Commented summary, by Gildas Bourdais, March 2006
This is a summarization with some comments, along with an Annex on Ubatuba; first written in French, and then translated in English, by Gildas Bourdais. The interview was conducted by telephone, with Jacques Vallée at his home in San Francisco.
The interview between Ufologist author, "Jacques Vallée," and long time friend Marie-Thérèse de Brosses of "Ici et maintenant", was evoked by the recent publication of Vallée's latest book, a novel entitled, Stratagème (Editions de l'Archipel). It took over 2-½ hrs and the following are the "highlights" of certain aspects of it, along with my comments, for those who couldn't listen to the broadcast.
It is to be noted right away that the novel in question was discussed only at the end of the talk; so, the discussion consisted mainly in a review of the long Ufological career of Jacques Vallée (hereafter JV), of his books and his ideas. Marie-Thérèse de Brosses (hereafter MTB) presented him as "the most famous Ufologist", for having written a series of largely successful books (the best known being the trilogy Dimensions, Confrontations and Revelations, published in English in 1988, 1989 and 1991, and later in French), and she recalled that he withdrew from the Ufological debate about ten years ago, being in deep disagreement with the new orientations of American UFOlogy, e.g., inquiries into "Roswell" and "abductions" etc.
"Stratagème", Science-Fiction book by Jacques Vallée, 2006
JV wanted to speak in the first place of an affair, which he takes to heart, even today, and that he called the "Pentacle memorandum". He wrote about it, especially in his book of memoirs, Forbidden Science (1992). Under that curious name, it is in fact a letter of the Battelle Institute, signed by the engineer Howard Cross, addressed to the Blue Book commission of the Air Force, at the beginning of 1953 (January 9). Let's settle at once a point of controversy: JV, in this talk, affirms that this letter was addressed to the CIA, and notes a first indication that the institute was involved in secret operations. In fact the letter was addressed to an executive of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, to the attention of Captain Edward Ruppelt, head Project Blue Book:
"Mr Miles E. Goll
Box 9575
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio
Att: Captain Edward Ruppelt."
This mistake by JV is curious since he had not made it in his book Forbidden Science.
That being said, JV recalls that he discovered a copy of that letter while putting in order the papers of his then "boss", the astronomer Allan Hynek, scientific adviser of Project Blue Book. JV explained again that he was very shocked by this letter which, to him, revealed a hidden face of American UFOlogy (we are going to see why), meaning deceptions to hide the truth on UfOs to the public, and even to the scientific panel which was going to be convened soon after in Washington DC, in January 1953, co-organized by the USAF and the CIA. This meeting, secret at the time, is now known as the "Robertson Panel", and we know that its aim was to give a scientific approval to the policy of "debunking" of UfOs (the word is in its final recommendations). JV complains, furthermore, to have been attacked by American Ufologists – whom he does not name – when he revealed and denounced that letter. It was mainly the team from the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), created by Allan Hynek (deceased in 1987), which publishes the excellent review International UFO Reporter (IUR), and other Ufologists such as Brad Sparks, who have firmly refuted the allegations of JV (IUR of May-June 1993). I must say that I found their arguments quite pertinent, and I have exposed them myself in an article (in French at http://home.nordnet.fr/~phuleux/jacques.htm)
In short, CUFOS has explained that the Battelle Institute had written to complain that they were not waiting for the completion of the important statistical study that Blue Book had commissioned to them, under the name of "Project Stork". Let's recall that that study was published later as the "Report 14" of Blue Book, and that it remains as one of the strongest documents to support the reality of UfOs (Stanton Friedman never fails to mention it). One can understand the irritation of the institute, seeing the little weight granted to their study in high places. It seemed absurd to them to gather a scientific panel in order to evaluate the reality of UfOs, without waiting for the completion of their study. That's how we should understand the sentence of the letter quoted by JV:
"Since a meeting of the panel is now definitely scheduled we feel that agreement between Project Stork and ATIC should be reached as to what can and what cannot be discussed at the meeting in Washington on January 14-16 concerning our preliminary recommendation to ATIC".
