Harald Malmgren had secrets

Those secrets–later revealed–were following a rapid and broadly developing brilliance from his youth, and then an accomplished career. This career put Harald Malmgren in a unique position amongst UAP/NHI whistleblowers: Senior Executive Service Presidential advisory insider. Coming forward prior to the initiation of the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE),1 Malmgren, as he often did in life, offered prescient insight into how the historical reality of UAP/NHI, and its coverup, would begin to confront the larger systems of governance, economies, and public common knowledge.

Before all that, a brief review of his early years marks the following highlights. Born on July 13, 1935, he had high executive function in his formative years fishing and harvesting seafood for his family on his own by age 7. He sought out divergent thinking. Between ages 10 to 13 he wrote the Atomic Energy Commission for information on nuclear energy. Early on he could engage with expert evaluation. By age 13, while contracting with his father on home restorations, he met and impressed president of MIT, Karl Compton.2

For his collegiate years, as an undergrad he first studied Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute3 and then attended Yale on a full scholarship. There he became a member of the Scholars of the House4, culminating in his graduate paper “Investment, Allocation, Technology, and Economic Development.”5 He graduated in 1957 at age 226 and was “awarded Yale's Howland Fellowship for study and travel abroad.”7 Again, hitting high marks and passing expert evaluation, he was Research Assistant to Nobel Laureate Professor Thomas Schelling while at Yale.8 He went on to further education at Oxford and Harvard, earning his Oxford PhD in the 1961-62 school year at age 26.9 His published thesis, “Information, expectations, and the nature of the firm”10 was seen as, “original and constituted a first attempt in paving the way to a new kind of industrial organisation.”11

Having published works and excelled at Oxford, Malmgren continued to be sought out academically. He was soon secured as a Professor at Cornell University–welcome letter,12 dated October 24,1961–and began as the inaugural recipient of the Justine M. Evans Memorial Fund.13 This fund was set up following the 1956 death of Gordon Maynard Evans, a 1906 B.S. Cornell graduate in Electrical Engineering. Malmgren can be seen with the label ‘Evans Professor’ in Cornell University salary records. The fund also gave him an explicit focus on both Engineering and Economics since its mandate was “to support a professorial position in the Department of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences, with primary aim to develop an appropriate third or fourth year course for engineering students, in cooperation with the Engineering College faculty, any appointments to the position to be on joint recommendation of the Deans of Engineering and of Arts and Sciences.” Malmgren’s specific role at Cornell combined Mathematical Economics with the Department of Engineering and College of Arts and Sciences. And to do so required a “joint recommendation” of Deans from both schools.14 Thus, his technical, mathematical and economic talents were fully engaged.

In another rapid progression, Malmgren would become a consultant at RAND in March 1962, and in July that same year, shift to the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), where by 1963 he was Head of the IDA Economics Group. And still, the 1962/63 CV for Malmgren is not yet finished. Since IDA served as advisers to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Malmgren joined the Administration of President John F. Kennedy as one of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s “Whiz Kids” inside the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Weapons Systems Evaluation Group, in the Pentagon.15

On the family front, also in 1962, Harald and wife Patricia welcomed their first child Karen Phillipa “Pippa” Malmgren.16

A busy few years.

Again, he did all this prior to reaching the age of 30.

But was Harald Malmgren a Walter Mitty?

This question–was Malmgren a Walter Mitty–seems like a wild non-sequiter even considering Malmgren’s accomplishments before age 30, but this was actual reasoning put forward in articles17 and an op-ed by Douglas Dean Johnson following Harald Malmgren’s death on 13 February 2025. Considering Johnson is using the ‘Walter Mitty’ tag in 2025 one also has to ignore the following 60+ years from 1963, where Malmgren’s exploits grew even further, going on to serve in Senior Executive positions for Kennedy, the next three presidents, becoming an Ambassador, and building out an international who’s who in his personal contacts. Yet this article will persist with the full analysis because ultimately the works by Johnson fall squarely into the Unquestionably Skeptical wheelhouse: dogmatic skeptics running disinformation efforts to buttress the UAP/NHI cover up.

Moving on, tagging the Top Secret cleared Malmgren as a Walter Mitty is nonsensical even by 1962. He was a highly cleared, youthful leader forming the early economic foundations that would later be used to leverage the defeat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and secure victory for the West in the Cold War. More on that later.

A different question has many more threads leading into it—did Harald Malmgren have an undisclosed resume entry—where the Central Intelligence Agency or other federal Intelligence branch was his employer? This deserves a deeper analysis as well.

To recap: Walter Mitty? No. CIA? Maybe…

Was Harald Malmgren an “Unglamorous Economist” and “Low-to-Mid-Level Analyst” or a “Senior Advisor” and “Whiz Kid”?

In Johnson’s works, he charts out a difficult position. In a tricky balancing act, he introduces Malmgren as an “unglamorous economist” and “low-to-mid-level analyst” who inflated his position but was really a “very much less consequential figure.” In the next breath though, Johnson states Malmgren was “a very significant player” in trade policy and a decades-long “successful consultant and lobbyist” dealing at the highest levels of international economic issues.

So which one is it?

Perhaps it is due to his own confusion that Johnson concludes Malmgren’s claims to be fiction. Thankfully though, Johnson provides much of the material that helps to decide the matter in the form of federal records listing roles, clearances, and work done by Malmgren. Supplementing these records with the contemporaneous diary entries of Malmgren–and other items missed by Johnson–the portrait of Malmgren becomes much more clear, even for someone who appears to have spent quite a bit of time in the shadows.

The question of whether Malmgren was a Senior Advisor Whiz Kid or an Unglamorous, Low-to-Mid Level Economic Analyst is easy to settle. Per his federal records provided by Johnson, when he was first working at IDA he was graded as a GS-15 and quickly progressed from there to GS-16, then GS-17. Historically, the ranks of GS 16-18 were absorbed into the Senior Executive Service,18 so Malmgren would carry a “Senior” tag by default.19

As for being a “Whiz Kid,” by Johnson’s own admission–”nobody was issued an official government ID that said ‘whiz kid’”–and the term was more broadly applied to the young, credentialed civilian analysts working inside the Pentagon through consultant arms such as RAND and IDA–both of which were on Malmgren’s CV. From the April 1966 essay “The Pentagon’s Whiz Kids” by Richard J. Stillman, ‘Whiz Kids’ were defined at the time as, “Most are young—in their thirties and early forties, have an Ivy League education, are highly intellectual, and eager to exercise power. Educational backgrounds of the new breed parallel that of Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara (Harvard Business graduate and later professor) who assumed top leadership of the Military Establishment in 1961—age 45.”20

Stillman wasn’t alone in chronicling this trend, quoting a recent–in 1966–article from The Journal of the Armed Forces he cites:

Of the 27 top officials of the Defense Department—old and new—11 including Secretary McNamara hold either graduate and/or undergraduate degrees from Harvard; six including Deputy Secretary of Defense Cyrus Vance, hold graduate and/or undergraduate degrees from Yale; two, Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs) Arthur Sylvester and Under Secretary of the Navy Robert Baldwin are graduates of Princeton… Twenty-two of the 27 went on to graduate school earning 12 LLB’s, 6 PhD’s and 6 MA’s. Eight earned their graduate degrees at Harvard.21

Was Malmgren, at IDA actively until October 1964, one of the described Yale undergraduates or one of six of the listed PhD’s? He very well could have been.

To list the 1960s Whiz Kid watchers explicitly, Malmgren was:

1. Young (He was 26-29 while at RAND & IDA)

2. Ivy League educated (Yale undergraduate; Harvard exchange; Oxford PhD)

3. Highly intellectual (Malmgren’s FBI interviewees–Schelling, Cross, Gates, Evans, et al–cite his high intelligence)

4. Eager to exercise power (Apparent from his progress in promotions and length of service in the Executive Branch)

5. Had an educational background similar to McNamara (McNamara as a Harvard Professor, Malmgren a Cornell Professor)

6. Worked for RAND, IDA or other federal think tank (Worked at both RAND and IDA)

7. Civilian (Malmgren did not serve in the military)

8. i.e. a Whiz Kid (✓)

Finally, to lay this to rest, from the thoroughly researched 1990 book “America’s Frontline Trade Officials,” author Charles Lewis states in his biography of Malmgren, “In 1962, he came to Washington as one of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s ‘Whiz Kids,’ working for the Institute for Defense Analysis.”22 Then in a 1997 interview with John J. Harter, held by Charles Stuart Kennedy, Harter said of his time working with Malmgren from 1966 to 1970, “Hal had been one of McNamara’s “Whiz Kids” at the Pentagon.”23 Giving the last word to McNamara himself, in between the 1960s and 1990s, McNamara still found time to have meetings with Malmgren while President of The World Bank, such as this post-lunch time appointment on 21 March 1979.24

The record definitively puts Malmgren in the Whiz Kid camp at an SES-level with an enduring connection to McNamara.

A Closer Look at Malmgren in the Early 1960s

Since much of Johnson’s deconstruction work of Malmgren rests on the time Malmgren spent in the truncated presidency of John F. Kennedy it is critical to revisit in more detail the work done and connections made by Malmgren during that period. A stark miss by Johnson, by 1 May 1962 Harald Malmgren was already employed as a consultant in the Economics Department at RAND Corporation. And this work was not that of an “unglamorous economist,” rather it required a Secret security clearance issued by the Department of the Air Force. Johnson makes no mention of Malmgren’s employment at RAND in his article, even though he had the FBI file and even highlighted the “Clearances” section.

Employed by RAND Corporation

Johnson was also well aware of the RAND Corporation and its connective tissue to Whiz Kids because he later cites Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith’s work there, “Two of the most prominent ‘whiz kids’ were Alain C. Enthoven25 and K. Wayne Smith.26 They co-authored a book titled How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961-1969. It was originally published in 1971, and republished in 2005 by the RAND Corporation.”27

Clearly Malmgren was working in Defense programs at RAND Corporation or else he would not have required a Secret clearance from the Air Force. Johnson makes no mention of this. As a general historical evaluation of these organizations, consider this Naval War College summary of RAND, IDA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Weapon Systems Evaluation Group:

The Navy transformed its Operations Research Group into an Operations Evaluation Group that became the Center for Naval Analyses. The Air Force established RAND. The Army established its Operations Research Office at Johns Hopkins University, which became the Research Analysis Corporation. The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) founded a Weapons Systems Evaluation Group that became the Institute for Defense Analyses. Initially these organizations provided mechanisms for contracting university professors; eventually, they developed permanent staffs.28

Looking more closely at the list of Malmgren co-workers in the RAND Economics Department during May 1962, there are many notable ones: Joseph E. Loftus - CIA agent;29 Andrew W. Marshall - Q-cleared30 and later longtime director of the United States Department of Defense’s Office of Net Assessment;31 Daniel Ellsberg–of Pentagon Papers fame–held extensive compartmented clearances32 and also had a Q-Cleared father;33 Thomas C. Schelling - Nobel prize winner34 with extensive clearances and classified work;35 and James R. Schlesinger - later Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Secretary of Defense, and CIA Director.36

Malmgren, soon to make the move to the IDA and join the advisory staff to the Kennedy Administration, was among peers at RAND Corporation. Its exclusive and clearance-based nature assured that.

Understanding the history of RAND Corporation with some more detail is useful as well. Here Thomas Fraise in his journal article “The Magicians of Nuclear Strategy” provides the essential overview:

In the 1950s, a new figure emerged in American strategic debates: the nuclear strategist. These civilians with impressive academic backgrounds moved freely between academia and the national security state, held security clearances, briefed and advised military officers and policymakers; and almost single-handedly produced a new field of knowledge: nuclear strategy and, more specifically, nuclear deterrence theory. This group of intellectuals emerged essentially out of the RAND Corporation, an entity of a new genre, created by the Air Force but filled with civilian researchers.37

Omitting a mention of Malmgren’s RAND employment in his article is a fairly consequential blunder by Johnson, and in the spirit of journalistic rigor, hopefully just that–an oversight. Pointedly though, when the Washington Examiner published a summary by Johnson of his longer self-published article, it did so as an opinion piece in its Op-Ed section.38 The paper does have investigative journalists, an “Investigations” department and related section,39 but Johnson’s work on Malmgren was not placed there.

More importantly though, returning to Malmgren, did his five months at RAND lead to greater security access and deeper involvement? The short answer is obviously yes, as already discussed, but those details also deserve a closer look.

Malmgren moves to the IDA

From his Secret clearance consultant role at RAND, Malmgren directly transitioned to his new Top Secret cleared position at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) with his clearance being issued by the Department of the Navy, Inspector of Naval Material on 9 July 1962 without delay.40 In parallel to his increased access, his pay and promotions likewise steadily progressed while at IDA. He maintained his relationship with Schelling–already having been connected since their Yale days together, which continued through to RAND, and then IDA. In addition he was now working with Richard Bissell, President of IDA. By December of 1963, Malmgren would be promoted to head of the Economics Group as recorded in the Administrative Appointments of The American Economic Review. More critically though, he was no longer in New York or California, but living and working in the National Capital Region where he would remain active for decades to come.

At the same time of Malmgren’s arrival at IDA, the Economic and International Studies Divisions were busily researching, writing, and publishing Study PACIFICA, a report “to assess the significance for the United States of the emergence of Communist China as a nuclear power.” One of the article authors that contributed to the collective report was Donald B. Keesing, a Q-cleared economist who delivered his Secret - RESTRICTED DATA report, “The Communist Chinese Nuclear Threat: Warheads and Delivery Vehicles (U)” on 15 September 1962, two months after Malmgren’s arrival. In other words, they were colleagues that worked together on Economics at IDA.

In the foreword to the report by Keesing, Director James E. King wrote:

The author, Donald B. Keesing, is an economist and Far Eastern specialist. Before joining the Institute for Defense Analyses he was with the Systems Analysis Office, Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories, where he co-authored a number of analytic studies on theater air powers, space research needs, command and control, and other subjects. He has also taught economics at Harvard University, where he served on the staff of the Harvard Defense Studies Program and later as an associate of the Harvard Economic Research Project.

This paper was written in support of Study PACIFICA, an analysis of the emergence of Communist China as a nuclear power.

Study PACIFICA was prepared by the International Studies Division of IDA for the Department of Defense, under Contract No. SD-50, Task Order I-23, effective 1 July 1961. Brigadier General Sidney F. Giffin, USAF (Ret.) was Study Leader.

Further alignments between Keesing and Malmgren’s background include:

• Keesing taught economics at Harvard while Malmgren taught economics at Cornell.

• Keesing was at Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories prior to joining IDA and Malmgren joined from RAND Corporation.

• Keesing was a Far Eastern specialist while Malmgren went to Europe and Turkey when studying abroad.

The only missing piece for Malmgren is a document like the one by Keesing that explicitly shows his Q-Clearance at work. Uncontroversially, Malmgren worked on anti-ballistic missile and nuclear intercept studies while at IDA—work requiring a Q-clearance—but the concrete proof that he employed a Q-clearance to do so is likely still locked up somewhere. Even the released report by Keesing has page after page of fully redacted content and references.

Thus, the idea that Johnson’s search for evidence of Malmgren’s Q-Clearance was exhaustive is not a serious one. The public does not have every record, and of the files in the public sphere, many remain redacted–especially in relation to Restricted Data governed by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954.

More evidence of a missing Q Clearances–in time, place and procedure–can be seen in the records of James Walter McCord Jr.41 In a Confidential CIA memo from 7 August 1962, the Personnel Security Division records that the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission granted McCord a “Q” clearance–number WA 116702–on 27 July 1962. Critically though, McCord was to only be advised of the clearance orally, and “in no case should he be notified in writing.” Yet another factor that could confound a Q clearance records search.

For yet another example of CIA record keeping practices that could impact Malmgren’s documented clearance history, there is the 1965 case of David Sanchez Morales. A long time employee of the CIA, when the Office of Security for the Agency for International Development (AID) made an enquiry to CIA on Morales’ background, they were informed of his employment, but explicitly asked, “that no investigation be made of employment with this Agency.”42 In other words, keep it out of the record. Similarly, in the FBI investigation into Malmgren, the CIA CHECK section only mentions Malmgren’s wife, Patricia Ann Malmgren. Harald is conspicuously absent. The CIA is also absent from the governmental agency list that the FBI notes on pages 8 and 9 of their file. With his work in the Executive branch and frequent international travel, it is highly doubtful that the CIA would not have a file on Malmgren, and much more believable that the missing FBI search is due to being asked to not investigate his background at CIA.

As an aside, but an even more pointed and older example of known hidden documents, the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP), the National Archives group in charge of declassifying–or retaining as classified by appeal–documents older than the 75 year maximum still have wholly classified documents from the 1940s. Case in point, “ISCAP Appeal No.: 2012-034” from the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum is a Top Secret - Codeword letter from Hillenkoetter to Truman on 19 April 1948. The ISCAP decision? “Affirmed the classification of the document in its entirety”.43 Again, Johnson’s search is de facto incomplete due to documents still remaining classified in whole and heavily redacted in part.

Back to the specific case of Keesing though, in him we have a direct connection to Malmgren, both working on studies of nuclear missiles, both at IDA, both economists, both in the Economics Group, both part of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s IDA advisers to his Office. Further, their working relationship was a familiar one. In 1963 Malmgren had several meetings with Keesing as contemporaneously recorded in Malmgren’s diary.44 In the same year, Malmgren had frequent appointments at the Pentagon, ABM meetings, Intercept meetings, appointments with Bissell, Schelling, Enthoven, and many others that formed the backbone of the Kennedy Administration’s Defense planning arm.

Recall McNamara’s 21 March 1979 meeting with Malmgren. On the day following McNamara met with Keesing. Not only did he know both Malmgren and Keesing, but through either remarkable coincidence or some more purposeful alignment, McNamara scheduled the two former IDA colleagues for meetings just 24 hours apart–or on the same day if the matching top right dates correspond.

Malmgren and Bissell

From his own contemporaneously kept 1963 diary, Malmgren recorded several meetings with Richard Bissell. Notably, his first in the year on 30 January 1963 corresponds in time with Malmgren’s retelling of this history in his interview with Jesse Michels more than 60 years later, “Okay. So, a few months after this series of episodes–Missile Crisis, Los Alamos–Richard Bissell called me up and said, ‘I’d like to spend some time talking to you. Maybe Friday afternoons after work would be good.’ I said, ‘Sure.’”45

The date for the ‘series of episodes’ was October 1962. A ‘few months after this series’ would be January 1963. In Malmgren’s diary on 30 January 1963 is a 3PM meeting to end his day with Richard Bissell.46 This very well could have been the meeting where Malmgren describes Bissell bringing out a bottle of whiskey and debriefing Malmgren, “There were things you need to know.”

To further corroborate Malmgren’s history, the diary contains many appointments at the Pentagon, with meetings related to Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense: Intercept, Intercept II, SAC NORAD, Air Defense of the North American Continent (ADNAC) and so on. Additionally, he met with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Stanford Research Institute (SRI), and Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) all of which were active in this space and era. Finally his records cover meetings with people such as: Richard M. Bissell, Thomas C. Schelling, Alain Enthoven, Stephen Enke, Arthur Goldberg, Charles M. Herzfeld, and many notable others.

