Part 11: Army/CIA Unit Studied the Real UFO Blue Book Cases

Part 11: Army/CIA Unit Studied the Real UFO Blue Book Cases

© 2008 by Linda Moulton Howe

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“We were supposed to talk with Vice President Nixon

about what we in the CIA were going to do with the special

Project Blue Book.” - “Stein,” Former Army/CIA UFO Analyst

 

November 30, 2008 Albuquerque, New Mexico - My June 29, 1998, interview with Stein at his Florida home continues from Part 10, in which he concludes his description of the several disc craft stored inside Papoose Mountain at Area 51, Nellis AFB, Nevada, including some identified as “German Vril” craft. Stein also described a trip to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, with his CIA boss, Anthony Barden, in June 1958, two months before the Area 51 trip. While in the Washington, D. C. area, the two men were scheduled for a meeting with Vice President Richard M. Nixon.

Stein: “At Area 51, the first two craft we saw looked almost identical. They were smaller, not nearly as big as one in the back. Col. Jim mentioned that those two were ‘Vril craft.’ We asked him what ‘Vril’ was. The Col. said it was a foreign saucer built in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Then he pointed up ahead and said the next three craft were alien (extraterrestrial) craft retrieved from New Mexico. There were three more in the back and they were huge, all sitting on metal sawhorses or stands to keep them off the ground. The disc on the very end was a huge one and Col. Jim said that was a German WWII craft built in 1938 and was jacked up higher on stands because it had a gun emplacement underneath, which he said the Germans called a ‘death ray.’ It was a different shape than the other craft, was dark in color and had a larger top that stood up probably 10 or 12 feet above the saucer. That one had a diameter of about 50 or 60 feet.

[ Editor's Note: Nazi-Disc-Photos.html reports: “The SS E-IV (Entwicklungsstelle 4), a development unit of the SS occult Order of the Black Sun was tasked with researching alternative energies to make the Third Reich independent of scarce fuel oil for war production. Their work included developing alternative energies and fuels.

“This group allegedly developed by 1939 a revolutionary electro-magnetic-gravitic engine which improved Hans Coler’s free energy machine into an energy Konverter coupled to a Van De Graaf band generator and Marconi vortex dynamo (a spherical tank of mercury) to create powerful rotating electromagnetic fields that affected gravity and reduced mass. It was designated the Thule Triebwerk (Thrustwork, a.ka. Tachyonator-7 drive) and was to be installed into a Thule-designed disc.

Haunebu I

 

“In 1935, the Thule Gesellschaft (Society) was scouting for a remote, inconspicuous, underdeveloped testing ground for such a craft. Thule found a location in northwest Germany that was known as Hauneburg. For wartime security reasons, the name was shortened to Haunebu in 1939. The early Haunebu I craft, of which two prototypes were constructed, were 25 meters (82 feet) in diameter, had a crew of eight and could achieve the incredible initial velocity of 4,800 km/h, but at low altitude. Further enhancement enabled the machine to reach 17,000 km/h. Flight endurance was 18 hours. To resist the incredible temperatures of these velocities, a special armor called Victalen (Frozen Smoke) was pioneered by SS metallurgists specifically for both the Haunebu and Vril series of disc craft. The Haunebu I had a double hull of Victalen.

“The early models also attempted to test out a rather large experimental gun installation - the twin 60 mm KSK (KraftStrahlKanone, Strong Ray Cannon) which operated off the Triebwerk for power. It has been suggested that the ray from this weapon made it a laser, but it was not. The Germans called it an ‘anachronism’ gun - not belonging to that time period or out of place.

Haunebu II

 

Heavily Armed Flight Gyro

Diameter: 26.3m/ 32.0 m Do-Stra

Drive: Thule Tachyonator (Thule Triebwerk) 7c

Control: Mag Field Impulser 4a

Speed: 6,000 km/h (theoretically up to 21,000 km/h)

Armament: 6 x 80 mm KSK in 3 rotating turrets

1 x 110 mm KSK in 1 rotating turret

Armor: Triple Victalen

Crew: 9 (with room for up to 20 people)

Quiet flight: 19 minutes

All weather, day and night, capable

Employment fitness: 100%

First flight: 1942

Available for service: 1944

 

Vril 7

 

Vril 7 craft in 1944. Source Rob Arndt.

