of the Low memo (also known as "the Trick Memo") matches the description of the event by Dr. Roy Craig (whom we'd previously interviewed). Strenz added an amusing detail about how the misfiled memo was located. Condon's secretary, Mary Lou Armstrong, had filed the memo under "T", because there was "To be consultation with Dr. Condon" on this and other things in the file. Craig was preparing a presentation for the Boy Scouts and wanted information concerning the origin of the Condon Committee. After the document had re-emerged, the staff — without Condon — discussed the memo which they generally agreed was not an actual "trick" to mislead, but rather a harmless turn of phrase. In other words, the memo was reassuring the University of Colorado that there would be no problem with conducting the investigation into "unidentified flying objects." (Strenz's words echoed those of Dr. Michael Swords' presentation on the Trick Memo so closely, it was if they spoke with one voice.)
During Strenz's research he gathered some unusual items including the newspaper clipping collection from the 1960s assembled by the head of NICAP's Seattle subcommittee, June Larson.
When Strenz visited Project Blue Book and informed the project head, LTC Quintanilla, that he was writing his dissertation on newspaper coverage of UFOs, Quintanilla informed him that the microfilms of the Air Force's 1952 press clipping service were in the trash can and he was welcome to take them.
Among the 36 rolls of discarded microfilm were 32 rolls of newspaper clippings from April to September 1952, 2 rolls of material, mostly case files exchanged between Project Blue Book and the Public Information Office in the Pentagon, 2 other rolls, and the real treasure: letters to the Air Force by citizens written after the 1952 Life and Look magazine articles on UFOs. Also contained in the microfilms were reports not filed in the Project Blue Book records, along with miscellaneous accounts of interesting occurrences dating from the 19th century through to 1953. A number of UFO incidents from World War II were also in the files, many of which Project Blue Book chief, Capt. Ed Ruppelt, said he was unaware.
From Iowa we went to Wisconsin where we picked up Richard Heiden, former Assistant Editor of the APRO Bulletin, and moved on to a meeting of the UFO History Group in Michigan. These meetings occur twice a year and could be characterized as seminars in Advanced Ufology. Dr. John Reed closely questioned Tom and me on various aspects of research on mostly government involvement with UFOs. Unfortunately, we could not report much progress on expanding many aspects of UFO history.
We tried to humorously turn aside his questions saying we had many researchers from the fictitious "Institute of Ufology" where dozens, scores, indeed hundreds were researching these very questions. However, it is almost heartbreaking to report that there has been little real progress in elaborating the necessary investigation into a comprehensive understanding of the UFO field.
The only positive development we could give him was that the scanning of case files, documents and letters was proceeding well, with about 4000 items scanned by me personally, and a much larger number scanned by Barry Greenwood.
Dr. Reed had acquired the Notes of Charles Fort quite by accident and progress has been made on characterizing and verifying the entries.
On Sunday we completed an Oral History interview with Richard Heiden who has an extensive collection of Latin American material. While Richard has had no contact with government authorities in South America, he does continue his correspondence and work with many Latin American ufologists. He and Roberto Bancs of Argentina recently wrote an article for the Fortean Times.
Richard's tenure in APRO mostly involved article composition and the translation of foreign material, rather than influencing policy in the organization.
We said good-bye to Richard at the airport and flew to Los Angeles, then drove to Santa Clarita on Monday to meet with Gordon Lore, former Assistant Director and Vice President of the National Investigative Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP).
Later we were joined by Erica Lukes from Utah who has an Internet Radio program "UFOs Classified." She and Gordon are writing a book together, and Gordon has authored an article on Erica which will appear in the Fall 2019 edition of Filmfax magazine.
Gordon's first work, Mysteries in the Skies, written with Harold Denault, was the first book to focus on historical UFO reports that pre-dated Kenneth Arnold's famous 1947 encounter. His latest work, Flying Saucers from Beyond the Earth: A UFO Researcher's Odyssey recounts his own history with NICAP and afterward as the head of the "UFO Research" project. The book describes UFO cases investigated by both these organizations and details his interactions with Donald Keyhoe and others.
During our interview Gordon recounted several of his UFO sightings which can be read here.
