Dr. Lyoyd V. Berkner:
A rear admiral as well as a physicist, he was Executive Secretary of the Joint Research and Development Board in 1946 (under the supervision of Dr. Vannevar Bush). Dr. Berkner headed a special committee to direct a study that led to the establishment of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG). In 1952 he was placed on the Robertson Panel, an advisory panel on UFO's requested by the White House and sponsored by the C.I.A.

Dr. Detlov Bronk:
An internationally known physiologist and biophysicist who was Chairman of the National Research Council and a member of the Medical Advisory Board of the Atomic Energy Commission. With Dr. Edward Condon, Director of the National Bureau of Standards (who later headed the USAF-sponsored UFO project at the University of Colorado), Bronk became a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Brookhaven National Laboratory. He also served as President of the Rockefeller University.

Amongst other activities, Brookhaven has been a primary source of investigations into the presence of radiation at suspected UFO crash sites and landing sites, into the effects of various forms of radiation on humans, and into the treatment of radiation exposed persons found in the vicinity of atomic weapons tests or exposed in the performance of their duties in the research into and construction of nuclear and biological weapons. Brookhaven is a known C.I.A. scientific laboratory cover.

Dr. Vannevar Bush.
He was recognized as one of the leading scientists in the U.S.A.. He organized the National Defense Research Council (NDRC) in 1941 and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) in 1943. The latter led to the establishment of the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. After the war, he became head of the Joint Research and Development Board.

Wilbert Smith, A Canadian government scientist, noted in a Top Secret designated memo, that Dr. Bush headed a small group concerned with the subject of UFO's and their mode of propulsion. He was director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, under Roosevelt and Truman; was commissioned by the United States Intelligence Board (USIB) to recommend ways of linking all the intelligence bureaucracies. He recommended that the director of the Central Intelligence be recognized by the heads of the other intelligence agencies as responsible for coordination of all intelligence functions and activities.

His memoirs bring out the close connection between government, industry, and the great centres of learning and engineering that developed in the U.S. during World War II and became cemented afterwards, through the military/intelligence denominator.

James V. Forrestal:
Secretary of the Navy under Roosevelt; had misgivings about spreading Bolshevism, contact with Nitze from 1939 onward developed his distrust and paranoia of the Russians, took shortcuts to get the job done, tended to be alarmist of others opinions, his focus was forever to have the USA "prepared" for the future (challenges from other states).

With the Joint Chiefs, he supported the concept of peacetime centralized intelligence. In 1945, he posed the question "Is the Soviet Union a nation or a religion?". In the spring of 1945, Forrestal and others, were already preparing to alter the intelligence target of the OSS from the collapsing Axis powers to the Soviet Union. Truman would agree to create the CIA for just that purpose.

In 1946, he wrote "We are trying to preserve a world in which a capitalistic-democratic method can continue, whereas if Russian adherence to truly Marxian dialectics continues, their interest lies in the collapse of this system." Josif Stalin stressed that incompatibility, in his later speeches. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas told Forrestal that Stalin's speech was "the declaration of World War III." 1946 would see the arrest of 22 Soviet spies in Canada from the defection of Igor Gouzenko. The atomic secrets of the U.S.A. had been leaked; the U.S.A. would no longer be the only nation with an atomic bomb. In July 1947, he became Secretary of Defense (at the time of the Roswell Incident).

At the inaugural meeting of the National Security Council , NSC 4A, was initiated by Forrestal, to allow the CIA to conduct covert psychological warfare. He was worried by the prospect of a Communist or Socialist victory in the upcoming elections. NSC-4A began CIA covert political operations. Anything thereafter that was given a Presidential directive and money for those purposes from the Congress, was legal. By 1949, Forrestal frequently declared that the communists were planning to invade the United States and was deeply anxious about communist infiltration and influence.

Strong-minded, driven, ambitious, sensitive, publicity-conscious, a New York investment banker; he did not want the Navy to lose out in any new arrangements. He was drawn to strange situations in both his personal and public lives. He was always ready to take drastic action. He was physically and intellectually high strung. His extreme nervousness heightened his perception of everything, and he thought in extreme terms. A printed card on his desk in the Pentagon read

"We will never have universal peace until the strongest army and the strongest navy are in the hands of the most powerful nation".

