The U.S. Intelligence Community Monitors UFO Researchers’ Activities: (Redux)

(Originally published on Wednesday, July 31, 2013)

In 1973, when I began interviewing former/retired U.S. military personnel regarding their UFO experiences at nuclear weapons facilities, I didn’t give much thought to the possibility that the intelligence community would take an interest in my activities [ad]. At that point, the CIA’s “Robertson Panel” Report—which recommended surveillance of American UFO-research advocacy groups—was still classified. Indeed, as far as the public knew, the only component of the U.S. government responsible for UFO-related matters was the Air Force.

By Robert Hastings The UFO Chronicles 3-30-25

However, that myth slowly faded away as classified documents began to be pried
loose for public inspection via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). By the
early-1980s, the involvement of the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA in the
collection of UFO-related data had been firmly established.

My own naiveté regarding what I considered to be the remote possibility of
covert surveillance of my own activities was shattered in early 1982, shortly
after I first went out on the American college lecture circuit to report my
findings. Those public programs resulted in media coverage by numerous
newspapers, including the New York Times, as well as the Associated
Press and United Press International.

Apparently, FBI also took notice.

The first indication I had that someone was monitoring my research activities
came within months of my first national publicity. It was/is my practice to
tape record
my interviews with the military veterans—who have described observing UFOs
maneuvering near or hovering over ICBM sites, nuclear weapons storage areas,
or similar locations. Beginning in February 1982, after each and every
telephone conversation with one of those individuals, recorded with their
permission, it became clear that someone was tapping my phone.

After each interview, only moments after hanging-up, I received a mysterious
call from someone who said nothing, even though I could hear background
noises, who then hung-up after 30 seconds or so. I stress that this odd
pattern only occurred after I had spoken with this or that veteran, who was
divulging dramatic information about one nukes-related UFO incident or
another. It never happened after one of my calls to my family or friends, or
at any other time. The pattern continued for several months.

Obviously, someone was attempting to intimidate me or, at the very least, was
just letting me know that they were aware of who I was talking to. As I have
repeatedly said over the years, I guess I was too stupid to be scared because
I continued with my efforts to learn what the U.S. government was hiding from
the public, relating to UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites.

I now have more than 140 U.S. military veterans on-the-record—I just spoke
with a new source earlier today, a former Minuteman missile Electro-Mechanical
Technician who sighted a UFO at Minot AFB in 1968—and I am happy to report
that the FBI has never contacted any of those guys. In other words, regardless
of who was tapping my phone, there were no repercussions for the persons who
had agreed to speak with me. And, to date, no one has ever shown up at my door
either.

That said, in one recent
case, someone did learn about my telephone and email communications with a
retired Air Force missile targeting technician who had made a few inquiries on
my behalf, relating to a widely-publicized missile communications-disruption
incident at F.E. Warren AFB, in Wyoming, on October 23, 2010.

That individual was in touch with a few of the active duty missile maintenance
personnel who had responded to the problem, during which
50 ICBMs
became temporarily unavailable because the base could not communicate with the
launch officers who controlled them. Officially, the disruption had lasted 59
minutes and was caused by an improperly-replaced computer card in a
weapons-control processor.

However, what my retired Air Force contact learned about the incident, from
the missile maintenance techs who had responded to it, was much different: The
event involved an intermittent communications disruption that actually lasted
more than a day, not a mere 59 minutes, as the Air Force claims.

More importantly, several independent maintenance teams returned to the base
reporting their sighting of a huge, cigar-shaped object in the sky above the
missile field. My contact was told that the entire missile maintenance
squadron had been unexpectedly assembled and admonished by its commander not
to speak about “the things they may or may not have seen” in the sky. Clearly,
the aerial object was not a blimp.

Unfortunately, I was later informed by my contact that two of those missile
technicians, upon retiring in June 2011, were informed by their superiors that
a “flag” had been placed in their Air Force service records, relating to their
unauthorized disclosures about the incident. Obviously, someone had been
monitoring their emailed conversations with my go-between, who later forwarded
their comments to me. This development meant that the two men would have
difficulty finding work in the aerospace field after leaving the service.

I of course felt very badly about this development, even though my contact has
said that the two individuals had been fully informed that he was passing
information on to me about an apparent UFO maneuvering above F.E. Warren’s
nuclear missiles during the communications-disruption incident.

In this type of situation—where active duty Air Force personnel leak
information about UFOs near nuclear weapons sites to outsiders—the Pentagon
becomes trapped by its own deceptive policy of claiming that UFOs pose no
threat to U.S. national security. (It was this official stance—UFOs, even if
they exist, are not a threat—that was used to justify the closure of the Air
Force’s UFO study, Project Blue Book, in 1969.)

The two individuals who reported multiple sightings of the huge cigar-shaped
craft by missile maintenance teams at F.E. Warren AFB in October 2010—at a
time when 50 ICBMs were effectively offline—cannot be prosecuted for divulging
classified information because, among other repercussions, the Air Force
higher-ups would have to openly admit that they took the UFO reports seriously
and went so far as to admonish an entire missile squadron not to talk about
the incident.

In short, any open prosecution of the two men would risk turning a media
spotlight on the whole affair, thereby raising public awareness about the true
nature of the event—something the Pentagon definitely does not want to happen.

And so the game goes on. The Air Force continues to claim that UFOs pose no
risk to U.S. national security. Meanwhile, veterans slowly but surely come
forward to report UFOs at various nuclear missile bases—as far back as 1962
and as recently as 2010—which often appeared just as some of America’s nuclear
missiles mysteriously malfunctioned. Maybe, someday, the public will be let in
on the truth.

Last week, Larry Bryant sent me a letter he had composed on my behalf,
directed to the National Security Agency (NSA), asking that any and all NSA
files containing information regarding my UFO-related activities to be
released to me, pursuant to requirements stipulated in the federal law known
as the Privacy Act. That missive has been inserted below.

-click on image to enlarge-

I suspect that, after a lengthy runaround, I will be told by NSA that no such
files exist. Or, perhaps, those files will be discovered to be “missing” just
like the FBI files on my research activities. Regardless, the agency certainly
will not be candid with me, no matter what the facts are.