60. The Truth About UFOs: The CIA's Alien Obsession (Ep 3)

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About an hour and a half out of Baku, Senator Russell, who was not feeling well, was resting in his compartment with the lights turned out.

He suddenly noticed a greenish-yellow ball rising rapidly.

He rushed into the next compartment stating that he had seen what he thought was a flying saucer.

The rest of the party turned out the lights and looked out the window, but saw nothing and was initially skeptical.

However, suddenly a second ball was noticed rising rapidly, and then the other members of the party were convinced.

The second object was initially seen at a minimum altitude of 700 to 800 feet, while the first object was initially initially viewed at an even higher altitude.

The object gave the impression of whirling and appeared to follow a single trajectory with no break in its flight pattern.

About five to ten minutes after the sightings and after the subject had returned to his own compartment, the guard came in and pulled down the shades.

Welcome to The Rest is Classified.

I'm David McCloskey.

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

And that, dear listeners, was the record of a 1955 CIA interview of Senator Richard Russell, United States Senator, talking to Herbert Scoble Jr., who then was the assistant director of scientific intelligence at the CIA.

It was an interview that was only fully declassified in 2022, thanks to the efforts of a website called The Black Vault.

And we are

on part three, Gordon, of 17 of our exploration of the wonderful world of UFOs and secret intelligence programs.

And this time, Gordon, finally, now, listeners, of course, who have made it through the first two episodes will notice that we have not spent a lot of time, have we, talking about the Central Intelligence Agency, much to this co-host's chagrin and dismay.

And this time, we are going to focus on what the CIA knew about UFOs and how the conspiracy spread.

That's right, David.

And you seem to know quite a lot about this subject as a former CIA officer, given that you're wearing, again, a tinfoil hat.

Although a slightly different one from the last time we recorded an episode.

It is different.

Did you need to improve it?

My children came into my office yesterday and someone stomped on the other one that I had so lovingly made.

And so I've crafted another one, which I think looks a little bit more handmaid's tail, perhaps, in its conical shape than the other one did.

Watchers on YouTube or wherever you're watching this can be the judge.

You know, this one is actually, Gordon, it's substantially warmer.

I think there's sort of a heat dome that's building up in here that's even worse than the one I was wearing for the other episodes.

If you pass out, I'll just keep going.

And I'll just keep going.

Just kind of wave and shout.

It's true that neither of us have blacked out while recording yet.

No, unlike some of those pilots who were going up to chase the balloons in the previous episodes.

But this is the first time.

And also, if you suddenly disappear, it'll be yet another alien abduction.

Because, of course, a reminder that if you want to hear David's alien abduction story, that is available to um declassified club members as well as the rest of the series that'll be episode 18 in the in the capstone of the 17 part series so the central intelligence agency one of my favorite topics how how did the cia get involved in ufos yeah why and how so we talked last time about the kind of roswell incident 47 this kind of raft of sightings which happened at the start of the cold war So the U.S.

Air Force is starting its own project to collect information.

Now, of course, one of the questions of why is the government collecting this information if they know, as we heard last time, that so many of these things are kind of secret spy balloons, like Project Mogul, which was the kind of reason for Roswell.

And the answer, of course, is that there's that tiny bit of doubt in their minds, tiny bit of doubt that maybe there's something else, not necessarily aliens, but perhaps foreign aircraft or foreign weapons systems which are being developed.

And it is the era of kind of quite rapid Cold War development in technology, the belief that kind of air and space is the future.

The U.S.

Air Force, of course, is relatively new, growing fast, wants to kind of project power, also keep its budget.

And so, you know, there's an incentive, I think, to...

to suggest that all kinds of interesting things are happening in the skies and that they need programs to kind of keep on top of it.

So the real fear, I think, is not so much what aliens might be doing as what the Soviets might be doing.

That's more terrifying than it being extraterrestrials.

Is it just being the commies?

And it reminds me, I guess, of

maybe some of the justification for the initial foray into MK Ultra, the CIA mind control project, I think we mentioned in the last episode, and in that so much of that initial research was sort of grounded initially in kind of a fear that the Soviets might be doing it, right?

