SUBJECT: WHO'S DISINFORMING WHOM ? FILE: UFO2538 PART 5 컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴컴 This file is provided by UFO Magazine. All rights are reserved. You may distribute this file freely as long as this header remains intact. Date prepared: September 7, 1993 Contributed by: Don Ecker/ UFO Magazine **************************************************************** Intelligence and UFO Research by Don Ecker/Director of Research *UFO Magazine Vol. 8 No. 5 -- All rights reserved. ***************************************************************** During the third week of July, 1993 *UFO Magazine received a written report from an organization calling itself the "ASSOCIATED INVESTIGATORS GROUP". There was no return address on the envelope, and the members listed on the back were all pseudonyms. Some of the pseudonyms were fairly easy to figure out, some were not. However the report itself was extremely inflammatory. The first paragraph read; "One of the nation's leading sponsors of UFO research and investigation, the Fund for UFO Research, has had a long-standing secret relationship with the CIA and the U.S. Intelligence community. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, an optics and laser specialist with the Naval Surface Weapons Laboratory near Washington, DC, one of the Fund's founders and member of the group's Executive Committee, has been secretly meeting with CIA officials since 1979, briefing them about various UFO matters and investigators." *UFO Magazine immediately called the Fund for UFO Research Chairman Richard Hall to get the Funds stance on these allegations. Hall right off stated that he had just spoken with Todd Zechel, one of the primary accuser's alleging CIA connections with the Fund and Dr. Maccabee. Zechel denied being the sole author of the document, but according to Richard Hall, refused to name the other authors. Hall stated when asked that the Fund was aware of contacts that Maccabee had within Central Intelligence, but had not been aware of any extensive relationships. When asked by Hall if he felt there may be other "moles" in the Fund for UFO Research he stated "No I don't and I have to say that I think this has a potential to be over blown. All we are dealing with here are some fairly major indiscretions by Bruce Maccabee." When asked if Hall thought Maccabee would have reported back to the Agency on persons in the field he said "I have no way of knowing, is the honest answer, but I sort of doubt it because my reading of his personality and character". "In 1979 Bruce went to New Zealand for, I think it was NICAP, it wasn't for the Fund, and when he came back he told us that he had briefed some people at CIA on the case. As the years went by Bruce said he had talked to CIA people and had contacts over there. When it became obvious that they were ongoing things several members of the board met with Bruce and told him this wasn't right, we can't have you going over there and talking privately with those people. We are dedicated to the position of getting information out on this subject and this will look bad, you can't do it. We told him this could backfire on the Fund, we had no idea of how deeply involved he was." According to the document from the ASSOCIATED INVESTIGATORS report, and from Richard Hall, the point man at CIA that Maccabee knew was Roland "Ron" Pandolfi, Directorate of Science and Technology. Hall stated that "making some inquiries of my own, he (Pandolfi) is notorious for dealing with a whole bunch of people in the field. He is probably dealing disinformation in the field." Hall then stated for the record that because of many of Maccabee's favorable statements about the Gulf Breeze case, the Fund was unable to do any balanced presentation of negative information about the case because the Fund had asked several people to report on it and they refused because of reservations about Maccabee. Maccabee recently vacated the Chairmanship of the Fund for UFO Research when Richard Hall took over. Maccabee is still a member on the Board. Todd Zechel was next contacted. When asked what initiated the release of the ASSOCIATED INVESTIGATORS REPORT, Zechel said the report was done because Maccabee was found to have briefed CIA in Langley on May 28th, 1993. The briefing was, according to Zechel on "residual magnetic effects found in the Gulf Breeze incident." Zechel stated "I knew Bruce quite well in the seventies. I got started in the field in 1976 and I always respected and admired him because he seemed to be a very responsible scientist. He was very cautious and not making outrageous pronouncements." "One of the concerns we had with all this is was that Maccabee felt more loyalty to the CIA than he did to his friends at the Fund." Zechel was then asked why the names listed on the report were all pseudonyms and not the actual persons involved. He said "The basic reason is stated in the last page of the report. There are several confidential investigation going on, and when they are completed the people will then be identified." Zechel then said that "I may as well put my name on it since I will be blamed for it anyway." "One of the inferences that you can draw from the situation is that before 1979 was quite cautious, seemingly afraid that he might loose his government classified research job, and after 1979 when he began meeting with the CIA he seemed to