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One of the things I heard time and again when my Body Snatchers in the Desert book was published in the summer of 2005, was that not only was there no evidence to support the notion that diabolical human-experimentation was the cause of the Roswell controversy; but, in addition, there was no way that government and military agencies, offices and departments would ever even consider engaging in – or sanction – such terrible actions.

Really?

I have to say that the faith and trust (or, as I prefer to call it, the outright, naive gullibility) that people have in government never ceases to amaze me.

Consider the following. For what is perhaps the most shocking example of the way in which human beings were indeed utilized for radiation-related experiments at the height of the Cold War, we have to turn our attention to something called Project Sunshine.

Although not directly allied with the events as described in my book, the history and activities of Project Sunshine collectively serve as perfect examples (and perhaps far more importantly as officially documented examples) of the way in which human beings and bodies were utilized in Cold War radiation and biological experimentation in a fashion very similar to the Top Secret Roswell-related events as outlined in Body Snatchers in the Desert.

In the 1990s, the Government’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments looked into a whole range of Department of Energy-related scandals involving the use of human beings in radiation tests from the 1940s to the 1970s.

One particular memorandum, dated June 9, 1995, and prepared by ACHRE’s Advisory Committee Staff, is titled Documentary Update on Project Sunshine Body Snatching and states:

“As part of Project Sunshine, which sought to measure strontium-90, the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission] engaged in an effort to collect baby bones from domestic and foreign sources. As discussed in the prior memorandum, the project involved the use of a cover story (those without clearance being told that the skeleton collection would be used to study naturally occurring radiation, and not that from fallout). Key participants in Project Sunshine at its onset included the AEC’s Division of Biology and Medicine (DBM), its Director John Bugher, Columbia University’s Dr. J. Laurence Kulp, and the University of Chicago’s Dr. Willard Libby (who became an AEC Commissioner).”

The memorandum then refers to Dr. Willard Libby and his work in more detail. A 1955 transcript classified as “Secret” (located in the classified materials at the National Archives and recently declassified at the Committee’s request), sheds more light on the role of tissue sampling in Project Sunshine.

The transcript shows that considerable thought had been devoted to best ways to establish channels to procure “human samples,” and the impact of secrecy on the effort. AEC Commissioner Willard Libby, who was a primary proponent of Project Sunshine, explained the great value of “body snatching,” and noted that the AEC had even employed an “expensive law firm” to “look up the law of body snatching.”

The meeting was then turned over to Dr. Libby, who was by now an AEC Commissioner. Dr. Libby began by stating that there was no effort more important to the AEC than Sunshine. However, he said that “…there are great gaps in the data.” He elaborated: “By far the most important [gap] is human samples. We have been reduced to essentially zero level on the human samples. I don’t know how to get them but I do say that it is a matter of prime importance to get them and particularly in the young age group.”

The supply of stillborns had evidently been shut off: “We were fortunate, as you know to obtain a large number of stillborns as material. This supply, however, has now been cut off also, and shows no signs, I think, of being rejuvenated.”

Therefore, Libby told the audience, expertise in body snatching would be highly valued: “So human samples are of prime importance and if anybody knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country.”

Some people reading this, no doubt, will scarcely believe that these latter words were said in all seriousness, and soberly recorded, within official files of the US military.

As noted, Libby recalled that when Project Sunshine was created in 1953, a law firm was hired to study this problem. He added: “I don’t know how to snatch bodies. In the original study on the Sunshine at Rand in the summer of 1953, we hired an expensive law firm to look up the law of body snatching. This compendium is available to you. It is not very encouraging. It shows you how very difficult it is going to be to do legally.”

The conference attendees discussed the need for a wide enough variety of samples to cover age ranges and potential variations among body parts. A Dr. Kulp, from Columbia, explained that there were certain “channels” available:

“We have the channels in these places where we are getting everything. We have three or four other leads where we could get complete age range samples from different other geographic localities. These three are Vancouver, Houston, and New York. We could easily get them from Puerto Rico and other places. We can get virtually everyone that dies in this range.”

