Laurance Rockefeller’s Initiative to The Clinton White House urging the release of information that it may have regarding UFOs

Extraterrestrial Politics Part 1 - Rockefeller Initiative to The Clinton White House

Written by Grant Cameron

Sunday, 02 August 2009 21:30

"My hope is that at a minimum someone senior in the administration will make a statement that the area we have been discussing (UFOs) is a reasonable subject of potential great significance to a number of fields. And that any qualified researcher who wants to work in this area should be encouraged." C.B. Scott Jones writing to President Clinton’s Science Advisor

"We have spoken with a number of present and former U.S. government officials who may have been in a position to know what information the U.S. Government has on this subject. Our approach to the U.S. government has been focused on urging the release of information that it may have regarding UFOs that has been heretofore held as classified for national security purposes. We have urged that now that the cold war is over, constraints on release of information can be relaxed." Laurance Rockefeller

In January 2001, the Clinton White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), released to me 991 pages of documents on to a Freedom of Information Request (FOIA) asking for documents related to UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and the Rockefeller UFO Initiative.

The OSTP is one of the few Clinton White House Executive departments that is open for FOIA requests. The other approximately 76.8 million pages of paper documents, 75,000 museum artifacts, and 1.85 million photographs are exempt by law from disclosure or FOIA requests for five years after the end of the Clinton administration, or January 20, 2006.

Based on the UFO records released by OSTP, and testimony of people who were involved in the White House UFO Disclosure Initiative, it is conceivable that there could be thousands of other pages of UFO material in the personal papers of the President and the First Lady, and in the papers of many of the cabinet members and Press Secretaries in the Clinton White House.

The documents released by the OSTP consist of all the correspondence coming into and going out of the Office on the included UFO subject. There is also some internal UFO related correspondence between staffers in the OSTP collection. Most UFO - related FOIAs filed between 1994 and 2001 are included in the package. Some, like the FOIA response to Dick Farley in early 1995, are mysteriously absent. Most of the 991 pages are related to Laurance Rockefeller’s UFO Disclosure Initiative, set up by Rockefeller to obtain declassification of all UFO files held by the United States government.

I should note, at this point to anyone thinking of paying the $135.00 to obtain this set of documents, that the documents are very poorly filed compared to the excellent list of documents compiled by the FOIA officer, Barbara Ann Ferguson. The set of documents I received from OSTP, were short of almost 300 pages of the documents on the list. In attempts to straighten this out, other documents that should have been in the UFO FOIA request were found.

The 88 documents that make up the set are numbered 1 through 88. I strongly suggest anyone requesting the documents check the number against the document, as well as to check to see that the document number fits the document described. Many documents I received had two different numbers - which means one of the two documents ordered isn’t there. I would also suggest a very careful checking of the entire package once it is received. This process took me many hours, and remain incomplete.

This first section is an attempt to provide an overview of what is contained in the collection. In addition to the OSTP documents, I have attempted to provide as background some of the other undocumented UFO items related to the Clinton administration. This was done because all these items tied together show a Clinton White House very interested in the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrial intelligence.

The first document, which to began became a flood of documents going into and out of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, was written by Henry L. Diamond, attorney for Laurance S. Rockefeller. It was dated March 29, 1993.

The Letter stated that Rockefeller, who was described by Diamond as "a leading U.S. conservationist, businessman, and philanthropist," was "anxious to have a brief meeting with Dr. Gibbons (Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology) to discuss the potential availability of government information about unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life."

While most of the Rockefeller brothers had focused their attention on making money and politics, Laurance Rockefeller had over the years, developed an interest in the ecology, UFOs, and extraterrestrial intelligence. These interests may have stemmed from his days at university, where he majored in philosophy. Rockefeller described his interest in UFOs and ETI this way:

My interest in ETI is prompted by the fact that I have been long concerned with the possibility of expanding man’s spiritual and intellectual potential. This interest stems from a lifetime of concern and support for innovative thinking in fields such as philosophy, holistic healing, science and spirituality. I have become convinced that we must fulfill more of our human potential if we are to cope with the increasing difficult problems which now challenge our quality of life and our very survival.

