Groundbreaking conspiracy film needs your help

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

Regular Silver Screen Saucers visitors may recall that I've been involved on-and-off for several years now with the incendiary investigation into the alleged murder of Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore.

Westaway Film has teamed up with my colleague Dr. Matthew Alford to produce The Writer with No Hands, a documentary feature which delves deep into the world of Hollywood spies, lies, and double-lives.

I've seen the rough cut and was blown away by its production values, storytelling, and, most of all, by the new information that Dr. Alford has amassed in recent months.

 

Dr. Matthew Alford

Westaway Film is using the crowd-funding website Kickstarter to try to raise £12,000, which is necessary to buy copyright footage of Gary Devore’s old movies and to polish-up the technical aspects of the documentary (graphs, audio, etc.) to make it fit for cinematic and DVD release.

If you want to own a copy of the film, as well as some accompanying goodies, you can contribute to the £12,000 fundraising drive on Kickstarter. If the filmmakers do not reach their required figure, then your contribution is simply ignored, and you won’t have spent a penny. Your transaction will only be processed if the filmmakers succeed in reaching their target figure, which will allow them to complete their film.  

The Writer with No Hands is a Powerful and politically significant film, and one that I’m proud to have played a small part in. If you’d like to make a contribution to the film – anything from £1 upward -- head over to Kickstarter. Thanks.

 

The CIA, the Movie Mogul, and 'The Day the Earth Stood Still'

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

First contact: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)

Evidence mounts that iconic 1951 movie was CIA UFO acclimation project 

__________________________

 

• Darryl Zanuck – the movie mogul who oversaw the film’s production – was a CIA asset.

• Zanuck was considered a “friend” of the US government who could be “relied upon” to subtly “insert ideas” into his productions.

• Zanuck helped shape the script for The Day the Earth Stood Still and wanted audiences to “completely accept” that open ET contact could happen “in the not too distant future.”

 

'Hangar 18', the CIA, and the Mormon Church

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Embedded below is a detailed write-up of my ongoing research into the historical corporate, political and religious connections of the film studio Sunn Classic Pictures -- the early output of which reflected a strong interest in Biblical figures and the idea of extraterrestrial visitation.

In the context of UFOs, the studio is perhaps best known for its 1980 conspiracy movie, Hangar 18...

This article was originally published at Earthfiles.com

 

Related:

Hangar 18 and Predictive Weirdness (by Mike Clelland)

A History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television

CIA Manipulation of Hollywood UFO Movies: New Details Emerge

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

For the past few months I’ve been conducting fresh research into two Hollywood UFO movies that would appear to bear the fingerprints of the CIA: The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Hangar 18 (1980).

I recently discussed this research with Linda Moulton Howe and our conversation was aired last night on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.

The full uninterrupted audio is also currently available for free at Linda’s Earthfiles.com, along with a complete transcription and accompanying images. The interview is split into two parts...

Part One deals with my research into the 1980 movie Hangar 18 and the corporate, political and religious connections of the studio that produced it – Sunn Classic Pictures.

Part Two deals with the iconic 1951 movie The Day the Earth Stood Still and the political and intelligence connections of the legendary movie mogul who oversaw its production – Darryl F. Zanuck. Particularly revealing is a memo Zanuck wrote to the movie’s screenwriter in 1950. Learn more at Earthfiles.com

PLEASE NOTE:

My discussion with Linda Moulton Howe, although detailed, really only skirts around the edges of my two case studies. For the full details of my research into both Hangar 18 and The Day the Earth Stood Still, please read the two articles (with full references) that will soon accompany the audio on Earthfiles.com. These same articles will also be posted in-full at Silverscreensaucers.com in the coming days.

CIA and drugs: a comprehensive historical overview of the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the global narcotics trade

By Robbie Graham
 

 

Ever wondered how the CIA and other alphabet soup agencies acquire the trillions of dollars required to sustain the blackest of their black projects – including UFO-related programs?

“Drugs!” the well-informed among you might cry. Yes, indeed, the global narcotics trade has long played a major role in sustaining the US government’s immense shadow infrastructure. But understanding the historical intricacies of how and why the CIA embedded itself in the drugs trade is not easy. Usually, to comprehend the CIA-narcotics-industry symbiosis, a researcher would be required to trawl through dozens of rare books and academic journal articles. It would take a very long time.

 

Indeed, it did take a very long time for my brother, Jamie Graham, who, in 2007, wrote his Politics Masters thesis on this very subject. Despite its unconventional and deeply controversial subject matter (a subject that most university professors simply refuse to acknowledge), Jamie’s thesis was nevertheless awarded a Distinction grade – such was the strength of the case it made for the Central Intelligence Agency’s historical involvement in the global narcotics trade.

The contents page alone (below) will give you an idea of the sheer scope of this research project. It is surely one of the most comprehensive studies of its kind to have been produced in recent years. It is now available in-full online. READ IT HERE.

