UFOs and Government

A Historical Inquiry

Michael Swords Robert Powell Clas Svahn Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos Bill Chalker Barry Greenwoc 1 Richard Thiem< Jan Aldrich Steve Puree 11

ANOMALIST BOOKS San Antonio * Charlottesville

UFOs and Government

Copyright 2012 by the UFO History Group ISBN: 1933665580 All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher. The UFO History Group: Michael Swords, primary content author for United States chapters Robert Powell, project administrator, editor, and author Clas Svahn, primary author for Sweden Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, primary author for Spain Bill Chalker, primary author for Australia Barry Greenwood, author and content consultant Richard Thieme, author and content consultant Jan Aldrich, primary content consultant Steve Purcell, primary photo illustration editor The UFO History Group would also like to thank William Murphy, Thomas Tulien, and Franklin Woodward for their help and advice during the project.

Cover design: Seale Studios

AnomalistBooks.com Anomalist Books 5150 Broadway #108 San Antonio, TX 78209

Chapter 18: UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain

UFO Policy in Spain In November 1967, the Air Force Staff drafted the first internal memo on UFOs. The presence of unidentified flying objects in the national air space was considered "indubitable." The memo proposed to the Chief of Staff that an Information and Analysis Center be created for this purpose within the Air Defense Command. The note was returned to the files without further comments or action. In 1968, a typical wave of UFO sightings occurred in Spain, with many incidents reported by newspapers and other news media. As a response, in December 1968, the Air Ministry's press office released a communiqu inviting citizens to report cases to the authorities. Days later, 2 nd Air Force Chief of the Staff General Mariano Cuadra Medina issued the first regulations on how to handle UFO observations. The information was rated as Confidential. 1 At this time, Ministry authorities in Spain labeled UFOs as a "delicate issue" and did their best to provide objective information to the public while avoiding cause for alarm. During 1974, another UFO "wave" shook Spain, and early in 1975 the official procedures for dealing with UFO information were updated by General Cuadra, then Minister of the Air. Copying what journalist J.C. Bourret did in France in 1976 (securing permission from the Gendarmerie to have access to its UFO archives), reporter J.J. Benitez requested access to the Spanish Air Force UFO files in October 1977, and he was granted General Mariano Cuadra Medina summaries for twelve reports, which he published immediately in a sensationalist and commercially-oriented book that violated the signed agreement he had reached with the Air Force Chief of Staff. This kind of mismanagement of official UFO information spoiled normal relationships between the Air Force and UFO researchers in Spain for 15 years. The Air Force stated in an internal memorandum:
This journalist made an indiscriminate use of this information and exploited it for their own benefit, publishing a book and several articles, which have led to the legend of the Secret UFO Archives of the Air Force.2

During the 33rd meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, held on October 12, 1978, in New York City, agenda item #126 discussed the "Establishment of an Agency or a Department of the United Nations for Undertaking, Coordinating and Disseminating the Results of Research into Unidentified Flying Objects and Related Phenomena," a proposal addressed by Grenada's Prime Minister, Eric Gairy. (Grenada is a tiny Caribbean island country located northeast of Venezuela.) Subsequently, in the 35th meeting of the UN's Special Political Committee held on November 27, 1978, pursuing the same subject, Dr. Jacques Vallee, among others, spoke for the delegation of Grenada. No positive resolution was made regarding this resolution. As a consequence of this resolution, the permanent ambassador of Spain to the United Nations wrote to the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to inform him that during the session devoted to 423

UFOs and Government UFOs "a French scientist from the delegation of that country [sic] made reference to a recently published study by the Armed Forces of Spain on this issue." This letter was relayed to the Ministry of Defense, which in turn wrote to the Air Force Staff. JEMA (Chief of the Air Staff) replied on January 16, 1979, to say that whenever a UFO sighting was reported to the authorities, an Informing Judge was appointed by the corresponding Air Region to proceed with a proper investigation, according to the norms currently in force. (See appendix: JEMA letter to Ministry of Defense, January 16, 1979) The missive follows:
According to the records and reports of the Informing Judges held by this Staff, concerning alleged UFOs, some of the phenomena have been motivated by natural causes and others have not been determined accurately, considering the latter as unidentified aerial phenomena. Excluding these investigations, a general study on this topic has not been carried out. 3

It was obvious that the French scientist (either Dr. Vallee, or Claude Poher who also attended as part of the Grenada delegation) had certainly alluded to the newly-marketed book by Benitez that publicized the set of twelve UFO report summaries he had obtained from the Spanish Air Force. In January of 1979, the Barcelona-based UFO organization CEI (Center for Interplanetary Studies) ! solicited the King of Spain for his mediation to gain access to the UFO information collected by the Air Force, Army, Navy and Police. Don Juan Carlos handed this request to the Chief of the Air Staff (JEMA). As a result, on January 25, 1979, the JEMA recommended that the Minister of Defense discontinue the classification of UFO information (See appendix: Ministry of Defense letter, March 26, 1979). The consequence was a meeting held by the Joint Chiefs of the Staff on March 3, 1979, where it was decided to formally define UFO information as Classified, rather than Confidential. There is little written information disclosing the thoughts of the successive heads of the Air Force regarding the UFO issue. On July 1981, Joan Plana wrote to the Air Space Section (SESPA) posing several conceptual questions. Internal correspondence from the Second Chief of Staff to the Office of Public Affairs established the criteria for a potential (but never-sent) reply to Plana, as follows:
...the setting of standards to follow for the appropriate inquiries about the appearance of UFOs in the Spanish airspace, as [well as] the interest the Air Force has on the subject, do not indicate any recognition of the existence of such UFOs as manned or alien spacecrafts, but rather the responsibility that this Air Force has in the environment of the national territory against risks which these Unidentified Flying Objects might cause on air navigation. 4

This internal document also stressed that this subject was not secret because of the UFO sightings, but because of the related information concerning radar surveillance, detection, and air defense system issues. During the decade of the 1980s Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos developed a catalogue of UFO observations by military and police personnel."^ The plan was to have access to all the UFO information produced by the Armed Forces. This program generated a lot of correspondence with multiple government agencies. The program's working objective was reshaped by focusing it to ensure that the Air Force would deliver its UFO files to the public at large, as these were the most extensive and elaborate records by orders of magnitude. In May 1991, an "Informative Note" (NI) was sent to the Chief of the Air Staff entitled "The UFO Archive and its Possible Release." (See appendix: Flight Safety Section NI, May 22, 1991.) This NI request was the result of meetings and correspondence between Ballester Olmos and both the head of the Air Force Public Affairs Office, Major Ramn Alvarez Mateus, and the head of the Flight Safety Section of the Air Staff, Colonel Alvaro Fernndez Rodas. The latter unit was where the UFO archive was kept.