Not only does the timing hold up from Malmgren’s 1963 calendar to his April 2025 interview with Jesse Michels, but he also gets the timing correct in Tweets prior to that. To add further nuance, since Bissell was no longer the CIA Deputy Director formally,47 the January 1963 meeting with Bissell was not part of his official CIA duties and off the record, which is also part of Malmgren’s retelling, “I swore secrecy to him, not under any law.”48

Bissell would remain close at hand in Washington D.C. by first becoming Vice President of IDA the day after his accepted resignation from the CIA:

I joined the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) as executive vice president on March 1, 1962, immediately following my departure from the CIA. I viewed my new job at IDA, which bridged the academic and military worlds, and more generally the area of U.S. foreign policy, as providing an opportunity to stay in Washington and continue working on problems that would prove interesting. Four and a half months later, on July 12, 1962, I became president of IDA, succeeding Garrison Norton.49

At the same time Bissell was becoming president of IDA in July 1962, Malmgren was arriving from RAND. Then, in the fall of 1962, when Keesing, King, et al released their PACIFICA report, it was done so on IDA imprint because Bissell, “had worked out a series of agreements with the Pentagon and begun the implementation of new management policies. The agreements specified that tasks would be accepted and reports released only on the authority of the president of IDA and under the IDA imprint.”50 Thus we have the IDA branded report. Then in March 1963, Bissell would write to Malmgren to happily inform him of his salary increase along with Malmgren’s increasing role and grading with the Department of State.

In short, as work colleagues, Yale alums, and economic-focused academics who met regularly, Malmgren and Bissell would certainly have the opportunity for off the record conversations in 1963.

Malmgren in October 1962

Two historical events that make up much of the Malmgren interview with Michels, and which both happened in October of 1962, are the Cuban Missile Crisis and Operation Fishbowl culminating in the Bluegill Triple Prime test. Johnson disputes Malmgren having any involvement in either one; however, as Malmgren was present and working in the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG) at the Pentagon via IDA’s Weapon Systems Evaluation Division, he would have an abundance of opportunity to be involved.

Bluegill Triple Prime

Starting with the latter first, a major focus of Malmgren’s work was on Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense and the related topics of the era: Air Defense of the North American Continent (ADNAC), Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), and Intercept tests. Again, returning to Malmgren’s 1963 calendar, he was still busy with this work throughout the year as seen in this brief summer sample.

Also of note, all early ABM devices were nuclear warheads, “The [United States and Soviet Union] started developing anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems in the 1960s to protect against ICBMs and SLBMs. Since they were not very accurate, the ABMs carried a nuclear weapon to destroy the enemy warhead.”51 So Malmgren, working directly in this area, would have the standing to be part of the analysis of Bluegill Triple Prime, delivering on his role relevant to ABM defense. Remember too that Bissell, now head of IDA, was applying his economics background to weapons development and testing, so when Malmgren notes his access due to his analysis on “Economics of ABM + Costing & Operating costs” this aligns with the business-orientated mandate of Bissell as he outlines in his biography:

I felt that what we were being paid to do was to bring an independent judgment on weapons. How good is an aircraft? Will it really achieve the promised range? How efficient is it as a weapon? We were hired not to give another military opinion but to exercise an independent judgment arrived at by competent scientists and technical people.52

Then as the liaison from IDA’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Division (WSED) to the Pentagon’s Weapons Systems Evaluation Group (WSEG),53 Malmgren was even more specifically directed to be a competent judge of weapons and weapons tests like the Operation Fishbowl series. This is directly opposite to how Johnson portrays him, “Malmgren was at the time a low-to-mid-level analyst-researcher with no direct involvement in such matters.” The facts clearly state otherwise.

Additionally, in what seems to be a recurring practice in Johnson’s writing, in his article on the Bluegill Triple Prime nuclear test he dedicates a large portion of research to his views, but his omissions are stark. Nowhere in the 13,000+ word article does he mention the retrograde separation of the rocket vehicle (RV) and the booster–namely the Thor retrorocket blast–which significantly slowed the booster to create an abundance of separation between it and the warhead.

Geoff Cruickshank–in his article “The Bluegill ‘Booster in Fireball’ Theory: A Flawed Argument Nuked By Basic Physics”–makes this point clear in his section ‘Flaw No.2: Retrograde Rockets’:54

As we can see from this image, (17), the Kingfish shot on 1 November 1962 had retrorocket firings at 180.593 and 181.701 seconds after launch. Using the above information stating that the Bluegill test would fire its retrorockets at a time 2 seconds after the other tests (Starfish, Checkmate, Kingfish and Tight Rope), I have used 182 and 184 seconds in my modelling data of the booster and RV trajectories.

To this end, actual flight data from the Bluegill Triple Prime tests gives the time the RV separated from the booster at 176.4 seconds after launch. (18) Using the Douglas Aircraft Company (DACO) data above, the two side-mounted, solid propellant retrograde (“retro”) rockets would fire in what is known as “ripple” mode – sequentially, one after the other. This reaction would work both opposite to the direction of travel and laterally, pushing the spent booster off the line of trajectory of the RV. These retrorocket firings are Doug’s Flaw No.2.

17. Project Officer’s Report - Project 9.4b Pod and Recovery Unit Fabrication https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA995471.pdf Pg. 90

18. Ibid., Pg. 92

The use of ‘retro rockets’ is also made explicit in the November 1961 document, “Preliminary Plan for Operation Fishbowl” where it says, “After engine cut-off, latches securing the payload open and solid propellent Retro rockets on the Thor back it away from the payload.” Further, they specifically cite this as a way to reduce, “the possibility of the booster interfering with the diagnostic and debris investigation.”55

As seen in Cruickshank’s analysis, the planning of the test, and its results, there was a significant separation between the booster and the warhead at the time of the recorded detonation. To simplify this even further, rocket boosters are not designed to ride along with rocket vehicles. The Apollo missions didn’t end with the Saturn V rockets landing on the moon; rather, the diminutive lunar module. The space shuttle didn’t go into orbit with the Liquid Oxygen tank and SRB Motors attached. Launches that have boosters in proximity to–or exceeding–rocket vehicles tend to look like this:56

Since the object in the videos of the Bluegill Triple Prime detonation was not the booster, or the pods, it was unidentified. This was the conclusion at the time in 1962 as well since the UFO–colloquially called a tag along–was what instigated Malmgren to use his position within WSEG to get details on the unknown object. The inquiry also aligns with Malmgren’s U.S. Navy Top Secret clearance, as testimony from David Noble Whitecrow–completely unknown and unrelated to Malmgren–states that he knew, “a second-class diver in Pearl Harbor back in 1962, and his group was called away on a top-secret mission.” Cruickshank, in another study co-authored with Caren Gallaudet and Rear Admiral Tim Gallaudet - U.S. Navy (ret.), detail that the dive:

Chief’s reference to a “top secret mission” for a full complement of divers aligns with the possible contents of COMSERVPAC MSG 290214Z, which ordered the Fleet Ocean Tug USS Abnaki and the Harbor Tug USS Tuscumbia to deploy to the Johnston Island area with YFN-994 covered lighter and Barges 6456 and 6085 in tow.57

Caren Gallaudet (nee Ritter) was herself a U.S. Navy diver who, “graduated with honors as the only woman accepted into the Navy’s Diving and Salvage career path called Special Operations (now Explosive Ordnance Disposal) from USNA in 1991.”58 Her service provided her acute insight into the deck logs from the October 1962 recovery operations stating, “the deck logs of the Safeguard during the recovery operation are ‘very tight lipped’ about the dive operations it participated in with the Point Barrow between 28-30 October 1962.”59 Johnson makes no mention of the work of Navy divers in the recovery, nor Whitecrow’s corroborating account.

Reviewing the timeline, between 28 October 1962 and 23 November 1962 Malmgren would learn about the ‘tag along,’ culminating with his visit with Lawrence Gise at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory two weeks prior60 to President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson jointly visiting61 on 7 December 1962.62 Of note, a president and vice president making any joint visit is an exceptionally rare activity. They take separate planes and cars to ensure continuity of government in case of a disaster. Further, their trip represented two of the three presidents to ever visit Los Alamos, with Bill Clinton being the other.

According to Malmgren, the visit was prompted by the extraordinary debris recovered from the Bluegill Triple Prime event:

Michels: “When you came out two weeks before [Kennedy and Johnson] what did you find? What did they tell you?” Malmgren: “I met Lawrence Gise63 and he said, ‘I have this letter saying that I can brief you.’ I said, ‘Thank you, because I’m really–” He said, ‘Well test details are controlled by Naval Intelligence. It was interesting,’ he said, ‘They don’t share everything with the Navy Department. They are an autonomous entity. They are more secure than any other intelligence agency. Just be aware, the mighty CIA is not on their fully approved list to circulate.’ So I said, ‘Well what am I here to find out?’ He said, ‘Well..’ and he reached for some stuff sitting on his desk, ‘these are things that have come down.’ I’m looking at, sitting here on his desk, round rocks.” Michels: “So you’re looking at material, anomalous material?” Malmgren: “Yeah.” Michels: “Debris.” Malmgren: “Yeah.” Pippa Malmgren: “Debris or images?” Harald Malmgren: “Debris.”64

Then–as previously discussed–Bissell, aware of Malmgren’s progress, met with him to have the Malmgren-recounted off-the-record debrief on UAP/NHI in January 1963. From Malmgren’s diary, undisputed government records, and other facts of the timeline, his retelling of events is highly plausible. Following Malmgren’s death, the film Age of Disclosure added further corroborating details when James Clapper stated as chief of Air Force Intelligence he was part of an Air Force investigation into UAP in the same location deeply linked to, and setup by, Richard Bissell: Area 51.65

This was followed by David Grusch appearing on The Megyn Kelly Show on 8 January 2026, stating that, “General Clapper was well aware of the crash retrieval issue, managed the crash retrieval issue and when he was the DNI, USDI and DIA director, he placed people in critical roles to manage this issue..both publicly and...non-publicly. General Clapper, Stephanie Sullivan, other folks in the IC...are well aware of this issue, [and] were in rooms discussing this issue.”66

Then, announced in a May 2026 Press Release,67 the Department of War launched the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE). Far from Malmgren’s portrayal by Johnson as a ‘fabulist’, his testimony fits within a continuum of the historical record that preceded him, his contemporaneous accounts, and history as it has played out after his death. To drive home that point, from the very files PURSUE has put forward, there is DOE-UAP-D004_Los-Alamos-Conference-on-Aerial-Phenomena_1949.pdf which details the 1949 deliberations of scientists, intelligence officials, and military personnel at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory on the topic of “Aerial Phenomena.”68

Only in Johnson’s article–with its already identified omissions–is Malmgren seen as being “engaged in gross fabrications about his jobs, authorities, and associations.” Instead, when the historical record is searched and taken into account, Malmgren was precisely in the correct places at the correct times with the needed clearances to have taken part in the conversations he describes.

Cuban Missile Crisis

In what appears to be an attempt to discredit Malmgren, Johnson combines exaggerations of Malmgren’s testimony regarding his relationship with the Kennedys and McNamara, plus his record dump–from the wrong location–to make it seem as Malmgren was not involved. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Johnson cites records from EXCOMM and the White House, when Malmgren’s retold interactions were with the JCS at the Pentagon in the recently established Joint War Room:

The Joint War Room Annex, which had been established by the JCS in March 1952 as a means to coordinate the operations of all atomic-capable forces, was operated by the Air Force as an adjunct to the AFCP. It was not until after the crises of 1958 that the JCS would assume control of the Joint War Room Annex and, finally, in August 1959, would establish their own Joint War Room. In December I960, the AFCP finally gave up its Joint and national responsibilities.69

Due to the relationship of IDA with the JCS Weapons Systems Evaluation Group inside the Pentagon, this seems obvious, but it is further cemented by Malmgren’s diary and his testimony that, “suddenly the Cuban Missile Crisis unfolds, and I get a call, ‘Bob wants you to work directly with a small group in the war room.’ I said, ‘What’s the war room?’ ‘It’s where the generals meet and decide: go, no go. Because they have the weapons. The White House doesn’t have them.’”70

In other words, Malmgren was at the Pentagon, not the White House. His retelling of his ‘appointment’ as a liaison was likely about as formal as being declared a Whiz Kid. Factually, he was an IDA consultant, again with the overarching goal of being an adviser to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Thus it makes sense that he could stand in and buy time for the SecDef within the Pentagon while McNamara and team were occupied at the White House.

For McGeorge Bundy, Malmgren’s year at Harvard was while Bundy was Dean of Students and active in the academic competition for people like Malmgren as a doctoral graduate. That Malmgren graduated from Yale with a senior year spent in the Scholars of the House adds further credence to the idea that Harvard would be inclined to offer him a Ph.D track based on producing published work. As unusual as this may seem, Harvard has similar odd instances of granting doctoral degrees. Take NRO legend James G. Baker’s example:

He received his PhD in 1942 from Harvard in rather an unusual fashion, which is worth retelling. During an Astronomy Department dinner, Dr. Harlow Shapley (the director) asked him to give a talk. According to the “Courier-Journal Magazine”, “Dr. Shapley stood up and proclaimed an on-the-spot departmental meeting and asked for a vote on recommending Baker for a Ph.D. on the basis of the ‘oral exam’ he had just finished. The vote was unanimous.”71

Likewise, Kennedy, a Harvard grad–and plausibly hearing recommendations from Bundy, McNamara, Schelling, Bissell and others as to Malmgren’s talent–could have gone along with Malmgren being their young, informal point man within JCS at the Pentagon during periods of the Cuban Missile Crisis when McNamara or his deputies were tied up at the White House. Malmgren doesn’t describe this role gloriously, “They’re not going to be eager to hear from this young squirt.” And likewise getting less than exalted instructions, “Don’t tell them what you think should happen. Ask a lot of questions.”72 Succinctly: stall.

Malmgren’s retelling certainly doesn’t sound like Johnson’s description that he “cast himself as a prime mover of events.”73 Rather Malmgren’s version tracks with his other retellings as being a go-between, or, at best, a safe pair of hands familiar to the more academically oriented Kennedy administration. This aligns with his later clarification that his “interaction with JFK and Bobby was very limited.” So while Malmgren would absolutely qualify as ‘senior’ based on his GS grading and ‘advisor’ in his role as an IDA consultant to the Secretary of Defense, he never portrayed himself as a Rasputin whispering in Kennedy’s ear. Reading Johnson you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

The rest of the Cuban Missile Crisis doesn’t need rehashing. If Malmgren found success in stalling, then he was on the right side of history with several others. Did he save the world? No more so than Vasily Arkhipov, Krushchev, JFK, McNamara, Dobrynin,74 Gen. Taylor, Bundy, the many boat captains who turned away from the blockade, and nameless others. Curtis LeMay never seemed to learn that lesson though, as McNamara recounted:

“After Khrushchev had agreed to remove the missiles, President Kennedy invited the Chiefs to the White House so that he could thank them for their support during the crisis, and there was one hell of a scene. LeMay came out saying, ‘We lost! We ought to just go in there today and knock ’em off!’”75

The Clearance Q

For the era (1962-1972) it is not surprising that Malmgren’s FBI file could miss the Q Clearance. Especially since his investigation at that time (1970) was not in relation to the Atomic Energy Commission or a Restricted Data handling role. In fact, by then the FBI were not the primary agency in charge of running Q Clearance investigations.76 That office was the Civil Service Commission.77 This is even an element of the FBI file itself. First, the FBI file cites an earlier Civil Service Commission investigation, “The files of the Bureau of Personnel Investigations, Civil Service Commission, indicate that during an investigation conducted by the Civil Service Commission concerning Dr. Malmgren in 1965, Frank H. Golay, Professor of Economics, Cornell University, Ithaca. New York, was interviewed.” Second, the other government agencies listed as searched for security information do not include the Atomic Energy Commission because by this time the FBI had a security and defense investigation mandate only.

Further, just prior to Malmgren’s hiring at IDA, the Kennedy Administration emphasized the use of the Civil Service Commission in the investigation of contractors:

On April 30, 1962 the White House issued a Report on Government Contracting for Research and Development, approved by the President, that set forth general policy guidelines for government contracting with private institutions and enterprises for scientific and technical work…the SecDef, the Administrator of NASA, the Chairman of the AEC, the Director of the National Science Foundation, the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, and the Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology…had been directed by the President to review the growing use of contractors to operate R&D facilities and programs, perform analytical studies and services, and provide technical supervision of weapons systems and other programs, with a view to recommending policies.78

On top of this, the Department of Energy–and Atomic Energy Commission before it–had historic problems in issuing security clearances, screening, records keeping, and timeliness related to its Q Clearance program. This is perhaps typified in the June 1999 report, “Science at its Best - Security at its Worst” which summarized, “At the birth of DOE, the brilliant scientific breakthroughs of the nuclear weapons laboratories came with a troubling record of security administration. Twenty years later, virtually every one of its original problems persists.”79

Looking more closely at the types of security issues AEC and DOE struggled with is even more revealing:80

DOE Inspector General reports in 1990 and 1991 found that one of the weapons laboratories had granted “Q” clearances (which provide access to U.S. government nuclear weapons data) to more than 2,000 employees who did not need access to classified information.(28) A 1992 report to the Secretary of Energy noted that “DOE grants clearances requested by its three major defense program sponsored labs based on lab policies to clear all employees regardless of whether actual access to classified interests is required for job performance.” (29)

28. DOE/IG/WR-B-91-08, “Review of Contractor’s Personnel Security Clearances at DOE Field Office, Albuquerque,” September 1991.

29. DOE, “Office of Safeguards and Security, Report to the Secretary: Status of Safeguards and Security,” February 1993

So when Malmgren says “they gave me a blanket Q clearance”81 the ‘blanket’ very well could have been applied as part of IDA broadly, or the WSED / WSEG compartment specifically. As seen prior, IDA Economics Group coworker Donald B. Keesing worked with Restricted Data while a Malmgren colleague–and personal reference–James E. King Jr. was likewise Q cleared. Recall that Malmgren became Head of the Economics Group in the latter half of 1963 so would then be Keesing’s boss. As head of the group he supervised 20 economists and 12 research assistants. This group produced Restricted Data research–proven with the example from Keesing–so a management role overseeing the Restricted Data research would necessitate a Q Clearance.

History offers another surprising instance of a managerial role conferring a Q Clearance:

[Ronald] Reagan’s tenure as governor also provided direct experience regarding classified material and security clearances, since his duties included oversight of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory—a national resource for nuclear research—which required Reagan to hold a “Q” clearance granted by the Atomic Energy Commission.82

Reagan certainly wasn’t a scientist or engineer, and neither was Keesing, but both had Q clearances.