abandon all those cautions, and got involved with a lot of things that seemingly going up against the government. Being one of the lead sponsors of the MJ-12 investigation. If MJ-12 was legitimate, which I don't believe it was, then Maccabee was certainly taking a number of risks with his security clearance. The fact that nothing happened to him obviously indicates that no one was displeased with what he was doing." One of the main points Zechel presented concerned the aftermath of Maccabee's New Zealand trip, and his briefing at CIA. Maccabee told Zechel on the record that he had met the CIA's custodian of the UFO files. Zechel states he has Maccabee telling him on audio tape that this unnamed CIA officer had told him (Maccabee) that the Agency had over 15,000 UFO documents. Zechel had brought this point up twice as he told *UFO "This was a critical point because we were in the middle of litigation with the CIA and we were trying to prove the CIA had lied to the court, and lied about their search (for records). Obviously this was a major crime if they have filed all sorts of affidavits to the U.S. District Court swearing that their total files consisted on only about 1,000 documents." The contact at CIA that Maccabee had that purportedly told him about the 15,000 documents was Dr. Christopher C. "Kit" Green. Green is now reportedly chief of Biomedical Sciences Dept. at General Motors. His replacement at CIA is now Roland "Ron" Pandolfi in the Directorate of Science & Technology. Later Zechel said that while speaking to Maccabee he asked him if he were working for the CIA. According to Zechel Maccabee stated "You might say that." Zechel said that with Maccabee's background he was recruited by the CIA to work on classified national defense work involving "Star Wars". This in would fit into normal governmental contract work given Maccabee's background in optical physics and his expertise. Zechel was asked about the allegation in the AIG report that Maccabee was identified as a member of the infamous "Aviary" (Sea Gull) of UFO researcher William Moore. When asked how this was verified Zechel stated "It was verified through him (Maccabee) to me within the last month. (July 1993) He talked about receiving a form message from Bill (Moore) in which Moore had sent a memo out to the Aviary that U.K. researcher Armen Victorian was doing an investigation on the "birds", and the memo stated to not worry about it, no one was worried about being exposed. Maccabee told me that it was funny that Moore said no one was afraid of being exposed, no one asked him, and he was afraid of being exposed!" *UFO then called Dr. Maccabee. Maccabee was told that *UFO had called Richard Hall at the Fund, and that Hall had verified that the Fund was aware of his involvement with the CIA since 1979, and that Hall had told Maccabee that they were afraid that if this was publicly known it could reflect back on the Fund. Maccabee stated that "I have a professional relationship in the sense of what I do, and in particular I was working on lasers, and I became of interest to them in 1984. This UFO stuff came up as topics of mutual interest. This paper (AIG) misrepresents things and that is one of many things." Maccabee was asked if he did contact CIA in 1979. Maccabee stated he did brief CIA on his New Zealand investigation. However Maccabee stated that the report was wrong about him contacting CIA. "Coming back from New Zealand, I had looked for help in my analysis, or for people to review what I had done in terms of the radar aspects of the New Zealand case. I had told Jack Acuff of NICAP I would be interested in technical experts in radar. I learned from Jack there was a scientist with major credentials with a corporation. He had become aware of NICAP because of sonic booms, like sky quakes, which were taking place at the time (in the late seventies, after the Concord starting flying.) People were phoning in reports about these booms, and were seeing lights in the sky. The scientific community got interested, and the guy I ended up talking to, Gordon MacDonald, decided to do an investigation with the Naval Research Laboratory, and they found to their dismay that most of the information that is available is in the files of UFO groups. So they contacted NICAP among others for information, so that is how MacDonald got in touch with NICAP and Jack Acuff. When the New Zealand case came along, I was given this guy MacDonald. I met with him and he agreed with some of my conclusions and offered a couple of suggestions. About a week or so later, he called and asked if I would like to brief some people at the CIA where they had other radar experts. I said ok, and then a guy from the CIA called up and invited me to come over. Apparently MacDonald had contacted the CIA on his own. So, here on this report (AIG) is a paragraph which is written in a slanted and fabricated manner." Maccabee was asked if it were true that after the New Zealand briefing he was taken aside by a CIA official and reveled to him that this man was custodian of UFO files, and that these files consisted of close to 15,000 documents, and then later on at some point he (Maccabee) later retreated from that statement. He said "Yes there is" and then he was asked if it were Dr. "Kit" Green, Maccabee said yes but he never mentioned the name. "Zechel found that out on his own." "After the briefing, this