So, I mean, I guess here there's a parallel that even though so many of these sightings, if not all of them, can be traced back to balloons, Air Force kind of experimental crafts, things like that.

But what if?

But what if, exactly.

And that, that what if is pretty powerful, it turns out, in the 1950s.

So the Air Force have got these successive projects and they've got great names.

The first one is called Saucer, which is not a very little on the nose, I would say, for a

secret.

Yeah.

But then called Sign, which is maybe better, you know, kind of signs from above.

Grudge, which I think is a weird, that's kind of, that suggests someone didn't want to do it to me.

And they said, I'm going to to go, I got sent to do this, this UFO program, and it's my grudge.

So that's what I'm going to call it.

And then Blue Book, which is the kind of most famous one that lasts through the 50s, to kind of collect these things.

But of course, as we said, it's not just the Air Force.

The CIA wants to get in on the act.

Now, it's really interesting, I think, because it's not so much the aliens.

It's again, what could earthly adversaries?

be doing with the possibility of UFO sightings.

So in the early 50s, Edward Taus, who is the acting chief of the CIA's weapons and equipment division, that's a good title, isn't it?

Sounds like a good division.

I think that had been disbanded by the time I joined.

That's too bad.

That sounds like they are.

I signed up for that crew.

But they look at it and they say most of these UFO sightings could be easily explained, but they should continue monitoring.

But there's a.

And there's an official CIA history paper on this, which is great, which is declassified, which is agency officials accepted the Air Force's conclusions about UFO reports.

In other words, they're mainly understandable.

But they concluded that since there is a remote possibility that they may be interplanetary aircraft, it's necessary to investigate each sighting.

So

just that remote possibility, CIA thinks we've got to do this.

So they form a study group, move to a different division.

But here's the key fact is that they want to keep it secret.

I mean, it's the CIA's everything's going to be secret, but they definitely don't want the public or the media know

that they are doing this and investigating investigating it that's could be one of the problems so they reckon there's a kind of one in ten thousand chance that this is really kind of something that's really a big threat big if true big if true that's fair so they put together a panel of scientists in 1953 and they start reviewing all the cases so they look at the motion picture film of a ufo sighting in utah the previous year in july 1952 and one in montana from 1950 And they conclude that the images on one film were just caused by sunlight reflecting off seagulls

and that the other ones at Great Falls, Montana were sunlight reflecting off the surface of two US Air Force interceptors.

So they unanimously conclude there's no evidence of a direct threat to national security or extraterrestrials.

But, but this is the key bit,

because of this kind of competition with the Soviet Union, they still see that there is a kind of national security danger in the world of UFO sightings.

So one of the things they look at is they look at the Soviet press.

They They see no reports of any UFO sightings.

And they go, hmm, is that that's strange?

That free and open Soviet press.

Yeah.

So they go that already they go, oh, that's strange.

There's something going on there.

So I like the way that's an indicator of something.

But what they're worried about, basically, is that the Soviets could be using UFOs as a psychological warfare tool.

So there's lots of ways they think they could be using it.

One is to exploit the kind of sightings of UFO and all the fear of them to disrupt US air defenses.

Because if US air defenses are kind of overloaded with people saying they're seeing UFOs, then you won't know what's real and what's fake, will you?

You'll be kind of lots of false signals.

And then the Soviets could kind of hide within the noise of all that UFO sighting, some real attack plans.

So that's one of their worries, which is a kind of use of UFOs for kind of confusion.

But the bigger one is that they fear they're going to use UFOs to undermine government and society.

In other words, that lots of people will end up wearing tin foil hats and taking this issue seriously, and that will degrade

the UFOs.

We should accomplish it.

Now, I'm pleased to say there is no sign of that happening, especially not on this podcast.

But

they say they believe the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off hysterical mass behavior.

which might threaten the orderly functioning of government.

I find this quite interesting because

that's what they're worried worried about is the use of it in this Cold War context.

And so one of the CIA's assistant directors actually says, we need to bring this to the National Security Council.

And then also there's some stuff going on in the UK because they learned the Brits are also come on now.