Later John Greenwald joined us for a short visit and gave us a copy of his new book Inside the Black Vault.
We spent some time with Gordon at the Saugus Café and during one visit we were joined by Greg Bishop, a friend of William Moore. Naturally, we had several questions for Greg to ask Moore. While Moore did not talk much about his UFO days, Greg thought he might be willing to discuss what had transpired during that time.
We scanned Gordon's files which included cases from NICAP and his own UFO organization. The material comprised incidents from 1952 to 2000 but most were from the 1960s. He also had a manuscript of a book about the 1896-97 airship wave.
After completing our final document scans, we returned home to process our collection of new items.
Our next planned research outing was to be College Park, Maryland, and the National Archives II. While preparing for this trip, an opportunity presented itself to scan the CUFOS files collection. On August 6 we departed for Chicago.
Coming so soon after being given access to former NICAP Vice President and Assistant Director Gordon Lore's extensive files, the addition of the CUFOS treasure trove meant we had a vast amount of documents ahead of us to scan and process. This added to the workload of continuing to digitize extensive collections of material from Dr. Willy Smith, Andy Roberts, Ty Briggs (NICAP Connecticut), Ray Fowler, Peter Gerimia, Robert Todd, and several others.
The primary objectives in our document scanning project are:
1. Preserve files which might otherwise be lost.
2. Enhance the ease of sharing materials.
3. Facilitate the portability of files.
4. Increase the ease of cataloging special features.
To date, thousands of files are now present in what we refer to as our Digital Filing Cabinet. The number of files completed so far is only a small slice of what is left to be accomplished. Unfortunately for American ufology, file preservation seems to have a very low priority.
Barry Greenwood had previously scanned a large portion of the CUFOS and Project Blue Book files, and Ray Fowler's report was already within our collections. This helped to ease our workload somewhat but the task ahead was still demanding. A few Project Blue Book files with notes from Dr. Hynek were scanned as were important case files from pre-1947 to 1960, and all files between 1960 to mid-1963. Working 10-12 hours day, Barry and I were also able to complete the years 1963 and 1964 along with most of the huge assortment of 1965 files. August 1967 to the end of 1970 were also finalized as were sample files for other years. Tom Tulien joined us at CUFOS during the final days of our information gathering effort and helped out with the difficult task of scanning and refiling documents.
We spent some time with Tom discussing the Minot AFB, North Dakota incident and his website which provides many details and analyses by experts of the event. Some ufologists appear to consider the Minot episode to be too "inaccessible" because of its complex and detailed nature. The sheer amount of corroborative evidence comprising multiple instances of ground-visual, airborne-visual and airborne-radar sightings appears too daunting for some. Researchers should be grateful for evidence-rich instances like the Minot AFB case where all the key elements necessary to demonstrate a genuine UFO occurrence are present.
UFO history, the process by which we've come to understand the field, seems to be uninteresting to many. How the phenomena can be discussed without an historical context seems impossible. Lacking such context, mythology and conspiracy theories abound.
We took home about four bankers' boxes of loose files for all years from CUFOS, of which two were almost exclusively Australian reports. These documents will be returned after they are processed. We have exchanged scanned files with other researchers so backups of the work exist.
Some observations from the files scanned:
Many NICAP files that had once contained pictures subsequently had the photographs removed. This is probably because Stuart Nixon's main interest was photographs and he was left in charge of the office after Keyhoe's tenure ended.
Pre-1970 monthly NICAP summaries of cases were broken down by groups "Pending-Files awaiting follow-up", "E files-Explained files", "D files-Doubtful or lights in the sky", "B and Bx files-Substantial unknowns", "F-Foreign", "F-Fhotos". (NICAP used the letter "F" for both). Various characteristics were noted on important files in a pre-printed coversheet. After Keyhoe, these coversheets were no longer used to annotate special characteristics, but just to record general information like date, location and witness name. Also, pending reports increased as lack of staff meant fewer follow up actions.