Rockefeller, according to the Diamond letter was taking this preliminary step to brief Dr. Gibbons in preparation for "an approach to President Clinton on this subject." Rockefeller, the letter said, was prepared to tell President Clinton that,

"There is a belief in many quarters that the government has long held classified information regarding UFOs which has not been released and that the failure to do so has brought about unnecessary suspicion and distrust. Many believe that the release of such information, if it exists, on a basis consistent with national security considerations, would be a significant gesture which would increase confidence in government."

The proposal, made for the preliminary UFO meeting with Gibbons, involved discussing the issues involved, thus making "his (Rockefeller’s) communication to the President as useful as possible." Diamond proposed a 45-minute meeting that would be attended by himself, Rockefeller, and Scott Jones, then President of the Human Potential Foundation in Washington, D.C..

The responsibility for obtaining a meeting with the President’s Science Advisor was the responsibility of Scott Jones. There was no indication that the White House would be interested, or would allow an audience on the subject. Jones suggested that the road into the White House, and ultimately the President, was through Jack Gibbons. Gibbons was the official chosen because he had been recently appointed as Science Advisor to the President. Secondly, Jones had known Gibbons when he was at the Congressional Research Service and Jones was special assistant to Senator Claiborne Pell on the Hill. (1985-1990).

Matrix of UFO Beliefs: Briefing and Document Scandal

Within the OSTP collection of UFO documents that the OSTP sends out in response to FOIAs, there is no document that details Dr. Gibbons’ acceptance of Laurance Rockefeller’s offer of a UFO briefing, but he did reluctantly accept. Preparations for the briefing of President Clinton’s Science Advisor on UFOs were begun.

On April 14, 1993, at 7:30 a.m. Rockefeller and Dr. C.B. Scott Jones sat across from Dr. Jack Gibbons and his chief aide, Skip Johns. Rockefeller spent thirty minutes briefing him on the current state of Ufology, with the help of a nine-page briefing paper titled the Matrix of UFO Beliefs.

The Matrix of UFO Beliefs had been written for Rockefeller and Jones by award winning investigative journalist Richard Farley. Farley referred to the paper as "an investigative and analytical tool . . . reflecting primary categories into which beliefs about UFOs seem to fall, when allowing for the broadest range of reported phenomena and perceptions." Farley, who had worked on the paper for years, described the concept within the paper that he prepared for briefing Dr. Gibbons:

The Matrix of UFO Beliefs was not designed to suggest to the President or his advisors what "all the UFOs might be." And the paper reflects my assumption that, for at least some publicly perceived "UFOs," various of our government’s branches would be expected to know very well what may have been witnessed.

Primarily, the Matrix of UFO Beliefs was to serve us as our outline for a briefing of the President and his senior advisors on the range of public opinions and beliefs about UFOs as had been determined from: the popular literature; activity at UFO conferences; and throughout respective UFO venues into which beliefs evolved or had been seeded, manipulated or reinforced.

The second part of the Matrix of UFO Beliefs is reflective of our assessment (5/14/93) of the range of citizen beliefs about what our government might know, and what roles its agencies may have been or be playing. These analyses I also arrived at by sifting through most of the organizational venues of "UFOlogy."

Farley was a member of the Rockefeller UFO Disclosure Initiative to the Clinton White House, from October 1992 through April 1994. "My task in support of our White House UFO disclosure effort," wrote Farley, "was to recommend and produce background materials for Mr. Rockefeller to leave behind after his meeting to make his case."

Farley resigned from the UFO effort in protest of Rockefeller's approach to the problem. "I ultimately disagreed," wrote Farley after he resigned, "on the timing and dynamics of ‘what to push and when.’" Further, Farley had a serious concern that UFOs were being used as "camouflage for exotic aerospace and directed energy technologies."

