Although the CIA still had no operational spending authority, this was quickly overcome through a variety of subterranean enterprises conducted globally. Intelligence agencies need money, and lots of it. If one wishes to raise private armies for secret wars around the world, or remove intractable national leaders determined to forge policies independent of U.S. wishes, then huge amounts of money become a necessity. Initially, much of the CIA’s money seems to have come from wealthy Americans. (As future CIA Operations Chief Frank Wisner put it, in obtaining money for secret ventures “it is essential to secure the overt cooperation of people with conspicuous access to wealth in their own right,” in other words, people who are rich.)56 Soon, however, the CIA’s money came from two basic sources: Congress (e.g., legitimate taxes, classified amounts of which were distributed to the agency) and its ever-growing number of private ventures, not all of which, to put the matter mildly, were legal.
THE TWINING LETTER
By this time, Schulgen’s letter had reached the desk of Gen. Nathan Twining, head of Air Material Command (AMC). On September 23, 1947, Twining wrote a classified, now famous, letter regarding the flying discs. He noted that the discs were “real and not visionary or fictitious.” They may possibly be natural phenomena, he wrote, such as meteors. But:
the reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted ... lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely.
He went on to list the common descriptions of the objects:
(1) Metallic or light-reflecting surface; (2) Absence of trail, except in a few instances when the object apparently 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; (6) Level flight speeds normally above 300 knots are estimated.57
Twining recommended that Air Force Headquarters “issue a directive assigning a priority, security classification and code name for a detailed study of this matter.” He also ordered that the best UFO reports be sent to the following places: the Joint Research and Development Board; the Office of Scientific Research and Development; the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics; and the Atomic Energy Commission. Each of these offices had strong links with Vannevar Bush.
Twining’s letter stated that no wreckage of a flying disc had been recovered. This point has been used by some skeptics as evidence against the reality of the Roswell crash. Here was Twining, head of an organization that
Twining did state that UFOs were not secret American craft. This came as a surprise to Schulgen, who expected the reply that there was nothing to the affair, that everything was under control. Instead, Twining wrote that the phenomenon was unexplained and warranted further study. Again, one might ask whether he was hiding the fact that UFOs really were U.S. experimental craft. Fifty years later, the answer clearly is no. The U.S. had no craft in 1947, experimental or otherwise, that could duplicate the reported maneuvers of flying saucers. When Twining wrote his letter, Chuck Yeager had not yet broken the sound barrier (he did it the next month at Muroc Field). Why would Twining tell Schulgen to keep studying flying saucers if they were simply classified American craft? If there were good reasons for doing so, none have emerged.58
Twining’s letter, a crucial document in UFO policy, received no official acknowledgment for twenty years. Yet, because of it, the air force soon created its first formal UFO investigatory body, Project Sign.
MJ-12: YES OR No?