“When a Vril 7 was downed by the Russians in 1945, a similar underbelly mounted KSK gun was destroyed with debris recovered from the battle site. Postwar, the strange metal balls and tungsten spirals that made up the weapon could not be identified. But recently it has been speculated that the Triebwerk-connected balls formed cascade oscillators that were connected to a long barrel-shrouded transmission rod wrapped in a precision tungsten spiral, or coil to transmit a powerful energy burst suitable to pierce up to 4 inches (100 millimeters) of enemy armor. The heavy gun installation, however, badly destabilized the disc.”

Stein: “At Area 51, the craft described by Col. Jim as ‘Vril’ were not shiny silver. It almost looked like they were fabric-covered because there was no shininess. Maybe the metal was deteriorating after twenty years (1938 to 1958).

YOU HAD NEVER HEARD OF A GERMAN-MADE DISC BEFORE THEN?

Well, on our first trip to Washington, D. C. with Anthony Barden, we were in the CIA headquarters warehouse of files and saw some documents about Germany at the end of World War II.

WHAT DATE DID YOU MAKE THAT TRIP WITH BARDEN?

In May or June 1958. That was shortly before our CIA group in the southeastern U. S. military base received our first UFO photographs. Anthony Barden and I went to Langley. It was supposed to be a White House trip.

YOU MEAN TO TALK WITH THE PRESIDENT?

Yes, and the President was Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Vice President was Richard M. Nixon. We had not seen the Italian or other UFO photos at that point. We were supposed to talk with Vice President Nixon about what we in the CIA were going to do with the special Project Blue Book, but that meeting never materialized. We first stopped off at Langley CIA headquarters in Virginia where we were first scheduled to stop. The rest of the trip was cancelled. I don’t know if it was because Nixon had to fly somewhere. But something happened and we never met him. So, we did our own research in the CIA archive.

WERE YOU GOING TO MEET VICE PRESIDENT NIXON THERE?

No, we were going to the White House in the Oval Office. That’s where we met three times after that first appointment was cancelled.

AFTER 1958?

Yes.

HAD ANTHONY BARDEN MET WITH NIXON BEFORE?

Yes, he had. Anthony was in the White House with some CIA officials just shortly after Eisenhower took office, which was in January 1953.

RELATED TO THE DISC PHENOMENON?

No, I don’t think so. SO, ON THIS TRIP AROUND JUNE 1958 YOU AND ANTHONY BARDEN WERE SUPPOSED TO TALK WITH VICE PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON ABOUT THE DISC TECHNOLOGY?

Yes. Eisenhower and Nixon knew all about Area 51 and what was going on with the aliens. Of course, President Harry S. Truman knew all about it, too. But I think Nixon and Eisenhower were the last two presidential executives to know everything. As far as I know, John F. Kennedy did not know much about it – at least that’s what Anthony Barden’s son told me later. Presidents were just chopped off from the Need To Know after Eisenhower and weren’t given the highly classified alien information.

DID BARDEN TELL YOU WHY YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE A MEETING WITH NIXON?

It was in regard to our organizing the CIA unit to analyze foreign UFO photographs and we were going to work with the agents that we had in an effort to try to debunk some of the reports as counterintelligence. Barden was supposed to talk with Nixon about how he planned to handle the foreign films and photographs that we got.

BECAUSE YOU WOULD BE TRESPASSING INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES AND NEEDED COVER STORIES FOR THE U. S. BEING IN OTHER COUNTRIES IF AGENTS GOT CAUGHT?

Yes, it was always a very tricky thing. Even the agent in Mexico had to get affiliates who were native Mexicans in order to do interviews of eyewitnesses and photographers because he was so tied up with the Mexican government he could not get free to go into the field to do the work himself.

SO, YOU’RE AT CIA HEADQUARTERS IN LANGLEY, VIRGINIA, AND THE MEETING WITH NIXON IS CANCELLED. WHO SUGGESTS YOU GO TO THE CIA ARCHIVE FILES?

