Wilbert B Smith, Project Magnet, and his Claims of UFO Debris

[Itsme]

It has come to my attention through meetings with American officials that the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Committee on Armed Services have been undertaking in-camera hearings with government and military subject matter experts on the recovery and exploitation of physical material from Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

He might be referring to Grusch plus additional witnesses, mentioned by Mellon in a recent article by him on Politico:

Since AARO was established, I have referred four witnesses to them who claim to have knowledge of a secret U.S. government program involving the analysis and exploitation of materials recovered from off-world craft. Other sources who, rightly or wrongly do not trust AARO’s leadership, have also contacted me with additional details and information about an alleged secret U.S. government reverse engineering program. Some have supplied information to the intelligence community’s inspector general, others directly to staff of the congressional oversight committees.

Content from External Source

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/03/ufo-crash-materials-intelligence-00100077

As Minister of National Defense, you may not be aware Defense Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has participated in efforts to analyze UAP, which is publicly traceable to circa 1950.

I think he is referring to information on Wilbert Smith here, a senior radio engineer with the Canadian government Department of Transport at the time.

From: Above Top Secret by Timothy Good, William Morrow & Company, ISBN 0-688-09202-0, 1988:

During a recorded interview with C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch in November 1961, Wilbert Smith admitted that a number of fragments from UFOs had been recovered and analyzed by his research group, including one that had been shot from a UFO near Washington, DC in July 1952. Said Smith:

"I was informed that the disk was glowing and was about 2 feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off, and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report, and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weight about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about 1/3 of that. It had been sawed off. …
There was iron rust -- the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers -- thousands -- of 15-micron spheres scattered through it."

Smith was asked if he had returned the piece to the U.S. Air Force when he had completed his analysis. "Not the Air Force. Much higher than that," he replied. "The Central Intelligence Agency?" asked the interviewers. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point," said Smith. But he added, "I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem -- their identity -- for yourselves."

Content from External Source

In a 1950 memo written by Smith (so two years before the aforementioned analysis), he states that he made some inquiries at the Canadian embassy in Washington and learned that:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.
b. Flying saucers exist.
c. Their modus operandi is unknown, but a concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush.
d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

Content from External Source

The memo is attached.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I think he is referring to information on Wilbert Smith

Ummmm, why would a:

...a senior radio engineer with the Canadian government Department of Transport

Content from External Source

be doing this:

Wilbert Smith admitted that a number of fragments from UFOs had been recovered and analyzed by his research group

Content from External Source

with something classified by the US government as:

...rating higher even than the H-bomb

Content from External Source

?

This guy could use a thread of his own it would appear.

 

[Rick Robson]

He might be referring to Grusch plus additional witnesses, mentioned by Mellon in a recent article by him on Politico:

Since AARO was established, I have referred four witnesses to them who claim to have knowledge of a secret U.S. government program involving the analysis and exploitation of materials recovered from off-world craft. Other sources who, rightly or wrongly do not trust AARO’s leadership, have also contacted me with additional details and information about an alleged secret U.S. government reverse engineering program. Some have supplied information to the intelligence community’s inspector general, others directly to staff of the congressional oversight committees.

Content from External Source

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/03/ufo-crash-materials-intelligence-00100077


I think he is referring to information on Wilbert Smith here, a senior radio engineer with the Canadian government Department of Transport at the time.

From: Above Top Secret by Timothy Good, William Morrow & Company, ISBN 0-688-09202-0, 1988:

During a recorded interview with C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch in November 1961, Wilbert Smith admitted that a number of fragments from UFOs had been recovered and analyzed by his research group, including one that had been shot from a UFO near Washington, DC in July 1952. Said Smith:

"I was informed that the disk was glowing and was about 2 feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off, and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report, and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weight about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about 1/3 of that. It had been sawed off. …
There was iron rust -- the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers -- thousands -- of 15-micron spheres scattered through it."

Smith was asked if he had returned the piece to the U.S. Air Force when he had completed his analysis. "Not the Air Force. Much higher than that," he replied. "The Central Intelligence Agency?" asked the interviewers. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point," said Smith. But he added, "I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem -- their identity -- for yourselves."

Content from External Source

In a 1950 memo written by Smith (so two years before the aforementioned analysis), he states that he made some inquiries at the Canadian embassy in Washington and learned that:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.
b. Flying saucers exist.
c. Their modus operandi is unknown, but a concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Dr. Vannevar Bush.
d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

Content from External Source

The memo is attached.

Didn't find a biography of that Mr. Wilbert Smith on the web, I'd appreciate if someone find and share more information about him in order to double-check what I heard about him on the Black Vault's six minute video released tonight, where John interviews there Mr. Chris Rutkowski and they get into more details about Smith. Judging from I heard there he's long involved with the UFO stuff, with unusual claims like "at one point he was at regular communication with the Aliens" (min. 5:17):

 

[John J.]

From: Above Top Secret by Timothy Good, William Morrow & Company, ISBN 0-688-09202-0, 1988:

During a recorded interview with C.W. Fitch and George Popovitch in November 1961, Wilbert Smith admitted that a number of fragments from UFOs had been recovered and analyzed by his research group, including one that had been shot from a UFO near Washington, DC in July 1952. Said Smith:

"I was informed that the disk was glowing and was about 2 feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off, and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report, and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weight about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about 1/3 of that. It had been sawed off. …
There was iron rust -- the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers -- thousands -- of 15-micron spheres scattered through it."

Smith was asked if he had returned the piece to the U.S. Air Force when he had completed his analysis. "Not the Air Force. Much higher than that," he replied. "The Central Intelligence Agency?" asked the interviewers. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point," said Smith. But he added, "I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem -- their identity -- for yourselves."
Content from External Source

Timothy Good's writings, including "Above Top Secret", have been criticized as being unreliable.
He is a keen proponent of the hypothesis of a "UFO cover-up" by USA agencies, and was the first to publicize the (bogus) "Majestic 12" documents.

Martin Bridgstock, in a review of Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-up for The Skeptic in 1989... ...concluded that the book:[19]

is not a clear, rigorous survey of the evidence for UFOs. It is a polemical volume, which seems to be devoted to making the case for UFOs, and a cover-up, seems as convincing as possible. However, inspection of the theses put forward in the book, and checking of a few cases with other sources, seem to show that the book is not reliable and its conclusion cannot be trusted.

Content from External Source

Wikipedia, Timothy Good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Good
...and Majestic 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12

 

[Duke]

Timothy Good's writings, including "Above Top Secret", have been criticized as being unreliable.
He is a keen proponent of the hypothesis of a "UFO cover-up" by USA agencies, and was the first to publicize the (bogus) "Majestic 12" documents.

Martin Bridgstock, in a review of Above Top Secret: The Worldwide U.F.O. Cover-up for The Skeptic in 1989... ...concluded that the book:[19]

Content from External Source

Wikipedia, Timothy Good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Good
...and Majestic 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majestic_12

How unreliable and full of beans is Tim Good? Paranormal radio pioneer Art Bell literally dropped him from a live interview on his "Dark Matter" radio show after he repeatedly told ridiculous, unsupported anecdotes and guaranteed them as factual. Bell cut Good loose not long after he related a story from an unimpeachable (but not identified) source who claimed the late US astronaut Gordon Cooper had plans to land an alien supplied craft at the UN. Bell was clearly dumbfounded.

Later in the show Bell came clean, explaining he gave Good the heave ho because he had put forth so many unsubstantiated claims and he (Bell) didn't find him (Good) credible.

If Art Bell basically calls you out in front of millions of listeners on a live radio show, that pretty much says it all.

 

[Itsme]

Didn't find a biography of that Mr. Wilbert Smith on the web, I'd appreciate if someone find and share more information about him in order to double-check what I heard about him on the Black Vault's six minute video released tonight, where John interviews there Mr. Chris Rutkowski and they get into more details about Smith. Judging from I heard there he's long involved with the UFO stuff, with unusual claims like "at one point he was at regular communication with the Aliens" (min. 5:17)

I found this:

Smith was responsible for engineer aspects of all matters radio in Canada, including equipment standards, radio relay systems (microwave) and broadcast facilities and interference studies. (1) He ran, “Radio Ottawa”, which is where Canadian spies radioed in and where Soviet communications were intercepted. He also allocated frequencies for AM/FM radio stations and for the intelligence agencies that used those frequencies.

His direct involvement with UFO research began when he was in Washington, D.C. attending a conference. He read Frank Scully’s “Behind the Flying Saucers” that revealed the crash in New Mexico in 1947, and that the saucers used magnetic propulsion. After that he was hooked.

Wilbert was connected through the Canadian Embassy in D.C. to a military attaché, Lt. Col Bremner who got him an interview with Dr. Robert Sarbacher on September 15, 1950. Sarbacher was an electrical engineer and a guided missile scientist who consulted with the U.S. He related to Bremner/Smith that Scully was correct, flying saucers existed. They did not originate on Earth and the subject was the most highly classified in the U.S. government, at a level higher that the H-Bomb. (2) He further told Smith that there had been saucer crashes in New Mexico, and that the saucers indeed utilized magnetic principles in their propulsion. Of course, this is exactly what Smith was looking for.

