Read Part II

Clinton, OSTP, and UFOs - Part 1
Records of the Clinton Office of Science and Technology Policy Related to UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence - Part 1

by Grant Cameron

In January 2001, the Office of Science and Technology Policy Released to me 991 pages of documents related to an Freedom of Information Request asking for documents related to UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and the Rockefeller Initiative.

The documents consist of all the correspondence coming into and going from the office on the requested subjects. There is some internal correspondence on these issues. All FOIAs filed in the areas of UFOs were included in the package. Most of the 991 pages are related to the Rockefeller Disclosure Initiative set up to gain declassification of all UFO files held by the United States government.

I should note, at this point to anyone thinking of paying the $135.00 to obtain this set of documents, that the documents are very poorly filed compared to the excellent list of documents compiled by the FOIA officer Barbara Ann Ferguson.

The first set of documents I received were short almost 300 pages of the documents on the list. After letters to straighten this out I discovered 170 pages still missing. The 88 documents that make up the set are numbered 1 through 88. I highly suggest that anyone requesting the documents check the number against the document, as well as checking to see that the document number fits the document described. Many documents I received had two different numbers - which means one of the two documents you ordered isn't there. I would seriously suggest a very careful checking of the entire package once you get it. This will take many hours.

This paper is an attempt to provide an overview of what is contained in the collection, as well as provide a bit of background of what was going on related to UFOs in the Clinton White House outside of these documents which only with The Office of Science and Technology Policy, which is only one arm of the White House. 

The Documents
The first document to begin what would become a long flurry of documents into and out of the Office of Science and Technology Policy was written by Henry L. Diamond, attorney for Laurance S. Rockefeller. It was dated March 29, 1993.
The Letter states that Rockefeller, who was described by Diamond as "a leading U.S. conservationist, businessman, and philanthropist," was "anxious to have a brief meeting with Dr. Gibbons (Special Assistant to the President for Science and Technology) to discuss the potential availability of government information about unidentified flying objects and extraterrestrial life."

Rockefeller according to the Diamond letter was taking this preliminary step in preparation for "an approach to President Clinton on this subject." Rockefeller, the letter said, was prepared to tell President Clinton that "there is a belief in many quarters that the government has long held classified information regarding UFOs which has not been released and that the failure to do so has brought about unnecessary suspicion and distrust. Many believe that the release of such information, if it exists, on a basis consistent with national security considerations, would be a significant gesture which would increase confidence in government."

The proposal of a preliminary meeting with Gibbons was to discuss the issues, thus making "his (Rockefeller) communication to the President as useful as possible." Diamond proposed a 45 minute meeting that would be attended by himself, Rockefeller, and Scott Jones, then President of the Human Potential Foundation.
There are no documents in the OSTP package which show Dr. Gibbons accepting the Rockefeller offer for a briefing, but he did accept. On April 14, 1993, at 7:30 am Laurance Rockefeller and Dr. Scott Jones sat across from Dr. Jack Gibbons and his aide Skip Johns and briefed him on the current state of Ufology, with the help of a briefing paper titled "The Matrix of UFO Beliefs." The paper had been written by award winning journalist Richard Farley. Farley wrote the paper based on his 20 years of active inquiry into 'UFO' phenomena. The main contributors to Farley's thinking were J. Allen Hynek, and prominent Ufologist Jacques Vallee.

A second briefing paper was prepared for this Gibbons briefing by Rockefeller. This paper was prepared at the direction of the Central Intelligence Agency. It involved what amounted to a "using" of UFO researcher Bruce Maccabee to prepare the paper in record time. It will be discussed later related to correspondence sent to Gibbons office by Dick Farley. Enclosed with Farley correspondence were enclosures which clearly describe what happened.

There were no actual OSTP records of the briefing in the FOIA package, other than a copy of the briefing paper "The Matrix of UFO Beliefs". Strangely, Richard Farley stated to this author that the copy of the "Matrix of UFO Beliefs" found in the OSTP records is not the same one he wrote. It had been changed, he stated, by Scott Jones for an altered version. Farley has also made this claim elsewhere. The only other item found in the OSTP files is the briefing paper written by Bruce Maccabee, but it will be discussed later.

The records we have telling us what happened at the briefing come from outside the White House. Those involve accounts from briefers Laurance Rockefeller, Scott Jones, and Richard Farley who were involved in writing the briefing.

On April 21, 1993, one week after the briefing took place, Rockefeller wrote Gibbons thanking him for the chance to present their case for "UFOs and Extraterrestrial Intelligence." As a follow-up to what they had discussed in the briefing, Rockefeller stated that Scott Jones would be providing an annotated bibliography as important background source material on UFOs. According to Rockefeller's letter, Gibbons had apparently welcomed the idea. Rockefeller also figured that the background material would be important because during the briefing Dr. Gibbons had related that in three months as Science Advisor to the President he had not "learned that the United States government has a body of knowledge on UFOs or ETI that is being withheld from the public."

In a May 26th letter from Gibbons to Scott Jones, Gibbons revealed not only had he been provided with a bibliography, he was provided with a number of books from the Jones Foundation Library. Gibbons indicated that he was reading the UFO books and would return them when he was done.

Rockefeller also revealed in the April 21st letter that Gibbons had, following the briefing, recommended that the UFO government issue be sent to Secretary of Defense Les Aspin for action. Despite Gibbons suggestion that Defense handle the UFO issue, there was an indication that aides in Gibbons office were interested in the UFO issue. (Documents found later in the OSTP package show that Aspin (at the advising of Melvin Laird, former Secretary of Defense in the Nixon Administration) sent the UFO issue back to OSTP and the President for action.

In one of the concluding paragraphs of the April 13th letter, Rockefeller notified Gibbons that Scott Jones was " planning to convene a small group to discuss the state of knowledge about UFOs and ETI in an informal, non-public way." The suggestion was made that Gibbons or one of his staffers would be welcome as an observer. One of Gibbons staff members scribbled in the margin of the letter, "I would be willing to go if JHG (John H. Gibbons) OKs it."

The official invitation to discuss UFOs privately came in an August 4, 1993 letter from Rockefeller to Gibbons. The informal roundtable discussion was to be held September 13-15, 1993 at Rockefeller's JY Ranch in the Teton Forest near Jackson Hole Wyoming. As well as a representative from Gibbons office, Rockefeller had invited people like Dr. Steven Greer, Dr. John Mack, Dr. Peter Sturrock, Linda Moulton Howe, Jill Tarter, and Dr. Leo Sprinkle.

Skip Johns, a key Gibbons staffer, who had been present with Gibbons during the initial Rockefeller UFO briefing, wrote a note on top of the document to Tim, another Gibbons staffer, "JHG would like to discuss with you." Unfortunately according to one of those attending, Bruce Maccabee, no one from the Science Advisor's office attended.

On October 20, 1993 Gibbons and Rockefeller's lawyer Henry Diamond met and talked at the Environmental Law Institute. Diamond wrote a letter to Gibbons informing him that Mr. Rockefeller would like to have another meeting to discuss UFOs. Shortly after this October request by Diamond another UFO researcher Steven Greer, International Director of Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), made his move, to like Rockefeller, brief the Clinton White House people on the UFO subject, and achieve two of the same goals at were being promoted by Rockefeller. 1) Attain a complete declassification of all UFO documents within the U.S. Government 2) Gain amnesty for witnesses involved in classified UFO activities, so they could tell their stories without fear of reprisal.

On December 13, 1993 Dr. Greer met with the "principal advisor to the President for Intelligence matters related to national security,"  DCI Director James Woolsey. The meeting was set up through the cooperation of John L. Petersen, who had worked in the Office of the Secretary of defense, and on the National Security Staff at the White House. At the time of the briefing, Petersen was the director of the Washington area think tank known as the Arlington Institute.

Like Dr. Gibbons, Clinton's DCI was open to a briefing on UFOs. There were two reasons for this. James Woolsey and his wife, Sue Woolsey (Chief Operating Officer of the National Academy of  Sciences) had experienced a daylight sighting in New Hampshire in the late sixties. In addition, Woolsey, was attempting to open things up. Only weeks before, On November 30, James Woolsey had appeared on CNN's Larry King Show. There, Gibbons had stated that the new Clinton administration "wished to disclose historical material in a spirit of new openness."

The briefing of Woolsey and is wife by Dr. Greer lasted three hours, a very long time in the world of briefings. It led to Woolsey to request information from within the CIA about certain cases that had been provided to him by Greer. Woolsey was unable to obtain any further material. What Woolsey received in reply to his queries has often been described as the " empty file syndrome."

Even though Woolsey enjoyed more power to get the answers to the UFO mystery than did jack Gibbons, he was cut off from President Clinton. Part of his isolation was caused, in Woolsey opinion, to the fact that Clinton's interests lay in domestic political issues, and not intelligence matters.
Woolsey reportedly only met in person with the President twice during his entire tenure at DCI. Woolsey described his weakened position. " I sort of wandered in," Woolsey said of his job at DCI, "and wandered out." When a man crashed a plane on the White House lawn, the joke went around the CIA that it was Woolsey trying to get a meeting with the President. Years after Woolsey left the Clinton White House, even he took to telling the plane joke.

Woolsey's UFO requests also led to a new study of the CIA records related to the UFO phenomena. In 1997, the CIA published the results of this study in their classified publication Studies in Intelligence. The paper was titled, "CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-1990." It was authored by CIA historian Gerald K. Haines. The unclassified version published a couple years later received wide distribution on the Internet.

Greer went on to brief many of the people inside the Clinton White House. From the apparent evidence he was much more active evangelizing White House staff on UFOs than were Jones and Rockefeller. During one interview he mentioned some of the people inside the Clinton Administration who had been briefed by himself or his briefing team:

"There were many briefing materials that were given, not only to the CIA Director Mr. Woolsey, but to other senior members of the Clinton administration. Members of our team of the CSETI Project Starlight team were able to provide briefing materials to and meetings with the Presidents' closest friends, and the Bruce Lindsay family. Bruce Lindsay being the President's sort of senior counselor in the White House, but also one of his closest friends...We were also able to do a similar briefing materials and conveyed them to the President's Science Advisor, to Tony Lake, who at the time was the National Security Advisor to the President.....to senior people in Al Gore's office, his Chief of Staff, as well as Al Gore, and many of his personal friends."

Despite these many briefing, Dr. Greer is only mentioned in passing in the 1,000 pages of material released by the OSTP.  This is probably accounted for by the fact that his contacts were outside the OSTP, and the record of his contacts will not be available until 2006 when the Clinton files become subject to FOIA.

The lack of OSTP references to Greer does not mean that Greer and Rockefeller did not cross paths. Greer did have contact with Laurance Rockefeller. The complete record of their association is not totally know yet. What is know is that Greer did at one time have close connections with Dr. Gibbons UFO briefer Laurance Rockefeller. A few months before doing his briefing with Woolsey, Dr. Greer had met with Rockefeller at his ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. During this meeting Dr. Greer provided Rockefeller with material that Rockefeller had requested for a briefing of President Clinton (which did occur in August 1995). Dr. Greer provided him "a package of evidence, assessments and other documents."

He and Rockefeller had been working together since February 1994. He had provided Rockefeller with the latest UFO information being received from top level deep-throats in contact with CSETI. Rockefeller, in exchange, provided funding for Dr. Greer's The Project Starlight Coalition (PSC). The PSC was a group CSETI had formed in July 1993. Greer described it as "a voluntary association of researchers, scientists, world leaders and concerned citizens who are dedicated to effecting a non-harmful disclosure on the UFO/ETI (Unidentified Flying Object / Extraterrestrial Intelligence) issue in the near future."

The Roswell Search
Diamond wrote Gibbons in October 1994 asking for a new face-to-face meeting for Mr. Rockefeller. Once again, it appeared that what Rockefeller wanted - Rockefeller got. On February 4, 1994 Rockefeller and Scott Jones met again with Gibbons and his staff. By this time, the responsibility for dealing with Rockefeller and his UFO Disclosure Initiative had moved back from the Defense Department to Gibbons Office for Science and Technology Policy.

During this February 94 meeting Gibbons made a stunning proposal related to Rockefeller's main request that all UFO information be declassified and released. Rockefeller referred to the Gibbons proposal in a follow up letter.
"We believe that your approach of starting by addressing a specific incident is an important and reasonable way to begin the process of declassification in this area."
It was an opportunity that Rockefeller's made the most of. He fully encouraged Gibbons to work to declassify Roswell, the "mother of all UFO cases." Rockefeller wrote, "The July 1947 Roswell incident would be a logical and challenging place to start. While much in the public sector has been written about it, the government has had nothing to say about it after the original press release saying that a flying disc had been recovered was retracted. The public record of this incident has been thoroughly analyzed. Further information depends upon access to classified information.
Many are convinced that Roswell marks the beginning of government secrecy about UFOs. However, whatever the truth of Roswell, a definite statement about it from the government would be very important. If it actually was UFO related, it could be used to start the process of reversing the government's 40 plus years of denial on the subject. If it can fully be explained as not UFO related, it would be a significant contribution to the field, and perhaps even contribute to more rigor in research on the subject. If this specific project initiative is successful, it will become an important prototype for the release of all UFO information. Obviously, the means of carrying out this event-related review is up to you. However, to the extent we can be helpful, we want to be."

Rockefeller added that "Scott Jones and his associates are quite current on research accomplished on this subject. I have asked that they be available to assist your investigation inany appropriate way."

In addition to "lifting classification about Roswell" Rockefeller asked that President Clinton "grant amnesty on an individual basis to allow those with knowledge of the incident to speak without fear of prosecution."

Finally, Rockefeller asked that Gibbons "designate a staff person for continuing contact." In the meantime, and under these circumstances, Rockefeller promised that he would hold off on the letter he was drafting addressed to President Clinton.
This "Clinton draft letter" popped up over and over in the 1,000 pages released by OSTP, from this first reference in 1994 to early 1996 when it appeared the letter might have been sent to the President. It appeared attached to Gibbons letters, in various states of draft. In one draft, discussed later, Gibbons or one of his staff actually made comments in the margin about various ideas expressed in the letter.
Attached to this Gibbons letter, was an even more interesting letter to Anne Bartley who appeared to have been one of the Gibbons staffers in the room during the February 4th meeting. In this letter, Rockefeller makes an even more stunning disclosure - it was the President's Science Advisor Jack Gibbons who had proposed making Roswell a test case for new declassification procedures. Rockefeller wrote, Jack's suggestion to make the 1947 event a test case of the Government's willingness to review classification procedures under the President's recent Executive Order was a very good one.

Like with the letter to Gibbons, Rockefeller dangled the proposed letter to Clinton, "my idea of the letter to the President seems best tabled and for us to concentrate on Jack Gibbons and follow through on his suggestion."

Only three days after these Rockefeller letters, Scott Jones wrote a letter to Jack Gibbons fulfilling his role to provide Dr. Gibbons with the best evidence they could provide on the Roswell case. Much of the material presented to Gibbons with the letter, was produced by the Fund For UFO Research as part of their effort "to support a thorough and open inquiry into the Roswell incident." also enclosed with the letter was a series of press clipping related to the efforts that were being undertaken by Representative Steven Schiff (R-NM).

The OSTP files also show that Dr. Gibbons office was provided a 170 page report on Roswell prepared for the Fund for UFO Research by Fred Whiting. It is not clear if the report was presented prior to, after, or during the February 4th meeting. This private report titled "The Roswell Events" was described as a chronology of events and a compilation of supporting documentation concerning the possible crash of an Unidentified Flying Object and the recovery of its wreckage and the bodies of its crew in July 1947 near Roswell, New Mexico.

In the letter Jones also revealed two interesting sidelights to Roswell investigations going on in other government circles.  Both sidelights were presented by Jones as warnings to Dr. Gibbons that the Roswell search was not going to be an easy one. The first item Jones pointed out was that he had heard that when the GAO had contacted the Pentagon for information on Roswell for their investigation, they had been told by a military spokesman to "Go shit in your hat." Secondly, Jones warned about UFOs being used to cloak other highly classified projects.

My mention of mind-control technology at the February 4 meeting was quite deliberate. There are reasons to believe that some government group has interwoven research about this technology with alleged UFO phenomena. If that is correct, you can expect to run into early resistance when inquiring about UFOs, not because of the UFO subject, but because that has been used to cloak research and application of mind-control activity.

On April 26, 1994 Rockefeller was again back in contact with Gibbons, this time commenting on the Clinton Executive Order to reduce unnecessary secrecy classification that was beingcirculated among federal agencies. Rockefeller hoped that it would be enough to help find the UFO files that were being sought. Secondly, in this letter Rockefeller mentioned meeting with Carl Sagan on the issue of extraterrestrial life. Sagan had expressed skepticism about the quality of the evidence of extraterrestrial life, but did "strongly support" the release of government information on the subject.

On May 24, 1994 Gibbons received a memorandum from Sheila E. Widnall, Secretary of the Air Force, notifying him that the Air Force was investigating UFOs, and "Roswell in particular." It is assumed that the request for the U.S.A.F. to investigate Roswell came from Dr. Gibbons office, the President, or someone inside the President's office. We will not know for sure who ordered the investigation because Clinton records are not subject to FOIA for the next five years.

What is known is that Secretary Widnall knew the White House wanted a report on Roswell, and she was writing to Gibbons to report what had been done. Her words were very encouraging,

"While we don't have the bottom line yet, I thought you would be interested in this interim report I got from my staff. I intended to bring it over this morning, but forgot. My policy is that we are declassifying everything even remotely related, and anything our people think still needs to be classified will have to be justified to me. More to follow!

On the bottom of the memo Gibbons wrote a note for his primary Roswell expert in the office Skip Johns, "Skip- for your scanning. After you and I have had a chance to discuss, I'll be ready to communicate with L.R. and his niece. JG"

On May 26, 1994 Scott Jones wrote another letter to Gibbons to ask if "there had been enough progress with your look into the Roswell incident to warrant another meeting with Laurance." Secondly, Jones stated he was writing to update Gibbons on the latest news.

One news item Jones wanted to relate is that there had been a break in the Rockefeller camp. Richard Farley, who had written the "The Matrix of UFO Beliefs" briefing that was used to introduce Gibbons to the UFO classification issue, had broken with the team. 

Worse yet, as Jones related, he had made an independent move to bypass Rockefeller and Gibbons and go right to the President. This meant that there were now at least two roads to the President on the same issue. "I am sorry," wrote Jones, "about this uncoordinated action." Jones explained what had happened, "I have learned that one of the Foundation's former staff members, Dick Farley, has made an independent contact with the White House on the UFO subject. Farley wrote me that as of a month ago he had sent three different packets of material that detailed the complete activities of the foundation in support of Mr. Rockefeller and his interest in the declassification of government materials related to the UFO phenomena. Farley would only identify the White House staff person as an Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff (the staffer turned out to be Deputy Chief of Staff Phil Lader who went on to be appointed by President Clinton to be Ambassador to Great Britain) . . my major concern is that when you heard about Farley's approach you may have thought that we were trying to run a second separate program on this subject with another part of the White House Staff. That emphatically is not the case. Farley had personal motivation for what he did, and I suspect we will continue to try to maintain the contact."

Along with this refection of Richard Farley from the Rockefeller camp, came a another break from the Rockefeller camp. Ufologist Jacques Vallee had been offered a position helping with the Disclosure Initiative. Instead of taking the offer, Vallee turned it down and wrote directly to Dr. Gibbons to present his own UFO views which differed from those Rockefeller was presenting. He offered to meet with Gibbons either in San Francisco or Washington and at Gibbons convenience. Despite Vallee's high profile in the UFO community Gibbons turned Vallee down cold. Vallee was told he could provide anything on the subject by mail, but as one of Gibbon's aides wrote, "Did not encourage."

READ Clinton, OSTP, and UFOs - Part II
by Grant Cameron

Copyright 2001 Grant Cameron