UFOVIEW
11-7-2008
As obituaries go, it's about as nondescript as you can imagine, its 120 words painting a silhouette of a man who, unbeknownst to the uninitiated reader, managed to accumulate more enemies than friends during his 63 years on planet Earth.
Well, I'm talking not about UFOlogical iconoclast James W. Moseley (publisher-editor of the gossipzine "Saucer Smear") but about one of Moseley's unfavored acquaintances -- W. Todd Zechel, who according to "Smear's" Oct. 10, 2008, issue, died in relative obscurity on Nov. 14, 2006. (Moseley, of course, remains with us, headed toward
octohood.) Both men had been cigarette-smokers; in Zechel's case, his obesity and smoking probably caused him to sustain a stroke several years before his demise.
In his later years, Zechel (who might've enjoyed being called the "Colombo of UFOlogy") had a tacit but nevertheless self-destructive approach to interpersonal relations: if you can't successfully attack your enemies, then just go ahead and attack your friends. Somehow, "Todd the God" (as he liked to be called) viewed me as a friend -- one who, alas, could be regularly exploited whenever Zechel felt so inclined.
If Zechel could lay claim to any lasting self-descriptor, it might go like this: "The Ultimate practitioner of the strategy called 'the end justifies the means.'" Even so, he possessed a folksy, ribald sense of humor, a slightly commendable irreverence toward official authority, an abundant talent for stalking/milking his research prey, and an enviable knack for writing.
It was in the latter category that I received my final word from him -- cranked out via an e-mail message addressed to me and to several other persons on May 8, 2006. (Having no computer of his own, he relied on the communal computer service at his local public library.) His message consisted of an essay titled "The CIA's Most Secret Counterintelligence Project: The Condon Committee." One of his e-correspondents at the time -- Frank Riccardi, director of the UFO-research web site of http://www.eyepod.org -- has posted the essay's contents as part of the Eyepod's online newsletter called "The Alien Chronicles" -- Issue 2-23.
In light of recent rumors about the U. S. Central Intelligence Agency's (alleged) interference with the (alleged) plans by certain U. S. Navy insiders to jump-start some official U. S. disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence (allegedly via a series of high-level talks at secret UN-sponsored venues), I'm presenting, below, the text of Zechel's j'accuse smoking gun -- as a sort of elongated epitaph.
Meantime, readers desiring to learn more about Zechel's investigatory projects will find his biographic sketch and other reprinted material at the eyepod.org site.
THE CIA'S MOST SECRET UFO COUNTERINTELLIGENCE PROJECT: The Condon Committee
By W. Todd Zechel
Investigative Journalist
Former NSA/ASA Communications Specialist
(c) 2006
When the U. S. Air Force, under Congressional pressure, appointed Dr. Edward U. Condon of the University of Colorado to head a purported "independent scientific study of UFOs" in 1966, it was the end result of the CIA secretly taking charge of UFO intelligence in late 1957, having gained control of "'scientific intelligence" within the intelligence community. Between 1958 and 1966, the Air Force had been stuck in the publicly humiliating position of having to pretend it was the U.S. government agency responsible for studying UFO sightings and related events for whatever intelligence could be obtained. But in reality it was the CIA that had wrestled control away from the USAF by proving to the National Security Council (NSC) that the Air Force had completely bungled the job and was incapable of handling it without covering itself in proverbial eggs.
Dr. Condon had worked on the ultra-secret Manhattan Project during WW II, helping develop the Atomic Bomb. Later he became the head of the National Bureau of Standards, which assisted in American scientific, technical development. But in early 1951 he suddenly left the Bureau to become the director of research and development at Corning Cookware in upstate New York. But unlike the previous director, Condon did not specialize in developing pots and pans at Corning; but instead he spent his time developing missile and rocket nose cones and heat shields/ablation shields for America's space program -- Condon had been and was a key member of the National Aeronautics Advisory Committee (NACA), the forerunner of NASA. In fact, Condon is reputed (within supersecret circles) to have based his heat shield developments on the analysis of recovered extraterrestrial material*, after he left the National Bureau of Standards at the behest of President Truman.
