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1961 March 17th Kyw Radio Major Keyhoe 23m P258

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[00:00] Opening remarks and introduction

He refuses to accept the evidence that has been gathered as to the proof that there are flying saucers, that there are craft with intelligent navigation that are coming to our planet. The first reason is that the United States Air Force has adopted a policy of officially debunking and explaining away these reports, even to the point of ridiculing their own veteran pilots. We have cases we can prove that with, documented cases. Why should the Air Force be doing this? Because when they started out, they were puzzled and a little disturbed by these sighting reports, and they decided the best thing was to go under wraps with this subject until they had the answers. And that was in effect for about two years. At that time, they were about to come out in the open and say that there was evidence that these things were interplanetary, and General Hoyt Vandenberg, the chief of staff, vetoed it, changed the policy to one of debunking them,

while behind the scenes they were actually investigating these things. And this has been the policy ever since, with a few variations. Occasionally, a group in the Air Force has tried to get it out in the open, and there have been reports that have been... leaked or even officially released for that purpose. But right now, the Air Force stand is openly, they don't exist, behind the scenes, they're real, and we have to find out what they're here for. Just a few minutes ago, at the opening of tonight's program, PM, you indicated your own personal belief in the intelligent navigation behind these flying saucers or UFOs. When did you first come in contact with it? Was it when you were a Marine aviation officer? No, I had... it was after World War II, and I had gone back on inactive duty, and I had been in the Air Force for a long time, and I had been in the Air Force for a long time. And I had been in the Air Force for a long time, and I had been in the Air Force for a long time,

and at that time, I was as much a skeptic as anyone. Being a pilot, I was more skeptical than some. After talking to about 800 witnesses, most of them pilots and other trained observers, and to an admiral, a head of naval research, and another admiral, head of Navy guided missiles, I realized that these things were real. They were either some secret devices of ours, or the Russians, or they were interplanetary. And later, the first two answers were completely ruled out. How can you rule out that the Soviet Union might be developing this spacecraft? Because the first official sightings on record go back into World War II, at a time when they were having a very difficult time fighting the Germans with ordinary propeller aircraft. These strange oval-shaped and rocket-shaped devices, disc-shaped too, were seen chasing our bombers, fighters, circling them, buzzing them, and flying off at tremendous speeds.

In fact, some of our pilots fired at them. Now, these things couldn't have been in operation then. The Russians, neither the Russians nor other allies, were anywhere near that type of machine. Isn't this part of the problem, however? I think at least three different configurations have been reported for these flying saucers. It's difficult. If it were just one, it might be a more condemning bit of evidence. But there are many configurations and shapes that have been reported. Yes, I know. But look at the different configurations and shapes in our own aircraft and our own missiles. We have so many different types of aircraft today that you could get 40 or 50 different silhouettes against the sky. And the missiles, the same way. The Air Force report. Project Grudge report. 1949, which was released and then reclassified secrets,

[03:00] Interview segment

stated that the majority of these reports described disc-shaped objects, capable of high acceleration and high speed. The second group was projectile or cigar-shaped objects, also capable of high speeds. The third group was lighted objects at night, and they couldn't tell the shape because the lights were so brilliant that they hid whatever was behind them. Presumably, they were most of them disc-shaped. And is the method of travel or acceleration that of the spinning motion, which keeps it spinning forward, so to speak? Not necessarily. Not in the rocket shapes, at least. There have been some reports of rotating discs. Now, that might tie in with our own plan to rotate some of our spaceships to create artificial gravity so that you wouldn't be weightless inside of one of them. Whether or not that's the purpose, I don't know. But the majority of the reports do not describe rotation. They're merely apparently metallic devices, rather thick at the center, about one-tenth of the diameter.

And they've been reported by top observers. Including Navy pilots, to be up to three or four hundred feet in diameter. There's one case of that kind over the Atlantic, where the crew of a Navy super-constellation, the reserve crew, and two crews that were being brought back from foreign duty, all of them saw this gigantic machine coming toward them on a collision course, and then suddenly whipped to one side, they turned, came back, paced them for a few moments, and tilted upward and disappeared at supersonic speed. These men were interrogated by intelligence at Gander Air Force Base when they landed, and again by naval intelligence down at Patuxent. A few days after that, the commander, the senior pilot, was shown some photographs, secret UFO photographs, by a scientist in a high government agency, and asked to pick out the one that most resembled what they had seen. And he picked it out and said it was exactly like this one.

