188

189







Once upon a time, earth was ruled by 'city states', sovereign centers of political,
scientific and military power.
Rivalries throughout history led to countless conflicts.


190

In the last world war, many of the great 'city states' were bombed, burned or
obliterated.


Time marches on, often in a controversial direction. In July, 1947, the most
powerful city on the face of the earth was not...

or
or


191

But a small town very few had ever heard of. A minor city in the middle of
nowhere had suddenly risen to the pinnacle of earthly power.

Not because of its size or population, culture or religion -- only Roswell, New
Mexico possessed the most fearsome weapon humanity had ever created.


And with the US Army Air Corps, Roswell had the means to deliver it.




192

But who would deliver Roswell? Born of Indian and cattle wars, the town had
barely survived through the years, and current events had taken an ominous turn.
On that fateful July morning, the city fathers were called for an emergency
meeting.

Taking to the podium, the new mayor minced no words...

"Gentlemen, our beloved Roswell faces a crisis that
could soon turn our lovely community into a ghost town!
"This new 'jet age'...once Roswell was a welcome stopover
for horsemen on cattle drives, railroad passengers on their
way West and motorists and truckers shipping goods all around
the country...but not in the future!
"Soon, very soon, giant jet aircraft will transport the needs of
America, making us all 'flyover people'. Unless we take drastic action,
Roswell is doomed to ultimate and permanent oblivion!"

193

His warning was met with severe skepticism.

"A Roswellian twisting "Patent exploitation of "Misinterpretation of
of unreliable data." disconnected facts." disputable forecasts."

Undeterred, the mayor introduced his special guest...

"Roswell city fathers, unless the lot of you grow up,
you all are gonna be forgotten orphans.
"I am the commander of the bravest, most loyal patriots this
country has ever produced, the fighting crews of the United
States Army Air Corps!
"That's right, the Air Corps. We fought and sacrificed to win
the war against Germany and end the one with Japan. And our
immortal spirit was born at Roswell field where thousands of
the best pilots, bombardiers, and navigators were trained to

194

kick ass around the world. A war-winning, liberty-preserving,
heroic organization is going to be tossed into the dustbin of
history. Within a couple of months, the federal government is
officially renaming us the United States Air Force!"


"Well, general, we could "Alert the newspapers. "Give vital lectures.
study the problem." A mail-in campaign." Warn the country."


"Listen to me. This 'Air Force' is the just the beginning
of an anti-Roswell conspiracy. The days of our base and
its B-29 atomic bombers are numbered. The new gentrified
'Air Force' won't want its personnel stationed in the desert,
but in golden California and sunny Florida. Once the exclusive
home of the Bomb, the Army Air Corps will be left behind
and abandoned.
"I'm not surrendering my identity, my heritage without a fight.

195

"He who controls the Bomb controls the state, the country, the
world. That power will be Roswell's forever!"

"But that's rebellion!" "Revolution!" "High treason!"



"I have a full wing and four Bombs. Around the clock,
one will be in flight, its payload armed. Anybody tries to
interfere with my Army Air Corps and..."

196

Not that far away...



"Those earthlings! Monitoring "Didn't they learn anything "Our patience is at an end.
them for ages. We had hoped..." from their horrible war?" Roswell must be destroyed!"
"Agreed. If humanity is truly a "A burst of 'ball lightning', "Wait! Are we to be as
potential danger..." Roswell will disappear." inhuman as they are?"
"We will take steps?" "When?" "Now!"

197



While in Roswell...

"Now, general, please. Our town is in dire need, but you wouldn't really drop
one of those bombs on America, would you?
"Maybe we can talk about this, come to a reasonable agreement. What is it you
want?"

198


"You think I'm doing this for myself, my own patriotic zeal? Then none of you
understands the meaning of Roswell. America treasures 'Kitty Hawk' as the 'Birthplace
of Aviation'...

"But our new 'Air Force' would wipe the unique heritage of Roswell off the map.
More heroes were trained at Roswell Field and died in combat than grateful citizens
living here in peace. Roswell is the very lifeblood of the US Army Air Corps atomic
bomber command. And must be so forever.


199

"I want the permanent new headquarters of the Air Corps to be here in Roswell, a
monumental tribute to the men and machines who saved America. Bombers today,
bombers tomorrow, bombers for all time!"

Suddenly...

"General, sir! There's a UFO coming. "And it's going to land, right
No, sir. It's not a weather balloon." here in Roswell."



200

Silently, the alien spacecraft lands. Its occupants quickly de-saucer and join the
meeting.


"People of Roswell. You "We come here not in peace, but "Roswell must become
forced us into this to insure that peace reigns on a symbol of hope for
unprecedented planet earth." humanity, not its
Interruption." destructive hubris."


"My God, you speak English!" "As do you. How hard can it be? Chinese
was a challenge."


201


"Red Alert! Red Alert! Get every bomber "Technology you cannot imagine has
in the air. Hello, hello!" severed all communications."


"An invasion force...you're here to "Alien beings among us. What kind
conquer the earth!" of encounter will this be?"


"We will not decide the fate of Roswell and earth. You will."

202


"Do you call your craft a 'flying "Roswell, the city that would save
disc' or would you prefer humanity from...itself?"
'flying saucer'?"


"All the same color and gender. "Seems the best this world has produced
No more diverse than we are." is incapable of improving."

"That's not true. Under my administration,
taxes will decrease as services increase."

203


"Your honor, you think they'll "'All men are equal, but not to us.
register to vote?" We'd have to reverse-evolve
ourselves millions of years to qualify."


"Roswell will serve as an example, "What is it we should do?
depending on your earthly actions."


"No atomic bomb from Roswell will ever be used in your future insane wars."

204


"No! Nobody tells us how to fight and win our wars."

"We do not make war. "A meteor will vaporize your "Or a guided comet to
Our technology can town and bomber base." eradicate the earth."
effortlessly solve this situation."




205


"Please, I'll pass a new law "I'll retire and write a book. America and
granting 'space aliens' equal rights the world will know that Roswell is the
in Roswell." heart and soul of the US Army Atomic Air Corps!"


As the visitors prepared to leave...

"This isn't your first time, is it? "Nothing you can do will stop us from finding
Did you kill the dinosaurs? out. It is Man's destiny to explore and discover the
Help us beat Hitler? And why impact of intelligent life in the universe."
didn't you save the Titanic?

206


"We will seek the truth." "Investigate every sighting." "Collect masses of data."


"Earth is but a speck in our space odyssey. "Fantastic! A mind-altering
Our universal purpose is peace and experience that will direct my life."
understanding."


"Before you can hope to comprehend our civilization and take part in the greater
purpose of a million galaxies, humanity must first reach out to its many 'alienated'

207

peoples. Only by recognizing and respecting every aspect of your planet will you ever
achieve the power to reach the stars."



"'We'll meet again, don't know how, don't know when.' "Give Roswell an 'incident',
If only we could forget Roswell as completely as attention to a little town
they will forget us. That flying gas bag, desperate to be a part of the
knock it down." national culture."


208



"Our nanotechs, invisibly inserted into each "But not permanently. In 25 or 30
Roswellian's mind, will block out their years, witnesses may experience
memories of our visit." flashes of the past."


"Then our secret will be revealed? The greatest event in human history
and all the earth will know of our presence? The impact..."


209





"Calibrate your consciousness. No one will ever find out
what really happened at Roswell!"

210






Project LTIMATE






211




1



"This is the biggest story since the parting
of the Red Sea! You can't cover it up!"
'Scotty', the newspaper reporter to the USAF, in 'Thing from Another World' (1951)



212



If UFOlogy had a 'Moses', he'd have come down from the Mount bearing copies
of the July, 8th, 1947 Roswell Daily Record for the multitude.
The Roswell Army Air Force had captured a 'flying saucer!' To be exact, the Air
Corps Intelligence Officer said 'flying disk' a termed coined only weeks before by a
pilot who'd spotted a string of nine, shiny, disk-like objects flying past Mount Rainier--the
first post-War II sighting in the United States that garnered nationwide news coverage.


213

As reported by the Record, there had been two witnesses.
Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn. last
Wednesday night at about ten o'clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the
sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed.
Wilmot called Mrs. Wilmot's attention to it and both ran down into the yard to
watch. It was in sight less than a minute, perhaps 40 or 50 seconds, Wilmot estimated.
Wilmot said that it appeared to him to be about 1,500 feet high and going fast. He
estimated between 400 and 500 miles per hour.
In appearance it looked oval in shape like two inverted saucers, faced mouth to
mouth, or like two old type washbowls placed, together in the same fashion. The entire
body glowed as though light were showing through from inside, though not like it would
inside, though not like it would be if a light were merely underneath.
From where he stood Wilmot said that the object looked to be about 5 feet in
size, and making allowance for the distance it was from town he figured that it must
have been 15 to 20 feet in diameter, though this was just a guess.
Wilmot said that he heard no sound but that Mrs. Wilmot said she heard a
swishing sound for a very short time.
The object came into view from the southeast and disappeared over the treetops
in the general vicinity of six mile hill.
Wilmot, who is one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the
story to himself hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen
one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about it. The
announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after
he decided to release the details of what he had seen.


214

The rancher who discovered the debris told the Record that he and his son saw a
"large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and
sticks."
The 'incident' hit the media like an A-Bomb. Roswell was flooded with inquiries
from all over the world. But no mention was made of an 'alien spaceship' or 'alien
bodies.' The term 'UFO' had yet to be uttered.
But the very next day...

'Not a grounded flying disk, but a harmless, high-altitude weather balloon."

The Army Air Corps invited reporters in for a look. Close examination revealed
that the balloon carried neither weapons nor technology. Attached was a 'kite', an
aluminum reflector to attract radar, dispelling any notion of a secret surveillance device.

215

In short order, the excitement was over. Strangely, no Roswell residents sought
any further explanations and would be silent about the 'incident' for more than thirty
years. They would blame 'government agents' who threatened them with jail if they
spoke up. Later this shadowy sect would be known as...

On September 18th, the Roswell 'incident' all but forgotten, the Army Air Corps
officially became the United States Air Force.

Later that year...