The elevated security status of WSED / WSEG–due to being focused heavily on nuclear weapons– also deserves recognition, by 1964:

…the Washington divisions of IDA were consolidated in quarters in a new IDA building at 400 Army-Navy Drive in Arlington, Va., directly across from the Pentagon. WSEG moved into the new building as well, joining WSED in occupying three separate floors of the building. WSEG and WSED staff members worked in co-mingled offices under WSEG security control, and also utilized a small suite of WSEG offices in the Pentagon for liaison and on-site study requirements. The remainder of IDA operated in separate office space in the new building under an IDA industrial security system.83

Next, take a close look at this sequence of events related to nuclear missiles and war planning, all highly indicative of Q cleared work. It begins with SecDef Robert McNamara meeting with İlhami Sancar, Minister of National Defense of Turkey to discuss the removal of the U.S. supplied and managed JUPITER nuclear missiles stationed in Turkey following the Cuban Missile Crisis. McNamara tells Sancar that the move will be “done by approximately the first of April.”84 Then, in a letter from Patricia Malmgren to her mother she writes Harald is leaving “next Monday for a three day trip to Omaha of all places!”85 This corresponds with Malmgren’s diary entry of “SAC/NORAD?” on Monday, 8 April 1963 with Strategic Air Command (SAC) being housed at Offutt Air Force Base in Omaha Nebraska. That trip is also in conjunction with a call to Thomas Schelling about “Promisel”, i.e. Dr. Nathan E. Promisel who was nicknamed “Mr. Materials Science” and had this CV at the time:

From 1940 to 1966, Nate was chief materials scientist and engineer for the Navy Department in Washington, D.C. From 1955 to 1964 he was the recipient of outstanding accomplishment awards from the Navy Department. From 1959 to 1971 he was member and chairman of the NATO (AGARD) Structures and Materials Panel. In 1962–1963 he was science attaché at the U.S. Embassy in London.86

Later in the year, the delay for Joint Chiefs of Staff and IDA managed 1963 Joint War Games was because “all the senior military must be at a SecDef conference at the Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, Offutt Air Force Base, for a two day period for the previously considered dates.”87 This delay, noted in a 22 August 1963 JCS memorandum, was followed by a Schelling call to Malmgren about “Joint War Games” on 6 September 1963, likely telling him about rescheduling the event. Then at the time of the Joint War Games, Malmgren had all day bookings for AID at the Pentagon related to WSEG. Corresponding with Malmgren’s likely war games attendance were several noted “Senior Adviser” roles–i.e. IDA advisers–which would be part of the Red Team in the games. Also scheduled for attendance were McGeorge Bundy, John McCone, and Robert F. Kennedy. That Malmgren’s contemporaneous 1963 calendar entries align so closely with these now declassified Top Secret events is a defining factor for the accuracy of the diary and Malmgren’s own credibility and record keeping.

Again, thanks due to Johnson for getting federal files that so clearly display Malmgren’s Top Secret clearances, work with RAND, IDA, and connections to Bissell, Schelling, Enthoven, etc. But Malmgren’s Q Clearance investigation files would have come from 1962 and from the Civil Service Commission, not the FBI–especially since Malmgren’s records show zero loyalty or espionage concerns. The outline of an earlier investigation is in the FBI file reference to the 1965 Civil Service Commission work, but this would have come at a time when Malmgren was entering the Office of the Special Representative for Trade Negotiation, and not requiring a Q clearance investigation like when entering IDA and WSEG. Complicating matters is the integrated security features of IDA WSED and Pentagon WSEG personnel as well as the AEC and DOE’s historic troubles related to clearance management. Finally, oral Q clearances like the one for Mc Cord further cloud record searches.

In short, from the primary source material, Malmgren was obviously working on areas that were managed as Restricted Data: Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) defense, Air Defense of the North American Continent (ADNAC), Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), Intercept, SAC, NORAD, etc. He was supervising Q-cleared and Restricted Data handling personnel. He was working inside the Pentagon alongside officials concerned with nuclear weapons within the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group. And he was writing papers for IDA concerned with the same.88 It would be more shocking–and a serious lapse–if somehow he was not Q-cleared.

Not So Boring Economists

“Some years ago he began to make up an alternative, much more exciting version of his life” states Johnson near the close of his introduction to Malmgren, but from the record we know for the entirety of his government career from RAND in March 1962 onward, Malmgren operated with clearances and–save five months out of hundreds–a Top Secret clearance. He was in the Pentagon working for the WSEG during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the latter half of Operation Dominic, and nearly all of Operation Fishbowl. His bosses–Richard Bissell at IDA and Robert McNamara as Secretary of Defense–were likewise economists with compartments full of clandestinely covered work. Long time mentor Thomas Schelling, a pioneer of game theory, was another economist and future Nobel-prize winning one at that. But why? Why all the import, accolades, and excitement around economists? Two major reasons surface: they helped win the Cold War, and economics was a prime field for intelligence and covert operations.

The United States did not roll tanks over the Berlin Wall or–as LeMay would have preferred–carpet bombed eastward from there to break up the USSR. Rather, those walls crumbled from within. Facing continued economic pressure for decades in a race between nations, the USSR capitulated, unfit and unable to keep up with the growing disparity in the West from citizens’ standard of living to advancing military prowess. The tipping point came in the 1980s, as the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, elections swept Eastern Europe in 1990, and 1991 saw the dissolution of the USSR. The decades prior set those events in motion, and it began just as soon as World War II ended, if not earlier.

Fittingly, the economist at the nexus of this beginning–Harry Dexter White–also carved out molds of Cold War economist and spy, on both sides no less:

The Venona decrypts listed sources including the code names ‘Richard’, ‘Jurist’, and ‘Lawyer’ in many Soviet cables between 1944 and 1946. Richard, Jurist, and Lawyer are now known to be cover names for Harry Dexter White, confirming that he had indeed been known in the Soviet networks; had received instructions from Soviet Intelligence; had leaked US State and Treasury papers on foreign policy, military matters, and monetary proposals; had lobbied the Administration for concessional treatment of the Soviet Union; and had promoted and protected other sympathizers.89

Venona, a World War II program initiated by the Signals Intelligence Service and later run by the NSA,90 focused on decryption of intelligence messages transmitted by the Soviet Union. Harry Dexter White, who helped shape U.S. economic policy at the end of the war and establish the International Money Fund and World Bank was also a Soviet sympathizer, if not outright agent.91 Thus from the beginning of the Cold War, economics and spying were inextricably joined.

Coming in on the timeline after White were heavy weights like Bissell, John von Neumann, and Schelling who doggedly pursued economic victories within the CIA and other U.S. military industrial settings. Malmgren directly worked with two of these three and became part of the growing efforts in trade and development that expanded US gains globally in the 70s and 80s. Author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” John Perkins, fits into this timeline as well, beginning in 1963 and purportedly operating in conjunction with the NSA.92 Pippa Malmgren wrote of her father’s efforts in this era, “Drawing on the ideas of his academic mentor, Tom Schelling — who later won the Nobel Prize for his idea of game theory — Harald concluded that for each dollar spent on a hypothetical ABM system, it would cost the adversary roughly seven dollars to penetrate it.”93 Meanwhile RAND continued to focus and press on macroeconomics and systemic vulnerabilities, while IDA targeted the cost-exchange ratios of military technology.

With a framework in place, the Reagan-Bush Administration aggressively pushed these economic and military technology factors to a level of disparity that was too much for the Soviet Union to bear and its empire imploded with most of its satellites joining into western economies.

Malmgren progressed steadily in these times as well gaining in rank and grade within the Executive branch of the U.S. government, serving presidents Johnson, Nixon and Ford at what would soon after become the Senior Executive Service level, gaining the title and role of Ambassador, and then returning to the private sector to again teach and lobby as an international trade specialist.

A Diagnostic Shift

Perhaps one of Malmgren’s most consequential tweets is one that has not been knowingly acknowledged in other reviews of his life,94 namely his 13th year anniversary announcement on 26 July 2024 of his recovery from Stage IV throat cancer:

13 years ago I had just completed months of arduous, physically debilitating radiation and chemotherapy treatment of Stage IV cancer in my throat at Sloane Kettering in NY, evading death but with half my previous weight barely capable to walk, when my eldest daughter @DrPippaM persuaded me to exercise my brain with Twtter, now X, conversation with the world, providing my reflections on US and global change as therapy.95

Prior to the cancer battle, Malmgren had a deeper voice, markedly different to the one most were familiar with when seeing his interview with Jesse Michels on 23 April 2025. It began to degrade steadily following the therapy, but is still noticeably more robust in 2017 from his 21 April interview with Jacob Shapiro:

In that same year, on 16 December 2017, the New York Times published, “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.”96 Malmgren would likely have some ideas as to the Black Money angle.

Still not venturing into the UAP/NHI fray publicly, he had another serious health scare in 2019, “Days after our 2019 London lunch my life again was put in question by aspirational pneumonia. Escaped again, your reminder now tells me time has come to leave behind me some of my exciting, busy life’s lessons.”97 This reminder in July 2023 came about six weeks after the initial whistleblower reveal of David Grusch on 11 June 2023.98 By 2024, Malmgren was regularly discussing UAP and his associated history on X. Luis Elizondo’s book, “Imminent” was released on 20 August that year99 and Harald B. Malmgren would be entering the last half year of his life.

Before his death100 on 13 February 2025 however, he would record an extended interview with Jesse Michels for his series American Alchemy, with the episode being released posthumously on 23 April 2025. At this stage in his life–a cancer survivor facing repeated battles with aspirational pneumonia–Malmgren most likely knew his time was limited. Did he seek aggrandizement and deception in his final moments as Douglas Dean Johnson alleges? Or faced with death, did Harald Malmgren organize his affairs and make his dying declaration? The records collected in this research, and the events that have followed from the Executive branch of the U.S. government, strongly indicate the latter.

The Counter Intelligence Campaign of Dogmatic Skeptics

On the day of the release of the Jesse Michels documentary and interview, Harald Malmgren and Pippa Malmgren’s Wikipedia pages were targeted for deletion by the same Wikipedia editor, “Chetsford”.

Both were preserved. The overt heavy-handedness of the targeting however brought Wikipedia Co-founder Jimmy Donal Wales into the conversation, stating from his ‘Jimbo Wales’ account on whether or not to Keep or Delete Harald Malmgren’s article:

Keep - the question of whether someone’s views are accurate or “whacky” really has no bearing on the question of notability. Similarly, the popularity that someone might have in “wild corners of the internet” has no bearing on the question of notability. Per Very Polite Person there’s plenty of sourcing out there and there’s no question that the article could be improved. Deletion seems out of the question.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:10, 23 April 2025 (UTC)101

Meanwhile, Johnson classified these actions as, “Wikipedia editors had removed some unsubstantiated claims from the encyclopedia’s previously weakly sourced profile of Malmgren” rather than the targeted deletion that was being attempted both on Harald and Pippa Malmgren’s Wikipedia pages immediately following the release of Michels’ video and after Harald Malmgren’s death. Johnson’s own Malmgren piece likewise came after Malmgren’s death, unable to correct the record. Johnson states, “When I started this project in January 2025, I planned to seek an interview from Harald Malmgren before completing this article. However, Malmgren died on February 13, 2025.” I have reached out to Johnson requesting records of any attempted outreach in his research–either to Harald before his death or Pippa following.

After his self-published article, Johnson wrote an op-ed for the Washington Examiner, restating his “journalistic investigation”, yet landing in the opinion section. Finally he promoted his work on the Mick West run Metabunk Forum. A familiar network to those who have studied the dogmatic skeptics: Metabunk, Wikipedia, and writing that definitively states what readers should think.

Picking up the Petty Pieces

A few remaining items are left from Johnson’s deconstruction. First is the Kennedy circle connection that Malmgren claims was at a ‘go-between’ level with Sargent Shriver, right after Malmgren qualifies any interactions he had with JFK and Bobby as, ‘very limited’.102 Obviously not at the level of pen pals or close friends, but rather passing acquaintances, Malmgren’s claimed workplace connection to Shriver was highly qualified and certainly not a ‘close association’ as inflated by Johnson. Unsurprisingly they didn’t leave a record of writing to each other. Yet, they were not completely without a record of some group connection. From the Council On Foreign Relations’ Non-Resident Members listing, the following share pages 94 and 95: Robert S. McNamara, Harald B. Malmgrem, Paul H. Nitze (Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs), Thomas C. Schelling, and R. Sargent Shriver.103 From the noted records, Malmgren and Shriver appear 15 times each, covering 15 years of CFR membership.

Next, the inferred Malmgren claim of a sub-4 minute mile. Inferred is the correct usage because in checking the video and transcript from which the statement surfaces, it is told second-hand by Jesse Michels and not a direct quote from Malmgren. Thankfully, Yale does have an archive of athletics that is available to search in person which should provide a black and white account–or at least some directional weighting–but really not much should be made of this claim. There is a chance that it was something misheard or miscommunicated in a phone call between Michels and Malmgren with the latter suffering aspirational pneumonia and having a severely impaired voice.

Third, the salaries and income tracked by Johnson are left without context of the larger financial picture. As a start, with full scholarships during his schooling, Malmgren had zero debts–as later confirmed in his FBI investigations. More importantly, the IDA starting salary of US $17,400 would place Malmgren in the top 5% of United States income earners in 1962.104

Heading to Washington with zero debts, he was in a position to purchase a suburban home for around $18,000. For cars, a new Ford Galaxie or Chevy Impala of that year would run between $2,600 to $3,000. Civil servants at the highest grade of GS-18 were earning between $18,500 and $20,000 then, so Malmgren’s salary likewise conferred senior status.105

Finally, prior to his RAND and IDA employment, the Evans Professor role was not the “designation of a bottom-tier teaching slot” as Johnson claims, but explicitly an elevated, jointly approved position. It appears Malmgren misremembered or misspoke the name of Gordon Evans as Galen Stone, but accurately described the structure and newness of the professorship he was given. The language, ‘start at the top’ appears to be how Cornell pitched the role.

Conclusion

Harald Malmgren was in the right places, at the right times, with the right background, right clearances, right colleagues, producing the right kind of work to make his retelling of private conversations highly plausible. Through inexplicable twists of logic, Johnson strives to portray the opposite, calling Malmgren’s history lies, fictions, and confabulations. However, Malmgren’s history ties into events beyond his control and aligns with accounts completely separate from his involvement. Since his death, the release of NHI/UAP data held by the U.S. Government has only become more formalized, while other documentaries and DOPSR reviewed works have added to, not disproved, Malmgren’s account. He placed his account in the hands of Senate Intelligence, as recounted by longtime staffer Kirk McConnell, and being privy to classified documentation not yet released to the public, they too found Malmgren to be plausible.106

Malmgren undisputedly earned and rightly held the titles of: Ph.D., Ambassador, Senior Executive, and International Trade Consultant while operating at the highest levels of government at the forefront of the world’s stage. His work is recorded in the records of Congress, Presidential files, and numerous books. From this position, he chose to make a dying declaration that aliens are real, they’re here, and we’ve shot at them with nukes. He is perhaps the most highly ranked and longest serving member of what is now considered the Senior Executive Service, to make such claims. And at a time when more files come to light, more declassifications expire, and an empire built for the mid-century struggles with the present one, Harald Malmgren again appears to be on the right side of history.

In that light, watch–or rewatch–Jesse Michels’ exceptionally well-produced biography with the confidence of knowing the legitimacy of Harald Malmgren’s background. History has already proven that Michels’ work was so well done as to trigger a speedy and aggressive backlash. Yet the people that tried to erase Malmgren following his dying declaration failed, and the government records that corroborate his accounts have only continued to increase.

Appreciations

This deeper look into Harald Malmgren would not have been possible without the help and support of all the people that communicated with me in the process of researching and writing this paper, including: Pippa Malmgren, Geoff Cruickshank, David Burkett, Rob Heatherly, Rob Jones, Matt Ford, Pavel Ibarra, and many unnamed others.

Last, and most importantly, my heartfelt thanks to you, the reader.

It is my hope that this, and coming work, adds to the marvel of our wider universe of knowledge–the scope and scale of which should fill our days with many wonders and abundant curiosity, placing onerous secrets and dogmatic skepticism in a very distant and small perspective.

Any mistakes, errors, or omissions are the fault of this author.

Comments, criticisms and receipts are greatly appreciated.

The overall aim of this writing is that it’s done in a way that makes us all better for life ahead. An effort that Harald Malmgren championed.

May he rest in peace.

Corrections

27 August 2026 - The author incorrectly identified Major General James S. Murphy and Major General John W. Carpenter in an earlier version of this article. Confirmation of the misidentification was received on 27 August 2026 and corrected.

In one of the three documents featured in the release, “CIA_ER1-2735_Majestic_pages1-2” now hosted by Ryan Wood on the Majestic Documents website, there is mention of Mantell who was famed1 for chasing—to the point of death—a UFO in an attempt at interception in 19482.

In addition to Mantell’s tragedy however is the case of 2nd Lieutenant Mark Richard Polking, who after scrambling to launch on August 19, 1954, from McGuire Air Force Base ‘flamed out’ in his F-86D Sabre and crashed while on a ground-controlled approach (GCA) during his return landing. This event was likely a year or less before CIA_ER1-2735 was written.

News accounts at the time3 said 2nd Lt. Polking was on a ‘routine training flight’ —although the fact, that his plane was armed with 24 rockets makes that unlikely.

But in 1957, a surprising source said 2nd Lt. Polking was actually chasing ‘after unidentified targets’ and posthumously published a poem he wrote describing just such a chase. This source: Aviation Week4, with the poem appearing in Philip J. Klass’ Avionics section.

As editor of the section, Klass is the likely author of the note at the end of the poem:

EDITORS NOTE: AVIATION WEEK is privileged to publish this poem by 2nd Lt. Mark Richard Polking, USAF. Lt. Polking was an all-weather fighter pilot in Air Defense Command, flying F-86Ds out of McGuire AFB, N. J. Like some other gifted pilots, Lt. Polking hoped to combine writing and flying. He planned to return to the University of Michigan after his term of USAF active duty to complete his academic degree. Lt. Polking died at the age of 22 in the crash of his F-86D after its jet engine flamed out on a GCA approach to McGuire. He was returning from a scramble after unidentified targets similar to the mission of “Level-head.”

Here is the poem as it appeared in the March 18, 1957 issue of Aviation Week:

In the poem, 2nd Lt. “Levelhead” Polking scrambles to intercept unknown radar contacts who turn out to be friendly, strayed aircraft. The days and nights around August 19th, 1954, however, had sightings of a different sort. From Loren E. Gross’ collection of reports from June-August, 19545 is a clipping from the 18 August 1954 issue of Newsday:

The Ground Observer Corps (GOC) were still active in this era. Trained observers, they frequently catalogued unidentified sightings backed by radar, radio, and multi-angle visual recordings. Again, from Gross’ records6:

The White Plains, New York, Ground Observer Corps (GOC) Filter Center covered a large part of the states of New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey. During the years of 1951 to 1955, James C. Beatty served at the Center as instructor, team supervisor, and alert crew supervisor. He remembers that many of the 15,000 GOC volunteers reporting to White Plains did spot UFOs; In fact, he said: “It was a fairly frequent occurrence.”