My boss, Anthony Barden, had been in the archive library before to see if there were any boxes from Ft. Belvoir that had been sent to the CIA for storage that might contain UFO photos and films. So, we looked around.

WHERE DID YOU GO TO LOOK?

 

Langley, Virginia, CIA Basement Archive

We headed into a warehouse area where all the material is boxed. It was a huge area and we had to show our credentials to get in. Our credentials showed we were TOP SECRET with White House clearance, so we were ushered into this basement area of one of the buildings at the Langley CIA complex. There were rows and rows and boxes and boxes of records going back to the OSS. Some of the first rows were WWII files.

[Editor's Note: Wikipedia - The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II from June 13, 1942, until September 20, 1945. It was the wartime intelligence agency and predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) formed by President Harry S. Truman officially on July 26, 1947, three weeks after three wedge-shaped aerial craft came down at three different sites in New Mexico: one, between Corona and Roswell; two, near the Trinity Site on White Sands Proving Ground; and three, 30 miles east of Alamogordo.]

HOW BIG WAS THE BASEMENT ROOM?

At least half a city block long.

FILLED WITH SHELVES LIKE IN A LIBRARY?

Yes. Some of the newer parts were still empty shelves, but most of it was full. I imagine by now, it’s overflowing and they’ve got a couple more rooms that size! Everything then was manual labor with paper files. Today, a lot is on computers.

DID YOUR BOSS SPEAK TO ANYONE IN AUTHORITY ABOUT YOUR LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ON A PARTICULAR SUBJECT?

No, we just showed our TOP SECRET White House clearance and said we had papers to look for before our next meeting with Vice President Nixon. The security guard checked his records to make sure we were on the list for TOP SECRET White House clearance and we were both there.

DID YOUR BOSS KNOW WHERE TO GO IN THE BIG ARCHIVE?

No, we just went in there more or less blind hoping we could find something. He wanted photos from Ft. Belvoir in regard to Project Blue Book or anything that might be labeled ‘Photos from Project Blue Book’ and stamped Ft. Belvoir. If we found just plain Project Blue Book, it would have been material that was useless (designed to debunk the actually serious UFO phenomenon placed under a strict policy of denial by Truman and Eisenhower in the interest of national security).

HOW DID YOUR BOSS COPE WITH A ROOM THAT WAS HUGE FILLED WITH HUNDREDS OF FILES?

There were no copy machines in there, so you can’t make copies and the security guards do frisk you when you come out to make certain your shirt isn’t full of documents. (laughs) But Anthony Barden asked one of the security guards inside the big archive if the guard had ever seen any boxes come in concerning Project Blue Book. The guard said there were some and he looked in an index book and told Anthony Barden to go to Aisle 27, Category E, or something like that. We went to that section and there was a great big wall labeled 27-E. We started looking and found a file box labeled ‘Project Blue Book,’ but nothing from Ft. Belvoir.

Anthony pulled the box and saw that it was just materials that were used to debunk UFOs. Then we started looking further and I got into the older area concerning World War II. That’s where I stumbled across the 1947 file for Roswell.

 

CIA File About Roswell, New Mexico, Alien Crash

WHAT DID IT LOOK LIKE AND WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING YOU SAW?

It was a pretty thick folder full of forms and orders. It was filed under ‘Miscellaneous Secretary’s Notes’ – that’s what was on the outside of the box. And here was the Roswell file in it!

WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING YOU READ?

The first thing I read was a form about Roswell. It was four pages stapled together and it was about the movement of the Roswell craft after they had been recovered on trucks and where they went. It said one craft was picked up and went to the air force base outside of Roswell for the first day. Then, on the second or third day, it had gone to Ft. Riley, Kansas, and was headed for Dayton, Ohio.

WHY FT. RILEY?

Ft. Riley is an Army training center and the Roswell craft went there just as a stopover en route to Ohio. Probably only a couple of people, or no one, new what was in the truck or trucks parked overnight.

THIS WAS EN ROUTE TO WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB?