Content from External Source

source: https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

Also found a transcript of his interview with C. W. Fitch of Cleveland, Ohio, and George Popovitch of Akron, Ohio, in 1961:

FITCH: Have you ever handled any of this hardware yourself, sir?

SMITH: Yes. Quite a bit of it. Our Canadian Research Group has recovered one mass of very strange metal . . . ii was found within a few days of July 1, 1960. There is about three thousand pounds of it. We have done a tremendous amount of detective work on this metal. We have found out the things that aren't so. We have something that
was not brought to this Earth by plane nor by boat nor by any helicopter. We are speculating that what we have is a portion of a very large device which came into this solar system ... we don't know when . . . but it had been in space a long time before it came to Earth; we can tell that by the micrometeorites embedded in the surface. But we don't know whether it was a few years ago—or a few hundred years ago.

FITCH: You mean then that you have about a ton and a half of something metallic, of unknown origin.

SMITH: That is correct. We can only speculate about it at this time—and we have done a great deal of that. We have it but we don't know what it is!

FITCH: You're a friend of Admiral Knowles, Mr, Smith?

[Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles, U.S. Navy, Retired.]

SMITH: Oh, yes. Admiral Knowles and I have been very good friends for many years.

FITCH: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct, sir?

SMITH: Yes. It is correct. I visited with Admiral Knowles and I had with me a piece which had been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July of that year— 1952. I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by your Air Force.

FITCH: Is this the only piece you have handled which definitely had been part of a UFO, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: No. I've handled several of these pieces of hardware.

FITCH: In what way, if any, do they differ from materials with which we are familiar?

SMITH: As a general thing they differ only in that they are much harder than our materials.

FITCH: What about this particular piece from that UFO near Washington . . . did it differ from conventional materials? Was there anything unusual about it, sir?

SMITH: Well, the story behind it is this: The pilot was chasing a glowing disc about two feet in diameter—

FITCH: Pardon me, sir. But did you say two feet . . .

SMITH: That is correct. I was informed that the disc was glowing and was about two feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weighed about a
pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about one third of that. It had been sawed off.

FITCH: What did the analysis show?

SMITH: There was iron rust—the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers—thousands—of 15-micron spheres scattered through it.

FITCH: You say that you had to return it—did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that

FITCH: The Central Intelligence Agency?

SMITH: [Chuckles] I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem—their identity—for yourselves.

Content from External Source

source: http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

 

[Rick Robson]

I found this:

Smith was responsible for engineer aspects of all matters radio in Canada, including equipment standards, radio relay systems (microwave) and broadcast facilities and interference studies. (1) He ran, “Radio Ottawa”, which is where Canadian spies radioed in and where Soviet communications were intercepted. He also allocated frequencies for AM/FM radio stations and for the intelligence agencies that used those frequencies.

His direct involvement with UFO research began when he was in Washington, D.C. attending a conference. He read Frank Scully’s “Behind the Flying Saucers” that revealed the crash in New Mexico in 1947, and that the saucers used magnetic propulsion. After that he was hooked.

Wilbert was connected through the Canadian Embassy in D.C. to a military attaché, Lt. Col Bremner who got him an interview with Dr. Robert Sarbacher on September 15, 1950. Sarbacher was an electrical engineer and a guided missile scientist who consulted with the U.S. He related to Bremner/Smith that Scully was correct, flying saucers existed. They did not originate on Earth and the subject was the most highly classified in the U.S. government, at a level higher that the H-Bomb. (2) He further told Smith that there had been saucer crashes in New Mexico, and that the saucers indeed utilized magnetic principles in their propulsion. Of course, this is exactly what Smith was looking for.

Content from External Source

source: https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

Also found a transcript of his interview with C. W. Fitch of Cleveland, Ohio, and George Popovitch of Akron, Ohio, in 1961:

FITCH: Have you ever handled any of this hardware yourself, sir?

SMITH: Yes. Quite a bit of it. Our Canadian Research Group has recovered one mass of very strange metal . . . ii was found within a few days of July 1, 1960. There is about three thousand pounds of it. We have done a tremendous amount of detective work on this metal. We have found out the things that aren't so. We have something that
was not brought to this Earth by plane nor by boat nor by any helicopter. We are speculating that what we have is a portion of a very large device which came into this solar system ... we don't know when . . . but it had been in space a long time before it came to Earth; we can tell that by the micrometeorites embedded in the surface. But we don't know whether it was a few years ago—or a few hundred years ago.

FITCH: You mean then that you have about a ton and a half of something metallic, of unknown origin.

SMITH: That is correct. We can only speculate about it at this time—and we have done a great deal of that. We have it but we don't know what it is!

FITCH: You're a friend of Admiral Knowles, Mr, Smith?

[Rear Admiral H. B. Knowles, U.S. Navy, Retired.]

SMITH: Oh, yes. Admiral Knowles and I have been very good friends for many years.

FITCH: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct, sir?

SMITH: Yes. It is correct. I visited with Admiral Knowles and I had with me a piece which had been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July of that year— 1952. I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by your Air Force.

FITCH: Is this the only piece you have handled which definitely had been part of a UFO, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: No. I've handled several of these pieces of hardware.

FITCH: In what way, if any, do they differ from materials with which we are familiar?

SMITH: As a general thing they differ only in that they are much harder than our materials.

FITCH: What about this particular piece from that UFO near Washington . . . did it differ from conventional materials? Was there anything unusual about it, sir?

SMITH: Well, the story behind it is this: The pilot was chasing a glowing disc about two feet in diameter—

FITCH: Pardon me, sir. But did you say two feet . . .

SMITH: That is correct. I was informed that the disc was glowing and was about two feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weighed about a
pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about one third of that. It had been sawed off.

FITCH: What did the analysis show?

SMITH: There was iron rust—the thing was in reality a matrix of magnesium orthosilicate. The matrix had great numbers—thousands—of 15-micron spheres scattered through it.

FITCH: You say that you had to return it—did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that

FITCH: The Central Intelligence Agency?

SMITH: [Chuckles] I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem—their identity—for yourselves.

Content from External Source

source: http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

Thank you! Will read it with the due attention ASAP.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I found this:

As I said, maybe Smith needs his own thread, but as he's a Canadian that claims to have studied crashed UFOs and the idea that there is a secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering program is the point of Maguire's letter, let's see what Smith has to say.

Right off the start, IF Smith's claim is true that he was reverse-engineering crashed UFOs and he's told lots of people about it, it's not all that secret is it. He's rather open about what he did and what he's seen and handled:

FITCH: Have you ever handled any of this hardware yourself, sir?

SMITH: Yes. Quite a bit of it. Our Canadian Research Group has recovered one mass of very strange metal . . . ii was found within a few days of July 1, 1960. There is about three thousand pounds of it.

We have something that was not brought to this Earth by plane nor by boat nor by any helicopter. We are speculating that what we have is a portion of a very large device which came into this solar system ... we don't know when . . . but it had been in space a long time before it came to Earth; we can tell that by the micrometeorites embedded in the surface. But we don't know whether it was a few years ago—or a few hundred years ago.

Content from External Source

FITCH: Is this the only piece you have handled which definitely had been part of a UFO, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: No. I've handled several of these pieces of hardware.

Content from External Source

http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

So, not only has he handled lots of possible UFO meta-material, the Canadians apparently have 3k pounds of the stuff.

Smith supposedly had a meeting in DC:

Wilbert was connected through the Canadian Embassy in D.C. to a military attaché, Lt. Col Bremner who got him an interview with Dr. Robert Sarbacher on September 15, 1950. Sarbacher was an electrical engineer and a guided missile scientist who consulted with the U.S.

Content from External Source

Smith claims that Sarbacher, who sounds like a contractor not an actual government employee told him about saucers:

He related to Bremner/Smith that Scully was correct, flying saucers existed. They did not originate on Earth and the subject was the most highly classified in the U.S. government, at a level higher that the H-Bomb. (2) He further told Smith that there had been saucer crashes in New Mexico, and that the saucers indeed utilized magnetic principles in their propulsion. Of course, this is exactly what Smith was looking for.

Content from External Source

https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

How does Sarbacher know any of this? If the program is classified "higher than the H-bomb" where did Sarbacher learn of it? Doesn't sound very classified. This story also seems to be the source for Smith's claims in his memo:

I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

b. Flying saucers exist

Content from External Source

https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/smithmemo-21nov51-pdf.59986/

Smith ran a small AATIP type program called Project Magnet in the Canadian DoT (Department of Transportation) (bold by me):

Smith made a request to use the facilities of the Department of Transport to study UFOs. The project was formally approved on December 2, 1950, with the intention to collect data about UFOs and apply any recovered data to practical engineering and technology.

Smith and his colleagues in government believed that UFOs, if real, might hold the key to this new source of power. A small-scale undertaking, the project used DOT facilities, with some assistance from personnel at the Defence Research Board (DRB) and the National Research Council.