Furthermore the letter suggested to put in place a program of observation of UfOs, in a well chosen area (such as New Mexico where many sightings were reported at the time), well equipped, and which would be tested by staging some flights of ordinary aircrafts and balloons without the observers knowing it. A classical scientific procedure, as noted by CUFOS, not a dark conspiracy to stage false UfOs in order to deceive the public, as JV seems to believe, even today.
He has thus commented, at that talk, the polemic he had triggered in 1993: "Ufologists were not up to their task. I was at once accused of all sorts of things. All my books were rejected!" "Wrong, I must cut you here!" replied MTB, stressing how influent his books were, and still are today, to begin with Passport to Magonia (1969). The French title, "Chronicles of Extra-Terrestrial Apparitions".(1972) is a mistranslation, as JV stressed himself, since it is in this book that he began putting in doubt the "extraterrestrial hypothesis", or ETH, as it is usually called!
JV and MTB then recall several of his books, among which Messengers of Deception (1979), in which JV began to develop a theme to which he is strongly attached, the one of manipulation by disinformation agents. This is where we must pay attention particularly because, according to JV, it is not to hide UfOs but rather the contrary: to make people believe in UfOs, by means of clever rumours and staged events, with the objective of hiding obscure secrets which are, probably, highly secret knowledge and technology! This is a theme that he is going to expose in almost all his books, and on which he talked at length at this meeting.
MTB tackles the question of rumours of UfO crashes, and of secret contacts with extraterrestrials, by quoting the revelations of a former executive of Walt Disney, Ward Kimball. He revealed (note: in 1979 at the annual MUFON Congress) that the USAF had proposed to Disney, in 1955 or 1956, to make a documentary on UfOs, for which it would have provided authentic UfO films, but the project failed. MTB recalls then what happened next—another proposal, made through Colonel Coleman, former press representative of Blue Book, in 1972-73 was suggested to film producers Emenegger and Sandler; the idea was to include not only UfO shots, some of them by astronauts, but also on a UfO crash from 1949; this included a live alien who later died in 1952, and also an encounter with three aliens in Holloman AFB in 1971. This second project was also cancelled, the same as another proposal made in 1983 to Linda Howe. Then it was the turn of Hynek and Vallée, solicited in 1985 by the Air Force, to participate in a new, similar, film project that would have been produced by Emenegger. Their participation was a condition for the decision to make the film, but they refused.
MTP asks JV to tell what happened. He confirms those episodes, but he explains why, contrary to Linda Howe, Hynek and himself were very suspicious (as he said in his book Revelations). According to him, several visits to Norton AFB in California, where the USAF film archives are kept, had lead to nothing concrete. He was particularly suspicious of the risk of disinformation aiming at amplifying rumours in order to "make people believe that there are UfOs in the sky". According to him, "it's disinformation to hide something else". The Russians do that very well, and he cites rumours of UfOs circulated to hide secret launchings of "illegal satellites". There are "massive" programs of disinformation, sociological experiments...
MTB then questions JV about a very controversial observation, made in Russia at Voronej, about which he talked in a book written with French journalist Martine Castello (UFO Chronicles of the Soviet Union, 1992). Children related that they had seen tall beings coming out briefly from a landed UfO. According to JV, the case is not clear that there were UfOs in the area, and they did not have the time and the means to learn more (Let's mention here that this story has been put in doubt by Boris Shurinov in his book Les Ovnis en Russie).
These were not "Short Greys", remarks MTB! In effect, answers JV, they came later, following the book Communion of W. Strieber. (We don't need to recall here that JV has never ceased to put in doubt that big wave of abductions testimonies, appeared in the United States, and in other countries, particularly in during the 80's).
Then, JV comes back, at length, on the "Pentacle memo", repeating that it was a scandal: "One can have doubts about Roswell, and of the MJ-12 documents, but on the contrary it was an authentic document!" In fact, it is not the authenticity of the letter, which is questioned, but its interpretation by JV.
MTB then mentions the low opinion of JV about Ufologists, quoting to this effect an eloquent passage of his new book Stratagème: "that world of nuts, charlatans and loonies…" ("ce monde de fous, de charlatans et d'illuminés…"). She concurs about the existence of a "lunatic fringe", including in France. JV agrees, but adds that there are also Ufologists who do "admirable work". He had anticipated in the 70's the coming of UfO cults, such as "Heaven's Gate", but Ufologists did not take him seriously! To him, there is a phenomenon of extraordinary gullibility, a "need to believe in extraterrestrials": it's a phenomenon of belief… But we must enlarge the "extraterrestrial hypothesis", it's much more complex...