His enormous ambition assisted Truman's decision to request his resignation in March of 1949 when Truman suspected that Forrestal was considering running in the opposition party. From that point on, Forrestal was convinced that Communists, Jews, and certain people in the White House were out to get him. He died May 22, in what appeared to have been a suicide at Bethesda Naval Hospital.

Gordon Gray:
He was Assistant Secretary of the Army in 1947 and was promoted to Secretary of the Army in 1949. Known for his interest and expertise in the areas of psychological warfare, he was appointed Special Assistant to President Truman on National Security Affairs in 1950 and directed the Psychological Strategy Board from 1951.

Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter:
First Director of the C.I.A., which was established the same month as MJ-12 - September, 1947; DCI-3 (Director of Central Intelligence, CIA) 01 May 1947 - 7 October, 1950; Commander, Navy Task Force in the Korean War - November 1950 to September 1951. He was born May 8, 1897; died June 18, 1982.

Earlier (1933-35, 1938-40, 1940-41, 1946-47) Assistant or Naval Attache, France. As the first head of the CIA, he faced long-term rivalry from Hoover of the FBI, in addition to bureaucratic rivalry from the Department of Defense, and the State Department. All tried to take a position of leader amongst equals without success. A longtime regular officer, Hillenkoetter made a point of studying the writings of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and liked to quote from them at length to make a point. While he established the agency as more than an equal to the other intelligence groups, it would not be considered superior. He had to spend a great deal of time reassuring the politicians regarding the CIA in response to bad press and reports arising from errors, mistakes, and inefficiencies, often pointed out by his defensive rivals.

His main problem was that he could never obtain clear policy guidelines from the President or the National Security Council. For a time Secretary of Defense Johnson and Secretary of State Acheson were not even on speaking terms.

In his quiet way, Hillenkoetter maintained the CIA as an independent agency, using his own military connections to keep the State Department at bay and to show military colleagues that the independence of the CIA had advantages for them. He demonstrated that the estimate and analytical functions of the CIA could play an important role in securing military funding.

Structured to deal with a changing world, these research and analysis skills gave the agency an elitist image over other "policing" intelligence organizations, making it both powerful and attractive in its consideration of possibilities in the political, scientific, technical and espionage worlds. Support from the CIA came to carry considerable weight with the government because of its apparent independence and "objective" analysis. By October, 1947, Hillenkoetter was already orienting reports and analyses to reflect the presumption-of-war attitudes of Forrestal and President Truman to justify covert operations.

No stranger to bureaucracy, Hillenkoetter subtly focused the importance of the CIA as the body to sell military programs to the government. In addition, the agency looked to the President and secretly carried out the President's will in return for his support.

In 1949, Hillenkoetter created the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI) to conduct basic research for the CIA. By June, 1950, Hillenkoetter, an agency insider, was director of the CIA yet received little attention from President Truman. He was also on the Board of Directors of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon (NICAP), an influential civilian group.

Hillenkoetter was one of the first intelligence chiefs to make public his conviction that UFO's were real, and that "through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense."

Dr. Jerome Hunsaker:
A brilliant aircraft designer, he headed the Departments of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was Chairman of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA).

Dr. Donald H. Menzel:
Director of the Harvard College Observatory and CIA consultant. He was primarily interested in mirage effects and optical illusions as rationalizations; in 1957, proposed "ball lightning" as a source of mistaken "sightings".

He wrote a number of books debunking UFO sightings and criticizing those who reported same. His work has since been largely discounted. He was involved with the National Security Agency and held a Top Secret Ultra clearance.

General Robert M. Montague:
From July 1947 to February 1951, he was the Base Commander at the Atomic Energy Commission installation at Sandia Base, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some of the first recovered UFO's were in the New Mexico area and one focus for sightings has been nuclear development and nuclear storage areas.