As I remember, it was destined for some place out side Dayton, Ohio, and then I think it went to Wright-Patterson AFB after that. I’m not certain what happened in Dayton, Ohio, but it stopped at some small base in that area. Then it went to Wright-Patterson where there was already either a classified area – or they built a classified area – because the craft would be kept there. At least one craft was there for some time, for months, and then it eventually went to California to a smaller air force base out there. Not Edwards AFB. It was another smaller base and I don’t remember the name.

Then apparently it went to Area 51 for awhile. They hauled it around to different scientists that had security clearances from WWII working on various projects and had the scientists look at the craft to see what they might recognize, what functions the craft had.

WERE THERE ANY PHOTOGRAPHS OF THE ROSWELL CRAFT IN THAT FILE YOU LOOKED AT IN LANGLEY?

No, I didn’t see any. It could have been they had already been taken out because the file was eleven years old by then (June 1958). There was a lot of blacking out censorship on a lot of the forms and names of the military officers who were there during the retrieval were all blacked out. Just their ranks were given.

 

CIA Document About Roswell Describes Craft

as Crescent-Shaped, Not Disk

WAS THERE ANY PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE CRAFT?

They had a description that it was crescent-shaped and it had one or two small, horizontal stabilizers on the back of it. One had been completely torn off. I know that’s quite a bit different from the saucer shaped round discs. There was a crescent-shaped sketch in the file, but no information on the sketch about when it was sketched or where it was from. But it was in the file labeled Roswell.”

Crescent-shaped UFO Photographed On July 7, 1947

See Military Similar Descriptions in Archive: 120899 Earthfiles

Pilot William A. Rhodes took two photographs of a crescent, or horseshoe, shaped object in the sky about a thousand feet above Phoenix, Arizona at dusk on July 7, 1947.

Newspaper photograph of William A. Rhodes

in The Arizona Republic on Wednesday, July 9, 1947,

Phoenix, Arizona. He is holding the box camera he used

to photograph the unusual horseshoe-shaped aerial object.

I talked with Mr. Rhodes in September 1999 at his Phoenix home about how he came to take these rare photographs. He told me, “During World War II, I was a flight instructor out at Falcon's Field here in Phoenix. I taught flying as well as aircraft identification. That gives me a leg up when I see something flying, by looking at its shape and watching it maneuver and fly, I can tell approximately how far it is away and how big it is.

“When this thing appeared over Phoenix, I had nothing but a little box camera of my mother's. It was where I could grab it from a few feet away and I snapped pictures of this thing as it came down out of the clouds and made turns and climbed back up. We had a solid overcast on that day and I snapped a picture just as it flipped quite rapidly. The box camera had a very slow shutter, about 1/50th of a second or 1/100th or something like that and it caused one of the photographs to blur on the image.

“But The Arizona Republic - I had a friend down there at that time who was head of the photography department. I called him up and he said, ‘Bring it down here right now. We'll develop it and run it in the newspaper.’ That was the main paper for the state and still is. So, I ran down there and they published it the (sic) next day.” (His photographs were taken late in the afternoon of Monday, July 7, 1947 and published in The Arizona Republic on Wednesday, July 9, 1947, upside down.)

Monday, July 7, 1947, the crescent-shaped aerial craft photographed

by William Rhodes is published upside down in.

Two different frames of box camera photographs taken by William Rhodes

of unidentified aerial object seen at dusk on Monday, July 7, 1947 over his Phoenix,

Arizona home and printed upside down on front page of the July 9, 1947 edition of

The Arizona Republic © 1947 by William A. Rhodes. The rear curvature inward is very

similar to sketches by some retired military men who claim firsthand

knowledge about such crescent-shaped craft of unknown origin.

Correct orientation of photograph © July 7, 1947

by William A. Rhodes, Phoenix, Arizona,

turned upright in Photoshop.

The Wednesday, July 9, 1947 front page of The Arizona Republic newspaper showed both of Mr. Rhode's photographs printed upside down with this caption: “This flying object was twice snapped at dusk Monday as it circled north of Phoenix. William A. Rhode first shot the picture as the slow-flying object was approaching him. As it banked to make a tight turn, he obtained the picture above showing clearly the shape of the object. In seconds, Rhodes said, the 'disc' shot away to the west at high speed. It had made three whirling turns north of the city, after approaching from the west. Aircraft identification experts yesterday would not hazard opinions on the object's nature.”

