UFOs - Leslie Kean [77]
In 1995, when Lieutenant Salas attempted to access government files about the incident, the Air Force sent him its reissue of its 1969 public statement—today’s “fact sheet”—that no UFO has ever given any indication of threat to our national security, with a letter stating that this statement still held true. Given his experience, and subsequent confirmation by other witnesses about the 1967 Malmstrom incident, Salas clearly disagrees with this national security assessment. “It is simply incorrect,” he says. “If you consider the fact that this UFO incident resulted in the loss of twenty missiles during the Cold War and the Vietnam War, this was a national security threat. The Air Force is not telling us the truth.” Salas is not the only former Air Force officer to take this position. Others—missile personnel, security police, radar operators, and pilots—have come forward with similar reports.9
We can conclude that the Air Force statement justifying the close of Project Blue Book was based on falsehoods about issues of great importance to the American people at the time. The denial of the real picture on UFOs was in itself dangerous. And it doesn’t make sense. Could the U.S. military really have decided to turn its back on UFOs in 1969, when sightings impacting air bases were occurring? It seems inconceivable. This would have been highly irresponsible, a breach of duty. More likely, our government misinformed the public in order to take UFOs out of public view. The escalating public demands for answers to something that the Air Force could not explain in the late ’60s were burdensome, and the CIA’s strategy of “training and debunking” had not been quite enough to take care of the problem. Perhaps the authorities in charge wanted to quell fears about any possible hazards associated with UFOs, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. But it seemed highly unlikely that all official UFO investigations were simply dropped.
Now we no longer have to speculate about that question, thanks to an explosive government document, once classified, that was later released through the Freedom of Information Act. Issued secretly two months before the 1969 Air Force announcement that all government UFO investigations would be terminated, it shows that, in fact, UFOs were considered to be a national security issue and would continue to be treated as such. The October 1969 “Bolender memo,” as the document has come to be known, illustrates the duplicity of the government’s public stance on UFOs.
The purpose of the memo, as sent by Air Force Brigadier General Carroll H. Bolender, a former World War II night fighter pilot who later became NASA’s Apollo mission manager, was to officially terminate Project Blue Book. In doing so, Bolender made the point that regulations were already in place through which “reports of unidentified flying objects which could affect national security” are made, those reports that are “not part of the Blue Book system.” This suggests that even before the close of Blue Book, the more sensitive reports were already being channeled elsewhere. It goes on to say that “the defense function could be performed within the framework established for intelligence and surveillance operations without the continuance of a special unit such as Project Blue Book.” And further:
Termination of Project Blue Book would leave no official federal office to receive reports of UFOs. However, as already stated, reports of UFOs which could affect national security would continue to be handled through the standard Air Force procedures designed for this purpose. Presumably, local police departments respond to reports which fall within their responsibilities.10
In other words, the military really didn’t need Blue Book—simply a public relations operation anyway—to continue dealing with UFOs. Instead it would, without public scrutiny, keep the necessary case investigations going, telling the people that there had never been an indication of a national security threat from any UFO. Three important points