mcrom901, on 03 July 2011 - 08:20 AM, said:
thanks for your detailed response, but if those sections were 'unclassified'; then how come they were not released?
i suppose the actual presence of said ufos are a matter of contention here, jumping to the conclusion that they were directly responsible in regards to the shutdowns is a different issue all together...
that's bad
not even anything about the jokes?
in regards to lt. col. chase... i believe he was the person who was involved re the rb-47 ufo case....
My link
IRT: "thanks for your detailed response, but if those sections were 'unclassified'; then how come they were not released?"
They may have been; we just don't know/. A lkot of classified documents were simply thrown away once they were declassifed. I've looked everywhere for that particular report, and I've been told by everybody, including Boeing and other contractors, that they don't have copies of it. Classified materials are treated very differently now than they used to be. There's a lot more control of materials today, and a lot more consideration for archived materials. There didn't used to be. The decision as to whether or not a particular document was worth archiving was very often being made by low ranking enlisted personnel. There was no substantial training on what should or should not be saved, and most administrative officers didn't consider it very important.
The document you're referring to was not conclusive, because it only dealt with the first week or so of an investigation that continued for many, many more months. Other documents represented the same information and gave more details, including all of the interim reports that were released. We simply don't know. We do know, however, that it was never saved, because if it had been, all of the people looking for it would not have been repeated;ly told that it has not been found at any of the repositories mentioned in any of the requests. It's not even listed as an archived document, which is why I suspect it was destroyed.
We would like to believe that any administrative body would preserve in some way all of the documents that it has produced for reference, but the plain fact is that they don't -- particularly the military. The number of documents produced is too large to save, which is one reason we instituted command histories as a form of summary documentation. This is also one reason that the ICBM histories were originally drafted. I think you'll find that almost every command, less so now than in the 1960s and 1970s, handle their archival duties differently.
It wasn't until Ronald Reagan became President that substantial changes in the handling of classified materials was actually instituted. Before his changes went into effect, automatic declassification of documents was normal, in accordance with the originating agency's decision upon first classifying any materials. During Reagan's administration, it was noted that the importance of classified materials' status changed often after the original classification was made, and very often this could only be determined by the command responsible for assigning the original classification. So what Reagan introduced basically amounted to getting rid of automatic declassification. The new rule was that a classified document could not be declassified unless the originating agency first responsible for assigning classification had advised that declassification procedures be adopted. This was huge. Before this point, it was considered the duty of all administrative officers to limit the number of classified documents under their control. There was so much, that there just wasn't enough administrative will to archive; it became accepted that the "job" necessitated both declassification and the destruction of materials, and this represented the corporate mindset of the day. Reagan changed that mindset by making declassification and destruction far more difficult. Of course, that didn't happen until well after the Echo Flight incident had already been declassified; so finding almost anything is not as easy as most people think. A lot of materials have simply been lost and destroyed.
IRT: "i suppose the actual presence of said ufos are a matter of contention here, jumping to the conclusion that they were directly responsible in regards to the shutdowns is a different issue all together..."
I agree completely. In regard to Echo Flight, there were rumors -- that's been well-established. I've tried to account for those rumors, and the Raymond Fowler testimony is, I believe, a suitable explanation for this. NMore importantly, the classification of the materials is not an aspect of the case that can be used to support an actual UFO, because a real UFO would not have been treated so casually by the command. It's illegal to classify an actual threat to a nuclear missile command any lower than Top Secret, so the fact that everything related to a UFO in this instance is Unclassified (and nothing involving the incident in general is classified above Secret) is more than sufficient reason to believe that the command never considered the UFO to be actual or to represent an actual threat.
In this case, Malmstrom AFB would have been the originating agency, so their classification of any part of the materials associated carries with it a tremendous responsibility. In 1967, President Kennedy's executive order increasing the emphasis of underclassification of materials was still in effect, and the charges related to such an act were very serious. If a charge of underclassification of materials was made against the commanding officer (and it was his responsibility alone, since he appointed all of his junior officer positions), it would have ended his career. There is just no reason to assume that an actual UFO would have been mentioned in an Unclassifed status if it were a genuine threat. That sort of carelessness would have changed everything. Kennedy's E.O., however, lowered any official rebukes for the overclassification of materials. The commanding officer's career would never have been threatened by establishing a higher than appropriate classification, because Kennedy wasn't very concerned about that aspect of the process, and rightfully so. It's far better to make a mistake that protects a document too much than one that protects a document too little. Reagan recognized this as well, which is why he didn't mind increasing so substantially the amount of maintenance and archived materials that he was instituting. Administrative officials before these changes were of the opinion that doing this would increase so subtstantially the amount of work required to protect these materials that there would be far more incidents of mistaken disclosures as a result. Reagan believed, again rightfully in my opinion, that this was a dangerous assumption to make that would ultimately result in disclosure occurring anyway, since it was an effect of not enough importance of overall protection being stressed by those who manage such materials. Basically, he told them that if it looked like there would be too much work involved, they should hire more people to do that work. He stressed the importance of protection over declassification and destruction. That changed everything, and can't be overemphasized.
IRT: "that's bad not even anything about the jokes?"
He said he didn't remember anything at all, according to what Salas told Fowler in his email. Secifically, he said "Unfortunately, he had no recollection (he said) of the radar visuals or sighting of the UFOs at Malmstrom."
Personally, I think Fowler was just being screwed around with. His interest in UFOs was well-known, as were his somewhat intense opinions regarding USAF conduct in regard to such matters. It is my belief that he made a target of himself. Whether he did or not, however, is ultimately not extremely relevant, since this individual apparently didn't remember anything at all about these matters, according to what Salas told Fowler. So far, the only person I've found who remembers any of it is Raymond Fowler, and even though he was there at the time, working at Malmstrom AFB and actively investigating the matter, he was unable to find anything at all, including someone who even cared what he thought about it. In my opinion, that's pretty significant.
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