“Have We Visitors from Space?”  by H. B. Darrach Jr. and Robert Ginna The Air Force is now ready to concede that many saucer and fireball sightings still defy explanation; here LIFE offers some scientific evidence that there is a real case for interplanetary saucers.   For four years the U.S. public has wondered, worried or smirked over the strange and insistent tales of eerie objects streaking across American skies. Generally the tales have provoked only chills or titters, only rarely, reflection or analysis.   Last week the U.S. Air Force made known to LIFE the following facts:   As a result of continuing flying saucer reports the Air Force maintains constant intelligence investigation and study of unidentified aerial objects. A policy of positive action has been adopted to find out, as soon as possible, what is responsible for observations that have been made. As a part of this study, military aircraft are alerted to attempt interception, and radar and photographic equipment will be used in an attempt to obtain factual data. If opportunity offers, attempts will be made to recover such unidentified objects. Already all operational units of the Air Force have been alerted to report in detail any sightings of unidentified aerial objects. Other groups - scientists, private and commercial pilots, weather observers - all trained observers whose work in any way concerns the sky, and what happens in it, are urged to make immediate reports to Air Technical Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, Ohio of any unidentified aerial objects they sight. Further, for the first time since Project "Saucer" was changed from a special-type project to a standard intelligence function, in December 1949, the Air Force invites all citizens to report their sightings to the nearest Air Force installation. All reports will be given expert consideration and those of special interest will be thoroughly investigated. The identity of those making such reports will be kept in confidence; no one will be ridiculed for making one. There is no reason as yet to believe that any of the aerial phenomena commonly described as flying saucers are caused by a foreign power or constitute a clear and present danger to the U.S. or its citizens. These disclosures, sharply amending past Air Force policy, climaxed a review by LIFE, with Air Force officials, of all facts known in the case. This review has resulted from more than a year of sifting and weighting all reports of unexplained aerial phenomena - from the so-called flying saucers to the mysterious green fireballs so often sighted in the Southwest. This inquiry has included scrutiny of hundreds of reported sightings, interviews with eyewitnesses across the country and careful reviews of the facts with some of the world's ablest physicists, astronomers, and experts on guided missiles. For the first time the Air Force (while in no way identifying itself with any particular conclusions) has opened its files for study. Out of this exhaustive inquiry these propositions seem firmly shaped by the evidence: Disks, cylinders and similar objects of geometrical form, luminous quality and solid nature for several years have been, and may be now, actually present in the atmosphere of the earth. Globes of green fire also, of brightness more intense than the full moon's, have frequently passed through the skies. These objects cannot be explained by present science as natural phenomena - but solely as artificial devices, created and operated by a high intelligence. Finally, no power plant known or projected on earth could account for the performance of these devices.   Let us first review some widely known facts.   The shapes and inscrutable portents of the flying disks first broke upon the skies of the world in the early months of 1947, with several sightings reported to the Air Force. The story first reached the nation on June 24, 1947, when a private pilot named Kenneth Arnold was flying from Chehalis to Yakima, Wash. Some 25 miles away, Arnold saw nine "saucer like things ... flying like geese in a diagonal chainlike line," approaching Mount Rainier. They swerved in and out of the high peaks at a speed Arnold estimated to be 1,200 mph.   Arnold told the whole story to his hometown newspaper, and like summer lightning it flashed across the country. Within a month, saucers had been reported by people in 40 states. For the public (as LIFE itself merrily reported in its issue of July 21, 1947) the saucers provided the biggest game of hey-diddle-diddle in history. Any man, woman, or child with talent enough to see spots before his eyes could get his name in the newspaper.   Nevertheless in serious moments most people were a little worried by all the "chromium hubcaps," "flying washtubs" and "whirling doughnuts" in the sky. Buried in the heap of hysterical reports were some sobering cases. One was the calamity that befell Air Force Captain Thomas F. Mantell on January 7, 1948. That afternoon Mantell and two other F-51 fighter pilots sighted an object that looked like "an ice-cream cone topped with red" over Godman Air Force Base and Fort Knox, Ky. Mantell followed the strange object up to 20,000 feet and disappeared. Later in the day his body was found in a nearby field, the wreckage of his plane scattered for a half mile around. It now seems possible that Mantell was one of the very few sighters who actually were deceived by a Skyhook balloon, but the incident is still listed as unsolved by the Air Force files.   