Farley wrote the Matrix of UFO Beliefs paper based on his 20 years of active inquiry into UFO phenomena. The main contributors to Farley's UFO thinking had been two prominent UFO researchers, J. Allen Hynek, and Jacques Vallee.

As well as the briefing paper that Farley wrote for Rockefeller’s briefing of Jack Gibbons (and thus the President), there was a second briefing paper also prepared for the Rockefeller briefing.

This paper was prepared at the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency, in response to the request they received from Gibbons asking for information to prepare him for the upcoming Rockefeller briefing. This second briefing involved "using" UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee to prepare the briefing paper for the CIA. It was prepared in record time.

There were no OSTP records of the actual Matrix of UFO Beliefs briefing in the FOIA package. The 9-page Matrix of UFO Beliefs briefing paper did not appear in the OSTP files until December 19, 1994, when OSTP staffer Sue Bachtel received two copies of the briefing she had requested from Scott Jones. The fact that Bachtel had requested a document from outside the OSTP, indicates strongly that the original Matrix was no longer in the files. This late appearance of the Matrix briefing into the OSTP files raises the question of:

• Where was the original of the Matrix of UFO Beliefs briefing paper that was used to brief Gibbons on April 14, 1993?
• Why did it take 20 months to get a copy of the Matrix of it into the files?
• Why was Sue Bechtel requesting copies of the Matrix briefing from Jones?
• Where is the correspondence related to the missing Matrix brief?

An insight into what might have happened comes from two May 1995 letters from UFO researcher, author, and publisher Bob Teets to Jack Gibbons. Teets had worked for Scott Jones’ Human Potential Foundation as managing editor for the HPF Press.

In his two letters, Teets told Gibbons that he had seen a "version of the Matrix . . . appended to a Gibbon’s Fax of March 29, 1994." Teets pointed out that the version attached to the fax was not the one that had been used during the original briefing of the Presidential Science Advisor. Moreover, the document in the OSTP files did not even exist at the time the OSTP claimed it had sent the document out. " It was," wrote Teets, " a revised version which my company prepared at Dr. Jones’ direction in mid-May, 1994. Therefore, such a version did not exist at the time you sent you Fax to Secretary Widnall nearly two months prior to that time."

Teets did not get an answer to his May 11, 1995-letter, but his letter did cause Gibbons’ office to take action. What OSTP appeared to have done was to destroy the "Matrix" document that they had attached to the March 29, 1994-fax. In the package of documents this author received from the OSTP, the March 29, 1994-fax referred to by Teets no longer has the Matrix attached to it.

Proof that Teets probably did see the Matrix attached, and that something is missing from the 3/29/94 Fax, is found on the cover page of the fax. The March 29, 1994 Fax is identified in the OSTP files as Document 11. OSTP identifies it as having 5 pages. Yet the cover page says the total number of pages in the document totals 16. Adding the Matrix document to the 5 pages would give 16 pages, so it is apparent, the Matrix document was removed. This probably occurred after Teets wrote to complain OSTP was using a document that didn’t exist when the fax was sent.

Why would the OSTP attach a document that didn’t exist yet, and where was the copy of the Matrix that was at one time attached to the fax? One story says that OSTP lost the original Matrix of UFO Beliefs, or more accurately, gave it away.

According to one source, Gibbons' office sent out the entire file (of originals!) to a person on the east coast who had filed a FOIA for UFOs. Gibbons office was forced to write to the researcher and request that he send the documents back. When the documents were returned, the Matrix was missing.

The OSTP office seemed to have a problem losing documents, as the Matrix is not the only document missing from the OSTP UFO document collection. Also missing is a second UFO briefing that was faxed to OSTP on the same morning of the first Rockefeller UFO briefing for Dr. Gibbons.

It was prepared by Navy civilian physicist, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, at the request of the CIA. The CIA, in turn, had been contacted by the White House to provide a briefing for Dr. Gibbons, to prepare him and provide background information for his upcoming UFO meeting with Laurance Rockefeller.