There was also discussion of the need to acquire what were insultingly termed “resources” from other countries. For example, a Colonel Maxwell, of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, suggested the military could provide some help in securing “specimens” from a native hospital in Formosa. In case you’re wondering, in the files the term “specimens” refers to people…

This passage is particularly revealing for one reason: when I was doing the research for my Body Snatchers in the Desert book, I was told by several sources that personnel from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project were deeply involved in the recovery of alleged handicapped Japanese bodies from a 1947 incident at White Sands, New Mexico.

It is, therefore, notable that in 1955, when the Project Sunshine discussions were well underway, one Colonel Maxwell, also of the Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, stated firmly that he knew how to acquire certain “specimens” from “a native hospital in Formosa…”

Interestingly, when the this testimony became public knowledge, new sources surfaced with their own dark and disturbing tales – all of which centered upon radiation experiments involving the bodies of children and physically handicapped and deformed individuals.

For example, on June 6, 2001, Reuters, in a news release titled “Babies and Stillborns Used in Nuclear Experiments,” revealed that:

“British newspapers reported that some 6,000 stillborn babies and dead infants were sent from hospitals in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South America, the UK and the US between the 1950s and 1970s without the permission of parents for use in nuclear experiments. According to the reports, the US Department of Energy used the bodies and some body parts for tests to monitor radioactivity levels of the element Strontium 90 in humans…The Observer, a British newspaper, also stated that British scientists also conducted tests on babies sent from Hong Kong and the research did not end until the 1970s. A government spokesman for Hong Kong announced that his country will investigate further into the reports.”

Then on June 12, 2001, Western Australia Newspapers Ltd., (WAN) revealed that: “…people with severe disabilities were used as human guinea pigs during British nuclear tests at the Maralinga Test Site in Australia in the 1950s.”

According to the allegations, a control group was flown to the British test site as part of an experiment to determine the effects of radiation on humans. The group, stated the WAN, died after being exposed to the radioactive fallout. While such claims were dismissed as unsubstantiated in a final report of a royal commission into British nuclear tests in Australia in December 1985, no less a source than Dr. Robert Jackson, Director of the Center for Disability Research and Development at Edith Cowan University in Australia, expressed concern that the Royal Commission did not hear testimonials from pilots.

Dr. Jackson first discovered details of these gruesome events in the 1980s when he was the Regional Director for the Western Australia Disability Commission. Of key relevance to the subject matter of this book, is an approach made to Dr. Jackson by a man who claimed to be a pilot and who had flown a “planeload” of disabled people from the UK to the Maralinga Test Site. The pilot told Dr. Jackson, “We didn’t fly them out again.”

Needless to say, I don’t find this last statement at all surprising – unfortunately.

A book review by Nick Redfern:

Love in an Alien Purgatory

Copyright 2009 InterAmerica, Inc.

After 45 years the truth is now revealed- one of the most famous UFO sightings in history was a hoax. The recent confession of an elderly College President -and a newly discovered document- indicate that the 1964 sighting of a landed UFO by Socorro, NM policeman Lonnie Zamora was the result of an elaborate school prank. This incredible story is publicly recounted for the first time ever by individuals who have held the secret of Socorro for decades.

THE SOCORRO UFO STORY

OFFICER LONNIE ZAMORA

Socorro Policeman Lonnie Zamora was performing his town patrol duties on Friday, April 24, 1964. But this would be unlike any other patrol Sgt. Zamora had ever experienced. At about 5:50 PM Sgt. Zamora started pursuit of a speeding car. But the chase was broken off when Zamora heard a loud explosion. He thought perhaps it came from a dynamite shack nearby. He then observed a cone of flame traveling over a hill. Once over the hill, Zamora stopped his car about 100 feet away from what he reported as a strange landed, 20 foot “aluminum-white” oval object resting on structured “legs.” The ovoid had a red insignia about two feet wide on its surface. Though the artistic rendition of the UFO above depicts an opening- Zamora had reported the object as smooth, without any windows or doors. Zamora also noticed what appeared to be two figures “the size of small adults or large kids” and “normal in shape” wearing “white coveralls” walking around the object.