MTB abounds on the widening gap between the partisans of the "nuts and bolts" ("tôle et boulonesque") and the others (we gather that they are the serious ones). JV insists that his book Passport to Magonia was very badly received in the United States. He and MTB mention the case of David Jacobs, who was at the beginning a good historian of UFOlogy, but who later "fell in the cooking pot of abductions, following Budd Hopkins". JV explains that he cannot afford to be so naïve, considering his professional activity...
MTB then asks him to come back to his great theory of the manipulation of Mankind by a "control force" (or "control system"). JV explains again that there is "a deep interaction with human consciousness", and that it is a phenomenon present since a long time. There are, however, physical aspects that are undeniable, and all this puts in question our ideas of reality, like today in fundamental physics.
MTB then asks him to tell what he had brought at the meeting of Pocantico in 1997, organized by Laurence Rockefeller and Peter Sturrock. JV answers that he had talked about estimates of luminosity, and about studies of materials alleged to come from UfOs. On this point he concludes this way: "The analyses that I know of show terrestrial things, in coherence with what the witnesses described", for instance for the composition of metallic fragments. Let's note here that JV has not mentioned a case that he presented briefly at Pocantico, the one of the debris from Ubatuba in Brazil, which had given rise to a very important debate. I refer the reader to the summary of that curious story, at the end of this account.
MTB questions JV on the cases of UfO accidents, reminding him that he once told her that he had invested himself into their study. JV answers that he keeps an open mind on that, but there are "many people who say many things…" He has gathered "a little collection of metallic elements" but he has "no answer yet". In his view, if some elements were retrieved in 1947 or in 1949, perhaps it was not possible to draw much from them. On the other hand, if biological entities were found, that should have had consequences in biology, but "this did not happen".
MTB then asks his advice on the book of Colonel Corso. JV had met him during two days at NIDS, and says that his manuscript has been very distorted. One episode, which was suppressed, is his encounter with a non-human entity, with telepathic contact… (I confirm that story which has been revealed since, notably by the journalist George Knapp, who had video-taped him well before the publication of the book, and who presented the video at the Laughlin congress in March 2000, to which I was invited).
Like in Varginha, asks MTB, alluding to the book of Dr Leir? I don't know, replies JV, I have not studied that case (that's too bad: a beautiful case of supposed UfO crash, recent, with credible testimonies on military cover-up. See for example the book of Dr Roger Leir (UfO Crash in Brazil, 2005, and in French under the title Des Extraterrestres Capturés à Varginha au Brésil, 2004).
Dr. Roger K. Leir)s book, 2004
MTB then asks him to talk about NIDS, and its reputation for secrecy. JV explains that NIDS still exists but that Robert Bigelow, its creator, has reoriented its activities toward aerospace, but JV himself is still associated to it. However, the biologist Colm Kelleher has left the scientific board.
MTB asks him if there is not a "black hole" on the results of analyses of the implants retrieved by Dr Leir. No, answers JV, there is just an agreement of confidentiality, "nothing sinister behind that…" We must wait to have results...
MTB: "so, there are no results yet?"
Yes, answers JV, there have been studies published on the NIDS web site, about cattle mutilations, and there is a book on the experiences in the ranch bought in Utah, where strange phenomena took place (it's the book of Colm Kelleher and George Knapp, Hunt for the Skinwalker, published in 2005).
At the request of MTB, JV gives again his opinion on the Rendlesahm affair. It was, in his opinion, an "experiment in psychological war". An indication is that some people had visited the radar operators and had told them to "watch for what was going to come from the sea"...
Although I have read several books on this complex affair, I don't recall to have read that. I have just asked on the UFO Updates list, and Nick Pope has answered this (message of February 22): "I've neither seen any documents nor heard anything from official sources that would support this theory. My own view is that it's highly unlikely".