Now, they have the secret photographs, they have reports by some of their top men that these things operate, obviously, under intelligent control, in formations changing from one formation to another, and they have their own secret conclusion that they're interplanets. They have their own secret conclusion that they're interplanetary, which they've been sitting on for a long time. What percentage of the reported sightings are actually UFOs? Remain unidentified. I would presume that perhaps maybe 99 out of 100 can be explained in one manner or another. No, the Air Force has recently said in a public statement by their spokesman that the Air Force has explained all but 2%. The same spokesman signed an official letter on Air Force letterhead saying that up to the end of 1959, they had a total number of approximately 6,000-some sightings. Of these, 9.4% remained unsolved. Don, many intelligent Americans refuse to accept this theory that they are real,

and if I can presume something here, I think one of the reasons I would join them is that I can understand why there has not been some attempt at communication from these people or these creatures, whatever they are. Now, how do you explain this? Well, there are several possible answers. One of them is that they may not use the same speech sounds that we do. They might not be able to communicate. There have been suggestions, and even some Air Force people have said this, that perhaps they use telepathy, or they may use an entirely different way of communicating. We do know that they have come down and deliberately changed formations at low altitudes, apparently as if to be seen, to indicate they are intelligently controlled. There have also been signals that have been picked up, which haven't been explained and never been traced to spaceships, but at least they could have come from them. We are, as you know, listening for signals from space

down in West Virginia in Project Ozma, and probably within a short time, we will be sending out signals of our own, hoping for answers. But the lack of communication, I don't think, is a complete bar to this, because the other evidence disproves it. Well, what about these reported landings? Could that have been an attempt at communication, or have these landings, in fact, maybe not have been as stated? There have been a few authenticated landings. I don't refer to the cases where people say, I talked with a spaceman who came out of one of these things, or I climbed in and rode to the moon, or something like that. Those people are frauds, and we've disproved most of their claims. And a great problem, I'm sure. Well, they are one of the biggest problems, because unfortunately, they get a lot of publicity, whereas an airline captain coming in with a serious report may get a paragraph or nothing. But there was a landing, for instance, in Ohio here,

in Goga County. An object touched down briefly and took off again, and the ground was checked by a civil defense director in that area and found to be highly radioactive, much more so than could have been caused by any normal thing. There have been other cases where they have come close to the ground and gone off the ground. Geiger counter devices check or indicated high radioactivity. Now, that's confirmed by Captain Ruppelt, who used to head the Air Force project, so that we know they have some unusual kind of propulsion. Now, I think we could probably list ten cases where there seems authentic evidence that they touched and landed, they touched down and took off again. But I don't know of any case where any creatures came out and looked around. They may have. They might possibly have to use spacesuits, as we will do when we land on the moon or other planets. Sleep at night, wondering about all this. For example, we know through the use of telescopes and so on,

or we can presume that there is no highly developed culture on any other planet that we know of that's capable of producing anything, that there are no creatures in the sense that we think of creatures. Where possibly could these things be coming from? That must turn some of your hair gray. No, some gray there already. You've got two questions in there. I'm going to try to answer the first one. Most of the prominent astronomers today, agree that there must be at least a hundred million inhabited planets in the universe. You can find names, even people who oppose the flying saucer idea completely, will say there must be advanced life, much farther advanced than we are, by the law of averages. In fact, one, there's one astronomer, the one who set up Project Osma that I just mentioned, said that there are probably a billion inhabited planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone. And that's one, that's only one of billions of galaxies.