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UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain This NI is essential because it explained the current situation of the files. After describing the efforts towards a full declassification, it disclosed two interesting facts:
What has been filed at Flight Safety [55 records] has become aged. Since 1980 no investigation has been made and, as noted before, since 1988 cases are not even archived. The contents of our archive do not reveal any mystery, nor does it clear up doubts to whoever may have them. Investigations have not been made by professionals or by [UFO] phenomenon specialists. 6

This document is very important because it started a process that would end in the total release of the UFO files in the coming years. The NI recommended that the UFO archives be declassified. Prompted by Ballester Olmos' suggestion, in July 1991 the Chief of the Staff passed instructions to the Air Regions in order to centralize all UFO registers into Madrid Air Force Headquarters. Consequentially, records increased to 62 files. (See appendix: Second Chief of Staff letter to Air Regions, July 26, 1991 ) The next step was taken in January 1992, when all the UFO archives were transferred to the Air Operative Command (MOA is the Spanish acronym) at Torrejn AFB (Madrid). This order by General Ramn Fernndez Sequeiros, Chief of the Air Staff (JEMA), is a milestone in the history of the Spanish Air Force handling of the UFO phenomena. (See appendix: Chief of Air Staff letter to MOA, January 15, 1992):
I inform you that upon receipt of this letter you will be responsible for General R. Fernndez the management and handling of all matters related to unidentified flying objects (UFOs), for which the existing documentation at the Air Force Staff is attached. After analyzing the documentation submitted, you must draft and submit for approval of my authority the management procedures it deems appropriate, which will include rules to follow on the classification and declassification of records that are generated. Once these procedures are approved, declassification will proceed, consistent with the standards adopted in the documents submitted. 7 Sequeiros

At the time this new directive was released, M O A ' s commander-in-chief was General Alfredo Chamorro Chapinal, who during the next several years would carry out the order with the utmost professionalism and rigor. Within the MOA structure, the newly added responsibility was placed in the intelligence section, commanded by Lt. Col. ngel Bastida, a first class officer who years later reached the rank of general, before he died prematurely. He was a key figure in the management of the declassification process, and a great friend with whom Ballester Olmos would work hundreds of hours in the succeeding years. 8

General A. Chamorro

Chapinal

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UFOs and Government During a hectic pair of months in March and April of 1992, MOA's intelligence produced several official notes and papers: a proposal for UFO files management, the Air Force's UFO archival history from 1962-1992, the existing military rules and regulations, an inventory of all letters addressed to UFO authorities on UFOs since the late 1960s, the first computerized listing of the Air Force UFO files, and finally the draft of 1G-40-5 the future procedure for investigation of UFO claims. A proposal for full UFO disclosure was the final result of the working papers prepared by Lieutenant Colonel Bastida
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for his commander in chief, General Chamorro, who signed and forwarded it to the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Fernndez Sequeiros. (See appendix: MOA's commander-in-chief to JEMA, April 13, 1992) On April 14, 1992, the Joint Chiefs of the Staffs (JUJEM) supported Fernndez Sequeiros' proposal and downgraded the classification level to mere Internal Reserve, its practical significance being that the Air Force Chief of Staff was empowered to fully declassify and release the UFO files at his discretion. (See appendix: Letter from JEMA's chief of cabinet, April 29, 1992) UFO Procedures Currently in Force "Instruccin General 40-5" (General Instruction No. 40-5) is the present 28-page procedure used for investigations of UFO sightings by the Air Force, issued March 31, 1992, by the Chief of the Staff and distributed to the units in June of 1992. As Lieutenant Colonel Bastida later admitted, it was inspired by several UFO questionnaires that Ballester Olmos had supplied to the Air Force, including those used by the USAF. IG 40-5 states that as soon as a UFO report is communicated to the Air Force, it will be reported to both MOA and the regional Air Command with some primary information on the event, accompanied with a statement from the nearby Air Force unit advising whether or not an investigation should be carried out. If the regional Air Command decides to start an inquiry, a Reporting Officer will be appointed. MOA may also appoint an Investigating Officer from the Intelligence Section. Following the issued procedures, a Confidential File will be created. When the investigation is finished, MOA will either recommend that JEMA declassify it or to send it to the JUJEM for higher classification. As internal documentation, the IG protocol is not declassified itself, but the Air Force is indulgent in allowing UFO researchers to have access to it. (See appendix: Cover of IG 40-5, issued March 31, 1992) Since the inception of the IG 40-5, only three times has this been activated, two in 1993 and one in 1995. In all cases, it generated files of some 100 pages in length, which soon were declassified in their entirety. It is expected that any future release of reports will continue to be complete.

The UFO Disclosure Process As soon as the classification downgrading took place, MOA's Intelligence Section (Bastida) started the hard work of reviewing all 62 files. Only people's names were deleted from the documents, and for every file a declassification proposal was submitted to the authority of JEMA on a routine basis. 426

UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain Stamped with the Chief of Air Staff signature, the files were sent to the Library of the Air Force Headquarters (Madrid) for free consultation and reproduction for the public. The first UFO file was declassified in September 1992. This process lasted seven more years up to 1999, when finally 84 files (covering 122 events reported from 1962 to 1995) were disclosed. In 1993, Lt. Col. Bastida left the MOA due to a promotion and was replaced by Lt. Col. Enrique Rocamora Aniorte, who followed-up the process until its termination, utilizing serious and high working standards. Bastida released 22 files between 1992 and 1993, and Rocamora released 62 files between 1993 and 1999. The design structure of a typical declassified file includes the cover sheet (one or more pages), with several box headings: M A N D O O P E R A T I V O A R E O (Air Operative Command) later renamed as M A N D O A R E O DE C O M B A T E (Air Combat Command), ESTADO M A Y O R - SECCIN DE INTELIGENCIA (Staff-Intelligence Section), and the general Lieutenant subject description A V I S T A M I E N T O DE F E N M E N O S E X T R A O S (Sighting of Strange Phenomena). It is followed by seven brief sections that summarize the file contents.