MTB finally tackles the topic of the new book of JV, Stratagème, ten minutes before the end of the talk (she has explained to me that she expected to have more time but it was shortened because JV had to go to an important lunch). She points out that "a Ufologist has made a very hard critic of it". JV answers that he has "a lot of respect for him" but that he has not understood that it is a novel, and that one must "read between the lines"… He comes back to the theme of the manipulation to make people believe in false stories, like in the Bennewitz case (abductions in the alien base of Dulce, etc).
MTB agrees, but raises the critical point of the repetition, in his novel, of the story of Nick Redfern published a few months ago (Body Snatchers in the Desert), explaining that Roswell was in fact a failed experiment of irradiation in flight of handicapped Chinese prisoners, who would have been brought from Manchuria at the end of the second world war, an experiment which would have been concealed by spreading the rumour of a UfO accident...
To that, JV answers, firstly that he has not copied Redfern, and secondly that it must not be taken too seriously because an old alcoholic doctor tells it, in his novel… But there would have been real experiments of irradiation of prisoners affected with progeria, and we must thank Redfern to have published documents, which put in doubt the Roswell crash.
What can we make of these revelations? Since I am the author of the article, I thank Vallée here, for his good opinion of me, but I still refer the reader to it (in French only) at: http://www.spica.org/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=1046
Let's just say here that this story of handicapped Chinese prisoners, from a Japanese center of bacteriological war experiments in Harbin, Manchuria, is simply impossible: those prisoners had been all killed by the Japanese just before the arrival of the Russians in August 1945. Furthermore, they used prisoners in good health in order to achieve significant experiments! I also refer the reader to my critic of the book of Nick Redfern (in English and in French) at: http://www.ovni.ch/home/frame4.htm
As a final note, JV explains that a lot of time has been lost on Roswell. Something probably happened, but there is no proof that it was a UfO. It was a mistake of Laurance Rockefeller to suggest to the scientific adviser of President Clinton to study that case, in 1994. JV does not mention, however, that he had attempted to dissuade him, unbeknownst to Rockefeller. MTB asks him to give at least one case worthy of study, but JV refuses, preferring a global, statistical approach. At the risk of surprising the reader, I think one can agree with that. A good example of such an approach remains the study of the Battelle Institute!
One of the arguments endlessly repeated by the skeptics is that researchers have never put their hands on the faintest material from a UfO. But, how could they do it, if they are suppressed when they are discovered? There exists at least one outstanding case of alleged UfO fragments, those found near Ubatuba in Brazil, in September 1957. Several laboratories, mainly in Brazil and in the United States, studied them without reaching a final conclusion about their origin, terrestrial or extraterrestrial, but we are going to see that some aspects of the story remain obscure, even today.
On September 14, 1957, the Brazilian journalist Ibrahim Sued received a letter with an unreadable signature, together with three samples of a substance, apparently metallic. The witness says that he watched with friends, near the ocean, the explosion of a saucer in flight, fragments of which fell, burning, in the water like fireworks, and that he was able to retrieve a few of them on the beach. The physician Olavo Fontes, a well-known Ufologist, reads the article, and soon obtains the three fragments from the journalist. A first fragment is cut in several pieces, and is studied at the Mineral Production Laboratory, depending from the government. Several tests establish that it is made of extremely pure magnesium, a first very curious result, knowing that magnesium, a very reactive element, is not found pure in nature and is never used in the building of vehicles. At the time, the astronomer Donald Menzel, the father of all debunkers, supposed that it was a fragment of meteorite; but the idea of a meteorite made of pure magnesium is completely unconceivable, and nobody was satisfied with that explanation.
Olavos Fontes
Let's summarize the main points of a long story, which will pass, notably, by the Condon commission. The American physicist Paul Hill has given a very clear and convincing analysis of it in his remarkable book Unconventional Flying Objects. A Scientific Analysis, written in 1975 but published only in 1995, after his death. It must be noted that Paul Hill made his entire career at NASA, where he reached important posts of responsibilities. He was personally interested in UfOs after seeing them twice in 1952 (a great year). With humour, he recalls how he had been instructed by his hierarchy to keep silent, when he was at NACA, the predecessor of NASA, and how, having studied UfOs during all his life personally, he wrote this book of reflexions on the physics of UfOs. He became interested in the affair of the debris of Ubatuba when reading the report of Dr Olavo Fontes, published in 1966 in the book The Great Flying Saucer Hoax, of Coral Lorenzen, director of APRO with her husband Jim Lorenzen. The Lorenzens have played an important part in that story, Fontes being their correspondent in Brazil.
