Claim: A UFO crashed in 1933 Italy and the US Recovered it

[Eburacum]

The Caproni was a very early jet aircraft, one of the first to fly anywhere in the world; but it had poor overall performance, and very few were built.

But the name Silverplate was a contraction of "Silver Plated Project"

That's right; it had nothing to do with the 1942 event. Brophy senior seems to have a fabulist, who took tall tales from all over the place to elaborate his story.

Note that the bombers concerned were painted silver to reflect the blast of the atomic bomb;

 

[Ravi]

Note that the bombers concerned were painted silver to reflect the blast of the atomic bomb;

Nope.

The aircraft that dropped the atomic bombs (Enola Gay and Bockscar) were unpainted, bare metal planes made of polished aluminum. [1, 2, 3]
The US Army Air Forces stopped painting bombers olive-drab camouflage in 1943. Leaving the planes unpainted saved weight (which increased the bombers' range and speed) and eliminated drag. [1, 2, 3]
The specific Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers used for the atomic missions were part of a secret modification project known as Silverplate. To safely carry the massive weight of the atomic bombs, these planes had their armor plating and most of their defensive gun turrets stripped out, which further increased their speed and operational range.

 

[Eburacum]

That's a better explanation; thanks.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Brophy senior seems to have a fabulist,

Just to be clear, William J. Brophy Jr. was in fact a pilot during WW2 and latter a Major in the Air Force. He passed away in 1986. William P. Brophy was his older son and seems to be the teller of tall tales. And to make things more difficult, some editions of Vallee and Paola's Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, refer to William J. Brophy Jr., the WW2 pilot, as "Brothy Sr". and/or "Brophy Sr." Some researchers refer to the son, William P Brophy, by his family name of "Billy" to limit the confusion.

Billy does claim that many of his tales were told to him by his father possibly back in the '70s, however many of Billy's stories twist and turn over the years to fit whatever event he was trying to insert his father into, often long after his father had passed away.

In the early '00s, Billy originally had his father involved with a 1947 UFO crash in New Mexico and a 1950 crash in Mexico. By extension, he knew about the recovered Italian UFO. Then appeared at the 2010 Italian UFO conference and by then was mentioning his father's involvement with the supposed 1945 Trinity UFO crash. It's likely all the stories are the result of Billy taking vast amounts of UFO lore and using that to interweave his late father into various events.

 

[jdog]

Just to be clear, William J. Brophy Jr. was in fact a pilot during WW2 and latter a Major in the Air Force. He passed away in 1986. William P. Brophy was his older son and seems to be the teller of tall tales. And to make things more difficult, some editions of Vallee and Paola's Trinity: The Best Kept Secret, refer to William J. Brophy Jr., the WW2 pilot, as "Brothy Sr". and/or "Brophy Sr." Some researchers refer to the son, William P Brophy, by his family name of "Billy" to limit the confusion.

Billy does claim that many of his tales were told to him by his father possibly back in the '70s, however many of Billy's stories twist and turn over the years to fit whatever event he was trying to insert his father into, often long after his father had passed away.

In the early '00s, Billy originally had his father involved with a 1947 UFO crash in New Mexico and a 1950 crash in Mexico. By extension, he knew about the recovered Italian UFO. Then appeared at the 2010 Italian UFO conference and by then was mentioning his father's involvement with the supposed 1945 Trinity UFO crash. It's likely all the stories are the result of Billy taking vast amounts of UFO lore and using that to interweave his late father into various events.

Kind of like how the older Howard Malmgren got, the more (purportedly) involved in world affairs he would say he had been, saving the world as an advisor to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis and later UFO shootdowns.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Kind of like how the older Howard Malmgren got, the more (purportedly) involved in world affairs he would say he had been, saving the world as an advisor to Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis and later UFO shootdowns.

Yeah, but in that case Harold was expanding his own resume. In this case it was Billy expanding his late father's involvement.

I'll have to find it, but one researcher talked to Billy's younger brother. He claimed their dad was a sober guy and that aside from 1 mention of a cigar shaped UFO encounter over Georgia in the '50s, he never spoke of UFOs. He claimed his brother Billy was "eccentric ". Many of Billy's stories use stuff that became popular or came about in the '80s, some after his father's passing.

 

[Fritzkquzerk]

To think that we Italians could have retro-engineered this saucer so we'd have antigravity FIAT Cinquecentos now, what a shame this isn't true!

 

[Jeffknox]

I'll have to find it, but one researcher talked to Billy's younger brother. He claimed their dad was a sober guy and that aside from 1 mention of a cigar shaped UFO encounter over Georgia in the '50s, he never spoke of UFOs. He claimed his brother Billy was "eccentric ". Many of Billy's stories use stuff that became popular or came about in the '80s, some after his father's passing.

That was Douglas. See: https://douglasjohnson.ghost.io/cra...sies-of-billy-brophy-about-his-airman-father/

When I edged the conversation back into the details of Billy's crashed-UFO stories, Sean responded:

SEAN BROPHY: Well, I'm going to be honest with you. My brother might be a little eccentric sometimes, but I do not doubt my father knew a bit about UFOs, and I know about the encounter he told me about. My father was very sober, so we had a good conversation about that. I won't forget it. My dad would never lie to me about something like that.

[extraneous material omitted]

I can't speak for him [Billy] at all when it comes to that. He's on his own for the rest of it. I know nothing about the rest, but I do know about the cylindrical craft that my father spoke to me about. That was quite specific.