Maccabee was told by CIA scientist Dr. Ronald Pandolfi that his briefing document would be used to brief the President’s Science Advisor, Dr. John Gibbons. The briefing was titled, "Briefing on the U.S. Government Approach to the UFO Problem as Determined by Civilian Researchers During the Last Twenty Years." It arrived just after Rockefeller’s UFO briefing was completed, and was not presented.

It was Maccabee himself who discovered that the briefing he had prepared for Gibbons was missing from the OSTP files. His discovery came after receiving a reply to an FOIA he had filed with OSTP in July 1996 for all their documents related to UFOs and the Rockefeller UFO Disclosure Initiative. There is now a copy of Maccabee’s briefing in the OSTP files thanks to Maccabee, who in January 1977, sent OSTP another copy. He stated he was sending it "in case you have lost the previous one."

Still another document missing from the OSTP collection is the reply to the April 29, 1995 letter from Dick Farley to Dr. Gibbons requesting a release of all UFO documents inside the OSTP. The OSTP did reply to the letter, treating it as an FOIA request, and providing hundreds of pages of documents to Farley. The two-page letter sent to Farley was for some reason left out of the OSTP UFO collection.

Lastly, according to Dick Farley, also missing from the OSTP files were "exchanges between former SECDEF Melvin Laird and then-SECDEF-Designate Les Aspin which apparently were in the OSTP files." These had, according to Farley been part of a package of "original" documents that OSTP mistakenly sent to a researcher in Maine by the name of William Laparl.

Asked to confirm this Laparl said, "Yes I remember a Laird letter, because he had been out of the situation for so long, that I didn’t even know if he was still alive." He also confirmed that he had mistakenly been sent the original documents.

Educating Clinton’s Science Advisor

On April 21, 1993, one week after the briefing took place, Rockefeller wrote Gibbons thanking him for the chance to present the case for "UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence." As a follow-up to what they had discussed in the briefing, Rockefeller stated that Scott Jones would be providing an annotated bibliography as important background source material on UFOs.

According to Rockefeller’s letter, Gibbons had apparently welcomed the idea. Rockefeller also figured that the background material would be important, for during the briefing, Dr. Gibbons had related that in three months as Science Advisor to the President, he had not "learned that the United States government has a body of knowledge on UFOs or ETI that is being withheld from the public."

In a May 26th letter from Gibbons to Scott Jones, Gibbons revealed not only had he been provided with a bibliography, he was provided with a number of books from the Jones Foundation Library. "I look forward to working through them," wrote Gibbons, "and will return them to you when I am finished."

Rockefeller also revealed in the April 21st letter that Gibbons had, following the briefing, recommended that the UFO /government issue be sent to Secretary of Defense Les Aspin for action. Despite Gibbons suggestion that the Department of Defense handle the UFO issue, there was an indication that aides in Gibbons office were interested in the UFO issue. (Documents found later in the OSTP package show that Aspin, at the advising of Melvin Laird, former Secretary of Defense in the Nixon Administration sent the UFO issue back to OSTP and the President for action).

In one of the concluding paragraphs of the April 13th letter, Rockefeller notified Gibbons that Scott Jones was " planning to convene a small group to discuss the state of knowledge about UFOs and ETI in an informal, non-public way." The suggestion was made that Gibbons or one of his staffers would be welcome as an observer. In the margin of the letter, a member of Gibbons staffers scribbled, "I would be willing to go if JHG (John H. Gibbons) Oks it."

The official invitation to discuss UFOs privately came in an August 4, 1993-letter from Rockefeller to Gibbons. The informal roundtable discussion was to be held September 13-15, 1993 at Rockefeller’s JY Ranch in the Teton Forest near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Those attending included: Richard Farley, Bob Teets, Rockefeller and a couple Rockefeller non-UFO friends from New York, Henry Diamond, Dr. Scott Jones, Dr. John Mack, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Linda Moulton Howe, Dr. Steven Greer, Marie Galbraith, and Keith Thompson.