NICAP had about 40 investigative subcommittees during its existence — 30 being active at times in places like Europe, Chile, Canada, Hawaii, Guam, California, New York, Texas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Mass., New Hampshire, Kentucky, Tenn., Georgia, North Dakota, Washington State, Washington, D.C., Florida, etc. After the Keyhoe tenure, the subcommittees lasted for about two more years. Stuart Nixon seemed to pick fights with the Los Angeles subcommittee about new members and photographs they investigated. Once John Acuff took over and asserted that all subcommittee investigations were the property of NICAP, most of the subcommittees quickly quit or became inactive.
During the Keyhoe era, Ted Bloecher reviewed incoming reports and determined which required follow up. Diana Sinkler-Knopf would contact subcommittees or individual investigators to look into the incidents. If these were unavailable, she would send letters and sighting report forms to any known witnesses. Diana would follow up with second inquiries if the first was not answered. Cases without further information would be considered incomplete and added to the "D" - Doubtful file. Ted and Diana would contact the Air Force, Weather Bureau, NASA, the Navy or other agencies or undertake specific activities to track down possible explanations. Rocket launches, barium cloud experiments, NASA calibration aircraft, balloon launches, advertising planes, satellite flyovers, meteors, aircraft and astro-illusions caused many sightings. Locally, military members and government employees would sometimes supply leads to local or other sightings. Richard Hall, Gordon Lore, and Isabel Davis got involved in some of the more important cases.
With the end of the Keyhoe era, several ongoing projects ceased: Volume II of the UFO Evidence, Condon committee rebuttal, other specialized publications, the Medical Panel (Hall), and the Occupant Panel (Bloecher). The Volunteer Flight Officers Network and Euronet, ceased to exist for other reasons, but partly since the NICAP component did not put up a vigorous advocacy for them to continue.
The stated purpose of the Volunteer Flight Officers Network (VFON) was to report reentries, satellites, and meteor sightings, but it was, in fact, a NICAP front organization to collect UFO reports from airlines and other aviation sources. Run by Delta Airline's and Denver NICAP Subcommittee head Herb Roth, VFON had the support of the Smithsonian, the USAF and other agencies. Even the CIA's Air America chipped in with a report from one of its pilots.
Hopefully, in future we will be able to complete our scanning and digitizing of the remaining CUFOS files to create a readily available digital repository of the material.
Digital Filing Cabinet
UFO organizations and individuals usually manage case files by date, although some use location. Others, like Dr. Michael Swords, use topics (CE2e, DD, NL, etc.) to organize them.
I have started digitizing my files to aid in the exchange of information with researchers. Barry Greenwood and I, along with others, have decided to use the European "Project 1954" convention for file names:
Year-Month-Day Area-Country-State (Provence)-City (town) type (ACUFOE, CE2e, DD, NL, etc.) Other items (Not required like # of objects, special characteristics) witness name (not required) origin of report (letter, report, NICAP, Andy Roberts' collection, etc.)
Some examples:
1943-03-04 US CA Long Beach ACUFOE color change Casey D Weinstein
This entry includes the date, location, the nature of the encounter – ACUFOE (aircraft/UFO encounter) – records that the object changed color, the name of the witness, Casey, and the source D Weinstein (Dominic Weinstein's case summary)
1947-07-06 US CO-KS enroute to Bartlesville OK 9 objs clip Daily Enterprise
In this entry we have date, location, the UFO being 9 objects and the source being a newspaper clipping from the Daily Enterprise newspaper. (We did not include the city because it is the same location as the sighting, and the date of the sighting is the same as the publication date).
1947-03-03 US ME Augusta airfield CE1 4 objs Dr. Trask G Fawcett
The date, location (specifically the airfield), type of encounter, the 4 objects, name of the witness, Dr. Trask, and the source from the George Fawcett collection.
1947-07-00 or 1947-07-00 end of month
For cases with less available information, we can have the date with only the month or some indication of what time of month.
1955-00-00 autumn US NM Ore Grande just outside CE1 USAF Adj report
This entry only contains the year and season the incident was recalled and the location, on the road just outside of Ore Grande, NM. The type of witness was an AF officer (Adjutant) and the source was from a personal report to me.
Additional sighting categories include:
Thanks to the scanning and digitizing of our files, I am now able to carry 3300 searchable cases with another 2000 various UFO items (databases, studies, gov't documents, audio, video files, etc.) on a thumb or external drive as I travel: a true digital filing cabinet.
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