Society for Scientific Exploration, post four.

Onward with the personal talk --- actually, my time limits forced me to only give a piece of this. You are being put through the whole deal... what a privilege, eh? {don't answer that}.

A lot of people know that 1952 was a major flap year and that we had by great good luck one of our favorite guys, Captain Edward Ruppelt, as chief of the newly re-named Project Blue Book. A few others know that there was a new Director of Intelligence, General John Samford, and a new officer assigned to the Pentagon's analysis of UFOs, Major Dewey Fournet. What almost no one knew was that almost the whole command structure which would have direct interface with this problem changed.

Some of the shifts are pictured at the top. Most significant were that Assistant Director of Intelligence Garland had himself seen a UFO, that the laughing jackanapes Colonel Edward Porter had been removed from thwarting sympathetic officers in the levels just below him [Colonels Weldon Smith and William Adams, who were directly over Dewey Fournet]. Watson was out at Wright-Pat, as were the two goons who had been ruining Grudge and the whole crew who had been lying to General Cabell, now also gone.

The real Mr. X in this new story was Stefan Possony. Possony was a violent hawk who had fled Europe in the face of Hitler and viewed the Soviets as at least as bad. He was, allegedly, a political science professor at Georgetown [translation: high level government spook]. Possony had trained himself into being an expert on the organizational elements of Air Power, and had a big reputation. But he also had become a major force in the psychological warfare intelligence community. Possony suspected that UFOs could readily be Soviet mischief, and probably, if so, part of a vast Soviet psychological warfare scheme. And in the new USAF intel regime of John Samford, Possony had a desk RIGHT IN SAMFORD'S OFFICE AREAS. Can you say "Direct access and strong influence?"

Possony was the brains behind something labeled "The Special Studies Group". We know very little about it, but some of what we know you can read on the next illustration below. Possony also had influence out of the office as well, with the officers just below him in the intelligence stack. There seems to have been a group very interested in UFOs who talked a great deal about this problem. Low man on that totem pole was Dewey Fournet, who did a study which is referred to by the single page handout above [more about that later].

These are parts of the six pages that I have which somewhat describe Possony's Special Study Group, as he was trying to get permission to go to Europe to glean intel on what the Russkis might be up to, particularly about UFOs. For anyone who is paranoid, what I did here for the SSE talk handout was to cut off a piece of one page and the top of another, so as to include the most UFO relevant parts of this short document for the handout. If this "secret manipulation" on my part causes deep angst in anyone, I'll be happy to scan in the whole thing [5&1/2 pages I think]. Of course if I'm CIA or NSA you still won't know if I'm holding back on you.... but if you're THAT paranoid, then I'll just have to quote the movie that "YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!"

On a more productive tack, read that note carefully. See, fascinatingly, how it progresses from simple remarks about Soviets or whatever, but gradually expands into open speculations/ plans re: the ET possibilities. Using The Special Study Group as a base, Possony seems to have wanted to push all sorts of studies of UFOs, including even the possibility of communication with them.

As far as Fournet's study is concerned: Dewey has said [to me, actually] that his "Motions" study was his own idea. Others think that it was his superiors, Adams and Smith's idea. Others think that Possony may have been the original hinter. The point is: regardless who was encouraging Dewey Fournet, the Pentagon had, in 1952, a veritable "nest" of high-ranking officers thinking all manner of adventurous thoughts about UFOs and studying them.

Dewey's study by the way was based upon a simple clear thought, and one natural to a pilot: Technology flies in hard geometric precision; nature's denizens, even the best geese, do not. If I can find many cases of hard geometric precision, I prove both technology and intelligence. Then, all I have to show is that some of that flying is beyond our own ken. Dewey felt that his study [all of cases occurring on his own watch at the Pentagon UFO desk from circa June-September 1952], demonstrated all of this.

So, the Pentagon was in Rock & Roll mode. The same could generally be said of Project Blue Book.

There Captain Ruppelt labored to repair the files and to plot the incidents therein. His first discovery was what we've emphasized earlier --- a disturbing concentration of sightings at the New Mexico nuclear lab and testing sites, and at Oak Ridge. In fact, his very first briefing to Generals Samford and Garland found him carrying this information to them on maps. This couldn't have made anyone feel too relaxed about UFOs.

Ruppelt applied for and got a standing science consultant [a near miracle in the current USAF "economic" environment] and we've heard of this guy : Dr. Allen Hynek. He was quite the naive goof to begin with... but he learned. Ruppelt also pursued photos and films, usually unsuccessfully [economics again] and took trips to major witness sites, and had other tests done on the rare opportunities to do so. In short "St. Edward" was trying to do his job, and using science when he could.

In one of the only times that he could apply bench science, he took soil samples from the alleged Desverges landing site and had his labs work on them. What they found haunted Ruppelt till the day he died. Despite the awful character of the primary witness, the straight science on the effects on the plants in the area said: something EXTREMELY strange happened here. The roots of the plants beneath the "landing area" looked like they had been microwaved inches beneath the soil. No one could figure it out. Because Sonny Desverges was such a poor citizen morals-wise, they wrote the case off.... but Ruppelt knew that the trace effects said "unidentified".

So... the Pentagon was moving. Blue Book was moving. Heck, even the Phenomenon decided to Flap just then. Paradise? Nope. Something happened.

 What happened was the CIA Robertson Panel --- but it wasn't the simple story that you've already heard {unless you've already read the book}. I'll go through that strange story next time.