Green asked me if I would come back and we can talk about the UFO situation in general. I was interested knowing that the government and CIA had just coughed up a bunch of documents, and he may have wanted to talk about the subject for his own reasons whatever they were. I went back again and sometime in the conversation we got into the documents. From what I recall and I do not recall it specifically, Green probably said there were many more documents, maybe as many as 15,000 documents. At any rate what is left out of this (AIG report) is what happened afterwards. I told Zechel about that because I knew he was dealing with that lawsuit. I thought he should know there might be more documents. I did not know of Zechel's independent information. Zechel had a covert source of his own. Plus, Gersten (Zechels attorney) had been led to believe by the CIA attorney there might be 10,000 pages." Maccabee stated then that in conversations with Green, Green told him that he personally only personally had approx. 1,000 documents. Maccabee's denial to Robert Hastings occurred in 1979 as opposed to the AIG report which states 1990. Maccabee stated "As far as a denial to Hastings, he had no need to know what I was doing 7 or 8 years beforehand. I was not about to spread it around, and it is very possible I denied it, I do not remember." When asked how with his job and security level, and with his public and private UFO interest, how could he continue with his UFO investigations and not be censored and not suffer the consequences that others in government service have suffered with a public UFO interest. Larry Bryant was one example offered. Maccabee said "I just played it cool, Larry did not play it as cool. He started sending around paid advertisements to armed service newspapers, and when some of them wouldn't publish his stuff he got mad and sued them and stirred up a big stink." "I never knowingly passed any disinformation, nor was I given any information or disinformation to pass." Maccabee was then asked if it were true that as late as May 28th, 1993 if he had once again briefed interested parties at CIA on the magnetic effects of the Gulf Breeze case and he answered "yes". Maccabee was asked if he had passed on information to CIA on any cases or personalities in the research community. "What I have done is talk to people that are interested in the subject on material that they could get elsewhere. At one time they were interested in tracking what was on bulletin boards (computer), with Lear and Cooper (Milton) and all that. I did not tell them anything that was not in the open literature. The Gulf Breeze briefing is a case in point, it was a lunch time talk, anyone could come to it, secretaries, street sweepers or the heads of covert departments, whatever. I did not know who showed up. CIA invites lots of people on lots of subjects and they will talk to people that are interested in those subjects. I been there a couple of times just like it said in this paper." Maccabee then stated that another misrepresentation in the AIG document concerned the years from 1979 to 1983. The paper states that Maccabee had a continuous and ongoing relationship with CIA. "FALSE" he stated. After the spring of 1979 I did not have ANY dealings with CIA until after 1983. In 1984 I was contacted by Pandolfi in regards to my work. I was asked to come over and give a briefing on my work which I did. Nothing about UFOs. I do not talk about UFOs unless the person I am talking to is amenable to it." After Maccabee gave the presentation on his work, he said that Pandolfi asked him about his 1979 presentation on New Zealand. "I couldn't deny it" Maccabee said, and "after that we got into conversations on the subject". "The implication of this document" said Maccabee, "is that I had continuous and ongoing relations with the CIA all the way through and that I was supplying information to the CIA on UFO stuff for years and years. This is not true." The one area where Maccabee was not open concerned the question about his being SEA GULL in William Moores aviary. Maccabee claimed he did not know if he were SEA GULL. When asked if he had received any documents addressed to SEA GULL he maintained he did not know. After conducting a number of interviews, I do not think there was any malicious intent on Maccabees part, but without a doubt some poor judgment. Walt Andrus was contacted to see if MUFON had any position on this. Andrus said that MUFONs position was "It is not a crime to talk to the CIA, after all they are a part of America to." Without a doubt they are, however after almost 50 years of lies and deceit where the UFO subject comes in, and considering historical events like the Robertson Panel, it is time for the government to come clean with the information on hand. There is a phenomenon, it has apparently interacted with human-kind for years. Agencies like CIA have hidden behind national security with information on UFOs, while claiming that UFOs do not threaten national security. You can't have it both ways and undoubtedly Maccabee will be another casualty in the long line of people who tried to have it both ways. Somehow only the phenomenon and the intelligence services seem to win this one. --end of file-- ********************************************** * THE U.F.O. BBS - http://www.ufobbs.com/ufo * **********************************************