The last installment of this series sought to answer an important question: Is there a modern, real-life equivalent to the conspiracy found in Bernard Newman’s fictional work, The Flying Saucer? The most likely candidate was a group of charlatans, liars, and disinformation agents located within the Department of Defense. This group operated officially as the Advanced Aerospace Weapons System Applications Program (AAWSAP) and then unofficially as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). This AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity was identified by a February 2024 report released by the Department of Defense’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) as the party responsible for disseminating wild, unsubstantiated tales of extraterrestrial Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) and secret programs involved in reverse-engineering alien technologies. The AAWSAP/AATIP cabal started feeding the public a steady diet of baseless UAP/UFO stories around 2017, when many Establishment media organs got in on the action with articles that portrayed AAWSAP/AATIP participants as courageous whistleblowers. After eight years of relentlessly misleading the public, the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity found its way onto the silver screen.

In March of 2025, the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity pulled out all the stops with the release of The Age of Disclosure, a UFO documentary film directed and produced by Dan Farah. Many of the members of the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity appear in the film, including former director of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force Jay Stratton, physicist and former CIA-funded researcher Hal Puthoff, astrophysicist Eric W. Davis, alleged retired senior CIA officer Jim Semivan, and, of course, the most vocal member of the fraternity, former military intelligence officer Luis Elizondo. With so many AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity members on parade, one cannot help but wonder if The Age of Disclosure is not a documentary, but, instead, a vacuous vehicle for the AAWSAP/AATIP agenda. What is that agenda? It seems to be a radical societal change brought about through the dissemination of UFO disinformation.

The foundation of the fraternity’s UFO disinformation campaign is the mother of all UFO psychological operations: the 1947 Roswell Crash. Predictably, several members of the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity line up on The Age of Disclosure with defibrillator pads in hand, attempting to breathe new life into the tired extraterrestrial interpretation of Roswell. What is old becomes new again as Puthoff appears on the screen and makes the following bold declaration: “Without a doubt, there’s hardly been any program that has been so successfully kept out of the public eye as anything like crash retrievals of unknown craft. This line of strong control started at least in the Truman administration with the Roswell crash.” Puthoff’s words are followed by an assurance from Elizondo that the Roswell incident was extraterrestrial in nature. Elizondo states: “In AATIP, we learned that the UAP event at the U.S. Army airfield in Roswell in 1947 did actually occur” (The Age of Disclosure).

Stratton then joins the Roswell chorus, describing the alleged Roswell craft as “a bootheel-shaped UAP that broke into two pieces on impact.” According to Stratton, “observers saw what looked like hieroglyphics or some type of writing on it.” Elizondo and Davis then add a shocking detail: “non-human bodies” were discovered in the wreckage of the crashed Roswell craft. Regarding the final disposition of the craft and the bodies, Stratton makes the following claim: “The recovered material from the crash, including the bodies, was all sent up to Wright Field, which is now called Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That’s where the U.S. had their reverse engineers” (ibid).

No one should be surprised to find so many AAWSAP/AATIP fraternal brothers invoking the dying myth of an alien crash at Roswell. The fraternity has a unique connection to the psychological operation that birthed and sustained what is arguably the most famous piece of UFO lore. The bridge between the Roswell UFO psyop and the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity can be found with a now-defunct group of UFO disinformation agents that assumed “bird names” as aliases. Referred to as “the Aviary” by its proxies in the UFO community, this group allegedly claimed at least one member of the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity as a participant: Hal Puthoff (“History of the Aviary”).