Colonel E.

Rocamora

EXPEDIENTE (file): file number representing the event date as year, month, day (e.g., 791111 for 11 November 1979) or any other indicative like the source and reception date (e.g., M A C A N NOV92) LUGAR (location) FECHA (date) R E S U M E N (abstract) NDICE DE D O C U M E N T O S (index of documents) C O N S I D E R A C I O N E S (comments). In every case it reads: "There are no issues that require maintaining the status of "classified matter") PROPUESTA DE CLASIFICACIN (proposal for classification). In every case it reads: "Declassified" The cover sheet is then dated in Torrejn (a town on the outskirts of Madrid where the Air Force Base is located) and signed by the M O A / M A C O M intelligence officer in charge. The rest of the file is the body of the report and the attachments. Once JEMA approves the proposal, a DESCLASIFICADO (declassified) stamp is printed on the document. (See appendix: Example of declassified file, cover pages 1 and 2) When the process was finished, 84 files had been compiled and all of them were made fully public. The disclosed files and the 122 actual UFO events they represent (i.e., individual reports, some files containing several cases) consist of: 78 (Case) files comprising 122 different events, 1962-1995 4 (Bis) files with supplementary information found for cases previously declassified I (Directive) file to release an assortment of historical regulations 1 (Catalogue) file containing 4 Air Force UFO report lists created over time

UFOs and Government

UFO Monographs at the Air School Not unexpectedly, over the years the UFO subject has been the motif for several academic monographs delivered to fulfill academic requirements in the Superior Air School of the Spanish Air Force ("Escuela Superior del Aire"). In fact, three such papers devoted to the UFO phenomenon have been presented. In February 1967, Captain Antonio Gonzlez de Boado wrote the text (in Spanish) "Unidentified Flying Objects" to qualify in the 73 rd Training Course for rank upgrading. Captain Boado believed in the factual reality of UFOs, and his 19-page essay was a simple, personal overview of the existing flying saucer evidence. This ahead-of-his-time Air Force captain died in 1969 in a flight accident. The second monograph was prepared in September 1981 by Lt. Col. Antonio Muoz Ferro-Sastre, as a requirement for the 37th Staff Course. It was entitled "Methodology Used Between 1974 and 1977 in the UFO Investigations in the Air Zone of the Canary Islands." Lt. Col. Muoz spoke from the extensive experience he had gained as an instructing judge appointed to investigate several UFO sightings reported in this Spanish region located in the Atlantic Ocean. The full text of this monograph, plus introductory notes by this author, is available online. 9 An analysis of the so-called UFO sightings in the Canary Islands area, revealed years later, their man-made nature as U.S. Navy ballistic missiles. 10 In September 1998, Lieutenant Colonel Enrique Rocamora, who had been in charge of declassification from 1993-1999, entered the 57 th Staff Course. Along with consultations and contributions from Ballester Olmos, he created a massive monograph under the title "The Process of Declassification of UFO Documentation in the Air Force," with ten chapters and 16 attachments amounting to 296 pages. (See appendix: Cover of UFO monograph by Lt. Col. Enrique Rocamora. Unfortunately, most works by alumni of Staff Courses are not available to the public, but may be released over time.)

Cooperation with Air Force Intelligence on UFOs Before the disclosure process started, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, who at the time was the Director of Research for CEI, was contacted by Lt. Col. Bastida of MOA Intelligence. No precedent existed for a UFO researcher to receive a request to brainstorm with a member of the military intelligence community. Bastida was found to be a thoughtful and open-minded military man. As a result, a sincere friendship coupled with a smooth working relationship and fruitful trading of ideas soon developed. Bastida was able to glean useful information on serious UFO studies from an experienced civilian, even to the point of using one of his books' 1 as a reference work for his duties at the MOA. 12 Ballester Olmos in turn learned first-hand of the Air Force's declassification plans and database. During the years the declassification process lasted, Ballester Olmos assisted MOA Intelligence, first through Bastida, then with Rocamora, in the study of the reports to be declassified and in many aspects of its development. This assistance was official and backed by MOA's top command. The possibility of a more formal collaboration agreement with the Ministry of Defense was once considered, but eventually both parties decided to keep it as a simple but highly efficient "gentleman agreement." The agreement was established on November 16, 1992, and it produced many long working meetings with MOA Intelligence over the years (See appendix: Lt. Col. Bastida letter to author, November 16, 1992). This extraordinary cooperation allowed Ballester Olmos to personally view, handle, and copy the original case files located in the filing cabinets of MOA/MACOM, and what was more important, to 428

UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain oversee the entire declassification process as an insider. It insured that all reports in official custody were released; increased the momentum of the process; secured copies of all related UFO documentation (additional to case files) such as policy statements, internal notes and letters, mail from and to citizens; and instigated further searches for missing information. The latter was most effective, and uncovered, among other items, an important set of color slides for a March 5, 1979, missile case. Essentially, in practice, Ballester Olmos performed loose quality control and audit functions during the entire UFO declassification process. All objectives were accomplished. It should be emphasized that this eight-year-long cooperation was totally gratis et amore. Public knowledge of this process generated some controversy in the sensationalist Spanish UFO press, but a similar technique was used later during the British disclosure and transfer of UFO files from the British Ministry of Defense to their National Archives. Dr. David Clarke played a similar role as Ballester Olmos had earlier in Spain. " After the archives were deposited at M O A , there were 62 files with 87 UFO cases by then. Since 1992, the incremental evolution of the official archives was mostly influenced by initiatives prompted by Ballester Olmos. For example, on November 17, 1992, and July 11, 1994, MOA produced requisitions to all units in the Air Force system demanding a search for, and the submission of, any existing documents on UFOs for centralization and disclosure. 1 4 Consequently, 16 additional files were created, containing 35 new cases, including three applying the new IG 40-5 procedures. These made up the 122 known UFO events. The reason why the Spanish disclosure process lasted eight years (1992-1999) for just 84 files lies in the fact that this was not a high-priority job in the daily routine of the Intelligence Section of the Air Operative/Air Combat Command. The good fortune that they requested civil cooperation allowed follow up, increased the rate of progress, and recovered important materials and case reports lost, misplaced, or located elsewhere. Summing up, all UFO reports in the custody of the Spanish Air Force Staff have been disclosed to the last page. It is also certain that, over the years, potentially interesting information was Col. Bastida (left), Lt. Col. Rocamora (right) and author. not submitted to the central depository (Air Staff) because it was considered irrelevant to the air safety or defense viewpoint by the local command. Later, such information was destroyed following the standard time rules for inactive files (five years on average).

Review of the Defense UFO Files The first UFO claim officially reported to the Air Force authority occurred in 1962 and the last entry was in 1995. From the first to the last, a total of 122 different UFO events are counted. In the 34 intervening years, six of them had zero entries, and peak years appeared in 1968, 1975, 1978-1979, and 1986. This is the yearly tabulation of 122 UFO events included in the 84 A F archives: 429

UFOs and Government

1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 3 0 0 2 1 3 23 7 1 2 0 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1 2 8 3 7 11 12 7 1 1 1 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 3 5 6 0 1 3 0 2 1 3 0

UFO sightings in Spain are in excess of 7,000. However just a tiny fraction of these (< 2%) have been reported to the Air Force. Probably people do not know that they can make reports to the Air Force, or they are unfamiliar with how to make the reports. In fact, when this option was publicized, the population did report their sightings, as it was demonstrated when the Ministry of the Air released four press communiqus in March, September, and December 1968, and April 1969. These announcements to the public ("authorities are concerned with UFO sightings, please report to us") elicited responses that gave rise to the peaks in the yearly distribution of sightings in the custody of the Air Force (See appendix: Relationship of number of UFO cases reported to the Air Force and Air Ministry press releases, 1968-1969). Of those actually investigated, many of the UFO reports in the Spanish Air Force files were merely descriptive; no conclusions were furnished. In a number of events, the A F didn't have complementary information saved in the private archives of civilian ufologists. During the eight years the declassification process lasted, Ballester Olmos had all events scrutinized and evaluated by a group of experts. The statistics discussed in the following paragraphs reflect the findings of this research. These are not official Air Force figures or statistics, which do not exist as such, other than as mere inventory lists of available files. Most of the declassified A F files have no conclusions, as the Air Force never saw fit to play the researcher's role in this context. The magnitude of reports to the Air Force decreased dramatically over the decades. In the 1960s, wave year 1968 had 23 real-life accounts reported; in the 1970s, peak year 1979 had 12 (half); in the 1980s, year maximum was 1986 with only six cases reported (half again); and in the 1990s, peak year of 1993 showed barely three, once again half. Since 1995, no formal, direct request has been addressed to the Spanish Air Force to generate any new investigation. In the following yearsbeyond the closure of the processthere had been occasionally some internal correspondence related to UFO sightings, for example concerning the November 27, 1999, re-entry of a Chinese rocket. 1 5 However, the information lacks the expected characteristics needed to generate the activation of IG 40-5, the Air Force procedure for investigation of UFOs. Out of 122 cases analyzed by the international team directed by Ballester Olmos, 1 6 ' 1 7 99 had conventional causes, 14 had insufficient data for evaluation, and 9 were considered potentially unidentified. The 23 unexplained and 99 explained cases are tallied in a comparison following a modified Hynek classification:
Nocturnal lights Daylight discs Radar-Visual Radar tracks Close encounters Total Unexplained 9 0 7 4 3 23 Explained 59 14 13 5 8 99 Total 68 14 20 9 11 122

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UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain Over half of the total cases concerned distant lights in the night sky, and most are explained as misperceptions of short-lived lights in the sky (astronomical and aerospace). In the daylight disc class, there are no cases of typical "flying saucers" seen in plain daylight as all such incidents had conventional solutions (mostly aircraft). Radar-visual incidents represent, obviously, the highest score in terms of aeronautical strangeness; typically these are uncorrelated tracks matching the sighting of an anomalous object in the atmosphere. Although most such reports lie in the explained category, there are a few unknown phenomena as well. In the group of radar-only cases (no human-witness involvement), we find a relatively high number of unexplained events. Basically it is due to the fact that most records lack additional data, being just a few lines in terms of documentation, taken from military radar logbooks with no follow-up or investigation ever done. These are mostly candidates for false echoes, and the lack of information precludes any proper analysis. Finally, close encounters also score high in strangeness but include a higher incidence of psychological and hoax causes; yet a few such incidents survived preliminary study. As in civilian ufology, sometimes one observes an unwillingness to accept that a given UFO experience can be solved. On November 4, 1968, Iberia pilot commander J. Lorenzo Torres was flying from London to Alicante, through Barcelona, when at 18:23 hours (GMT) the pilot reported to Barcelona control tower the sight of a "very big light...a central light with two lateral lights...it is like a UFO." The light was seen in front of the plane making an up and down motion. In a press interview months later, he stated: " W e thought it could not be Venus, as I had read something in this regard, and I was convinced after thinking carefully, that it was not that planet." Questioned about what it could have been, the pilot replied: "Perhaps the reflection of a star, there are many problems of reflection. I do not believe it was a flying saucer." Analysis of the incident has revealed a match of the space-time position of planet Venus with the UFO source. To this day, the pilot continues to reject this explanation (in spite of the fact the he himself considered it during the sighting, meaning we are talking about a stellar-sized light). He never reported having seen Venus and the UFO at the same time, as what should have occurred given the nearby placement if two different light sources ever existed. The former pilot stated that when the Air Force learned of this occurrence, they said he had seen the planet Venus. Unlike other case investigations of the period, the A F files contained no paper trail of any inquiry made regarding this observation (as has been confirmed by Ballester Olmos), except the transcript of conversations between ground control and the airplane, a two-page document that was duly declassified. A manuscript note in the transcript's first sheet (erased in the released version) reads: "Commander Lorenzo: careful!" This note is open to interpretation. A conservative one is that the pilot was perceived as prone to problems by the military. Conspiracy lovers may think otherwise, of course. This pilot has reported recently that when he arrived back at Barcelona airport, he was told that radar had detected three objects, that he was given the radar records, and that these were later confiscated. However, the actual Air Force archives retain no information whatever about this UFO observation other than the air control's conversation and no radar records at all. The official files of the time were rather extensive, with good field investigations on other UFO sightings of the same time frame, but in this case the pilot's assertions cannot be checked or proven. Coming back to Venus, the period November 1968-February 1969 was very rich in UFO misidentification with this planet, and several of the UFO cases in the official repository vouch for this, either by the original A F inquiry or by independent fresh re-investigations. There is another episode of alleged confiscation of records by the military. On May 1968, there was a wave of sightings of flying triangles of large size at high altitudes in Spain; they were seen both from the ground and the air. To make a long story short, it turned out to be a flood of tetrahedron-shaped stratospheric balloons launched by CNES (French Space Center) from a location near the north of Spain. The evidence to support this explanation is considerable and is both national and international. One of the released files, dated May 15, 1968, covers two observations from Madrid and Barcelona. 431