[extraneous material omitted]

I can't speak as to the veracity of his stories, but I do know about the one with my dad [the aerial encounter].

 

[Julian Vale]

Thanks to Sheffinder and john.phil for locating and translating the report in posts #10–12. In the report PDF, page 3 describes a "documento manoscritto"; page 9 limits its conclusion to "il solo campione esaminato" and identifies "22 agosto 1936". Has anyone located a separate examination report that explicitly identifies and tests either of the two typed 1933 telegrams? A scan with an identifiable specimen would help distinguish testing one item in the collection from testing the core telegrams. I discuss that distinction in my essay, and would welcome a source that changes the assessment.

 

[Mendel]

Thanks to Sheffinder and john.phil for locating and translating the report in posts #10–12. In the report PDF, page 3 describes a "documento manoscritto"; page 9 limits its conclusion to "il solo campione esaminato" and identifies "22 agosto 1936". Has anyone located a separate examination report that explicitly identifies and tests either of the two typed 1933 telegrams? A scan with an identifiable specimen would help distinguish testing one item in the collection from testing the core telegrams. I discuss that distinction in my essay, and would welcome a source that changes the assessment. Disclosure: the essay and this question were prepared with AI assistance.

Well written; I'm not sure I follow your main thesis, but asking for provenance is valuable, and I like how you go about it.

You write:

If a government genuinely has the ability to suppress evidence, that can explain why an authentic secret leaves little public trace. Unfortunately, exactly the same explanation protects a fabrication. A forged document can always be defended with, "Of course you cannot find the other records. They were destroyed because this was secret."

This point deserves a little elaboration. Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time—and with the same lack of provenance? (And the same lack of a plausible motive for the alleged coverup.)

I'd also like to draw your attention to the "Hitler Diaries", a forgery that passed muster enough to be published in a major German magazine; if only because they were claimed to originate from the same kind of totalitarian regime.

 

[jon_eir]

Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time

Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time?

I don't believe a vast government concealment program is real. Any evidence I've ever been quoted on this directly is often taken out of context and based on older, unsupported claims.

To address the quoted post, here are some programs that are cited and fit your criteria. I pulled this text from an essay that was shared privately with me, from a paper titled "A Complex Topology Explaining UAP Belief Endurance." I won't share it in full without permission, and it's not directly related to the post. I inserted supported wiki links

This paper develops a structural model for how a body of belief can persist for multiple decades, generate substantial institutional momentum, and resist successive disconfirmations — without anyone actively coordinating the persistence and without any physical referent at the core of the belief.

ULTRA / Bletchley Park (1939-1974)

Over 12,000 people kept the secret of Allied decryption of German military ciphers for three decades after the war ended. Winston Churchill omitted Bletchley from his six-volume history of the Second World War. Hundreds of memoirs by generals, admirals, and civilian leadership stayed silent. Internally, decrypts were laundered through a fictional MI6 spy called "Boniface" with a fictional network of agents in Germany, so field commanders would believe they were receiving human intelligence rather than signals intelligence — but that was internal cover, not a public mythology. Externally, there wasn't an active public cover story; merely a vague public sense that Allied intelligence had performed well.

Tiny fragments did leak into books from the late 1950s onward, but none communicated the scale of what had happened. A computer science professor named Brian Randell first publicly revealed the existence of Colossus in 1972 while preparing a book on the history of computing, and his subsequent campaign to get the broader Bletchley story declassified initially failed. When F.W. Winterbotham's The Ultra Secret was about to publish in 1974, the British D-Notice Committee couldn't block the American edition, so they allowed a partial authorized account to go out first as a diversionary move.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_(cryptography)

Manhattan Project (1942-1945)

The same shape, compressed in time. Approximately 130,000 personnel over three years. Near-zero public discourse. Then disclosure-by-use in August 1945. Workers at Oak Ridge and Hanford famously did not know what they were building. The genuine information penetration that did occur was internal — Klaus Fuchs, Theodore Hall, the Rosenberg ring — and was contents-specific: real espionage went after real contents. No popular mythology grew up around it during classification.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project

AZORIAN / Glomar Explorer (1968-1974)

The intermediate case. Six years of an industrial cover story. The Hughes Glomar Explorer was publicly presented as a deep-sea manganese mining vessel, and the cover was largely accepted in the press. A handful of investigative reporters got close but were persuaded to hold. The story broke in 1975 and produced the canonical "Glomar response" to FOIA requests, which is now the legal scaffolding underneath much of modern classification fog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian

 

[Julian Vale]

Thanks, Mendel. The paper doesn't establish a historical parallel with the same provenance gaps and a comparable motive for a cover-up. I should have said that more clearly. Secrecy can't do the work of authenticating a document, and I don't mean that authenticity and fabrication are equally likely. jon_eir's examples don't resolve that problem for Magenta. The broader information-control argument is still a hypothesis. The Hitler Diaries comparison is worth pursuing, particularly the claimed route from the alleged source to publication. For the telegrams, the immediate question remains which actual specimen was tested.

 

[Mendel]

To address the quoted post, here are some programs that are cited and fit your criteria.

Thank you!
None of these have had a document leaked, though?
They're either secret, or they break big; they don't linger halfway broken for decades. Yet that is what we are supposed to believe: that a governments protects a secret amazingly well, except for one set of documents that miraculously reaches the public without provenance or corroborstion.
I don't think I've seen this pattern anywhere before, outside of hoaxes.

For a hoax it makes sense, because a hoax must be detailed to be believable, but it can't be provenanced or corroborated because it is fake.

 

[jon_eir]

None of these have had a document leaked, though?

I didn't pick up exactly what it was you were looking for, I guess. I would suggest that Skunk Works projects like the U-2, Blackbird and stealth aircraft were all rumoured about before they were officially revealed. Some kind of stealth helicopter had also been rumoured about since at least the 1980s.

For example, regarding the A-12/Oxcart:

With the growing number of A-12s, how much longer could the project remain secret? The Department of Defense was having difficulty concealing its participation because of increasing Oxcart expenditures. It also realized that the technological data would be extremely valuable in connection with feasibility studies for the commercial supersonic transport. Awareness grew in the aircraft industry that something new and remarkable was going on. Commercial airline crews had sighted the A-12 in flight.

In spite of all this, 1963 went by without any public revelation. President Lyndon B. Johnson was brought up to date on the project a week after taking office and ordered an announcement for the spring of 1964."

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/article/1194oxcart/

If you're looking for something specifically within the UFO sphere, Linda Moulton Howe's discussion with Art Bell brings up an interesting example.

"Phil Leroy described three large, dark helicopters flying extremely low. According to the preserved program transcript, two passed within roughly 250 feet of him at an estimated altitude of only 50 feet. He reported:

• no navigation lights, strobes or identifying markings;
• essentially no engine/rotor noise despite their proximity;
• only a rush/gust of air as they passed;

AI was used to pull the above details from the source."

https://artbellarchive.org/episode/...ost-investigators-dave-oester-and-sharon-gill

By their nature, none of those reports can be tied to an actual encounter with a top-secret aircraft per se. The point is simply that rumours and reports resembling technologies that were later publicly acknowledged can predate their official disclosure.

For actual classified documents being leaked, I would suggest looking at WikiLeaks and similar cases. The clearest pre-internet example is probably the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg leaked thousands of pages of classified Department of Defense documents to the New York Times and other newspapers.

https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers

OR Samuel Loring Morison leaks surrounding the KH-11 (1984): Morison supplied Jane's Defence Weekly with classified KH-11 satellite photographs. The photographs were actually published in 1984.

"the images gave the general public around the world a first glance at the capability of America's classified reconnaissance satellites."

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/spiesfly/phot-04.html

Again, I don't believe there is a black program or psyop secretly covering up a program. This is a particular bugbear of mine, and these sources are often used as evidence of this, which I do not support. I simply offer them as evidence to either support or deny your claim, and realise this may be taking the thread off point.

 

[Mendel]

For actual classified documents being leaked, I would suggest looking at WikiLeaks and similar cases. The clearest pre-internet example is probably the Pentagon Papers. Daniel Ellsberg leaked thousands of pages of classified Department of Defense documents to the New York Times and other newspapers.

Yes, but the provenance of these papers was clear, and they're corroborated.

OR Samuel Loring Morison leaks surrounding the KH-11 (1984): Morison supplied Jane's Defence Weekly with classified KH-11 satellite photographs. The photographs were actually published in 1984.

Yes, but was it a secret that these satellites exist?

What we get with hoaxes (and the Italian UFOs) is a detailed "leak" without any plausible context.

If an oxcart design document was leaked, but the USG still claimed that was fake and it didn't exist, then that'd be in that category. But typically, at that point we'd asume the adversaries know, so the secrecy no longer serves a purpose, and is relaxed.

 

[jon_eir]

@Mendel @Julian Vale

I guess I'm just struggling to frame the complete point that you're both making and my own epistemological biases. I went back and reviewed your conversations and the essay prepared by Julian. This is an interesting conversation that has probably been defined as well as it can be, IMO.

Where I'm at with this is similar to the distinction between a conspiracy theory and a conspiracy. Once a conspiracy theory is proven to be real, in the strictest sense it is no longer a conspiracy theory; it becomes speculation about something that is actually true.

I see the same problem with the question of whether this is a hoax or real. It will continue to be a possible hoax until sufficient proof is provided one way or the other. I don't see a workable framework in which an intermediate state of uncertainty doesn't exist.

Julian-your essay was interesting and well constructed, IMO. What it possibly doesn't take into account is another possibility: maybe the Italians did find something, but their investigation was inept or flawed to the point that it produced major errors.

In other words, the documents could be real, in whole or in part, while what they describe still wasn't actually a UFO. Highly unlikely, maybe, but it seems to be a possibility that the approach doesn't address—or perhaps one that the methodology or epistemological framework doesn't allow for.

Mendel-you may also be getting close to some kind of epistemological loop, I think. To give another counterexample to what you just asked for, maybe a less strict definition of hoax or "conspiracy theory" needs to be applied. If a conspiracy theory develops outside the mainstream, within a fringe community or subculture, it may continue to be described as a conspiracy theory even when part of the underlying claim is subsequently shown to be true.

If we accept that definition, I would point to the Nimitz/Tic Tac material that appeared on the AboveTopSecret forum in 2007. It was met with considerable scepticism both within and outside the UFO community, but the video itself was later acknowledged as genuine US Navy footage.

The Department of Defense stated in 2020:

"The U.S. Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos."

More importantly for this discussion, the same statement says that the videos had been circulating publicly following "unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017."

https://www.defense.gov/News/Releas...nse-on-the-release-of-historical-navy-videos/

That doesn't establish that the interpretation attached to the Nimitz footage was correct, of course. It establishes something narrower but relevant: material appeared within a fringe/conspiracy-oriented community, was treated with considerable scepticism and suspected of being a hoax, but was later authenticated as genuine government material.

So, in that limited sense, something suspected of being a hoax was subsequently proven not to be one. If we're approaching this through the framework of conspiracy theories and applying our broader definition, then it began within the fringe/conspiracy world and was still ultimately shown to contain authentic material. The authenticity of the evidence and the truth of the interpretation placed upon that evidence remain two separate questions

 

[Julian Vale]

the documents could be real, in whole or in part, while what they describe still wasn't actually a UFO.

Yes, an authentic record of a mistaken investigation is a separate possibility. The ghost-flier comparison was meant to leave that open, but I could have made it more explicit for Magenta. The Navy example illustrates the distinction: authenticating the footage doesn't authenticate every account attached to it. For the Italian papers, I'd still want to establish who made each document and when, then assess what it says about the event. Uncertainty is a valid conclusion; it doesn't make all explanations equally well supported.

 

[Mendel]

Mendel-you may also be getting close to some kind of epistemological loop, I think. To give another counterexample to what you just asked for, maybe a less strict definition of hoax or "conspiracy theory" needs to be applied. If a conspiracy theory develops outside the mainstream, within a fringe community or subculture, it may continue to be described as a conspiracy theory even when part of the underlying claim is subsequently shown to be true.

Part of the underlying claim is always true. Aircraft often create white vapor trails. What makes any theory about what these trails are a conspiracy theory is the claim that there's a secret that attaches to the phenomenon, and there's a big coverup for that secret (the conspiracy). The secret also has to be implausible. Like, "the government is developing a secret weapon" is not a conspiracy theory, that's just business as usual. "The government is developing anti-grav technology" is a conspiracy theory, because it also assumes a scientific breakthrough with no context.

If we accept that definition, I would point to the Nimitz/Tic Tac material that appeared on the AboveTopSecret forum in 2007. It was met with considerable scepticism both within and outside the UFO community, but the video itself was later acknowledged as genuine US Navy footage.

That is a fairly close example of what I'm looking for (no provenance!), except that the videos are so ambiguous as evidence that, while the material is genuine, it doesn't prove the claim that was attached to it. ("The USG has footage of alien craft.")

The Italian material would be unambiguous if it was genuine.

I see the same problem with the question of whether this is a hoax or real. It will continue to be a possible hoax until sufficient proof is provided one way or the other. I don't see a workable framework in which an intermediate state of uncertainty doesn't exist.

In practical terms, absence of evidence becomes evidence of absence at some point.
You cannot treat everything you don't have sufficient data on as a potential extraordinary thing when all the things you have data on are ordinary.

You cannot say that something is potentially genuine when the possibility of it being real is merely fictional.

 

[jon_eir]

That is a fairly close example of what I'm looking for (no provenance!)

If no provenance is what we're looking for, then that's exactly what you have with the 2007 leak of the Tic Tac/Nimitz documents. I would also say that Project Ultra provides an example of this, with it having been rumored and written about before being confirmed in 1974.

Ladislas Farago's 1971 best-seller The Game of the Foxes gave an early garbled version of the myth of the purloined Enigma. According to Farago

The 1973 public disclosure of Enigma decryption in the book Enigma by French intelligence officer Gustave Bertrand[94] – which dealt mainly with the Polish and then Franco-Polish efforts before the Invasion of France and before the Ultra program[95] – generated pressure to discuss the rest of the Enigma–Ultra story

British ban was finally lifted in 1974

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_(cryptography)#Postwar_secrecy

The KH-11's existence and general reconnaissance role became publicly known following disclosures surrounding the 1978 Kampiles case. Actual classified KH-11 imagery was subsequently leaked to the press, including imagery published by Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984 without its source initially being publicly known.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81M00980R000400040016-7.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com


this quote below is what I was trying to address

Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time—and with the same lack of provenance? (And the same lack of a plausible motive for the alleged coverup.)

Outside of that, I was just trying to understand the position you were taking and provide supporting/conflicting evidence for it.

You cannot say that something is potentially genuine when the possibility of it being real is merely fictional.

I do think it's fair to say that something is potentially genuine—"potentially" could mean a 1% probability. Anything is potentially genuine until its definitively proven to be true or false. I'm not sure I follow "the possibility of it being real is merely fictional."

To make my position clear and how I would state it: I find, on the balance of probabilities, that the existence of a large-scale government black-ops cover-up program is highly unlikely. Hoaxes and genuine leaks do and have occurred, and I do not see how they could be construed as evidence for anything other than what they are evidence for in and of themselves.

 

[Ann K]

Anything is potentially genuine until its definitively proven to be true or false.

I take serious issue with that statement. So leprechauns are "potentially genuine"? Santa Claus? Pixies? Unicorns? When things don't pass the "smell" test, we don't make the vain attempt to "prove them false". We simply can't prove a negative, but can only fail to prove a positive.

When things break the laws of physics or perform other tricks that can best be described as "magic", do they merit any attempt to do the impossible (ie prove a negative) or should we continue to keep them on the list of "potentially genuine"? There comes a point at which we skeptics must say that we don't know what it is ...but that's NOT an endorsement that "it might be real". The same is true of governmental secrets, which are "secret" by definition. In most cases we would never have the details to determine their likelihood. The only thing we might have access to are those who make the "conspiracy" charge, and even then there might be an extensive chain of I-heard-it-from-X before finding the first one who said "It's a secret, but I know..."

 

[NorCal Dave]

I find, on the balance of probabilities, that the existence of a large-scale government black-ops cover-up program is highly unlikely.

Depends on what you mean by "black-ops cover-up programs". I think we would agree, most governments have secret programs. That might include large scale research programs that produce advanced aircraft, satellites, and weapons systems or smaller programs that produce better imaging or data collection. This would also include "black-ops" type stuff like the SEALS or the UK's SAS. The fact that there are legitimate secrets helps fuel the conspiracy.

A conspiracy theory centered around the local ladies gardening club is a tough sell, as there is nothing inherently secret going on at the gardening club. One can contemplate what secrets are involved in local fraternal organizations like the Elks or Moose lodge, as they do have some sorta secret initiation meetings, but nobody really thinks the local Elks are up to no good. Taken a step further, a fraternal group like the Masons, who have secret meetings AND were often at odds with the Catholic church AND had many members in positions of power, provides much more fodder for various conspiratorial ideations.

As to an orchestrated "cover-up", there is some evidence to suggest elements in the Intel and defense world may have allowed UFO sightings to go unanswered for a time, rather than talk about advanced aircraft. The whole Dulce Base fiasco with Richard Doty also suggests rouge elements in the government can engage in disinformation and or some version of a cover-up, but as for a large scale organized program dating back 50-100+ years, depending on who's claiming it, is as you said, highly unlikely.

I think a big difference between the leaks about real programs and leaks about UFOs, is that the real programs follow on from known technology and once deployed, inevitably become known. A U2 or A12 can't just be kept at Area 51/Groom Lake in total secrecy, they have to be deployed. As such, they were disclosed as soon as they became operational. The leaks that revealed Project Azorian were backed up by the actual Glomare Explorer sitting in the Pacific Ocean.

These Italian documents suffer the same problem all the other supposed leaks about UFOs do. They rely on the idea of real governments secrets to boost their authenticity, but ultimately don't really provide anything. The whole crashed UFO retrieval and reverse engineering trope suffers from a complete lack of UFOs or any reverse engineered products from said UFOs. Unlike the U2 or the Glomare Explorer, there has never been anything physical to back up the leaks.

Depending on who is making the claim, there are dozens if not 100s of recovered UFOs dating back as far as the turn of the 19th century that have been recovered and are in the possession of various governments around the world. And yet, no one has ever produce any viable evidence that any of these exist. When a civilian does manage to beat the government to one of these UFOs that crash at an alarming rate, the descriptions of, or the material recovered is anything but Extraterrestrial. Some sticks and foil at Roswell, bits of magnesium from Ubatuba, a windmill part at Trinity, bits of terrestrial waste and so on. As for all the reverse engineered wonder technology, we usually get something about the transistor, which is over 60 years old, or maybe going to the moon. Often from the same people that deny we went to the moon. Or, like the elusive UFOs themselves, the secret reverse engineered technology, like free energy, is hidden away for nefarious reasons.

 

[Mendel]

Thank you for your response!

If no provenance is what we're looking for, then that's exactly what you have with the 2007 leak of the Tic Tac/Nimitz documents.

That was my point.

I would also say that Project Ultra provides an example of this, with it having been rumored and written about before being confirmed in 1974.

Ladislas Farago was what we would today call a conspiracy theorist. He believed what he was told, and spun tales around it, most notably the idea that Nazi Martin Bormann was living in South America, not lying in his grave in Germany. He is not a credible source.

The KH-11's existence and general reconnaissance role became publicly known following disclosures surrounding the 1978 Kampiles case. Actual classified KH-11 imagery was subsequently leaked to the press, including imagery published by Jane's Defence Weekly in 1984 without its source initially being publicly known.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP81M00980R000400040016-7.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

So, corroboration for the existence of the satellite was there before the documents appeared.

The pattern, that there's an unprovenanced document/set of documents that establishes something new and hitherto unknown, without a prior context or corroboration shortly after, points to an elaborate hoax. (I'm going to consider this statement true, until shown a counterexample.)
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, ...

The idea is that government secrets have an understandable, common-sense motive for secrecy; that their exposure is either a piecemeal process; or, if "leaked", sees corroboration shortly afterwards (certainly within a decade, say). This is usually because the leak destroys the point of secrecy. It's not a threat to national security to say what everyone knows already.

A hoax lacks that process that surrounds a genuine leak.

I do think it's fair to say that something is potentially genuine—"potentially" could mean a 1% probability. Anything is potentially genuine until its definitively proven to be true or false. I'm not sure I follow "the possibility of it being real is merely fictional."

How do you arrive at that "1% probability"?

As a frequentists, historically no flying saucer has ever been found, so the probability is 0%.
As a Bayesian, all UFO reports that have been run down turned out to be mundane, so the prior for the Italian UFO to exist must be 0.0001% or less.
As a physicist, the Drake equation and the vast interstellar/intergalactic distances put the probability of alien vistors at even less.

The only reason the public entertains the notion of alien visitors intuitively is because we see them fictionalized so often, and our caveman brains don't distinguish between what's real and what's fictional when building our intuition about the world.

There were no UFO sightings before science fiction. A luminous floating orb would have been a ghost or a spirit, entities that are today understood to be fictional; people saw them because they had heard stories about them.

Ghost and spirits only exist in fiction.
Flying saucers only exist in fiction.
The probability of them existing in reality is 0.
It is not fair to claim otherwise; I'd say it is deceptive.

 

[jon_eir]

I take serious issue with that statement. So leprechauns are "potentially genuine"? Santa Claus? Pixies? Unicorns? When things don't pass the "smell" test, we don't make the vain attempt to "prove them false". We simply can't prove a negative, but can only fail to prove a positive.

When things break the laws of physics or perform other tricks that can best be described as "magic", do they merit any attempt to do the impossible (ie prove a negative) or should we continue to keep them on the list of "potentially genuine"? There comes a point at which we skeptics must say that we don't know what it is ...but that's NOT an endorsement that "it might be real". The same is true of governmental secrets, which are "secret" by definition. In most cases we would never have the details to determine their likelihood. The only thing we might have access to are those who make the "conspiracy" charge, and even then there might be an extensive chain of I-heard-it-from-X before finding the first one who said "It's a secret, but I know..."

what im saying is where does the smell test stop and start-and what is the basis for that stop and start.

Regarding the the "breaks of laws of physics" that's not what being discussed here. If something appears to break the laws of physics Thats worth looking, evidence for breaking the laws of physics would be just that, evidence.

As regarding the government secrets I was attempting the highlight that epistemological problem and figure out what the central argument of the counterpoint was and see if it could be addressed directly

 

[Mendel]

Regarding the the "breaks of laws of physics" that's not what being discussed here. If something appears to break the laws of physics Thats worth looking, evidence for breaking the laws of physics would be just that, evidence.

The typical physics lessons in school should have driven home the fact that "evidence for breaking the laws of physics" is evidence that the experimenter has screwed up somewhere.

Any "breaking of physics" has context. There is a history of observations that establish that the laws of physics might need to be extended to explain certain data, and corroboration after the "new physics" has been pinned down.

 

[jon_eir]

That was my point.

ok so i gave you the supporting the supporting evidence that was related to your point and this thread. That was my goal.

The epistemological discussion that evolved after that were not my intentions. Regarding ufos being real that was not what being discussed and further interactions were merely to highlight the problems that occur when these conversations start, you put the existence of UfO prior to this incident at 0.0001%. Again that was my point extremely highly unlikely but not impossible. To keep switching from a scientific type of logic to a preponderance of evidence type of logic l is fruitless from my experience. There is no scientific like evidence that these papers are real. That's where the conversation stops for me.

from earlier

Julian vale write:

If a government genuinely has the ability to suppress evidence, that can explain why an authentic secret leaves little public trace. Unfortunately, exactly the same explanation protects a fabrication. A forged document can always be defended with, "Of course you cannot find the other records. They were destroyed because this was secret."

Mendel write:

This point deserves a little elaboration. Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time—and with the same lack of provenance? (And the same lack of a plausible motive for the alleged coverup.)

you guys were having a preponderance of evidence like discussion and you asked for evidence of something, we have settle on the 2007 tictac materials being at least one example of that. Where that leaves your discussion is up to you guys

 

[Ann K]

Regarding the the "breaks of laws of physics" that's not what being discussed here. If something appears to break the laws of physics Thats worth looking, evidence for breaking the laws of physics would be just that, evidence.

No, because we understand the physics of how things behave in our atmosphere, for example. I'm not talking about "how could an alien civilization break the laws of physics at home", because that's not something we have any way of knowing - although we can tell that the same physics governs everything in the universe, with the caveat "as far as we can tell". But we DO know the principles of the behavior of objects in our atmosphere or our water. If a thing is claimed to have an "impossible" speed without leaving a heat signature, then it is, as advertised, impossible.

As for governmental secrets, my issue isn't to deal with those themselves, because it's almost a given that they exist. My problem is with the people who say "We don't know, but I know", and those quoting him who are so ready to accept his word uncritically. "Secrets" are not waved around that readily, and "I know" sometimes means "I suspect", but more often "I find that hypothesis to be useful to me, or to my political position, or to my country".

 

[Mendel]

The epistemological discussion that evolved after that were not my intentions. Regarding ufos being real that was not what being discussed and further interactions were merely to highlight the problems that occur when these conversations start, you put the existence of UfO prior to this incident at 0.0001%. Again that was my point extremely highly unlikely but not impossible. To keep switching from a scientific type of logic to a preponderance of evidence type of logic l is fruitless from my experience. There is no scientific like evidence that these papers are real. That's where the conversation stops for me.

The probability is nonzero for the Bayesian approach because it assumes you see one positive result on top of every negative result you know about. I estimated a million UFO reports and no UFO to arrive at 0.0001%.
It looks impossible to me.

The statement "it is possible that people see genuine flying saucers" has ZERO supporting evidence. It is fiction. It is less probable of occurring in reality than a person some author invents for their story actually existing—and that would be a coindicidence.

There is no "preponderance of evidence", there's just the utter and complete absence of evidence for flying saucers, outside of fiction. The amount of evidence for plaid elephants is equal to the amount of evidence for flying saucers.

If we adopt your standard, then nothing you can think of is impossible, and the word "impossible" has no meaning.

 

[Mendel]

Julian vale wrote:

If a government genuinely has the ability to suppress evidence, that can explain why an authentic secret leaves little public trace. Unfortunately, exactly the same explanation protects a fabrication. A forged document can always be defended with, "Of course you cannot find the other records. They were destroyed because this was secret."

Mendel wrote:

This point deserves a little elaboration. Are there really "authentic secrets" that have "left little public trace", at least for a time—and with the same lack of provenance? (And the same lack of a plausible motive for the alleged coverup.)

you guys were having a preponderance of evidence like discussion and you asked for evidence of something, we have settle on the 2007 tictac materials being at least one example of that. Where that leaves your discussion is up to you guys

Thank you for restoring the context. That is exactly the point I am belaboring: these hoaxes do not look like official secrets, and Julian Vale's defense does not hold for them if you look more closely. Disclosures of official secrets have never stood alone if they were as detailed as the Italian UFO papers.

 

[MapperGuy]

"A UFO crashed in 1933 Italy and the US Recovered it"

Should probably read "A UFO crashed in 1933 Italy and the US stole it later" as the Italians recovered it and the US ended up with it, or so the story goes.

Both ULTRA and Manhattan Project were wartime programs, amidst a host of other secret programs of lesser sensitivity. Most of the people directly involved knew only parts of the story, and were only directly involved in one aspect or another. But they all knew that there was a war on and that what they were doing was somehow involved with winning it.

If many people involved never wrote books about it or talked about it to large audiences that was part of putting the war behind them and getting on with their lives. People understood better then than people today seem to that there are reasons for secrets, and that they and their nation will not benefit from revealing them.

 

[John J.]

The set of documents sent to Bologna newspaper lIl Resto del Carlino seem to have been photocopies.
I don't know if the documents sent to ufologist Roberto Pinotti were also photocopies, but if so it prevents age-testing of papers or ink that might help establish the age of the originals.

It might not have been too difficult to find a 1930s- style typewriter in 1990s Italy. But I'm not sure if any analysis of the documents has reached even that level of detail: the Italian Wikipedia page "Incidente di Magenta" https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_di_Magenta says CISU, the Italian Center for UFO Studies doubt their authenticity largely because

...i documenti "non hanno numeri di protocolli, non hanno timbri né alcuna indicazione verificabile"

machine translated,

...the documents "have no protocol numbers, no stamps and no verifiable indication"

...so they lack features which would have been characteristic of the regime and military of that time.

There is no mention of whether the typeface used matches a 1930s typewriter, which I think might imply this hasn't been investigated.
Typed documents can be linked to a specific typewriter if the investigator has that machine, but typed documents can also identify the model of typewriter used, the specific machine used does not have to be accesible.

If the Magenta UFO crash documents are a hoax, all the hoaxer required was a typewriter (perhaps not of 1930s vintage), basic stationary, access to a photocopier and a copy of the Regia Aeronautica crest.
For the latter, maybe an authentic document (probably non-UFO related!) or maybe more likely a history book/ book about military aviation.
I thought of Frank Abagnale's claimed use of decals from a model kit of a Pan Am plane to forge ID (seen in the 2002 film Catch Me If You Can),
transfers of the Regia Aeronautica crest can be found in many decal sheets for model WW2 aircraft, but I suspect they'd be too small for practical use (unless maybe such decals existed for larger, e.g. RC, models). (Example below, not the exact same design, others might be closer):

As far as I can tell (sadly I can't read Italian) the documents contain no convincing technical details whatsoever.
An eyewitness sketch is totally redundant if you actually possess the craft in question.

There doesn't appear to be any pre-1996 evidence of a well-known UFO event in the Magenta area in 1933.
For fairly obvious reasons, whatever hypothetical steps the regime may have taken to cover up the story, they would no longer apply after 1944 or 1945, and people tend to remember such things for more than 11 or 12 years even (perhaps especially) if they're told they can't talk about them.

From NewsNation, "No UFO records in Vatican archives despite whistleblower claim: Source", updated 16 June 2026, Susie Pinto:

...NewsNation's Susie Pinto traveled to Magenta, a town outside Milan, where UFO researchers have long alleged an unidentified craft crashed in 1933...
The search for corroboration, however, yielded little.
Among the local residents interviewed was a lifelong resident in his 70s who said he had never heard stories about a UFO crash in Magenta. Given that nearly a century has passed since the alleged event, any firsthand witnesses would almost certainly no longer be alive.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/relig...-vatican-archives-david-grusch-whistleblower/

I think this is telling; NewsNation is hardly skeptical about UFO claims. Pinto mentions the response of one resident, which makes me wonder what her other interviewees said- if any had recollected a story about a crashed UFO, or anything else about a UFO around that time and place, I firmly believe she would have mentioned it.
The point about any firsthand witnesses having passed away ignores the fact that people tend to tell others, perhaps their children, about unusual and notable things. Local tales of strange events persist for decades, even centuries. Many people in the Magenta area in 1933 must have lived for many years after WW2, in a free and vibrant Italy. If some had witnessed or heard about the UFO, it is likely they would also have become aware of the flying saucer reports from (chiefly) the USA from 1947 on, and might have been persuaded to bring their recollections to wider attention.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The amount of evidence for plaid elephants is equal to the amount of evidence for flying saucers.