As Zamora started to approach the object on foot, the figures jumped away from his view. As Zamora left his car, he bumped it and his glasses fell off. He reports that a flame from the underside of the craft then appeared and the object roared away. Zamora heard a high-pitched whine and then silence. The object traveled very fast over him, and then just three feet above a nearby shack- and finally out of view over another hill. Left at the site were four “landing impressions” as well as areas of burnt creosote bush near where the object has rested.

Zamora, shocked, then radioed to another officer what he had just observed. When the officer asked Zamora “What does it look like?” Zamora responded, “It looks like a balloon.” Zamora would later state that he did not know exactly what it was -it could have been a secret military experiment or even ET. Zamora has remained reluctant to offer his opinion on the specific nature or origin of the craft. He says it was strange and frightening. But he leaves the analysis to others- and only indicates that he was sincere in reporting what he had observed. And Zamora was sincere. And he was extremely cooperative with investigators. But he was also hoodwinked.

The period following the sighting in 1964 found Socorro a town turned upside-down. It was also an active one for Lonnie Zamora. He was visited by many journalists and UFO researchers. This included officials from the US Air Force Project Blue Book, investigators from the civilian UFO study group NICAP and noted skeptics. The story received national and international media attention. To this very day Socorro remains one of the most well-known UFO incidents in history. Still living, long retired and exhausted of the matter, Zamora now avoids any talk about the event.

THE INCRIMINATING DOCUMENT

A former New Mexico Tech President affirmed in the 1960s in a letter to renowned scientist Dr. Linus Pauling that the Socorro UFO was a hoax.

A letter from Dr. Linus Pauling located within the Special Collections of Oregon State University (where the Pauling papers are archived) provides insight into the true nature of the Socorro sighting. In a 1968 letter to Dr. Stirling Colgate -the President of New Mexico Tech- Pauling inquires about the Socorro sighting. Colgate replied to Pauling by sending back Pauling’s letter with a handwritten notation at the bottom. Dr. Colgate writes: “I have a good indication of the student who engineered the hoax. Student has left. Cheers, Stirling.”

This telling letter can be viewed here:

Letter

Dr. Pauling (a multiple Nobel-Prize winner) was very interested in the UFO phenomena. An earlier article by this author details Pauling’s secret UFO studies. He was researching the Socorro-Zamora landing case and decided to write to his friend, Stirling Colgate, President at New Mexico Tech to see what he might have known about the incident. Dr. Colgate’s blunt reply leaves little doubt that tricksters were involved. But to allay any further doubt, I contacted Colgate.

THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT’S CONFESSION

DR. STIRLING COLGATE

As well as having been NM Tech’s President, Dr. Stirling Colgate was a world-famous astrophysicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Considered a science visionary, he specialized in plasma and atmospheric physics. His discoveries in these fields are acknowledged as monumental. His associates included such luminaries as Oppenheimer and Pauling. Colgate still maintains an office at Los Alamos at age 84! This author emailed Colgate to see what his thoughts are today on the Socorro UFO and to see if he would shed additional light on the event. In my email to Colgate I attached the Pauling letter from 1968 with Colgate’s handwritten notes on the Socorro UFO.

Colgate took several days to reply to me. In his email, Colgate answered very cryptically and sparingly:

- To the question, “Do you still know this to be a hoax? His reply was simple: “Yes.”
- When asked, “Today, decades later, can you expand on what you wrote to Pauling about the event?” He wrote: “I will ask a friend, but he and other students did not want their cover blown.”
- He offered that the hoax, “was a no-brainer.”
- When asked “Specifically how did they do it?” He just answered, “Will ask.”
- When queried, “Have you ever publicly commented on this?” he replied “Of course not.”