UFOs and Government The file included a report by the Defense Command. It related that a passenger filmed one such object near Madrid during the inaugural Iberia flight from Tenerife (Canary Islands) to Paris. The report writes: " C O C controller suggested Madrid ground control, in touch with the airplane, asks the captain to get hold of the film, something that he had already done by himself in order to furnish it to the Defense Command, the passenger freely agreeing to cooperate. It should be noted that the passenger had entered the pilot cabin, where he was asked to film the object. The film was submitted to Madrid Control, which in turn mailed it to the Ministry of the Air's chief of the National (Air) Control Service, who in turn dispatched it to this (Defense) Command." The archived file contains a letter from the Defense Command to the Minister of the Air dated May 31, 1968, saying it is attaching a report and the film. But the film did not arrive. The incoming letter, entry-stamped June 1, 1968, contains a manuscript note stating that the film was not included in the submission. In 1992, Lt. Col. Bastida tried his best to find the film everywhere, unsuccessfully. All this information is part of the declassified file. Stories like this (the "severe" loss of a four-minute film of a sounding balloon in flight), cooked in a sensationalist prose, have been used to cast doubts about the honorability of what has been a transparent and comprehensive disclosure process. A note on missing files seems to be in order. The UFO policy by the Air Force in Spain has been loose. There was never a department focused on UFO claims and UFO sightings as it represented a low priority subject. No rules even existed until 1968 when the first rules were drafted and disseminated within A F circles. When new cases arose in 1975, the 1968 rules were reinforced to cope with the investigations of those sightings. In consequence, a number of UFO sightings originally reported to regional units, airdromes, Air Force bases, or radar stations (either by military personnel or civilians) were never submitted to the Air Staff and never found their way into the UFO archive. These reports were irretrievably lost, with a number of these missing reports being known to ufologists. In addition to not being listed in any internal catalogue of UFO case resources in the Air Force Staff, these reports are not present in the original files in M O A / M A C O M facilities. Furthermore, over a 30-year period, with so many different persons handling the centralized information in the Operations Division of the Air Staff (Air Space/Flight Safety section), the loss and destruction of correspondence, reports, films, etc, was inevitable. This is the normal result of a lowprofile activity with no specialists or continuing work program.

True U F O Cases Only nine out of the 122 cases collected by the Air Force resisted a full explanation. This is the judgment of a group of civilian specialists and scientists under the coordination of Ballester Olmos. They evaluated the information that was received directly from M O A . Lastly, these nine reports described incidents that seemingly defied explanation as known objects or phenomena, and occurred between 1975 and 1985. The first four cases were inland but the last five were maritime sightings over areas of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean (heavy airborne and seaborne traffic areas). There have been no "true" UFO cases reported to the Air Force since 1985 (and no actual reports beyond 1995). It seems to be that many of the apparent high-strangeness accounts refer to old-time episodes when, presumably, investigative techniques were not as sophisticated as they are today, or the access to background or environmental information was much more restricted or difficult to obtain. One cannot avoid thinking whether this conclusionthe best cases are old casescan be generalized to other countries as well. The case abstracts that follow serve to illustrate the type of raw unknown phenomena found in the Spanish Air Force records. 432

UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain January 1, 1975, Quintanaortuo, Burgos: At 6:25 in the morning four soldiers were driving from Santander to the Army Engineers Academy at Burgos after a N e w Year's Eve celebration on their Christmas leave. When they were 14 km from their destination, the driver stopped the car after seeing a high-speed light in the sky moving in a parabolic course. Then, they all saw in the fields a very intense light. Intrigued, they got out of the car, crossed the highway, and saw some 400 meters away a luminous body, shaped like a truncated cone and hovering some two meters above the ground. It was about two meters in height by three meters across the base. It emitted a yellowish light, and on the bottom it had some luminous spurts aimed at the ground. Suddenly, the phenomenon faded. Almost immediately a row of four objects appeared in its place. After two minutes, the nervous witnesses decided to continue their trip. They realized that two other cars had also stopped. About one kilometer further, they stopped again, now seeing only two lights in the distance. Some three minutes later they resumed their trip. The Army inquiry, including a field trip and an overflight of the area by plane, revealed no visible traces of the incident. Days later, a magazine took the soldiers and their officers to the alleged landing location and several burnt spots were discovered on the site. The Army (not the AF) inquiry revealed some ambiguity in the witnesses' accounts (in fact, some of the data above come from complementary sources other than the official report). The Army also advanced the hypothesis of an optical illusion caused by a reflection of moonlight on metallic parts of a nearby high power line coupled with some prior suggestion. This case looks very interesting but was not expertly investigated; therefore it is an unidentified rather than an unidentifiable phenomenon. In some ways this incident is reminiscent of the narrative of a Canadian farmer who, on September 1, 1974, just four months before the Spanish event, also saw four similar objects which produced swirl marks on his fields in Langenburg, Saskatchewan. 1 8 UFO research certainly demands exercises in comparative ufology, but, most importantly, such exercises should be based on bona fide cases. January 2, 1975, Brdenas Reales firing range, Navarra: At 22:55 hours a soldier on duty near the main tower of this Air Force firing range in northern Spain saw a motionless bright red light at ground level. He called the Corporal guard, who went out in the company of three soldiers. The light seemed to be from two to five kilometers away. After five to ten minutes, it rose up to 25 to 50 meters from the ground and flew slowly in the direction of an auxiliary tower. When the light reached the tower, it changed course and increased speed and height, moving towards the main tower. Very rapidly, it disappeared to the northwest. At 23:10 hours the Corporal reported the sighting by telephone to the Sergeant on duty, who went out to a mound and through binoculars he saw an object similar to an "inverted cup," with white lights on top and bottom, and with pulsed amber and white lights around it. It was in the same position as the initial sighting. Its size was compared to a long truck. The object illuminated the environment over an area of 100 meters in radius. As before, the light rose up and flew towards the auxiliary tower, disappearing this time to the northeast 15 minutes later. Five soldiers standing by the main tower guard post also saw the object, but they could not identify any shape. The following morning, the Civil Guard called the military facility and asked if any aircraft had crashed in the area, as sightings of lights over the range had been reported to the police post of the nearby town of Tudela. The Air Force inspection of the site found no traces of any type. Radar did not detect any abnormal tracks. The military inquiry was superficial and did not offer any conclusion. The Lieutenant General of the III Air Region wrote a "personal interpretation" of the facts and addressed it to the Minister of Air. He rejected the possible landing of UFOs in the area and concluded: "The lights or light effects observed may have been produced by the Moon halo, the light from any star, or by any nearby farm tractor, when crossing some of the fog layers or mist that intermittently cross the Range, thus provoking an optical effect that caused the appearance of a lighted object in motion." This was a hasty opinion based on personal prejudice and the desire to close the case. A helicopter is a possibility, but it 433

UFOs and Government cannot be proven. This interesting case demands a professional re-investigation. (A drawing of this event at the Brdenas Reales Firing Range is displayed in the appendix.) July 14, 1978, Mazarrn, Murcia: This is not an Air Force report. During a dawn exercise performed by an Army unit, where a military group attempted to perform an outflanking maneuver on a number of camped soldiers, they observed for two hours an unfamiliar group of lights. They described them as a red light (vanishing on occasion), two greenish-white lights (that shone sporadically) and four white lights that appeared irregularly and flew without any specific formation. Initially, the first light was sighted near a pond for 15 minutes, at an uncertain distance, oscillating from right to left. Back at their camp, they saw a red light hovering less than ten meters over the road, which was then joined by two white lights. They continued in the direction of this group of lights. The lights also moved forward, leaving the road and moving around obstacles like houses or hills, then coming back to the road in front of the group of soldiers. Height over the terrain was estimated between 4 and 30 meters. A reconnaissance of the area on the following night did not reveal anything unusual, except the antenna of a meteorological station. The observers insisted they could not have been confused by it. This is one of the few UFO reports from the Spanish Army, and it was submitted to the Air Force (Intelligence) for information purposes. The editing of the report, prepared by a Captain, is quite poor and the event description unclear. The case has not been investigated and it remains poorly documented. 1 9 The Army report from Mazarrn was one of the cases not originally filed in the Flight Safety (SEGVU) Section of A F Headquarters where all UFO documents were under custody. As mentioned before, Ballester Olmos' first contacts with Air Staff officers included the boss of S E G V U , Colonel A. Fernndez Rodas. He was the author of the May 22, 1991, memo which recommended UFO disclosure and which commenced the process. In 1993 his j o b position was changed and he was appointed head of the Intelligence Division. It was there that some old UFO files were found, and he rushed to send them to MOA to be added to the declassification plans. Had it not been for his commitment to the idea, these would have become part of the missing UFO reports. Based on his consulting arrangement with the military, Ballester Olmos received for review the Mazarrn report from the M O A Intelligence Section in 1993. Years later, by April 1998, he realized that the UFO declassification process was slowing down, so to expedite the process Ballester Olmos typed up the standard cover memorandum himself, along with the summary of the information and the list of the attachments, and sent it all off to the M O A . As a result of this initiative, the file was declassified one month later. July 20, 1978, Agoncillo airdrome, La Rioja: A soldier was on duty at the main gate of this military airfield when he observed a strange object in the air. It was 01:20 hours when he informed the guard post. A Second Lieutenant and a Corporal went to the site in time to observe for five minutes a flying object moving from east to west some 1,000 meters above the ground. The object's flight was slow and noiseless. T w o of the witnesses described it as lozenge-shaped, while the other two said it had the shape of a triangle. All agreed that there was an intense white light flashing at one second intervals in the very center of the structure, while they differed in the number of additional white lights which were placed on every apex of the object's body, i.e., three in the triangle and four in the rhombus. The object continued to fly steadily until it disappeared from sight. This sighting was unknown to the A F Staff until 1991, when it arrived at Headquarters from the corresponding Air Region in response to the centralization query activated by Colonel Fernndez Rodas, therefore an investigation never occurred in the first place. An airplane or a helicopter could explain the observation but the information is too limited to conclude anything for certain. September 9, 1978, Mediterranean Sea, 142 km East Barcelona: This is an incident where most of the available information comes from civilian sources. A transcript of air-to-ground conversations between some airline pilots and personnel from the Barcelona Air Control Center described lights seen 434