Also in April 1952 the Canadian government established Project Second Storey, a parallel UFO research project, with Smith also involved. It consisted of a group of scientists and military officers who met periodically to consider the UFO question and to recommend government action. Smith reported to Second Storey on some of Project Magnet's findings and conclusions.[1]

Content from External Source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Magnet_(UFO)

He was the Project Magnet director for the Canadian Government’s UFO study from 1950-1954. Wilbert Smith was a Senior radio engineer in Canada when he began the project within Transport Canada. Though the program formally ended in 1954, informally it ran until his death in 1962….

Content from External Source

https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

In addtion, Smith claims to have shown a piece of a flying saucer that was shot at/down near DC. The piece had been "loaned" to him by the US Airforce:

FITCH: I have been told by a mutual friend that in 1952 you showed Admiral Knowles a piece of a flying saucer. Is that statement correct, sir?

SMITH: Yes. It is correct. I visited with Admiral Knowles and I had with me a piece which had been shot from a small flying saucer near Washington in July of that year— 1952. I showed it to the Admiral. It was a piece of metal about twice the size of your thumb which had been loaned to me for a very short time by your Air Force.

Content from External Source

http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

So, to be clear, the US Airforce shot down or shot off a piece of a flying saucer over Wahington DC and they then "lent" a piece of it to a radio engineer from the Canadian DoT. Who then went around showing it to other people. And this is all classified "higher than the H-bomb"?

This seems to be his description of his "loaned" piece:

SMITH: That is correct. I was informed that the disc was glowing and was about two feet in diameter. A glowing chunk flew off and the pilot saw it glowing all the way to the ground. He radioed his report and a ground party hurried to the scene. The thing was still glowing when they found it an hour later. The entire piece weighed about a pound. The segment that was loaned to me was about one third of that. It had been sawed off.

Content from External Source

http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

But after saying it was loaned to him by the Airforce, he says he returned to something "higher up":

FITCH: You say that you had to return it—did you return it to the Air Force, Mr. Smith?

SMITH: Not the Air Force. Much higher than that

FITCH: The Central Intelligence Agency?

SMITH: [Chuckles] I'm sorry, gentlemen, but I don't care to go beyond that point. I can say to you that it went to the hands of a highly classified group. You will have to solve that problem—their identity—for yourselves.

Content from External Source

http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

So, again all of this is at very high levels of classification, but a Canadian radio engineer from the DoT has access to these things and is openly talking about them. This interview was in 1961, only 9 years after the supposed event, not decades later when it might not have been a big deal.

In the later part of his career, Smith was in contact with aliens and wrote about them in a newsletter that was latter compiled into a book:

Smith believed UFOs were linked to psychic phenomena [2] and believed himself to be in contact with extraterrestrial beings who communicated to him through telepathy.[3] Smith wrote a number of articles for Topside, the publication of the Ottawa New Sciences Club which he founded, outlining the philosophy of the "Space Brothers" with whom he claimed to be in contact.[4] The articles were later collected and published posthumously in 1969 under the title The Boys from Topside.[5]

Content from External Source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Magnet_(UFO)

Amazon doesn't seem to have Smith's book, but is aware of it:



If one really wants to read up Smiths view of the Space Brothers, AbeBooks has a used copy, but it's a bit pricy for my UFO book collection:




I don't understand the idea of a radio guy from the Canadian DoT having highly classified access to and preforming analysis on meta-materials obtained by the US.

Is this who Maguire is referencing?

 

[Rick Robson]

I don't understand the idea of a radio guy from the Canadian DoT having highly classified access to and preforming analysis on meta-materials obtained by the US.

Same here. But to me anyway this story deserves more research. The following excerpt is particularly interesting:

Smith was responsible for engineer aspects of all matters radio in Canada, including equipment standards, radio relay systems (microwave) and broadcast facilities and interference studies. (1) He ran, “Radio Ottawa”, which is where Canadian spies radioed in and where Soviet communications were intercepted. He also allocated frequencies for AM/FM radio stations and for the intelligence agencies that used those frequencies.

Content from External Source source: https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

 

[John J.]

As I said, maybe Smith needs his own thread, but as he's a Canadian that claims to have studied crashed UFOs and the idea that there is a secret UFO retrieval and reverse-engineering program is the point of Maguire's letter, let's see what Smith has to say.

Borrowing NorCal Dave's logic here...

Also found a transcript of his interview with C. W. Fitch of Cleveland, Ohio, and George Popovitch of Akron, Ohio, in 1961:

http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

This is via the former National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), essentially a club of people across the US who had an interest in, and sometimes investigated, UFO sightings and related claims. It's taken from Frank Edwards' book "Flying Saucers: Serious Business", 1966, Bantam Books, New York.

I think it is important to realise Wilbert Smith died in 1962. He was not in a position to refute things which he is claimed to have said in, e.g., Flying Saucers: Serious Business.

For example- this absolute nonsense valid example of independent science is attributed to Wilbert Smith, who used

...data obtained from beings more advanced than we are.

Content from External Source

"The New Science", https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science
Unless Wilbert Smith made a serious break from "mainstream" science (more widely known as, er, science) I doubt very much that he had anything to do with this. Perhaps we should be cautious when his name is invoked by others making unusual claims.


The transcript (in Flying Saucers: Serious Business) and its introductory material make a number of claims which seem (to me) extraordinary, but with no real supporting evidence other than the word of author Frank Edwards and Wilbert Smith (but please note the above- Smith wasn't in a position to refute what Edwards wrote).

The original Canadian program was established to duplicate, if possible, the UFO flight characteristics by development of a discoid propelled by some form of electrical field. In 1953 this was abandoned

Content from External Source

It'd be good to see evidence of this. But I doubt we'll see any.
Interestingly- and as discussed briefly elsewhere on the forum (apologies, can't find where) A.V. Roe/ Avro Canada's Special Projects Group under John Frost did try and build jet-powered "flying saucer"-shape aircraft from 1952, with US funding, resulting in the striking, but utterly impractical, VZ-9-AV Avrocar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar

Canada is home to excellent scientists, engineers and military personnel, but I doubt it would've made sense to split expertise in "flying discoids" considering the relatively small defence establishment (and budget).

It was during one of those hectic nights over Washington that a military jet got a radar lock on one of the UFO's and poured a burst from his machine guns into the disc... Ground crews scoured the area shoulder to shoulder and found the fragment in a farmer's field.

Content from External Source

I've been aware of the "Washington Invasion" for many years, and I've never read or heard of anything that remotely corroborates this from any credible source (unreliable sources are two-a-penny in UFOlogy). The Washington Invasion is notable for the total lack of photographic evidence of any sort, and the radar reports coinciding with atmospheric temperature inversions in the D.C. area- a phenomenon known to cause false radar returns (now rare, due to radar digital filters since the 70's).

Mr. Smith... ...had been said to have been the recipient of the fragment collected by gunfire from that Navy jet.

Content from External Source

(My emphasis).
The only armed jet aircraft deployed to investigate the radar blips of July 19-20 and July 26-27 1952 were USAF F-94 Starfires from New Castle USAF Base in Delaware, and possibly a USAF F-89 from Langley AF Base, Virginia:
Washington Citypaper, "Saucers Full of Secrets", Dan Gilgoff 14 Dec. 2001,
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/260860/saucers-full-of-secrets/
and "Washington, D.C., UFO incident" on Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C.,_UFO_incident

It was hi [sic] 1952 that the UFO which had reportedly crashed in Spitzbergen was recovered by the Norwegian Air Force, according to their statements given to the press.

Content from External Source

This story first appeared, it seems, in the West German local newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung, June 1952.
Why the Norwegian Air Force chose to brief a West German local newspaper for the Saarland- a landlocked region immediately SE of Luxembourg- but not, say, Die Welt (or the Norwegian media, or NATO, or the UN) must be open to question.
Briefly discussed here https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-legends-of-ufo-crashes-at-spitsbergen-norway-1946-1952/

I feel the Edwards text (with the Fitch interview of Wilbert Smith) is pretty much typical of the material written by some UFO enthusiasts in the 60's/ 70's for which there was a ready paperback market (and therefore eager publishers).

We might be doing Wilbert Smith (1910-1962) a disservice if we believe all the claims that some in the "UFO community" have attributed to him.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Same here. But to me anyway this story deserves more research. The following excerpt is particularly interesting:


Content from External Source source: https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

I'm not sure there is a lot more to research. Most of the information I found was from @Itsme and it seems to be somewhat circular. The angelicvisions25 blog looks like it's based mostly on the interview Smith did with NICAP and maybe his memo.

The Wikipedia entry for Project Magnet lists it's source as this:

Footnotes[edit]​

1. ^ Jump up to:a b "Canada's UFOs". Shirley's Bay, Ontario Project Magnet, 1952. Library and Archives of Canada. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
2. ^ Brenda Denzler (1 June 2003). The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of Ufos. University of California Press. pp. 221–. ISBN 978-0-520-23905-0. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
3. ^ Jerome Clark (December 2000). Extraordinary encounters: an encyclopedia of extraterrestrials and otherworldly beings. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-57607-249-3. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
4. ^ Roy Craig (1995). Ufos: An Insider's View of the Official Quest for Evidence. University of North Texas Press. pp. 130–. ISBN 978-0-929398-94-5. Retrieved 24 January 2013.
5. ^ Wilbert B. Smith (1969). The boys from Topside. Saucerian Books. Retrieved 24 January 2013.