It has been some time now, and I have never heard back from Stirling Colgate. He indicated that he would “make some inquiries” to see what more could be detailed on the event. Perhaps his “friend and the other students” who he alludes to are still not ready to come forward and be identified. As Colgate puts it, maybe they still do not “want their cover blown.”

Or perhaps Colgate was stunned that the Pauling letter was ever discovered- and knows that he has already said too much. Colgate is likely conflicted about having known about the hoaxers -and the truth about the Socorro UFO- for decades. He said nothing publicly then- and prefers to not say a whole lot more now.

THE COLLEGE PROFESSOR’S CORROBORATION

NEW MEXICO TECH

Dr. Frank T. Etscorn was a Psychology Professor at New Mexico Tech from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s. Dr. Etscorn is famously known for being the inventor of the Nicotine Patch. A wing of the College was dedicated to Etscorn in 1993. Etscorn had known about the Socorro UFO event from the decade before he began work at the College- and it had always intrigued him. This author had learned of his interest and contacted Dr Etscorn to see if he had ever found out anything about the sighting and what had really happened. In a recent telephone conversation, Dr. Etscorn related:

“As a project, a former student of mine had examined the case in the mid 1980s. Using yearbooks and networking, she began calling alumni who were at Tech in 1964. She somehow located one of the former students believed to have been involved. He would not expand on the hoax or have his name used- but she found out it was a hoax. My memory of her investigation is spotty- it was 25 years ago. But I remember that she found also found out through records that coincidentally a rear projection device was stolen from the campus the day of the UFO sighting.”

Etcorn was a noted psychologist. He said that the psychology of these Techies was such that they liked to fool those who they thought were foolish.

We discussed how the pranksters may have incorporated 1) a large helium balloon resting on the desert floor to appear “landed” and then released up into the air on cue. Perhaps it was a reflective white colored balloon or a balloon fitted over with glossy-white craft paper- with added “landing struts” and a red insignia drawn on its side 2) “roaring” or “whining” explosives, pyrotechnics, model rockets, thrown flares or a flame device 3) smaller students dressed in white lab coats acting as the “aliens” and 4) the digging out of “landing depressions” and burning of nearby bushes. Soil or rock in the area may have been “salted” with silicon or trinitite from the school’s Geology Lab. And perhaps it was intentional that Zamora was led to the landed craft by a speeding car. One of the students may have purposely engaged Lonnie in a car chase to lure him to where the hoax was staged. Zamora reports that he “broke the chase” to investigate the UFO- just as the students knew that he would.

Though these ideas about how the hoax may have been accomplished are strictly speculative, Dr. Etscorn reminded me of an important fact: Nothing that was reported was beyond the abilities of “smart Techies” to create.

WHAT A TECHIE LEARNED

Dave Collis was a freshman at New Mexico Tech in 1965, a year after the Socorro UFO incident. Collis went on to become a published scientist helping to lead the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at NM Tech. He is considered a world expert in researching blast effects and explosives.

Collis explained that he himself enjoyed planning pranks when he was a student at Tech. In 1965, he and his friends had planned a “paranormal” prank and shared the plan with one of his trusted Professors. The Professor (who had been with Tech for years) told him that NM Tech had a long history of pranking- and that one of them was especially noteworthy. Collis then said that the Professor (whose name he does not remember or does not wish to offer) had “confidentially told me that the UFO sighting by the town cop was a hoax done by Techie students.” Collis did not want to press the Professor on who did it -or how. Collis says, “he was telling me this in confidence, so I didn’t ask for the details and he didn’t offer.” When asked if the Professor could have been making up the hoax story, Collis replied that in the context of his conversation with him- there was no reason for him to lie. The Professor had told him the truth about the hoax, of that he was sure. Collis, when told about Stirling Colgate’s confirmation that it was a hoax said, “Colgate is a brilliant man and he was a great College President. From what I was told by my Professor, it was a hoax. And if Colgate also says it was a hoax, it was.” Collis (who is a pyrotechnics expert and often directed NM Tech’s July 4 Fireworks) said that it always has surprised him that people didn’t seem to realize just how “terrestrial” the reported Zamora UFO seemed to be in the first place.