Ben Affleck: "Hollywood is full of CIA agents"

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

Discussing his new film Argo this week, Ben Affleck has stated that Hollywood is likely teeming with CIA operatives. In a video interview with the actor, The Guardian's Catherine Shoard asks: "Are there many actors in Hollywood who also moonlight as agents do you think?" At this point, Affleck sits forward in his chair and laughs uncomfortably. He replies: "I think there are probably quite a few, yes. I think probably Hollywood is full of CIA agents and we just don't know it. And I wouldn't be surprised at all to discover that this was extremely common."

Shoard then asks: "Are you CIA?" To which Affleck responds, with a strained smile: "I am yes."

Obligatory laughter then follows from Shoard as Affleck adds: "And now you've blown my cover, so there goes my career, so I hope the directing thing better work out."

Argo is the true story of a CIA mission to rescue six Americans holed up in the Canadian embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis of 1979. Affleck, who directs and stars in the film, is no stranger to working with the CIA. In 2002, he starred in the big screen version of Tom Clancy’s TheSum of All Fears, whichdepicted the Agency as tracking down terrorists who detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this movie, CIA director George Tenet gave Affleck a personal tour of the Agency’s Langley HQ. The actor also consulted with CIA analysts and worked closely with the Agency’s former Entertainment Liaison Chase Brandon, who served as the movie’s on-set advisor.

Affleck’s wife, Jennifer Garner, enjoyed an even cosier relationship with CIA as the star of the Agency-supported TV series Alias (2001 – 2006). Garner even starred unpaid in a CIA recruitment video in 2004.

Incidentally, Catherine Shoard, who conducted the interview with Affleck, was the Commissioning Editor of an article I co-authored in 2009 for The Guardian’s Film Blog examining DoD involvement in Hollywood’s UFO movies. The Guardian also published a major feature article by myself and Dr Matthew Alford in 2008 looking at CIA infiltration of Hollywood.

For the most up-to-date and comprehensive article yet published on CIA involvement in Hollywood, I highly recommend Matthew Alford’s new article co-authored with Professor Tricia Jenkins, which appears in the June 2012 issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. Read it HERE.

Related:

Ben Affleck, Rwanda, and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe

‘The Cryptos Conundrum’ review: spies, lies, and veiled threats

Silver Screen Saucers

Guest Review
By Shepherd Johnson

I've read The Cryptos Conundrum, it makes L. Ron Hubbard look like Hemingway; it really is that bad. The book glorifies the CIA. It's very tedious. Chase Brandon goes into a history of the CIA against a backdrop of alien visitation with some New Age theosophy thrown in. He also crams just about every conspiracy theory he can think of into the book: JFK assassination, Loch Ness Monster, the mystery of how the pyramids were built, etc. The book is clearly a public relations effort used to promote the CIA while exploiting the popularity of UFOs and aliens.

This is the first time the CIA has overtly expanded into using literature as a propaganda tool. Note that I said "overtly". Of course the CIA has acknowledged that they have cooperated with some movie productions, but this is the first time for a book. On the first page there is a disclaimer saying that the book was submitted to the CIA's review board so no classified information was leaked to the public. The CIA often does this when former employees write books, but in this instance, this is clearly a ploy to make the book more mysterious. Of course the CIA probably did review the book, but this is what is known as a limited hangout, which is essentially hiding the truth in a wrapper of lies. 

Chase Brandon

Of course there is no classified information leaked in the book, but the CIA and Brandon want people to think that there is a possibility that there could have been. It is interesting that Brandon chose Coast to Coast AM to launch his book promotion. So that says that the target audience is the conspiracy/UFO community. Chase Brandon was the CIA's Hollywood liaison officer. That meant that when a TV/movie production company wanted to shoot a scene in the lobby of CIA HQ they had to go through him and if a production company wanted CIA cooperation in return the CIA expected input into the script, production, etc. I'm willing to bet that this book has already been optioned for a movie, probably before the ink was dry on the last chapter. Chase Brandon is a CIA propagandist; any foray that such a person might take into the public sphere should always be looked at with suspicion.

Note from Silver Screen Saucers Editor Robbie Graham:

Brandon's fictional book -- which he has repeatedly insisted should be read “between the lines” because, he says, it contains a great deal of “truth” -- features a fleeting but intriguing sub-plot about a nosey journalist who begins investigating the activities of the book's protagonist, Chalmers (clearly modelled on Chase Brandon himself). The journalist is intent on blowing the lid off a conspiracy involving Chalmers. In his book, Brandon writes that the journalist “had run across the name of Jonathan Chalmers, a ‘senior government official’ who seemed to be a thread of continuity throughout whatever mysterious activity the federal government and the CIA seemed to be up to.”

Chalmers doesn't take kindly to the journalist's snooping and duly arranges to have him assassinated.

The name of the journalist... "Robert Graham".