Dr. Jill Tartar, then director of SETI was also invited to the meeting. Dr. Tartar, however, turned down the invitation. In a polite refusal of the invitation sent by Scott Jones, Tarter "cited some of the other folks who were going to attend and suggested they were ‘not scientific.’" The refusal was therefore an attempt to distance herself from the fringe element, she perceived as attending the Rockefeller gathering.

Dr. Carl Sagan also declined an invitation to attend the event at the Rockefeller Ranch. He claimed a scheduling conflict. It was the first of at least a couple encounters between the hard-core UFO skeptic and Laurance Rockefeller. Rockefeller met in 1994 with Sagan and his wife, but no details of what came of the meeting were made public.

In 1996, Rockefeller had an indirect contact with Sagan while setting up an international conference on UFOs and ETI, which was to be hosted by the Executive Director of the International Scientific Union.

Through Jill Tarter, Sagan found about the conference and declined a chance to be involved even before he was even invited. In a letter Sagan wrote to Jill Tarter he spelled out his refusal to attend. Sagan wrote,

"I think I’ve said all I’ve had to say on the UFO business in The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. If Mr. Rockefeller has an questions on the content of the book, I would be more than happy to engage in a one-on-one dialogue."

Although no records exist of if Sagan and Rockefeller met again, Rockefeller did write Sagan and made the offer. In his letter to Sagan he also raised a serious question about the logic of Sagan’s thinking on UFOs and ETI.

Your letter to Dr. Tarter of October 2 has found it’s way to my desk and I am delighted that you are available to continue a dialogue. . .We continue to share your interest in assessing the probability of extraterrestrial intelligence. We believe that while the approach through radio telescope inquiry might prove useful, other inquiries might be productive as well. As you well know, there is a substantial anecdotal evidence on the existence of ETI and UFOs, and little evidence of radio signals. Thus, we believe other avenues are worthy of serious scientific inquiry.

Skip Johns, a key Gibbons staffer, who had been present with Gibbons during the initial Rockefeller UFO briefing, wrote a note on top of the invitation document to "Tim," another Gibbons staffer, "JHG would like to discuss with you." Unfortunately according to one of those attending, Bruce Maccabee, no one from the Science Advisor’s office attended.

On October 20, 1993 Gibbons and Henry Diamond met and talked at the Environmental Law Institute. Subsequent to that discussion, Diamond wrote a letter to Gibbons informing him that Mr. Rockefeller would like to have another meeting to discuss UFOs.

Shortly after this October request by Diamond, another UFO researcher, Steven Greer, International Director of Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), made his move to, like Rockefeller, brief the Clinton White House people on the UFO subject. He hoped to achieve two of the same goals that were being promoted by Rockefeller: 1) attain a complete declassification of all UFO documents within the U.S. Government; and, 2) gain amnesty for witnesses involved in classified UFO activities, so they could tell their stories without fear of reprisal.

On December 13, 1993, Dr. Greer met with the "principal advisor to the President for Intelligence matters related to national security," DCI James Woolsey. It was the first of many UFO briefings that Greer would do for members of the Clinton administration.

From the available documentation, Greer was much more active proselytizing White House staff on UFOs than were Jones and Rockefeller. During one interview, he mentioned some of the people inside the Clinton administration whom had been briefed by himself or his briefing team:

"There were many briefing materials that were given, not only to the CIA Director Mr. Woolsey, but to other senior members of the Clinton administration. Members of our team of the CSETI Project Starlight team were able to provide briefing materials to and meetings with the Presidents’ closest friends, and the Bruce Lindsay family. Bruce Lindsay being the President’s sort of senior counselor in the White House, but also one of his closest friends...We were also able to do similar briefing materials and conveyed them to the President’s Science Advisor, to Tony Lake, who at the time was the National Security Advisor to the President...to senior people in Al Gore’s office, his Chief of Staff, as well as Al Gore, and many of his personal friends."