THE REASON FOR THE HOAX

Collis also explained that Lonnie Zamora had a reputation for “hounding” the Techie students during that time. The students and the Socorro police did not have a particularly good relationship back then. He said that there was “a lot of friction” at the time between what were felt to be “elitist and educated Techies” versus the “under-educated and simpler town folk.” Zamora was always harassing the students for seemingly no reason, and at every opportunity. Many of the college kids just did not like him. What better way to “get back” at Zamora than for them to fool a fool?

Little known is that Zamora himself had worked at New Mexico Tech as a mechanic for seven years before becoming a patrolman. He had developed an insiders view of these college kids’ world- a world that was very different than his own. When he left to join the town police, he was then in a position to exert his “influence” on these same kids. Collis further explains that Zamora was known as being “not especially educated.” Supporting this are the observations of USAF investigator Dr. J. Allen Hynek. He wrote in his report of his interview of Zamora, “I would conclude that Zamora, although not overly bright or articulate, is basically sincere.”

PRANKS AND GEEKS

As readers of my articles well realize, I am convinced that ET has visited Earth. But I am also a critical thinker. I recognize the role that pranks and hoaxes have played when it comes to things UFO. I am not happy to report the results of my investigation- but it is a story that must be told. It is an obligation to history and truth. The compulsion to prank is a reality we must always bear in mind in evaluating all UFO reports.

Neil Steinburg’s classic study on college pranks, “If At All Possible Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks” is very instructive relative to the Socorro hoax. Steinburg’s hypothesis is that college pranks happen because there are many young creative minds that feel “stifled.” And these minds are looking for release- a little fun. And there is a “geek” connection. Complicated and sophisticated pranks are often pulled off by engineering or science students who have the technical know how. The many well-known stunts by students at MIT and Caltech show that the grander the stunt- the more highly educated the students. The “fun” of such pranks does not come from admission to them, it comes from the reaction to them.

I recall two pranks that were pulled off by others during my own college days when living in Boston. MIT students had perfected two stunts that were mind-boggling. The first involved taking an enormous promotional prop “cow statue” (weighing a quarter-ton) from the lawn of a suburban steakhouse. Somehow the students were able to hoist the huge cow figure on top of the famous MIT “dome buiding.” They removed it the following day -and returned it to the steakhouse lawn- without anyone ever having seen them. To this day, no one has ever owned up to the prank- and no one has ever come forward stating that they saw the stunt being carried out. It is still unknown how this was accomplished without use of a heavy construction crane. The second prank involved a high-tech catapult. Somehow the MIT students were able to hurl large clear water balloons made of very thin material up and over two city streets. The water balloons were sent careening across the block with precision to land exactly at the entrance of another college’s building. When people went to open the door, invisible “water bombs” hit them out of nowhere- causing them to get soaked. Visibly stunned, they had no idea where the water burst came from- and had to go to class soaking wet.

THE SOCORRO HOAXERS TODAY

Great jokes can be carried out with great planning and calculation. But great jokes can also backfire. Perhaps the Socorro UFO hoaxers continue to get a “big laugh” over the whole thing and revel in their prank done decades ago. But it is more likely that the New Mexico Tech pranksters -who perhaps became famous scientists- are today oldsters in retirement struggling with what they did. They played a trick on a community, a nation and the world. They are keenly aware that they had involved the Air Force, media, scientists and many others. They know that Zamora’s life was made difficult by the event. He was made a spectacle and suffered hugely from the unwanted attention. They must ponder their youthful folly- and how much time, effort and money was expended in the prank’s long aftermath. It was “a prank gone wild.” It had escalated beyond what they could ever have imagined. Often pulling off a brilliant prank “traps” the pranksters. They create the illusion, but they never receive the “credit.” And no credit was ever sought by those who engineered one of the greatest hoaxes in UFO history.