Alford (left) and Graham (right)

My colleague Dr Matthew Alford and I are among only a very small handful of writers in the world to have published articles about Brandon since he left the Agency’s Entertainment Liaison Office in 2007. In 2008, we co-authored a major article on CIA involvement in Hollywood for The Guardian newspaper. The feature -- which was published as a cover story for the paper’s “Arts” section and which is now one of the most widely read articles of its kind on the Internet (Google “CIA and Hollywood”) -- discussed Brandon’s ties to the Hollywood screenwriter Gary Devore, who disappeared in suspicious circumstances in 1997. In 2010, we wrote another cover story, this time for Fortean Times magazine and with a much tighter focus on Brandon. That same year, we co-presented our research into Brandon at the University of Westminster at the Fortean Unconvention. We also spoke about him on BBC radio’s Movie Cafe show.

Brandon suggests that people read his book “between the lines”. Well, reading between the lines, it seems a certain former CIA operative is a little peeved at a certain British writer or writers. Anyway, moving on...

In addition to the above book review, Shepherd Johnson has also drawn my attention to a related photo essay he compiled in 2009, the subject of which is the CIA’s Camp Peary, “which figures prominently in Chase Brandon's book,” says Shepherd, “only he calls it “Camp McLeary” and locates it in “Virginia's Tidewater Peninsula area” and near Williamsburg, Va.”

Shepherd notes that “this is the actual location of the CIA's trade-craft school which he [Brandon] reveals in the book. The CIA uses the cover of the Defense Department and the site is officially called "Armed Forces Experimental Training Activity”. It's the site of the “underground Area 51” in the book [The Cryptos Conundrum] where they have taken the dead aliens.” 

I have posted three of Shepherd’s Camp Peary photos below. For the full photo essay, see here.

Shepherd Johnson's articles and photographs have appeared on various websites including, CBS News, Coast to Coast AM, Prison Planet and Cryptome. Print articles include Fate Magazine. Living in Virginia in close proximity to Washington D.C., he has covered many issues involving politics and national security. He is currently researching the various aspects of the U.S. government's involvement with UFOs.

CIA, UFO Disclosure & Hollywood: Robbie Graham interview

Silver Screen Saucers

UFO Think Tank interview with Robbie Graham, July 24, 2012, with host Alejandro Rojas...

LISTEN HERE

Chase Brandon & Roswell: let your thoughts be known!

Silver Screen Saucers

Grant Cameron of PresidentialUFO.com has created an opinion poll in response to the ongoing ‘Chase Brandon & Roswell’ story...

Vote now!

“Alien language” presented by CIA & Disney

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

UPDATED: 19 JUNE, 2012

SCROLL DOWN FOR NEWLY ADDED IMAGES FROM RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN FEATURING SYMBOLS - AND CODE (?) - DESIGNED BY THE MOVIE'S CIA ADVISOR...

Nordic aliens in Disney's Race to Witch Mountain (2009).

One of the most eyebrow-raising cases of government involvement in a Hollywood UFO movie in recent years is that of Race to Witch Mountain (2009), which apparently received extensive support from the CIA – albeit in an ‘off the books’ capacity – despite its plot drawing extensively from UFO mythology (with references both to Area 51 and Roswell) and its presentation of a sinister government UFO cover-up.

In 2010, the film's director, Andy Fickman – a self-described “UFO enthusiast” born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico – told me that, although he personally shaped the majority of the film’s UFO-related content, at least some of it was the result of CIA input. The director claims that, in a highly unusual production arrangement, he and his crew were closely assisted by an active employee of the CIA whose advice extended to designing the alien writing seen in the flying saucer during the film’s climactic scenes. 

Race to Wicth Mountain: inside the flying saucer.

Despite my best efforts, Fickman has been unwilling to reveal to me the identity of his CIA advisor, but claims he’s a former Air Force Technical Intelligence Officer, that he had been “very active in Hollywood,” and “had a lot of connections in the computer world and [experience in] satellite imagery.”Fickman said of his CIA advisor:

All of the on-camera alien language in terms of their spaceship and everything – that was all designed by him in the sense [of what] the mathematics of communication would be, so you know... there would be a similar mathematical equation that the government probably has if they were to ever come across an alien race. So a lot of the things we ended up using were things he was bringing to me... and the next thing you know, that’s what I had on screen. 

The alien “language” to which Fickman refers appears onscreen in Race to Witch Mountain in the form of holographic symbols aboard the Nordic aliens’ flying saucer. Some are simple, some are more elaborate. Presented below are three of the most frequently recurring symbols that appear in the climactic scenes of the movie...

Morse code-type design as featured in the Race to Witch Mountain DVD menu.
This 'code' also appears in the film alongside various symbols.

Race to Witch Mountain DVD menu featuring various symbols that appear in the film. Not all symbols are displayed here.



The symbol pictured right frame appears frequently in Race to Witch Mountain's flying saucer. In the film it is seen to rotate.