Paul Hill
By reading Paul Hill, one understand how certain mistakes allowed to seed doubt. The analysis of the first sample, he explains, gives an astonishing result. Not only the magnesium is of very high purity (with only weak superficial traces of magnesium hydroxide caused probably by a reaction when falling in the sea water), but the density (or specific gravity) of this sample, of 1.866 g/cc, is 6.7% heavier than the one of ordinary pure magnesium (1.741 g/cc). On the other hand it is almost exactly the one of the isotope 26, rare on Earth, of which Paul Hill gives the detailed calculation: 1.861, a very small difference, of only 0.005%, explainable by the limits of precision of the measurements. According to him, this difference cannot be caused by the presence of traces of magnesium hydroxide, the density of which is 2.36, because it would have required the presence of a lot of it. Besides, the measure of density had been made for a piece carefully polished, taken from the center of the fragment in order to avoid contamination. That piece of metal, explains Paul Hill, could be obtained only by isotopic separation, a process that exists, to this day, on Earth, only for the difficult separation of uranium isotopes!
The continuation of the story becomes incredible. The laboratory, although quite competent, does not consider verifying this extraordinary result on the two other fragments, and destroys the first one in other tests, of lesser importance. Dr Fontes, who kept a second piece of the first fragment, has given it to the military laboratory of the Navy, which had requested it; but it destroys also that piece! It becomes thus impossible to pursue the study of this first fragment, and especially to perform a decisive test of the isotopic composition with a mass spectrometer. Dr Fontes then sends the two other fragments to his colleagues and friends of APRO, Coral and Jim Lorenzen, in the United States. They are cut in several pieces, and some are provided for analysis to American laboratories.
In the United States, the trace of the samples becomes more difficult to follow, explains Paul Hill. Analyses made at the laboratories of Oak Ridge and Dow Chemical reveal a density close to normal, with a certain number of impurities, but with still a curious result: an important part of aluminium, which does not exist in current products (it may be noted here that, if those fragments did come from a UfO which had exploded, we may suppose that they came from different parts made of different materials). Then, another piece given by APRO to the Air Force is destroyed mistakenly, without results (Oh the naivety of the first Ufologists!)
The Lorenzens also try to get ATIC interested, but to no avail. The last fragment falls in the hands, if we may say, of the Condon commission of the university of Colorado. It is tested in a laboratory of the FBI, after having been rendered radioactive in an atomic pile. This time, they find an important proportion of Zinc and strontium. But the Condon commission then discovers that Dow Chemical had tested, during the war, very pure magnesium with a part of strontium; this is judged sufficient to discard the whole affair, even if it is impossible to explain how such a product could have ended up in Brazil. As for the measure of density made in Brazil, the "explication" by the presence of hydroxide is adopted without problem.
This Ubatuba affair has provoked a long polemic. Of course, the possibility of a hoax cannot be completely excluded, considering that the first witness remains unreachable (and got no benefit from the story), but one still wonders how he could have obtained a piece of magnesium of such a high purity. The story of Ubatuba does not end there. Other studies have been made, presented in an issue of the Journal of UFO Studies in 1992 (New series, vol. 4), comprising a study made in 1969-70 by physicists Walter Walker and Robert Johnson, which had not been published yet. This study of 36 pages exposes the analyses already achieved, and a new study by Dr Walker. In 1969, APRO had entrusted him with one of the pieces, and he made non-destructive tests on its crystalline structure. He discovered that this material had been manufactured by a process of directional growth of the crystals, which allow increasing their solidity, a technique that was actively researched at the time. Dr Robert Johnson, of the Material Research Corporation, has validated this finding, co-author of the article. In brief, this is a new bizarre twist in this mysterious affair. On the other hand, Dr Walker seems to accept the measures of density made in the Unites States. He remarks that, to obtain the results found in Brazil, it would have required that the fragment contained 21% of magnesium hydroxide, an explanation that seems conceivable to him. However, he remains open, with this personal opinion at the end of his report: "In summary, after all these years, I consider the Ubatuba magnesium fragment as unusual material of still unknown origin".