Despite these many briefing, Dr. Greer is only mentioned in passing in the 1,000 pages of material released by the OSTP. This is probably accounted for by the fact that his contacts were outside the OSTP, and the record of his contacts will not be available until 2006 when the Clinton files become subject to FOIA requests.

The lack of OSTP references to Greer does not mean that Greer and Rockefeller did not cross paths. The complete record of their association is not totally known yet, but what is known, is that Greer did at one time have close connections with Dr. Gibbons’ UFO briefer, Laurance Rockefeller. A few months before doing his briefing with Woolsey, Greer had met with Rockefeller at his ranch outside of Jackson Hole. During this meeting Dr. Greer started providing Rockefeller with material that Rockefeller would eventually use to brief President Clinton, at his Wyoming Ranch, in August 1995. Dr. Greer described the material as "a package of evidence, assessments and other documents."

He and Rockefeller had been working together since January 1994. He had provided Rockefeller with the latest UFO information being received from top-level deep-throats in contact with CSETI. Rockefeller, in exchange, provided funding for Dr. Greer’s Project Starlight Coalition (PSC). The PSC was a group CSETI had formed in July 1993. Greer described it as "a voluntary association of researchers, scientists, world leaders and concerned citizens who are dedicated to affecting a non-harmful disclosure on the UFO/ETI (Unidentified Flying Object / Extraterrestrial Intelligence) issue in the near future."

The Roswell Search

Diamond wrote Gibbons in October 1993 asking for a new face-to-face meeting for Mr. Rockefeller. Once again, it appeared that what Rockefeller wanted - Rockefeller got. On February 4, 1994 Rockefeller and Scott Jones met again with Gibbons and his staff. By this time, the responsibility for dealing with Rockefeller and his UFO Disclosure Initiative had moved back from the Defense Department to Gibbons Office for Science and Technology Policy.

During this February 1994 meeting, Gibbons made a stunning proposal related to Rockefeller’s main request that all UFO information be declassified and released. Rockefeller referred to the Gibbons proposal in a follow -up letter.

"We believe that your approach of starting by addressing a specific incident is an important and reasonable way to begin the process of declassification in this area."

It was an opportunity that Rockefeller made the most of. He fully encouraged Gibbons to work to declassify Roswell, the "mother of all UFO cases." Rockefeller wrote,

The July 1947 Roswell incident would be a logical and challenging place to start. While much in the public sector has been written about it, the government has had nothing to say about it after the original press release saying that a flying disc had been recovered was retracted. The public record of this incident has been thoroughly analyzed. Further information depends upon access to classified information.

Many are convinced that Roswell marks the beginning of government secrecy about UFOs. However, whatever the truth of Roswell, a definite statement about it from the government would be very important. If it actually was UFO related, it could be used to start the process of reversing the government’s 40 plus years of denial on the subject. If it can fully be explained as not UFO related, it would be a significant contribution to the field, and perhaps even contribute to more rigor in research on the subject.

If this specific project initiative is successful, it will become an important prototype for the release of all UFO information. Obviously, the means of carrying out this event-related review is up to you. However, to the extent we can be helpful, we want to be.

Rockefeller added, "Scott Jones and his associates are quite current on research accomplished on this subject. I have asked that they be available to assist your investigation in any appropriate way."

In addition to "lifting classification about Roswell" Rockefeller asked that President Clinton "grant amnesty on an individual basis to allow those with knowledge of the incident to speak without fear of prosecution."

Finally, Rockefeller asked that Gibbons "designate a staff person for continuing contact." In the meantime, and under these circumstances, Rockefeller promised that he would hold off on the UFO letter he was drafting addressed to President Clinton.

This "Clinton draft letter" popped up over and over in the 1,000 pages released by OSTP, from its first reference in 1994, to early 1996, when it appeared the letter might have been sent to the President. It appeared attached to Gibbons’ letters, in various states of draft. In one draft, discussed later, Gibbons or one of his staff actually made comments in the margin about various ideas expressed in the letter.