Left frame: the flying saucer's schematic.

The question, of course, is what do these symbols mean? Besides some of them bearing a passing resemblance to certain crop formations (the authenticity of which is debatable), it is difficult to ascribe any significance to them beyond the fact that they were designed by an alleged CIA operative.

Has the CIA, in cooperation with Disney, presented us with real alien symbols / language? If so, to what conceivable end? In all likelihood, the symbols mean nothing, but it would be remiss of me not to throw them out there for feedback. Your comments are welcome.

More information on CIA involvement in Race to Witch Mountain can be found in my article UFOs and Disney: Behind the Magic Kingdom.

No saucers in this Hoover: J. Edgar biopic will side-step UFO issue

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

A historical epic based on the life of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is headed for the big screen this November. Directed by Oscar winner Clint Eastwood and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, the movie will chronicle the rise to power and time in office of the legendary lawman and will also explore his closeted homosexuality.

What the movie - entitled J. Edgar - will surely not explore, however, is Hoover’s longstanding and well-documented interest in the UFO phenomenon. Documents released through the Freedom of Information Act show that the flying saucer fever that swept America during the summer of 1947 also reached as far as the Bureau’s headquarters and had Hoover himself in a sweat. He was particularly frustrated at his inability to get straight answers on the subject from the US Air Force, which he was convinced was keeping crucial UFO-related information from him.

In an FBI document dated 10 July, 1947, in response to a request from the Air Force that the Bureau assist in its flying saucer investigations, a hand-written note from Hoover reads:

“I would do it but before agreeing to it we must insist upon full access to discs recovered. For instance in the la. case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.”

A remarkable statement indeed in its unambiguous acknowledgement that – in the opinion of the FBI director at least – the US Army was already in possession of a flying disc.

Debate has raged for years in the UFO research community about the meaning of Hoover’s “la.” reference. The Roswell incident had occurred just days earlier in New Mexico – could this be what he was referring to? If so, why say “la.”? Some speculate that “la.” might be short for Los Alamos – as in Los Alamos laboratories – where wreckage from the Roswell crash(es) allegedly was sent for testing. It is also possible that Hoover was referring to an older and less well-known UFO incident: the 1942 ‘Battle of Los Angeles,’ in which one or more saucer-shaped objects hovered silently over LA for several hours, drawing heavy artillery fire from the US Army. Witnesses described the objects as being impervious to the Army’s shelling, but perhaps they were not quite so impervious as they appeared.

Whatever the precise meaning of Hoover’s note, his interest in the UFO issue was clear. A wealth of UFO documentation from the FBI’s own files is now freely available for the public to examine; it shows that the Bureau’s monitoring of the UFO phenomenon continued throughout Hoover’s four-decade reign as FBI head honcho. The full complexity of the FBI/UFO interplay is crisply elucidated by Nick Redfern in his book The FBI Files.

History may come to regard the aforementioned ‘flying disc’ document as one of the most significant Hoover ever signed. But will this – or any reference whatsoever to the UFO phenomenon – feature in Eastwood’s forthcoming movie? I wouldn’t hold your breath. Why? Because the UFO subject is missing from the pages of history as officially written. UFOs have been excised entirely from our official historical meta-narrative. It follows, then, that UFOs are also absent from Hollywood’s historical dramas. For the cinema-going UFOlogist, this absence is noticeable no more so than in movies dealing with heavyweight political figures, such as John F. Kennedy (JFK), Richard Nixon (Nixon), George W. Bush (W.), James Jesus Angleton (The Good Shepherd) – even Howard Hughes (The Aviator).

This December will see the release of the Margaret Thatcher biopic The Iron Lady, which also will undoubtedly give the UFO topic a wide berth. Thatcher, of course, was in office at the time of the famous Bentwaters UFO incidents, which involved the apparent landing on British soil of a structured craft of unknown origin and resulted in a large-scale cover-up involving the UK and US governments. On May 21, 1997, Thatcher told British researcher Georgina Bruni that, when it comes to UFOs, “You can’t tell the people.” She might have added: “And certainly not in an Oscar-worthy drama.”

To add the UFO element to fact-based political biopics in a pre-disclosure world would be to turn historical drama into sci-fi. But in a post-disclosure world, the inclusion of UFOlogical detail will seem only natural to filmmakers. Right now, the most significant chapter in modern history has yet to be explored by Hollywood creatives outside of the generic trappings of science-fiction. When disclosure finally comes, Tinseltown will have a field day.