Beatty, however, states that one of the most memorable UFO incidents he knew about took place in late August or early September, 1954. At 9:30 p.m. the Poughkeepie, N.Y., GOC post called in to report the sudden appearance in the night sky of a big orange ball. There was no mistaking the image for the moon since the lunar orb was also visible in another part of the heavens and it was not in full phase. This extraordinary sight lasted for about ½ hour, the large round object stationary except for a slight oscillation. Finally, the object left the area, moving southwest and turning a yellow-orange color.

At full alert, the Filter Center tracked the UFO as it travelled in a southeastern direction.

Beatty:

“While the object had been progressing across our board, I at that particular time was on the hot-line at the Filter Center... Two radar stations we were hooked into confirmed at that time they had been holding an electronic fix on this same object... It coincided in position and movement with the object we had seen visually.”

Jets were scrambled from Steward AFB, Newburgh, N.J.; and from Newcastle airbase in Delaware. Beatty again:

“At the time I was hearing the scrambles in the background, the plot was progressing more in a direction toward the state of Connecticut... then we began to pick up the jet patterns, coming in from the south in the case of the scramble from Delaware, and from the west in the case of the scramble from Stewart Field... We could track the jets as they closed in on this object.

“Shortly before the interception occurred, a strange thing happened to the orange object. This was reported both by the ground observer posts and by the pilots of the jets. It seemed to speed up in its motion--it had been oscillating or pulsating and moved rather slowly--and it changed to a rotational effect with also a change of lights. By this time the reports came in that it was a whirling combination of red, green and yellow lights...

“Then at almost the same time we got reports from the posts which had been holding this object under ground observation, and jets themselves that the object disappeared straight upward in a burst of speed... At that moment it also became apparent that not only the ground observers, but also the aircraft and airborne radar had lost visual and electronic contact with the object as it zoomed upward and vanished in the night sky.”

Another “Summer of 1954” UFO report would follow the March 18, 1957 Aviation Week article as Sports Writer and Editor of Worcester’s The Evening Gazette, Frank Crotty wrote in a Tuesday, April 2, 1957 editorial7.

From his vantage point on Main St in Hyannis, Massachusetts, Mr. Crotty would be looking back towards Long Island (17 August sighting) and from there onwards towards McGuire AFB in Trenton, NJ (19 August intercept). While his was a joyful day time sighting and doesn’t mention jets in pursuit as others at this time do, it does add to the history of activity in the area—especially around August 1954.

Sadly, after the night of 19 August, parents had to bury a son.

Were they told he died in a training accident or when sent on an interception mission? Did Klass come across the poem from Polking in the McGraw-Hill mailroom? Did he know the Polkings personally? Was the incident another piece of motivation for his debunking career in the future?

These questions remain unanswered.

Mark’s father, Anthony, would go on to sign for his son’s application for a headstone8.

By March 3, 1956 a bronze plaque would signify a commemorative gift made by the Polking family towards the purchase of books for the Kuemper High School library9.

A MEMORIAL GIFT TO KUEMPER HIGH SCHOOL.

In memory of their son, Lieut. Mark Polking, who was killed in an army air force crash August 19, 1954, Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Polking have presented a gift of $500 to Kuemper High School which has been used to purchase books for the library.

Some of the books were on display in the trophy case during National Catholic Book Week with the above bronze plaque which has been made to commemorate the gift.

Replicas of the plaque have been placed in each of the 140 books in the memorial collection.

Mark would be brought back home to Carroll, Iowa and laid to rest in Mount Olivet Cemetery10.

Will histories like this become apparent in upcoming PURSUE releases? Or will people have to scrape together the pieces on their own?

Many of the records still held classified relating to UAP/NHI are older than, or just shy of 75 years and should be up for mandatory declassification. Given the extra scrutiny based on the PURSUE initiative, their release should be all the more urgent.

Simply, if all the documents relating to the reality of UAP/NHI older than 1951 were released the question would move from “What if?” to “What now?”

~

Below are records on Mark Richard Polking to aid further researchers:

Crash Date YYMMDD: 540819
Aircraft Type: F-86D
Aircraft S/N: 51-8331
Squadron: 5FIS
Group: 4709ADW
Home Base: McGuire AFB, Trenton, NJ
Command: -
Action Code: KCRGC (Killed in Crash Ground Collision)
Damage Code: 4
Pilot: Polking, Mark R
Country: USA
State: NJ
Location: 1 Mi S McGuire AFB, Trenton, NJ
File Code: 54-08-19-002

New Jersey Record of Death

Birth Certificate of Mark Richard Polking

Polking Family Headstone

The first release of files responsive to, “…identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs)”1 went live on the Department of War website on 8 May 2026. In the release were hundreds of UAP incidents recorded in roughly 160 files—images, videos, and PDFs.

Takeaways

When looking at the release as a whole, some takeaways become immediately obvious:

1. There’s a distinct gap between 2001 to 2020 with only 3 released incidents.

2. Incidents after 1974 rely heavily on the COMETA Report2, and prosaic launch records.3

3. Without COMETA and yearly launch records, the gap in reporting extends back to 1974.

Anomalies

The two reports, “Modeling Unlikely Space-Booster Failures in Risk Calculations” and “Vandenberg AFB Launch Summary 1958-2000” remain anomalies from the May 8th release. Within each are no records of UFO/UAP. Historically of course, these launches include previously reported incidents, such as Dr. Bob Jacobs filming a UAP targeting and firing upon a dummy warhead as it sped through the atmosphere.4 Yet no such specific incidents are highlighted within these reports or separately in the other files released.

Influences

As for reasons behind the decline in reporting between 1974 and 2020, the passing of the Privacy Act Amendments (1974) and the Church Committee investigation (1975-1976) likely served notice to the intelligence community (IC) to bury UAP/NHI records and privatize domestic counter-intelligence efforts. In fact, the very next day after the Senate closed the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (The Church Committee) on April 29, 19765 a new, private committee formed on April 30, 1976: The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.6 Perhaps domestic counter-intelligence efforts are easier to quietly run when they’re part of a marketing plan rather than a federal IC initiative.

Challenges

A very granular detail from the May 8th release could be a preview of the hurdles put in place to prevent disclosure. Found in an FBI file7 covering an incident—the recovery of metal fragments which seemed to have previously been a cylindric shape—from July 29, 1947:

Within this document is a person tagged with “CONF. INFT” i.e. a confidential informant that has their name redacted while informing during the investigation. The most notable feature of this redaction—(b)(7)(D)—is that it has no expiration. Not in time passed, nor in the death of the person being redacted:

It has long been recognized that Exemption 7(D) affords the most comprehensive protection of all of the FOIA's law enforcement exemptions. Indeed, both Congress and the courts have clearly manifested their appreciation that a “robust” Exemption 7(D) is important to ensure that “confidential sources are not lost through retaliation against the sources for past disclosure or because of the sources' fear of future disclosure.”8

While such protections help reassure people at risk when providing information to criminal investigators, both this specific instance—an “informal report”—and the closed loop of this investigation, make the use of Exemption 7(D) seem spurious. The report concludes that there, “has been no speculation that a guided missile originating in a foreign land landed in New Hampshire.”9 A foreign-borne guided missile would certainly be cause for a national security concern, but since it was eliminated at the time, the fragments were inert and scheduled to be destroy by the FBI in Boston10, the only ongoing national security element in this memorandum is what is written in the margin, “Flying Discs”.

This redaction is due an appeal for several reasons:

1. The confidential informant is likely deceased of natural causes.11

2. The information provided by the confidential informant was “similar in all major details” as the unmasked informant in the report, Dean Bunker.

3. The memorandum is responsive to PURSUE which specifically targets “unsealing and reporting”.

4. Finally, the name is likely already released.

The Confidential Informant

In the referenced teletype dated July 18, 194712 an MIT professor L.H. DeWald—described as an “outstanding metallurgist”—stated the fragments may be from a jet turbo plane. Next, the redacted confidential informant from the July 29, 1947 memorandum has a 10 character redaction based on the fixed-width type used. As was the convention with abbreviations at the time by the FBI, spaces were not added after period punctuation, so the confidential informant is very likely:

Since the FBI has published both the teletype and follow-up memorandum, the redaction using a (b)(7)(D) exemption should be removed.

Conclusion

At both ends of the spectrum—from spurious single name redactions in documents over 75 years old to multiple decades of missing files—it will be a continuing struggle to get forthright disclosure of the government’s involvement in the programs associated with UAP/NHI. It will be even more tenuous to get the fulsome details of the formerly government-led initiatives that were moved to the private sector in the mid-1970s onward. Yet it’s critical that the effort is made for a full accounting to learn and safeguard against coverups of such magnitude being repeated.

4

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The Day a UFO Disarmed a Nuclear Warhead: The Dr. Bob Jacobs Interview

In the history of the UFO phenomenon, few cases are as explosive—or as well-documented—as the incident witnessed by USAF Captain (Ret.) Dr. Bob Jacobs…

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And as I learned more about Menzel, I noticed that much more suspicious activity surrounded his famed “Menzel gap.” The problem was that the different insights were scattered across varied sources. They needed to be put in one place. That is the genesis of Unquestionably Skeptical (like Donald Howard Menzel), but here’s a quick 20 key points:

1. Worked with Vannevar Bush from 1936

2. Knew Edward Condon “in 1930” (Menzel’s own words)

3. Active with early computers from 1935 onwards

4. Built his own radio as a child–kept his callsign all his life (W1JEX)

5. Harvard colleague Howard Aiken created the Mark I-IV series of computers used heavily by the military

6. Close friends with Wallace Eckert, inventor of the automatic star position measuring machine

7. Close friends with Wallace’s wife, Dorothy “Doll” Eckert (circa 1928/9), who computed star positions

8. Both of the Eckerts did their work using photographic plates.

9. Robert Oppenheimer oversaw the selection of Menzel as HCO Director

10. Was investigated by FBI Special Agent Guy Hottel–yes, THAT Guy Hottel

11. Helped build the observatory that oversaw Trinity, White Sands test range, and Holloman AFB

12. Was NSA before the NSA (Navy Op-20-G), cleared to Top Secret Ultra

13. Described as ‘ingenious’ in his analysis of photographic plates

14. His Ph.D. thesis was finished using the Harvard plate vault archives from 1922-1924

15. He was in Roswell during Roswell

16. After Roswell he was going to Wright Field “about once a week” (again his own words)

17. His early 1950s assistant also held a Top Secret clearance

18. Was a military industrial complex consultant from World War II onwards

19. Began high volume debunking in media in 1952

20. The UFO flap of 1952 was right before Menzel become HCO director

And all of these things happened before he got rid of 1/3 of Harvard’s photographic plate collection–the ones from the same era Beatriz Villaroel has recently made famous for showing capture ‘transient’ phenomena that disappear in Earth’s shadow and in-between photos a few hours apart.

It doesn’t end there though.

At the same time Menzel was getting rid of the problematic plates, he was also evicting the first organization he ever joined as an astronomer: the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO), headquartered at Harvard College Observatory. AAVSO astronomers were interested in stars doing variable things: binaries, large ranges in dimming and brightness, and things of the like that would easily house Villaroel’s modern day ‘transients’.

But wait, there’s more! Not only did he evict AAVSO from Harvard, he chased them from their next likely home at Boston University. Using his connections to torpedo that deal–even though it had zero financial impact on Harvard–Menzel made sure AAVSO would not land at another equipped and recognized university. AAVSO ended up in a small office working as a network hub for its volunteers, no longer active, equipped, variable star observers.

The other thing he was doing at the same time? Screwing with the UFO study that Battelle Memorial Institute was to prepare for the Robertson Panel in January 1953. He did this by getting Howard Aiken–now running the Mark IV at Harvard for the US Air Force–to get several years worth of USAF ATIC UFO files, the very same ones Battelle wanted to study for their Robertson Panel report.

The other trend I saw: things seemed to happen much earlier than the generic biographies suggest. For example, Wikipedia has Menzel’s “own UFO experience on 3 March 1955” while the UFO report he filed with the US Air Force’s Blue Book happened on 12 May 1949.

These data-deletion events and then his aggressive debunking make him the grandfather of professionalized skepticism, applying military deception and counterintelligence techniques on the public while working with scientific rigor in private.

My next article will explore that further as Menzel still has 1953 through 1976 on his timeline.

Donald Menzel was a genius

It is unequivocal that Donald Menzel was a genius. There are many stories that capture this1, but perhaps one of the best is from I. Bernard Cohen as he and Henry Tropp interviewed Howard Aiken for the Computer Oral History Collection. On Menzel, Cohen recalled, “The first person who said scientifically that there has to be a positive electron, and this we can document, was Donald Menzel, but he gets no credit for it, because it was just his thinking as he was studying problems in electrodynamics and quantum theory.”2

The genius consideration may be a bitter pill for researchers digging into the cover-up of UAP/NHI–and a surprise for dogmatic-skeptics–but it is medicine worth taking to have a better frame of reference for uncovering the facts that Menzel was so successfully able to hide.3 Of course he had help, but many of the bounds Menzel tied around the data indicating an earthly presence of NHI remained secure, and secret, for decades.

This type of success in secrecy–across generations–is not accidental, it is intentionally and expertly applied.4 It is the outcome of controlled access, compartmentation, and institutional authority. It is also indicative of secrecy tightly held. Wilbert H. Smith offers a peek into the climate of secrecy in which Menzel operated when he discreetly uncovered through Canadian Embassy staff in Washington D.C. the “...operation of the saucers…” and relayed in his Top Secret memo5 from November 21, 1950:

“The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.”

Perhaps no other researcher uncovered as much about Menzel as Stanton T. Friedman, who said, “I have developed great respect for Donald Menzel. He may have been egotistical (a word I heard often from his associates, and it comes through in some of his writing about his background); however, I have to respect his discretion in maintaining an active life on behalf of his country and I admire his patriotism.”6

Thus, believing Menzel to be a boor or simple skeptic is a disservice. The question isn’t whether Menzel was intelligent. He was. The question is what he did with that intelligence as he entered the classified communications world–and why his public role as an arch-skeptic functioned so effectively. Better to abandon as much bias as possible and earnestly seek answers to:

• How did Donald Menzel apply his genius to the cover-up?

• What strategy and tactics endured, some even into our present day?

• How did his background, training and relationships contribute to his efforts?

• How did he father modern dogmatic skeptics?

Menzel’s Youthful Mind

Born on the picturesque eastern edge of Colorado’s Front Range7 and growing up in the Rocky Mountains,8 Menzel filled his days developing secret ciphers for his boyhood clubs, inventing offshoots of Pig Latin, learning Morse code, securing a Boy Scout merit badge in signaling, building his own radio transmitter, doodling, reading voraciously, and writing in abundance.9 Later in his boyhood years, he gained the amateur radio call sign W1JEX which he kept until his death. Not one for staying pent up indoors, he also enjoyed fishing, rock collecting, camping and trekking through the Rockies while a Boy Scout.

Throughout his life he retained a prodigious intellect, was strategically-minded, had a lasting and precise memory, was inventive, and was a prolific author.10 His acceleration from undergraduate to Ph.D. is summarized well by Craig Bauer and John Ulrich in their excellent, “The Cryptologic Contributions of Dr. Donald Menzel.”

As an undergraduate at the University of Denver, class of 1920, he planned on a career in chemistry. Indeed, he received his A.B. in chemistry, standing second in a class of several hundred students. In 1921, he earned A.M.s in chemistry and mathematics, also from the University of Denver. However, while working as an industrial chemist, his plans were changed by an explosion which left him seriously affected by the fumes. His doctor’s orders were to keep away from chemicals. Thus prompted to change fields, he pursued astronomy. At Princeton University, he earned an A.M. in astronomy in 1923, and a Ph.D. in astrophysics in 1924. According to Menzel, there had only been one other Ph.D. in astrophysics awarded in the U.S. at that time. His age made it even more impressive; he was born on April 11, 1901 (in Florence, Colorado).11

Prior to beginning his Ph.D. and when still considering astronomy, Menzel wrote to the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO) President Leon Campbell to learn how variable star observers worked.

“In May 1920…Campbell responded to a letter from Donald H. Menzel of Denver, Colorado, explaining in general terms how variable star observers worked. He referred the boy to the work of Henry Norris Russell, Harlow Shapley, Theodore Phillips, and Herbert Turner, who did visual or photometric work that young Menzel could ‘take up to advantage.’ Menzel’s reply indicated his desire to begin work immediately, without waiting for charts. By August, Menzel reported he had observed some eclipses of binary stars with the 6-inch Grubb refractor of the University of Denver. Within a year, Menzel won an appointment to graduate study in astronomy at Princeton University. He attended his first AAVSO meeting, the 1922 Spring Meeting hosted by the Olcotts in Norwich, and then traveled on to Cambridge for research in the HCO plate stacks. During his stay in Cambridge, Menzel roomed with the Campbell family.”12

While studying for his Ph.D. in astrophysics, “Harlow Shapley employed him at Harvard as a research assistant during the summers of 1922, 1923, and 1924.”13 These years were Menzel’s introduction to the famed plate vaults of the Harvard College Observatory. Marianne J. Dyson records: “[Henry Norris] Russell sent his graduate student Donald Menzel to Harlow Shapley at Harvard to use the plate vaults for his thesis on the ionization potential for titanium...Menzel completed his thesis ‘A Study of Line Intensities in Stellar Spectra’ in 1924.”14

Menzel went on to teach for two years, first at Iowa State and in the second at Ohio State, where in 1926 he met and married Florence Kreager. Next, with the recommendation and backing of Russell, he took a role at Lick Observatory. Here he demonstrated his expertise with photographic plates–skills honed in Harvard’s vaults–when a colleague, “...had not calibrated the photographic plates to establish the relationship between blackness of the image and intensity, a limitation Donald ingeniously managed to overcome.”15

While Menzel was earning his degrees and working at Lick Observatory, he also pseudonymously wrote science fiction as Don Howard.16 He wrote popular science in his own name and with pen names including ”Joseph N. Howard, George W. Zint, Charles T. Howard, Gene Deachem, Don Home, Haldon Menley, and Charles T. Dahama (this last name consisted of his initials with the letter ‘a’ interspersed between).”17

During the latter half of the 1920s, Menzel’s popular science writing frequently appeared in Science and Invention magazine, where he served several years as a contributing editor.18

In the years following his Ph.D., an enduring pattern solidified for Menzel. He could handle a variety of studies, groups, and projects while excelling in each, consistently demonstrating success on parallel tracks: scientific work, public writing, and pseudonymous fiction. In 1932, at age 31, Menzel was hired at Harvard College Observatory and became a permanent fixture there until his retirement and death in 1976. Menzel’s restless mind19 persisted throughout his life as he held patents in his own name,20 was an unheralded war hero,21 and kept entire swathes of his accomplishments hidden for decades.22 Of his classified work with the NSA, CIA–and other nascent intelligence organizations that preceded them–his wife of 50 years, Florence Elizabeth Menzel, never knew.23

Menzel, the Harvard Man

In the 1930s, Menzel earned a reputation for being diligent and diplomatic. “At Harvard, where theoretical activity was encouraged, the next nine years were to be scientifically the most productive of Menzel’s career. He promptly became acquainted with Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicists and persuaded them to work with him on problems of astrophysical interest.”24 He met and stayed connected with luminaries in both theory and applied sciences. These include Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, George Birkhoff, James G. Baker, Howard Aiken, Wallace Eckert, Philip Morse, Vannevar Bush, Edward Condon,25 among many others.26 Each figure named here is documented in this article with a specific connection to Menzel.