Puthoff and his Aviary cohorts claimed William Moore, an American author and major peddler of the extraterrestrial interpretation of Roswell, as their chief operative inside the UFO community (ibid). What was it that brought Moore and the Aviary together? Did the Aviary draw Moore’s name out of a hat filled with the names of other potential henchmen? There is some evidence that suggests that the Aviary’s selection of Moore was not so random. That evidence indicates that Moore either wittingly or unwittingly worked for deep state elements before the Aviary’s recruitment. In 1980, Moore co-authored one of the first books about Roswell, The Roswell Incident. His writing partner on The Roswell Incident was Charles Berlitz. An understated part of Berlitz’s life is his intelligence background. During the Second World War, Berlitz served with the Army Counter-Intelligence Corps. Most of Berlitz’s 13 years of active duty in the U.S. Army were spent in intelligence (McLellan). Did Berlitz’s intelligence work continue when he entered the Ufology field? One must entertain the possibility that the team of Berlitz and Moore helped covert political forces elevate the extraterrestrial interpretation of Roswell to the place of importance it holds within today’s UFO community and, arguably, the culture at large. Researcher Grant Cameron has noted that Moore’s and Berlitz’s work on Roswell “put the 1947 Roswell UFO crash on the map.” He further observes: “Prior to [The Roswell Incident] no one in the UFO community had ever heard of the story” (Cameron). If Moore and Berlitz were involved in some kind of effort to convince the public that aliens had crashed at Roswell, then it may have been Moore’s participation in such a venture that caught the attention of Aviary members, prompting the recruitment efforts that followed. The author and Ufologist had already proven his value to covert powers with the publication of The Roswell Incident. Why not bring him on for another UFO disinformation effort?

Moore became the Aviary’s primary agent after a series of encounters with a mysterious colonel who was referred to by the code name “Falcon.” Moore first encountered Falcon in 1980 while he was on a tour promoting The Roswell Incident. The relationship was sparked by a cryptic phone call that Moore received after a radio interview on WOW, an Omaha, Nebraska, station. Author Greg Bishop writes:

After a radio interview (at station WOW, no less) in Omaha, Nebraska, a secretary stopped him in the lobby and said that there was a call for him. The voice on the other end identified himself as a colonel at nearby Ofutt [sic] Air Force Base and then said, “We think you’re the only one we’ve heard that seems to know what he’s talking about.” The colonel asked if Moore could meet for coffee and a chat. (58f.)

Busy with his book tour, Moore told the colonel that he would contact him later and took down his phone number. The colonel proved to be persistent, contacting Moore after another radio interview. Bishop contends that this second telephone encounter led to the establishment of a meeting time and place. Bishop states:

On the return trip, after another interview at Albuquerque’s KOB radio, Moore was again requested at the switchboard. He picked up the phone and identified himself. “We think you’re the only one we’ve heard that seems to know what he’s talking about.” This got Moore’s attention, and this time he had a couple of days open. A meeting was set up at a local restaurant. (59)

During his first meeting with the mysterious colonel, Moore received a document describing a “project called ‘Silver Sky,’ which appeared to have something to do with Air Force UFO investigations and reports back to the Pentagon regarding sightings and encounters” (61). Bishop claims that Moore examined the document and determined that it was a fake. Moore had a second meeting with the colonel in late October of 1980. This time, the colonel was not alone. Bishop elaborates: “In yet another Albuquerque eatery, they sat down with an AFOSI [Air Force Office of Special Investigations] agent whom Moore had not seen before. The man was introduced as Special Agent Richard Doty from Kirtland AFB” (63).

After Moore told Doty and the colonel that the “Silver Sky” document was a fake, he was informed by the colonel that the document was a test to determine if the Ufologist could identify fraudulent documents (63f.). Moore had apparently passed the test. The colonel offered Moore a deal. Author Greg Bishop shares the details of that deal:

The meat of the deal was finally laid on the table: Moore would keep an eye on selected UFO researchers and report on their opinions and feelings about rumors and cases making rounds in their small community. The Falcon also revealed that he held a high position in the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is basically the military’s very own CIA. Elaborating on the offer from the previous meeting, he said that he represented a group of highly placed people who were unhappy with the secrecy surrounding the UFO subject, and wanted someone they could trust in order to release information to the public in a controlled way. (64)

The “group of highly placed people” referred to by Falcon was, of course, the Aviary. According to Bishop, Moore agreed to the Aviary’s deal, and Richard Doty became “his main counterintel contact” (64). While Moore may have initially agreed to simply act as a spy for Falcon, his role soon became more nefarious in nature. Falcon, Doty, and other Aviary participants used Moore to disseminate disinformation within the UFO research community. Many Ufologists took the bait, and some of the most outrageous beliefs held by UFO true believers grew out of this campaign. Those beliefs coalesced into a convoluted, contradictory body of myths undergirded by the assertion that aliens crashed in Roswell in 1947. The deep state-connected grift, however, began to come apart when rumors emerged that Moore was a disinformation agent. The catalyst for these rumors was an exchange between Moore and researcher Lee Graham. Author Jacques Vallee shares the details:

Among these rumors was the accusation made by researcher Lee Graham, who stated that Bill Moore had approached him “in an intelligence capacity” and had indicated that he worked for the government for the purpose of releasing sensitive UFO information to the public.