References[edit]​

• Clark, Jerome, The UFO Encyclopedia: The Phenomenon from the Beginning, Volume 2, L-Z Detroit: Omnigraphics, 1998 (2nd edition, 2005), ISBN 0-7808-0097-4
• Story, Ronald J. (editor) and J. Richard Greenwell (consulting editor), The Encyclopedia of UFOs, Garden City: Doubleday & Co, 1980, ISBN 0-385-13677-3
• Canada's Unidentified Flying Objects: The Search for the Unknown at Library and Archives Canada

Content from External Source

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Magnet_(UFO)

It's some old UFO books and Smith's own book. Even then, if one goes to footnote #2 and tracks down:

The Lure of the Edge: Scientific Passions, Religious Beliefs, and the Pursuit of Ufos. University of California Press. pp. 221–. ISBN 978-0-520-23905-0. Retrieved 24 January 2013.

One finds that Smith is merely mentioned as someone that gave an opinion to Vallee:


https://www.google.com/books/editio...5lWsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA221&printsec=frontcov

As for the quote you had:

Smith was responsible for engineer aspects of all matters radio in Canada, including equipment standards, radio relay systems (microwave) and broadcast facilities and interference studies. (1) He ran, “Radio Ottawa”, which is where Canadian spies radioed in and where Soviet communications were intercepted. He also allocated frequencies for AM/FM radio stations and for the intelligence agencies that used those frequencies.

Content from External Source

https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

The first 1/2 of that sounds like what he would do. He was a radio engineer. As for intercepting Soviet communications, I don't know enough about Canadian governmental organizations to know. Why this was being handled in the department responsible for roads and transportation and not some Canadian Intelligence Agency, I don't know. I know if I follow the footnote #1:

1. A Tale of Extraterrestrial Politics in the White House, http://www.presidentialufo.com/old_site/smith1.htm

It seems to take me to a Spanish language gamming site so I'm not sure where the information is coming from.

I can't see any scenario where the US government is obtaining UFOs through retrieval or shooting them down and is then giving parts of said UFOs to a Canadian radio engineer for analysis, even if he were not out blabbing about it. If that's the case where does that leave Smith's stories? Not to label people, but I think he's a well-meaning crank. He worked on a book that is a compilation of his telepathic conversations with the "Space Brothers".

 

[Duke]

Borrowing NorCal Dave's logic here...


http://www.nicap.org/reports/520723washington_transcript.htm

This is via the former National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), essentially a club of people across the US who had an interest in, and sometimes investigated, UFO sightings and related claims. It's taken from Frank Edwards' book "Flying Saucers: Serious Business", 1966, Bantam Books, New York.

I think it is important to realise Wilbert Smith died in 1962. He was not in a position to refute things which he is claimed to have said in, e.g., Flying Saucers: Serious Business.

For example- this absolute nonsense valid example of independent science is attributed to Wilbert Smith, who used

...data obtained from beings more advanced than we are.

Content from External Source

"The New Science", https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science
Unless Wilbert Smith made a serious break from "mainstream" science (more widely known as, er, science) I doubt very much that he had anything to do with this. Perhaps we should be cautious when his name is invoked by others making unusual claims.


The transcript (in Flying Saucers: Serious Business) and its introductory material make a number of claims which seem (to me) extraordinary, but with no real supporting evidence other than the word of author Frank Edwards and Wilbert Smith (but please note the above- Smith wasn't in a position to refute what Edwards wrote).

The original Canadian program was established to duplicate, if possible, the UFO flight characteristics by development of a discoid propelled by some form of electrical field. In 1953 this was abandoned

Content from External Source

It'd be good to see evidence of this. But I doubt we'll see any.
Interestingly- and as discussed briefly elsewhere on the forum (apologies, can't find where) A.V. Roe/ Avro Canada's Special Projects Group under John Frost did try and build jet-powered "flying saucer"-shape aircraft from 1952, with US funding, resulting in the striking, but utterly impractical, VZ-9-AV Avrocar. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avro_Canada_VZ-9_Avrocar

Canada is home to excellent scientists, engineers and military personnel, but I doubt it would've made sense to split expertise in "flying discoids" considering the relatively small defence establishment (and budget).

It was during one of those hectic nights over Washington that a military jet got a radar lock on one of the UFO's and poured a burst from his machine guns into the disc... Ground crews scoured the area shoulder to shoulder and found the fragment in a farmer's field.

Content from External Source

I've been aware of the "Washington Invasion" for many years, and I've never read or heard of anything that remotely corroborates this from any credible source (unreliable sources are two-a-penny in UFOlogy). The Washington Invasion is notable for the total lack of photographic evidence of any sort, and the radar reports coinciding with atmospheric temperature inversions in the D.C. area- a phenomenon known to cause false radar returns (now rare, due to radar digital filters since the 70's).

Mr. Smith... ...had been said to have been the recipient of the fragment collected by gunfire from that Navy jet.

Content from External Source

(My emphasis).
The only armed jet aircraft deployed to investigate the radar blips of July 19-20 and July 26-27 1952 were USAF F-94 Starfires from New Castle USAF Base in Delaware, and possibly a USAF F-89 from Langley AF Base, Virginia:
Washington Citypaper, "Saucers Full of Secrets", Dan Gilgoff 14 Dec. 2001,
https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/260860/saucers-full-of-secrets/
and "Washington, D.C., UFO incident" on Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1952_Washington,_D.C.,_UFO_incident

It was hi [sic] 1952 that the UFO which had reportedly crashed in Spitzbergen was recovered by the Norwegian Air Force, according to their statements given to the press.

Content from External Source

This story first appeared, it seems, in the West German local newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung, June 1952.
Why the Norwegian Air Force chose to brief a West German local newspaper for the Saarland- a landlocked region immediately SE of Luxembourg- but not, say, Die Welt (or the Norwegian media, or NATO, or the UN) must be open to question.
Briefly discussed here https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/the-legends-of-ufo-crashes-at-spitsbergen-norway-1946-1952/

I feel the Edwards text (with the Fitch interview of Wilbert Smith) is pretty much typical of the material written by some UFO enthusiasts in the 60's/ 70's for which there was a ready paperback market (and therefore eager publishers).

We might be doing Wilbert Smith (1910-1962) a disservice if we believe all the claims that some in the "UFO community" have attributed to him.

Great post!

A couple comments:

1) It's unclear who referred to the "Navy jet" that shot at a UFO over Washington DC in 1952 in your post. Smith or Edwards? I can't remember where, but I've read about this episode previously. The validity of the claim was questioned because USAF F-94 jets were armed with unguided rockets, not machine guns. While later model F-94s were armed with "Mighty Mouse" rockets, early F-94s were armed with .50 caliber machine guns. So they did have guns they could have fired. I don't believe anyone fired at anything over DC in 1952, but the intercepting a/c were so equipped.

2) Unless I missed it, I didn't see a date when Smith/Canadians allegedly took possession of the piece shot from the UFO, but it would have been the latter half of 1952 at the earliest. I agree with your assessment of the limitations of Avro Canada around the 52/53 time frame. In addition to the two "saucer" projects you mentioned, they were churning out CF-100s, shutting down the failed swept-wing CF-103 Canuck, and starting early studies that evolved into the oft mourned (at least in Canada) CF-105 Arrow. That's a lot of work being carried on by one aircraft manufacturer in a diminishing Canadian defense budget as the Korean War was winding down. They must have been stretched very thin, difficult to imagine they would have had the resources/budget to reverse engineer an alien craft.

 

[Mendel]

This story first appeared, it seems, in the West German local newspaper Saarbrücker Zeitung, June 1952.

Small correction: as the capital of the Saarland, Saarbrücken was not part of West Germany until 1957. After WW2, France administered the Saarland as an independent region. I doubt the staff at the Saarbrücker Zeitung would've been able to contact anyone who could've confirmed the veracity (or not) of that story.

 

[Itsme]

So, again all of this is at very high levels of classification, but a Canadian radio engineer from the DoT has access to these things and is openly talking about them. This interview was in 1961, only 9 years after the supposed event, not decades later when it might not have been a big deal.

The interview was in november 1961 and Smith died of cancer in december 1962. Maybe he already knew he was sick at the time?

Anyway, I found some more material that might shed some light on this.

The project that Smith worked on (projecr Magnet) was located at Shirleys Bay, which is a "Canadian military and civilian telecommunication research campus" (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirleys_Bay).

Project Magnet was supported and funded by the Defense Research Board:

Smith felt the preliminary result of his work in geo-magnetism correlated with the available data on reported UFO behavior, and that they were fairly close to some of the answers. The Defence Research Board liaison officer at the Canadian Embassy in Washington evidently agreed with Smith for he was extremely anxious for him to get in touch with Dr. Solandt, Chairman of the Defence Research Board upon Smith's return to Ottawa, to discuss with him future investigations along the line of geo-magnetism energy release.
Consequently, upon his return to Canada, Smith met with Solandt on November 20, and obtained his support. Solandt agreed that work on geo-magnetic energy should proceed as rapidly as possible and offered DRB's cooperation in providing laboratory facilities, acquisition of equipment, and specialized personnel.

