Project: Bluebird, and the UFO Program

By Bob Koford

By the time the Air Force had prepared to release Blue Book Special Report #14 for publication, which was originally completed on March 17, 1954, there were so many people standing in line to get a copy that it actually seemed to take them by surprise. These folks were made up of a sampling of just about every aspect of the more "enlightened" of our citizenry, which included military, Intelligence, Government, Science and Academia.

-A Page from a Draft of Report #14-


Why were these people so eager to read the Air Force's "final" report on UFOs? Because as harsh as it sounds, the Air Force had been caught out-right lying on so many occasions in the past, that these people were jaded, and had heard that this report would be different. They knew that IBM had assisted them in pulling together the data, and assumed it would be thorough. Like us common folk, they wanted, and expected, the real answers.

-an example of people's concerns, and actions-


Though the report was important, alas it was not as comprehensive as it was made to appear. This was, in large part, because several cases had already been mis-diagnosed, and been labled -prematurely- as Identified. An example of this was the Chiles-Whitted case of 1948. This case had been labled as being of meteoric origin previously, so that conclusion carried over into the final report. This would aide in bringing the total unknown count down, considerably. The total "Unknowns" count came out to be about 4%, but this was the percentage without the added statistic of "Insufficient Information", which would have raised it to something closer to 20%..a very clever ploy, indeed. While I was reviewing the documents pertaining to this report, I came across some information that could possibly paint a much darker picture of the whole affair.

On 27 January, 1956, Dr. Paul Fitts, one of the original specialists for Project: Grudge, wrote a letter to the Commander of the Air Technical Intelligence Center, at Wright Field, Ohio, Air Force Intelligence Office, asking for their authorization to borrow a copy of Special Report #14, to aide in a report he was working on at the time.

"Dear Sir," it began, "While I was head of the Psychology Branch, Aero Medical Laboratory, I reviewed some of the interview data from sightings of unidentified Aerial objects and prepared a report giving some psychological interpretations of these reports. Subsequently, about two years ago I served as a consultant to an Air Force contractor in connection with the preparation of a questionnaire to be used in collecting data on Project 'Bluebird'."

-view entire document here-


Critical in this bit of information is the fact that Project: Bluebird had been the original program that was the start of the now very well known, and now known to have become very abusive, mind-control experiments conducted under the umbrella of Project: MK ULTRA. Dr. Fitts is admitting that this 1949 program, Bluebird, was utilized, at least in part, for the UFO Program. The letter was penned in 1956, so when he said,"...about two years ago...an Air Force contractor" he was admitting that Bluebird, which was begun in 1949, was still operational in 1954.

According to Dr. Colin A. Ross, author of the book BLUEBIRD, it was the biginnings of the governments effort to "...create amnesia, new identites, hypnotic access codes, and new memories in the minds of experimental subjects". Gordon Thomas, in his 1989 book Journey Into Madness, wrote, "On July 20, 1950, the Agency (CIA) took its first practical step to test behavioral controls on humans."

Both Bluebird, and its predicessor CHATTER (Navy program 1947-1953 see Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_CHATTER ) emerged from Project Paperclip, the secret program to re-patriate several German Scientists into the United States. When Dr. Fitts wrote: "...a consultant to an Air Force contractor" was he referring to the CIA? It would seem logical, as the CIA was the principal agency behind Bluebird. Gordon Thomas wrote that he had heard that Project Bluebird was so named "when the director saw a bird soaring into the sky beyond his window." That director was first DCIA Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter.

[Be advised that my "pop-up blocker" blocked a pop-up when clicking on this link, but it contains a list, from a declassified document, via the FOIA, showing the exact requirements for Bluebird efforts:

http://www.examiner.com/x-6495-US-Intelligence-Examiner~y2009m7d4-CIA-behavior-modification-Project-Bluebird ]

According to Dr. Fitts, as per his letter to ATIC, in 1956, information on UFO witnesses was being used for project Bluebird. This troublesome connection between mind-control and the UFO witnesses needs to be explored much more, but I admit that my windows of oportunity are hit-and-miss, these days. This connection will be, and must be, exposed more completely. Maybe it is less of a connection than it appears. Maybe there is a good explanation to this connection with Project: Bluebird.