Graham also claimed that Moore had shown him a DIS (Defense Investigation Service) badge. (Vallee 47)

Lee’s account and other accusations prompted Moore to attempt to explain his dubious connections away at a July 1989 Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) conference held in Las Vegas (46). Moore’s time at the podium seemed to only make his guilt more obvious. Vallee elaborates:

In a confused and embarrassing presentation before the MUFON Conference, Bill Moore indeed confessed that he had willingly allowed himself to be used by various people claiming to act on behalf of Air Force Intelligence and that he had knowingly disseminated disinformation, although he had never been “on the payroll.” This is a mere play on words, of course. Not being on the payroll does not mean that he was not paid in cash or through other means. Writing to the editor of the excellent magazine Caveat Emptor (P.O. Box 4533, Metuchen, NJ 08840) in the summer of 1990, researcher Robert Hasting was still calling Moore “an unpaid government informant.” (My emphasis).

Moore gave a weak excuse for his actions, claiming that he acted in a heroic private effort to infiltrate and ultimately expose the operation. At the end of this rambling speech, Moore refused to take any questions and left the auditorium through a side door, making a quick getaway. (47, italics in original)

In 1996, Stanton Friedman, another suspicious Ufologist with more problematic government connections than one could shake a stick at, attempted to rehabilitate Moore’s reputation in the UFO community by putting a bizarre spin on Graham’s encounter with Moore. Friedman attempted to portray Moore as a prankster and a joker. According to Friedman, Moore “was not in the military and does not work for the government but has a fondness for playing games.” These “games,” asserted Friedman, included displaying a benign MUFON identification card to Graham and subsequently making a wild claim. Friedman writes: “As a joke, Bill once pulled out a MUFON identification card, flashed it at Lee, and indicated that he was working for the government. Lee bought it” (57).

Commenting on Friedman’s strange apologia for Moore, deceased researcher Jim Keith states:

This sidesteps the alleged impersonation of a government official, Graham’s memory of a DIS badge, not a MUFON card, the fact that Moore admitted to being a government agent, and the bottom line that the joke is unfunny. One wonders why Friedman would go out if his way to disclaim the government connection of an admitted government collaborator. (289)

No one bought Friedman’s poor explanation for Moore’s behavior. The jig was up, and at least one Aviary member was willing to raise the white flag of capitulation: Richard Doty, the AFOSI officer who acted as Moore’s contact with the Aviary. In a letter to Jim Moseley that appeared in the July 19, 2000, issue of Saucer Smear, Doty flatly states: “Moore was used to provide disinformation to Ufologists.” He further writes: “During my OSI days, I did perform disinformation operations against many different targets, but everything I did was sanctioned by our Government. I never did anything as a maverick” (“Missives from the Masses”). Doty’s letter to Moseley seems to demonstrate that the mask, at least to some degree, has come off.  It is interesting to note, however, that even after confessing to muddying the informational waters with a tremendous amount of disinformation, Doty still wants the public to believe many of the stories about Roswell that were likely circulated by disinformation agents like him. In his letter to Moseley, Doty also writes the following:

I don’t have the beliefs that some might think. The truth is this: Two alien spacecrafts crashed in the desert of New Mexico in the summer of 1947. Our Government recovered five bodies and one live alien. That alien lived until 1952. The recovered spacecrafts were transported to Wright-Patterson for examination and then on to several secret locations. That is it. To the best of my knowledge we have not been visited since. We don’t have any UFOs at Area 51. We might still have some remnants of the crashed craft from 1947. The bodies were preserved but I have no knowledge as to their location. (ibid)

Clearly, many deep state actors and institutions want the Roswell legend to endure. It seems to serve as the foundation for a UFO narrative that was used and preserved by many different covert political circles and has now been passed on to the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity to cultivate. The foundation, of course, cannot be lost, or the entire collection of lies propping up all the manipulation comes crashing down. Doty understands this and has done his part to preserve the Roswell UFO story.