So that, I don't think there's any question, that we're going to find intelligent life eventually out in space. As far as the type of creature is concerned, that's varied a great deal. Now, some scientists have said, for a long time, used to say it was impossible that there could ever be life similar to ours on another planet. That it was bound to be different. Then there's been a change in that. Quite a number of scientists lately have said, well, by the law of averages, with billions of inhabited planets, you're bound to have some that are the same size of our Earth, as our Earth, and the same distance from their sun. With our evolution, perhaps roughly comparable, that might have produced beings that look a great deal like us. So that the probabilities are, there are some creatures out in space and other worlds that are like Earth men. Now, Dr. Uri, you know who Dr. Uri is, one of the former commissioners of the AEC.

Harold Uri. That's right. He recently stated, and restated, I like to think that in a room on another planet, intelligent people are sitting around and discussing the question as to whether there is intelligent life on other planets. Just as we are here. And I could name you a whole lot of people, including Harlow Shapley, who used to be head of Harvard Observatory, and the present head, Menzel, who all agree on that. So that the life is there. It's just a question as to what these beings are after, why they're here, whether it's curiosity, or is it something else behind it. My guest on Program PM tonight is Major Donald Kehoe, UFO expert, unidentified flying object.

[10:22] Development of the interview themes

And when I say expert, I mean him. I think the first paperback book I ever bought, was a book, I believe, entitled, Our Flying Saucers Real. And you were the author. We're going to get back to our discussion in just a minute. You don't have to worry about traveling by flying saucer right now, but you do have to worry about your car. Don't take... Major Kehoe, you travel around the country lecturing on flying saucers. I presume your office is in Washington, D.C. Do you get a lot of mail, or do a lot of people say to you, Major Kehoe, I think you're a crackpot? No. No, I've been very fortunate. No one has had the nerve to say that to me directly. The Air Force has implied... But one reason why our organization is fairly well respected is the high level of the Board of Governors and the Technical Advisors and most of the members. When you have admirals and generals and colonels and top scientists and astronomers,

members of the FAA, many government agencies, and big names in cities and states around the country, you can't pass them off as crackpots. But aren't there just as many big names on the other side of the ledge as those who decry the fact that these might be real? No, they're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. They're not. The big names on the other side are those who have taken the Air Force denials and said, well, the Air Force is a big agency. Surely they know what they're talking about and telling the truth. But I will state here unequivocally that the United States Air Force has deliberately misled Congress, the press, and the public. Now, this is not my statement. This is a statement I am giving you which reflects opinions of the House Majority Leader, Representative McCormick, who stated that even he, as Chairman of the House Select Committee on Outer Space, could not get the answers from the Air Force.

Congressman Joseph Carr of Minnesota on the Astronautics Committee, who said that even in closed sessions when they tried to get high-ranking officers to give them the facts, they refused to answer, saying that the UFOs were tied up with the nation's security. They didn't say they're not real. He said they're tied up with the nation's security. But, Don, it isn't entirely wrong, perhaps, that they don't want the public to become overly fearful and expectant. That's right. That's right. And they're doing the very worst thing. Now, you've heard of the great Swiss analyst, Dr. Carl Jung. He is a member of NASA. And he has said, if it is true, the Air Force is withholding these facts. And it is true. That's my statement, but it is true. He said this is the stupidest and most unpsychological policy they could invent. He said because nothing adds more to panic and fear than denials and hiding the facts. And other psychiatrists have told us the same thing,

that one of these days something will happen, and all of these denials will be faced, but something will happen. Some big thing will happen, and the Air Force will have to come out and say, yes, that's right, we were covering it up. And immediately people will say, why? There must be something ominous behind the secrecy. The confidential report that our Board of Governors sent to Congress points out four secrecy dangers. And one of them is the danger of accidental war. Now, a lot of people don't know this, but the former coordinator, NATO coordinator for Allied Air Services, warned that if we didn't stop denying the existence of these things, one of these days some of our defense officials in the network, the warning network, were going to start an accidental war. Now, already SAC bombers have been launched against Russia when UFOs were mistaken for a sneak attack. That's happened. They were recalled when they found it was an error.