UFO Secrecy and Disclosure in Spain at 20:35 hours that the pilots could not identify in the environment of aeronautical point India. Whether or not they were stationary or moving, at sea level or above, we do not really know. The Barcelona Control radar did not register any abnormal echo, but a civil aviation report mentions that contact was established with Pegaso Defense radar center in Madrid. With this background, in 1992 Ballester Olmos requested that MOA Intelligence look for any reference to it in the secret control logbooks of this underground facility at Torrejn AFB. A short annotation was all that was recorded (it was declassified in 1997). From it we know basically what Barcelona Control was reporting about calls being received from several pilots describing unknown luminous activity over the Mediterranean Sea (apparently it lasted 35 minutes in total). Defense noted that at no time was any signal detected on their radar screens. There was no Air Force or Civil Aviation investigation, other than the conversation transcript. Presently, this event is under independent, private analysis. February 25, 1979, Atlantic Ocean, Southeast of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands): This is another example of recovered information. For the third time MOA was convinced to request once more that certain records be searched for lost UFO information. Successfully, the C A M O , or Circulacin Area Militar Operativa (Operative Military Air Traffic), radar unit in the Canary Islands replied by sending a number of entries copied from logbooks in the time span of 1977-1991. An 11-line annotation was found describing how at 2 a.m and for 35 minutes C A M O radaras well as the major military W-8 radar stationdetected one unidentified track located 84 km to the southeast, flying at an altitude of 4,400 meters. An Iberia airplane in the area was alerted, and the pilot reported having seen above his position an intense, elongated light. Information acquired from the W-8 local radar site disclosed that the radar echo transmitted squawk, which is a signal emitted by the transponder of an airplane. This is the most probable explanation, but one that cannot be confirmed due to the brevity of the information at hand. This information was declassified in 1997. March 13, 1979, Mediterranean Sea, Balearic Islands to Alicante: In an underground secret bunker called Pegaso, placed within the facilities of Torrejn AFB (Madrid), lies the major surveillance center to coordinate all radar sites in Spain. In this key Operations Center of the defense system, just before 11:00 am. an uncorrelated echo was detected north of Algeria, over the Mediterranean Sea. It was traveling at 840 knots (1,556 km/hour) on a northwest course, in an incoming direction to Spain. The track was code-named KL-553 and it was classified as unknown. Three minutes later, a scramble was ordered and a Mirage III aircraft took off from Manises AFB (Valencia) to identify the trace, but before it could be intercepted, the trace vanished from the radar screen. It had traveled 115 km during that time. Four minutes later, the echo reappeared in another position; this time it was apparently motionless. It was now thought to be a ship's reflection. In spite of this, the military aircraft was vectored towards that point. Juan-Vicente Ballester Olmos at Pegaso control

When the interceptor jet was at 15 km distance room, the mainframe Defense center. from the track, the radar echo started to move in a northwest direction again. It accelerated to 730 knots (1,352 km/hour) climbing to a height in excess of 24,000 meters. Six minutes later, the track had changed its route to the northeast and in two minutes it was lost. There was never visual contact by the Mirage III pilot. (The appendix contains a radar overlay of the March 13,1979, sighting.) 435

UFOs and Government The brief information available makes it difficult to decide whether or not it could have been an advanced foreign aircraft, a false echo, or anything else. In consequence, in absence of an established solution, this qualifies as a true U F O report. May 22, 1980, Atlantic Ocean, South Gran Canaria (Canary Islands): At 23:05 hours the Air Transit Control Center at Gando airport (Gran Canaria) detected some unidentified traffic on a 210 course (SSW) at a speed of 600 knots (1,110 km/hour), moving away from the Berriel airdrome, located to the south of the island. A few minutes later, an aero-taxi pilot flying on a 231 course reported a bright object pass on his left and descend towards the sea (See appendix: May 22, 1980, UFO and airplane courses as well as a drawing by the instructing judge). An officer experienced in UFO inquiry investigated this case. He concluded that it was an unknown object. Independently, however, we have determined that the position of the light observed by the pilot matched the position of the planet Venus at that time and place. Because the object was not also tracked from the W-8 radar station on the island, the possibility of a false echo also exists. This continues to be classified as a UFO as of today. December 23, 1985, Atlantic Ocean, Las Palmas to Arrecife (Canary Islands): The merchant vessel Manuel Soto, owned by Transmediterrnea Co., was sailing from Las Palmas to Arrecife, two islands of the Canary archipelago, when at 03:10 hours the third officer on duty observed on the horizon by the prow what seemed to be the rising of a heavenly body. Initially, he identified it as the star Antares. Ten minutes later, he confirmed that the light's position corresponded neither with Antares nor with any other star or planet. The officer took measurements of height and azimuth of the light, which remained stationed in the same spot for 15 minutes, after which it started to move quickly. Other members of the crew came to view the light as well; the second officer, the radio operator, the steersman, and the d e c k ' s guardian. The light was approaching the ship, reaching the vessel's zenith two minutes later. At that moment, all witnesses could perceive the object's profile, which did not resemble that of a familiar airplane or helicopter. The object had a very intense white light at its center, a weaker red light near it, and another soft white light set apart. The separation between lights made the witnesses think that the object was flying low, yet no noise was heard. The shipping company delivered the logbook annotations to the Spanish Navy, which in turn submitted this information to the Air Force. No records of anything uncommon in this time frame were found in the Canary Island sentry systems. The sighting details might be compatible with the approach of an airplane from the horizon, flying at a constant altitude; however, lack of investigation precludes any conclusion other than unidentified. These cases serve to illustrate the magnitude and relevance of the unexplained episodes managed by the Air Force. While these reports have some potential, the evidence does not force us to re-examine current paradigms or mainstream concepts. These are either intrinsic mysteries, or mysteries due to a lack of proper field investigation and competent event analysis. The information collected does not indicate military ownership of this problem, nor does it prove any threat to homeland security; therefore it is understandable that there exists no long-standing philosophy towards UFOs from the defense perspective in Spain. UFOs, as a class of phenomenon reported as flying objects, fell naturally under the jurisdiction of the Air Force. Therefore the subject was handled by Air Space (SESPA) or Flight Safety (SEGVU) sections within the Air Staff from 1968 to 1992. When it was transferred to the M O A / M A C O M , since it was unrelated to Operations, Telecommunications & Electronic War, or Logistics, UFO case management was assigned to Intelligence. But true intelligence work was performed on the UFO question as one might expect. No consultations with scientists, exchanges with foreign governments, review panels, analysis of reports, or the like were undertaken. History shows that UFO accounts were approached (if at all) with little forethought and then simply filed away.