The Brits are also looking at shameless, shameless plugs.

Because none other.

none other than the legendary, those who know their Second World War spy history, a man called R.

V.

Jones had created a standing committee in June 1951 on flying sources.

Now, R.

Jones is a kind of legend in British intelligence because he was the kind of man who basically helped develop and find Nazi planes using advanced technology and kind of using radars to detect them, finding ways to confuse German radars, ways of defending our planes.

He was the kind of scientific whiz linked between the air ministry and MI6, who played a really important role in the war.

He actually also had some role in the pidgin program, but that's a separate story.

Now, now we now see why Gordon included this paragraph in the script.

R.Z.

Jones.

I don't think any pigeons were ever confused for you, folks.

It's a different story.

But it's interesting.

So, Jones is looking at this as well.

So, British intelligence is also looking at it, but their conclusions are similar to the CIA.

They're basically most of the sightings are not enemy aircraft, but kind of misrepresentations of natural phenomena.

But the British noted that during a recent air show, RAF pilots and senior military officials had observed a perfect flying saucer.

And Jones says, we're having trouble over in the UK trying to deal with public opinion on UFOs.

And the public was getting convinced they were real.

So on both sides of the Atlantic, you've got this slight fear that this is getting out of hand.

And, you know, it's the era of McCarthyism.

And the CIA panel are even worried that some of the UFO groups are being run by the kind of Soviets in some way to subvert American society.

So there's these groups like the civilian Flying Sorcerer Investigators in LA and the Aerial Phenomena Research

Organization in Wisconsin.

And the panel is saying we need to monitor these groups because what if this is part of a Soviet subversive campaign?

It's a bit like, you know, the Reds are using Hollywood and they're using the UFO reports all to kind of undermine us, to destroy us from within.

So this is where I think the CIA's interest is kind of really interesting because you can see why they might get involved.

So they basically dismissed the idea that any of this stuff is

real, right?

And it becomes a psychological warfare sort of information warfare tool or a potential tool

by the mid to late 50s.

Before there was social media, there were UFO reports in order to undermine American democracy.

There is an overlap of sort of interest, I guess, in theory,

between...

a group of people interested in kind of quote-unquote uncovering the truth about UFOs and the Soviet Union and that there would be a shared interest in kind of the diminishing of trust in U.S.

government institutions and probably a desire for transparency of really kind of secretive organizations that, of course, the U.S.

government preferred to keep their programs, their intentions, their budgets, their capabilities secret.

The Soviets would have an interest in one of these interest groups being able to sort of pry it open.

You can see the parallel.

Making fun of it a bit, but you can understand how in the context of the 50s, some of these groups would look like subversive yeah yeah subversive soviet influence campaigns sure so yeah so the cia panel is going to recommend that the national security council actually kind of debunk ufo reports and have a policy of public education to tell people that there's not much evidence for this and it suggests using the mass media advertising business clubs schools and even the disney corporation to get the message across so i love this idea they're going to go to disney there's no evidence they did and say please can you help us dismiss the idea of UFOs?

You're like, most Hollywood film studios and entertainment companies are like living off this stuff.

They're not going to be aligned to that objective.

No, it's a hard, a hard sell.

And then there's another story, kind of wild story, which fuels the interest.

And you read at the start about the recollections of U.S.

Senator Richard Russell seeing a flying saucer.

Now, what's interesting about his recollection is that that is in the Soviet Union in October 1955, when he comes back and he says, I've seen something.

And there's lots of questions about what the Soviet Union might be doing.

You know, have they got the flying saucers or something like that?

And it's a pretty influential guy.

So the CIA decide they better talk to him.

So they send Herbert Scoville, who's the Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence.

So I guess a pretty senior officer.

And he goes to see him.

And he says, the testimony of Senator Russell does not, in my opinion, support the theory that the Russians have developed saucer-like or unconventional aircraft.

It's quite possible that the objects seen were were the exhausts of normal jetti aircraft in a steep climb.

And he goes on to say, it's possible the aircraft were short or vertical takeoff variety aircraft.