Source: https://www.sacred-texts.com/ufo/canada.htm

Apart from project Magnet, there was a Blue Book alike Canadian project set up by the Defence Research Board that ran for a few years and Smith was involved in it, too:

During the early months of 1952 there was a noticeable increase in the number of UFO incidents covered by the Canadian Press. Several of these involved reports of disc-shaped craft over Royal Canadian Air Force bases, many reported by service personnel themselves. The Defence Research Board (DRB) noted this increase, and DRB chairman Solandt asked staff member Harold Oatway to get a committee together "to see if we can make anything out of these flying saucer reports". Oatway was a friend of Smith and knew of his involvement. On April 22, 1952, the committee gathered by Oatway held its first meeting, with Peter Millman, head of the Dominion Observatory, as its chairman. Smith, Edwards and Solandt were also among those present.

(same source)

So Smith was working on defence projects related to UFOs, which may have given him access to data and materials supplied by the US.

 

[NorCal Dave]

"The New Science", https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science
Unless Wilbert Smith made a serious break from "mainstream" science (more widely known as, er, science) I doubt very much that he had anything to do with this. Perhaps we should be cautious when his name is invoked by others making unusual claims.

I'll only dissagree on this bit from an otherwise great post. Smith himself wrote some odd things and seemed to believe in flying saucers as real. From his own memo:

I was further informed that the United States authorities are investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be related to the saucers such as mental phenomena and I gather that they are not doing too well since they indicated that if Canada is doing anything at all in geo-magnetics they would welcome a discussion with suitably accredited Canadians.

While I am not yet in a position to say that we have solved even the first problems in geo-magnetic energy release, I feel that the correlation between our basic theory and the available information on saucers checks too closely to be mere coincidence. It is my honest opinion that we are on the right track and are fairly close to at least some of the answers.

Content from External Source

https://www.metabunk.org/attachments/smithmemo-21nov51-pdf.59986/

He believed in using the geo-magnatism of the earth to create flying vehicles and that the secret to that was in the UFOs that had been recovered. Note in the quote above that while the US is looking into "mental phenomena" as a possible explanation and "not doing too well" they "would welcome a discussion with suitably accredited Canadian" in the field of "geo-magnetics."

That is, the Americans need a smart Canadian to help them with geo-magnetic research, like me.

Also, from his memo:

We believe that we are on the track of something which may well prove to be the introduction to a new technology. The existence of a different technology is borne out by the investigations which are being carried on at the present time in relation to flying saucers.

Content from External Source

And he did write a newsletter about his telepathic conversations with the Space Brothers.

 

[John J.]

And he did write a newsletter about his telepathic conversations with the Space Brothers.

(also the other information in NorCal Dave's post): Ah, so Wilbert Smith clearly did have strong sympathy for "alternative research"!

It was while I was reading "The New Science" (link below)

"The New Science", https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science

...I thought, no-one with engineering or scientific credibility would write this stuff- and then noticed it was (apparently) published after his death. I started wondering if some less scrupulous UFO enthusiasts were attributing bizarre claims to Smith to give them more credibility.

But I think you (NorCal Dave) make the case pretty convincingly that Smith was already (and demonstrably) "in the zone", so to speak!

 

[Duke]

I just ordered Smith's book through interlibrary loan, should be enlightening.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I just ordered Smith's book through interlibrary loan, should be enlightening.

Please share when you get it. I wasn't going to drop $300 on it, but it is now on my list of odd ball books to search out when in an antique or used bookstores.

It was while I was reading "The New Science" (link below)

Could you read it? I tried a bit. I got that gravity is electrical in nature and I assumed at some point he would show how it can be overcome with electricity, which was his whole thing, geo-magnetic electrical anti-gravity. I think.

I also think this does need it's own thread, this is becoming very tangential to MP Maguire's letter. I'll see about working up an introductory OP and see if the mods can then shift this discussion over there.

As for section 3 of The New Science, it seems to come from the Space Brothers:

Principles & Technology of Other Races

(Assembled from disclosures made by space people in various communications made to W. B Smith, and others with whom contact has been established. Data is arranged in logical rather than chronological order. )

Content from External Source

https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science#intro

There are no page numbers, so one just has to skip along to find Section 3.

 

[FatPhil]

In a thread on Canadian MP Larry Maquire, the topic of Wilbur Smith came up. While Maquire may have been referring to him, the interesting subject of Smith took off, so here is a separate thread just for discussing Smith starting with some of the posts from the Maquire thread. The OP for Maquire can be found here:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/la...efense-minister-on-uap-recovery-program.13005

And in particular, this seemingly posthumous publication: https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science
It's a very hard read, as it's somewhere between waffley pseudo-science and just plain word salad.
Did he really claim that protons are made out of electrons and positrons? I shut my browser tab as soon as I got to that particles bit, and the left half of my brain collided with the right half, and self-annihilated.

 

[NorCal Dave]

And in particular, this seemingly posthumous publication: https://www.wanttoknow.info/energy/wilbur_smith_new_science
It's a very hard read, as it's somewhere between waffley pseudo-science and just plain word salad.
Did he really claim that protons are made out of electrons and positrons? I shut my browser tab as soon as I got to that particles bit, and the left half of my brain collided with the right half, and self-annihilated.

I was going to ask you about the "math" in some of it . But I'm glad someone else had the same take on it. I'm hoping Mick can split the Maguire thread and put the Smith stuff here. EDIT: which is where we are now.

 

[NorCal Dave]

The interview was in november 1961 and Smith died of cancer in december 1962. Maybe he already knew he was sick at the time?

I don't know, an almost "deathbed confession"?

The project that Smith worked on (projecr Magnet) was located at Shirleys Bay, which is a "Canadian military and civilian telecommunication research campus" (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirleys_Bay).

Apart from project Magnet, there was a Blue Book alike Canadian project set up by the Defence Research Board that ran for a few years and Smith was involved in it, too:

Yes, I mentioned these organizations in post #8 with a few caveats which I'll highlight here:

Smith made a request to use the facilities of the Department of Transport to study UFOs. The project was formally approved on December 2, 1950

Content from External Source

It's not a big program, Smith was using DoT facilities and it was:

A small-scale undertaking, the project used DOT facilities, with some assistance from personnel at the Defence Research Board (DRB) and the National Research Council.

Content from External Source

And lasted ~3 1/2 years officially, with Smith carrying for a number of years after:

It was formally active until mid-1954 and informally active (without government funding) until Smith's death in 1962

Content from External Source

The other UFO program was Project Second Storey:

Also in April 1952 the Canadian government established Project Second Storey, a parallel UFO research project, with Smith also involved. It consisted of a group of scientists and military officers who met periodically to consider the UFO question and to recommend government action. Smith reported to Second Storey on some of Project Magnet's findings and conclusions.[1]

Content from External Source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Magnet_(UFO)

Which sounds a lot like some UFO guys getting together to talk about UFOs. It also cataloged sightings NICAP/APRO/MUFON style:

In 1952, in connection with the establishment of Project Magnet by Wilbert Smith at the Department of Transport, the committee was formed by members of other government agencies and dedicated solely to dealing with "flying saucer" reports. This committee was sponsored by the Defence Research Board. Its main purpose was to collect, catalogue and correlate data from UFO sighting reports.[1]

Content from External Source

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

As for Project Magnet being "based" at Shirley's Bay, it sounds more like he had an office or two that he was allowed to use:

In October 1952, Smith set up an observatory at Shirley's Bay outside Ottawa to study reports of UFO sightings, believing that UFOs would emit physical characteristics that could be measured. A number of sighting reports were investigated by Project Magnet but in 1954 the project was shut down. Smith was allowed to use the Shirley's Bay facilities with his own funding and did so until his death in 1962.[1]

Content from External Source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Magnet_(UFO)

So Smith was working on defence projects related to UFOs, which may have given him access to data and materials supplied by the US.

As I've said above, I can't see any situation where the US military is collecting downed UFOs and giving parts of them to a DoT guy in Canada, even if he was working on a Canadian UFO program.

IF and these are BIG IFs, Smith had some sort of specialized knowledge about geo-magnetic energy sources, and...

IF he US military had actual pieces from recovered UFOs, and...

If the US military needed a Canadian radio expert to anaylize the UFO parts...

My limited knowledge of classified operations suggests that they would be highly compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis.

So, IF the US military needed Smith's expertise, I would think he would be invited to come to a lab in the states to do whatever he needed to do on a piece of material that's origins are concealed from him.

There is no way the US military would get a hold of Smith and say something like: "Hey Wilbur, we shot off a piece of a UFO the other day. Here's it is, how about you take a look at it for us. Don't worry about showing it to other people either, just give it back to some even higher ups when you're done ok."

IF Smith looked at material for the US military that came from a UFO, he would never know what he was looking at.

 

[Itsme]

@Mick West
The title of the new thread is not accurate. Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was the head of project Magnet, not of the Canadian UFO program.
Please change it to: Wilbert B Smith, project Magnet, and his claims of UFO debris
More info on Smith here: http://www.radioalumni.ca/x_SmithWilbert.htm

 

[Itsme]

My limited knowledge of classified operations suggests that they would be highly compartmentalized on a need-to-know basis.

So, IF the US military needed Smith's expertise, I would think he would be invited to come to a lab in the states to do whatever he needed to do on a piece of material that's origins are concealed from him.

This was in the 1950's, I don't know how tight security was back then.
Maybe Smith had a unique measurement setup in his project Magnet lab that was useful to the US. We don't know if the story he was told about the origin of the material he was asked to investigate was correct, either.

 

[NorCal Dave]

@Mick West
The title of the new thread is not accurate. Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was the head of project Magnet, not of the Canadian UFO program.
Please change it to: Wilbert B Smith, project Magnet, and his claims of UFO debris
More info on Smith here: http://www.radioalumni.ca/x_SmithWilbert.htm

That was my fault. I started a new thread for Smith and asked Mick to split the Maquire thread. It maybe should have included " Head of 'A' Candian UFO Program". He seemed a minor figure in UFOlogy, with some bazar writings but not really needing of multiple threads, so I left it a bit open ended. I said as much in the OP I wrote, but when threads get split, they stay in chronological order, so my explanatory OP ended up as post #19, so I just deleted it. Hence, some confusion. Again, my fault.

 

[Rick Robson]

@Mick West
The title of the new thread is not accurate. Wilbert Brockhouse Smith was the head of project Magnet, not of the Canadian UFO program.
Please change it to: Wilbert B Smith, project Magnet, and his claims of UFO debris
More info on Smith here: http://www.radioalumni.ca/x_SmithWilbert.htm

Yea I understand your concern, newcomers will see this thread and its title as created by you.

 

[John J.]

This was in the 1950's, I don't know how tight security was back then.

Tight enough to realistically rule out US sharing of crashed ET craft with Canada, I think (but don't know, of course).

The UK and Canada (and Australia, in the shape of Mark Oliphant), via the MAUD committee and the Tizard Mission, shared useful nuclear information (and Uranium ore) with the US in WW2; US nuclear information-sharing with those countries became more restricted as the Manhattan project progressed. The McMahon Act of 1946 effectively ended the sharing of US nuclear weapons technology with any countries, until 1958 (the UK had detonated its own fusion device in 1957).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project- includes info on the Commonwealth contribution to the Manhattan Project;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_Energy_Act_of_1946- the "McMahon Act".

If, as Smith appears to have claimed, the USA had alien craft (or pieces of alien craft)

and the subject was the most highly classified in the U.S. government, at a level higher that the H-Bomb

Content from External Source

...then by his own assessment of the security level, the US would not have shared information about the recoveries (let alone samples or hardware) with any other nation in the timeframe (1950-1954) that Smith gives.

 

[John J.]

I was thinking about my last post (above), when something struck me;

In a 1950 memo written by Smith (so two years before the aforementioned analysis), he states that he made some inquiries at the Canadian embassy in Washington and learned that:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

There is a problem with Smith's timeline here.

The first H-bomb (thermonuclear weapon) test was in 1952,
the USA's Ivy Mike test at Eniwetok Atoll
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_Mike

The decision to proceed with thermonuclear weapon development was taken by President Harry Truman on 31 January 1950;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon

A useable fusion bomb only became possible with the Teller-Ulam design, allowing staged implosion, first described 9 March 1951
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Teller–Ulam_design

I've been trying to find the earliest known use of the term "H-bomb" but without success. We do know Edward Teller and other Los Alamos scientists working on the first fusion design used the term "Super" (see Teller-Ulam design) perhaps up to at least 1951, but this doesn't preclude the use of the term H-bomb.

In any event, if Smith's memo is true then the Canadian embassy in Washington was aware of US thermonuclear weapons development in 1950- not impossible, I guess- and was willing to mention it to Smith, who understood what "H-bomb" meant even though a practical design, let alone an actual H-bomb did not at that time exist.

The McMahon Act of 1946 effectively ended the sharing of US nuclear weapons technology with any countries

-Which included Canada. Indeed, for all practical purposes the McMahon Act initially affected only Canada and the UK.

I think it's unlikely that Wilbert Smith wrote a memo in 1950 referring to "the H-bomb".

 

[Itsme]

I've been trying to find the earliest known use of the term "H-bomb" but without success.

How about Feb 1, 1950? This was 9 months before the Smith memo and one day after Truman publicly announced the development of the H-bomb:

 

[Rick Robson]

So Smith was working on defence projects related to UFOs, which may have given him access to data and materials supplied by the US.

Possibly true, but then he would have had that access for only a couple of years (1950 to 1952), right?

Smith and his colleagues in government believed that UFOs, if real, might hold the key to this new source of power. A small-scale undertaking, the project used DOT facilities, with some assistance from personnel at the Defence Research Board (DRB) and the National Research Council.

I couldn't find a clear confirmation of what was referred to there as "this new source of power", but I guess we can safely assume it would be "geo-magnetic energy", right?

 

[Itsme]

Possibly true, but then he would have had that access for only a couple of years (1950 to 1952), right?

Don't know, he did not give any info on when he got the debris as far as I know

I couldn't find a clear confirmation of what was referred to there as "this new source of power", but I guess we can safely assume it would be "geo-magnetic energy", right?

Here's the full text of his memo (the memo was attached to the OP). I think that answers your question, and it also answers the question how Smith got involved in US UFO investigations (see text in bold).
Source of the text below: https://www.cufon.org/cufon/foia_006.htm

MEMORANDUM TO THE CONTROLLER OF TELECOMMUNICATIONS:

For the past several years we have been engaged in the study
of various aspects of radio wave propagation. The vagaries of this
phenomenon have led us into the fields of aurora, cosmic radiation,
atmospheric radio-activity and geo-magnetism. In the case of
geo-magnetics our investigations have contributed little to our knowledge
of radio wave propagation as yet, but nevertheless have indicated several
avenues of investigation which may well be explored with profit. For
example, we are on the track of a means whereby the potential energy of
the earth's magnetic field may be abstracted and used.

On the basis of theoretical considerations a small and very
crude experimental unit was constructed approximately a year ago and
tested in our Standards Laboratory. The tests were essentially successful
in that sufficient energy was abstracted from the earth's field to operate
a voltmeter, approximately 50 milliwatts. Although this unit was far from
being self-sustaining, it nevertheless demonstrated the soundness of the
basic principles in a qualitative manner and provided useful data for the
design of a better unit.

The design has now been completed for a unit which should be
self-sustaining and in addition provide a small surplus of power. Such a
unit, in addition to functioning as a `pilot power plant' should be large
enough to permit the study of the various reaction forces which are
expected to develop.

We believe that we are on the track of something which may
well prove to be the introduction to a new technology. The existence of a
different technology is borne out by the investigations which are being
carried on at the present time in relation to flying saucers.

While in Washington attending the NARB Conference, two books
were released, one titled "Behind the Flying Saucer" by Frank Scully, and
the other "The Flying Saucers are Real" by Donald Keyhoe. Both books
dealt mostly with the sightings of unidentified objects and both books
claim that flying objects were of extra-terrestrial origin and might well
be space ships

from another planet. Scully claimed that the preliminary studies of one
saucer which fell into the hands of the United States Government indicated
that they operated on some hitherto unknown magnetic principles. It
appeared to me that our own work in geo-magnetics might well be the
linkage between our technology and the technology by which the saucers are
designed and operated. If it is assumed that our geo-magnetic
investigations are in the right direction, the theory of operation of the
saucers becomes quite straight forward, with all observed features
explained qualitatively and quantitatively.

I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff
in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

b. Flying saucers exist.

c. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made
by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.

d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be
of tremendous significance.

I was further informed that the United States authorities are
investigating along quite a number of lines which might possibly be
related to the saucers such as mental phenomena and I gather that they are
not doing too well since they indicated that if Canada is doing anything
at all in geo-magnetics they would welcome a discussion with suitably
accredited Canadians.

While I am not yet in a position to say that we have solved
even the first problems in geo-magnetic energy release, I feel that the
correlation between our basic theory and the available information on
saucers checks too closely to be more coincidence. It is my honest
opinion that we are on the right track and are fairly close to at least
some of the answers.

Mr. Wright, Defence Research Board liaison officer at the
Canadian Embassy in Washington, was extremely anxious for me to get in
touch with Doctor Solandt, Chairman of the Defence Research Board, to
discuss with him future investigations along the line geo-magnetic energy
release.

I do not feel that we have as yet sufficient data to place before Defence
Research Board which would enable a program to be initiated within that
organization, but I do feel that further research is necessary and I
would prefer to see it done within the frame work of our own organization
with, of course, full co-operation and exchange of information with other
interested bodies.

I discussed this matter fully with Doctor Solandt, Chairman
of Defence Research Board, on November 20th and placed before him as much
information as I have been able to gather to date. Doctor Solandt agreed
that work on geo-magnetic energy should go forward as rapidly as possible
and offered full co-operation of his Board in providing laboratory
facilities, acquisition of necessary items of equipment, and specialized
personnel for incidental work in the project. I indicated to Doctor
Solandt that we would prefer to keep the project within the Department of
Transport for the time being until we have obtained sufficient information
to permit a complete assessment of the value of the work.

