After
a tense wait, the CIA has finally stated its position on the explosive “Roswell
Happened” comments made by their former Entertainment Liaison Officer Chase
Brandon. Jennifer Youngblood of the
Agency's Office of Public Affairs said that official historians have checked
their files but “found nothing in the Agency’s holdings to corroborate Mr. Brandon’s
specific claims.”
Brandon
ignited an ongoing media furore following his appearance on Coast to Coast AM
on June 23 of this year when he announced that he had seen evidence in a box
marked ‘Roswell’ at the CIA’s Historical Intelligence Collection (HIC) which
confirmed “100%” his belief that the government had recovered an extraterrestrial
craft and its occupants near Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947.
The
CIA was responding by email to a detailed series of questions sent by a group
of British and Canadian researchers: Robbie Graham, doctoral candidate at the University
of Bristol and editor of silverscreensaucers.blogspot.com, Matthew Alford,
Grant Cameron, and Victor Viggiani. The group’s email requested information
about Brandon, specifically: his current relationship with the CIA; the
possibility of researchers checking his claims; the vetting of his comments by the
Publications Review Board, and whether his utterances disclosed classified
information in any way.
Robbie
Graham commented: “The CIA have done exactly what we expected they would
do. They’ve refused to address our
questions and they’ve brushed aside Brandon’s claims without directly calling him
a liar.” He added: “It’s interesting
that they say they actually checked
their archives for the ‘Roswell box’ Brandon described -- that must have been a
weird library trip.”
The
purpose of Brandon's statements remains unclear, with some pointing to him
promoting his new book, The Cryptos Conundrum,
and others speculating it could be part of a more sophisticated UFO disinformation
or disclosure strategy.
Youngblood
also pointed the researchers towards the Agency's 1997 supposedly definitive
account of its role in UFO studies, which appears on its website.
Anyone know if the CIA ever started up anything new after they shut down Project Blue Book?
ReplyDeleteHi Gunther, Blue Book was a USAF project. Since it's closure in '69, the US government has maintained that none of its branches is involved in UFO investigations or research. That's the official line.
DeleteAh, very interesting. It has been a while since I have read up on any of this stuff so I wasn't sure. Thanks.
DeleteThanks for the update!
ReplyDeleteCan we see the full text of Youngblood's email?
ReplyDeleteThough I would like to post Youngblood's reply in full, sadly, half of her response to us is unpublishable as it was "off the record" (in bold). Only one line of her email was "on the record". The "off the record" material was entirely obfuscatory.
DeleteThanks for your efforts, Mr. Graham. Would you please comment on any response Youngblood may have offered to your specific request for clarification of Brandon's current relationship with the CIA? Thank you...
DeleteOF course the CIA is going to deny his claim!! They will NEVER admit to this!!
ReplyDeleteThe CIA may deny they have any records of Brandon's claims, but I find it very telling that they checked their archives. Sounds like they did a once over just to be sure nothing was missed. The mere act of checking lends credence to his claims.
ReplyDeleteSo they can circumvent freedom of information guidelines the government has given all record keeping of UFO files (and the drones flying over USA cities) to some of the universities. That way the government can say they know nothing and have nothing to show.
ReplyDeleteRoswell is a dead issue with both DOD and CIA confi rming no alien craft or bodies were found at Roswell It was a Top Secret US spy mission over Russia- end of story Confirmed by FTD USAF.
ReplyDeleteWrong o, marylou..... the only military commentary on Roswell is the USAF report claiming it was a Mogul array and that has been thoroughly debunked....
Delete@various anonymouses
ReplyDelete> OF course the CIA is going to deny his claim!
> The mere act of checking lends credence to his claims.
Come on. When you see non-confirmation as confirmation, you have to ask yourself seriously what -- if anything -- would change your mind.
The CIA uses passwords on their email accounts -- they're hiding something!
The Army just bought 10 years worth of toilet paper -- aliens are invading!
Michael Horn doesn't blink or use a comb -- he's an alien hybrid!
(Okay, that last one is true.)
:) Nice one, Terry!