So the CIA are kind of investigating these claims, but I think because he's a powerful senator, they probably don't want to.

Yeah, you can't just dismiss it.

Yeah, you're crazy.

So maybe there with the CIA on the case of the UFOs.

Let's take a break and afterwards we can look back at how they're going to fuel the conspiracy theories.

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Well, welcome back.

The CIA is, of course, worried about this potential for panic, this widespread belief in UFOs, including among members of the American Senate.

But of course, like any good intelligence agency, Gordon, as soon as the CIA gets involved and tries to sort of calm everything down, they're actually going to have the exact opposite reaction.

Isn't that right?

And the involvement of the CIA in the story is going to become one of adding fuel to the fire.

I think it's

exactly.

If they're worried about someone undermining trust in government, I'm afraid that their investigations into it to stop that are going to end up having that effect.

It's a kind of tragic blowback from the CIA operation.

So, what's interesting is a few ways in which they're going to fuel the idea of UFOs.

One is actually some of their genuinely secret classified programs.

So from 1954, the CIA is partnering with Lockheed's advanced development facility in Burbank, California, which is known as the Skunk Works.

Featured in the last TopGov movie amongst other places, where they're developing advanced fighter jets and things like that.

I think Tom Cruise flies one, doesn't he?

At the start of the...

That's right.

He flies one.

Is it going Mach 10?

Yeah, something crazy.

It was based off of a...

a plane that was allegedly in development at Skunk Works at some point.

So this Skunk Works real thing, August 1955, it's testing a a high-altitude experimental aircraft, which will become known as the U-2, not the band, the aircraft, which could fly at 60,000 feet.

And so in the mid-50s, most commercial airliners are flying between 10 and 20,000 feet.

So much higher.

Idea is super secret, high-altitude plane, fly over the Soviet Union, take reconnaissance photos so high it's not going to get spotted by the soviets and air defenses and Soviet fighters can't get up high enough to reach it.

So it's in a way it's the successor to some some of those spy balloon programs that we were talking about in previous episodes.

So the U-2 is going to be able to do that thing, but in the form of a manned flight.

And at this point in the mid-50s, the CIA is running U-2 test flights around the country.

Yeah, I mean, I guess you're testing it over our airspace, right?

Yeah, exactly.

And so, of course, commercial pilots and air traffic controllers are now reporting a large increase in UFO sightings.

And so these early U-2s are silver.

They're later painted black, and they reflect rays from the sun.

Feels also like a small logistical mistake there to have painted them silver.

I would imagine that makes it look like a fireball going through the sky.

Exactly, yeah.

Exactly.

It looks like a fiery object to anyone seeing it, which, you know, is kind of suspicious.

So the Air Force are running this Blue Book program that I talked about, which is to kind of collate all the sightings.

And they have a kind of secret channel to the CIA because they're basically able to say internally, well, we can attribute about half of all the UFO reports from the late 50s through the 60s to kind of U-2 and other reconnaissance flights.

So they know it on the inside that that's what a lot of these sightings are.

But of course, this is a secret program.

So the public can't be told that this is actually what's going on.

And, you know, there's later the SR-71 Blackbird, which is also going to be trial.

So this kind of secret program, again, by the CIA is going to fuel the idea that they're UFOs and the secrecy around it is going to stop it being possible to dismiss it.

And, you know, instead, they'll try and kind of explain away the U-2 sightings by linking them to natural phenomena like ice crystals and something called temperature inversions.

So there's some genuine reasons.

There's also some other crazy projects.

There's a Canada-British US thing called Project Y,

which is a vertical takeoff and landing thing.

And it is literally a flying saucer.

So there were proper kind of programs which were being run covertly by lots of these governments which explain it but that's not the only way the cia unfortunately fuels the conspiracy david what was the cia supposed to do there you can't let word of the youtube get out i mean you probably don't even want that spread deep into the air force itself right i mean that has got to be one of the most classified platforms the agency is developing in the in the mid-50s.

So you shouldn't have had it painted silver, I guess.

But you have to test it in the U.S., right, over U.S.

airspace.

So you're kind of

in a tough spot.