216

In an "exhaustive account," of UFOs in the 1940s by Frank Scully (Later
honored by 'X-Files), the Roswell 'incident' was not mentioned.
Thirty years later, when Scully's book had shown to be full of 'hoaxes' and 'con
jobs', UFOlogists tracking down the Roswell 'space aliens' speculated that 'Behind the
Flying Saucers' was published 'as a subterfuge aiding to discredit the initial reports',
'gray propaganda,' a specialty of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
In 1951, a UFO 'flap' began with the release of the film 'Day the Earth Stood Still'
which opened with a 'flying saucer' landing in Washington DC. When the 'space alien'
stepped from the saucer, a seismic shift occurred; from that moment on, more people
would be watching science fiction than reading it.

"We have come to visit you in peace and with goodwill."
Generations later, more than a billion screens would be playing science fiction.

"Watch the skies, everywhere! Keep looking. Keep watching the skies!"

217

Such was the mission of the US Air Force. Project Blue Book began in 1952,
the second revival of its UFO study (after Projects Sign and Grudge) to determine if
UFOs were a threat to national security, and to scientifically analyze UFO-related data.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, stunning the Free World and adding
fuel to the UFO fire. If the Soviet Union could put an artificial satellite in orbit, then surely
an advanced alien civilization could send a spaceship to earth.
UFO 'sightings' zoomed up during the 1960s, but the vast majority turned out to
be conventional aircraft. Some were misinterpretations of American and Soviet rocket
launchings. Many were crude hoaxes that UFOlogists would champion for years.

In 1966, facing up to a growing 'public relations dilemma,' the Air Force funded
the 'University of Colorado UFO Project' under physicist Edward Condon, a 'name'
scientist who'd worked on the Manhattan Project to build the A-bomb.

"...The greatest contribution to real security that science
can make is through the extension of the scientific method to the social
sciences and a solution of the problem of complete avoidance of war."

218

For two years, a committee of scientists examined hundreds of UFO files from
the Air Force's Project Blue Book and from the civilian UFO groups National
Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and Aerial Phenomena
Research Organization (APRO) which did not mention Roswell in their lists of "most
important UFO cases".

Nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has
added to scientific knowledge. Careful consideration of the record as it is available to us
leads us to conclude that further extensive study of UFOs probably cannot be justified in
the expectation that science will be advanced thereby.
In 1969, the Air Force closed down Project Blue Book.
The UFOlogists were outraged, calling the report 'biased' and 'incomplete' and
blaming a 'government conspiracy' run by the CIA.
The CIA had been interested in UFOs, but by 1953 concluded that there was no
evidence of a direct threat to national security or that the objects sighted might be
extraterrestrials. UFO reporting might threaten a working government by clogging the
channels of communication with irrelevant reports and by inducing "hysterical mass
behavior". Could a potential enemy contemplating an attack on the United States exploit
the UFO phenomena to disrupt US air defenses? (Soviet KGB was working on it.)


219

At the height of McCarthyism, CIA recommended that the National Security
Council debunk UFO reports and institute a policy of public education to reassure the
public of the lack of evidence behind UFOs. It suggested using the mass media,
advertising, business clubs, schools, and even the Disney corporation to get the
message across. CIA also advised that private UFO groups, the Civilian Flying Saucer
Investigators in Los Angeles and the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization in
Wisconsin be monitored for subversive activities. (Commie spies?)

Back and forth it went in the name of 'science' and 'national security', pitting the
scientific method against the public's imagination.
In 1984, UFOlogists claimed 'definitive evidence' with the release of the
'Majestic 12 (MJ-12)' documents detailing White House and Pentagon actions to cover-
up UFOs dating back to the Roswell 'incident'.



220

Classified 'MAJIC EYES ONLY' above Top Secret, a select committee of political
and scientific VIPs was formed to exploit recovered alien technology. The documents
named names. Every member of the MJ1-12 committee, from the Truman
administration to Kennedy's had one thing in common: he was dead.

As for the reams of documentation... "Completely bogus" reported the FBI
forensic team that thoroughly examined them, but Hollywood would option the screen
rights anyway.
"Government disinformation!" railed the believers, "Yet another layer in the
ongoing conspiracy to discredit the UFO 'phenomena'."

In 'Space Aliens from the Pentagon', self-published in 1993, the author believed
the creatures recovered after the crash near Roswell were 'rhesus monkeys killed in a
rocket-sled or early rocketry experiment, shaved so their "g-suits" would fit.'


'They changed from rhesus monkeys to chimpanzees after that,' the author went
on. 'The rhesus monkeys were too hard to handle. They were violent. ... They probably
cut (the monkeys') fingertips off because they had these claws.'

221


Fox premiered The X-Files on September 10, 1993. Channeling Americans'
distrust in their own government, and embracing conspiracy theories, especially about
UFOs.
After a long and tireless push by UFOlogists, in 1994, the Air Force Official
Report concluded that the recovered material in 1947 was a radar tracking balloon.

"...The disc is hexagonal in shape and was suspended from a balloon by a cable,
which balloon was approximately twenty feet in diameter. ...the object found resembles
a high altitude weather balloon with a radar reflector. ...disc and balloon being
transported..."
Then the USAF revealed Project Mogul which involved high altitude balloons
meant to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atomic bomb tests.

222


"It is very probable that this TOP SECRET project balloon train (Flight 4), made
up of unclassified components; came to rest some miles northwest of Roswell, NM,
became shredded in the surface winds and was ultimately found by the rancher ten
days later. This possibility was supported by the only living eyewitness to the actual
debris field and the material found who described a small area of debris which
appeared, "to resemble bamboo type square sticks one quarter to one half inch square,
that were very light, as well as some sort of metallic reflecting material that was also
very light ... I remember recognizing this material as being consistent with a weather
balloon."
Concerning the initial headline, "RAAF Captures Flying Disc": research failed to
locate any documented evidence as to why that statement was made.

"A photograph of Jesus Christ might be a comparable story to the first real photo
of an extraterrestrial," boasted the publisher of Penthouse, who paid nearly $200K for a
candid pose of a plastic prop in the Roswell UFO Museum.

223


In 1997, a longtime aviation editor and UFO investigator confirmed the
conclusion of the Government Accounting Office: not one shred of evidence in the
archives of the federal government lends any credence to the supposed alien crash at
Roswell (or any other locale) and that the Roswell 'incident' was due entirely to
misidentification of weather equipment.
Nearly 50 years since the Roswell 'incident', a new CNN/Time poll showed that
80 percent of Americans think the government is hiding knowledge of the existence of
extraterrestrial life forms.
Published in 2005...

The 'incident' was disinformation to cover up Japanese POWs mistreated in
experiments from WWII. Transferred to Roswell to study effect of radiation and high
altitude exposure, something went wrong. When the 'flying disk' hit the news, the
government created a convincing retraction. Or so it was thought.
In late 2009, Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences held its first major
conference on astrobiology. "There is no conflict between believing in God and in the

224

possibility of extraterrestrial civilizations perhaps more evolved than humans," declared
the Catholic Church's chief astronomer.

"What does Pope Benedict know and when did he know it?"
A 2011 best-seller, citing 'an unimpeachable source': What crashed in New
Mexico more than 60 years ago was a remotely-piloted German-designed 'disc-shaped'
aircraft sent by Soviet Premier Stalin containing 'midget mutants' created by the Nazi
'Angel of Death' Dr. Mengele.

"The Truth is Out There," preached the X-Files.
'The truth shall make you free.' (John 8:32) is chiseled in stone at CIA
Headquarters.

225


CIA director Allen Dulles once advised, "If you want to keep a secret, then
pretend to share it."
Unable to discern the authentic Roswell artifact, skeptics and believers, scientists
and UFOlogists, the Air Force and the media...

"They're digging in the wrong place!"







226


2



Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter
how improbable, must be the truth.
Sherlock Holmes


227


Just three miles from the 'Plains Theater', the future home of The International
UFO Museum and Research Center, Roswell Army Air Field had begun operations in
1941 to train thousands of bomber pilots, navigators and bombardiers--the largest, most
successful flight school in aviation history.
World War II had ended with two bangs; the atomic bombs dropped on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki had killed nearly 150,000 people and almost as many future
Air Force jobs. Gone were the thousand-plane bombing raids that destroyed Nazi
industry, then burned Japanese cities to the ground. Woefully unprepared at Pearl
Harbor, the Army Air Corps had become the most powerful destructive force ever
known, but the fighting done, the 'Greatest Generation' went home and boomed babies.
Not to worry. We had the B-29 Superfortress, the biggest, most advanced, most
beautiful four-engine bomber ever to fly.


228

The B-29 was the world's first 'Atomic Bomber', and the second. During missions
over Japan, three damaged Superfortresses made emergency landings in the Soviet
Union. The crews were interned and the planes shipped to Russian aircraft factories for
'reverse engineering'. In May of 1947, the Red Air Force rolled out its first long-range
strategic bomber, the Tupolev Tu-4 (NATO codenamed 'Bull'), a near bolt for bolt copy
of the B-29.
Half the Pentagon went into a panic; the Russians had a bomber that could hit
Los Angeles, Washington, New York, even Chicago!
Cooler heads prevailed. Untouched by war, the United States was the world's
lone superpower. No nation on earth would dare attack us. We had the atomic bomb!

"The Atomic Bomb is for people with weak nerves."
Stalin did not have weak nerves. After beating the German Army back from the
gates of Moscow all the way to Berlin, the Red Army 'liberated' and then occupied
Poland, Rumania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Albania. Together with East
Germany, the future Warsaw Pact would serve as 'buffer zone', protecting the Soviet
Union from another invasion by the West.
Or was Stalin planning...an attack?


229

George Patton didn't trust 'the Ruskies'. With the Nazis beaten, 'Blood n' Guts'
wanted to keep going east.

"Do not destroy the German planes. You may need them."
"If I were president," said one of the scientists who had worked on the Manhattan
Project, a Jew who saw Stalin as anti-Semitic as Hitler. "I would drop the Atomic Bomb
on Moscow right now!"
Easier said than done. Western Europe, still in ruins, had garrisons of American,
British and French troops, but the Red Army outnumbered the soon-to-be-called NATO
soldiers, 5 to 1. Their air force had the West down 3 to 1 and in tanks, 10 to 1. If the
Reds mounted a massive blitz, they'd reach the Channel almost as fast as Hitler's
panzers had.
Thousands of US bombers and fighters had been stationed in Britain during WW
II, but to deploy even a couple of B-29s with atomic bombs overseas would have been
unthinkable, a victory only for Communist propaganda.