Whatever became of Falcon? It is a burning, nagging question for many who have chosen to dig into the convoluted topic of UFO disinformation agents. Falcon was, after all, regarded by many in the UFO community to be the ultimate UFO whistleblower until Moore’s damning confession at the 1989 MUFON conference ended that charade. As researcher Nick Redfern points out: “the Falcon could be seen as the ufological equivalent of the infamous ‘Deep Throat’ of Watergate and All the President’s Men fame” (Redfern, “Taking a Look”). The faux UFO “deep throat’s” mask may have been ripped off in 2015, when researcher Greg Bishop claimed that he had been told by Moore that Falcon was a man named Harry Rositzke (ibid). Rositzke seems to have been one of those many covert operators who helped shape world history from the shadows. In the November 8, 2002, New York Times, one finds the following description of this enigmatic character: “An intelligence officer for nearly 30 years, first with the Office of Strategic Services and with its successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, Mr. Rositzke found himself at the center of wartime and then cold war covert activity” (Lewis). Rositzke’s work in intelligence began with America’s entry into the Second World War. At the time, he “had established himself as a promising scholar of linguistics, specializing in Anglo-Saxon.” The war, according to the New York Times, “carried him into strategic services, for which he was chief of military intelligence in London, Paris and Germany.” When the war ended, Rositzke found himself in the CIA (ibid).

Rositzke’s work with the agency does not appear to have been academic in nature. He seems to have been involved in covert operations, playing an active role in the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. The New York Times elaborates: “Mr. Rositzke was the first chief of the C.I.A.’s Soviet division. From 1952-54, he ran agents against the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe out of Munich. From 1954-56, he was in charge of the operations schools in the agency’s training division.” In 1957, Rositzke became CIA station chief in New Delhi, “operating against Soviet, Chinese and Tibetan targets.” In 1967, a former State Department code clerk who defected to the Soviet Union named John Discoe Smith claimed that a 1955 attempt on Zhou Enlai resulted in Rositzke’s expulsion from India. Smith asserted that he had informed Indian officials about a 1955 bombing of a plane that had the Chinese delegation to the Bandung Nonaligned Conference as its occupants. The bombing, said Smith, was carried out by the CIA’s New Delhi station. The first premier of the People’s Republic of China was believed by the Agency to have been on board. That, of course, was not the case. India removed Rositzke in what the New York Times describes as “belated retaliation” (ibid).

 The most significant portion of Rositzke’s background, however, may have emerged five years after his 1970 retirement. At that time, William Colby, then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), released a report that revealed many of the ugly details of MHCHAOS, an illegal domestic espionage project conducted by the CIA. The report’s revelations included “a memorandum dated Aug. 15, 1967, by the leader of covert operations, Thomas H. Karamessines, suggesting that Mr. Rositzke and another official, Richard Ober, be put in charge of Chaos.” Did the Agency follow Karamessines’s recommendation? The New York Times states: “Whether this happened remains unclear” (ibid). If Rositzke did find himself at the head of MHCHAOS, then it would place the UFO disinformation campaign carried out by Moore and Doty in a disturbing context. Rositzke’s recruitment and use of Moore to disseminate lies may have been a continuation of the CIA’s intrusion into America’s domestic sphere that started with MHCHAOS. If this speculation is correct, then Rositzke and his CIA associates were part of the large collection of covert operators who used the extraterrestrial version of the Roswell crash as a foundational myth upon which many wild UFO stories were laid.