Menzel recounts working on early analog computers with Vannevar Bush in 1936:

By this time, Vannevar Bush at MIT was very active with the differential analyzer. And I went down to him and told him about my problem and between us we worked out a special machine. It was a very simple sort of gadget in which you would transform, just simply follow a line tracing and with pencil would draw out the linear that would rectify this. And so this was another step in the development [of computers].27

Also in the 1930s, Menzel recounts early computer developments with Aiken and Eckert:

I heard during this discussion about 1935, that there was likely to be a computing facility here at Harvard. And I believe Howard Aiken at that time was planning such a facility and he probably went around to the Heads of the different departments including the Astronomy Department and he asked Dr. Shapley what the needs would be of the astronomer. And of course, Dr. Shapley asked me to do that, and this was what this came out of. This was not something that I dashed off by any means. I made quite a study of it. I myself am not a celestial mechanician. I had obtained advice on this from two people. One of them was himself a pioneer in computation, Wallace Eckert. He was a very close friend of mine. His wife used to work for me.

Wallace Eckert’s wife, Dorothy Eckert, worked in the field of computerized measurement of star positions on photographic plates:

The measurement of stellar positions on photographic plates was an important program under the supervision of Dirk Brouwer, head of the astronomy department at Yale University. Its purpose was to register the data on the plates that were taken at the Yale-Columbia Southern Station. Numerous people were involved, particularly Ida Barney and Dorrit Hoffleit at Yale, and for the numerical processing and automatic scanning, Rebecca Jones and Dorothy Eckert, wife of Wallace Eckert, at the IBM Watson Laboratory.28

Even before the war, Menzel is documented forming working relationships across universities with people of a similar, pioneering bent. He was actively applying new technology to astronomy and paying attention to the development of computers. Returning to Menzel for more background on his long term friendship with the Eckerts, again from his interview with Henry Tropp:

Menzel: Well she [Dorothy “Doll” Eckert] worked at Lick Observatory when I was at Lick Observatory and then later on during World War II, when I was in the Navy, and faced with additional problems in computation, and so on, I – I hired “Doll” as they called her, to work for me in the Navy Department. And she worked for me for a couple of years. And we, well, as I say, I’ve known her since 19 .. 1928 I guess, in this work.

Henry Tropp: Of course Wallace Eckert has always been interested in this problem and the need for computation.

Menzel: Well, it was Wallace that was my primary contact in this because of the fact that I knew him so well.29

As for other scientists mentioned above, on Robert Oppenheimer, Menzel states, “...I knew him very well and he was very kind and gave me a great deal of help and encouragement.”30 Regarding Edward Condon, “It must have been in 1930 that I first became associated with the Bureau [of Standards] because I knew Ed Condon very well. And Ed used to rely on me for advice a good deal.”31 On Morse, “I got most of my [mathematical] encouragement from MIT, Philip Morse.”32 For mathematics help at Harvard, “There was only one person that I really obtained help and encouragement from and that was George Birkhoff. He was the bravest of them all and I went to him with some of my mathematical problems and he considered me a very good practical mathematician. And that was high praise coming from him.”33 And finally for Baker, “Menzel was the first to recognize [James G. Baker’s] talents for building new instruments and put him under the guidance of instrumentalists such as Joseph Boyce and George Harrison at MIT.”34

Closing the decade and by the start of the 1940s, Menzel was well-established in academia and the fields of study that would put him firmly in the establishment of an America preparing for war.35

Menzel crosses into a cleared, indoctrinated and classified world

The Second World War brought profound changes for Donald Menzel. First, he became a lieutenant commander in the Navy, holding a Top Secret Ultra Clearance. Ultra intelligence came from the program concerned with codebreaking German, and other, sourced codes. In his book “Top Secret Ultra” Bletchley Park intelligence analyst Peter Calvocoressi gives the history on nomenclature:

Enigma was the name given by the Germans to their machine. Ultra was the name given by us to the intelligence we got from breaking Enigma. Top Secret Ultra, to give it its full name, was a grade or category of intelligence. It applied to documents and to what was in them. Some things were Secret, others were Most Secret. But Most Secret did not mean what it said. For some things were more secret than Most Secret. These were Most Secret Ultra - changed to the dubiously grammatical Top Secret Ultra when the Americans came into the war.36

Menzel’s boyhood ciphers were no longer a hobby. Code breaking and code making became a key aspect of his wartime activities–featuring teaching secret classes of “Code Girl”37 WAVES38 for use in the total war effort. His other activities included analysis of the ionosphere to determine optimal times for radio propagation,39 direction and location finding of enemy submarines,40 transponder signals, and communications intelligence.

Also during the war, his parents, mother Ina Grace (née Zint) Menzel and father Charles Theodore Menzel, died less than a year apart on November 6, 194241 and August 17, 1943,42 respectively. The sense of loneliness and reevaluation that accompanies the loss of both parents didn’t alter Menzel’s path; rather, the passings cemented his identity and network of, “...many contacts in the military industrial complex.”43

The boy genius was now in his 40s, a father to two daughters and an instructing mentor to many more young women–eagerly seeking to serve in the Office of Naval Intelligence. The mix of these traits would define his closest friends and confidants moving forward: intelligence, clearances, scientific discovery, industriousness, inventiveness, and subterfuge.

In 1942, this work mix brought Menzel into the blandly named, “Navy Communications Annex” and that unit–when later combined with the Army Signal Intelligence Service–would become the National Security Agency (NSA).44 Earlier, Menzel worked with the Office of Scientific Research and Development under Vannevar Bush with one of his developments there being, “...a gun sight that could be used when the plane that was flying in from the direction of the sun.”45 (Patent US761649A) In 1942 though, now fully housed within the Navy, he found out that he was to be in charge of mathematical and physical research for Naval Communications, combining his knowledge in astronomy, radio ham operations, and the effects of solar activity on radio propagation.46

This station also means Menzel would have U. S. Navy manual DNC 5, “Communications Instructions” [referenced earlier in Unquestionably Skeptical (About UFOs)] as one of the textbooks for the courses he continued to teach to WAVES. With DNC 5 as a textbook, his courses would be certain to cover cryptography, cryptanalysis, deception, manipulative transmissions, and misleading material.47 He was also keenly aware of radio countermeasures. Even further, developing a type of computing machine for the Navy that gave probability and the likely fix for enemy submarines when they transmitted, Menzel was able to provide coordinates that, “...sank dozens of submarines, especially in the Caribbean.”48

Menzel’s successes in cryptanalysis, direction finding, and novel computing methods–on top of his core curriculums in astrophysics and communications led to his becoming an NSA and CIA consultant for more than two decades following the war. This later consulting role is documented in primary records and Menzel’s own statements, presented in later sections.

Returning to our photo from the opening of this article, Menzel, center of frame, is surrounded by astronomers and combined forces from the US and Canada. The date is on or near July 9th, 1945, when the cloud-obscured solar eclipse overhead would hit totality. Victory in Europe was secured two months earlier on May 8th. The first nuclear bomb would be detonated a week later on July 16th at Trinity as part of the Manhattan Project. Three weeks later, on August 6th, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, then on Nagasaki on August 9th. Within two months on either side of this photograph, World War II was over.

Menzel’s Majestic matriculation

For many, the end of World War II meant an end to their military service.49 For Menzel it only looked that way. He returned as the first chair of the Harvard Astronomy Department,50 but he would remain the Commanding Officer at the Naval Reserve Unit in Boston continuing cryptographic work.51 Additionally, he was a scientist on the receiving end of Operation Paperclip, “...to the advantage of coronal studies.”52 Menzel sought, “...to find out all that German scientists had been doing in coronagraphic studies during the war.”53 And, “...to get several of the newest German coronagraphs being produced at the Zeiss plant at Jena transferred to observatories in the Western Hemisphere.”54 Author Ruth Liebowitz puts it succinctly, “When the war ended, some of the scientists who had been in wartime employ now disengaged. Menzel was one of those who did not.”55

The Mark I computer would also remain in service at Harvard’s Cruft Lab, overseen by Professor and former US Navy Commander Howard H. Aiken.56 Entering service in 1944, the Mark I, followed by the Mark II and Mark III, continued to run communications intelligence (COMINT) calculations57 after earlier being put to use by John von Neumann in calculating the implosion of the atomic bomb.58

All these–Menzel, Aiken, Von Neumann59–would remain “COMINT indoctrinated personnel” long term with the United States Communications Intelligence Board (USCIB). As the postwar period slid into the Cold War the partnership with the London Signals Intelligence Board (LSIB) grew into the Five Eyes Alliance (FVEY) with the addition of Canada in 1949, then Australia and New Zealand in 1956.60 With the cooperation between GCHQ and NSA flourishing during the Cold War, Menzel remained equally as busy.

Back to the immediate aftermath of the war:

In 1946, after learning that Army Signal Corps’ researchers had detected radar signals that had reflected from the Moon,61 Donald Menzel of the Harvard College Observatory proposed to the Navy Department that the Moon could be deliberately used as a reflector for radio signals. Menzel had served as Naval Reserve commander during World War II and advised the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff as a member of their radio propagation committee. That proposal would find its way to James Trexler, who back in his college days at Southern Methodist University had tried reflecting high frequency radio waves from meteor trails as part of a radio propagation study. That put Trexler into the small club that was apt to have radio, communication, and cosmic objects in the same thought.62

As for “cosmic objects” UFOs were likewise active. During the war, a “UFO crash retrieval case occurred in 1941 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. This crash kicked off early reverse-engineering work, but it did not create a unified intelligence effort to exploit possible technological gains apart from the Manhattan Project uses.”63 In leaked document records, this crash retrieval, a few more associated with the “Battle of Los Angeles,” which occurred on the night of February 24th and early morning hours of the 25th in 1942, and others prompted the development of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit.

On March 5, 1942, George C. Marshall writes a top-secret memo to the President, which states: “Regarding the air raid over Los Angeles it was learned by Army G2 that Rear Admiral Anderson recovered an unidentified airplane off the coast of California with no bearing on conventional explanation… This Headquarters has come to the determination that the mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and according to secret intelligence sources they are in all probability of interplanetary origin.”64

This memorandum is a categorized copy under the header of INTERPLANETARY PHENOMENON UNIT, which in 1984 was acknowledged to have existed, but the records of which were no longer available to the Department of the Army as they were, “…transferred to the Air Force in the late 1950’s.”65

Bringing this into the present day, these crash recoveries are what Age Of Disclosure documentary film producer and director Dan Farah, in an interview with Chris Como, states as being, “...recoveries started prior to Roswell, during World War II in fact.”66

UFO investigations continued in step with contacts, notably with “foo fighters” during the war and “ghost rockets” in Scandinavia during the summer of 1946. The ghost rocket flap saw both US Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and General Jimmy Doolittle travel to Sweden to investigate, urging, “…Intelligence to conduct research and collect information in an effort to identify the sightings.”67

Returning to the other side of the world, Menzel was busy touring sites for a second solar observatory, to be situated on Sacramento Peak, in New Mexico amongst the mountains that overlook Alamogordo, White Sands Missile Range, Holloman Air Force Base to the west, and Roswell to the east. “For the first reconnoitring trip to the Sacramento range, Menzel enlisted his friend, Ralph S. Damon, the president of American Airlines (and later of TWA), who had an interest in solar astronomy. Damon provided one of his research planes for an initial aerial survey and came along himself. Menzel and O’Day then explored further on foot.”68 The dates of that trip? July 2, 1947 to July 7, 1947.

Historian Richard Dolan adds:

Around the time of the Roswell crash and the inundation of flying saucer reports in the American Western region. Dr. Menzel and Dr. Walter Orr Roberts travel to White Sands, New Mexico, on a special research airplane provided by American Airlines. The purpose of their trip is initially unclear, and the Denver Post reports on July 6 that there was a meeting in New Mexico between Los Alamos officials and Dr. Roberts, but attempts to locate Roberts or the officials were unsuccessful. Dr. Roberts, who is a regular contributor to the Denver Post, explains upon his return to Denver on July 7 that the trip was for the viewing of a V-2 launch on July 2, which had been suddenly canceled. However, there are doubts about this explanation, as there is no record of a V-2 launch on July 2, and the word “cancellation” seems evasive. It is also unclear why Roberts and Menzel remained at White Sands until July 7 if there were no launch results to collect and study. The nature of the meeting with Los Alamos officials and its connection to the V-2 launch remains uncertain.69

All of this serves to answer Stanton Friedman’s rhetorical question, “How could [Menzel] possibly have been a member of a group that was fully aware of the crash of a flying saucer outside Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947?”

In the leaked and disputed–but timely–IPU documents below, it’s possible Menzel may have even been the scientist listed as part of the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit given orders to investigate the crash site since he was present and held Ultra clearance.

The Ultra level of clearance–which Menzel still held–was later used on the IPU Summary Report covering the incident.

What’s even more remarkable is that Menzel’s involvement could have been related to early experiments of targeted shoot-downs of UAP, as stated in Luis Elizondo’s Imminent, “An electromagnetic pulse generated from one of the nearby test ranges had inadvertently intervened with the craft’s technology and caused it to crash.”70 While Elizondo makes the claim of an ‘electromagnetic pulse’–possibly radar–interfering with UAP in 2024, Guy Hottel, a Special Agent for the FBI notes the claim much earlier, in 1950, “...the saucers were found in New Mexico due to the fact that the Government has a very high-powered radar set-up in that area and it is believed the radar interferes with the controlling mechanism of the saucers.”71 Additionally, scientists Menzel and O’Day, working with Secret clearances from and for the Army Air Forces (about to become the United States Air Force [USAF] on September 18, 1947)72 were also considering Sacramento Peak as an overwatch for V-2 rocket missile tests, as this late 1940s image shows multiple radar stations running precise triangulation. Had Menzel’s success in targeting submarines graduated to UAP?

While Menzel’s level of know-how and direct involvement in this moment of history is still speculative, one documented result is known. In another leaked presidential memo, the timeline shows just a week after USAF became its own branch, Menzel is listed as part of a group established by the special classified executive order of President Truman on 24 September, 1947: Majestic-12 (Majic-12).73

Menzel enters the battlefield of persistent secrecy and managed public perception

By late September 1947, the available paper trail and later claims converge on Menzel as a UAP/NHI insider; the open question becomes how early that began. As taken, he certainly knew by then, and very well could have known much earlier. Prior to becoming known in public as the leading skeptic and debunker of UFOs, Menzel had a busy schedule in getting briefed. With the Sacramento Peak project taken on by the newly minted Air Force and the main contract running from May 1948 to May 1953, Menzel says he was, “shuttling back and forth between Cambridge and Air Force [Materiel Command] Headquarters at Wright Field, Dayton, Ohio, about once a week.”74 Menzel’s Wright Field activity was earlier than that though, as he was “anxious” to address the heavy discussion around the Alamogordo project with officials there.

His trips back to New Mexico became no less frequent, and he was often heading to Washington D.C. as well. A founder at one of Menzel’s post-war consulting appointments–Walter J. “Wally” Moe of Engineering Research Associates (ERA)–noted that Menzel left their project in 1947 to go to work on a ‘hush hush’ project. “No one knew what it was.” As the Sacramento Peak Project was reported on by the press from the initial stages, it had to be something else. Later Moe recounts, “that Menzel was suddenly called to Washington in the summer of 1947 to work on some highly classified job. (He and I [Bill McNeff] believe this was probably the newly forming NSA and the MJ-12 group.)”75

Similarly, government activity following Roswell was also a flurry as the National Security Act of 1947 enacted on July 26, 1947 created several Executive Branch and military entities: National Security Council, Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Resources Board, Secretary of Defense, United States Air Force, and more.76 One of the first activities of the newly formed Air Force was Project Blue Book, which began the same year (1947) and ran till the end of 1969.77

Following briefings, the likely role of Menzel’s involvement with the Majestic-12 Group would be counter-intelligence, a skill he developed–and taught, as mentioned earlier–during the war while in the Navy’s NSA predecessor: OP-20-G.78

With a key element being “DECEPTION” and the “Study of all available information with respect to enemy methods of communication, with a view towards developing counter-measure plans.”79

In 1949, Menzel is tracked by the FBI going on a fishing trip with the earlier mentioned Edward U. Condon. The report states, “Boston T-4 furnished on August 29, 1949, a Harvard College Observatory ‘Gossip Sheet’ prepared and distributed for the personnel at the Harvard Observatory by HARLOW SHAPLEY. The Boston Office has a copy of this item which is dated August, 1949. The Sheet reflects that during July, 1949, Dr. MENZEL had been on a fishing trip with Dr. EDWARD U. CONDON, among others. The extent of MENZEL’s personal associations with CONDON, beyond the foregoing, are not known in Boston.”

To add to the intrigue, the FBI Special Agent in Charge working on the Menzel file: Guy Hottel.

This is the same Special Agent out of the Washington Field Office (WFO) that was on the ‘flying saucer’ file with informants telling him about high powered radar targeting UFOs in New Mexico. Even earlier FBI documents connect the three, as SAC Guy Hottel documents Condon and Menzel in the same Internal Security - R (Bureau File #100-205955) chronicling activities in 1948 in relation to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) investigation into Condon for communist sympathies which began on March 1, 1948.80

Another factor for the increased scrutiny of Menzel during this time was his pursuit of a Q-Clearance–a clearance which Condon already held after working on the Manhattan Project during the war–for a Consultant position with the University of California, Atomic Energy Commission Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico on July 22, 1949.

Also in 1949, Menzel would prod the Blue Book process by filing his own report of a daylight sighting while his driver ferried him from Holloman Air Force Base to Alamogordo between 09:15 and 09:30 on the 12th of May. Doing so connected him with their database and provided first hand experience with how Project Blue Book would handle cases.

Menzel would continue making inroads into Blue Book in the coming years, most notably working with Navy-Harvard-USCIB cleared colleague Howard Aiken in the summer of 1952 to collect UFO files from the Air Technical Intelligence Center (ATIC) in preparation for Menzel’s first book on the topic.81 Having these reports prevented Battelle Memorial Institute from using them in a statistical study of UFOs as a supplement to the Robertson Panel taking place in January 1953.82 Blue Book chief Edward Ruppelt relates the event in his personal papers:

[Menzel] said that he had decided to write a book and wanted to know when he could come to ATIC to study our files. Although this was against the policies, Col. Dunn suggested that we go ahead and try to set it up. I checked with AMC security people and they said that he had no clearance and that temporarily, he couldn’t get one. Since ATIC is a secure area he couldn’t be allowed to visit for any length of time. He was notified of this and didn’t like it. Col. Dunn sent him a letter, very much to the point, saying that he could get his data through channels, from the PIO, like anyone else.