230

The entire American atomic arsenal was six 'Fat Boy' bombs. And only one
squadron in the country that could drop them: the 509th Bombardment Group (Very
Heavy), at Roswell Air Field in New Mexico.
If the Russians started World War III, a formation of six loaded B-29s and six
spares would first fly to a base in upstate New York. How many would then fly to
Newfoundland, Iceland and finally England would be up to the Joint Chiefs and finally
the president. But we couldn't show the Soviets we were fighting them halfway!
On 21 March 1946, the 509th Composite Group was assigned to...

'Peace is Our Profession'.
For a war Pentagon 'hawks' believed was 'imminent' for years, how would the
509th nuke the Soviet Union? The missions against Japan were 'milk runs'; no enemy
fighters, no flak. The crews took naps on the way home.
Would the US pin its hopes on one B-29 'sneaking' into Russia to bomb Moscow
or Leningrad or Kiev? Or three strikes simultaneously? Americans by the score would
be dying in Western Europe. How to end this quickly with a mushroom cloud?

Flying across the continent with a full fighter escort was a good beginning, until
they reached the 'Buffer Zone'. Churchill's 'Iron Curtain' had descended across the
Continent from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic', and an electronic one, the

231

Red radar defense network boasting the finest tracking technology in the world--The 'SK
Air Search', operational since 1944 on a 150 cm wavelength with a range of 175 miles.
Of course, it was the best. The 'SK' was made in America and shipped to Russia as
Lend-Lease.
As they had with the B-29, the Soviets would copy the SK radar sets and position
them throughout the 'Buffer Zone.' Linked to Red interceptor aircraft, the Soviet National
Air Defense Force would soon be known as PVO Strany.

Without a detailed map of the USSR radar network complete with the 'signal
signatures' of every site, the B-29s would be sitting ducks. If one were shot down and
crashed, the Russians would get a fully-operational A-Bomb. And if it exploded when
the Superfortress hit, what could America say to the loved ones of 50,000 vaporized
Eastern Europeans?
We had given the Russians our radar. They had copied our bomber, and their
spies had stolen the secrets of our Atomic Bomb.

"We are the Communists' superior in every way...except espionage!"

232

At Roswell in the late spring of 1947, the Americans finally began playing catch-
up.

On June 4th, winds were blowing at a moderate 10-20 mph. Had a news reporter
or a scientist or an historian been in the communications hutch of the 509th at Roswell
Field, none would have seen anything out of the ordinary.
Roswell Field had no long-range radar. White Sands Proving Ground had two,
the second, a modified SCR-584, was undergoing separate testing for missile tracking
by the Signal Corps Engineering Laboratories. Army Air Corps personnel, radio
intercept operators wearing earphones, were clicking off the Morse Code as they
eavesdropped in on the 'SK' radar stations at White Sands, Alamogordo Army Air Base,
and Corona tracking a Roswell weather balloon. When the target had run its course, the
collected scripts were passed to the Radio Intercept Analysts.
The messages were Standard Operating Procedure: Time (Always in Greenwich
Mean or 'Zulu' Time), 3-digit 'raid' number, first and second four-digit grid, and last, a 3-
digit 'remarks' code.
1051Z 632 1498 6432 378
Piece of cake. But given only the flight path of the balloon and the weather
conditions, how many 'fly-bys' would it take a Radio Intercept Analyst who knew nothing
of the radar system to break the grid code, locate the radar stations and map out their
capabilities?
'Tracking-back-the-cat' would become CIA tradecraft.

233


No one knew exactly when the 'radar train' from the Mogul balloon touched down
on an open field 75 miles outside of Roswell. The debris had been found and bundled
up for nearly a week before the rancher brought it in.
That's when the 'flying disk' hit the fan. The 509th knew nothing about Mogul
which had been launched by the University of New York and was intended 'to produce a
reliable "constant level balloon" to act as an equipment platform, originally for sensitive
microphones to 'listen" for the sound traces of Soviet Atomic explosions but later to
carry equipment taking air samples again checking for the signature of Atomic
Explosions.'
Mogul was a dream-scheme. When the Reds got the A-bomb they'd explode it
and broadcast to the world how powerful it was. The 509th could soon be up against
PVO Strany and needed real help now.
At first, the 'Captures Flying Saucer' headline had spooked the 509th, but it might
kill two birds with one balloon--to prove that the Air Corps had nothing 'secret' going on
and a propaganda show. The weather balloon revealed to the media appeared as pure
and as innocent as a Disney princess wearing a 'train'---aluminum boxes, strung out like
beer cans behind the honeymoon coupe. The 'train' attracted radar, but nobody picked
up on that.

234

The Roswell tests got a codename: ULTIMATE. For good reason. This would be
no 'cloak 'n dagger' caper, no 'black bag' job, but the largest intelligence-gathering
operation in history.
PVO Strany wouldn't know what hit them!
When the Air Force was officially created in September, it came with a special
branch: the Security Service, the future Radio Intercept Operators and Analysts. Plus
linguists and technicians from the 'best and the brightest' airmen and officers who would
staff the new 'electronic tripwire' along the Soviet Union 'Buffer Zone'. Running the show
would be the newest 'company' in the government.

"We have developed an effective method of penetrating
the Iron Curtain with the use of high level balloons."
The US already had monitoring sites in West Germany, but these would have to
be upgraded and the network expanded. Under the code name Project ULTIMATE, the
CIA's Special Procedures Group began stockpiling surplus WW II weather balloons, but
the operation had only begun to come together when the Russians made their move.

Germany had been divided into four zones, as was its former capital, Berlin, in
East Germany, the Soviet Zone. Stalin had had enough of the 'open city'. On July 27th,
1948, he ordered the Red Army to cut off land routes used by the Allies to supply the

235

city. Without trucked in food, the Russian dictator expected Berlin to surrender to Soviet
rule.

The US Air Force had other plans and began flying in supplies. Surviving a
harsh German winter, the 'Berlin Airlift' carried over two million tons of supplies in
270,000 flights. The blockade of Berlin was finally lifted by the Russians on May 12th,
1949, becoming a symbol of the United States' 'resolve to stand up to the Soviet threat
without being forced into a direct conflict.'
The US had just begun to fight. By 1951, the Air Force had set up a chain of
listening posts manned by highly trained USAFSS personnel, more than 90% enlisted
men, unheard of in the rest of the Air Force. The 'Berlin Airlift' had been only a warm-up.
The Roswell radar tests were about to bear fruit. The CIA needed only a 'cover story.'


236

'The National Committee for a Free Europe (NCFE), later the Free Europe
Committee, was established in 1949 to find work for the democratic migrs from
Eastern Europe, put migr voices on the air in their own languages; and carry migr
articles and statements back to their homelands through the printed word.' These
objectives were realized through the establishment of a publishing division, Free Europe
Press, and a broadcast division, Radio Free Europe (RFE).
Founded, funded and run by the CIA, the NCFE maintained a public identity as a
private corporation of freedom-loving American citizens.

"The Crusade for Freedom will provide for the expansion of
Radio Free Europe into a network of stations. They will be given
the simplest, clearest charter in the world: Tell the truth."
NCFE marketing raised millions. At no time did anyone working with 'Crusade
For Freedom' ever suspect that they were helping NSA and the AF Security Service
execute an intelligence-gathering operation.


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On May 27, 1949, the Chairman National Committee for a Free Europe wrote
potential members...
'An advertising campaign of a suitable tone and dignity will start ...The enterprise
touches so closely upon the instinct of survival, and the need is so clear, that substantial
contributions have already been assured from a number of sources, and adequate
funds are in hand for some time to come."

A month later, the USSR exploded its first atomic device.
The Crusade for Freedom got a trademark and an endorsement.

"That this world under God shall have a new birth of freedom."

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The 10-ton bell got a ticker tape parade in New York City. then visited 21
American cities, and people in every state were encouraged to sign Freedom Scrolls
and contribute money for RFE. More than a million dollars was collected.

"This is a struggle, above all, for the minds of men."
And to map out the PVO Strany radar network. After nearly four years of building
and training and political maneuvering, the CIA and the AF Security Service were up
and ready. Psychological warfare, 'PSYOPs' at its pinnacle was about to take flight...the
grandest, noblest airborne invasion the world would ever know.
The first 'weather research balloons', about four feet in diameter, were launched
in August 1951 from an open field three miles from the Czechoslovak border. A 'test
operation', independent of Radio Free Europe. The Free Europe Committee had used
the Free Europe Press to print up millions of propaganda leaflets.

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In part they read, 'A new wind is blowing. New hope is stirring. Friends of
freedom in other lands have found a new way to reach you...Millions of free men and
women have joined together and are sending you this message of friendship over the
winds of freedom...There is no dungeon deep enough to hide truth, no wall high enough
to keep out the message of freedom. Tyranny cannot control the winds, cannot enslave
your hearts. Freedom will rise again.'


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Each balloon carried about 3000 leaflets, and when the weather was favorable,
about 2000 balloons were launched each night. Over 11,000,000 leaflets in two weeks..

'When dawn comes, the scene overhead is something out of science fiction,'
wrote the executive vice-president of the Crusade for Freedom. 'The sky to the east is
literally filled with balloons on their way to Czechoslovakia.

'The crews go back to work again at 7:30 a.m. and the launchings continue
through noon. During the past ten hours nearly 3,000 balloons and over 4,000,000
messages have been sent...It is 7:00 p.m. before the last truck pulls back into the
courtyard in Munich. Except for naps on the road, nobody has slept for 36 hours.'
PVO scrambled their new MiG fighters to intercept the invaders. When the jets
proved too fast to get an accurate bead on their floating targets, slower, propeller-driven
Messerschmitts, captured Nazi fighters, were sent up and antiaircraft guns fired at the
balloons as they crossed the border.

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Project ULTIMATE quickly outgrew CIA. In November, 1952, a new agency was
created 'to collect, process, and disseminate intelligence information from foreign
signals for intelligence and counterintelligence purposes and to support military
operations.'



Under NSA command, from sites in West Germany, the USAF Security Service
listened in. Not only mapping out the radar net, but by intercepting voice communication
to Russian pilots, determined their reaction times and state of readiness.
Mission classification required a codeword security clearance: Top Secret
DINAR.
The FEC had gained valuable practical experience in balloon launching, but the
leaflets needed an upgrade.

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"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
Next time around, George Orwell took to the sky. Other material urged readers
to insist on workers' rights today, demand concessionstomorrow, Freedom. Police
cars in Prague and elsewhere used loudspeakers, ordering citizens to turn in all the
leaflets.