Time will tell.

Saturday Night Uforia: In the news, 1952 (Part 1)

Saturday Night Uforia: In the news, 1952 (Part 1)

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Tales from the Morgue: V-2 Rocket Too Close For Comfort

Tales from the Morgue: V-2 Rocket Too Close For Comfort

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v2-rocket-off-course-falls-near-juarez.html

"Colonel Turner explained that the explosion actually was concussion caused by the force of the four and a half ton V-2 ramming the earth at 12 miles per minute...The alcohol and liquid oxygen with which the rocket is fueled would only burn and would not explode, the colonel explained. Mexican soldiers were ordered in the rater to mount guard. They were stationed on the rim, aiding American Military policemen to keep sight-seers and souvenir hunters from the area...Many El Pasoans spotted the rocket’s vapor trail after the missile was fired at White Sands, about 500 airline miles north of El Paso, and a few minutes later heard a terrific explosion and smoke rising in the direction of Juarez...Morris J. Boretz, who was en route to Southwestern General Hospital to visit his daughter, said he was at Brown street and Rim Road when he saw the rocket leaving White Sands and saw the crash south of the Rio Grand, looking like a miniature atomic bomb explosion."

The Split between the Army, and the Air Force, and the Roswell Case

In 1947, when the infamous Roswell crash occurred, the Air Force
wasn't yet an agency of its own. It was still the Air component of
the Army, known as the Army Air Corps, and Army Air Force, but as
the historical record reveals, there just happened to a very large
amount of distrust between the new Air Force, and the Army. This
wasn't just a small matter. The distrust was so great, that Harold
Watson was tasked with spying on the Army, on behalf of the Air
Force. This is the same Watson who became so well known as the
great UFO debunker for the Air Force's UFO, Flying Saucer/Disc
Program.

In 1947, the Army was in charge...pretty much! They immendiately
began to compete with the Navy over the new Missile Defense type of
programs. As the location was being affirmed, for the joint
missile testing grounds, the Army retained most of the control over
the newly established White Sands Proving Ground (first known as
the Long Range Proving Ground). The head committe was controlled
by the Army, and immediately after the Roswell crash, the Army, and
Air Force began battling over the territory, and its usage.
The Air Corp was just beginning to split from the Army as this
momentous event was unfolding. Could this division explain some of
the mysterious discrepatcies in the case?

If you examine the manner in which the events transpired, it indeed
gives the appearance of one hand not knowing what the other is
doing.

For instance, one of the most common arguments surrounding the
affair is the manner in which the case was presented to the public,
and the time passage from when the "explained" event occurred, as
compared to when the clean-up operation began.

What if the Air Corp component stumbled upon something, which the
Army component quickly seized control of? Then ordered the Air
component to go along with a cover-up of the "real" event? As time
passed, and the Air Force was seperated, the secret remained with
the Army, who continued to investigate from a secret location at
the WSPG.

This would explain some of the discrepancies in the way it was
handled, as well as the way in which the relationship between the
new Air Force, and the Army, grew with such a paranoid, and
distrusting nature.

According to this Air Force history page:
http://www.airforcehistory.hq.af.mil/EARS/watson.htm

During the late 1940s, the Army began testing captured,
German V-2 missiles at White Sands, New Mexico. The question was
asked of General Watson, "What's the Army doing at White Sands?"
Since the question came from a high level, he decided to find out.
To gather the information, General Watson decided to see what
information could be obtained using electronic surveillance. After
getting his plan approved by J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation director, and General Nathan Twining, the Air Force
Chief of Staff, General Watson put a crew in a hotel in Alamogordo,
New Mexico, near the White Sands missile range to spy on the Army.
This was the start of electronics intelligence (ELINT) as a
concerted effort in the Air Force.

