Brane Space: Jerry's Further Revelations About Past UFO Files And The Role of FOIA Releases

Jerry, in March, 2006, in Midwest City, OK

Caption from 1990 VHS tape segment

UFO Discussion L-R: me, Jerry, Mike, Jerry's wife

Jerry reveals background to FOIA files on UFOs

Jerry points out audacity of Twining memo

Having an active and lively discussion of UFOs and UFO history in my mom and dad's living room was something Jerry didn't believe would have a positive outcome, so never entertained. This was why he suggested - in late July, 1990 - we three Stahl sibs (Me, Jerry, Mike) and spouses meet instead at his Indiana Ave. address in Port Charlotte, FL. There, we had a freewheeling discussion on the history of UFO interactions with Earth, including ancient speculations (i.e. that Jesus was actually an "alien" emissary sent to Earth in human form) and especially Jerry's unique Air Force experiences at Wright-Patterson AFB.

The related subject of over classification of UFO files also came up and obviously, is what made resort to FOIA requests so necessary. Jerry then reminded us that the Freedom of Information Act (5 USC -552) took effect on July 4, 1974 and ushered in the promise of "finally releasing the logjam" of previously hidden UFO reports. This led to Jerry going over the most critical (to him) history in the immediate aftermath of the FOIA's passage.

The first breakthrough arrived in December, 1977, when two citizen groups (GSW, CAUS) - under the leadership of one Brad Sparks- succeeded in getting a court order from a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. to compel the CIA to undertake a background file search of all UFO files. By July, 1978, Jerry noted, "some 10,000 pages were located, but only 900 pages were eventually released" to the two groups. At the same time, the CIA refused to release "fifty -seven related UFO documents."

Jerry asked rhetorically: "Why the fuck not?" Neither me, Janice, Mike or his wife Gerri, or Jerry's wife Elaine, had any answers. But Jerry did and he wasn't hesitant:

"I'll tell you why. The Air Force intended to re-engineer downed saucer parts - such as recovered at Roswell- and develop new, more powerful weapons."

Jerry elaborated that in such a case keeping the recovered craft findings secret would have been paramount. There could not be any advantage given to the "other side" by knowing about it.

Jerry in his 1990 revelations was at his most animated referring to an FOIA -released memo from Gen. Nathan Twining:

23 September, 1947

Concerning Flying Discs

To:

Commanding General

Army Air Forces

Washington 25, D.C.

ATTENTION: Brig. Gen. George Schulgen

AC/AS-2

1. As requested by AC/AS-2 there is presented below the considered opinion of this Command concerning the so-called ‘Flying Discs’. This opinion is based on interrogation data report data furnished by AC-AS-2 and preliminary studies by personnel of T-2 and Aircraft Laboratory, Engineering Division, T-3. This opinion was arrived at in a conference between personnel from the Air Institute of Technology, Intelligence T-2. Office of Engineering Division, and the Aircraft, Power Plant and Propellor Laboratories of Engineering Division T3.

2. It is the opinion that:

(a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious.

(b) There are objects probably approximately the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft.

The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll) and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically or remotely

(d) The apparent description of the objects is as follows:

(1) Metallic or light reflecting surface

(2)Absence of trail except in a few instances when object was operating under high performance conditions

(3) Circular or elliptical in shape, flat on bottom and domed on top.

(4) Several reports of well-kept formation flights varying from three to nine objects.

(5) Normally, no associated sound except in three instances a substantial rumbling roar was noted.

On citing and showing us this document Jerry declared it revealed Gen. Twining's sheer audacity, in dispatching it to Brig. Gen. Schulgen. It also reflected the pervasive urgency in the military within 2 1/2 months of the Roswell crash. He then remonstrated violently against the Air Force's duplicity in its parsing of the provisions of the FOIA when the two civilian groups requested other crashed saucer records over 1947-48.

This was after citing Col. John Bowen - then serving as provost marshal at Carswell AFB, Ft. Worth - at the time of the incident and "who was in charge of securing the area after the recovery." Jerry noted Col. Bowen had been airborne at the time of the incident and had been alerted at the object's intrusion into U.S. air space. The Air Force, in response, denied the existence of said documents as well as the recovery of any extraterrestrial device. Then, responding to a subsequent appeal of the denial, the Air Force "went for broke" in Jerry's words, as it proclaimed it:

"was not subject to the appeal, as it had not denied access to the documents but rather denied any existence of the material supposedly in them."

"Can you believe that double-talk bullshit?" Jerry huffed.

Jerry was adamant in asserting the Twining memo itself lay the foundation for Project Sign and its principal conclusion that the discs were indeed real and likely of extraterrestrial origin. This, of course, was followed by Project Grudge which determined the flying discs had to be rendered nonsense, the province of fools, wackos and dodos. The emergence of Project Grudge, Jerry stated, arrived after the Bowen-related FOIA requests and appeal.