Helium and hydrogen filled different types and sizes of balloons, from round to
pillow shaped. Cartons filled with leaflets were attached to the bottom of the hydrogen-
filled pillow balloons. The loosely-covered cartons were held upright by envelopes
containing dry ice. As the dry ice evaporated, the cartons tipped over, thus dropping the
leaflets. To try and hit an intended population target, the balloon launchers calculated
the weight of the dry ice, the amount of hydrogen, weight of the leaflets, direction and
velocity of the wind. FEP estimated that 500 balloons carrying 2 to 7 pounds of leaflets
could be filled and launched hourly at the stations.
The Radio Free Europe balloon launchings were backed up by a theme song
The Iron Curtain Does Not Reach the Sky. Three major launching sites were
constructed in Bavaria to launch the balloons in round-the-clock operations in good
weather.
ULTIMATE was more successful than even the CIA had planned. Combining
radio and the printed word had pioneered a new frontier in political warfare---the media
blitz! (And perhaps, the first grande continental UFO 'flap')

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The Korean 'Police Action' had the USAFSS listening in from posts in Japan and
Taiwan. Intel gathered on the Red Air Force's role would save American lives, but
against Soviet MiGs, the B-29 was fatally vulnerable.
Stalin died on 5 March 1953. "He fought barbarism with barbarism," said Nikita
Khrushchev who'd soon take over the Soviet Union.
Five months later, USAFSS Headquarters moved from Brooks Air Force Base,
Texas, to "Security Hill" at Kelly Air Force Base, Texas, and renamed the Air Force
Special Communications Center.

The B-52 Stratofortress joined the Air Force in 1954. The gigantic eight-engine
bomber would be America's sole atomic deterrent for the rest of the decade.
Safeguarding the nation, the 509th pilots made less than the NY Yankees' batboy.


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While in America...

ULTIMATE went on. By 1956, over half a million balloons, some as tall as 60
feet, carrying over 300,000,000 leaflets, posters and books had 'invaded' Eastern
Europe provoking official Communist fury and profanity, and ultimately, an issue before
the United Nations.
RFE ended the balloon-leaflet campaigns when huge antennas and powerful
transmitters had finally constructed to more efficiently reach its East Europe audience.
Communist European propaganda blamed the fatal crash of a Czechoslovak airliner on
balloons crossing its flight path.


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Impact brought an even higher human cost. In 1956, encouraged by ULTIMATE,
the Hungarians revolted and were brutally crushed by the Red Army. More than 2,500
were killed and thousands more imprisoned.

Through Project ULTIMATE, the USAF Security Service had revealed PVO
Strany's radar defense to be a vulnerable patchwork and its pilots so unskilled that they
often had to follow railroad tracks to fly from one city to another.
Thanks to Roswell, America was ready for World War III.
Linked to the manned bomber, USAFSS would continue to upgrade and expand
with sites in Turkey, Pakistan, and Iran (We wanted the intel even more than the oil.)
Linked by teletype (the first e-mail), faster than UPI or AP, the Security Service had
created a DOD internet that could relay a 'critic' message to the President's desk in
mere minutes.

On May 1, 1960, PVO Stany SAMs shot down a U-2 spy plane. If Homer had told
this tale, CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers would have been 'The face that launched a
thousand spy satellites.'

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The Air Force soon launched the 'Discoverer' series, described as a 'satellite
technology development effort', but like 'The Crusade for Freedom' balloons, was a
cover for CIA espionage. The first 'Discoverer' satellite mission revealed that Soviet
ICBM deployment had barely begun. A mission in late 1961 confirmed that there were
no Soviet ICBMs filling vast areas of unexplored Siberia. Not only was the US still in the
lead, but the Red Air Force had greatly reduced its reliance on manned bombers.

The North American Aviation XB-70 could fly Mach 3+ at an altitude of 70,000
feet. But newly operational high-altitude surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) had suddenly
made the manned nuclear bomber vulnerable and the Valkyrie was cancelled in 1961.


247

During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, USAFSS was able to give President
Kennedy accurate and timely intel on the state of the Red Air Force and the Soviet
Supreme Rocket Forces.
In 1950, President Truman had backed French colonialism in Indochina with a
military mission and military advisors. When the Vietminh kicked out the French in 1954,
the 'Domino Theory' took root.

"No other challenge is more deserving of our effort and energy...
Our security may be lost piece by piece, country by country."
On 23 November 1963, the AF Security Service reported that PVO Strany had
been as shocked as we were by JFK's assassination.

In 1969, the USAFSS had peaked at 28,637 personnel, but the Radio Age of
intelligence-gathering had evolved into 'electronic warfare' and intercept sites aimed at
the Warsaw Pact began shutting down. In 1979, the Security Service was renamed
Electronic Security Command, and given new missions via digital technology. Another
reorganization a few years later resulted in the Air Intelligence Command, subsequently
downgraded to the Air Intelligence Agency (AIA). Continued re-organizations within the
USAF have completely absorbed the various missions into different sub-groups. The
latest iteration: the Air Force Information, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Agency
(AFISR).
For more than thirty years, USAFSS had served as a 'tripwire', protecting
America from Communist attack. And then disappeared under Top Secret DINAR.

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USAFSS veterans felt ignored, frustrated, and dismissed, not unlike the
Roswellians, that forgotten town where their original mission had begun. Something had
to be done.

At the 1979 New Mexico Military Institute's graduation ceremony...



Founded in Roswell in 1891, the New Mexico Military Institute, a state-supported
four-year high school and two-year junior college has been a vital training ground for
America's future leaders, military and civilian, including Heisman Trophy winner,
Vietnam vet and Super Bowl champion Roger Staubach.

The parade ground was packed. Graduating cadets in dress uniforms stood at
attention while their parents beamed proudly.

249


After the color guard and National Anthem, the principal speaker was playing no
game.

"I believe in American heroism, that honor and courage and sacrifice in
defense of the United States should not be concealed, covered up or classified
Top Secret DINAR.
"You all need to know that right here in Roswell the Air Force began
its electronic intelligence gathering crusade against the Soviet Union.
Beyond 'harmless weather balloons' and Project ULTIMATE, we were
conducting 'ferret' missions, recon flights along the border of the Soviet empire,
from the Iron Curtain to the Siberian coast.


250

"Whoever it was, Pentagon, CIA, coming up with that 'Capture Flying Disc'
headline pulled off the greatest military deception since 'Operation Fortitude'
Patton's fake D-Day army.

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."
The audience grew silent with anticipation. The general hesitated for only a
moment.

"American volunteers flying in harm's way, skirting the Soviet border to
'spook' PVO Strany, vital defense data to insure our freedoms...

"The flights cost us dearly. There were shoot-downs, our people killed by
Russian MiGs. But 'national security' turned our heroes into victims. Families
were told that their loved ones were dead, but not how, where and why.

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"Let us be 'silent warriors' no more. The hell with Top Secret DINAR! It's
about time we recognized and honored our fallen heroes. Let's hear it for the
United States Air Force Security Service!"
A split-second of silence, then...

For the first time since June of 1947, Roswell was back in the headlines.
Reaction ignited a spark of entrepreneurism that had founded the town. Within a
year, with contributions from Radio Free Europe, the Crusade for Freedom Society, the
509th Memorial Group, and the National Balloon Preservationists, the 'ULTIMATE
Museum' was born.


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The historic exhibits of 'harmless weather balloons' and 'pillow balloons' backed
by political posters in a 'Buffer Zone' of languages around the original 10-ton bell. Its
message to the world still rang.
'A new wind is blowing. New hope is stirring...There is no dungeon deep enough
to hide truth, no wall high enough to keep out the message of freedom. Tyranny cannot
control the winds, cannot enslave your hearts. Freedom will rise again.'

Not only had Roswell been "The 'Kitty Hawk' of the Greatest Airborne Invasion in
History", but "The Birthplace of the Media Blitz!"
Displayed prominently in the museum foyer is a framed memorial...

With the names of the heroes who gave their lives for their country.
Big corporations became ULTIMATE sponsors, testing their latest commercials
on site and giving out exclusive samples. The museum committee then bought the
Roswell movie theater on Main Street, turning it into a showcase. Hollywood movies big

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and small would no longer premiere in New York or Beverly Hills, but at The ULTIMATE
Theater. The annual ULTIMATE Film Festival continues to be a great success.
Every year since 1984, during the Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Labor Day
weekends, The Roswell Museum reenacts 'Project ULTIMATE' launching helium-filled
balloons filled with valuable leaflets that will drop from the sky into the center of town.

'He who demands the future, commands the future!'
This year's events will be sponsored by yet another Hollywood 'alien invasion'
epic. More than 5,000 free movie passes, T-shirts and action figure 'leaflets' will float
over the huge crowd. Over the years, as valuable as the 'leaflets' have been, most are
never redeemed, but treasured as ULTIMATE souvenirs.
A Madison Avenue ad man gave America a new adjective. "Our new campaign
...it's gonna be Roswellian!"
Not until 1997 did the Department of Defense declassify the USAF Security
Service. None of that ever happened in Roswell.
Something else did.




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3


how quickly our differences, worldwide, would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world"
"How quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if
we were facing an alien threat from outside this world."
President Ronald Reagan




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'Roswell' was Mr. Smith's first name. His son, Van C. Smith, a professional
gambler, filed a claim in 1871 and named the settlement to honor his father. 'Billy the
Kid', the Lincoln county War, and raids by the Mescalero Apaches colored the 1880s.
In 1890, not gold, but a vast artesian water supply was discovered beneath
Roswell. Irrigation turned the arid land into vegetable fields. The 'Chisum Trail' began
nearby for driving longhorn cattle to the railhead at Las Cruces. The First National Bank
was established, and in 1891, the town was incorporated. The Roswell Dispatch, now
the Roswell Daily Record, began its storied history, as did the Goss Military Institute,
later renamed the New Mexico Military Institute.
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, many small towns in the Heartland
had been abandoned as their citizens sought work elsewhere. FDR's 'Works Projects
Administration' created jobs and hope in Roswell, but in the 1970s Walker Air Force
Base closed and half the population moved out. Many worried that Roswell would
become yet another New Mexico 'ghost town'.

In the nick of time, the town was saved by a 'close encounter'.