Attached to this Gibbons letter, was an even more interesting letter to Anne Bartley who appeared to have been one of the Gibbons staffers in the room during the February 4th meeting. In this letter, Rockefeller makes an even more stunning disclosure - it was the President’s Science Advisor Jack Gibbons who had proposed making Roswell a test case for new declassification procedures. Rockefeller wrote,

Jack’s suggestion to make the 1947 event a test case of the Government’s willingness to review classification procedures under the President’s recent Executive Order was a very good one.

As with the letter to Gibbons, Rockefeller dangled the proposed letter to Clinton: "My idea of the letter to the President seems best tabled, and for us to concentrate on Jack Gibbons and follow through on his suggestion."

Only three days after these Rockefeller letters, Scott Jones wrote a letter to Jack Gibbons fulfilling his role to provide Dr. Gibbons with the best evidence they could provide on the Roswell case. Much of the material presented to Gibbons with the letter, was produced by the Fund for UFO Research as part of their effort "to support a thorough and open inquiry into the Roswell incident." Also enclosed with the letter was a series of press clipping related to the efforts that were being undertaken by Representative Steven Schiff (R-NM).

The OSTP files also show that Dr. Gibbon’s office was provided a 170-page report on Roswell prepared for the Fund for UFO Research by Fred Whiting. It is not clear if the report was presented prior to, after, or during the February 4th meeting. This private report titled "The Roswell Events" was described as:

A chronology of events and a compilation of supporting documentation concerning the possible crash of an Unidentified Flying Object and the recovery of its wreckage and the bodies of its crew in July 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico.

In the February 17 letter, Jones also revealed two interesting sidelights to Roswell investigations going on in other government circles. Jones presented both sidelights as warnings to Dr. Gibbons that the Roswell search was not going to be an easy one. The first item Jones pointed out was that he had heard that when the GAO had contacted the Pentagon for information on Roswell for their investigation, they had been told by a military spokesman to "Go shit in your hat." Secondly, Jones warned about UFOs being used to cloak other highly classified projects.

My mention of mind-control technology at the February 4 meeting was quite deliberate. There are reasons to believe that some government group has interwoven research about this technology with alleged UFO phenomena. If that is correct, you can expect to run into early resistance when inquiring about UFOs, not because of the UFO subject, but because that has been used to cloak research and application of mind-control activity.

On April 26, 1994, Rockefeller was again back in contact with Gibbons, this time commenting on the Clinton Executive Order to reduce unnecessary secrecy classifications that were being circulated among federal agencies. Rockefeller hoped that it would be enough to help find the UFO files that were being sought. Secondly, in this letter Rockefeller mentioned meeting with Carl Sagan on the issue of extraterrestrial life. Sagan had expressed skepticism about the quality of the evidence of extraterrestrial life, but did "strongly support" the release of government information on the subject.

On May 24, 1994, Gibbons received a memorandum from Sheila E. Widnall, Secretary of the Air Force, notifying him that the Air Force was investigating UFOs, and "Roswell in particular."

A cartoon found in the OSTP package of documents. It was taken  from the January 21, 1994 Albuquerque Tribune, and included in a collection of articles dealing with the Congressman Schiff Roswell investigation.

Although there is no record of the order from the White House to Widnall, it is quite apparent that the White House had ordered the new review of the Roswell case, consistent with the agreement Gibbons and Rockefeller had made to make it a test case for UFO disclosure.

In hindsight, Secretary Sheila Widnall was probably the last person the Clinton administration should have approached to aid the disclosure process. Widnall came to her job with first class black-world credentials. She had been for six years a trustee of Aerospace Corporation, a half billion-dollar-a-year nonprofit organization that provided management and technical support for the Air Force space program, including half of the black reconnaissance programs supporting the CIA and NSA. These black-world credentials made her the perfect choice for the Air Force which in 1997 spent 40 cents of every dollar on secret projects.