General Walter Bedell Smith:
Replaced Forrestal August 1, 1950, after Forrestal committed "suicide". He had been Eisenhower's wartime Chief of Staff, following which he had been U.S. ambassador in Moscow (1946-49), then appointed the second director of the CIA and fourth director of Central Intelligence. Born October 5, 1895, he died on August 9, 1961.

Smith was plagued with ulcers which gave him an even temper - he was always angry. He was given the nickname, "Beetle." Shortly, after his 1950 operation to remove his ulcers, and a large part of his stomach, he weighed only 135 pounds. He was a perfectionist, largely self-educated, had a photographic memory, encyclopedic knowledge and shrewd judgement about people and ideas. He had absolutely no tolerance for fools and theoreticians.

His G-3 military authority at the end of World War II and his intimidating personality brought prestige and power to the CIA. He was its first director who could put his military counterparts to obey orders. He made it possible for the CIA to produce coordinated reports for the first time and established a proper administrative facility for the agency. The attention given to writing concise and relevant reports, not research papers, provided the crisp answers Truman and others wanted. Disagreements with the report from the other intelligence services would be footnoted; the language of the report would not be changed to accommodate views the CIA did not support thereby maintaining the strong conclusion found and presented. Smith got the Estimates to the top-policy people, and on occasion they had great effect.

Unlike Forrestal, who looked out for the Navy, Smith reflected no Army prejudice and privilege when he was DCI. He had been General Eisenhower's chief-of-staff in WWII and later an ambassador to Moscow. Smith kept bureaucracy at a minimum by bringing Professor William L. Langer in to head the OSS research and analysis section. Offered 200 personnel, Langer refused to work with more than 20. Smith also tried to restrict the presence of social butterflies in the agency by firing those who participated in the cocktail party circuit: they were a security risk tending to gossip for social prestige. This reinforced the "secret" nature of the agency.

Sydney William Souers:
Rear Admiral, U.S. Naval Reserve; made Deputy Chief of Naval Intelligence, 1945; DCI-1 (Director of Central Intelligence) 23 January 1946 - 10 June 1946; made Executive Secretary of the National Security Council in September, 1947; he resigned in 1950 and was retained as a special consultant to the Executive on security matters; born March 30, 1892; died January 14,'73;

With a banking and business background, he was a good administrator; Souers was a reserve officer who had served during World War II as deputy chief of naval intelligence. He had been a reserve navy admiral and as a civilian had been an executive of the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain in Truman's home state, Missouri. Recommended by Forrestal to Truman, he shared Forrestal's conviction that the Soviet Union presented the greatest threat to the security of the United States.

As the first director of the CIA, he was never given the authority or resources to carry out the work intended. He initially agreed to take the job for 6 months and would have worked equally well with the White House or a unified Department of Defense taking control; he found himself administrative director of an interdepartmental group answerable to a committee, the National Intelligence Authority (NSA). Souers played a great part in the selection of Vandenberg to follow him. He had influence with President Truman. He saw in Vandenberg, a person who could take the investigation of statutory background and requirements for a comprehensive peacetime intelligence organization that had been organized in his tenure, and make them a practical reality.

General Nathan F. Twinning:
An outstanding commander of bombing operations in both European and Pacific theatres during World War II. In 1945, he was appointed Commanding General of Air Materiel Command (AMC), based at the Army Wright Field (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base).; coordinated information between the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2, Office Chief of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propeller Laboratories of the Engineering Division T-3. In September, 1947, he called for a security coding to be applied to "Project Saucer".

"The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious"

On July 8, 1947, the day of the first press release announcing the recovery of a crashed disk near Roswell, Twinning suddenly cancelled a planned trip to the West Coast "due to a very important and sudden matter. While reporters were advised that Twinning was "probably in Washington", he had in fact made a sudden trip to New Mexico, where he remained until July 10.

On 30 December, 1947, " Project Sign " was initiated and given 2A security classification, Wright Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio was given responsibility for it.

By the fall of 1950 and the Korean War, Brigadier General Merrill Twinning would be the commander of the USA marine training center at Camp Del Mar, California.