UFOs and Disney: Behind the Magic Kingdom

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

The role played by Hollywood in shaping our notions of potential alien life has long been a subject of fascination and contention in the UFO research community. Although there seems to be a consensus among UFOlogists that big screen depictions of UFOs serve to acclimate the populous to the reality of the phenomenon, opinions diverge on whether this acclimation effect is the product of design (inferring the existence of a "Hollywood UFO conspiracy"), or is merely the result of a natural cultural process driven by generic trends and stemming from a simple recognition among Hollywood executives that, when it come to the box office, aliens sell like hotcakes. Within this ongoing debate concerning UFOs and Hollywood, the name of one studio consistently has rung out over the decades – Disney. The House of Mouse has overseen the production and/or distribution of numerous UFO and alien-themed movies in recent times, with the best known examples including Flight of the Navigator (1986) Signs (2002), Lilo and Stitch (2002), Chicken Little (2005), Lifted (2007), I am Number Four (2011), Mars Needs Moms (2011) and the forthcoming John Carter (2012). 

Once Upon A Time...

The Disney/UFO connection can be traced back to 1953 when the CIA-sponsored Robertson Panel recommended that the US government make efforts to strip UFOs of their "aura of mystery" through the exploitation of mass media including television and motion pictures. In this context, the panel highlighted Walt Disney Productions specifically as a potential conduit for its propaganda. The panel’s singling-out of Disney made sense given the animation giant’s then firmly established working relationship with the US government: during World War II Disney made numerous propaganda shorts for the US military, and in the 1950s corporate and government sponsors helped the company produce films promoting President Eisenhower's "Atoms for Peace" policy, as well as the retrospectively hilarious Duck and Cover documentary, which depicted schoolchildren surviving an atomic attack by sheltering under their desks.

That the Robertson Panel highlighted Disney is significant in that the Panel’s general recommendation to debunk UFOs through media channels is known to have been acted upon in at least one instance: this being the CBS TV broadcast of UFOs: Friend, Foe, or Fantasy? (1966), an anti-UFO documentary narrated by Walter Cronkite. In a letter addressed to former Robertson Panel Secretary Frederick C. Durant, Dr Thornton Page confided that he "helped organize the CBS TV show around the Robertson Panel conclusions," even though this was thirteen years after the Panel had first convened. In light of this case alone, it seems reasonable to assume that the government may at least have attempted to follow through on the Robertson Panel’s Disney recommendation.

With this in mind, consider the case of the Oscar-winning Disney animator Ward Kimball. Best known for creating iconic Disney characters such as Jiminy Cricket and The Mad Hatter, Kimball also worked as Directing Animator on Disney classics including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1938) and Pinocchio (1940). While at a MUFON symposium in 1979, Kimball claimed that the United States Air Force (USAF) had approached Walt Disney himself in the mid-1950s to request his cooperation on a documentary about UFOs that would help acclimate the American public to the reality of extraterrestrials. According to Kimball, in exchange for Disney’s cooperation, the USAF offered to furnish the production with genuine UFO footage. Kimball claimed that Disney accepted the deal and – ever faithful to Uncle Sam – began work immediately on the USAF project. It wasn’t long, however, before the USAF reneged on its offer of UFO footage. When Kimball challenged the USAF Colonel overseeing the project he was told that "there was indeed plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Kimball, nor anyone else was going to get access to it." The Kimball case, though, seems to be at odds with the Robertson Panel’s recommendations, which were to debunk UFO reality through media channels, not promote it. But perhaps another faction within the military-intelligence community – one with a UFO acclimation agenda – had similarly recognised Disney’s propagandist potential? We can only speculate.

Disney’s Alien Encounters

A tantalising case of alleged Disney/government UFO collusion is that of the 1995 documentary Alien Encounters from New Tomorrowland, which officially was produced with the sole purpose of promoting Disneyworld’s then-new ‘ExtraTERRORestrial Alien Encounter’ ride. Yet, the content of this curious "promotional" documentary was viewed with suspicion by UFO researchers for the following reasons:

 - Throughout its forty-minute run-time, the documentary’s presenter/narrator, Robert Urich, makes numerous declarative statements to the effect that UFOs are one-hundred-percent real and extraterrestrial in origin. Such statements include: "For nearly fifty years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth; "More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico"; and "Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth."

- The documentary tells us of alien microbes found in meteorites in Antarctica that had been analysed by NASA. At the time the documentary was televised in 1995, NASA was indeed analysing a Martian meteorite recovered from Antarctica, and had indeed reached the tentative conclusion that it contained fossilised microbial alien life. The inclusion of this information in Disney’s 1995 documentary is intriguing, however, as NASA did not make a formal announcement about its findings until August of 1996 – 17 months after the documentary was televised.

- The actual ‘Alien Encounter’ ride received very little screen time, with the vast majority of the documentary’s content being focused on UFOs and extraterrestrials as a factual reality. The ride itself seemed like an afterthought.

- The documentary was aired in only a handful of US cities at seemingly random times on selected dates in February and March, 1995, with no advance notice – a rather odd marketing strategy considering its purpose was to promote a major theme park ride for families.