It was Widnall who recommended to the White House the seizure by the Air Force of two tracts of public land totaling 3,900 acres around the famous Area-51 test site known in the UFO world as "Dreamland." The area had become famous for UFOs after a man by the name of Bob Lazar went public in the late eighties claiming that he had been involved in a black budget program at the base involving the back engineering of captured flying saucers.

Widnall said publicly that getting too close to the base could allow foreign intelligence to gain knowledge about U. S. capabilities. "Collection of information regarding the air, water, and soils is a classic foreign intelligence practice because analysis of these samples can result in the identification of military operations and capabilities," Widnall stated.

The seizure probably had more to do with that fact that Lazar’s claims about alien technology at the base were widely reported. This led to an entire tourist industry around Area-51 centered on people hiking up into the mountains surrounding the base where they could look down over into the valley towards the flight test center at Groom Lake, and see what was flying around.

It is assumed that the request for the U.S.A.F. to investigate Roswell came from Dr. Gibbons office, the President, or someone inside the President’s office. We will not know for sure who ordered the investigation because Clinton records are not subject to FOIA requests until January 2006.

What is known, is that Air Force Secretary Widnall knew the White House wanted a report on Roswell, and she was writing to Gibbons to report what had been done. Her words appeared at first glance to be very encouraging,

"While we don’t have the bottom line yet, I thought you would be interested in this interim report I got from my staff. I intended to bring it over this morning, but forgot. My policy is that we are declassifying everything even remotely related, and anything our people think still needs to be classified will have to be justified to me. More to follow!

On the bottom of the memo Gibbons wrote a note for his primary Roswell expert in the Office, Skip Johns, suggesting they sit down and discuss the report prior to talking to Rockefeller. "Skip for your scanning." Gibbons wrote. " After you and I have had a chance to discuss, I’ll be ready to communicate with L.R. and his niece. JG"

On May 26, 1994 Scott Jones wrote another letter to Gibbons to ask if "there had been enough progress with your look into the Roswell incident to warrant another meeting with Laurance." In addition, Jones stated he was writing to update Gibbons on the latest news.

One news item Jones wanted to relate is that there had been a break in the Rockefeller camp. Richard Farley, who had written the "The Matrix of UFO Beliefs" briefing that was used to introduce Gibbons to the UFO classification issue, had broken with the team. Worse yet, as Jones related, he had made an independent move to bypass Rockefeller and Gibbons and went right to the President. This meant that there were now at least two roads to the President on the same issue. "I am sorry," wrote Jones, "about this uncoordinated action." Jones put forward his account of what had happened,

"I have learned that one of the Foundation’s former staff members, Dick Farley, has made an independent contact with the White House on the UFO subject. Farley wrote me that as of a month ago he had sent three different packets of material that detailed the complete activities of the foundation in support of Mr. Rockefeller and his interest in the declassification of government materials related to the UFO phenomena. Farley would only identify the White House staff person as an Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff (the staffer turned out to be Deputy Chief of Staff Phil Lader who went on to be appointed by President Clinton to be Ambassador to Great Britain). My major concern is that when you heard about Farley’s approach you may have thought that we were trying to run a second separate program on this subject with another part of the White House Staff. That emphatically is not the case. Farley had personal motivation for what he did, and I suspect we will continue to try to maintain the contact."

Along with this defection by Richard Farley from the Rockefeller camp, came another break from the Rockefeller camp. Ufologist Jacques Vallee had been offered a position helping with the Disclosure Initiative. Instead of taking the offer, Vallee turned it down and wrote directly to Dr. Gibbons to present his own UFO views, which differed from those ideas Rockefeller was presenting. Vallee had offered to meet with Gibbons either in San Francisco or Washington or at Gibbons convenience. Despite Vallee’s high profile in the UFO community Gibbons turned Vallee down cold. Vallee was told he could provide anything on the subject by mail, but as one of Gibbon’s aides wrote, "Did not encourage."

Last Updated on Sunday, 02 August 2009 21:46