But it could build up to the point where we launch on an error, the Russians immediately know that we've launched, and they have several ways of knowing it besides radar. They have agents near most of our SAC bases, the shortwave radio. We then pick up the Russian launching, and the original UFO false alarm sets off a war. Now, our boarding, the governors, including Hill and Carter, who I said was former head of the CIA, have warned Congress that this alone is one reason for ending the secrecy. And there's another one, the danger that people will mistake these things for Soviet secret weapons. After two decades of sightings, why are they still so timid, though? Now, for example, we have pretty well figured out what we will do when we send, let's say, a team in the years to come to the moon or to another planet. They'll descend from their craft. They'll take Earth samples. They'll try and meet people. They may bring one back.

I think even Columbus, about in 1492, yet they've conformed not at all to our expectations of what the rational people would do, or rational creatures, when they arrive at a planet that they have not seen before. Well, one thing, when they arrive in our atmosphere, immediately jet interceptors take off and in some cases fire at them, which is nothing to encourage them to land, for one thing. I don't know whether we've ever fired any missiles. The Air Force has denied that, but they've denied other things. But we have not encouraged them in any case to land. We chase them. The order is still in effect. Every time a UFO shows up, one or more jets must be scrambled to try to intercept these things and force them down. However, we may not follow the pattern that we have laid out for space travel. If we should get to Mars and find out there that we're greeted in a very unfriendly fashion, we may change our plans. And since we're belligerent,

we might even decide perhaps to wipe out the Martians and take over the planet anyway. Well, we did that to the Indians as much as we could. Again, this matter of communication. Some have stated that perhaps they are attempting to communicate through some intelligent system which we cannot translate or decode in any way. Is this true? Yes, I think that's very possible. The Joint Chiefs of Staff answered a question that we put to them some time ago. I asked if there'd ever been any intelligent radio communication with UFOs. And they wrote back and said that to date there had been no communication by radio otherwise, and we surely must be aware of the technical, technical difficulties involved in communicating. Now, you can take that two ways. It could mean that they have tried and found out that there were technical difficulties or they recognized it at the start and haven't tried. But I think, judging by the fact

they've set up Project Osmo for listening, there may be a secret project for attempting communication. Well, haven't there been some signals intercepted that could not be explained? No, we haven't. They seem to have a rational, intelligent basis. That's right, even back in 1924. RCA, or whatever the name it was carrying at that time, announced that they had picked up strange messages, and that just happened to be at the time that Mars was near the Earth. I don't think I've mentioned that every time Mars nears the Earth, there is an increase in UFO sightings. That's happened since 1948. See, the story here is you have a mass of evidence by hundreds of highly trained observers here and abroad which have been analyzed by experts. What about the story of a piece of metal, Don? Let me cut in here. Yeah, sure. Wasn't it in Texas or some southwestern state where they say they found a piece of metal? No. Was it a metal after one of these craft

had supposedly landed a piece of metal they could not identify as to its composition? Well, I don't remember the Texas case, but there was one case in Washington after the Washington Airport sightings where a piece of metal was found, and it was taken to Bureau of Standards, and I can't prove this, because this is hearsay from the former head of the Canadian project. According to what he said, the Bureau of Standards was unable to identify this metal, and it was passed on to them for an examination in their official project, and they couldn't identify it, but there's one case I do know. On November 13, 1957, a UFO exploded or disintegrated near above the grounds of the Maryland State Hospital, Crownsville, Maryland. Fragments of this device fell on the hospital grounds. The Army intelligence officers from Fort Meade rushed in there and roped off the area and checked it with Geiger counters for several hours, and then in the meantime,

they picked up what they could of this fragment and packed it. They checked it very carefully and rushed it to Baltimore, and from there it was flown out to Dayton. Dayton denied when we first asked them if they had ever heard of it. Later on, they admitted, and this was taped by one of our representatives and a television producer out there, that it did arrive, but it was in a cellophane or some kind of plastic container wrapped up in something else, but the fragment had disintegrated. There was nothing left but very fine ash when it got there. Well, regardless of that, something fell. Now, that's all I know of fragments.