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"If ya wanna see 'flying saucers'," Dr. J. Allen Hynek quoted a wag, "'Goose the
waitress.'"
Like Mark Twain, Hynek had lived and died by a 'cosmic clock'. Twain was born
with the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1835 and died when it came back blazing in
1910, the year Hynek was born. When Halley returned feebly in 1986, Hynek was
barely able to see it before he passed away.
An astronomer trained in the scientific method, for more than thirty years, the
dapper Hynek, with a cool beard, eyeglasses and a pipe, was the voice of integrity in
the UFO Community, an honest straight-talker who never came on like 'The Voice of
Authority'.
A professor at Ohio State University, Hynek was contacted by Project Sign in
1948 to be a scientific consultant for their investigation of UFO reports centered at
Wright Patterson Air Force Base, a quick commute.

"The whole subject seems utterly ridiculous," said Hynek. "A fad that would soon
pass."

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Just the kind of 'respectable scientist' the Air Force wanted to debunk UFO
reports.
For the first few years of his UFO studies, Hynek thought that a great many
UFOs could be explained as prosaic phenomena misidentified by an observer. But
beyond such fairly obvious cases, Hynek often stretched logic to nearly the breaking
point in an attempt to explain away as many UFO reports as possible. In his 1977 book,
'The Hynek UFO Report' he admitted enjoying his role.

But the astronomer's take on UFOs began to change after examining hundreds
of reports, including those by astronomers, pilots, police officers, and military
personnel. He was also distressed by ' the dismissive or arrogant attitude of many
mainstream scientists' towards UFO reports and witnesses.
For the April 1953 issue of Journal of the Optical Society of America titled
"Unusual Aerial Phenomena," Hynek wrote, 'Ridicule is not part of the scientific method,
and people should not be taught that it is. The steady flow of reports... raises questions
of scientific obligation and responsibility. Is there ... any residue that is worthy of
scientific attention? Or, if there isn't, does not an obligation exist to say so to the
publicnot in words of open ridicule but seriously, to keep faith with the trust the public
places in science and scientists?'
That same year, Hynek was an associate member of the Robertson Panel, which
concluded that there was nothing anomalous about UFOs, and that a public relations
campaign should be undertaken to debunk the subject and reduce public interest.
The reports kept coming. Hynek concluded that some were deeply puzzling,
even after considerable study. "As a scientist I must be mindful of the past; all too often
it has happened that matters of great value to science were overlooked because the
new phenomenon did not fit the accepted scientific outlook of the time."
What prompted Hynek's change of heart? "Two things, really," he'd later say.
"One was...the Air Force. They wouldn't give UFOs the chance of existing, even if they

258

were flying up and down the street in broad daylight. Everything had to have an
explanation. I began to resent that, even though I basically felt the same way, because I
still thought they weren't going about it in the right way. You can't assume that
everything is black no matter what. Secondly, the caliber of the witnesses began to
trouble me. Quite a few instances were reported by military pilots, for example, and I
knew them to be fairly well-trained, so this is when I first began to think that, well,
maybe there was something to all this."

"One of the most impressive scientists I met while working on the
UFO project. Hynek didn't do two things that some of them did: give you the
answer before he knew the question; or immediately begin to expound on his
accomplishments in the field of science."

In 1977, Hynek spoke to a packed house. "What I really believe about UFOs is
that the phenomenon as a whole is real, but not necessarily just one thing.
"There is sufficient evidence to defend both the Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI)
and the Extradimensional Intelligence (EDI) hypothesis," Hynek continued. "...I hold it
entirely possible that a technology exists, which encompasses both the physical and the
psychic, the material and the mental. There are stars that are millions of years older
than the sun. There may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than
man's. We have gone from Kitty Hawk to the moon in some seventy years, but it's

259

possible that a million-year-old civilization may know something that we don't ... I
hypothesize a technology encompassing the mental and material realms. The psychic
realms, so mysterious to us today, may be an ordinary part of an advanced technology."
But Hynek didn't know. Finding out had become the quest of his life. Soft-spoken,
conservative and cautious, Hynek was accused, by UFO fringe groups, of being a CIA
"mole" to sabotage the movement.
Donald Rumsfeld had been Hynek's congressman and introduced J. Allen Hynek
at the 1968 Symposium on UFOs. When Rumsfeld became Secretary of Defense under
President Ford (Also for W. Bush), after twenty years working for the Pentagon, Hynek
demanded to be told the whole truth about UFOs.

"You have no right to know."
Hynek's final days were spent in a hospital.
Why cant they tell me now?" he asked again and again. "Why cant they tell me
the truth even now?
Hynek waited for that telephone call from the White House, the Pentagon or the
CIA. None ever came. It was the ultimate disappointment.
But Hynek had left an indelible mark on UFOlogy. His 1972 book "The UFO
Experience: A Scientific Inquiry", had set down the three kinds of 'close encounters.'
First: visual within 500 feet.
Second: Physical trace of its presence
Third: Direct interaction
Steven Spielberg hired Hynek as a consultant and insisted on a cameo in 1977's
'Close Encounters of the Third Kind,' a fantasy the 'Grand UFOlogist' must have wished
had been real.

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Then came Stanton Friedman. The 'Grand UFOlogist' of the New Millennium
started his UFO crusade in 1958, and since 1967 has lectured at more than 600
colleges and 100 professional groups in all 50 states, 9 Canadian provinces and 16
other countries. He has published more than 90 UFO papers and has appeared on
hundreds of radio and TV programs and many documentaries, and twice at the United
Nations.

A nuclear physicist with multiple degrees, Stanton Friedman spent 14 years
working in highly advanced, and highly classified programs, including nuclear aircraft,
fission and fusion rockets, and compact nuclear power-plants for space and terrestrial
applications.

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Like Hynek, Friedman wore glasses and had a beard. But brazen and outspoken,
he would boldly take 'flying saucers' where no UFOlogist had gone before.
Even while involved with 'Close Encounters', Hynek had avoided describing UFO
occupants as "aliens" or "extraterrestrials,"; there was not enough evidence to
determine if beings associated with UFOs had an objective physical reality or to confirm
their origins or motives.
Near the end, Hynek was critical of the popular extraterrestrial hypothesis. "I
have come to support less and less the idea that UFOs are 'nuts and bolts' spacecraft
from other worlds. There are just too many things going against this theory. To me, it
seems ridiculous that super intelligences would travel great distances to do relatively
stupid things like stop cars, collect soil samples, and frighten people. I think we must
begin to re-examine the evidence. We must begin to look closer to home."
Throughout his tenure as 'Grand UFOlogist,' Hynek had been frustrated and
belittled by the Air Force's logic on 'flying saucers': "It can't be, therefore it isn't."
Stanton Friedman took a new tack: It could be, therefore it is.

'Problem' or 'phenomena', UFOs had become a market, but lacked a brand
name, a flagship and a Mecca. Friedman would change that in 1978, when he called up
the Air Corps intelligence officer who handled the 'wreckage' at Roswell.
"It was not a weather balloon," said the retired officer
Friedman found himself in the right mind-set at the right time. In 1964, the
Warren Commission submitted its final report to put the JFK assassination to sleep;
instead it awakened a spate of 'conspiracy' books blaming the Mob or the Russians.
One 'theorist' had the CIA killing JFK because the president demanded to see its
complete UFO files, which, of course, could not be permitted.

262

The 'Pentagon Papers' made the front page of the New York Times in 1971,
detailing how the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public
but also to Congress, about US involvement in the Vietnam War.

In September 1977, Ground Saucer Watch (GSW) a UFO group, filed a Freedom
of Information Act lawsuit against the CIA requesting all UFO documents. A search
conducted by the Office of General Counsel produced approximately 900 pages. On 14
December 1978, the Agency released all but 57 documents of about 100 pages, on
'national security grounds'. GSW then sued for the release of the withheld documents,
claiming that the Agency was still holding out key information.

"Are we in UFOs?" asked CIA Director Stansfield Turner who would be assured
that "No organized Agency effort to do research in connection with UFO phenomena nor
has there been an organized effort to collect intelligence on UFOs since the 1950s." The
CIA held only "sporadic instances of correspondence dealing with the subject," including
various kinds of reports of UFO sightings.
The country, it seemed, couldn't trust Congress, the President, the Pentagon or
the CIA.
So why did so many Americans believe a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel who wasn't
even a pilot who claimed that a 'flying saucer' had crashed at Roswell more than thirty
years before?

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Because we wanted to believe. That wasn't the Air Force that lost the Vietnam
War, but the Army Air Corps, the heroes whose courage and sacrifice had won WW II.
Plus, there were eyewitnesses!

Published in 1980 with uncredited help from Stanton Friedman, the 'Roswell'
trademark cleared the launch tower and took off.

264


That same year, the courts dismissed the GSW lawsuit versus the CIA, finding
that the Agency had conducted a thorough and adequate search for UFO files 'in good
faith'.
But Friedman was just warming up, proclaiming a 'Cosmic Watergate', charging
the 'ship' and 'alien bodies' had been hidden at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where
so many years before, Dr. Hynek had gotten his start.
What was the truth? Back in 1947, the intelligence officer who started it all with
the 'flying disk' was allegedly told by his superiors, "Just be a good soldier for a few
more years and it will all come out.

What did come out over the years were dozens of Roswell books claiming
'definitive proof' and 'Top Secret revelations.' Evidence that a second spaceship and
then a third had crashed sold thousands of copies. 'Little green men' had become
'grays' and the 'alien body count' rose to near 17, the number of USAF Security Service
personnel killed by the Russians during the Cold War.
The ultimate manned bomber program had begun in 1981. The Air Force was
granted approval in 1987 for 132 operational B-2 aircraft, principally for strategic
bombing missions. Each would cost $1.2 billion. Its first flight was July 17, 1989. Tested

265

at Edwards Air Force Base, California, the bat-like bomber would generate scores of
UFO 'sightings.'

In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down. Soon after, the Soviet Union disappeared.
Would Roswell? Once called the Pearl of the Pecos and by Will Rogers the
prettiest little town in the West, the early 1990s brought an economic slump. The
downtown area was nearly half-vacant and in need of architectural and structural
repairs. Yet again 'space aliens' came to the rescue.

Opened to visitors in 1992 to educate the general public to all aspects of the UFO
phenomenon, the International UFO Museum and Research Center' was created to
bring back the feeling of 1947 a newsroom, a government cover-up room with a fake
alien corpse from the 1994 Showtime movie 'Roswell: The UFO Cover-up', and also a

266

room dedicated to providing information about sightings. Also under the same roof -
crop circles, Area 51, the paranormal, alien abductions. and a replica of the Mayan
sarcophagus lid found in Palenque, Mexico that shows a man blasting off in a
spaceship. The Research Center offers books, records, and other research materials
galore. On the museum board are the best-known and most influential UFO experts on
earth.

