The American Influence
In looking at the activities of the Flying Saucer Working Party one cannot overstate the influence of the Americans. The phrase “following the lead given by the Americans on this subject” which we quote in the previous paragraph is extremely revealing and it is clear from the report itself that much of the material comes from liaison with those involved with Projects Sign and Grudge. There are other clues. As we have said, R. V. Jones forged extremely close links with the Americans on a range of intelligence issues and it is interesting to note that the fourth item of the Flying Saucer Working Party’s terms of reference (requiring them to liaise with US authorities) was a late - though undoubtedly sensible - addition to the original remit.
Once the terms of reference included a requirement to get alongside the Americans on the UFO question, active liaison began. A member of the Flying Saucer Working Party duly travelled to America to meet with US authorities. It is also known that H. Marshall Chadwell was consulted and sat in on at least one of the Flying Saucer Working Party’s meetings.
Chadwell was Assistant Director of the CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence and in 1952 and 1953 was one of the key figures in the Scientific Panel on UFOs, better known as the Robertson Panel, after its chairman H. P. Robertson, an eminent physicist from the California Institute of Technology.
Robertson had been President Eisenhower’s Scientific Adviser during the war, holding the rank of a four-star General. He had worked closely with R. V. Jones on various scientific intelligence matters and moved seamlessly between government service and academia. His post-war appointments included a post as theoretical physicist in Pasadena, associated with the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Observatories, and a spell as head of the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group at the Pentagon.
The Robertson Panel’s sceptical report concluded that further study of the UFO phenomenon was not warranted, though as CIA Chief Historian Gerald Haines has confirmed, the CIA did not abandon their interest in the phenomenon.
It is also interesting to note what Edward Ruppelt (former head of the USAF’s Project Blue Book) says about the British UFO research effort. Writing in his 1956 book The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects he makes a number of specific references to the UK.
In chapter 3 he states that the 1948 document Estimate of the Situation (prepared by staff on the USAF’s Project Sign, initially classified Top Secret and concluding that some UFOs were extraterrestrial) mentioned that “Ghost Aeroplanes” had been detected on British radar early in 1947.
In chapter 10 there is a sentence that reads as follows:
“Two RAF intelligence officers who were in the US on a classified mission brought six single-spaced typed pages of questions they and their friends wanted answered”.
Chapter 14 mentions the September 1952 UFO sightings during Operation Mainbrace (including the sightings at RAF Topcliffe). Ruppelt comments:
“It was these sightings, I was told by an RAF exchange intelligence officer in the Pentagon, that caused the RAF to officially recognise the UFO”.
In chapter 17 Ruppelt reveals that even after he had left Project Blue Book and the USAF, friends in RAF intelligence kept him informed about latest developments, on a private basis.
Another indication of the strong US influence on the Flying Saucer Working Party is the fact that their June 1951 final report was entitled Unidentified Flying Objects. This term had been devised by Ruppelt himself, early in 1951, but was not at the time in use outside US Government circles.
To put the above remarks about US influence into context, it is worth noting the extent to which Britain was in thrall to America more generally by the early Fifties. This process had started during the Second World War with the Lend-Lease Bill, the terms of which had contributed to the decline of British power and influence. By the end of the war it was clear that in a very real sense the British Empire had been supplanted by an American one. In intelligence matters too, the historic position had been reversed and in post-war years Britain was very much the junior partner to the US.
|