You can't tell people what it really is.

But there are other cover-ups as well.

So the CIA is doing this thing where it's investigating it.

This is a great story, which is reports emerged that these two elderly sisters in Chicago have got a tape recording of a UFO.

And the CIA goes, we should look at it.

So a CIA officer goes to see them, but he goes undercover.

So he doesn't want to reveal a CIA because the the CIA are trying to not reveal that they're investigating UFOs because they don't want to spread the conspiracy.

Right.

You want to keep everything calm.

Yeah, you want to keep everything calm.

So instead, the CIA officer goes to see these two sisters, pretends he's from the Air Force.

And this is a great account in a CIA declassified document.

In trying to secure the tape recording, the agency officers reported that they'd stumbled upon a scene from Arsenic and Old Lace, that the only thing lacking was the elderberry wine, one of them cabled headquarters.

After reviewing the sisters' sisters' scrapbook of clippings from their days on stage, so clearly they used to be actresses or stage performers, the officers secured a copy of the recording.

OSI, which I guess the Office of Scientific Intelligence, analyzed the tape and found it was nothing more than Morse code from a US radio station.

But the tragedy about this is, so that looks like just CIA undercover officer goes.

Fair enough.

But the problem is that the sisters were really excited that the US government had taken an interest.

It validates their suspicion that it's UFOs.

So they're telling people in the UFO community, and a UFO expert kind of hears about it.

And so then he goes to the Air Force and says, well, tell me about this officer who came and tried to find the tape.

And the Air Force, of course, are like, we can't say anything because it's the CIA, really.

So they're kind of like, they try and kind of stay silent.

So then the UFO expert goes around saying, well, there must be a secret CIA program because he's worked out it's not really the Air Force.

So he writes to Alan Dulles, the head of the CIA,

about this.

And the CIA officer then has to go undercover again in Air Force uniform to meet the man in New York to try and put him off by telling him the tape was destroyed.

Now, that doesn't...

That doesn't strike me as the best way of putting him off by A, lying again and B, telling him the tape's being destroyed, which obviously just makes him more, even more obsessed with the idea that there's a kind of government cover-up and the CIA have a secret program to look for UFOs.

So, you know, you absolutely fueled it in that one moment.

Each step in this progression, though, in this particular story, makes sense, doesn't it?

Because if you have these two sisters who have this tape,

I guess if you're the agency and you're running U-2 flights and all this kind of, you're thinking,

well, they might actually have something that if it fell into Soviet hands, could be quite damaging.

Like they could have something that sort of reveals state secrets about the U-2 or some other program.

And so you send somebody and then they end up with this useless tape.

And then all of a sudden you have this UFO community who thinks oh, the U.S.

government.

It's one of these things where by the end, it's farcical and it makes no sense and it's absurd.

But each individual step, I think, makes a lot of logical sense.

And also I'm just kind of pro cover-up, you know, so there's that too.

But this is the irony is that by the 60s, so this is all happening in the 50s.

And they're doing all these investigations.

And they're also kind of trying to get hold of photos that people might have been taking.

But again, they're trying not to admit that it's the CIA who are looking for them.

By the time it gets to the end of the 50s, they basically lost interest in this at the CIA.

And they kind of decided, you know, we don't think there's anything there.

But at this point,

the public is starting to realize that the CIA has been looking.

And so the more these little bits of information leak, like the sisters and the photograph, and the fact people don't reply to requests for freedom of information and things like that.

The more people become convinced there's a cover-up and people are saying, well, what is the truth?

The CIA is hiding this.

And of course, we're now getting into the kind of era of JFK assassinations, of conspiracy theories, of the notion of cover-ups.

So the fact that there was a secret CIA program and that it's not been revealed is now seen as part of the cover-up for the fact that there must be UFOs.

And the kind of pressure is going to kind of grow on that to reveal the truth.

And so the idea is the CIA must be part of the great cover-up.

Which it kind of was.

Kind of was.

It was just covering up really top secret spipe planes.

And just general investigations.

But my favorite theory is that President Kennedy was assassinated because he planned to level

with Premier Khrushchev of the Soviet Union about UFOs.