There was no such easy explanation for the strange phenomenon observed at 2:45 a.m. on July 24, 1948 by two Eastern Air Lines pilots. Captain Clarence S. Chiles and Copilot John B. Whitted were flying in bright moonlight near Montgomery, Ala. when they suddenly saw "a bright glow" and a "long rocketlike ship" veer past them. They subsequently agreed that it was a "wingless aircraft, 100 feet long, cigar-shaped and about twice the diameter of a B-29, with no protruding surfaces, and two rows of windows ... From the sides of the craft came an intense, fairly dark blue glow ... like a fluorescent factory light." They said the weird craft "pulled up with tremendous burst of flame from the rear and zoomed into the clouds at about 800 miles an hour," rocking their DC-3 with its "prop or jet wash."   Just as inexplicable was the experience of Lieut. George Gorman of the North Dakota Air National Guard. On Oct. 1, 1948 Gorman was coming in at dusk to land his F-51 at Fargo, when he saw an intense, bright light pass 1,000 yards away. Curious, Gorman followed the light and saw that it seemed to be attached to nothing. For 27 hair-raising minutes Gorman pursued the light through a series of intricate manoeuvres. He said it was about 6 inches in diameter and going faster than his F-51 (300-400 mph). It made no sound and left no exhaust trail. After Gorman landed, the light having suddenly flashed away in the upper air, he found support for his story - the chief of the control tower had followed the fantastic "combat" with binoculars.   The occurrences, jarring though they must have been to the participants, left the official calm of the Air Force unruffled. The project set up to investigate the saucers ("Project Sign," known to the press as "Project Saucer") seemed to have been fashioned more as a sedative to public controversy than as a serious inquiry into the facts. On Dec. 27, 1949, after two years of operation, Project Saucer wrote off all reports of unidentified aerial phenomena as hoaxes, hallucinations or misinterpretations of familiar objects - that is, all but 34. These stubborn 34, seemingly unexplainable, were briskly dismissed as psychological aberrations.   While these assurances appeased most of the press and pacified the public, some elements in the Air Force just about this time began to worry a bit more seriously. Saucer reports continued to come in a rate of about one a day and were handled under the code name of "Project Grudge." Officers at policy level began to show concern. "The higher you go in the Air Force," conceded one Intelligence officer, "the more seriously they take the flying saucers."   There was good reason to be serious. As review of all records has shown, these years have produced literally dozens of incidents defying simple explanation - and provoking the most incredible questions.

Book Excerpt From Extraterrestrial Contact The Evidence and Implications Dr. Steven Greer Director of the CSETI (Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Disclosure Project group The Marilyn Monroe Document came to me by way of a contact with access to NSA officials. It has been authenticated by the best document researcher in the world - a man who for years sat outside General Odom's door as his senior aide when Odom was NSA head. It is a smoking gun, especially when put together with the other documents. The reader will note that the document is signed by James Angleton, one of the main CIA counter-intelligence figures of the 1960s and fanatical "mole hunter" who ruthlessly tried to stop any leaks of sensitive intelligence. Note that the document, which has very important project code names and numbers on it, is a summary of CIA wiretaps of Marilyn Monroe. After the Kennedy brothers distanced themselves from her she felt hurt and began to call Bobby Kennedy and some of her friends, threatening to hold a press conference to tell the world what President Kennedy had privately told her about some very sensitive matters. The most sensitive of these matters was the ET issue. Note the section of the document which refers to telling all regarding what President Kennedy told her about "the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space." Later, the document refers to "secret effort by the US and UK governments to identify the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies" and that Dorothy Kilgallen believed the story may have come from the New Mexico crash in the late forties...'a clear reference to a Roswell-type incident. The document also refers to Monroe's "secret diaries and what the newspapers would do with such disclosures." This document is dated 3 August 1962-around the time of Marilyn Monroe's mysterious death [4 August 1962]. Actor Burl Ives, a personal friend and CSETI life time member, told me at his home in Anacortes, Washington, that he had been friends with Marilyn Monroe before her death. He told me quite clearly that he and all her close friends knew she had been murdered. But they did not know why. Perhaps now we do... UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe   Donald Burleson, Ph.D.  has been fascinated with the death of Marilyn Monroe for many years. In fact, as a certified UFO field investigator, research consultant, and New Mexico State Director for MUFON (Mutual UFO Network), he had heard rumors of a UFO connection with Marilyn's death.   One of the linchpin's of Dr. Burleson's hypothesis is a CIA document, that has come to be known as the Marilyn Monroe document, which mysteriously surfaced in 1994. The document has a subject line "Marilyn Monroe" and a project line "Moon Dust". According to Burleson, "Project Moon Dust" had existed since 1953 and whose purpose was the recovering of debris from fallen space vehicles, certainly to include UFO crash depris.   