For the reasons cited above, many in the UFO research field felt that Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary was an effort by the powers that be to prepare us for Disclosure – a subtle test of public reaction to an official declaration that we are not alone. But in the sixteen years since the documentary was produced, not one UFO researcher has attempted to contact the film’s writer and director, Andrew Thomas, in order to learn the truth of the matter. So, in February 2011, I decided to do just that.

In an hour-long telephone interview, Thomas revealed to me that he had been selected by Disney for the documentary project based on his background in reality television, having been the original producer of the phenomenally successful TV show, Cops: "Making things exceptionally real was the line of work that I was in at the time," he said. The other key factor was Thomas’s previous position as head of "special marketing" for Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) in the mid-to-late 1970s. Regarding Close Encounters, Thomas explained that marketing executives at Columbia Pictures were concerned that Spielberg’s chosen title for the film made it sound "suspiciously like a pornographic movie, because no one had any reference to what that vocabulary meant." This was where Thomas came in:

"Eighteen months before the film [Close Encounters] was going to premiere... before we’d even sold it to audiences, we had a campaign to introduce that vocabulary and make it part of the vernacular, so when the film opened-up everyone would know what was being discussed, and there wouldn’t be any question. So what I did was I worked with a planetarium to create a planetarium show that was about twenty-minutes long... you sit down and a UFO shoots across the planetarium dome and then the audience is trained on how to figure out whether that was a meteor, a comet, or actually an extraterrestrial. We managed to bus-in tens-of thousands of kids from all around the country on the pretence of seeing an educational planetarium show, but what they really got was a sophisticated message to explain to them that extraterrestrials and UFOs are real and what an encounter of the first, second and third kind actually meant."

Clearly, then, Thomas was a natural choice for Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary, the entire purpose of which, according to the director, was to promote the ride itself. Thomas told me that Disney had requested a documentary "about the history of mankind and aliens. Not a film history, but more of a realistic approach... a special about the history of UFO sightings," with Disney’s only stipulation being that "the last five minutes had to focus on the ride." Thomas confirmed to me that, instead of giving the documentary network time, Disney’s plans from the outset were to "seed it into independent television stations across the country."

Chain structures in meteorite fragment ALH84001

But why did Thomas’s documentary take such a strong stance in favour of UFO/ET reality? He summed-up his approach as follows:

"I figured... instead of asking people to question ‘could it be possible?’ to just adopt the point of view that this [alien visitation] has been going on for 50 years, everybody’s known about it... And I thought it fit with the hyperrealistic nature of the ride that we were eventually trying to promote... I did it really kind of naively – I said to myself 'okay, I’m going to believe this right now, and I’m going to believe everything and I’m going to collect all this stuff and construct what would be a documentary if we all just had a consensus that it [the UFO phenomenon] was real...' We didn’t make up anything, but it certainly surprised the people at Disney."

Somewhat disappointingly for conspiracy theorists, Thomas claims to have written the script in just a few hours while flying back from Florida to his home in Los Angeles. "There was nothing to it," he said, "it just kind of came out, it was easy." Furthermore, Thomas claims to have conducted the vast majority his research at the National Archives and stressed that, beyond these archival visits, "there was no direct government contact" on the production. "I didn’t get any special access from anybody," he said.

But how did Thomas come to acquire his information about the NASA meteorite? "I found it on the Internet," said the director, matter-of-factly:

"It wasn’t a big secret. NASA had been doing that – they’d been getting meteorites... and inside I believe they were finding some complex amino acids, some material that could only be produced organically, that sort of thing, so it was an easy jump [in logic]. And the reason that NASA released the information months later is because they take their time. They don’t find something and release it. They find it and they study it."

Thomas’s meteorite information did raise a red flag at Disney, however: "They called me in and they said ‘we’re really concerned about this thing about NASA exploring rocks in Antarctica.’ I told them it was absolutely true and to let me go back to the office and I’ll get the material [sources] so they can check my facts... no big deal. So it wasn’t any big secret, it was just that the official [NASA] announcement came later."

Former Disney CEO, Michael Eisner

There were aspects of the Alien Encounters project, however, that even Thomas considered strange – not least of all was the fact that Disney CEO Michael Eisner took a direct interest in the documentary, personally vetting its content and even filming his own introduction for the piece:

"I thought it was really odd because to me this was kind of a minor marketing project, but they [Disney] put a lot of weight into it. I mean Eisner doesn’t have to stop walking down the street to pick up a twenty-dollar-bill – it’s not worth his time. But they had him look through this. And he filmed this intro to the show. I didn’t do that. He had his own film crew take him out to a sound stage and film his own intro, which I thought was just really surprising."
Also surprising to Thomas was Disney’s inexplicable TV scheduling for the documentary, which he described as "completely counter-intuitive," because "it played on independent stations in the afternoon at like 2 o’clock or 3 o’ clock, or some horrible time when no one would be watching it."