The latter also provided the excuse to mount a decades- long campaign of disinformation "to protect the bunch that wanted to re-engineer the discs for weapons" in Jerry's blunt parlance. Mike attempted to challenge that as an assumption, and insisted if it were really the case we'd have seen the redeveloped weapons by now. Jerry, unamused, shouted:

"How do you know that? Huh? The fact is there are various bases those craft are being re-assembled and tested as we speak but the government is keeping it all under wraps. They don't want the Russkies or the Chinese finding out!"

Conforming to Jerry's 1990 take, we have Chris Impey, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, quoted in a WaPo article appearing this past Wednesday:

“The U.S. has always tended toward secrecy. Only in the last year or so has there been a push for transparency, but the backdrop of that was flat-out denial or secrecy.”

The article itself noting:

"Whether a country shares UFO information often comes down to military interests. The United States has often been less willing to publicize or publicly engage on questions about UFOs — even going so far to spread misinformation in the 1950s — for fear of ceding a strategic advantage to adversaries and jeopardizing national security."

All of which supported Jerry's 1990 explanation for why such secrecy shrouding UFO files was/is a given, and then leading to his acid observation:

"Hey, if there's nothing really there and all this UFO stuff is about wackos and fruitcakes just seeing things - why hide it?"

And we now know - from the same WaPo piece- this is not done in other nations, e.g.

In U.S., most UFO documentation is classified. Not so in other countries.

Which elicits the question, Why not done? Why not mount an extraordinary decades long effort to undermine every reported UFO, including kneecapping the reputations of those doing the reporting? Well, because in the U.S. recovered craft are re-engineered and re-purposed in order to obtain a military advantage - in novel weaponry - that other foreign rivals (China, Russia) don't have.

As noted in that WaPo article:

One August evening in 1954, a Brazilian plane was tracked by an unidentified object of “strong luminosity” that didn’t appear on radar. Two decades later, a river community in the northern Amazon jungle was repeatedly visited by glowing orbs that beamed lights down onto the inhabitants. In 1986, more than 20 unidentified aerial phenomena lit up the skies over Brazil’s most populous states, sending the Brazilian air force out in pursuit.

The stories are not the ravings of a UFO buff. They are official assessments by Brazilian pilots and military officers — who often struggled to put into words what they’d seen — and can be found in Brazil’s remarkable historical archive of reported UFO visitations.

What gives? In the words of Brazilian Rodolpho Santos, a historian at the Federal Institute of Minas Gerais:

"It’s comparatively easy to get this information here. And the variety of records is good and considerable.”

It’s all in public records. There are no security clearances such as demanded in the U.S. (Where even Ike, we were informed by Jerry, was told he didn't have a clearance high enough to see the crashed Roswell craft, after taking the reins as president in 1953). But totally different in Brazil. No heavily redacted documents. Anyone can access the files — the military reports, the videos and audio recordings, the grainy unverified photographs — and thousands of people have.

It seems that in Brazil and much of South America, there has been a more relaxed attitude toward the inexplicable, the public’s right to know and the limits of scientific explanation. In South America, at least four countries — Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Peru — have public government programs that study and investigate UFO activity. Argentina and Chile regularly release reports on identifying aerial objects. And in Uruguay, which has passed UFO details along to the United States since the 1970s, the military runs the Commission for the Reception and Investigation of Complaints of Unidentified Flying Objects.

Meanwhile, legislators in Washington push for the same transparency that other parts of the world have enjoyed for years, even holding House hearings to make the case, featuring former Air Force vets. And yet what do they get in return? More stonewalling amid torrents of disinfo from the military, intel agencies. And even the esteemed "fourth estate" chipping in its two cents, heaping scorn on testifying military senior personnel such as David Grusch and David Fravor, e.g.

UFO congressional hearing: Whistleblower says US concealing 'multi-decade' UFO program | AP News

Jerry? He wasn't surprised in our 1990 talks and he wouldn't be surprised now. As he put it when the conversation ended: "The fuckers will never come clean until and unless one of them lands right in the middle of D.C. I just hope I am alive to see it."

Alas, he didn't make it, dying from a burst abdominal aneurysm on Aug. 6, 2016.

Meanwhile, Col. Ariel Sánchez, the head of the Uruguayan program told the WaPo:

“We have been sharing the information with the public since the beginning. We believe people need to be informed.”

Unlike here in the U.S. where the powers-that-be believe citizens need to be coddled from the fact we are not alone and other - more intelligent - beings - also occupy the cosmos and are in our midst. Though too many try to deny it or bury it in provincial or pedestrian claptrap.

And: