by Bill Chalker
(Copyright © B. Chalker – 1996)
This article expands on some material that appears in the book The OZ Files – the Australian UFO Story. The author can be contacted at:
P.O. Box W 42,
West Pennant Hills,
NSW, 2125, Australia
by phone on Sydney 9484 4680
or via email: bchalker@ozemail.com.au
The UFO “cover-up” argument sustains an extraordinary controversy. At its heart is the quest for proof of the Ultimate Secret.
The Ultimate Secret purports to be this: UFOs are real. They are extra-terrestrial in origin. The extra-terrestrials (or ETs) are already visiting us. Some of their craft have crashed and been retrieved into military custody. In some cases, open contact has taken place, in a covert setting – a form of “alien liaison”. Alien technology, retrieved either through “crashes” or direct “exchanges”, has been examined, subjected to attempts at reverse engineering, and is being used in secret advanced technologies, such as extraordinary advances in aircraft design. Governments, particularly the United States, know this and have kept it from us. There has been a concerted campaign by some of the parties involved in the cover-up to bring things out into the open. Some participating individuals have started to come forward. This process is gathering momentum. Extraordinary disclosures are at hand. The implications are mind-boggling.
Your rational reaction to all this will inevitably be complete skepticism or outright rejection. If it is not, you are presumably a UFO enthusiast, many of whom enshrine this sort of material like an article of faith in the litany of the uncritical belief that pervades much of the popular interest in UFOs. The famous Roswell “UFO crash” and the notorious MJ-12 saga are the cornerstones of the “ultimate secret” in the United States.
Ultimately, there is no absolute proof of any of it. It is impossible to say with any certainty just what is going on. We could be dealing with: real extra-terrestrial contact – a cosmic Watergate – in which Churchill’s wartime maxim of counterintelligence may rule, namely: “Truth is so important it must be guarded by a bodyguard of lies”, delusions and lies on a large scale, motivated by either hoaxer or aberrant mentalities – in its grandest expressions, one of the biggest hoaxes in history, a Space Age technological expression of the urban legend syndrome – cosmic folktales – which moved my friend Jerome Clark to label such stories as “soldiers’ tales, or the horrendous secrets I learned in the service”, some sort of extraordinary clandestine intelligence gambit – an exercise in disinformation and deception – a paranoia and conspiracy buff’s garden of delights.
It is possible we could be seeing a combination of any or none of these possibilities.
Such tales are not limited to the US. Here too in Australia we have had our share of these seemingly apocryphal stories. The number of them is striking. Most of them are unknown to even the most seasoned UFO enthusiast and are told here for the first time. In trying to unravel the convoluted trail these tales have left, I almost feel like the fictional FBI special agent Fox Mulder of the hit TV series “The X Files”, as a maze of mirrors lead off in bizarre directions, supported by even more bizarre and unbelievable stories.
CLASSIFIED: SECRET AUSTEO
(AUSTRALIAN EYES ONLY)
We met at a location in Parramatta on August 1st, 1990. The topic of confidential discussion – a strange tale about extraordinary activity at an Australian military research facility. I had requested a face to face meeting with my informant. She was telling me a startling story told to her by a senior RAAF mechanic.
According to the tale, sometime prior to 1985, the mechanic had been seconded, along with various other personnel, to work on between 12 to 14 strange “craft”, held at a secure hangar facility. Most of the “craft” were very unusual in appearance – like “Star Wars” type craft, with strange projections underneath. Only one was round in appearance, and was apparently 12 feet in diameter. Some of the objects had been opened. Some seem very complex, others were very simple looking, with what appeared to be hydraulics, seemingly totally inconsistent, with their apparent purpose – space travel. The seconded personnel were apparently very frightened of this work. They did not know what they might encounter.
Creatures had been recovered from some of these craft. They were reportedly several types, but the mechanic was best informed on 2 “males”, who were identical to human beings externally, but had completely different internal organs, save for smaller lungs. The entities were deceased.
The mechanic took his partner – my informant – out to the boundary fence of the complex and pointed out the hangar facility where he had been forced to work. He was convinced that the “craft” were not from this world.
My informant, a journalist, accepts the story her former partner told her. She herself saw a UFO in the Salisbury area and seemed convinced of some sort of connection with the strange claims of the RAAF man. I asked the woman to put me in contact with him, but to date no confirmation from him or anyone else for that matter has occurred. Other stories however continue to emerge.
The facility in question was the Weapons Research Establishment (WRE) at Salisbury, a RAAF/Defense Science and Technology Organization (DSTO) operation, where AUSTEO (Australian Eyes Only) security prevails. The Defense Research Center at Salisbury (DRCS), north of Adelaide, is Australia’s largest research and development complex, with 3 key defense labs (Advanced Engineering, Electronics research and weapons systems research), employing more than 2700 scientists, engineers, technicians and back up personnel. These labs are also connected with smaller facilities elsewhere, such as the Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL), Melbourne. DRCS has the advantage of RAAF Edinburgh Air Force Base next door, with its important research and aircraft testing facilities. One of the most interesting developments to come out of DRCS was Project Winnin or the Hoveroc – an anti-ship missile decoy. It is a hovering cigar shaped solid fuel rocket that can be launched and then hovers and provides controlled sideways movement – an extraordinary achievement.
SALISBURY SAUCERS?
Another source, a well known TV journalist, told me of a story he had heard. Sometime during the seventies a TV crew camera man known to him had allegedly been at Salisbury as part of a media contingent, apparently involved in a corporate film, or some such similar project, for the RAAF. During their presence at the facility they wandered off without a military escort. They came upon a hangar which housed a saucer – type of craft. Their examination of it was cut short with the arrival of military security who hurried them away very quickly and pressured them to not disclose what they had seen.
Such stories are of an apocryphal nature and do not invite a lot of confidence. In isolation they are just provocative stories. When such stories start to pop up on a regular basis, it is reasonable to ask what is going on – are these tales legitimate or are they the stuff of “urban legends”.