Rositzke is certainly not the only CIA official connected to Roswell-based UFO lore. The wild claims of former CIA agent Chase Brandon also support the assertion that the CIA has employed the extraterrestrial interpretation of Roswell as the foundational myth in its creation of UFO lore. Brandon spent 35 years with the CIA, working on everything from counterinsurgency to thwarting drug smuggling rings. He supposedly retired and pursued writing, releasing a novel entitled The Cryptos Conundrum in 2012. The book is a science fiction thriller about CIA efforts to conceal the crash of an alien spacecraft at Roswell. Brandon claims that the book, while fictional, is based on fact. He alleges that he happened upon proof of an extraterrestrial crash at Roswell while rummaging around in a CIA archive called the Historical Intelligence Collection. According to Brandon, while perusing the archive, he discovered a box labeled “Roswell” (Blakely). Brandon says that he examined the box’s content and, predictably, saw proof positive of what Moore and countless other Ufologists and disinformation agents have been saying about Roswell for years now. Does Brandon believe a word of what he has said and written regarding Roswell? Or is he, like Rositzke before him, serving a UFO deception agenda? While the truth has yet to be fully discerned, one can at least lean toward what is probable. It is more probable that Brandon is playing the disinformation game than it is that aliens fell to the earth in Roswell some eight decades ago. This contention gains greater traction when one considers Brandon’s rather dubious background as the CIA’s first entertainment liaison officer. In this capacity, Brandon worked on a several films, likely ensuring that their narratives comported with CIA agendas and historical accounts. 

The AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity has yet another connection to the Roswell UFO psyop: Apollo 14 astronaut and Ufologist Dr. Edgar Mitchell. While he was alive, Mitchell had an association with two members of the fraternity, Eric Davis and Hal Puthoff. In his book Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, AAWSAP/ATTIP participant Luis Elizondo describes Mitchell as “a close friend and confidant” of Davis and Puthoff. Mitchell was also a recipient of the famous Wilson/Davis memo, a 13-page summary of Davis’s conversation with Vice Admiral Thomas R. Wilson concerning UFO/UAP issues. Davis is reputed to be the author of this memo, and he and Puthoff allegedly gave a copy to Mitchell (42). Following Mitchell’s death in 2016, the copy was retrieved from the astronaut’s safe and released to the public by his estate (43).

Mitchell was a fervent supporter of the extraterrestrial interpretation of the events at Roswell. His passionate stance on UFOs stemmed, in part, from his personal connection to the Roswell incident. According to Elizondo, Mitchell “once confided to Hal [Puthoff] and Eric [Davis] that his family was among the Roswell families who were threatened by the FBI after the Roswell crashes” (43). Such an experience would have a tremendous impact on a young Mitchell. That does not, however, explain why Mitchell believed that what crashed at Roswell was extraterrestrial. What caused the astronaut to reach such a bizarre conclusion? According to Skeptoid, Mitchell “says his views are based on things told to him by people who are in on the secrets” (Dunning). It never occurred to Mitchell that the “people who are in on the secrets” may have been using him.

One researcher has asserted that Mitchell “was effectively turned into an unwitting amplifier for the dissemination of the CIA’s ‘UFO Legend.’” According to Garrick Alder, Mitchell became a disinformation amplifier in 1976, when he approached United States Navy Admiral Bobby Ray Inman with questions regarding the 1947 Roswell incident. At the time, Mitchell was gradually coming to believe that the 1947 Roswell incident was part of a UFO cover-up (Alder). Mitchell appears to have been guilty of confirmation bias, a tendency to search for data that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs. It seemed to be the desire of the covert forces behind the UFO deception to exploit this flaw in Mitchell’s thinking. These forces, particularly those within the CIA, manipulated the flow of information in a way that caused Mitchell to firmly believe in extraterrestrials and a UFO cover-up.

