In a phone conversation with Dan Smith over the weekend, we discussed the modern day on-going equivalent of yesterdays UFO/Flying Saucer problem now slowly coming to light in the FOIA archives of the CIA.
Smith noted that his friend Ron Pandolfi, the former CIA analyst who was last confirmed working for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence DIA/MASINT, told him that because the phenomena are real but cannot be nailed down physically, intelligence operations focus on tracking the people who are involved with the phenomena instead.
Meanwhile the CIA appears to be working overtime to throw a monkey wrench into the Freedom of Information process with their new CREST document archive.
For example, a quick search for "flying saucer" at the CREST 25-year project on-line search site brings up numerous documents with titles like "ABOARD A FLYING SAUCER THE ADVENTURES OF TWO 'KIDNAPPED' HUMANS."
Unfortunately, unless you are prepared to invest a lot of time and money, that may be as far as you get. The documents at CREST cannot be accessed on line like the handful available at the CIA FOIA Electronic Reading Room.
As the Federation of American Scientists pointed out, "... by refusing to place the CREST database online (or to release it to others who will do so), the CIA is undermining the "effective utilization" of this existing agency database.
The Mother Jones article cited by the FAS explains:
In a quiet, fluorescently lit room in the National Archives' auxiliary campus in suburban College Park, Maryland, 10 miles outside of Washington, are four computer terminals, each providing instant access to the more than 10 million pages of documents the CIA has declassified since 1995. There's only one problem: these are the only publicly available computers in the world that do so. At a time when Google is scanning and posting the contents of entire libraries to the Web, the agency refuses to link this large collection of documents-accessible through the CIA Records Search Tool, or CREST-to the Internet. This has effectively placed the CIA's declassified library beyond the reach of most Americans.
Mother Jones goes on to explain:
CIA officials also believe that even sanitized documents, if made available online, could potentially compromise "sources and methods." The fear is that foreign spies, utilizing the so-called "mosaic principle," could piece together fragments of information from a wide range of declassified sources to make deductions about ongoing intelligence operations.
One might well wonder what is so sensitive about the flying saucers that might be pieced together to make deductions about on-going intelligence operations.
The on-line fiasco known as SERPO comes to mind, given the numerous past and present intelligence officials involved, as well as their connections to high level CIA related operations like IN-Q-TEL and recent overtures to Chinese researchers.
One very badly reproduced "flying saucer" document that might shed a little light on this subject is available to examine at the CIA electronic reading room (or until they read this post and pull it off the system!)... from Director of Central Intelligence W.B. SMITH.
CIA calls General Walter Bedell Smith, the fourth Director of Central Intelligence from 1950 to 1953, during the heyday of the flying saucer era, "one of CIA's most successful and influential directors."
The cover letter to an undated 26 page memorandum from DCI Smith to the Director of the Psychological Strategy Board states:
"I am today transmitting to the National Security Council a proposal (TAB A) in which it is concluded that the problems connected with unidentified flying objects appear to have implications for psychological warfare as well as for Intelligence and operations"
Later Smith calls for "Determination of what if any utilization should be made of these phenomena by US psychological warfare planners and what, if any, defense should be planned in anticipation of Soviet attempts to utilize them."
The fact that the phenomena remain unknown does not appear to deter this effort.
"Intelligence problems include"... "Knowledge of the exact nature of the phenomena" and "Whether any are susceptible to control, and can be thus utilized for other military or psychological offense or defense."
A National Security Council (NSC) ACTION is recommended for a "centrally administered research program under RD3 be established with "research objective requirements to be specified by the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence, and Director Psychological Strategy Board."
Another draft page notes that "The National Security Council has recognized as a national security problem our present limited capabilities in making prompt positive visual or mechanical identification of flying objects. The problem is recognized also as one which bears directly upon both offensive and defensive capabilities of the armed forces; as one of concern to operations as well as to intelligence; and is one having possible implications for psychological warfare."
UPDATE: For more information, see my book "Knowing the Future: The UFO Spy Games"