DeleteIT IS STANDRD , TO NOT KEEP THIS INFO WITHIN THE SAME "LIBRARY" AS AS WE WILL CALL "AVERAGE" INFO. TRUTH BE TOLD, THE DPARTMENTS DONT TRUST THERE OWN WORKERS, SO THE ABOVE AVERAGE JOE WOULD NOT HAVE ACCESS TO THIS INFO ANY WAY. A CLEARENCE WORKS ON A NEED TO KNOW BASE. NO MATTER WHAT TYPE OF LEVEL IT IS, AND IF THE "BOSS" SAYS ' NO ONE NEEDS TO KNOW' WELL THEN, THAT FILE WILL BE KEPT UNDER LOCK AND KEY, UNDER LOCK AND KEY, UNDER LOCK AND KEY. I DOUBT 'THEY WOULD HAVE HAD ACCESS TO THE "FILES" ON A WHIM SUCH AS, TO DISPROVE A STATEMENT.
ReplyDeleteWhy even comment on it? Either way, their commenting on the subject leaves room for the possibility that they are attempting to cover up/hush up and attempting to deter any further questions or investigations into the matter.
ReplyDeleteSeriously though, I served 28 years in the Marine Corps with 8 years working in conjunction with the NSA. My father was old school OSS and he evolved with the OSS when it became the CIA. I grew up knowing many of the "Big wigs" of the 60's & early 70's and was encouraged by some to join the military and go into Intel...which I did. They wouldn't comment on this unless it was, in their eyes, going to draw more attention than they wanted in certain areas of their attempt to keep things dumbed down.
Darwin ate an Apple and Bit hard into the Seed of Desperation during the Winter Solstice. QSAIMISKSK
Well, when CIA (or the US Gov, for that matter) tells us that they are not doing something or that they don't have something or that they don't know about something we can pretty well assume that we are being lied to. Their track record is to lie about everything, avoid oversight and duck accountability.... They torture and then, when Congress demands copies of the tapes to prove that America doesn't torture, the CIA destroys them with zero explanation - meanwhile we have innocent men claiming to have been captured and tortured and the Red Cross tells us they can't find half the people the US claimed to have "renditioned" about 100and fears they are dead.... and then we learn that CIA destroyed almost 100 interrogation tapes... Bottom line: We cant take the US gov or any of its so-called Allies word on anything at all. It has no credibility at all on most subjects much less those UFO related. They say they don't study UFO, then that makes us the experts and we can figure this out without them... and at some point heads will, or should, roll....
ReplyDeleteThe CIA is an evil organisation, and Chase Brandon is just a troll trying to capitalize off of his questionable association knowing full well they would never admit to anything. The whole thing is a smokescreen.
ReplyDeleteI listened to Brandon and I think the story is less about CIA's secret files and more about the so-called "weird desk" file collection that was maintained by a handful of officers at CIA over the years. The file collection is mentioned in declassified CIA documents. Those real declassified documents refer to officers who kept copies of documents on unusual phenomena in their desks -- and discussions of the information with senior officials. Brandon implies what he saw was a box of (probably privately) collected materials left behind by Agency analysts.
ReplyDeleteVery very possible. But such a box in HIC collections in the mid-1990s should still be there somewhere. You would also think that someone with Chase Brandon's experience and brains would know the difference between original source documents, eyewitness statements, official personnel's own individual & departmental reports, and documentary evidence (photographs, lab reports, etc) would be easily distinguishable from open source snippets and research material that one or more analysts happened to have collected over the years. And there's always the possibility that it's something in between: pieces of the puzzle that were collected by one or more analysts over the years that are not open source, but were intelligence community tidbits on the subject of interest. Considering Congress empowering the GAO to look into this subject and several presidents showing an interest, I don't think it's rational for Chase Brandon to think he needs to keep the details of what was inside the box a secret. If anything, he'd be helping the current CIA determine what they misplaced. It's hard to go to prison for disclosing something the government does not officially consider classified. And the president is the final person who gets to decide not only classification but clemency on this sort of issue. Fear not.
Delete