Inman went to the CIA on Mitchell’s behalf and asked about the 1947 Roswell incident. In response, the CIA told Inman that his “authority was not sufficient to release the information” regarding what happened near the now famous New Mexico township in 1947 (ibid). This meant that Inman had to return to Mitchell with a flat denial instead of even a superficial explanation. The CIA’s response was significant because it transformed Mitchell’s suspicions into steadfast convictions. Alder elaborates:

In the 1970s, the ‘official story’ of Roswell was still that an ordinary weather balloon had crash-landed in 1947. Crucially, the CIA did not instruct Admiral Inman to stick to this well-established cover-story, instead refusing to allow him to say anything at all. This deliberate omission allowed astronaut Edgar Mitchell to believe that an extraterrestrial spacecraft really had crashed near the New Mexico township. (ibid)

The CIA’s refusal to disclose the facts regarding the 1947 Roswell incident was actually part of an effort to turn Mitchell into a mouthpiece for many lies that now permeate the UFO community. Unfortunately, in many ways, Mitchell was the perfect recruit for such a task. Alder writes:

From the point of view of the people behind the UFO disinformation, Dr Mitchell would have been an ideal unwitting spokesman. He was brought up in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico, during the 1930s. In July 1945, he witnessed an enormous and brilliant flash of light in the middle of the night, and eventually learned that he was one of the few civilians to have witnessed the top-secret Trinity Test at nearby Alamogordo. Aged 16, Edgar Mitchell was one of the thousands of people who read the Roswell Daily Record’s 8 July 1947 report that a flying saucer had crashed nearby. From an early age, he was receptive to claims about government cover-ups and about extraterrestrials. There is a certain twisted poetry in the way that the 1947 ‘Roswell Incident’ was used against the lunar pioneer, decades later. (ibid; italics in original)

During a December 17, 2018, telephone interview conducted by Garrick Alder, Inman claimed that he had wanted to tell Mitchell that what crashed at Roswell was a balloon tied to “Project Mogul,” a top-secret project involving high-altitude balloons that was run by the US Air Force. Alder describes “Project Mogul” as an “exercise to learn more about nuclear weapons tests being conducted in the Soviet Union.” The project, according to Alder, “worked by measuring long-distance sound waves originating from nuclear explosions and propagated across the upper atmosphere.” Inman told Alder that the CIA became “very cross” with him when he expressed a desire to tell Mitchell that the wreckage at Roswell was the remains of a “Project Mogul” balloon. Inman alleged that the CIA informed him that he “had no authority to unilaterally release details of the balloon project” (ibid). It seems that Inman was attempting to portray himself as a hostage to the CIA who desperately wanted to tell Mitchell the truth. The “Project Mogul” explanation, however, seems to have been little more than another piece of disinformation.

The recovery and analysis of whatever crashed at Roswell did not conform to the procedures employed at other suspected “Project Mogul” crashes during the same time period. A one-page FBI memorandum dated September 23, 1947, provides details surrounding an “Instrument found on a farm near Danforth, Illinois” (Redfern, Body Snatchers in the Desert, 37). The circumstances surrounding the “Instrument” discovered in Danforth, Illinois, and the Roswell incident are uncannily similar. Redfern elaborates:

The similarities between the events at Roswell and those at Danforth are, at the very least, striking. For example, both “objects” were found on ranch land, both were initially suspected of being flying saucer debris, and in the same way that the Air Force tried to lay the Roswell controversy to rest with its Mogul hypothesis, the material evidence in the Danforth case was also suspected by some within the military of originating with a Mogul balloon array. (37; italics in original)

Redfern cites FBI documents that track the journey of the Danforth object from its resting place on ranch land to investigators in the US Armed Forces. FBI records, according to Redfern, state that “the strange find was handed over after its discovery to a Mrs. Whedon of the Army Engineers.” An examination of the Danforth object led Whedon to conclude that “the instrument had been used by the Air Forces on tests which were classified as Top Secret.’” This prompted Special Agent S.W. Reynolds of the FBI’s Liaison Section to contact the Air Force’s Intelligence Division for more information. The Air Force’s Intelligence Division told Reynolds that “Mrs. Whedon alluded that the instrument was used in ‘Operation Mogul.’” Thorough examinations of the object eventually revealed that it was a hoax. The “instrument” was, in fact, “part of an old-style radio loudspeaker.” What is important, however, is that the object was initially believed to be debris from “Project Mogul.” Despite the suspicions that the object was related to “Project Mogul,” none of the intense secrecy, intimidation tactics, and cover stories employed in the Roswell incident were present in the Danforth case. Redfern writes: “The material was simply forwarded with the minimum of fuss to Wright Field for inspection, and it was Wright Field’s staff that concluded, despite the initial assertion from the Army Engineers, that the debris was unconnected to Mogul” (37f.).