Ever since these photos were sent to me from the Daily Record I knew, one day, someone would ask me about them. I see no signs of hoaxing.

 

[Mendel]

The amount of evidence for plaid elephants is equal to the amount of evidence for flying saucers.

Ever since these photos were sent to me from the Daily Record I knew, one day, someone would ask me about them. I see no signs of hoaxing.

My point stands.

Spoiler

 

[Andreas]

If we adopt your standard, then nothing you can think of is impossible, and the word "impossible" has no meaning.

Personally, I find the word "impossible" largely irrelevant. I can make up a story about a strange exoplanet inhabited by elephant-like creatures with a technologically advanced civilization and argue that it's not impossible for such a civilization to exist. Claiming that something is impossible often amounts to trying to prove a negative. Sometimes that's possible, but more often, it isn't. Instead, I think we should always ask ourselves whether we have any reason to believe something exists and apply Hitchens's razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

In the case of the alleged 1933 crash and all the fuss surrounding it, we were presented with supposed evidence. Whether it's theoretically possible for a cover-up to remain hidden for almost a century isn't really relevant. What matters is whether the evidence presented is genuine. And as far as I'm concerned, it isn't.

Which brings us back to where we started: "What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."

 

[NorCal Dave]

I can make up a story about a strange exoplanet inhabited by elephant-like creatures with a technologically advanced civilization and argue that it's not impossible for such a civilization to exist.

Footfall is a 1985 science fiction novel by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The book depicts the arrival of members of an alien species called the Fithp that have traveled to the Solar System from Alpha Centauri in a large spacecraft driven by a Bussard ramjet.

The alien Fithp resemble baby elephants with multiple prehensile trunks. They possess more advanced technology than humans,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Footfall

I believe this is the 2nd time the suggestion of elephant-like creatures has come up on the forum and I was able to respond with this book .

I don't know if the documents sent to ufologist Roberto Pinotti were also photocopies, but if so it prevents age-testing of papers or ink that might help establish the age of the originals.

I didn't get too deep into the exact nature of the documents when I first looked into this story. For me the important thing was the different stories that emerged that aren't in the documents. I figured the documents were likely fake as nobody but a few UFO researchers took them seriously. Beyond that, even if they were real or partially real, they pretty much just describe some UFO sightings and the crash of something in Magenta, its possible movement to an airfield and some guys looking into it. It could have been something like Roswell, a real crash of something that got mixed up in the reporting. All the good parts of the story don't really come around until the early to mid '00s with Brophy's involvement.

However, in looking back it appears that after the newspaper lIl Resto del Carlino trashed the first batch of photocopied documents, actual documents were later sent to Pinotti:

Then a second series of missives, in three different packages, posted in March-April 1996, were sent by "MR. X" to the top Italian ufologist Dr. Roberto Pinotti, Director of the Italian UFO research journal NOTIZIARIO UFO (and long-term FSR Consultant !).

http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc1885.htm

In 2000, during the annual World UFO Symposium in San Marino, my colleague Alfredo Lissoni and I gave a lecture on the sensational discovery of some new original material, which has been sent to us anonymously on a number of occasions regarding the existence of the so-called "Fascist UFO Files". This material dealt with a purported flying saucer that had either crashed or landed near Magenta in Lombardy in Italy on April 11th, 1933, some fourteen years before the famous Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash.

https://www.theblackvault.com/casef...ssolini-fascist-ufo-files-by-roberto-pinotti/

It all began in early 1996 when I received a handful of hand written notes on stationary bearing the seal of the "Kingdom's Senate" in the mail. The year mentioned in the material was 1936 and in the hand written document, first sent to a Certain "Valiberghi" by a secret agent using the first name "Andrea" there was a sketch of a "mysterious airship".

https://www.theblackvault.com/casef...ssolini-fascist-ufo-files-by-roberto-pinotti/

It's unclear if what Pinotti received had been used to create the lost photocopied tranche, but it seems he did get some actual memos and notes that he had tested:

(Antonio) Garavaglia conducted a series of chemical tests of the paper and ink – remember, he had originals and not copies – and he concluded they are really authentic, hand written documents from the Fascist era. The color of the paper and ink aging process led him to believe they were absolutely genuine and not modern forgeries

And they had a historian comment on the general wording and style of the documents:

Alfredo Lissoni also consulted with Andrea Bedetti, a historian and expert on Italy's Fascist period. "I cannot exclude the existence of a "RS/33 Cabinet" said Bedetti. He also examined in the documents for the wording and the bureaucratic style of the period", as well as the stationery ("Kingdom's Senate" and Stefani Agency telegrams) and aeronautical terminology used. Bedetti found that all of it was consistent with genuine Fascist-era documents. According to debunkers this didn't rule out a skilled forger, but they have to admit he would have to be someone deeply knowledgeable about Fascist history, style, vocabulary and terminology

https://www.theblackvault.com/casef...ssolini-fascist-ufo-files-by-roberto-pinotti/
.

 

[Andreas]

I believe this is the 2nd time the suggestion of elephant-like creatures has come up on the forum and I was able to respond with this book .

Absolutely wonderful! I'd love for first contact to involve baby elephants visiting the United Nations and shaking trunks with all the world leaders. Perhaps that's the perfect plot for Disclosure Day II?!