In reality, Condon was chosen to head the UFO study in order to get the Air Force off the hook, the USAF being in the position whereby it had to pretend it was studying UFOs, while behind the scenes and in secret the CIA was conducting the real study. In point of fact, the CIA would utilize the Condon Committee to collect UFO intell, while at the same time promising the USAF it would ultimately debunk and dismiss UFOs, which was done in what became known as "The Condon Report."
In February 1967, Condon and four other scientists associated with his study secretly met with CIA officials at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in downtown Washington, D.C., where U-2, SR-71, and satellite spy photos were analyzed utilizing state-of-the-art computer enhancement techniques. After being briefed and given a dog-and-pony show by NPIC's founder and director, Art Lundahl, who implored Condon's group to obtain some good UFO photos/films for NPIC to study, Condon issued a nationwide appeal through the media for citizens to send the Condon Committee UFO photos/films to assist the purported "impartial" study of UFOs, post-haste. In reality, the photographic evidence was being sought for the CIA to further its secret study of UFOs, on-going since the early 1950s but without a mandate until late 1957.
In April 1967, a Condon Committee researcher, Dr. Gerald Rothberg of Stevens Institute, Hoboken, N.J., was dispatched to Harrisburg, Penn., to investigate an on-going local UFO flap. Accompanying Rothberg, disguised as research assistants, were two covert CIA officers, one of whom was Fred Durant, a highly experienced and knowledgeable CIA Office of Scientific Intelligence officer who typically operated under a cover of being a civilian scientist, lastly with Avco-Everett Research Lab, where he was reputed to be conducting R Mararchi knew the UFOs surveilling White Sands were real but was convinced they were an amazing technological advancement by the Soviets.
The Soviets had gone so far as to stage an "accidental" exposure of a supposedly "Top Secret" schematic of a (bogus) Soviet-built flying saucer to an American spy in Moscow in 1950. Then in 1953 the Russians tried to reinforce this misinformation by planting a story in a Vienna, Austria, newspaper which claimed a flying saucer had crashed on Norway's Spitzbergen Island, and it had Russian markings on internal parts and matched almost exactly the bogus schematic exposed to an American spy in Moscow in 1950.
After Condon had buried the truth about UFOs with the study he headed and the report it generated, all designed to get the Air force off the hook and take UFO research underground where the CIA would answer to no-one, the public was only partly persuaded; but academia and politicians swallowed it like the proverbial hook, line, and sinker. Now, however, all manner of nonsense became part of the public forum on UFOs; but still, in spite of Fred Durant's gloomy predictions, America did not fall apart, the Soviet Union did.
The CIA's motto, borrowed from the Bible, says: "Know ye the truth, and the truth shall set ye free." Sadly, America has yet to be set free by learning the truth about UFOs being withheld by the CIA and other U. S. government agencies.
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* Note: The E.T. material studied and mentioned in this report has nothing whatsoever to do with the Roswell, N. M., incident of 1947, which was in truth the debris from the crash of a cluster of six balloons launched June 14, 1947, from White Sands as part of a Top Secret experiment to develop a recoverable sniffer of atomic tests in the Soviet Union. [LWB note: this being Zechel's bias favoring the contentious Mogul balloon theory for the Roswellian crash-retrieval/cover-up case.]
** The AVRO disc was just part of a U.S. Air Force attempt to misinform/mislead the Soviets, which started about 1953, when the USAF let a contract to Canada's A. V. Roe aviation company purportedly to build a flying saucer for only a few hundred thousand dollars. It was all a hoax designed to fool the Russians and the American public! [LWB note: The U. S. Army also had a hand in that multi-m R">See Also:
'UFO Cover-up' Add Submitted To Classifieds at 'Robins Air Force Base'
CIA Says, "No UFO Investigation Since The '50's!"