If the Roswell debris was, in fact, related to Mogul, then one would expect to see all of the same benign procedures put into practice in the Danforth, Illinois case. Instead, Roswell witnesses reported a restricted crash site with a high degree of security and the issuance of death threats by military officials. If this was all attributable to “Cold War nerves,” then why were such extreme measures absent from the Danforth case, an event which fell within the same timeframe as the Roswell incident? After comparing the two events, Redfern states

We have two incidents, one in New Mexico, one in Illinois, both on ranch land and both tied to flying saucers and to Mogul. In the first instance, the Air Force asserts that a Mogul balloon was most likely recovered, and in the second instance, Mogul was suspected by the military itself, no less. Yet the procedures undertaken to deal with the recovery and analysis of both objects were entirely different. More important, the overwhelming secrecy afforded the Roswell case at the Foster Ranch was absent in the incident at Illinois.

Had the two events occurred in different time frames – say, over the space of two or three years – it could be argued that the secrecy surrounding Mogul had been downgraded. Yet the Roswell and Danfort events took place only weeks apart. (38; italics in original)

Even though the Mogul explanation is seriously flawed, Inman wanted to present it to Mitchell as the definitive answer to the Roswell mystery. This raises an important question: Was Bobby Ray Inman really a protagonist in the Edgar Mitchell case? It seems that he and the CIA only disagreed on the type of disinformation that would be fed to Mitchell. It appears, however, that both wished to use the flow of information on Roswell to mislead the famous astronaut. Both the CIA and Inman were, in all likelihood, satisfied with the result of their disinformation campaign. Mitchell became a true believer in the extraterrestrial interpretation of Roswell and remained one until his death in 2016. Who knows how many people Mitchell converted into disciples of the cult of Roswell?

If aliens did not crash at Roswell in 1947, then what did, in fact, occur? The authors of this series certainly do not assert that nothing happened. There were honest people on the Roswell witness list whose testimonies prove that some kind of incident occurred in the New Mexico desert. The truth regarding that incident, however, has been obscured by years of disinformation, lies, distortion, and exaggeration. Where can one turn to find an accurate account of what transpired? The answer, ironically, may lie with one of the disinformation agents: Lieutenant Colonel Philip Corso.

Corso arrived on the scene eight years after Moore’s 1989 Las Vegas MUFON conference debacle. The twenty-year Army intelligence career man seems to have been on a mission of damage control. Moore’s confession nearly ended the Roswell craze. Corso was aiming to put the Roswell disinformation train back on track with the publication of his 1997 book, The Day After Roswell. In the book, Corso recounted his involvement in research and reverse engineering involving alleged alien artifacts and technology recovered from the Roswell crash, attributing many of the technological breakthroughs and advances of the modern era to alien technology borrowed from other worlds. The following is a list of advancements Corso claimed were the product of reverse engineering:

• Image intensifiers, which ultimately became “night vision”
• Fiber optics
• Supertenacity fibers
• Lasers
• Molecular alignment metallic alloys
• Integrated circuits and microminiaturization of logic boards
• HARP (High Altitude Research Project)
• Project Horizon (moon base)
• Portable atomic generators (ion propulsion drive)
• Irradiated food
• “Third brain” guidance systems (EBE headbands)
• Particle beams (“Star Wars” antimissile energy weapons)
• Electromagnetic propulsion systems
• Depleted uranium projectiles (Corso 113f)

Corso’s “revelations” have become part of a long line of “smoking guns” that support the idea that humanity has been the recipient of the “technology of the gods.” Corso had taken the Roswell narrative to a whole new level, presenting the 1947 incident as a kind of Bethlehem for the modern world.

