6 - The Kecksburg Incident
On the afternoon of December 9, 1965, a fireball was spotted streaking across the sky of the Midwestern United States. That much is not in question. Everything after that, however, is shrouded in hearsay and conspiracy theories. The story is that the object crashed Kecksburg, Pennsylvania. Multiple eyewitnesses claim the US Army was sent to the crash site and retrieved...something.
The identity of the object - assuming one actually existed - has changed over the years. Explanations include: a UFO; a Soviet satellite (Kosmos 96); a meteor; a covert military aircraft; and even a recovered piece of Nazi esoteric technology (Die Glocke). While the most mundane explanation, the meteor, doesn't explain the claims of eyewitnesses, it is a good idea to start from a skeptical stance.
I had heard of the Kecksburg Incident before. It has gone down in UFO lore as one of the best examples of an alien ship crashing and being retrieved by the government. Most UFO TV programs will have an episode on Kecksburg, usually with the most outlandish claims presented without criticism. I had assumed that, if the extraordinary tales had any basis in reality, they were distorted recollections of a satellite retrieval operation.
I was surprised to find the following documents related to Kecksburg among the documents provided by Mr. Friend.
First, this is a Project Moon Dust report on the recovery operation (2 pages):
I also found this report from the Shadow Garden (3 pages):
Given that later documents indicate an alliance between the US government and VIPER DIAMOND, it would appear that the diplomatic initiative mentioned in the Shadow Garden report was successful. Although there are no details given, VIPER OBSIDIAN is another race operating on Earth. At this point, there are at least three alien races on Earth, as well as at least one extra-dimensional race. The covert world of the Shadow Garden is becoming increasingly crowded.
It is also clear that the Shadow Garden is not the only agency involved. The report published earlier about the encounter with VIPER SAPPHIRE mentioned the involvement of Joint Special Operations Command. Project Moon Dust operated during the Cold War, officially to retrieve Soviet spacecraft that had crashed. It appears their remit was wider than just recovering foreign technology. If this report is any indication, they were the unit responsible for handling extraterrestrial technology for the US military. While Moon Dust was apparently terminated decades ago, it does lead to questions about how many covert agencies or arms of the National Security apparatus have been or currently are involved in these kind of operations. How widespread are the covert wars?
A few items of note:
- The Project Moon Dust report is not restricted to domestic intelligence consumers. There is no NORFORN qualifier in the classification header. That would make some sense, since groups like Moon Dust would have worked with our Cold War allies. In particular, a penetration of US airspace at the time would have been known to Canada, who were - and are - an integral part of NORAD.
- By the mid-1960s, there was a significant amount of material available on extraterrestrials. The reports mention a military Technical Manual (TM 44 - 208), a report on alien weapons (Offensive and Defensive Systems of Viper Diamond), procedures in place for responding to alien intrusions, including managing the flow of information to the public, and what appears to be a well-established bureaucratic process for coordinating operations involving a range of government agencies. By the time of Kecksburg, the national security apparatus had a great deal of experience with alien incursions.
- The use of multiple cover stories, some for public consumption, others for local government (and, one assumes, state and Federal government officials and agencies not read into operations like Kecksburg) raises questions about how much of our recent history we can trust. This is an increasingly relevant and complex problem. There are so many sources of information in the 21st century - and the number is increasingly exponentially - that it is increasingly difficult to determine what information is real and what has been constructed to advance an agenda. The Shadow Garden and other covert arms of government have been engaged in information management and fabrication for decades. Does the truth even exist?
Among UFOlogists, covert operations scholars, and conspiracy theorists Project Blue Fly had long been rumored to be Moon Dust's quick reaction team. This is apparently not the case; while they are related to Moon Dust, Blue Fly is a technology exploitation unit.The offhanded mention of Roswell as an example of a ship crashing due to the actions of other aliens puts an interesting twist on a venerable part of UFO lore. I'm asking Mr. Friend for more information about this.'Pinetree C-153' refers to the now defunct Pinetree Line of air defense radars that used to monitor the northern US and Canada for Soviet bombers. C-153 refers to a station in British Columbia. The mention of a Viper Diamond ship just 'hanging out' in US airspace is chilling. Were they waiting for the other ship to show up? Or were they engaged in some other kind of mission? I'm trying to find any evidence of abductions or animal mutilations from that time.
These documents offer further evidence of how widespread alien incursions had become by the middle of the twentieth century. They also provide more insight into how commonplace they were to the agencies tasked with responding to them. Within hours of a battle in our skies between alien spacecraft, significant military and intelligence assets were sent to a rural Pennsylvania. This is evidence of a massive, ongoing series of extraterrestrial intrusions in the United States. Intrusions that we couldn't stop in 1965. Are we any safer today?