The 'Area 51' and 'Galaxy' Movie Theaters, a 'flying saucer'-shaped McDonalds,
'Alien' street lamps, the annual Roswell UFO Festival with carnivals, trade shows, alien
costume contests, UFO lectures...

"Advertising is legalized lying."
"To promote business prosperity by assisting business development and
fostering community pride and spirit," declared the Roswell Chamber of Commerce.
In 1995 London-based film producer presented a few minutes of grainy black
and white film footage that purported to show a dead alien (supposedly from the
Roswell crash) undergoing an autopsy. First hailed as authentic by many in the UFO
community, a number of discrepancies soon popped out (spotted by forensic experts).
After the hoax had been thoroughly debunked, that story made for a 2006 comedy.

267


Was the Roswell UFO Museum a target for a CIA disinformation campaign? In
1997, the museum director claimed he was contacted by a man who said he had pieces
of wreckage from the 'flying disk' that crashed in 1947 given to him by his recently-
deceased father. A meeting was arranged in which the fragments were to be handed
over.
However, when the museum director arrived, he found a CIA agent waiting, who
told him that the telephone call had been monitored, and that the wreckage had been
confiscated and the informant arrested and taken to a secret location.
CIA tradecraft comes into question; if the informant had been apprehended and
evidence suppressed, why did the CIA agent keep the rendezvous? Had the agent not
shown up, yet another crank call would have been forgotten.
Despite alleged CIA interference, the 50th Anniversary of the 'UFO crash'
brought nearly 200,000 people to Roswell. Held annually over the 4th of July Weekend,
the UFO/Alien Festival is a joyous event that's out of this world.


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On October 22, 2002, the SCI FI Channel joined with John Podesta, President
Clinton's former chief of staff, to call for more declassification of government UFO
records.

"It is time for the government to declassify records that are
more than twenty-five years old and to provide scientists with data
that will assist in determining the real nature of this phenomenon."

The network's president added, "For the past decade, SCI FI programming has
explored the often-blurred line that separates science fiction from science fact. But
when credible scientists conclude that 5% to 10% of UFOs cannot be explained by
natural or artificial causes, we think it is worth taking a much closer look at what is
clearly a real and ubiquitous phenomenon."
SCI FI commissioned a report by independent journalist Leslie Kean to document
the government's failure to carry out systematic scientific research into the UFO
phenomenon.

269


"The fact is that scientists who have spent time studying, classifying, and
analyzing these phenomena agree that they are real and that it will require a
sustained research effort to determine their cause.
"The public has a right to know what is being observed in our airspace, once it
has been determined it is not a foreign or domestic aircraft."
A poll paid for by SCI FI Channel showed that 56% of Americans believe that
UFOs are real and that 72% believe that the government isn't telling everything it
knows about UFO activity.
Programmed hype for the latest SCI FI Channel documentary: 'The Roswell
Crash: Startling New Evidence' - "Working under top-secret conditions, archaeologists
from the University of New Mexico, in partnership with SCI FI Channel, set out to
uncover conclusive physical evidence to help prove whether the claim of an
extraterrestrial craft crash is science fiction or science fact."
Was this it? Had the 'secret' of Roswell finally been unearthed?


270

Backed by a series of books The Roswell Dig Diaries, the mini-series had the
original crash site ('The wrong place!' some said later.) excavated and the soil
examined. "Curiouser and curiouser'; at the climax came the 'smoking gun'. Not an
authentic artifact of alien origin or other-worldly DNA evidence, but a 1947 photograph
of an Army officer holding a memo, a piece of paper at the Roswell press interview.
Enhanced by computer technology, the words 'flying disk' and 'victims' could almost be
read.

In 2004, ten years after the U.S. Air Force closed its books on the claim that a
UFO crashed in Roswell, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, wrote in his
foreword to a new book that "the mystery surrounding this crash has never been
adequately explained -- not by independent investigators, and not by the U.S.
government...There are as many theories as there are official explanations.

"Clearly, it would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it
knows," wrote Richardson, who served as Energy secretary under President Bill Clinton.
"The American people can handle the truth -- no matter how bizarre or mundane... With
full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what
happened on that fateful day in July nineteen forty-seven."


271

Internet technology usurped UFO magazines and almost every UFO author.
Stanton Friedman, the 'Grand UFOlogist', is still marketable. Flying Saucers and
Science was published 2008 and Science Was Wrong with Kathleen Marden, in
2010. Thousands of Roswell and 'UFO community' sites populate the web with more
coming.

Sci Fi Channel's "UFOs: The Secret" aired in 2010, told the story of how "leaked"
government documents proved that the US has been recovering crashed unidentified
flying objects, often known as flying saucers, since 1941, and has been successful in
keeping this information from the public. Examined using forensic techniques, the
documents were declared genuine.

Advocates included a former astronaut, Skeptics noted that as no 'authentic
artifact' had been revealed, the 'secret' of Roswell remained undiscovered.



272

In 2011, plans to build a big new UFO museum in Roswell may have crashed.
The non-profit museum attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year, pumping
millions of dollars into the local economy, but times are tough and the five-year project
could take even longer or it might not happen at all.

"Our new building is on temporary indefinite, time frame
I don't know, it is on hold, we still have the whole block and we
still have all the plans. .
For more than 30 years, the Roswell phenomenon has been the wellspring of
dozens of Hollywood revenue streams, movies and TV shows that have grossed
billions.

"It's payback time!"

273

Turnabout being fair play, let the studios invest in 'the whole block' with models
and miniatures of 'flying saucers', and spaceships, the latest 'animatronics' and sci-fi
video game prototypes...

...The Roswell International UFO Museum and Research Center would become
what it's been all along: The ULTIMATE science fiction Museum.

This tiny town in the middle of nowhere, yet in the center of everything, beyond
Wonderland and Neverland, OZ and Shangri-la, Roswell makes us imagine...by a
dictum from 'Moses' himself...

"There has to be something out there
better than Man. Has to be!"

274



In May of 2011, the Czech Republic celebrated the 60th birthday of the launch of
Radio Free Europe broadcasts and the 'Crusade for Freedom' across and over the Iron
Curtain. For 5 years, a total of nearly 600,000 balloons carried more than 300M leaflets,
posters, books, and other printed matter to nearly a dozen different countries. In this
Roswellian Age, one can send more propaganda to more people the world over in five
minutes from a cell phone.

Project ULTIMATE lives on!

The Roswell International UFO Museum and Research Center is open seven
days a week from 9AM to 5PM. General Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for children 5-15.
Military (Must have ID Card or be in uniform) and seniors over 65, $3.

275


NSA and CIA thank you for your patronage.
We vets of USAF Security Service salute you!







276



USAFSS/ESC/AFIC/AIA/AF ISR Agency KIA/MIA

Fifty (50) members (48 flyers and two non-flyer) became KIAs or MIAs

16 separate incidents between 27 July 1953 and 31 March 2005

27 Jul 1953 RB-50G-2 1RSM
1st loss of USAFSS airborne operators as a result of hostile action, Sea of Japan

Staff Sergeant Donald G. Hill
A2C Earl W. Radlein, Jr.

10 Sep 1956 RB-50 Det 1, 6924RSM
Sea of Japan

Maj Loren C. Disbrow
SSgt Raymond D. Johnson
SSgt Theodorus J. Trias
SSgt Paul W. Swinehart
A1C William H. Ellis
A1C Harry S. Maxwell
A1C Leo J. Sloan

2 Sep 1958 C-130 17 total/11 USAFSS Det 1, 6911RGM
Shot down over Soviet Armenia

MSgt George P. Petrochilos
TSgt Arthur L. Mello
A1C Robert J. Oshinskie
A2C Archie T. Bourg, Jr.
A2C Joel H. Fields
A2C James E. Ferguson, Jr.
A2C Harold T. Kamps
A2C Gerald C. Maggiacomo
A2C Clement O. Mankins
A2C Gerald H. Medeiros
A2C Robert H. Moore

277

Eighteen of the losses occurred in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War

9 Mar 1967 EC-47 6994SS
Vietnam

TSgt Raymond F. Leftwich
A1C Charles D. Land
A1C Daniel C. Reese

7 Nov 1967 Gnd Attack 6994SS
Vietnam

TSgt Frederick Sebers

5 Feb 1969 EC-47 6994SS
Vietnam

TSgt Hugh L. Sherburn
TSgt Louis J. Clever
SSgt Rodney H. Gott
SSgt James V. Dorsey
A1C Clarence L. McNeill

5 Jun 1969 RC135 6985SS
Alaska Bering Sea

TSgt Eugene L. Benavides
SSgt Roy L. Lindsey
SSgt Richard J. Steen, Jr.
Sgt Douglas Arcano
Sgt Sherman E. Consolver, Jr.
Sgt Lucian Rominiecki

8 Oct 1969 EC-47 6994SS
Vietnam

SSgt Elmore L. Hall
Sgt Michael L. Stiglich

8 Apr 1970 Rocket Attack 6924SS
Vietnam

Sgt Paul Wayne Anthony

22 Apr 1970 EC-47 6994SS
Vietnam

SSgt Michael R. Conner

21 Nov 1972 EC-47
Thailand

MSgt John Ryon

278


5 Feb 1973 EC47, 6994SS
Laos

SSgt Todd M. Melton
Sgt Peter R. Cressman
Sgt Joseph A. Matejov
Sgt Dale Brandenburg


16 Mar 1981 Cobra Ball RC135
Shemya AB, Alaska

SSgt Harry L. Parsons III
SSgt Steven C. Balcer


22 Sep 1995 AWACs, 381IS
Elmendorf AFB, AK

TSgt Ernest Parrish

7 Aug 2002 MC-130H, 25 IS
Puerto Rico

SSgt Shane H. Kimmett

31 Mar 2005 MC-130H, 25 IS
Albania

TSgt Glenn P. Lastes
20 May 2009 IED, AFISRA Afghanistan
1st Lt Roslyn Schulte

18 February 2012, Djibouti, Africa
SRA Julian S.Scholten








279


\
FIRST




280





My country is history, and so am I. Never did I dream that one day, either one of
us would be.
Learn history well, comrade, for without its truth, you'll lack the wisdom to face up
to your story.

As for mine...

281



"The Earth is the cradle of the mind,
but one cannot live forever in the cradle."


How many things have been denied one day,
only to become realities the next!


"Revolutions are the locomotives of history."