[18:26] Closing discussion

But when you have thousands of radar tracking and thousands of scrambles where pilots have seen these things and photographs that show them, and they move in intelligent formations, there is enough evidence there that if you were up for murder, it would send you to the chair of the gas chamber. There isn't any question about it. It's entirely too strong to ignore. Oh, with all these cases and evidence that you cite, what do you think is the most compelling date, evidence, to date? What's the most compelling fact? Case, you mean? Yeah. That's awfully hard to say. Because some of them are just about equal. There was one case over the Gulf of Mexico where the crew of a B-29 bomber picked up on radar a group of objects coming toward the bomber some distance away at 5,240 miles an hour. Everybody thought their radar was off, so they recalibrated, and the next group that came along came out at the same speed, stopwatch computation.

So by that time, they had men watching out the blister windows, and they saw the second group go by some miles off the ground, What was the speed, by the way? That was 5,240 miles an hour. They saw them as merely as blue-white streaks through the sky, but they were exactly where radar showed them. A third group was picked up on radar, and it swung around behind the bomber and decelerated immediately to the bomber's speed. That's from 5,200 down to roughly 200 miles an hour. And for 10 seconds, they paced the bomber, and then they swung off to one side very sharply and climbed up toward a huge object which had appeared on the radar scope in the meantime. Now, this object showed a blip about a half an inch across, and you can tell how, you know, the ordinary blip, say, an airliner would show something about an eighth of an inch or less on that particular radar. When these objects merged with this, which presumably was some type of a carrier ship,

the large craft accelerated to over 9,000 miles an hour and went off the scope. Now, that's an official Air Force intelligence report that was declassified for me in 1953 when they were getting ready to release these things to the public. Later on, the policy switched. Another case, which I've always been concerned about, and now a lot of congressmen are, is the one where, two air officers, Air Force officers, were lost during a chase of a UFO. This UFO appeared over the Soo Locks, and a jet, an F-89 jet, was sent to intercept it. The object turned and went out over Lake Superior at a speed of well over 500 miles an hour, and the F-89 slowly closed the gap. After about 20 minutes, ground radar saw the blip of the F-89 and the blip of the UFO merge on the scope in one big, you know, they call it blossom into a large one. Then it disappeared. They immediately called the pilot of the F-89 and no answer, and after a while they alerted search and rescue.

They never found a trace, no oil slick, nothing. There'd been no May Day, no report of trouble. They simply vanished. The ship was gone. The next day, Air Force, Truix Air Force Base stated, the plane had been tracked by radar until it merged with an object 80 miles off Kiwi Noi Point in Upper Michigan. Later, the Pentagon denied it until they found it. This was on record. The AP had it, and they said, well, yes, it was put out, but somebody misread the radar. Now, you have ground radar men who are trained to pick up red bombers coming in and guide a fighter right square in on the tail, and they don't make mistakes like that. Furthermore, the plane's gone. The men are dead. Later, the Air Force denied this incident ever took place. We got letters from the survivor, from the relatives of one of these men, who said that the Air Force gave them two different answers as to what had happened, and the secrecy left them with very little consolation.

Later, the Air Force said, the Air Force admitted there had been such an incident. Don, we are running out of time. My final question for you, you know, we Americans love a good mystery, nothing like it, but we also like to find out what the answer might be. Are we going to find out the answer, and if so, any guesses to when? I think it's going to break at this session of Congress, because there is enough pressure down there now, enough congressmen have found that the Air Force has either evaded answers to their questions or has given them absolutely false statements. And I think it's building up to where this will be, out in the open before the end of this Congress. Out in the open is one thing, but what about the answers to the mystery itself? Will we ever know what these objects are? Oh, I think, yes. I think once that they're forced into the open, the Air Force will have to give up everything in its hands right now,

because of the dangers of the secrecy, I think they will be forced to tell the public what they have, what they've learned. And when are we going to know where they come from? Well, they may not know that, but they do know a lot more than they've ever admitted, and I think they can at least pinpoint a base in our solar system from which these things are coming. Major Donald Kehoe, my guest tonight on Program PM, for those of you who want to pursue this subject further, a reminder that Major Kehoe will be speaking at the Masonic Auditorium tomorrow night, starting at 8 o'clock.