Corso’s version of events, however, seems to subtly discredit his contention that whatever crashed at Roswell was undeniably extraterrestrial in nature. Portions of his testimony point to a terrestrial origin for the crashed craft. Corso states that there were

military fears at first that the craft might have been an experimental Soviet weapon because it bore a resemblance to some of the German-designed aircraft that had made their appearance near the end of the war, especially the crescent-shaped Horton flying wing. What if the Soviets had developed their own version of the craft? (3)

This statement appears very early on in Corso’s book. A short time later, Corso once again draws his readers’ attention to the similarities between the crashed craft at Roswell and Nazi technology. He writes:

In those confusing hours after the discovery of the crashed Roswell alien craft, the army determined that in the absence of any other information it had to be an extraterrestrial. Worse, the fact that this craft and other flying saucers had been surveilling our defensive installations and even seemed to evidence a technology we’d seen evidenced by the Nazis caused the military to assume these flying saucers had hostile intentions and might have even interfered in human events during the war. (4)

The similarities between the crashed object at Roswell and Nazi technology undermine the extraterrestrial interpretation that Corso wanted his audience to embrace. Corso unintentionally pointed his finger at the scientific wing of postwar Nazi circles as the creators of the craft. He further supported that position when he claimed that the United States military consulted with Nazi scientists in order to better understand what had been found in the desert. Author Joseph Farrell elaborates:

Apparently this “Nazi resemblance” was so palpable that Corso, when he established the secret team he needed to “reverse engineer” and seed all this recovered “extraterrestrial” technology into American industry, that he went to his superior officer, General Trudeau, and asked him if he could bring Nazi “scientists with clearance who (sic) we can trust, Oberth and von Braun” into the project “for advice.” (Farrell 245f.)            

If the Roswell object was, in fact, extraterrestrial in origin, then consultation with Nazi scientists would be neither necessary nor profitable. If, however, the crashed craft was the product of Nazi R&D, then Corso’s recruitment of von Braun and Oberth makes perfect sense. Corso seemed to be attempting to cover up Nazi fingerprints that were all over the Roswell incident. This should come as little surprise, given the fact that he engaged in covert political activity that advanced corporatist interests and participated in deep state institutions that exhibited a Nazi or fascist orientation.

Corso acted as the delegate from the military Operations Coordinating Board to the CIA group responsible for organizing the 1954 coup in Guatemala. Two years later, Corso sought to reactivate 50 garrisons of Eastern European paramilitary units that had survived in West Germany and were linked to the spy network of Reinhard Gehlen, the Nazi general who served as the German army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front during World War II. Dick Russell also states that “after the Kennedy assassination, Corso was among the first to spread rumors that Oswald was tied to a communist ring inside the CIA – and doubling as an informant for the FBI” (Russell 344).

In addition, Corso was a member of the Shickshinny Knights of Malta, an alleged fascist group which, according to Russell, possessed “an ‘Armed Services Committee’ that in 1963 read like a Who’s Who of retired military men at the extremist fringe” (343f.). The knights’ Armed Services Committee, says Russell, was staffed with several members of General Douglas MacArthur’s team, including General Charles Willoughby, MacArthur’s intelligence chief in Korea; Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, military attaché and psychological warfare director during World War II; Lieutenant General Pedro del Valle, an ITT president and leader of CIA operations involved in the 1973 Chilean coup; Lemmel Shepherd, a Marine general; and Sir Barry Domville, a British admiral who was imprisoned as a Nazi agent during World War II (344).

In spite of Corso’s suspicious background, he is regarded by many in the UFO community as a whistleblower who provided the public with the truth about Roswell. His book breathed new life into a myth that seems to only benefit the same deep state factions that have always been able to depend on the gullibility of UFO true believers. Discerning readers, however, see that Corso accidentally admitted to a hidden human hand behind the whole Roswell affair. Corso tried to put an extraterrestrial spin on the Roswell incident, fumbled the ball, and unintentionally identified postwar Nazi circles as the culprit.

With The Age of Disclosure, Roswell continues to reign as the foundational myth on which deep state actors have built a mountain of lies. What is the AAWSAP/AATIP fraternity now placing on that foundation? The Age of Disclosure provides a clue. Time and time again, AAWSAP/AATIP fraternal brothers appear on screen, pushing the notion that the reality of extraterrestrials will somehow facilitate a radical and inevitable change in human spirituality. Are they merely making dispassionate observations, or are they attempting to displace traditional religions that have proven to be an obstacle to covert and occult forces? This question will be taken up in the next installment of this series.

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