Why on earth would the Air Foprce be so worried about what the Army
was doing out there? So worried they would spy on the Army, to
find out. Its not as if the Air Force was completely out of the
"entire" loop!

[from the same historical account]:

...What TID/ATIC also needed, General Watson believed, was a
"gold mine" in technology. Accordingly, in 1950 he contacted Dr
Clyde Williams at the Battelle Corporation (now, Battelle Memorial
Laboratories) in Columbus, Ohio, to see if they would be willing to
work under contract for ATIC. The ATIC commander told Dr Williams
that he needed technological and scientific information and asked
if Battelle had any Russians in the work force. General Watson also
needed to know whether there was a place within the corporation
that could be turned into a secure compartment. General Watson
asked the Secretary of the Air Force for Air, Harold Talbot, for
$20 million for a contract with Battelle to provide technical and
scientific data on the Russians. This was the start of Project
Stork, later called White Stork and Have Stork."

Project "STORK" was also part of the UFO re-hash program, as can be read in the documents turned over to the National Archives, by the Air Force.

Battelle, one of the foremost metallurgical institutes in the
nation, had people who spoke Russian and Russian documents; they
also found some documents at Ohio State University. Gus Simpson
from ATIC ran the group at Battelle. Some folks at ATIC were
offended that the work went to a private contractor, but Watson
just did not have the people to do the work and did not have
Russian linguists. Battelle helped ATIC evaluate the MiG-15
components brought to the United States in 1951.

It is my opinion, for what it is worth, that the rivalry between
the Army, and the Air Force, is behind much of the UFO secret, as
well as the "Roswell" secret. It appears to me that the Air Force
was tasked to investigate something the Army was already very aware
of.

Socorro 1964...More than Lonnie

Here are some excerpts from Project Blue Book, for comparison to the latest info being circulated on this case:

see: Helpful Research Links at side bar of blog for Footnote.com-->

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Differences in the Handling of Impacts in 1947

Quotes are from White Sands Range History:
http://www.white-sands-new-mexico.com/missile_range_history.htm
Partial quote of military history article written by Michael Shinabery. Mr. Shinabery is an education specialist at the New Mexico Museum of Space History.

The book "We Develop Missiles, Not Air!" by Mattson and Martyn Tagg, (Air Combat Command,USAF/Cultural Resources Publication No. 2/June 1995) said the launch took place at 4:08 p.m. from Launch Complex 33. The liquid fuel was programmed to burn for 63.6 seconds, and thrust the 9,827-pound rocket to 4,696 feet per second or 3,202 mph, attaining 76 miles in altitude. However, technicians noted "steering was a trouble from liftoff," and "We Develop Missiles, Not Air!" said the V-2 "began tumbling end over end through the atmosphere. The pressure broke the missile apart." Pieces fell near 13th Street and Cuba Avenue, and along the Southern Pacific Railroad tracks. The News reported residents "got into cars and
hastened to the vicinity" of the crash above Indian Wells Road, about 35 miles from LC 33. Citizens also "guarded a portion of the apparatus the rocket was carrying" that had plummeted down to First Street. Bob Callaway, a high school freshman in 1947, said in a 1995 NMMSH oral history that he and a friend were tossing a ball at Michigan Avenue and 15th Street when the power lines "started shaking violently. About that time we got the sound wave from the explosion of the V-2." Callaway and four friends rushed to the scene in a truck, and watched personnel load wreckage onto a trailer. He said security permitted them to take non-hazardous material,
and they carted off a "bonanza" of wiring and steel tanks. They used the wires to build model airplanes, and the tanks to make "portable welding units," he said.
Callaway knew of one person who found cameras. That night "OSI started knocking on doors, and believe it or not, by midnight had recovered all five cameras," Callaway said. An Army release stated the payload was benign: "scientific equipment" for the Naval Research Laboratory, "two spectrographs and four 16mm gunsight aiming point cameras a cosmic ray count recorder camera and two other aircraft cameras." Also aboard was "a quantity of rye seed, which will be tested for effect on fertility of exposure to the upper atmosphere."