Overall, Thomas’s testimony punches serious holes in the theory that Disney’s Alien Encounters documentary was a government-sponsored UFO acclimation effort. Yet questions remain; indeed, some of Thomas’s statements only add fuel to the fire: why was Michael Eisner so personally invested in what – on the surface at least – was a minor TV marketing project? And why the bizarre and "totally counter-intuitive" TV scheduling for the documentary?

Indulging the conspiratorial interpretation of events for a moment: if powerful UFO-related interests were involved in the documentary – perhaps having recommended Thomas knowing what he would produce based on his sophisticated work on Spielberg’s Close Encounters – then Thomas himself would likely be oblivious to this fact. He would have been a pawn in a much larger game, so to speak. I’ll be the first to admit that this interpretation sounds farfetched; but it is not entirely beyond the realms of possibility. Certainly, during the time the Alien Encounters documentary was produced in the mid-1990s, Disney was working closely with the Pentagon on two separate pro-establishment Hollywood movies: In the Army Now (1994) and Crimson Tide (1995), both of which received generous production support from the Department of Defense in the form of expensive military hardware and on-set advice from DoD personnel. Indeed, Disney’s continuing willingness to support establishment power structures was effectively demonstrated more recently when it released the TV movie The Path to 9/11 (2006), which was heavily skewed to exonerate the Bush administration and blame the Clinton administration for the 9/11 attacks – provoking outraged letters of complaint to Disney from former high-level Clinton Administration staffers. The nature of Disney’s output makes sense given the company’s historical ties not only to the US defence department, but to the arms industry also. Even now, a long-time Directors Board member of Disney is John Bryson – also a director of The Boeing Company, one of the world’s largest aerospace and defence contractors.

President Obama with Disney/Boeing director, John Bryson

Despite Disney’s demonstrably cosy relationship with secretive institutions, however, and putting aside a couple of unanswered questions regarding the documentary’s personal vetting by Eisner and its curious TV scheduling, there simply is no direct evidence to suggest that Alien Encounters was ever anything more than marketing project for a theme park ride. However, a much more compelling case for Disney/government UFO collusion recently has come to light.

Race to Witch Mountain

Directed by Andy Fickman – a self-confessed "UFO buff" born and raised in Roswell, New Mexico – Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain (2009) depicts the arrival on Earth of two blonde-haired, blue-eyed, human-looking extraterrestrials (UFOlogy’s ‘Nordics’) and their plan to save their own dying planet from total atmospheric degradation. In a September 2010 interview, Fickman explained to me how he had sought to ground his movie as firmly as possible in UFOlogical reality by personally schooling his cast in UFO history: "I would spend time with my actors literally just going through ‘UFO 101’ – we’d watch every DVD that was out there, every documentary; I would give them book, upon book, upon book."

Although the vast majority of the film’s UFOlogical content came from Fickman, at least some of it was the result of CIA input. In a highly unusual production arrangement Fickman claims he was closely assisted by an active employee of the CIA whose advice extended so far even as to designing the alien writing seen in the UFO during the film’s climactic scene. Fickman is unwilling to name this advisor, but claims he is an Air Force Colonel with a background in Technical Intelligence, that he had been "very active in Hollywood" and "had a lot of connections in the computer world and experience in satellite imagery." Fickman said of his CIA advisor:

"All of the on-camera alien language in terms of their spaceship and everything – that was all designed by him in the sense [of what] the mathematics of communication would be, so you know... there would be a similar mathematical equation that the government probably has if they were to ever come across an alien race. So a lot of the things we ended up using were things he was bringing to me... and the next thing you know, that’s what I had on screen."

While on-set, Fickman took the opportunity to ask his CIA man some probing questions: "In typical ‘can’t confirm, can’t deny’ manner," said Fickman, "no matter what I would personally ask him about anything from ‘who killed Kennedy?’ To ‘what happened at Roswell?’ He always played it with a nice smile that implied 'I don’t think you have the security clearance for me to talk to you about anything.'" The CIA advisor also recommended that certain UFOlogical content be removed from the script: "there were things we got rid of in the script that he was just trying to follow logic on from a protocol standpoint," said Fickman, although he would not elaborate on the nature of the changes made.

Andy Fickman, director of Race to Witch Mountain (2009)

Fickman further claims that he was afforded a visit to NORAD’s sensitive Cheyenne Mountain facility in 2008, where – accompanied by his CIA advisor – his team spent 12 hours taking photographs and talking with on-duty military officers, including the heads of NORAD. "We wanted our Witch Mountain to resemble what NORAD and Cheyenne Mountain look like inside," he said. "We took a thousand photos and then by the time they released us into the wilderness maybe we had three hundred that had been approved for us to somewhat copy [for production design purposes]."