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Conclusions For decades (early 1960s to early 1990s), the Spanish Air Force response to the UFO phenomenon was to collect information on UFO events when reported to the authorities and submit them for investigation following simply-designed protocols, the output of which was a function of the competence and interest of the appointed investigator (called a "judge"). In general, no preconceived opinions existed other than the personal bias of the investigator, sometimes pro, sometimes con. Inquiries were not followed-up or scientifically tested, and when finished they were simply filed away and forgotten. The level of secrecy (actually called confidentiality or reserve) officially applied to UFO-related documents was first established in 1968. These were "Confidential" and this lasted from 1968 to 1979. They were then upgraded to "Classified" in 1979, and finally downgraded to "Internal Reserve" in 1992. This variability over time was due to reactions from external pressures. In 1976, a poorly handled release of summaries for twelve Air Force UFO files to a journalist unfortunately stifled the potential openness of the Air Staff. Beginning in 1990, Ballester Olmos succeeded in pushing forward what later became the start of a full disclosure of the UFO archives accumulated from 1962. Between 1992 and 1999, all records in the possession of the Air Force entered the public domain. Norms for a methodical investigation of UFO cases (field inquiry, use of standard questionnaires, etc.) were enacted in 1968 and 1975, and then superseded by modern procedures published in 1992 (IG 40-5). Historically speaking, two stages are distinguished in the performance of the Spanish Air Force in the UFO business: (a) secrecy (1962-1990) and (b) disclosure (1990-1999.) The "secrecy stage" shows a concern based in the ignorance of the nature of the UFO phenomenon and the understanding that it posed a potential threat to national security. The motivation for the "disclosure stage" mirrored the conduct of other governments, and it recognized the evidence that no real threat had become apparent since 1947, coupled with the acknowledgement that the UFO problem really belonged to scientists, not to the military.
20

This contemporary vision is shared by many governments that are declassifying and releasing their UFO archives, all clearly implying that "this is not our cup of tea" (UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Italy, and Spain.). Others (France, almost exclusively) continue with a staffed, albeit minimal, structure to cope with the study of UFO sightings. From this perspective, the situation in the United States seems to be unique.

Notes

1 2 3 4

Circular No. 9266-CT, issued December 26, 1968. Internal note from the Public Affairs Office of the Air Force, January 15, 1979. Memo from Chief of the Air Staff to the Ministry of Defense, January 16, 1979. Memo from Second Chief of the Air Staff to the Office of Public Affairs, October 1981.

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Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "Spanish Air Force UFO Files: The Secret's End," in MUFON 1993 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Walter H. Andrus, Jr. and Irena Scott (eds.), Mutual UFO Network, Inc. (Seguin, Texas), July 1993, pp. 127-168. 6 Informative Note of Flight Safety Section (SEGVU), May 22,1991. 7 Chief of the Air Staff to Chief of Command, MOA, January 15,1992. 8 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "ngel Bastida: El hombre del MOA," @nomala (II), 9, June 2008 (CD edition). http://tinyurl .com/bastida-fotocat 9 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "Documentos oficiales online (I): La monografa de Antonio Muniz Ferro-Sastre," http://www .ikaros .org .es/g035 .htm 10 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Ricardo Campo Prez, "Identificados! Los OVNIS de Canarias fueron misiles Poseidon," Revista de Aeronutica y Astronutica, March 2001, 200-207. http://vvwvv.ikaros.org.es/misiles.htm Translation: "Navy Missiles Tests and the Canary Islands UFOs," International UFO Reporter, 29:4, July 2005, pp. 3-9 and 26. 11 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Miguel Guasp, Los OVNIS y la Ciencia, Plaza y Jans (Barcelona), 1989. 12 Angel Bastida Freijedo, "Los OVNIS y el Ejrcito del Aire," Revista de Aeronutica y Astronutica, August-September 1992, pp. 655-659. 13 David Clarke, The UFO Files: The Inside Story of Real-Life Sightings, The National Archives (Kevv, Surrey, UK), 2009. 14 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "Monitoring Air Force Intelligence: Spain's 1992-1997 UFO Declassification Process," in MUFON 1997 International UFO Symposium Proceedings, Walter H. Andrus, Jr. and Irena Scott (eds.), Mutual UFO Network, Inc. (Seguin, Texas), July 1997, pp. 139-178 . 13 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Matias Morey Ripoll, "27 noviembre 1999: La ltima reentrada del milenio?", http://www.ikaros.org.es/271199.pdf See additional information in http://fotocat.blogspot.com/2009_10_21_archive.html 16 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "Declassification! Military UFO Records Released: The Spanish Experience," in UFO 1947-1997. Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy (eds.), John Brown Publishing Ltd. (London), May 1997, pp. 177-184. http://vvvvvv.ikaros.org.es/declass.htm. The full paper is available in Spanish: http://vvvvvv.ikaros.org.es/desclasificacion.pdf 17 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, Expedientes inslitos, Temas de Hoy (Madrid), 1995, pp. 153-236. (Epilogue: Dr. Jacques Vallee.) 18 Jerome Clark, The UFO Encyclopedia, Volume 3. High Strangeness: UFOs from 1960 through 1979, Omnigraphics, Inc. (Detroit, Michigan), 1996, pp. 280-282. 19 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Manuel Borraz, "Encuentro de clase militar en Mazarrn," http://vvvv w.i karos .org .es/mazarrn .pdf 20 Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos, "State-of-the-Art in UFO Disclosure Worldwide," http://vvvvvv.tinyurl.com/3b3qh5q

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