According to "UFOs and the Murder of Marilyn Monroe", the document has an apparent reference, in the routing data at the bottom of the page to MJ-12. This reference to MJ-12 further associates the Marilyn Monroe document with the whole question of governmental secrecy about unindentified flying objects.    Dr. Burleson's work involves computer image enhancement. He is a director of a computer lab at Eastern New Mexico University. One day, when the Marilyn Monroe document was being displayed, a student noticed "a sort of smudge or shadow" to the left of the TOP SECRET stamp. When enhanced the imprint contained the name "Schulgen". This proved to be another invaluable piece of UFO evidence. Brigadier General George Schulgen was the Chief of the Air Intelligence Requirements Division of Army Air Corps Intelligence. His job basically was to investigate UFOs! How did his name get on the document?   Marilyn was murdered on a Saturday night, she was prepared and had told friends, that she planned to hold a news conference on the following Monday. Several months before her death Marilyn had met Jose Bolanos, a Mexican film director and screenwriter. In fact Jose accompanied Marilyn to the 1962 Golden Globe Awards. Jose phoned and spoke to Marilyn around 10:00pm the night of her death and according to Jose she would tell the media something that "will one day shock the whole world". One can only speculate as to what the something was. We can be confident it didn't concern her affairs with Bobby or John Kennedy. Both of their wives were aware of their infidelity. She also probably knew of the plot to kill Fidel Castro and the Bay of Pigs, but would this be reason enough to silence her?   RFK Was At Scene of Marilyn's Death   Dr. Burleson believes that there is undisputed proof that Bobby Kennedy was at the scene of Marilyn's death. Norman Jeffries who worked with Marilyn's housekeeper Eunice Murray and helped around the house, said that some men came to Marilyn's house around 10:00 pm the night of her death. One man recognized by Mr. Jeffries was Robert Kennedy, who was accompanied by two men he didn't know. Elizabeth Pllard, who lived right next door to Marilyn and held bridge parties every Saturday night states that she saw Bobby Kennedy and two other men walk right past the window, headed for Marilyn's house, and one of the men was carrying a small black bag of the sort that a doctor would carry.   According to Norman Jeffries, Bobby and the two mystery men entered the house and ordered Norman and Eunice to leave. Marilyn Munroe biographer Donald Wolfe quotes Norman as saying, "I mean they made it clear we were to be gone." This was the second time in one day that Bobby Kennedy had ordered them out of Marilyn's house.   Norman was waiting at a neighbor's until Kennedy and the others left the house, which he says was about 10:30 pm. Eunice and Norman, feeling the "coast was clear", returned to the house and discovered Marilyn sprawled face down, nude, across the day bed in the guest cottage. She was alive, but she was dying.   Dr. Burleson believes that "between the time Bobby Kennedy and his two cohorts entered Marilyn Monroe's house around 10:00 pm. and the time they left it around 10:30 p.m., a loathsome crime was committed. Marilyn was clearly not expected to survive.   Marilyn's Little Red Diary   If you believe in the UFO conspiracy or not, it is apparent that Marilyn Munroe's death was due in part to information she knew about the Kennedy brothers and tragically recorded in her "little red" diary!   Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) audio recordings taped Bobby Kennedy and Marilyn Munroe having a violent argument which went something like this: "Where is it? Where the f___ is it? and things to that effect, "My family must have it," and "We'll make any arrangements you want," and "We'll pay you for it." In retrospect, it's obvious that Bobby was looking for Marilyn's diary.   Marilyn had been a diary-keeper all her life, and her most recent one was a little red book in which she was known to have scribbled, among other things, notes on things she and Bobby Kennedy had talked about, including political matters and foreign affairs. Jeanne Carmen has recalled seeing Bobby grab up Marilyn's red diary in her living room one day and hurl it across the room, shouting "Get rid of this!"   Dr. Steven Greer came into possession of a CIA document that dealt with Marilyn and Bobby Kennedy. A synopsis of the document stated that: The subject (Marilyn) would hold a press conference and would tell all; and the subject (Marilyn) made reference to her "diary of secrets" and what the newspapers would do with such disclosures.   Lionel Grandison, from the Los Angles County Coroner's Office, was the last person recorded to have seen and examined Marilyn's red diary. He had sent his driver to Marilyn's house in the hopes of recovering an address book so that relatives could be notified of Marilyn's death. Marilyn's housekeeper Eunice Murray gave the driver an address book and a little red diary! He stated that the diary contained interesting references to the Kennedys and other people (notably Fidel Castro), (but) it contained no addresses.   Grandison before leaving his office for the day locked the diary away in the Coroner's office safe. When he returned to work on Tuesday, August 7, the safe was still locked but the little red diary was gone. Marilyn's diary was never seen again!