General Hoyt Sanford Vandenberg:
Lieutenant General, U.S. Army (Army Air Forces), Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of the Air Force, USAF, DCI-2 (Director of Central Intelligence) 10 June 1946 - 01 May, 1947; born 24 January 1899; died 02 April 1954. Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, War Department General Staff January - June, 1946; Chief of Staff, U.S.A.F., 1948-1953.

He was one of World War II's glamour "fly-boys", young compared to his peers, boyish, handsome, had family connections in politics, ambitious and wanted to be Chief of Staff of the prospective independent air force.

Vandenberg was very aware of the failures of American Intelligence departments which had resulted in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, in 1941: the various services were uncoordinated, 80% of open sources of information were not being used, the American myth of winning a war by simply being able to shoot straight did not apply in modern times. Intelligence activities could neither be done in isolation nor always in the open view. He did not agree with intelligence by committee and supported the provision of authority to the director of Central Intelligence for all intelligence including clandestine operations. He left the directorship of the CIA in May, 1947 to become the new USAF chief-of-staff.

In August, 1948, when a top secret Estimate of the Situation by the Air Technical Intelligence Center offered its opinion that UFO's were interplanetary, Vandenberg, Air Force Chief of Staff at the time, ordered the document to be burned. He ordered "Project Sign" documents and reports to be destroyed in 1949. By demanding physical evidence and destroying documents supporting same he kept scepticism widespread in both government agencies and the media.

By 1950, Senator Vandenberg, and many others, abandoned past isolationist attitudes to adopt the position that if America was to control its own destiny, it would have to adopt a world-wide perspective. The world was manageable, and the U.S.A. could manage it.

OTHER PARTICIPANTS in high security
government UFO "projects".

Franklin Allen:
Journalist with the Hearst newspapers, saw 5 forms of specialized aircraft at Edwards AFB in 1954.

Lieutenant Colonel George Edwards:
USAF (Ret.) of New York, a scientist was involved in the AVRO VZ-9 man made saucer project; knew from the beginning that it would never fly; knew that the USAF was secretly test-flying a real alien spacecraft.

Dr. J. Allen Hynek:
astronomical consultant to USAF Project Blue Book, disbanded in December, 1969.

Major Donald E. Keyhoe:
(USMC- U.S. Marine Corp. - Ret.) interviewed several military witnesses and had enough friends in the services to give him an insight into some of what was happening. He spent much of 1949 putting together an article "The Flying Saucers are Real" which was published by "True" magazine.

Subject writer of several books, NICAP (National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomenon) director, researcher retained re the November 9, 1965 NE U.S.A./SE Canada power grid blackout.

Gerald Light:
of Los Angeles, a highly educated writer and lecturer who had an interest in the occult, the metaphysical, and clairvoyance, saw 5 forms of special aircraft at Edwards AFB in 1954.

Bishop James F. A. McIntyre:
Los Angeles, saw 5 forms of special aircraft at Edwards AFB in 1954. Later, he became a Cardinal.

Dr. Peter M. Millman:
Astrophysicist, chairman of the Canadian "Project Second Storey (PSS) interdepartmental government committee activated in 1952; later became head of Upper Atmosphere Research of the National Research Council (NRC).

Edwin Nourse:
Financier, Brookings Institute and Truman financial advisor, saw 5 forms of special aircraft at Edwards AFB in 1954.

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer:
Nuclear physicist who helped develop the A-bomb.
When he saw the mushroom cloud rise over the New Mexico desert during the test of the first atomic bomb, in 1945, he was heard to quote "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds," possibly remembering a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita.

Dr. Wilbert Smith:
Senior radio engineering scientist with the Canadian Department of Transport; headed the Canadian "Project Magnet" in the 1950's.

Head of the Department of Transport Broadcast and Measurement Section.

Expressed particular interest in developing power sources utilizing the earth's own magnetic field, during or before 1950. Set up a UFO detection station at the DOT's electronic establishment at Shirley Bay in mid-December, 1953.

John Van Neuman.

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