It is therefore recommended that a PROJECT be set up within
the frame work of this Section to study this problem and that the work be
carried on a part time basis until such time as sufficient tangible
results can be seen to warrant more definitive action. Cost of the
program in its initial stages are expected to be less than a few hundred
dollars and can be carried by our Radio Standards Lab appropriation.

Attached hereto is a draft of terms of reference for such a
project which, if authorized, will enable us to proceed with this
research work within our own organization.

Content from External Source

 

[NorCal Dave]

There is nothing mysterious about Smith's ideas and where they came from, he tells us. In the memo (bold by Itsme):

Scully claimed that the preliminary studies of one saucer which fell into the hands of the United States Government indicated
that they operated on some hitherto unknown magnetic principles.

Content from External Source

This a reference to John Scully and his book Behind the Flying Saucers, also mentioned in the memo.

So, what about Scully:

Francis Joseph Xavier Scully

Content from External Source

; (April 28 1892 – June 23 1964)[1][4] was an American journalist, author, humorist, and a regular columnist for the entertainment trade magazine Variety.

Content from External Source

Scully's 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers expanded on the themes of flying saucer crashes and dead extraterrestrials, with Scully describing one of his sources as having "more degrees than a thermometer."[12] In 1952 and 1956, True magazine published articles by San Francisco Chronicle reporter John Philip Cahn[13][14] that purported to expose Scully's sources as con artists who had hoaxed Scully.[15]

Content from External Source

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

The Aztec UFO hoax:

The Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax (sometimes known as the "other Roswell") was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology.

Content from External Source

Scully wrote that the crashed UFO along with other flying saucers captured by the government came from Venus and worked on "magnetic principles". According to Scully, the inhabitants stocked concentrated food wafers and "heavy water" for drinking purposes, and every dimension of the craft was "divisible by nine". Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Scully's story as full of "wild imaginings" and "scientific howlers".[7]

Content from External Source

During the late 1940s and early 50s, Silas Newton and Leo A. Gebauer traveled through Aztec, attempting to sell devices known in the oil business as "doodlebugs."[8] They claimed that these devices could find oil, gas and gold, and that they could do so because they were based on "alien technology" recovered from the supposed crash of a flying saucer.

Content from External Source

The two were convicted of fraud in 1953.[1][3]

Content from External Source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec,_New_Mexico_UFO_hoax

So, Scully's book has recovered alien technology that uses "magnetic principles".

Smith's memo also mentions Keyhoe's flying saucer book:

While in Washington attending the NARB Conference, two books were released, one titled "Behind the Flying Saucer" by Frank Scully, and
the other "The Flying Saucers are Real" by Donald Keyhoe.

Content from External Source

It was printed in paperback by Gold Medal Books, in 1950, and sold for 25 cents. In December, 1949, prior to the publishing of the book, Keyhoe published an article by the same name in True magazine, with similar material.[2][3] The book was a huge success and popularized many ideas in ufology that are still widely believed today.

Content from External Source

Which also contains the idea of alien technology and reverse engineering:

Keyhoe further stated that Earth had been visited by extraterrestrials for two centuries, with the frequency of these visits increasing sharply after the first atomic weapon test in 1945. Citing anecdotal evidence, he intimated the Air Force may have attained and adapted some aspect of the alien technology, its method of propulsion and perhaps its source of power. He believed the Air Force or the United States federal government would eventually reveal these technologies to the public when the Soviet Union was no longer a threat.

Content from External Source

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

We can see where Smith is getting some of his ideas, a pulp paperback book and a hoax to sell "alien" doodlebugs. At the time of the memo, 1950, it was not known that Scully had been hoaxed, but the rest of his book is dubious at best.

As noted before, his other source for these claims in his memo:

I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:

a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States
Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.

b. Flying saucers exist.

c. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made
by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.

d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be
of tremendous significance.

Content from External Source

Appears to be a Robert Sarbacher (bold in the original):

Bremner arranged an interview with Dr. Robert Sarbacher, an electrical engineer and guided missile scientist with an impressive background, but most importantly, who was then a consultant to the U.S. Research and Development Board (RDB). In the interview on September 15, 1950, Sarbacher was to tell Bremner/Smith that Scully was essentially correct, flying saucers existed, they didn't originate on Earth, and the subject was the most highly classified in the U.S. government, at a level higher than the H-bomb. This is all recorded in Smith's handwritten notes of the meeting and a top secret memo Smith wrote to the Canadian Dept. of Transport on November 21, 1950.

Smith's memo also stated that Dr. Vannevar Bush [the former U.S. head of the OSRD (Office of Scientific Research & Development) during WWII and who created the postwar RDB] was in charge of a small group looking into the "modus operandi" of the saucers. (The latter piece of information was not in Smith's notes of the meeting and may have come from another government source.)

Content from External Source

http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Smith_papers.html

I'm not sure on the source for this, it seems to be a pro Roswell site and the link to "Smith's handwritten notes of the meeting" is broken. However another link gave this:


http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Smith_9_15_50.html

This is where the previously used source got it's information:

https://angelicvisions25.wordpress.com/2018/02/05/ufos-wilbert-smith-and-the-canadians/

As is common in UFOLogy, the sourcing becomes layered or circular. Nevertheless, what is claimed is that "Scully was essentially correct", except he wasn't. And that UFOs were classified "higher than the H-Bomb". According to a consultant. I guess the point is, Sarbacher was consulting to Bush's RBD, so that means he was read into the very classified UFO program. Of course, that raises the question of why he's blabbing about it with some Canadian radio guy he just met.

Here is a letter Sarbacher wrote in 1983 remembering the time in question. It's in a non-copy PDF, so here is a series of screen shots:





http://roswellproof.homestead.com/Sarbacher_Nov1983.html

He makesa lot of claims, but offers little proof.

More later.

 

[Rick Robson]

The Aztec UFO hoax:

The Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax (sometimes known as the "other Roswell") was a flying saucer crash alleged to have happened in 1948 in Aztec, New Mexico. The story was first published in 1949 by author Frank Scully in his Variety magazine columns, and later in his 1950 book Behind the Flying Saucers. In the mid-1950s, the story was exposed as a hoax fabricated by two con men, Silas M. Newton and Leo A. Gebauer, as part of a fraudulent scheme to sell supposed alien technology.

And I thought the debate over what occurred there was far from settled, mind you.

 

[NorCal Dave]

And I thought the debate over what occurred there was far from settled, mind you.

Without starting a new thread, the Aztec UFO is classic UFOlogy. There is a report or story, in this case by Scully in the entertainment industry magazine, Variety, then his book, Behind the Flying Saucers. It gets investigated and solved or explained or debunked or whatever one wants to call it. As a result it goes away, only to be resurrected years later with "new evidence" and "new witnesses". Joe Nickel calls this the Roswell Syndrome.

As this book and story seem to be important to Smith a quick overview is warranted, starting with Scully's style. Here is a bit of his column that he wrote for Variety, presumably a similar column is where he first talked about the Aztec UFO. I'll only touch on it, but it's just a bunch of "I was told this" andicdotes with no names or proof of anything. I encourage others to read the whole column, and explain how anybody took his book seriously (bold by me):

I have just spent a weekend with scientists who know all there is to know about flying saucers, not only from this planet but from others.

Weeks ago these sages informed me that they had checked on two of the disks which had landed here from another planet and even told where the patters had landed: The Mojave Desert got one and the Sahara got the other.

The one that landed in Africa was more cracked than a psychiatrist but the other panicked gently to the earth like a slow motion of Sonja Henie imitating a dying swan.

All the saucer showed on inspection was a tiny hole in its side about the size of a 6B pencil. The word "pencil" made the scientists think of Venus, a planet well within the cruising limits of our solar system. IF the disk traveled on magnetic waves, the Scientists assured me the round trip from Venus and back could be made in 42 minutes. This one obviously had come down on a one-way pass.

Content from External Source

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Scully's_Scrapbook_of_October_8,_1949

I don't know if it's supposed to be satire, or tongue-in-cheek or just entertainment, it is Variety magazine after all, but this is who wrote up the Aztec UFO story and when he did, he named his sources:

According to Scully, in March 1948 an unidentified aerial craft containing sixteen humanoid bodies was recovered by the military in New Mexico after making a controlled landing in Hart Canyon 12 miles northeast of the city of Aztec. The craft was said to be 99 feet (30 m) in diameter, the largest UFO to date. Scully named as his sources two men identified as Newton and Gebauer, who reportedly told him the incident had been covered up and "the military had taken the craft for secret research".[3][5][6]

Scully wrote that the crashed UFO along with other flying saucers captured by the government came from Venus and worked on "magnetic principles". According to Scully, the inhabitants stocked concentrated food wafers and "heavy water" for drinking purposes, and every dimension of the craft was "divisible by nine". Science writer Martin Gardner criticized Scully's story as full of "wild imaginings" and "scientific howlers".[7]

Content from External Source

And these are the only 2 witnesses to the entire event and as mentioned above they were known for selling alien "doodlebugs" for oil exploration:

The two men told Frank Scully, a columnist for Variety, about the UFO crash. There were no other witnesses (local newspaper accounts don't show anything for the relevant dates). Scully claimed in his book that Newton and Gebauer told him the military had taken the craft for secret research.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-279533

In addition, there has never been any physical evidence that I'm aware of related to the event. It's just a story.