282




Klushino, a little village 100 miles from Moscow in Smolensk Oblast, was famous
as the site of a major battle of the Russian-Polish War in 1610.

Until March 9th 1934, when I was born.


I started growing up on a collective farm. My father was a carpenter and
bricklayer. Mama worked as a milkmaid.




283



Baptized in the Orthodox Church, I believed very early that God had a special
plan for me; because he made me small. Never would I ever be more than five foot, two
inches tall.



"Every religious idea, every idea of god, every
flirtation with the idea of God is unutterable vileness."


I was very proud to be a 'New Soviet Boy'. My country wasn't that much older
than I. The Bolshevik Revolution delivered us from the Czar and the First World War.
Then the Civil War killed millions more.




284

For so long there was famine and 'saboteurs' and 'traitors' everywhere. The State
Police rounded them up and took them away to the GULAG.




And when we believed life could get no harder, on June 22, 1941...




"Just kick in the door and the whole rotting
structure will come tumbling down!"





285

The Hitlerites stormed into Klushino and took over the collective farm and kicked
us out of our house.



Again I thanked God for creating me small. Papa, Mama, my bother Boris and I
dug a 'mud hut' three square meters in the back yard; for a year and a half, the 'New
Soviet Family' had to live in a covered ditch.


The Fascists drove the Red Army back, further and further as the weather got
colder.



"Moscow's fall is imminent!"

The whole world gave up on us. The Nazis had conquered one democracy after
another. What chance did the primitive Communists have?

Capitalists never understood. We are the Soviet Union! We will never be beaten,
never surrender!

286



"Let dog eat dog!"

Years later I would read H.G. Wells...



And realize that I had lived through War of the Worlds. Yet so few Westerners
knew or cared how much my country and my people had suffered.


"As if everything east of Chicago had been lain to waste."

287

For those who survived to grieve and rebuild, the Great Patriotic War would
never be over. We had saved the West only to have it unite against us.

Paper and pencils were hard to come by in school. Adding and subtracting spent
bullet casings, I took to math and physics. I trained in tech school and became a metal
molder in a foundry.



At the Saratov industrial school, during my fourth year I started taking flying
lessons. Thank God I was small. Compared to my old 'mud hut', every cockpit felt like a
dacha.


288

That first flight filled me with pride and gave meaning to my whole life and I couldn't
wait to join the Red Air Force.

At the Orenburg Aviation School I learned to fly combat aircraft.


On the ground, I met Valentina. The day I graduated and became a lieutenant in
the Soviet Air Force, we married.




Suddenly, the sky was no longer the limit. On October 14th, 1957, Sputnik
started the 'Space Age'.


"Beep, beep, beep."



289



An intercontinental outer-space "The Soviets will soon be dropping
raspberry to a decade of American bombs on us from outer space like kids
pretensions that the American way dropping rocks unto cars from freeway
of life was a gilt-edged guarantee overpasses."
of our national superiority.

Soon I was a father with a new dream: to be part of the Soviet Space Program.
Approved for Cosmonaut training, we moved to Star City, a secret complex near
Moscow.


Cosmonaut training was tough--experiments with weightlessness, heat
endurance, stress tests and having to spend long periods of time in a sensory
deprivation chamber.
My trainers rated me a top achiever 'with a calm persona and always having a
sense of humor.' Of course! Soviet writers and filmmakers had already paved the way.


290

Our competition had also been encouraged....


We were put here as witnesses to the miracle of life.
We see the stars, and we want them. We are beholden to
give back to the universe... If we make landfall on another
star system, we become immortal."
But unlike the Americans, I was being prepared for much more than a cosmic
quest; the Soviet cosmonaut will not merely be a victor of outer space, not merely a
hero of science and technology, but first and foremost a real, living, flesh-and-blood
archetype, rising up from the ruins of the Great Patriotic War, imbued with all the
invaluable qualities of the Soviet character.



291

"The human species, the sluggish Homo sapiens, will once
again enter the stage of radical reconstruction and become in his
own hands the object of the most complex methods of artificial
selection and psychophysical training... Man will make it his goal...
to create a higher socio-biological type, a superman, if you will."

I would become the 'New Soviet Man'!





But I would not be the first to orbit the earth...




The USSR had a tradition of heroic dogs who gave their lives for their country.


292



During the war, specially trained dogs would run under the Nazi tanks, tripping a
lever that set off a bomb and blow up the enemy vehicle and unfortunately, the animal
as well.
Laika, a stray from the streets of Moscow, would not survive the trip; her oxygen
would run out after six days. She was painlessly euthanized before that happened.
Or so we were told. Not until the New Millennium was it revealed that Laika had
died within hours after launch from overheating possibly caused by a failure of the
central R-7 sustainer to separate from the payload.

My government had no choice. Had we cosmonaut trainees been told the truth,
we might have felt differently about following Laika into space.

293


It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.

Soviet aviators had always braved danger in their quest to break altitude barriers.
In January 1934, the crew of the Osoaviakhim stratosphere balloon, dedicating their feat
to the Seventeenth Party Congress, set a new world record.


But they had pushed too hard and the balloon crashed. At the funeral, Stalin
personally carried the ashes through Red Square.

October 24, 1960 was a 'black day' in space exploration. A launch accident at the
main flight center caused a massive explosion which killed 124 people.
"Those responsible," judged the investigating committee, "Have already been
punished."

294


"You don't concentrate on risks. You concentrate on results.
No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done."



None of us future cosmonauts wavered for a moment. We had supreme
confidence in ourselves and in our country. One of us was going into outer space. God
willing, one of us would become the New Soviet Man!


"God has no intention of setting a limit to the
efforts of man to conquer space."

295

On April 9, 1961, three days before the scheduled liftoff, I learned that I had been
chosen.
Galochka, my second daughter, was a happy baby. My last night home before
the mission, while my dear wife was out shopping...
Galochka began to smell unhappy.
'Thoughtless child!' I giggled as I changed her, 'Your daddy is about to go up in
space, and you dirty your diaper!"

I slept well the night before, my body laced with wires monitored by a team of
doctors. I got up early, showered and shaved, then ate breakfast, 'space food',
squeezed from tubes.



296

Then...

"Dear friends, both known and unknown to me, fellow Russians, and people of all
countries and continents...What can I say to you in these last minutes before the
start?...Everything I have experienced and done till now has been in preparation for this
moment...I don't have to tell you what I felt when it was suggested that I should make
this flight, the first in history.
"Was it joy? No, it was something more than that. Pride? No, it was not just pride.
I felt great happiness. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage single handed in an
unprecedented duel with nature - could anyone dream of anything greater than that?
But immediately after that I thought of the tremendous responsibility I bore: to be the
first to do what generations of people had dreamed of; to be the first to pave the way
into space for mankind. This responsibility is not toward one person, not toward a few
dozen, not toward a group. It is a responsibility toward all mankind - toward its present
and its future. Am I happy as I set off on this space flight? Of course I'm happy. After all,
in all times and epochs the greatest happiness for man has been to take part in new
discoveries. It is a matter of minutes now before the start. I say to you, 'Until we meet
again,' dear friends, just as people say to each other when setting out on a long journey.
I would like very much to embrace you all, people known and unknown to me, close
friends and strangers alike. See you soon!

"Poyekhali!"


297



April 12, 1961







298



"Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World."



"To boldly go where no man has gone before."





"All or nothing? - Which shall it be?"



299



Vostok put in orbit, and the carrier-rocket separated, weightlessness set in. At
first, an unusual sensation, but I soon adapted myself.

The grand steppe, the infinite road from earth to the stars. The footprint of this
little farmboy more than a hundred miles high makes me the tallest man who ever lived.

A new age, a new hope, the New Soviet Man has entered the cosmos. Follow
me, everybody. I am first, first!


"The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows,
Where her son flies in the sky!"

300

The Earth is blue. How wonderful. It is amazing. Clouds and their light shadows
on the distant dear EarthWater looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spotsthe
horizon... abrupt, contrasting transition from the Earths light-colored surface to the
absolutely black sky...the rich color spectrum of the earth, surrounded by a light blue
aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal
black.
Rays were blazing through the atmosphere of the earth, the horizon became
bright orange, gradually passing into all the colors of the rainbow: from light blue to dark
blue, to violet and then to black.

"I owned the world that hour as I rode over it.
Free of the earth, free of the mountains, free of the clouds,
but how inseparably I was bound to them."
As soon as braking engine shut down, there was a sharp jolt. The spacecraft
started spinning about its axis with very high speed. The Earth was passing in the
window from top to bottom and from right to left. The speed of rotation was around 30
degrees per second, no less...Everything was spinning.




301

One moment I see Africa -- another the horizon, another the sky. I barely had
time to shade myself from the sun, so the light did not blind my eyes. I put my legs
toward the bottom window, but did not closed the blinds. I wanted to find out myself
what was going on.

On the phone I reported that the separation had not taken place. I decided that
the situation was not an emergency, with the code system I transmitted 'Vse Normalno,'

Re-entry heated up the inside of Vostok. Crimson flames raged outside.
I was in a cloud of fire rushing toward Earth.

I would not land with my spaceship, the impact might have been fatal. Instead, I
bailed out at 20,000 feet. But we couldn't tell anyone that. Due to international rules for
aviation records: "The pilot remains in his craft from launch to landing".

Had the Americans found out, they would have "disqualified" my flight.



As I neared the ground, I saw an old woman, a young girl, and a dappled calf.
.


"I'm a friend, comrades. A friend!"
"Can it be that you have come from outer space?" the woman asked.
"As a matter of fact, I have!"

302



"I have learned to use the word "I'm taller than the
'impossible' with the greatest caution." first man in space!"

I missed my landing site by 300 kilometers. A helicopter came and took me to a
nearby small airport. The medical team caught up with me on the second floor of the
terminal.

Pulse, blood pressure, vital signs, doctors, doctors, doctors!





Examined me before I went into space, the first and the last to see the old world.
...Again they were preparing me; the earth I had orbited was no longer the same.
For the next two days, I sat waiting in local dacha while the Party readied for my
arrival. My flight to Moscow was escorted by a formation of MiGs, maybe pilots I knew. I
still felt like one of them.

303


Red Square was a sea of cheering people, wave after wave after wave. I stepped
from the helicopter onto the red carpet. Later I'd see that my shoelaces were untied.
(Mama wouldn't have liked that.) Imagine 'The Columbus of the Cosmos' suddenly
falling to earth on his face.

Nyet! God had been with me from the very start, would be with 'The New Soviet
Man' forever.