[Bob note: this type of atmospheric rocket research is known as Aeronomy.]

The May 29 disaster was never listed in "the official White Sands firing summary," Mattson said in the New Mexico Space Journal. Launched from LC 33, the rocket was supposed to fly north, but instead turned south. "The missile ultimately arced over El Paso and landed" (impacted) south of Juarez near a cemetery. "A few hours after the wayward missile landed (impacted), the U.S. Army showed up and found that enterprising Mexicans were selling any old piece of scrap metal they could find and claiming it was V-2 debris. The United States ultimately apologized to Mexico for the incident and paid for all damages incurred." There is no record the News ever directly reported on the second incident, but the paper did reference it in the June 17 article. The story also said the Chamber of Commerce asked Hatch to "withdraw his recommendations to the War Department." Subsequently, V-2 launches
"resumed" in July 1947 "after safety procedures had been developed to prevent the rockets from endangering civilian populations again," Mattson wrote in the Space Journal.

I have been researching different rocket lauches that took place, in early 1947, from different ranges, and can see more evidence of omissions in the records, as is mentioned in these historical quotes. There is some reference to a WAC Corporal launch on an unspecified date during the time of the so-called "Roswell Crash", but as yet, I have not been able to pin point the exact date of firing, or exactly where it impacted. But, according to a United Kingdom Rocketry site, there is the only reference i was able to locate of a V-2 firing on July 4:
http://www.rocketservices.co.uk/spacelists/sounding_rockets/decades/1944-1949.htm

1947 12 Jun WAC-CORPORAL-B WSPG 60.3 km Round 26 and last flight in original form. Used a silk parachute.

1947 04 Jul 0500 ? US-V2 WSPG 72.5 km GE-Special with biological payload, landed at 142 km range near Roswell after partial parachute failure.

Since this is the proper date, and the mission seems to have involved a biological experiment, it seems to be very much in need of vetting. More needs to be done to find out the particulars of this mission. One thing that is readily apparent from reading these historical quotes is that normal folks, in that time period, were well aquainted with projects going on at areas like White Sands Proving Ground, and when an object from that area went astray, they were quick on the scene to collect debris. Not only that, but authorities allowed people to collect samples.

Even when the samples were of a classified type, such as the cameras, they (the military) didn't threaten them, they just asked for them back....and got them. it is just one reason why so many people have doubted the word of those who claimed to have been threatened by Army Air Force military police men, when dealing with what was recovered North Of Roswell, New Mexico, that summer.

According to witness that showed up at the Roswell incident, in much the same way as any of the V-2 impacts, to collect samples, they were turned away by military blockades. In the V-2 incident that I quoted from the White Sands Range History page, local citizens had blocked off the area, until the military could get there. Such was the patriotic feelings of Americans living in New Mexico at the time.

It is obvious that the head of the AAF Intelligence unit, the Sheriff, and even a rancher, would have understood the basic nature of the "find", even if it was made up of a large number of radar reflection devices. It would have landed in a train, in a fairly small area. Eyewitness accounts of shredded foil, strewn over a wide area, would have resulted from either an explosion, or high-speed impact. If it was an impact of a V-2 rocket, there would have been a large crater, and lots of easy-to-identify material...such as wires, and very terrestrial metal chuncks.

Pointing to the later reports that match the famous photographs doesn't solve the riddle either, because too many of the original witnesses to the debris field, and the debris, describe it as being mysterious, and "like nothing I'd ever seen before".

The mystery continues.