Not long after this I had a visit from Dr. Aiken, of Harvard, a computer specialist. Aiken said that he thought that maybe he could make something of the UFO reports if we would be kind enough to loan them to him. He was working for ATIC at the time and had the proper clearances and storage facilities that allowed him to store documents borrowed from ATIC. We packed up three years of reports and sent them to him. He was to send them back to us in a month. One month passed, then two, and not a word from Aiken. I called him several times and he was ‘just getting ready to send them back’ each time. Finally I sent Bob Olsen [of BLUE BOOK] up to Boston to get the reports but when he arrived Aiken couldn’t produce time. We did get them back a few days later.83

With Menzel having the data and connections to Howard P. Robertson–a fellow USCIB indoctrinated person–Menzel was able to influence the Robertson Panel as well, but this is getting a bit too far ahead. Back in 1950, Menzel was about to experience his own counter-intelligence pressure.

These accumulated early Majestic-12 counter-intelligence efforts reached a tipping point for at least one security office, as the associations84 and behavior would trigger Loyalty Hearings of Menzel, beginning in 1950. The amount of operations Menzel was running at this time were immense, as he recounts, “I was putting in about an 80-hour week on the average and thoroughly enjoying my work.”85 He even made time to be interviewed by Edward R. Murrow for the April 7th, 1950 news radio report, “Case of the Flying Saucer.”86

Then, the hammer fell.

From Menzel’s own journaled review of the event:

April 13, 1950 marked the beginning of the unhappiest, most traumatic experience of my life. Although the War had been over for more than 4 years, l’d continued as Commanding Officer of Communications Unit 1-1 of the US Naval Reserve in Boston. I was a consultant with TOP SECRET ULTRA clearance to the National Security Agency which had replaced the Naval Communication Unit I had been associated with during the War. The National Bureau of Standards had requested my services as consultant in the field of radio propagation at that time. Was on the Visiting Committee to that Bureau, reporting directly to the Secretary of Commerce. US Air Force experienced various problems associated with radio communications, rockets used for Space research, etc. Had specifically requested my services as a consultant. The duties were not onerous, but interesting. Had designed several experiments to be sent up in rockets. One of these had plans to detect X-rays which then concluded from theoretical studies might be coming to the earth.”87

Two airmen presented the 8-page document to Menzel at his home in Cambridge that April evening. It would initiate a nearly year-long period–until January 1951–until Menzel was cleared of any disloyalty and his Air Force clearances were reinstated. It was an active period of investigations. Recall this is the same window of time when Wilbert H. Smith sent his Top Secret “...operation of the saucers…” memo–November 21, 1950. Even with these leaks, the extremely tight compartmentalization of MJ-12 appears to have held until all the original members were deceased. At no point in the hearing did Menzel mention any of his other clearances. Once again, the man could compartmentalize exceptionally well.

With the loyalty hearing over, Menzel’s cover intact, and his lesser clearances in good standing with the armed services and intelligence investigators, it was back to full steam ahead on Majestic-12 activities. Old friend, fellow computer wonk, and Majic-12 compatriot Vannevar Bush was quick to congratulate Menzel on the success.

During 1951-1952, as with most years, Menzel published several papers, two of which–Menzel, D. H. & Sen, H. K., “Transfer of Radiation. III. Reflection Effect in Eclipsing Binaries.”, 1951 and Gaposchkin, C. H. P., Gaposchkin, S., & Menzel, D. H., “Variable stars in Milton field 54”, 1952–were close examinations of the HCO plate collection. A third paper, "Magneto-hydrostatics and solar prominences" published in Astronomical Journal, Vol. 56, p. 135 was commissioned by Air Material Command and covered how magnetism can steer plasma to overcome gravity–in the case of the paper, coronal mass being ejected from the sun.

Also in that year, "...President Truman established a Presidential Commission under the chairmanship of George A. Brownell to study the communications intelligence effort and to make recommendations concerning the management of the effort."88 The resulting report developed the foundational management of what became the National Security Agency in 1952.89 Menzel’s preparation, and a large ramp up in UFO activity, opened the main battlefield for counterintelligence and psychological warfare operations in the decades to come: public perception.

1952 - Menzel brings counter-intel to the layman: debunker, data-deleter and arch-skeptic

No year is more pivotal in Menzel’s Unquestionably Skeptical timeline than 1952.

Here are some highlights–with lasting consequences–that took place in that year:

• In February, James Bryant Conant asks J. Robert Oppenheimer to assess HCO and the astronomy department

• Oppenheimer was charged with finding the new HCO director (Menzel)90

• The Summer of ‘52 UFO Sighting Wave occurs, culminating over Washington D.C.

• Menzel publishes debunking articles in popular magazines and newspapers

• Using Dr. Aiken’s access, Menzel acquires Air Force ATIC UFO records

• Menzel’s first book, “Flying Saucers” is written. (Published February 5, 1953)

• Menzel becomes acting Director of the Harvard College Observatory - September, 1952

• The “Menzel Gap” begins

• AAVSO is given eviction notice from Harvard

• On November 4th, the NSA effectively forms under authority of a Presidential memorandum91

• Menzel meddles with the CIA’s “Robertson Panel”

• “Aviation Week & Space Technology” covers Menzel’s debunks with new reporter: Phil Klass

From the side of UAP activity, Dr. James E. MacDonald provides an excellent introduction to the year:

In 1952, a brief year’s energetic investigation (still not characterized by strong scientific expertise, but definitely characterized by vigorous Air Force checking and data-gathering in many striking cases) was the high-watermark of the official American UFO studies. The year 1952 saw about 1500 reports turned into Project Bluebook, some 300 of which were conceded to be Unidentifieds. When I visited Bluebook in 1966 for the first time, I was quite astonished at the number of feet of files on 1952 cases - and much more astonished to scan the contents of randomly sampled file-folders within that year’s shelfful. Case after case of, to me, entirely inexplicable cases, many coming from within Air Force channels (pilots, controllers, ground crewmen, etc.) told the story of the outstanding year in American UFO history.92

Archivist and historian Loren E. Gross begins his history of 1952 simply: “The BIG year.”93 Then, in his supplemental notes, goes on to detail archives from Barry Greenwood, Jan Aldrich, Robert Todd, Dr. James McDonald (who ‘discovered a lot of valuable data’), Robert Gribble, George Fawcett, Murray Bott, Les Treece-Sinclair, Paul Cerny, Leon Davidson, the files of APRO, NICAP, MUFON and CUFOS, and the Air Force’s own New York Romeike press clipping service preserved on microfilm.94

Investigator Leonard Stringfield also records his highest year of crash retrieval reports in 1952, detailing a supply chain of New Mexico crash and recovery, lo-boy transport, and subsequent storage of craft and occupants at Wright Patterson AFB95 while Stringfield was unaware at the time of the radar and EMP measures active in the West detailed earlier (Elizondo, Hottel, et al).

The maturing MJ-12 Committee–providing regular briefings for President Truman, and later preparing to brief incoming President Eisenhower during the year96–could have often been prodded by one of their military axioms, “The enemy gets a vote”97 when considering how to counteract the activity with their cover-up.

Even more speculatively, considering the attention of NHI and presence of UAP, there was curiosity–or concern–over the marked increase in nuclear detonations. First in volume, as the years 1951-1953 saw 47 detonations to the previous years’ 9 (1945-1950)–a 422% increase;98 and second, in scale as the first hydrogen bomb–Ivy Mike–was detonated, 31 October 1952, on Enewetak Atoll and had a 10.4 Megaton yield99–a 69,233% increase over the 15 kiloton Little Boy dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

1952 was a big year.

And Donald Menzel had plenty to do.

The known retirement of Harlow Shapley–then HCO Director–was on Menzel’s calendar for September, 1952 years in advance since Shapley would then be at Harvard’s mandatory retirement age for the era.100 His preparation for that event was already in place through his own studies of the plate stacks and his working relationships with Wallace Eckert, Doll Eckert, and Howard Aiken. While plans were in motion on this front early in 1952, their execution would wait till after Shapley’s retirement.

Another vector in Menzel’s public-facing skeptical shift was literature. Several books had already been printed on the topic of UAP/NHI including Gerald Heard’s “Is Another World Watching? The Riddle of the Flying Saucers“ which was first published in 1950 had already gone through two editions and three reprints.101 Other titles available at this time were: “The Flying Saucers Are Real” by Donald Keyhoe (New York: Fawcett, 1950); “The Flying Saucer as I Saw It” by Kenneth Arnold (Boise, Idaho: Self-published, 1950); “Behind the Flying Saucers” by Frank Scully (New York: Henry Holt, 1950); “The Coming of the Saucers: A Documentary Report on Sky Objects That Have Mystified the World” by Kenneth A. Arnold & Raymond A. Palmer (Boise, Idaho: Self-published, 1952); and even a 1952 pamphlet published from General Motors titled “Firsthand Facts About the Flying Saucer Mystery” by Henry J. Taylor. Arnold and Palmer’s book was announced at the very beginning of the year, “…in January 1952, Ray Palmer made known that both he and Arnold would team up to produce a full size hardback about the flying saucer mystery.”102

In addition to the books being published, investigative research organizations began to spin up. In January, the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) drafted its charter with the goal of regularly publishing news bulletins.103 The efforts of Donald Keyhoe–before, during and after 1952–would coalesce into the formation of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) in 1957,104 with a press release announcing its prospectus on 30 August, 1956.105

All these sorties into studying the existence of UAP/NHI–their reality still reported as classified higher than the H-bomb about to explode later in the year–had to be countered. Menzel’s experience and connections in having written for many years in popular science prints–plus his academic papers,106 military and intelligence reports–would give him the bulk of material to help write his premier debunking tome, “Flying Saucers”. His position at Harvard also allowed him extensive media and publishing connections, especially in this time period107 as he had sat on the Harvard University Press Board of Syndies for a four year term from 1 July 1948 to 1 July 1952,108 joining at the first available annual opening after the events of Roswell. He was also still in the midst of his long term role (1941-1959) on the Editorial Advisory Board of “Sky and Telescope” magazine. Meanwhile, MJ-12 colleague Vannevar Bush was on the Executive Committee at the Smithsonian Institution (1940-1955).109 His various publisher connections were following along closely, with the New York Times reporting later in the year that he would publish his first work on flying saucers as “a book due from Harvard this fall” in their Book Review section.110

The battle between the press in 1952 had no better salvo than the bombshell dropped 7 April on the cover of Life magazine, “THERE IS A CASE FOR INTERPLANETARY SAUCERS”.111

With rising star Marilyn Monroe’s debut magazine cover, this issue of Life magazine was clearly going to be one of its most popular.112 Of further concern to the Majestic-12 Committee, “There is a Case for Interplanetary Saucers” treated the existence of UAP/NHI in a straightforward way as a topic worth studying. Later that year, the British Interplanetary Society recounted the media battle thus, “Following the now famous Life article on April 7, Look for June 17 and Life's sister-journal, Time, for June 9, discussed at some length the theories about flying saucers of Dr. Donald H. Menzel, a professor of astrophysics at Harvard University.”113 Menzel’s self-authored article in Look directly countered the earlier article in Life using photos taken in his lab that mimicked the layout and style of those in Life of the Lubbock Lights.

Amplifying Menzel’s reach, his position was recounted in the July 3rd issue of The China Mail,114 June 11th issue of Variety,115 and the June 9th issue of Time116–to name a few. The biggest media firestorm, however, was yet to come.

The tug-of-war in the press between documenters and debunkers in the summer of 1952 lost out to the third-party exploits of UAP and NHI. As a consequence, the U.S. Air Force held a press conference on 29 July where General Samford and others reiterated Menzel’s cover-up claims of “meteorological phenomena of one sort or another, light aberrations” for the radar returns:

THE PRESS: General, the Captain mentioned a moment ago or had the thought that when there is temperature inversion the men know who are observing radar. Is it all right to ask if the Air Force thinks that these objects the other night were a result of temperature inversion?

MAJOR GENERAL SAMFORD: Well, I’ll answer that first, try to, and then ask Captain Jemes for an opinion. I don’t think that we are quite sure that the Menzel theory of temperature inversion or that scientists are sure that that is a good theory: It’s supported by some people. Other people who have equal competence, it would appear, discredit it. So the gamble as to whether that is the cause or not is about a fifty-fifty proposition. It’s appealing. It does satisfy certain concerns. Is that a fair statement or answer to that question?

CAPTAIN JAMES: Sir, the Menzel theory applies mainly to light rays.

MAJOR GENERAL SAMFORD: Yes.

CAPTAIN JAMES: In regard to the temperature inversion effect on radar waves that is fairly well established.

THE PRESS: There’s no doubt about the latter, is there?

CAPTAIN JAMES: That’s right.

THE PRESS: That’s been established.117

Menzel was back on the clock and getting his mirage and inversion talking points in the mouths of the Air Force and in front of more press. When August came, the New York Times reiterated Menzel’s reflection lab work. These debunks were disconnected from the reality of the situation. As radar and visuals were not at all solely ground based and were multi-source from both trained witnesses on the ground and pilots with radar operators in the air watching the UAP converge and react to jet interceptor positions.118 Menzel and the Air Force deliberately concealed the scope of the encounters, covered recently in a retrospective by CNN:

Before Patterson could close the distance, the lights broke formation and began converging on his interceptor. Radar scopes in the tower showed the targets tightening around his position. In the cockpit, Shirley Red 1 was suddenly engulfed in blinding light.

“They’re closing in on me,” he radioed to controllers, voice edged with alarm. “What shall I do?”

Patterson, a Korean War veteran, was asking if he should open fire on whatever was drowning his aircraft in light.

There was no immediate answer. Controllers and military officials who had gathered in the tower, by several accounts, were stunned into silence.

For a breathless moment, Patterson was alone with the lights circling his aircraft. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, they shot away into the night, streaking off radar in seconds.119

Remember that at this same time–the summer of 1952–Menzel was acquiring three years of Air Force ATIC UFO files through the clearance and request of Dr. Howard Aiken. Aiken, now running the Mark IV for the Air Force at Harvard, was able to provide cleared and secured storage on campus for the files while processing computer programs on the AF UFO files, mere blocks from where Menzel worked.120

This combination by Menzel of deception tactics—custody of case files and a mass-media explanatory campaign—maps cleanly onto the counterintelligence measures described in DNC 5, “which attempts to prevent the enemy from obtaining information of military value” and gives his cadre within MJ12 the upper hand in:

a. Capture or salvage of codes, ciphers, messages, plans, communication equipment, documents, or other classified material.

b. Theft, espionage, observation, and photography.

c. Interception of mail, wire, visual, radio, and telephone traffic.

d. Radio direction finding or tracking.

e. Traffic analysis.

f. Cryptanalysis.

g. Imitative deception, spurious messages, and falsification of communications.121

These are techniques that are common with dogmatic skeptics straight into our present day. Back in 1952, one more critical data source remained—Harvard’s own plates and programs—waiting just beyond Shapley’s retirement.

The Menzel Gap - Professor Menzel in the Vault Library with the Lead Pipe

As August gave way to September 1952, Harvard College Observatory (HCO) Director, Harlow Shapley, crossed into his mandatory retirement. Donald Menzel became Acting Director. A few historians depict this as a challenging choice for Harvard, but by then Menzel and close colleague Fred Whipple were bringing in the bulk of funding for the department.122 Another HCO astronomer, Dorrit Hoffleit, noted of the time:

Shortly before he reached mandatory retirement age, Shapley asked me to sample plates in the various series, selecting a pile of those I felt could safely be discarded, another of ones I thought might be controversial, and some of the poorer plates I thought should nevertheless be kept. When I finished, he would check my selections and draw his own conclusion, namely that the number of plates sufficiently poor to justify discarding was so small it would be a waste of time to search for them. Throw them away if you happen to come across any, he told me, and then be sure to make an appropriate note in the record books and card catalogs so that no one would subsequently search for them in vain.

But the new Director [Menzel] had other plans. His own work made comparatively little use of the plate collection, whereas office space seemed to be at a premium. He ordered his executive secretary, who had little if any experience in astronomy, to throw away the poorer plates to the extent of removing about a third of the collection, clearing the equivalent of one of the three floors of the plate vault. Moreover, this was being done in such a hurry that no records were kept of what was discarded. This wholesale destruction was driving me crazy. Finally I wrote the Dean what I thought. After that life naturally became intolerable and although I had tenure at Harvard, I resigned (nor was I the only one to do so).123

When Menzel became HCO Acting Director in September 1952,124 he quickly had one-third of the night sky photographic plates discarded. Further, he halted collecting night sky photographs during the entire period he was director.125 This became known as the “Menzel Gap” While historically the Menzel Gap126 has been explained as a cost-cutting or data-reduction measure, when all the pieces are assembled, the timeline is considered, and the outcome measured, the destruction of one-third of the astronomical photographic plates accomplished a targeted removal of UAP data.

A present day astronomer, Beatriz Villaroel, reveals what was likely on the plates Menzel targeted for removal. In her work, she used data from the First and Second Palomar Sky Surveys (POSS-I and POSS-II) and measured photographic plates prior to the first satellite launched into orbit, Sputnik I on October 4, 1957.127 This allows for a proxy highly similar to the set of data as Menzel would have had at HCO in 1952–a pre-satellite plate-based record of the night sky. Her papers, “Aligned, multiple-transient events in the First Palomar Sky Survey”, “Transients in the Palomar Observatory Sky Survey (POSS-I) may be associated with nuclear testing and reports of unidentified anomalous phenomena”, and “A bright triple transient that vanished within 50 min” detail what she found. Namely, transients–bright flashes appearing and then disappearing–on photographic plates produced one hour apart.

Back into the timeline of 1952, the “A bright triple transient that vanished within 50 min” paper deals with one of the very nights of activity in Washington D.C., “A particularly interesting case of multiple transient event was discovered in the POSS I Red image, of 50 min exposure time, taken on 1952 July 19. They exhibit no evidence of peculiar shapes or elongation that would occur with asteroids, meteorites, cosmic rays, photographic plate defects, or aircraft.”128

In the paper “Aligned, Multiple-transient Events in the First Palomar Sky Survey” Villaroel finds her most statistically precise result, “...a highly significant (∼22σ) deficit of POSS-I transients within Earth’s shadow when compared with the theoretical hemispheric shadow coverage at 42,164 km altitude. The deficit is still present though at reduced significance (∼7.6σ) when a more realistic plate-based coverage is considered.”129 A 5σ threshold is often treated in physics as ‘discovery-level’ significance; 7.6σ and 22σ are far beyond that.130 In other words, the shiny, reflective transients do not reflect back sunlight when in the Earth’s shadow. What is the likelihood Menzel–conventionally most famous for his study of the sun, globetrotting efforts in viewing solar eclipses, and patents on tools to view the solar corona without an eclipse–would not have checked for eclipsing shadow effects when viewing photographic plates chronicling the nights of peak UFO waves?