304



"Here is Gagarin, who flew up to space, and yet,
even he didnt see God anywhere."


What prophet or Pope or politician believes that because I came one hundred
and fifty miles closer to the Creator of The Infinite Universe that I, former farmboy and
foundry worker, needed God to make an appearance, to put on a show?



An cosmonaut cannot be suspended in space and not have God in his mind and
his heart.

My God is within me, a guide, a hope, deep in my immortal soul!

305


"All gods are homemade, and it is we "If you want to prove that God is
who pull their strings, and so, give them not dead, first prove that man is alive."
the power to pull ours."
After going around the world, I got to do it again: Italy, Germany, Canada, Brazil,
Japan, Cyprus, Hungary, Egypt, and Finland.



"Putting a man in space is a stunt: "Now that the Soviet scientists have put a man
...the propaganda aspects of the into space and brought him back alive, I hope
program leaves me entirely cool." they will also help to bring the United Nations
back alive."

306




"When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for
the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us
preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it."



307

Cuba was the closest I ever got to the United States. A missed opportunity. Not
that I wanted to visit Disneyland and Times Square, but the chance to talk one-on-one
with the American who would soon follow me.

KGB had the pulse of the American space program, bombarding us with NASA
reports, newspapers, magazines, films, TV tapes. I felt I already knew him.



"I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all."
He was twenty years older than I, but we were both fighter pilots. If war came,
and we went head-to-head...

A dogfight for the ages!

Each of us had beaten out the other trainees not just because of our skills, our
stamina, and maybe a little luck...because of the dream, to fly up there beyond the sky
and above the earth, higher and farther away, alone, alive and pushing through a dark,
endless 'no-life zone' all humanity longs to experience.

308


"Welcome to the future, Captain!"

No 'skip across space', Vostok 2 made 17 orbits, The first to work, take
photographs, and sleep in outer space, and then suffer from space sickness, Titov was
the first to pilot a spaceship on his own.

"In orbit now we have a small but harmonious collection of Soviet people."


309

Finally, an American astronaut joined us around the earth

"The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds
and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education
that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel."

Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 were launched a day apart to come close together in
orbit. The cosmonauts performed the first ship-to-ship communications in space,
giving us controllers vital experience in dual spacecraft operation.



310

As the United States was coming apart, the Soviet Union came together like the
Great Patriotic War, ahead of the world's greatest superpower, we were first in outer
space!

On June 16, 1963...

"If women can be railroad workers "The most effective way to do it,
in Russia, why can't they fly in space?" is to do it."
Voskhod 1 - A three-man ship!


311

The Americans were being left far behind.

"A significant space accomplishment
A clear indication that the Russians are continuing a large space
program for the achievement of national power and prestige."


Voskhod 2 - October 10-12, 1964...

Remember that time -- the insane mistrust,
not just for people but between countries.
KGB has a 'special treat' for the cosmonauts and their families: complete with a
pretty translator, the premiere of a US 'space TV show',


312

'Lost in Space' indeed! We cosmonauts burst out laughing. If this was the
'American Family of the Future', the United States would never get to the moon.
February, 3rd, 1966: The Soviet Union is first again. The first soft landing, Luna 9
'faxed' back images of the lunar surface, the first transmission from another world.

Luna 10 - the first lunar orbiter!

The Americans were desperate to catch us. Gemini 10 and 11 achieved a couple
of minor 'firsts': docking with another spacecraft on first orbit after launch, and a
tethered spacecraft.


313

To us and the Party, the American space program, though they had made
some progress, was still 'Lost in Space'
On September 10th, 1966, KGB had another 'special presentation' delivered via
diplomatic pounch. This time around, we left our families at home and set up the vodka.

"'Space, the final frontier'," said our translator and the lot of us were instantly
locked in: "'To seek out new life and new civilizations..."
The ship, the characters, the music, the....vision! People of all races and creeds
on a quest to explore the universe. And I was first! From that day on, week after week,
KGB had a new 'Prime Directive':

"Fascinating."

314


Gemini had come to an end. The Americans' new program: Apollo. We'd be
watching very closely. Unfortunately, NASA wasn't.

January 27, 1967


A flash fire erupted in the command module during a launch pad test of the
Apollo/Saturn space vehicle. The astronauts never had a chance.
We knew the tragedy would set the Americans back at least a year, but took no
joy. Those men were us, fueled by the dream. To die on the ground was the cruelest of
fates.
There would be changes made, major design and engineering modifications, and
revisions to test planning, test discipline, manufacturing processes and procedures, and
quality control.

Apollo 1 served as a warning we'd be fools to ignore.


315

Great news! I have been reinstated as a cosmonaut to serve as a backup pilot on
the next space flight. For Vostok 1, my 'alternate' had been with me every step of the
way, including on the bus, fully clad in an identical spacesuit. If, for some reason, I
faltered at the last moment, Titov would have jumped in the capsule; he would have
been first.



The three-man Soyuz was designed to beat the Americans to the moon. The new
spacecraft could actively maneuver in orbit for rendezvous and docking, a necessary
ability for circumlunar flights and eventual lunar exploration.



My good friend Vladimir Komarov would perform the first test flight solo. As
Deputy Director of Cosmonaut Training, I was determined that the Americans had not
died in vain. Technicians would inspect every inch of Soyuz.

Their report...


"More than two hundred violations.
The ship's a death trap!"

316

It is better to be wrong too soon than right too late. I had to go to the top.



"God will not forgive us if we fail."

The new First Secretary was more interested in headlines than humanity,
insisting on launches to coincide with historic dates or events. Missions were scheduled
as part of a grand national ceremony.

The Kremlin would not listen, not even to 'Columbus of the Cosmos'.


"This is starting to get... very Russian."
April 23, 1967
Vladimir and I marched in step from the launch elevator to the waiting rocket. We
both felt he was going to his doom. To save himself, all he had to do was feel a 'sudden
stomach cramp' and I would go in his place.

317

A 'New Soviet Man' to the end. He boarded the scraftcraft as if he were taking a
bus.

The liftoff was flawless, but Komarov soon experienced severe problems with the
Soyuz attitude control system.
"Devil-machine, nothing I lay my hands on works!" he called down.
We had to get him home. The first attempt to fire retros failed; orientation could
not be determined. The ship was passing through an "ion pocket." Komarov fired the
retro rockets on his seventeenth orbit, and he began his descent into Earth's
atmosphere, piloting the craft towards the landing site.
Unfortunately, one final problem occurred. The drag chute deployed successfully,
but due to a failure of a pressure sensor, the main parachute would not deploy. The
reserve chute then became tangled with the drag chute.


318

Soyuz crashed into a field near Orenburg. Komarov's ashes were buried in the
Kremlin Wall.
My protests came with the harshest of consequences: I was removed from the
cosmonaut program, forbidden to go into space again. Except as a 'figurehead'
passenger flown to Party functions, the Kremlin would make sure I'd never fly again.

"In a pig's eye!"
Some bigshot I've become. Stuck on the ground, I felt like Moby Dick without an
ocean. I continued to drink and smoke more and more. And cheat on my wife.

And who would blame me? I was first! Every woman in Russia wanted to boast
that she'd made love to a national hero!

"Drifting severely off course."

319

Not since I was a child did the sky seem so far away. Where I went, who I was...a
thousand short Soviet pilots could have sat in Vostok, and been automatically ejected
and celebrated by the whole world.
A man is what he does. One miraculous flight and I'd been falling ever since. I
had to fly again. I had to be Yuri Gagarin!

I applied for retraining as a fighter pilot. The Party knew better than to deny me,
but I could only fly with an instructor. The first time was a bit humiliating, after all...
I stowed my pride and kept at it. My second 'lesson' went well. The third would
qualify me to fly solo.

The weather appeared good. My instructor complimented me on take-off, but the
sky soon turned against us.
"Done," I radioed after only four minutes in the air. "Returning to base."
Then something went wrong.

"All communication has been lost."

320




"Another dream that failed. There's nothing sadder."







321


March 30, 1968




322





"Apollo in 1969. Shuttle in 1981. Nothing in 2011. Our space program
would look awesome to anyone living backwards thru time."




"I don't think the human race will survive the
next thousand years, unless we spread into space."




"I don't believe in no-win scenarios."

323


In 1991 the USSR plunged headlong into Trotsky's 'dustbin of history.'. There
are more statues, monuments, and memorials for Yuri Gagarin than for all the Soviet
Union's creators and rulers put together.



324


Since his death, Federation Aeronautique Internationale has been awarding the
Yuri A. Gagarin Gold Medal.

The town of Gzhatsk, adjacent to his birth town of Klushino, was renamed
Gagarin in 1968.

Gagarin Training Center in Star City is the school for cosmonauts.

Numerous streets, avenues and squares bear Gagarin's name throughout
Russia.
His boyhood has been turned into a museum, one of many.




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Soyuz flight crews observe a number of ceremonies before they leave the Star
City training complex outside Moscow. They leave red carnations at the Memorial Wall,
which commemorates Yuri Gagarin and the four cosmonauts who died in the course of
space missions. Then they visit Gagarins office at Zvyozdniy Gorodok, which is
preserved as a shrine, untouched since his death, and sign his guest book.
On the way to the pad, cosmonauts get out of the bus near the rocket and
urinate on its right rear wheel. The rite dates back to Gagarin himself, who reportedly
did not want to soil his space suit during takeoff.

In Space...

On Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left a memorial satchel
containing medals commemorating Gagarin and fellow cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov on
the surface of the Moon.



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Fallen Astronaut is an 3-inch aluminum sculpture of an astronaut in a spacesuit
commemorating astronauts and cosmonauts who died in the quest of space exploration,
placed there by the crew of Apollo 15.
A crater on the far side of the Moon and an asteroid, 1772 Gagarin.
In the STAR TREK Universe...

Gagarin IV USS Gagarin (Saber-class)
In 2001...


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The 'historic' series, dating back to the early days of Starfleet, opens with a
catchy tune and cameos of pioneers of aviation and space exploration, including...

Also Lindbergh, Earhart, Yeager, Shepard and...


Yuri Gagarin was nowhere to be seen.

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2010 SPACE FOUNDATION
Survey of Space Heroes
Tied for sixth place: Fictional character Capt. James Tiberius Kirk of the starship
USS Enterprise from the 1960s television series, Star Trek and Russian Cosmonaut
Col. Yuri Gagarin, Soviet Air Force, the first human in outer space.



"Poyekhali!"