So the idea is he was about to kind of reveal the truth about UFOs to Khrushchev.

So he has to be killed.

And that also Kennedy had confided about the aliens with Marilyn Monroe, obviously in one of their trysts.

And so she also had to be killed.

It's starting to feed into the kind of the grand conspiracy, isn't it, that you have, that there's something there.

And, you know, the pressure is growing on the state to kind of answer and to say, what do you know?

And so the papers are starting to get into it.

There's a big New York Times article, I think end of the 70s, suggesting the CIA had done some investigation.

So Stansville Turner, friend of the pod, who's then head of the CIA, actually has to turn to his own offices and go, are we in UFOs?

You know, he's like,

the CIA director is like kind of having to check with his team, like, hang on a sec, is there something here?

And the answer is no.

And I guess there's a persistent Cold War concern that the Soviets would have common cause.

We were talking about earlier, with kind of UFO interest groups in the states, right?

In revealing state secrets or in just sort of

questioning.

I guess there is something to that, right?

The idea that the CIA can't be trusted, that your sort of security institutions can't be trusted, they're covering something up.

That's a helpful cultural meme to have out there if you're the Soviets, right?

So that's, it's got to be a persistent kind of fear of the agency throughout the Cold War.

Yeah.

So by the time you get to the 80s, I think there's, again, you know, there's very little interest, but there is this counterintelligence concern that maybe also the Soviet Union and the KGB were using American citizens and UFO groups to try and obtain information on sensitive U.S.

weapons development programs, things like the stealth bomber and the stealth aircraft, or the vulnerability of the US air defense system.

The only real concern seems to be: well, are some of these people being used by the KGB, in other words, to go out and look for stuff for them, which is really US top secret programs.

And the kind of UFO thing is just a cover for that.

And that seems to be one of the only concerns that they've got in the 80s is that maybe the Soviets are kind of able to use this in some way, or maybe there's a way in which they can kind of try and penetrate U.S.

air defenses by mimicking being UFOs or something like that.

So there's a little bit of interest, but really by the time you get to the 80s, there's not much going on, I think, in the CIA.

But the problem is the idea is embedded in popular culture by now.

Well, Independence Day.

Great film.

Great film.

And I will say, I was frustrated, Gordon, at how few of the opening quotes for this series are lines from Independence Day.

I mean, there's so many good ones.

There's the great inspirational speech by Bill Pullman, who plays the president of the United States, that you did not use.

I mean, it is to that point, like the premise there, right, is that aliens have been discovered by the U.S.

government, kept, that, you know,

bodies have been kept at Area 51, right?

I mean, it's exactly out of kind of the Roswell lore.

And you got Mulder and Scully in the X-Files in the 90s as well.

So, but now we have been dismissing this a a lot.

Too much, I would say.

Too much, I know.

And I think even when you look at these reports, they're pretty clear that 95% of the sightings are something kind of boring, clouds, balloons, secret military programs.

A lot of birds.

A lot of birds, pigeons.

But there were five, you know, maybe 5% or so, which they just couldn't resolve.

And I think that's where it gets interesting because, in terms of government studies,

publicly at least, it's quiet and it's going to be quiet for a while.

But

in recent years, we've had a resurgence of interest in this and of taking it much more seriously, haven't we?

That's right.

And maybe there, Gordon,

we'll leave it.

And when we come back next time, we will undoubtedly reveal the truth behind those small percentage of UFO sightings or UAP sightings that the U.S.

government has not yet been able to solve.

We're also going to talk about whistleblowers, alien extraterrestrial whistleblowers, Gordon, and what the Chinese are up to in the skies.

But if you don't want to wait, nothing good ever came by waiting, you can join the Declassified Club and get access to that right now, plus a whole bunch of other goodies.

Go to therestisclassified.com and sign up for that club or not.

And if you don't, then you can, you know, listen to it later.

Yeah, and get visited by aliens, Naban.

A bit like that.

That may be the consequence.

That's right.

And you'll miss out on all the fun so with that we'll see you next time see you next time

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