The newspaper article by Robert C. Hanika stated in The Arizona Republic, on Wednesday, July 9, 1947:

“The first clearly recorded photographs of what is believed to be a mysterious ‘flying disc’ which has 33 states in America and even a few foreign countries on edge with its peculiar activities, was taken by an amateur Phoenix photographer. Rhodes snatched a camera from his workshop bench and by the time he reached a small mound at the rear of his home, the object had circled once and was banking in tight circles to the south at an altitude of approximately 1,000 feet, he said. In the overcast sky, the object continued its speedy flight from north to south and directly east of his position. Rhodes snapped the hurtling missile by sighting alongside his box camera.

“Quickly rolling up his last piece of film, Rhodes awaited the return of the craft which continued in a clockwise movement over his home and as it disappeared into the west, the second shot was taken. (Shown blurred on left in newspaper above.) Rhodes described the object's disappearance as phenomenal since it apparently winged over and shot up into the ether. ‘I don't think it was a P-80 since I have observed many of them over here. Also, the fact it made no other sound after the first pass over the house,’ Rhodes said, ‘makes me believe it was some other type of aircraft. In its three flights over the house, there was not a sound, even when it zoomed into the southwest,’ he said. Men long experienced in aircraft recognition studied both the prints and the negatives from which they were made and declined to make guesses on what the flying object might be.”

 

Stein Saw CIA Documents About “Aliens” Transported

with July 1947 Recovered Craft to Ohio Via Ft. Riley, Kansas

Howe: “WAS THERE ANYTHING IN THE FILE’S WRITTEN DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE 6-FINGERED HUMANOIDS?

Stein: ”Very little – only that they had found some dead aliens and one was still alive and was clutching on to some kind of a unit, a hand-held unit with a little hose on it that he plugged into his suit. Our military thought it was some kind of breathing device and that the being was laboring breathing when he was breathing the air.

DID IT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHERE THE LIVE BEING WENT?

No. It just said the live alien was taken away. It mentioned that the three dead ones were picked up and put in containers, probably in a preserving chemical like formaldehyde, and placed in small, plastic containers that were like for children’s bodies – something like that. But authorities were able to seal the containers and they had the dead bodies completely submerged in the preservative liquid in a see-through plastic container.

BUT IT DID NOT SAY WHERE THE BODIES WENT?

Well, they went with the craft on the truck load that first went to Ft. Riley, Kansas. It also mentioned that some of the bodies were sent for autopsy to find out more about the beings. It did not say where they went or why they went to different areas, but there were at least two different areas where the bodies were sent elsewhere for autopsy.

[Editor’s Note: Pages 32 - 33, The Day After Roswell © 1997 by Lt. Col. Philip J. Corso, who describes seeing non-human in small translucent container at Ft. Riley, Kansas, after the Fourth of July 1947.]

IN THE FILE, WAS THERE ANY MENTION OF THE PLAINS OF ST. AGUSTIN?

No, not in that particular file. That was just the Roswell file and there was nothing special in there except for the paperwork I just mentioned and some miscellaneous paperwork and notations filled out by the people who originally picked the craft up.

There WAS a notation about the cover-up – that the second day, a cover-up story about the weather balloon and the deflectors hanging down from the balloon. That was listed as a cover story to cover up finding the alien craft.

DID IT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT WHY THERE WAS A DECISION TO COVER IT UP?

It mentioned that the decision to cover it all up came from the White House, the very top, so that meant it was President Truman’s decision to cover it up, I would think.

BUT NO EXPLANATION? No. There was nothing much about the recovered live alien and three dead aliens. There were no photos of the beings or of the autopsies or anything. When there are excuses that files have been destroyed, I would guess that the file Anthony Barden and I saw at Langley is probably in the same envelope right now labeled, ‘Secretary’s Miscellaneous Notes.’

LIKE THEY WERE FILING SENSITIVE SUBJECTS UNDER COMMON, INNOCUOUS NAMES TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM STUMBLING ON TO THE MATERIAL.

That’s right, and you can imagine in a huge warehouse a half block long, you could be there a very long time looking through boxes to find something.”