The debate has started up again with the book of Paul Hill published in 1995. As we have seen, it is on the question of the famous measure of density made in Brazil that Hill departs completely from the "official" analyses made in the United States, although even Dr Fontes had more or less accepted them, as well as Dr Walker. However, that question of density is going to be closed again. Two years later, it is mentioned, very briefly, by Jacques Vallée, at the famous meeting of Pocantico, held in 1997 at the invitation of Laurance Rockefeller and led by physicist Peter Sturrock, professor at Stanford University. He has published the communications in his book The UFO Enigma, in 1999. Vallée does cite the study made by the Mineral Production Laboratory in Brazil, which found extremely pure magnesium, but, curiously, he does not mention the measure of density, corresponding precisely to the isotope 26 of magnesium. On the other hand, he recalls further studies in this paragraph, quoted here entirely:
"Subsequent work under the direction of Peter Sturrock has been conducted at Stanford University and at various laboratories in France, including Orsay University, confirming that the material was magnesium and magnesium oxide, but with substantial impurities (Sturrock, 1984), primarily aluminium, calcium, and iron. Analysis of this sample is still ongoing, with an effort to measure isotopic ratios that might help establish the origin of the material (Lorin and Havette, 1986).
The date of this event, often quoted in the literature as 1957, is actually imprecise. Dr. Pierre Kaufmann of São Paulo believes the original incident took place in 1933 or 1934, when a bolide indeed passed over Ubatuba and crashed at a nearby beach. The only aerial event to occur at or near Ubatuba in 1957 was the crash of a DC-3."
Here is another curious development, this time on the "UFO Updates" forum. Canadian Ufologist Nick Balaskas revealed, on April 6, 1999, that Dr Peter Sturrock had entrusted a piece of one of the fragments to Dr Sam Wang, of Vancouver in Canada, in order to determine the isotopic ratios. According to Balaskas, "The results of this test showed that the Magnesium isotope Mg24 (which makes up nearly 80 percent of terrestrial Magnesium) was nearly absent in the Ubatuba UFO piece that was tested".
Have there been other tests of the last pieces of Ubatuba still available (we don't know exactly which ones, and where they come from)? I have not heard of it. On the other hand, another, very interesting document was partially published in the 80's, which is related to Ubatuba. It is the long letter that Dr Fontes wrote to Coral Lorenzen, dated February 27, 1958. It was supposed to remain confidential, but it was leaked somehow from the archives of APRO, and a large excerpt of it was published in at least two books (UFO Crash at Aztec of William Steinman, and Above Top Secret of Timothy Good). In this letter, Dr Fontes told how he had received several times the visit of officers of the Brazilian Navy, who had insisted gravely that he should give them the fragments. Upon his refusal, they had revealed to him some secret information about UfOs, in order to make him understand the importance of doing it. They mentioned several UfO crashes, and failed attempts to intercept UfOs, some planes being shot down, to the point that these attempts had been stopped.
Presumably, this source of information is definitely closed, Dr Fontes having died from cancer in 1968, only 43 years old. Jim Lorenzen died in 1986, Coral in 1988, and the archives of APRO are apparently not accessible today.
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Sample of Ubatuba debris (left) under the microscope (right). |  |
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| Photos provenant de Walter Walker et du Dr. J. Allen Hynek du Center for UFOS Studies. |
Extract of th original textof Jacques Vallée(s presentation in Pocantico (The UFO Enigma, p. 239):
"Subsequent work under the direction of Peter Sturrock has been conducted at Stanford University and at various laboratories in France, including Orsay University, confirming that the material was magnesium and magnesium oxide, but with substantial impurities (Sturrock, 1984), primarily aluminum, calcium, and iron. Analysis of this sample is still ongoing, with an effort to measure isotopic ratios that might help establish the origin of the material (Lorin and Havette, 1986)."
"The date of this event, often quoted in the literature as 1957, is actually imprecise. Dr. Pierre Kaufmann of São Paulo believes the original incident took place in 1933 or 1934, when a bolide indeed passed over Ubatuba and crashed at a nearby beach. The only aerial event to occur at or near Ubatuba in 1957 was the crash of a DC-3."