Villarroel et al131 used automated pipelines, but even 70 years prior, Menzel had operationally feasible automation tools to pursue catalog-driven, punch-card-assisted screening. Here’s how this could have done in 1952:

1. With Air Force ATIC UFO data scrubbed by Aiken using the Mark IV, Menzel could identify suspect dates.

2. Further dates would be available from reports shared within Majestic-12. 1 and 2 create a targeted data set.

3. Working with Wallace and Dorothy Eckert, Menzel would have access to automatic star measuring machines.

4. Punched cards program the machine to locate stars on the plates, and vice versa, record all shiny objects on a plate.

Wallace Eckert explains the process in this way:

In the new machine we will not only place the photographic plate, but also a stack of a thousand cards, one for each star. Each card will contain the approximate position from the old catalog made 75 years ago. The machine will read the card, find the star, measure its position and punch the measured position on the same card. The new program will then be simply a matter of traffic control, so to speak, through the machinery.

After the machines have automatically performed the measurement and computation, certain data must be selected and displayed for inspection so that the astronomer can see what is going on; here again the machines come into use. We look upon this equipment as purely a slave which does the work and exhibits the material in such a way that the astronomer can exercise the judgment which formerly came only after he had exhausted himself on a lifetime of routine work.132

Whereas Menzel in his interview with Henry Tropp says:

Donald Menzel (DM): One thing that I was particularly interested in was the automatic measuring machines. Measuring the positions of stars.

Henry Tropp (HT): It was an automatic machine?

DM: It was an automatic machine. You put on the plate with a spectrum on it, and it went right through. You had, there were computing devices on it that made proper corrections for the different non-linearities in the machine itself, in the spectrograph itself. And at the same time, if I recall correctly, it measured the intensities of the spectral lines in some sort of a system of enquiry.

HT: But directly from the photographic plates?

DM: Yea. That’s correct.133

These machines could process both spectrum and position. Eckert published his paper “Automatic measurement of photographic star positions” with the fully running machine up in March 1954.134 While the non-automatic machines and Menzel’s relationship with the Eckerts was in place since 1927/1928. Dorrit Hoffleit expands on the plate destruction in her autobiography:

One of the first things Menzel did was to ask his secretary (whose previous job had been as personnel manager for the Jordan Marsh department store) to discard a third of the plates in the plate stacks in order to make room for more office space. When some astronomers took courage to object after many plates had been thrown out, he continued having plates removed from the stacks but stored in the cellar under the 15-inch telescope dome. He had long plank shelves made, and put so many plates on each shelf that the planks sagged in the middle in such a way that the upper shelves actually rested on top of the plates on the shelf below. Moreover, there was no concrete or other covering on the dirt floor. Although the foundation consisted of huge stone blocks, roots of trees penetrated the walls, and the humidity was high. Inevitably the plates were doomed.

The Harvard plate collection had been the largest in the world, probably the only one covering the sky from pole to pole with some series dating back to 1882. How could any astronomer, regardless of his own speciality in research, wantonly destroy so high a percentage of plates that were vital to many research projects, especially for variable stars?135

If some of the variable stars were equivalent to transients which prior to Sputnik were likely to be what Menzel and crew had tracked from space to crash sites on earth, the motivation for Menzel’s destruction is obvious. It was also a motivation that was an outlier for Menzel himself. The rocks and ores he collected as a child in Colorado he donated to the University of Denver where they can be found today. His ham-radio handle–W1JEX–he kept from childhood until he was a “Silent Key” in death.136 His letters, research and other materials populate archives at Harvard, Denver, the American Philosophical Society and more. His knowledge of the photographic plates was intimate and his ‘ingenious’ study of them was a key aspect of his Ph.D. thesis.

Even Menzel’s secretary in the year and a half prior, Catherine B Wyatt, is an outlier. Stanton Friedman tracked her down before she died, knowing that she likely held secret clearances:

Since it was clear from his comments to Kennedy that Menzel had the facilities for storing, preparing, shipping and receiving classified documents, I made a serious effort to find out who did his classified work for him in the late ‘40s and ‘50s. I eventually, after considerable effort, found a woman who had been a graduate student in one of the cryptograph courses, worked for him in Washington during the war as a kind of secretary and assistant, went back to Harvard with him, worked for him there, and wound up marrying one of his graduate students. He was like a father to her. As a matter of fact, her marriage took place in his house.137

After arranging an interview over the phone, when Friedman attempted to meet Wyatt in person she cancelled the meeting. Prior, Friedman had mentioned his interest in MJ-12 to Wyatt, but avoided the topic of UFOs. He later noted how seriously Wyatt reacted to the proposed meeting: contacting her lawyer, not daring to “tell Florence [Menzel] and Liz [daughter of D. Menzel] about MJ-12,” and “seemed more concerned about Navy stuff than gossip.” Near the close of Friedman’s note he adds a comment from Wyatt, “that Don’s Navy service was a lot more than people thought and that he was very special.”138

A gun is made up of pieces and works by a chain-reaction of events. It smokes after use. Here are the pieces of such a ‘smoking gun’ assembled, and Menzel working over the cellar grave of destroyed photographic plates.

Menzel Evicts the American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)

While the pruning of data was one Menzel initiative underway at Harvard, another was attempting to minimize the work and presence of AAVSO. In October 1952 at an AAVSO Council Meeting, Menzel, “spearheaded the creation of a re-evaluation committee to consider the future of the AAVSO, one of the first steps toward the eviction of the AAVSO from Harvard.”139 Martha Stahr Carpenter, who was then the AAVSO president, was given a deadline from Menzel of January 20, 1953 to have a full report from the re-evaluation committee. However even before that date was reached, Carpenter was, “presented with a plan for the AAVSO to be moved far away, to an institution that was already planning to acquire it, and had worked out the details of hosting the organization.”140 The move would have been not only a far one in distance, but a massive step down in stature as AAVSO was to be relocated to “a small college in the Midwest [Carpenter] had never heard of (and cannot remember the name of to this day). In her words, ‘Menzel had already given the AAVSO to this organization–he must have been embarrassed when he couldn’t deliver it.’”141 Carpenter averted the demise of AAVSO, but it would still have to leave Harvard.

Even after AAVSO was on the way out, Menzel pursued ways to prevent them from remaining established. “In October 1953, [AAVSO Director] Margaret [Walton Mayall] was relieved to receive an offer from Boston University’s Physics Research Laboratory (AAVSO 1953). Unfortunately, the offer was withdrawn on January 6, 1954 but only, according to Stephansky, after BU officials had spoken with HCO’s Menzel (Stephansky 1954).”142 Eventually, AAVSO moved into a small, 405 square foot office less than a mile east of HCO and became an independent, non-profit organization.143 While finally out of the reach of Menzel, the effect was already done. No longer an active staff of star observers with equipment and a Harvard home, AAVSO HQ became an archive office and networking hub for other AAVSO volunteers around the globe. The centralized investigation, collection and repository of variable star data at Harvard was no more.

Menzel finds a friend in Phil Klass

1952 still had December. That month, recently hired Aviation Week journalist Philip J. Klass at Aviation Week authored a piece on digital computers from defense contractor Hughes Aircraft Co., and contributed an article to the Headline News section, “Radar Needs ‘Saucer’ Filter: CAA.”144 Klass would expand on this stub in the coming year with the article “That Was No Saucer, That Was an Echo” on 20 July 1953, citing both the CAA’s Richard C. Borden and Tirey K. Vickers as well as Dr. Donald H. Menzel. In coming decades, Klass would become a key figure on the private side of the military industrial complex, carrying forward Menzel’s debunking mantle past the latter’s death in 1976. The two, along with Edward Condon, would become regular pen pals with some of their correspondence being preserved in the archives at the American Philosophical Society.145

The breadth and depth of the relationship between the three was unknown at the time to people debating any one of them separately on the existence of UAP/NHI. In the years to come, Menzel would provide leadership, guidance and examples while Condon and Klass would grow influence within their given domains. The three would all have similar traits that Menzel greatly valued in his influence campaign:

1. Media training and journalistic output

   1. Menzel: extensive history of science fiction and popular science writing

   2. Condon: began his career as a journalist for Bay Area newspapers146

   3. Klass: had a decades-long journalism career at McGraw-Hill’s Aviation Week & Space Technology147

2. Patent holders in engineering and sciences

   1. Menzel: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Donald+H+Menzel

   2. Condon: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Edward+U+Condon

   3. Klass: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Philip+J+Klass

3. Familiarity with clearances and the intelligence community

   1. Menzel: OP-20-G, NSA, CIA, broad defense industry consulting, Secret, Top Secret, Top Secret Ultra, MJ-12

   2. Condon: Q Clearance at AEC/DOE, National Bureau of Standards, clearance work in private industry (Corning)148

   3. Klass: Secret Clearance work at General Electric during WWII, regular CIA and NSA meetings as a journalist149

Later, Carl Sagan would be recruited in a similar way. Then following the death of Condon and shortly before the death of Menzel, Sagan and Klass would go on to found the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) in 1976. This is all getting a bit ahead of the situation in 1952 though, as there was still one major event Menzel had to prepare for as he finished out the year.

Menzel’s allies at the CIA and on the Robertson Panel

Also in December, the CIA was finalizing plans to review the work done in investigating UFOs, mostly by the Air Force, and make recommendations across broader Department of Defense and intelligence agencies regarding research and development concerning unidentified flying objects.150 This would become the Meetings of Scientific Advisory Panel on Unidentified Flying Objects convened by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, CIA on January 14 - 18, 1953; more commonly known as the Robertson Panel.151

The most notable panel participant in Menzel’s near sphere was fellow MJ-12 member, Dr. Lloyd Viel Berkner.152 Similar to Menzel, Berkner was a scientist with specialties in ionosphere and wave propagation who was closely connected to Vannevar Bush.153 He too carried the cadre line: “In McDonald’s files is a copy of a 1965 letter which Julian Hennessey, an English UFO researcher, had received from Berkner. Hennessey was interested in learning Berkner’s present attitude toward the UFO problem. Berkner wrote back on GRCS letterhead: ‘In the cases of all so-called unidentified objects brought to my attention to date there are none which cannot be explained as definable physical phenomena.’”154 Influencing the Panel from the inside was critical to MJ-12 as the scientists CIA had assembled were touching on some topics very close to Menzel’s home base at Harvard:

There was considerable discussion of a possible “sky patrol” by amateur astronomers (Hynek) and by wide-angle cameras (Page). Dr. Page and Dr. Robertson pointed out that at present a considerable fraction of the sky is now–and has been for many years–under surveillance every clear night in several meteor and aurora observing programs as well as sky mapping programs at the various locations listed below. Although the attention of those astronomers is largely directed toward identified rather than unidentified objects, no case of any striking unidentified object is known to Dr. Page or Dr. Hynek. Such an object would most certainly be reported if found on patrol plates.155

While that reporting eventually becomes true, as discussed previously above, there was a delay of roughly 70 years before such objects were written about by Villaroel, et al.

Back to the panel, the first location of the various sky patrols ‘listed below’ is item ‘a’: “Harvard University, Cambridge and New Mexico (meteor patrol)–Whipple.”156 Interestingly, while Harvard tops the list, its sky map function that was running since the 1800s is not recorded, nor is its observatory. Additionally, Fred Lawrence Whipple is named as director in place of Menzel or Shapley. Still, despite not being named, this helps account for why Menzel was in such a hurry to cull one-third of HCO’s photographic plate collection. It was a deletion so effective, that even after completing the Digital Access to a Sky Century @ Harvard (DASCH) on 29 December 2024,157 astronomers such as Villaroel have still had to rely on other observatories for data on UAP. In what reads like a feint of not knowing what was taking place on the Robertson Panel, Menzel’s last interaction with the panelists would be in a letter several years later after receiving the unclassified version of the report from Leon Davidson. His suggestions were not detailed by the CIA in their memorandum,158 but based on the cover up produced in the decades following, Menzel and the MJ-12 Committee achieved their aims.

While Menzel’s own involvement with the CIA is less well chronicled than his work with the NSA, almost 8 years later he would mention it in a letter to John F. Kennedy shortly before JFK’s election to president. “I have been associated since 1930 with a small organization that has now grown to the great National Security Agency. I served with them as a Naval Officer during World War II. I have been a consultant to that activity with Top Secret clearance and have also had some association with the ClA.”159

Menzel’s thank you missive to 1953

Leaving 1952 behind, a closer look at the Robertson Panel is a fitting beginning to 1953. The benefits Menzel and dogmatic skeptics derived from it paid out well in the decades following, enough so that Menzel thanked Panel doctors Robertson and Page in the 1963 preface of “The World of Flying Saucers”160 The path between that appreciation from Menzel and the largest impact for the general public following the Panel was the recommended and spun up Educational Program. As described in the report, “The Panel’s concept of a broad educational program integrating efforts of all concerned agencies was that it should have two major aims: training and ‘debunking’.”161

In the following paragraphs of the report a model CSICOP would later echo to extend Menzel’s counterintelligence work is outlined:

The “debunking” aim would result in reduction in public interest in “flying saucers” which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such as television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the “secret” is known.162

From the beginning when CSICOP formed, it incorporated magicians163 focused on showing the “secret” behind tricks. Their sleight of hand however was not a measure of reality, but substituting their staged solution for it. If this tactic came directly from Menzel’s suggestion it wouldn’t be shocking as his editorial work with Science and Invention magazine had him reviewing similar ploys.164

The Robertson Panel also mapped out the abundant need for psychologists, which would be exactly the type of troops needed in psychological warfare, “Members of the Panel had various suggestions related to the planning of such an educational program. It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program.”165 Again, CSICOP would mirror this point upon forming in 1976 till today, where they still have the most fellows and production in psychology and its related fields.166

Menzel being an astronomer was not to be left out by the Panel however:

Dr. Hynek suggested that the amateur astronomers in the U. S. might be a potential source of enthusiastic talent “to spread the gospel”. It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the “mystery” and then the “explanation” would be forceful.167

Enthusiastically leading the charge on this front was Menzel. The criteria of people able to reach mass audiences would lead him to Klass and Sagan, who both would later be founding members of CSICOP.168 Menzel even helped spin up a CSICOP-like precursor at Harvard, where fellow astronomers took on the varied topics of CSICOP’s later ire:

• Menzel: Debunking UFOs

• Bart Bok: Debunking astrology, in print169 and in petitions170

• Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin: Velikovsky171

• Fred Whipple: Velikovsky172 and UFOs173

• Harlow Shapley: Flying saucers174

None of these matched the enthusiasm of Menzel–nor the latter focused, dogmatic skepticism of CSICOP. Their lower activity in comparison to Menzel is probably due to their schedules requiring productive, scientific work plus a lack of incentive and orders since the others were not listed as engaged with MJ-12, the NSA and other counter-intelligence taskings. Still it is noteworthy that a CSICOP precursor formed in the Harvard Astronomy department and not at other universities. Perhaps Menzel’s enthusiasm was contagious. Or as a Navy Commander he learned how to lead up and down his chain of command.

Returning to the Robertson Panel, the educational program was outlined further:

...the educational program of “training and debunking” outlined above might be required for a minimum of one and one-half to two years. At the end of this time, the dangers related to “flying saucers” should have been greatly reduced if not eliminated. Cooperation from other military services and agencies concerned (e.g. Federal Civil Defense Administration) would be a necessity. In investigating significant cases (such as the Tremonton, Utah, sighting), controlled experiments might be required. An example would be the photographing of “pillow balloons” at different distances under similar weather conditions at the site.175

In case the use of psychologists was missed earlier the Panel reminds, “The help of one or two psychologists and writers and a subcontractor to produce training films would be necessary in addition.”176 Production value of those films was another key point as, “the Jam Handy Co. which made World War II training films (motion picture and slide strips) was also suggested, as well as Walt Disney, Inc. animated cartoons.”177 Finally, to the Panel’s surprise as it considered its counterpart in the Cold War, “The Panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy.”178

Menzel would make ample use of so many obvious possibilities for exploiting the topic, and the ‘debunking’ apparatus proved exportable:

Menzel marks the card catalog

Coming on the heels of the Robertson Panel, Menzel’s first UFO book “Flying Saucers” was published in February 1953 by Harvard University Press, where Menzel recently finished his four year stint on the Board of Syndics. Adding to Menzel’s media coverage, it drew many reviews.179 Harvard’s own Crimson newspaper cuts to the core of the book and Menzel’s Robertson Panel-aligned Educational Program mission in their review, namely, “a first rate analysis of a phenomenon in social psychology.”180 The book itself also leans into this angle, “The illusion, if any, comes from our psychological impression and mental interpretation of the phenomenon.”181

While mainstream reviews touted “Flying Saucers” as science popularizing, working scientists noticed missing data. Dr. Robert Wood’s critique, “I read my first book, which was Donald Menzel’s book. After I read that book, I told my wife, ‘This guy’s allegedly a scientist, but he’s not talking logically–he’s ignoring the data.’”182 “Lead USAF flying saucer sighting investigator, and lifelong friend of Menzel, astronomer Dr. J. Allen Hynek reviewed the book as well. Hynek critiqued Menzel for offering explanations to cases for which Menzel had incomplete or incorrect data.”183 Stanton Friedman stated plainly, “I didn’t like the man when he was alive. I was shocked by the inadequacy of his ufological research.”184

Dr. James McDonald adds:

For about 15 years, Dr. D. H. Menzel, former Director of Harvard College Observatory, has been saying that UFO reports fall almost entirely in that category. His two books, other writings, and many television and lecture discussions have invariably emphasized that position. It has been of particular scientific interest to me that a majority of his alternative explanations fall within my own area of interest, atmospheric physics. Consequently I have examined his arguments rather carefully and must say that they do not at all convince me.185

All these scientists were at the time unaware of the details of the targeted destruction of the HCO plate collection and the marginalization of AAVSO. Even more so were they unaware of Menzel’s ongoing work with MJ-12 and the NSA. Yet they could still see how Menzel’s debunks of UFOs would contradict, dismiss, substitute or erase the measured data. The disconnect for scientists debating Menzel was that they broadly knew of his expertise in combining details, scientific accomplishments and rigor. They were thus on loose footing when considering that Menzel may be, as McDonald put it, “...deliberately sloughing off sound data by assigning inane explanations which did not fit the facts.”186

Why then would Menzel appear ‘inane’ to credentialed colleagues? Why erase or dismiss sound data–radar readings, photos, astronomical plates? Why make choices and apply methods that create such a disparity? McDonald, Wood, Hynek, et al, struggled to ask–or were diverted entirely from–these questions. Diversion, deception and dismissals were precisely the desired outcomes of Menzel’s counter-intelligence work. Any data available to the public was available to the enemy. If something did demonstrate NHI or their technology and was not kept secret, it had to be suppressed—by deletion where possible.

In an interview recorded in 1992 with George Knapp and personnel associated with the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), former U.S. Army Colonel Philip Corso explained the policy surrounding the crash retrieval and reverse engineering program that fell under MJ-12 and related initiatives:

You know one of our greatest covers, I say, was the policy that says UFOs didn’t exist. If ever it didn’t exist, there was no crash. If there was no crash, there was no material. Nobody can investigate us because there was no such thing. And we played that up. We moved that ahead. The more the debunkers screamed, the more–the better we liked it. They’re doing the disinformation for us.187

The theater of serious scientific study filtered through the Air Force and then ‘resolved’ by Menzel gave others the impression that the United States was spending money chasing mirages. Jacques Vallee recorded the chilling effect in his journal this way, “If I remain in Austin professional pressures are inevitable, since the department works closely with Harvard Observatory which is directed by arch-skeptic Donald Menzel, who has just published his second debunking book, The World of Flying Saucers. I do not want to put my friends there into such an awkward position.”188

Returning briefly to 1952, when Menzel was interviewed by Time magazine, he categorized his role in playing the debunker as, “the man who shot Santa Claus.”189 Packaged as a silly aside, it frames the UAP/NHI topic as a loaded question and a false binary choice: you are either mature enough to accept hard truth, or you are clinging to childish myth. Techniques like these–loaded questions, social authority maneuvers, false binary frames, villain as authority, pattern interrupts, emotional leverage and more–would carry forward into dogmatic skepticism. So too would a willingness to play the fool, a famed strategy of Montesquieu:190

To be continued…

The role Donald H. Menzel played in the cover-up of the multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program has much more depth and detail than what is covered here, but even in this initial look the methods of how he grew his counter-intelligence efforts are clear. His exploits in cryptography, cryptanalysis, and communications with Op-20-G and later the NSA placed him in a small cadre of those inside the military-industrial-complex that had the ways, means and know how to control the secrecy over UAP/NHI. When given the chance, he destroyed data and pursued AAVSO to marginalize the records and people that could demonstrate the presence of NHI technology. As reverse engineering of retrieved materiel progressed, he ramped up his debunking in ways that preceded and precipitated the formation of CSICOP. Many of the people he interacted with on the side of secrecy excelled in their work. But in his time as director of the Harvard College Observatory and leadership of the astronomy department, William H. Press observed, “Over a period of two decades, Don Menzel and Bart Bok, both Shapley protégés, managed, mostly by academic inbreeding, to bring the department to another nadir of mediocrity.”191

NSA records show Menzel operating in the exact structures where information is compartmented, controlled, and weaponized: appearing as an Advisory Board member with Crypto status,192 and later listed under a Telecommunications Panel as “Indoctrinated.”193 This is the “how” in the way Menzel applied his genius not only to science, but to the art of controlled narratives–the discipline of saying just enough, with impeccable credentials, to force a cultural conclusion (“nothing to see here”), while ensuring the actual signal stayed buried behind classification, ridicule, and institutional gatekeeping. Indoctrination in these documents is the explicit mechanism of read-ins, panels, compartments, and clearance status that maps cleanly onto the public-facing tactics he pioneered: a debunking style optimized for mass adoption, where certainty replaces inquiry, anomalies are pre-labeled as error, and dissent is framed as gullibility.

That strategy endured. The modern dogmatic skeptic playbook–credential-first authority, selective standards of evidence, narrative closure, stigma as a tool, and the outsourcing of curiosity to “official conclusions”–did not arrive spontaneously in the late 1960s and 1970s. It was fathered in the Cold War’s communications-intelligence worldview, then exported to the public battlefield.

The next installment of Unquestionably Skeptical will trace the maturation of this system from 1953 to 1976, as the skeptic cadre grows from Menzel to Edward Condon, Philip Klass and others as they turned UAP denial into a durable, institutionalized doctrine.

These practices of manipulating popular media platforms have continued all the way to the present day where an example like LuckyLouie,194 a presumptive Mick West sock puppet account195 associated with the efforts of Guerrilla Skeptics, is an editor on Donald Menzel’s Wikipedia page:

From Menzel to Klass to CSICOP to Committee for Skeptical Inquiry to Guerrilla Skeptics196 to Mick West… the debunker chain continues.

There will be many more installments to come.

Appreciations

This deeper look into Donald Menzel was brought to you by the very first paid subscriber to Unquestionably Skeptical. The funds went to the production of the transcript and digital audio files of Menzel’s interview with Henry Tropp from the Smithsonian’s Computer Oral History Collection at the American History Museum. Sincere thanks to Analiese Oetting, Audiovisual Archives Specialist of the National Museum of American History’s Archives Center film collections for that production. Special thanks to all the people that communicated with me in the process of researching and writing this paper, including: Kathleen Marden, Allan Olley, Craig Bauer, Beatriz Villaroel, Geoff Cruickshank, Nick Cook, Whitley Streiber, Jacques Vallee, Rob Heatherly, Rob Jones, Pavel Ibarra, and many unnamed others.

Last, and most importantly, my heartfelt thanks to you, the reader.

It is my hope that this, and coming work, adds to the marvel of our wider universe of knowledge–the scope and scale of which should fill our days with many wonders and abundant curiosity, placing secrets and skepticism in a very distant and small perspective.

For my part, when examining people like Donlad Menzel, I hope to do so respectfully and in a way that makes us all better for life ahead. If any of his friends or family remain a custodian of his secrets, they will not come forward in a climate of disrespect. They will be welcome here. May this piece add to that conversation.

Any mistakes, errors, or omissions are the fault of this author.

Comments, criticisms and receipts are greatly appreciated.

Appendix

Reception and Criticisms

Dogmatic skeptics scored the opening of this series with “hit piece” accolades quickly–

“Hmm, he seems to have changed his name. Ryan Purkey is an SEO expert, so maybe he thinks it’s better to be anonymous when writing error-filled hit pieces.” @MickWest, Sep 9, 2025

[Note: Mick West, a user and author on Substack ( https://substack.com/@mickwest ), was asked to reply, citing any errors in the article “Unquestionably Skeptical (About UFOs)”. He has not done so.]

And – https://www.reddit.com/r/UFOs/comments/1nd7mnj/comment/ndg3z1t/ “This is basically just a MW hit piece by someone who obviously doesn’t like him and just likes to use appeal to authority.” @DisinfoAgentNo007 Sep 11, 2025

[Note: Argumentum ad verecundiam, the logical fallacy of ‘appeal to authority’ is based on proving a point using the opinion of an authority, as opposed to the data, experiments and research that is found to be authoritative. In the article, “Unquestionably Skeptical (About UFOs)” in contrasting Mick West with working scientists, the data of papers and citations as tallied by Semantic Scholar compared across two dozen people of similar media presence were used, creating work related to UAP/NHI but from differing affiliations: Skeptics vs Scientists. This dataset is reproducible and publicly available. Mick West has much lower measurable scientific output than Garry Nolan, Avi Loeb, Kevin Knuth, Alexander Wendt, Beatriz Villarroel and others by these metrics. In contrast to the scientific output, West’s talking points do get parroted in high volume by anonymous accounts on the internet though.]

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It began with a simple question:

“Does anyone know a debunker in real life? I’m not talking about people with the same attitudes or talking points. A lot of those get made by regular people as a sort of lazy reaction. I’m talking about, ‘Does anyone know anyone that spouts debunked points and goes out of their way to broadcast them, closely studying UFO news so that they can constantly tell everybody how there are no such things as UFOs?’”1

The publicity and profile of unabashed UFO debunkers–Michael Shermer, Mick West, Philip J. Klass, Neil deGrasse Tyson and others–are not driven by popularity. Taking Mick West as a recent example, his book, “Escaping the Rabbit Hole” published in September 2018, holds an Amazon Best Sellers Rank of #871,662.2 According to Book Beam’s sales estimator, that ranking represents zero sales per day and fewer than 30 per month.3 Actual readership is likely even lower. Public records from university and library systems show multiple years with zero checkouts, despite donated copies.

And yet—despite microscopic sales and attention—West is routinely booked as a “popular scientific investigator” in media appearances and promoted as a Fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). The gap between commercial reality (viewers, readers, attendees, subscribers) and the mainstream amplification of dogmatic skeptics is not an outlier.4 It is the norm.5

Skeptics vs. Scientists

As a group, high-profile skeptics contribute little to scientific inquiry compared to working scientists actively investigating UAP/NHI with domain expertise—such as Garry Nolan, Avi Loeb, Karl Svozil, Kevin Knuth, and Beatriz Villarroel.

When comparing a dozen Sol Symposium scientists with an equal number of well-known “scientific skeptics” (Shermer, West, Tyson, et al.), the difference is vast6:

The scientists who are Fellows of CSI and produce a significant amount of scientific research avoid investigating the UAP topic scientifically. The ones who do, skew heavily into one study group: psychology. Psychology related fields of study account for 29% of the people who are Fellows of CSI, while generating the lion’s share—62%—of the total CSI Fellows’ citation tally.

Much of that literature is not research psychology, rather it’s reductionist. Papers often focus on attributing witness accounts of UAP to hallucinations or mental error. The repetition of these faulty observer talking points feels less like science and more like propaganda.7

Dogma vs. Method

Consider Mick West again. He is near-zero for tallied contributions to scientific research. Instead of promoting inquiry, he criticizes working scientists’ inquiries. Contrast this with Garry Nolan–who continues to run successful laboratories, experiments, produce peer-reviewed works, file patents, earn citations, and rely upon the scientific method for his livelihood. Somehow Nolan—a scientific force in successful inquiry—does not have his work lauded by West, instead he is on the receiving end of West’s critiques, like in this literal back-and-forth from July 2025:

For a group whose mission is to, “...promote scientific inquiry,” they repeatedly show themselves to not be fans of scientific inquiry.8 If Mick West is a CSI Fellow in good standing, then their definition of scientific inquiry is clearly at odds with the scientific method.

Their skepticism isn’t inquiry. It’s dogma.9

Even though it is dogma, it has been widely successful over the past few decades, with skepticism rising significantly.10

However, the main item of the skeptical organizations’ efforts: ‘inquiry’ remains at all time historic lows.11

Hypothesis

​​This series proposes a central hypothesis:

The manufactured popularity of dogmatic skeptics as media authorities far exceeds what their attention, contributions, academic accomplishments, or sales metrics justify.

Historically, the rise of organized skepticism correlates with Intelligence Community (IC) efforts to outsource influence operations into the private sector. Second, the topic with the biggest disparity between scientific data and the most dedicated, dogmatic debunking within their networks is UAP/NHI.12 By analyzing the history of manufactured skepticism and their methods and rates of attention towards UFOs, their mission will become clear.

With this hypothesis at its core, the series will pull the thread that connects witnessed and instrument-measured UAP accounts, material NHI crash retrievals, reverse engineering, interrogation and medical analysis with the people that work to deceive, debunk and disinform about them. To set the stage for how agents deceive in the modern world requires a brief history lesson.

At the root of the disparity is deception.

The Historical Foundation: Global deception in a world at war

The 30 years between the beginning of World War I and the end of World War II, saw the battlefield circumscribe the globe and the military-industrial complex (MIC) rise up to fund, fuel and mechanize it. As war beyond borders spread, so too did the sources and methods to obscure it. In the blandly named, Communications Instructions the U.S. Navy defines “deception” in its use over radio being, “of two sorts: (a) Manipulative-transmissions used to conceal from the enemy the locations, movements, and strength of U. S. naval forces by the use of misleading material in our own communication channels; (b) Imitative-the use of radio to simulate enemy transmissions in order to confuse or deceive the enemy in his own channels.”13

Even in the early 20th century, the war planner had to take into account an enemy–and a public–that could receive radio broadcasts in realtime, relaying signals, methods and tactics, or news from the frontlines broadcast directly into their homes. Deception in war was nothing new. Sun Tsu wrote as much in the 6th Century BCE, “兵者詭道也 / All warfare is based on deception.”14

By the early 20th century, deception wasn’t just a tactic—it was a global system.

1933: The Magenta Crash

In the middle of the two wars, in 1933, one of the first recorded UAP crash retrievals took place in Magenta, Italy.15 While not yet at the historical beginning of World War II,16 its players were in place. Adolf Hitler was Chancellor in Germany, Benito Mussolini was Prime Minister and soon to be Il Duce in Italy, John Foster Dulles and Allen Walsh Dulles were active as financiers, diplomats and spies within Europe, Joseph Stalin was General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was President of the United States, Winston Churchill was a popular Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom–later to become Prime Minister, and Hirohito was Emperor of Japan.

With the prospect of news spreading rapidly on the crash in Magenta, media management was the decree, as reported 90 years later in the Daily Mail:

They include two June 1933 telegrams in Italian, one demanding 'absolute silence' over an 'alleged landing on national soil of unknown aircraft'.

Another, dated June 13, threatens the 'immediate arrest' and 'maximum penalties' for any journalists reporting news of an 'aircraft of unknown nature and origin'.

'Immediate recasting of any leads from the newspapers bearing said news is ordered,' the second telegram said.

Both say they are by 'personal order' of 'Il Duce' – Mussolini himself.17

The game was afoot. There would be no diplomatic detente. The Magenta craft crashed into a world preparing to wage war. Any leak of its technology that could shift the scales of who would come out ahead at the balance would not be tolerated.

Three debunkers would emerge from this period, two of which were directly connected to the military at pinnacles of its efforts in secrecy and science. While the third was a young, promising engineer working for one of the largest companies in the world, General Electric. These three were: Donald H. Menzel, Edward U. Condon, and Philip J. Klass. Coming articles in this series will examine each man as an individual and their efforts coordinated as a group.

Leading the pack, in age and rank, was U.S. Navy Commander, Donald Howard Menzel.

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Resources and References

Garry Nolan - Executive Director of the Board at The Sol Foundation.
Dr. Nolan is the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He trained with Leonard Herzenberg (for his Ph.D.) and Nobelist Dr. David Baltimore (for postdoctoral work for the first cloning/characterization of NF-κB p65/ RelA and the development of rapid retroviral production systems). He has published over 350 research articles and is the holder of 40 US patents and has been honored as one of the top 25 inventors at Stanford University. Full bio at https://thesolfoundation.org/people/garry-nolan/

The Sol Foundation - Science, Policy, and Public Education for the Post-UAP World
The Sol Foundation brings together experts from academia and government to address the philosophical, policy, and scientific problems raised by the likely presence on the Earth of UAP. https://thesolfoundation.org/about/

Avi Loeb - Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science
Abraham (Avi) Loeb is the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of Science at Harvard University and a bestselling author (in lists of the New York Times,Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Die Zeit, Der Spiegel, L'Express and more). He received a PhD in Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel at age 24 (1980-1986), led the first international project supported by the Strategic Defense Initiative (1983-1988), and was subsequently a long-term member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988-1993). Loeb has written 9 books, including most recently, Extraterrestrial and Interstellar, as well as over a thousand scientific papers (with h-index of 131 and i10-index of 614) on a wide range of topics, including black holes, the first stars, the search for extraterrestrial life and the future of the Universe. Full bio at https://astronomy.fas.harvard.edu/people/avi-loeb

The Galileo Project for the Systematic Scientific Search for Evidence of Extraterrestrial Technological Artifacts
The goal of the Galileo Project is to bring the search for extraterrestrial technological signatures of Extraterrestrial Technological Civilizations (ETCs) from accidental or anecdotal observations and legends to the mainstream of transparent, validated and systematic scientific research. This project is complementary to traditional SETI, in that it searches for physical objects, and not electromagnetic signals, associated with extraterrestrial technological equipment. https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo/home

Karl Svozil - Associated Editor of journals in Physics and Computer Science
Karl Svozil is an Austrian theoretical physicist at the TU Wien specializing in quantum theory and the logical foundations of chaotic systems. After studies in Vienna and Heidelberg, he continued his career as a visiting scientist in various locations, in particular, UC Berkeley and the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as Lomonosov Moscow State University and The University of Auckland. Full bio at http://tph.tuwien.ac.at/~svozil/publ/bew-cp.htm

UFOs: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Observations, Explanations & Speculations
Unidentified phenomena in space, in the Earth's atmosphere, and in waters are too important to leave their exploration to the military and scientific laypersons. Their proper scientific study is important for a variety of reasons; in particular, scientists and the public at large need to know the basic facts, to be informed about the way evidence is recorded, and to understand the difference been reliable evidence and fiction, as well as between plausible explanations and fantasy. With this objective, the book surveys the history of UFO observations, the variety of recorded phenomena, and recounts the efforts of investigative commissions and their published findings.

Kevin Knuth Director, Knuth Information Physics Laboratory
Dr. Knuth is an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the University at Albany (SUNY) and is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Entropy (MDPI). He is a former NASA research scientist having worked for four years at NASA Ames Research Center in the Intelligent Systems Division designing artificial intelligence algorithms for astrophysical data analysis. He has over 20 years of experience in applying Bayesian and maximum entropy methods to the design of machine learning algorithms for data analysis applied to the physical sciences. His current research interests include the foundations of physics, quantum information, inference and inquiry, autonomous robotics, and the search for and characterization of extrasolar planets. He has published over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has been invited to give over 80 presentations in 14 countries. CV at https://www.knuthlab.org/pmwiki.php/People/Knuth

The Knuth Cyberphysics Laboratory
The Knuth Cyberphysics Laboratory focuses on investigating the fundamental physics governing the processes of information-driven cyber-physical systems, as well as implementing advanced data analysis techniques to develop autonomous robotic systems. Particular emphasis is placed on developing autonomous question-asking machines that decide which data to collect based on what they have been programmed to learn. This involves an exploration of the recently-developed inquiry calculus, which enables machines to perform calculation with questions in a manner analogous to probability theory.

The Knuth Cyberphysics Lab has several prototype robots, one of which is a robotic arm that demonstrates the principles of a question-asking machine. Other efforts include a NASA-funded project to develop a Bayesian vision-based robotic navigation system. This is performed in collaboration with Autonomous Exploration Inc. and Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The lab is also working in collaboration with the Wadsworth Institute Brain Computer Interface Research Group to developing brain wave (EEG) analysis algorithms for Brain-Machine Interface.
More at https://www.albany.edu/physics/cyberphysics-and-robotics

Beatriz Villarroel - Director, the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO)
Dr. Beatriz Villarroel is a researcher in astronomy at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita) in Stockholm. She leads the Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project (www.vascoproject.org) and the EXOPROBE project. The VASCO project searches for vanishing stars with the help of automated methods as well as a citizen science project. Among the most interesting results from the VASCO project are the findings of anomalous “multiple transients” of unknown origin. EXOPROBE, that is a recently launched project, aims to find and locate an extraterrestrial probe in the Solar System. In 2012, Beatriz Villarroel received a Crafoord scholarship for young astronomers from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences for her research about quasars. In 2021, Beatriz Villarroel won the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science prize in Sweden for the VASCO project. In 2022, she was selected as one of 15 world-wide L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science “International Rising Talents”. In 2023, she gave a TEDx talk in Zurich on the topic “Why we should search for alien artifacts”. In September 2023, she received Heterodox Academy’s Open Inquiry Award for Courage. Full CV at http://beatrizvillarroel.com/

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) Since VASCO started up in 2017, its team has been searching for vanishing stars in the Milky Way through citizen science and automated methods. They compare images from the 1950s with images from modern sky surveys. They have found thousands of objects visible in the 1950s that no longer are seen today. Currently referring to these findings as ”short-lived transients”, they think most represent the bright state of an astrophysical object that brightened up for a few minutes later to dim again, rather than a star that actually vanished. Nevertheless, VASCO examines each ”vanishing star candidate”. More at https://vascoproject.org/

Footnotes