Incidentally, Fickman’s Cheyenne Mountain visit took place just a few weeks after the high-profile Stephenville Texas UFO sightings. Remembering that witnesses had described seeing fighter jets in pursuit of the Stephenville UFO/s, Fickman raised the incident with NORAD officers: "I asked the question of all the NORAD people point blank: ‘so, what about those jets – did you guys release those jets?’ And after a kind of thoughtful pause, the guy in charge said ‘hypothetically, if something had invaded US airspace, we would have responded in kind. I have no indication one way or another that jets ever pursued any unknown object at the time you’re referring to.’" Fickman found NORAD’s ‘non-denial denial’ to be "very telling."

The CIA, for its part, claims to have had no involvement in Race to Witch Mountain. In an email to the author, Paula Weiss, Media Spokeswoman at the CIA Office of Public Affairs, said: "We have no knowledge of any CIA officer having assisted with this film…It’s very easy for outsiders, including Hollywood film people, to assume any US intelligence officer is CIA when in fact he could be from DIA, NSA, NGA, etc. Sorry I can’t resolve this for you based on the available information."  

Fickman was puzzled by the CIA’s denial. When I asked the director whether or not the CIA man could have been retired from the Agency and had been acting in a private capacity (as is the case with a number of ex-CIA operatives in Hollywood, including Robert Baer, Milton Beardon and Chase Brandon), he replied: "there’s no way we would have had what we had, had he not been an active CIA employee..." Indeed, throughout the NORAD visit, Fickman claims he relied heavily on the influence wielded by his CIA man: "Nothing happened at NORAD without him flashing his card and making his calls."

Fickman believes it was due in large part to the fact that his military and intelligence advisors were secured "through back door channels" that his production was granted such extraordinary access to the inner-workings of the national security apparatus, but he insists there was no hidden agenda behind his government’s uncharacteristic generosity in this regard: "All of a sudden I was in places that I don’t know I would have been had I gone through normal channels. I don’t think there was anything abnormal about what they were doing, I just think it was [that] phone calls were being made and doors were sort of opening."

Fickman’s claims carry with them the weighty implication that the CIA may be operating in Hollywood beyond the dry remit of its media liaison office, which is to provide "impartial advice on matters of accuracy and authenticity" in relation the CIA’s image while on set, and certainly does not extend to accompanying a director on a private trip to NORAD’s Cheyenne Mountain facility, nor designing fictional alien language for a feature film in which the CIA itself is not even depicted.

Behind the Scenes

The real reasons for the CIA adopting an "advisory" role on Disney’s Race to Witch Mountain (as well as on numerous other Hollywood productions) were pointed to in a solitary comment by former Associate General Counsel to the CIA, Paul Kelbaugh. Whilst at a College in Virginia in 2007, Kelbaugh delivered a lecture on the CIA’s relationship with Hollywood, at which a local journalist was present. The journalist (who has since requested anonymity, but who is known to me) published a review of the lecture which related Kelbaugh’s discussion of the 2003 Disney-produced thriller The Recruit, starring Al Pacino. The journalist noted that, according to Kelbaugh, a CIA agent was on set for the duration of the shoot under the guise of a consultant, but that his real job was to misdirect the filmmakers: "We didn’t want Hollywood getting too close to the truth," the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying. In a blunt email to my colleague Matthew Alford, however, Kelbaugh denied having made the public statement and claimed that he remembered "very specific discussions with senior [CIA] management that no one was ever to misrepresent to affect [film] content – EVER." The journalist stands by the original report, and Kelbaugh has refused to be drawn into further discussion of the matter.

As a closing thought on Disney’s establishment ties in relation to the UFO question, in January 2011, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (SAGIA) staged its 5th Annual Global Competitiveness Forum (GCF) – a major International business convention which this year featured keynote speeches by the likes of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Intriguingly, this year’s GCF event also featured a special panel discussion entitled: "Contact: Learning from Outer Space," in which names such as Stanton Friedman, Jacques Vallee, Nick Pope and Professor Michio Kaku addressed the wide-ranging implications of UFOs and potential extraterrestrial life. How is this relevant to our topic? Well, it might not be, but the primary sponsor of the GCF event was Boeing – a company highlighted by Disclosure Project witnesses as being a key player in UFO-related ‘deep black’ programmes and which you’ll also recall is linked at a directors-board-level to the Walt Disney Company – and a key note speaker at the event was none other than Chairman of Walt Disney International, Andy Bird. UFOs, Disney, Boeing, even former heads of state – all under one roof, so to speak. It proves nothing of course, but is nevertheless worthy of mention in that it brings to mind what the famous ex-CIA operative Robert Baer once told me regarding the Hollywood/Washington relationship: "All these people that run studios – they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board." Certainly, Disney has long been "on board" with supporting government and military power structures; as to whether or not this support extends to an involvement in some indefinable "Hollywood UFO conspiracy" is impossible to say. For now, at least, all we can do is weigh-up what little evidence is available to us and each draw our own conclusions as to precisely what UFO secrets – if any – might lie behind the Magic Kingdom. 

Copyright © 2011, Robbie Graham

This article was first published in UFO Matrix magazine: Vol. 2, Issue 1: Summer, 2011.