During the fall, the Navy delivered its evaluation of the Tremonton, Utah, film to the air force. The navy’s conclusion: “Unknown objects under intelligent control.” As if this were not bad enough, the navy study had an impressive amount of technical support. Clearly, the air force efforts to dismiss UFOs had not yet succeeded. Navy Secretary Dan Kimball appeared to be moving toward acknowledging UFOs. However, on November 5, 1952, Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected to the presidency of the United States, which meant that Kimball and many others would soon be out of a job.58 November 18 is the alleged date of the MJ-12 briefing papers that Roscoe Hillenkoetter, late of the CIA, was to have presented to Ike. As discussed earlier, the documents may have been faked, although they are not as easily dismissed as some writers on the subject would have it. But even if the national security state was not preparing Eisenhower for UFOs, it was preparing the UFO problem for the Eisenhower administration.
The most significant event of late 1952 was the creation of the National Security Agency. On October 24, 1952, President Truman signed National Security Council Directive 6, a seven-page document that eliminated the first attempt at uniting all military signal intelligence (SIGINT) operations, and now replaced it with the NSA. Directive 6 remains classified to this day. The U.S.
The NSA describes its main function as planning, coordinating, directing, and performing foreign signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information security (INFOSEC) functions. That is, to safeguard all American national security electronic and signals communication, and to intercept all foreign communications. It is widely acknowledged to possess the world’s leading cryptologic (e.g., code making and breaking) capability. Therefore, it was only logical that the newly created organization also inherited responsibility for Operation Shamrock. Only three NSA staff members—the director (DIRNSA), the deputy director (D/DIRNSA), and one lower-level manager—knew the full extent of the project. It is unclear whether Harry Truman knew about Shamrock when he signed the order creating the NSA.
The NSA immediately became involved in UFO reports. Proof of 239 UFO documents was recovered from NSA through FOIA requests, and 160 of those originated from within NSA itself.60 This is surely a tiny proportion of actual NSA-UFO documents, but obtaining anything at all from NSA is no easy task. As authors Barry Greenwood and Lawrence Fawcett pointed out:
The NSA shreds forty tons of documents per day in its operations, but 239 UFO documents are saved. Why? Certainly not for reference to NSA interception techniques and personnel. These are easily available to NSA personnel elsewhere within the agency. It is evident that these are saved for the UFO subject matter. Simple narrative accounts of UFO incidents will not be released by NSA under any circumstances despite our efforts to purge the documentation of any reference to NSA operations. Why?61
NSA’s collection of UFO reports began no later than 1953, that is, right away. This is further evidence of the serious nature of the UFO phenomenon.
THE WAVE SUBSIDES—A BIT
While the CIA and ATIC worked toward a “final solution” to the UFO problem, the UFOs themselves were seen just about everywhere. The pace had slowed down from the summer, but by no means were unidentified flying objects absent from the skies of America, or for that matter, other nations. Press coverage of flying saucers was negligible, so this was a nonissue as far as the public was concerned. Still, many unsettling sightings continued to occur over restricted military areas, and jets continued to pursue unknown objects. Noteworthy events included a September 30 sighting of two discs at Edwards AFB in California, an October 11 domed disc sighting at Newport News, Virginia, an October 13 sighting of a round or elliptical object in Oshima, Japan, by an air force pilot and engineer, and an October 29 report from Hempstead, Long Island, involving a sighting by the pilots of two F-94s. The report included a statement by one of the pilots:
