Never Before Published Audio Taped Interviews Affirms UFO Activity at Nuke Missil
Regarding Drew Hempel's posting of Walt Figel's September 24, 2010 email to James Carlson (above) here are Figel's comments (WF) interspersed with my responses (RH):
WF: James,
First – your dad has not lied about anything nor do believe that he is even capable of lying about anything at all. He was, is, and always will be an honorable man. You should remember that always – I will.
RH: Figel is expressing an opinion here, not a statement of fact. Given that he has previously affirmed to me, on audio tape, that he received multiple eyewitness reports of a UFO-presence during the Echo Flight incident, and further affirmed that he had subsequently discussed those reports with Eric Carlson at length, the elder Carlson has either developed memory problems over time or he is indeed lying about not remembering the reports of a UFO presence. Unless Figel can read minds, he simply can not say whether Carlson has lied about not remembering all of that or, on the other hand, actually does not.
Moreover, if Carlson’s and Figel’s commander told them not to talk about the incident, including the reports of the UFO—as Figel explicitly stated during one of my taped conversations with him—then one might conceivably argue that lying to outsiders, who have no need-to-know from the Air Force’s perspective, is in fact the “honorable” course of action.
Fortunately, almost all of the 120-plus military veterans I have interviewed over the years are of the opinion that, in a democratic society, the reality of UFO activity at nuclear weapons sites is a topic worthy of open, candid discussion and, therefore, the public’s right-to-know trumps military secrecy. In my view, these persons are honorable men as well and, importantly, history will validate their revelations.
WF: Second – Bob Salas was never associated with any shutdown of any missiles at any time in any flight and you can take that to the bank. Just think about this for a split second. He is a person wrapped up in UFOs to the Nth degree. Yet he could not remember he was not at Echo. Then he thought he was at November – wrong again. Then he thought he was at Oscar – wrong again.
RH: Col. Fredrick Meiwald, Bob Salas’ former missile commander at Malmstrom AFB, stated as early as 1996—during an audio-taped conversation with Salas—that he and Salas were indeed involved in a missile shutdown incident, at Oscar Flight, that was nearly identical to the Echo Flight UFO event.
Unfortunately, Walt Figel, who was not present at Oscar at the time, prefers to believe his own uninformed opinion on the subject, based on equally-uninformed statements by his friend Dick Evans, who supposedly would have known about the Oscar event if it really happened.
In reality, these extremely sensitive incidents are need-to-know, Walt and Dick. Neither of you had any need to know about the Oscar Flight UFO incident, regardless of your positions in the Air Force, during or after the event. (BTW, both Salas and Meiwald have said that they were never briefed on the Echo incident. And yet, according to Figel, the first of his ten missiles at Echo had failed moments before his conversation with the guard on-site, who reported observing a “large, round object” hovering over it. Gee, I wonder why something like that wouldn’t be shared with other missile crews who were not present at the time, Walt. To maintain secrecy, maybe? What a novel idea.)
In any case, during my own May 6, 2011 audio-taped conversation with Col. Meiwald—after I told him that James Carlson has repeatedly called Salas a liar and a fraud—Meiwald stated, “All I can say is something happened [at Oscar] and, to the best of my knowledge, Bob Salas has stated what he believes [to be] true and I’ve supported the majority of what he has said. I have read his book and [although] I can not, you know, support what other folks are saying, I know what happened at Oscar. I know that Bob has relayed what happened at Oscar very accurately.”
Meiwald then elaborated and said that he couldn’t support everything Salas has said about the incident because he had been resting/sleeping when the first missile or two dropped offline—which occurred moments after Salas received a report from the Oscar Flight Security Controller about a UFO hovering over the Launch Control Facility’s front gate.
Although Salas had quickly told Meiwald about that telephone conversation, Meiwald says that he can’t remember it. Just as Eric Carlson says he can’t remember Walt Figel telling him something very similar, shortly after he had been awakened by Figel and took his position at the commander’s consol in the Echo Launch Control Capsule. When I first spoke with Figel, in October 2008, he was clearly incredulous about the elder Carlson’s alleged inability to recall those events, as one will hear in Figel’s tone of voice, when listening to the taped conversation at:
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When I asked Meiwald to confirm, as he did on tape in 1996, that Salas had dispatched a two-man Security Alert Team to one of the Oscar missile sites, where an alarm had been triggered, and that the team had seen a UFO hovering over it, Meiwald readily complied. When I asked whether he could recall the description of the UFO, as reported to him by the frightened SAT team, Meiwald replied, “All I remember is a bright object; a bright, flying object at low-level. Beyond that, uh, I can’t say.”
In short, while Walt Figel may confidently claim that Salas “was never associated with any shutdown” of missiles at Malmstrom, Salas’ former missile commander, Col. Fred Meiwald, says otherwise. When I asked Meiwald whether he and Salas had been debriefed by an OSI agent back at Malmstrom and asked to sign national security non-disclosure statements, as Salas has long stated, Meiwald replied, “That did take place.”
WF: Third – There is no record about anything happening at November or Oscar except in people’s minds that are flawed beyond imagination. Salas has created events out of the thin air and can’t get the facts straight even then. My best friend to this day was the flight commander of the 10th SMS at the time. He and I have discussed this silly assertion in the past couple of years – he thinks it is all made-up nonsense for sure. I put both Salas and Hastings in touch with him and he has told them both that an incident at November or Oscar never happened. In addition he was subsequently stationed at Norton AFB where the engineers tested the possible problems. No little green men were responsible.
RH: Figel never put me in touch with his “best friend” Dick Evans. Moreover, Col. Meiwald told me that he had not spoken with Walt Figel for decades. If Figel would like to call Meiwald and discuss the events at Oscar Flight, as reported by both Salas and Meiwald, I’m certain that Meiwald would be willing to confirm what I have written here. (I do note, however, that Meiwald is reluctant to become involved in the ongoing controversy surrounding the events at Malmstrom in March 1967, so he may not respond to inquiries other than Figel’s.)
WF: Fourth – I have always maintained that I do not nor have I ever believed that UFOs exist in any form at any place at any time. I have never seen one or reported that I have seen one. I have always maintained that they had nothing to do with the shutdown of Echo flight in Montana.
RH: So what? Figel’s skepticism toward the report he received from the guard who was on-site should not be confused with the report itself, as Figel admitted to me—twice—during my taped conversations with him. The eyewitness report, later corroborated by other security personnel sent to the site by Figel, is the key point.
In other words, Figel’s inability to believe what he was being told by the guard posted at the stricken missile silo—who, according to Figel, was an apparent eyewitness to the presence of a “large, round object” hovering over the site—is irrelevant. After all, Bob Salas was skeptical, just as Figel was, when he was told about the UFO hovering over the Oscar Launch Control Facility.
Moreover, another of the USAF veterans participating in my September 27, 2010 UFOs and Nukes press conference, retired Captain Bruce Fenstermacher, who was a launch officer at F.E. Warren AFB in 1976, said that he had been skeptical when told of a cigar-shaped UFO hovering over his LCF.
And on and on. In short, these launch officers’ understandable incredulity regarding the bizarre events reported to them is not the point, only the events themselves.
In numerous cases, at various bases, multiple missile personnel and security guards have reported UFO incursions at ICBM sites. In some cases, those incidents are verified in declassified files, for example at Minot AFB in August 1966 and at Malmstrom AFB in November 1975. The testimony of my many ex-USAF sources makes clear the extent to which the Air Force has gone to suppress these incidents, to keep them from public view, and why so few of the documents relating to them ever see the light of day. (After the collapse of the USSR, a number of former Soviet Army officers confirmed the reality of nukes-related UFO incidents in that country during the Cold War era. But that’s another story.)
WF: Fifth – The event at Malmstrom has a hand written log from me that was turned in just like all the other logs that I wrote over several years. I would think that if I wrote something like that in the log, there would be copies, it would have been classified at the beginning and then released along with the classified SAC messages and base reports. Nothing in that urgent SAC message even hints of UFOs at all and I think that it would if the official logs or telephone calls had referenced that fact.
RH: Here Figel is speculating again—incorrectly as it turns out. Actually, many documents confirming a UFO-Nukes Connection have long been kept classified after other less-incriminating UFO sighting files have been released to the public. For example, as ex-U.S. Army document specialist and UFO researcher Jan Aldrich notes, “In a 1952 LOOK article, [then Project Blue Book chief, Captain Edward] Ruppelt mentions a file of 63 cases of UFOs over nuclear installations, but such a file is not in currently-declassified Blue Book files.”
Indeed, many of my ex-USAF sources have described being debriefed by OSI—just as Salas and Meiwald were—and yet all efforts by myself and other researchers to have the OSI agents’ reports and the witnesses’ signed non-disclosure statements declassified via the FOIA have thus far proved unsuccessful.
WF: Sixth – When it happened, neither your dad nor I were “visibly shaken” by the events. It was just another day with a unexpected event in our lives. It was rather underwhelming at the time. No one rushed out to see us, no one made us sign any papers, no one interrogated us for hours on end.
RH: Retired Col. Don Crawford says that Figel and Carlson were indeed “visibly shaken” when he saw them during the missile crew changeover at Echo Flight later that morning. During one of his taped conversations with me, Figel says he won’t dispute the fact that Crawford may have had that impression, even though Figel doesn’t think it was accurate.
But may I point out that Figel also doesn’t think that Bob Salas was ever involved in a missile shutdown incident, despite Col. Fred Meiwald’s confirmatory statements about the reality of the event at Oscar Flight.
Figel further claims to have “a pretty good memory” even though he told Salas, on tape in 1996, that
both of the two-man SAT teams he had dispatched to the field had confirmed seeing the UFO initially reported by the guard already on-site, as did the missile maintenance personnel.
However, by 2008, when I first interviewed Figel, that particular memory had changed to only
one of the two SAT teams confirming the presence of the UFO. (One may listen to Figel’s 1996 comments to Salas by utilizing the audio link in my article, “The Echo/Oscar Witch Hunt”, posted at The UFO Chronicles. Figel’s audio-linked 2008 comments to me were just posted at that website moments ago, together with links to the tapes of our lengthy conversations in 2009 and 2010.)
Face it, Walt, as we get older some things just don’t work as well as they did when we were younger. As I stated during one of our recorded conversations, I understand and accept that witness testimony relating to these decades-old events is always an approximation of what actually took place.
In that context, I find it interesting that both Bob Salas and Fred Meiwald have said, to me and others, that their memories of the long-ago incidents at Malmstrom are sketchy (as any honest human being would confess). In Salas’ case, he’s candidly admitted to initially misstating certain facts, but has voluntarily corrected himself once the evidence became available to substantiate the actual facts.
Of course, Bob’s candor about his prior mistakes has been used against him by James Carlson and others, who twist the facts and claim that Salas is not credible because his story has changed over time. I suppose that these same debunkers will now call Col. Meiwald a liar, given that he substantiates—on tape—most of Bob’s statements about Oscar Flight.
WF: There is no Air Force “cover-up” it just did not happen the way Salas and has portrayed the course of events. I am sorry that you are all caught up in a pissing contest with these people, I really am. They are just not going to let go no matter what you say or do. He has made a 15 year career pandering about the country talking about things he has no knowledge about. I am not at all interested in taking them on – it’s not worth my effort – I have more important things to do with my life. I much rather just stay out of it.
RH: No cover-up at Echo, Walt? In 2008, during our first taped conversation, you told me that, at the conclusion of your post-incident debriefing, your superiors had told you and Eric Carlson, “Thank you very much. Don’t talk about it.” True, you didn’t have to sign non-disclosure agreements, as Col. Meiwald says he and Salas did, but it’s clear that the incident at Echo, including the reports from the guards—no matter how many of them actually confirmed the UFO—was being officially suppressed by higher-ups.
WF: Hopefully, we can move on. I did read about a briefing on the 27th here in DC. I am here in VA about 10 miles away. Interesting. Hopefully this helps you and confirms to you at least that your dad is a straight shooter and does not lie to anyone.
RH: After it was brought to my attention that Figel would be working in northern Virginia on the day of my September 27, 2010 press conference in nearby Washington D.C., I sent him an email in which I invited him to attend, saying that some of the USAF veterans who would be participating in the event wanted to confront him about his wishy-washy, seemingly contradictory statements regarding Echo.
If Figel actually showed up and sat in the audience—which I doubt—he never identified himself or spoke up about anything being said by either myself or the veterans, including Bob Salas and Bob Jamison, the former ICBM targeting officer who states that he helped restart some of the missiles at Oscar Flight, which Salas and Col. Meiwald say dropped offline just as UFOs were being reported in the vicinity.
BTW, Jamison first told me of his involvement in the Oscar retargeting in 1992, some four years before Bob Salas went public with his revelations about his and Fred Meiwald’s involvement in a shutdown incident. As we now know, although Salas had forgotten the designation of the flight in question, Col. Meiwald first confirmed, on tape in 1996, that it had been Oscar, thereby corroborating the statements made to me by Jamison in 1992, which were not published until 2008.
---------- Post added at 12:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:27 PM ----------
All,
In preparation for the airing of my upcoming interview, some of you may wish to listen to the audio tapes at:
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2011/06/echo-flight-icbm-incident-retired-usaf.html
http://www.theufochronicles.com/2011/06/echo-flight-ufo-incident-not-unique.html
Here you have the option of listening to what Cols. Figel and Meiwald actually say about the UFO events at Echo and Oscar Flights, as opposed to what James Carlson says they say.
Robert Hastings