Visit the Redfern site for more about the September release:

Science Fiction Secrets

Zecharia Sitchin’s latest book, “The Earth Chronicles Handbook” (Inner Traditions / Bear & Company 2009) is available

As you know, Sitchin has published numerous books that collectively make up the Earth Chronicles series – a historical and archaeological adventure into the origins of mankind and planet Earth. This latest release serves as an encyclopedic companion to provide a navigational tool for the entire series. Entries are coded to indicate, at a glance, their cultural origin and contain summations and commentaries that reflect Sitchin’s unique insights into the past.

I thought this new release would be of interest to some of our readers.

If you’d like more information, you can contact: http://www.sitchin.com/

If a flying saucer actually crashed near Roswell in 1947, leaving alien bodies among the debris, wouldn’t attendant visitors (‘colleagues” as it were) of the aliens who piloted the crashed saucer try to recover their compatriots or some of the debris that allegedly lay in the New Mexico desert for days before Mac Brazel (and the Army) took possession of it?

We know, from Kenneth Arnold’s “authentic” sighting, that UFOs or flying saucers often traveled in formation/groups, and since his sighting took place in the same time-frame as the Roswell incident, the extraterrestrial visitors were, possibly, aware (or should have been) of the Roswell crash.

Are the supposed advanced alien travelers so unemotional or callous (other possibilities we admit) that they’d leave their disabled and dying fellow-travelers to the desert or human society, without trying to retrieve them?

One can’t presume to know the operational parameters of an extraterrestrial race, but since many of the so-called Roswell witnesses, especially those who said they saw bodies among the debris and crashed saucer, ascribed sentience of a human kind to the beings captured or taken by the military, one can suggest that the Roswell beings were not so alien as to eliminate survival tactics from their other-world arsenal.

If the Roswell “saucer” was not that far removed, in design and operational format, from human aircraft, and the described beings not so alien in physiognomy from human beings, one can assume that the visitors would very likely act in a similar way to human beings when a disaster occurred; that is, members of the “race’ visiting the Earth, didn’t come alone, in one flying saucer, but were accompanied by others, in a bevy of saucers, as Arnold saw, and others reported at the same time as the Roswell crash, and would have acted much as we humans would have acted: the crashed craft and its occupants would have been sought out and helped (or retrieved), or an attempt to do so would have taken place.

(No other UFOs were seen in or near Roswell during the July period that encompasses the infamous episode.)

And if that alien race did come to Earth, from outer space, another dimension, or even as time-travelers, they wouldn’t, if even moderately sensible, ignore members of their race who were in distress.

If the loss of a concomitant craft and its beings were dispensable, for whatever reasons one can conjure, then an alien retrieval of the Roswell saucer may be acceptable to rationality, but that opens a whole new aspect to the extraterrestrial modus.

Or the Roswell incident is bogus, as an extraterrestrial visitation and accident, which is what many in the UFO community are coming to believe.

A media site, Newsy.com, we like has a nice report on Britain’s release of some MoD UFO files.

You can see the Newsy report by clicking here:

Newsy UFO story

(We thank Daniel at Newsy.com for the heads-up and link.)

Robert Stanley’s UFO web-site — unicusmagazine.com — contains photos and videos of UFOs over the White House, the Pentagon, and Washington D.C. generally.

Mr. Stanley has provided, for those interested in the famous 1952 Washington D.C. UFO event(s), some provocative images.

Click on BOOKS for the images and a book offer about the 1952 (and other) episodes.