J.P. Cahn of the San Fransisco Chronical heard about the story, tracked Newton and Gebauer down and revealed the hoax:

Cahn managed to convince Newton and Gebauer to give him a sample of the alien metal, which turned out to be aluminum.

Cahn's account of the alien ship hoax - and the two swindlers -- appeared in True magazine in 1952. The result was that several people who had been conned by Newton and Gebauer came forward. One of their victims was Herman Glader, a Denver millionaire who had the wherewithal to press charges. Newton and Gebauer were convicted of fraud the next year.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-279533

That should be the end of the story.A few years after it was reported, the only known sources for the story were convicted of fraud.

Through the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, most Ufologists considered the subject thoroughly discredited and therefore avoided it.

Content from External Source

But as UFO book writers are always looking for something to fill pages they simple regurgitated the story years later and/or intertwined it with Roswell:

In 1966, the book Incident at Exeter mentioned rumors of dead alien bodies stored at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. Those rumors inspired the 1968 novel The Fortec Conspiracy. In 1974, Ufologist Robert Spencer Carr publicly claimed alien bodies recovered near Aztec were stored at "Hangar 18" at Wright-Patterson, prompting official denials from the Air Force.[11]

However, in the late 70s, author Leonard Stringfield purported that not only was the incident real, but that the craft involved was one of many captured and stored by the U.S. military.[12]

Content from External Source

The Aztec hoax appeared again in 1986, when William Steinman and Wendelle Stevens published a book called UFO Crash at Aztec. In 1998 Linda Mouton Howe, a documentary filmmaker, claimed to have government documents proving that an alien ship had landed in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. That proof was the Hottel memo.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-279533

Note Linda Mouton Howe(LMH) and the Hottel memo. LHM figures prominently in our discussion of alien meta-materials linked at the bottom.
The Hottel memo is claimed by UFOlogist to prove both the Aztec UFO crash and Roswell UFO crash, even though it has nothing to do with Roswell (bold by me):

News organizations across the world were taken in -- once again -- by a hoax that was perpetrated more than 50 years ago.

The infamous Hottel memo was posted on several sites, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation's vault. It was touted as newly revealed this week. The memo supposedly confirms that alien ships landed in the U.S. in the late 1940s and the information was covered up.

But in fact the infamous memo has been making the rounds for several years. (It was never classified). The vault is simply a newer system put in place by the FBI over the past week to make accessing documents easier.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-279533

The memo is just a report of what an FBI agent heard about 2nd, 3rd or even 5th hand concerning the Aztec UFO crash. And what he heard led back to the 2 hoaxers, Newton and Gebauer and their "doodlebugs":

The memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The Hottel memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas in January of 1950, which was repeated to Guy Hottel by an Air Force investigator who read the story (and pasted into a memo himself. Such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out). That news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer.

Fick got the story from a two men, I. J. Van Horn and Jack Murphy, who said they got the story from a man named Coulter - actually a radio station advertising manager named George Koehler. Koehler got the story from Silas Newton.

The hoax begins with Newton and his accomplice, Leo A. Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer were peddling doodlebugs -- devices that could supposedly find oil, gas, gold, or anything else that the target of the con was interested in finding.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-27953

So, Hottel got the story from an USAF guy that read it in a Kansas paper, that got the story from Flick, a used car dealer, that heard it from Van Horn and Murphy that heard it from a radio guy, Koehler that got it from Newton. Even without that giant game of telephone, the story was already in Variety and Scully's book came out in 1950, so none of this was secret.

I'm not sure what is "far from settled" about it all. Again, to be fair to Smith, while Scully's column and book are full of wack-a-doodle claims and strange stuff, the fact that it was based on a hoax was not known when Smith wrote his memo.

LMH and meta-material discussed here:

https://www.metabunk.org/threads/meta-materials-from-ufos.12995

 

[Rick Robson]

I'm not sure what is "far from settled" about it all

Again, that's what I thought since no "settling" proof had come about either way.

 

[Mendel]

it's just a bunch of "I was told this" anecdotes with no names or proof of anything

if this wasn't acceptable in UFOlogy, we wouldn't have attention for David Grusch.
UFOlogy loves people who can spin a good story.
It's modern-age fairy-telling.

 

[John J.]

How about Feb 1, 1950? This was 9 months before the Smith memo

If I may say, a relevant and clear piece of evidence that refutes my contention that Smith probably wouldn't have used the phrase "H-bomb". Due regards to Itsme!

Like all of us on Metabunk, when I'm wrong I'm actually happy because it gets us closer to the truth.

I stumble away from the keyboard, look in the mirror...

Seriously though, good call.

 

[NorCal Dave]

Again, that's what I thought since no "settling" proof had come about either way.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you sir. I would argue that there is definitely "settling" proof one way, that it was a hoax and there is no reason to believe anything else. Scully only had the unsubstantiated claims of 2 witnesses and nothing else. The 2 witnesses were hucksters and convicted of fraud. The Aztec UFO crash never happened and the only evidence that it did was the story of 2 hucksters.

The FBI memo was merely an acknowledgment that the FBI had heard of the story.

I would call this "settling" proof of at least a non-UFO crash if not a full hoax.

 

[MonkeeSage]

The memo was the end of a long chain of tale-telling. The Hottel memo repeats a story from the Wyandotte Echo, a legal newspaper in Kansas City, Kansas in January of 1950, which was repeated to Guy Hottel by an Air Force investigator who read the story (and pasted into a memo himself. Such practices were common in the days before scanning documents was possible and memos had to be typed out). That news story draws from the account of a Rudy Fick, a local used car dealer.

Fick got the story from a two men, I. J. Van Horn and Jack Murphy, who said they got the story from a man named Coulter - actually a radio station advertising manager named George Koehler. Koehler got the story from Silas Newton.

The hoax begins with Newton and his accomplice, Leo A. Gebauer. Newton and Gebauer were peddling doodlebugs -- devices that could supposedly find oil, gas, gold, or anything else that the target of the con was interested in finding.

Content from External Source

https://www.ibtimes.com/fbi-hottel-memo-reveals-ufo-hoax-27953

So, Hottel got the story from an USAF guy that read it in a Kansas paper, that got the story from Flick, a used car dealer, that heard it from Van Horn and Murphy that heard it from a radio guy, Koehler that got it from Newton. Even without that giant game of telephone, the story was already in Variety and Scully's book came out in 1950, so none of this was secret.

I'm not sure what is "far from settled" about it all. Again, to be fair to Smith, while Scully's column and book are full of wack-a-doodle claims and strange stuff, the fact that it was based on a hoax was not known when Smith wrote his memo.

There is an alleged audio conversation between George Koehler and two AFOSI agents from March 1950. I have no way to verify if the tape is real. It is claimed to be from Scully's archives at the American Heritage Center.

If it is authentic it shows Donald Keyhoe was also in communication with Koehler because he (Keyhoe) "heard through someone, who heard from somebody else, who heard from somebody else that I knew something about it [flying saucers]" (6:10), which might mean some of Keyhoe's claims in his books also ultimately come from Newton through Koehler.

At around 9:30 the AFOSI agent asks if Koehler's source ever gave him any "parts" and claims they have reports he was showing "gadgets" to some clients, which Koehler denies and refuses to name his source. He says he is a true believer and thinks the government should reveal what they know about flying saucers to the public.

Around 18:00 the agent claims Jack Murphy told them that Koehler had "some gears and a couple of little chunks of metal" to which he claims "I don't have the gears or pieces of metal" but refuses to comment if he had ever had them.

I am taking this interview with a huge grain of salt, but if the recording is authentic it would seem to indicate that there were true believers going around at the time showing material they claimed had come from a UFO crash, possibly similar to the bits of aluminum given to J.P. Cahn, and which ultimately came from Silas Newton, and that Smith could have potentially heard about or got his hands on some of them.


Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVzZy9dKY1Q

Article:

As you might expect, once experts were able to investigate his claims, many pieces of Newton’s story fell apart. The “mystery metal,” which he claimed was indestructible, was identified as nothing but ordinary aluminum, with no unusual properties. The Doodlebugs were determined to be constructed of surplus military radio parts. Far from the professed $800,000 price tag, the estimated cost for each useless device was roughly $3.50. By this point, Newton had begun to walk back many of his alien claims, and was stating that these were merely stories he had heard from others, and he had no idea whether they held any veracity.

Source: https://history.denverlibrary.org/news/flying-saucers-and-fraud-silas-m-newton-story

 

[Bob Jase]

"There is an ALLEDGED audio conversation between George Koehler and two AFOSI agents from March 1950. I have NO WAY TO VERIFY if the tape is real. It is CLAIMED to be from Scully's archives at the American Heritage Center."

Well that's enuff proof for me!/

 

[Itsme]

Stanton Friedman interviewed Dr Sarbacher in 1983.
The transcript is at: http://www.nicap.org/reports2/Stanton Friedman - Robert Sarbacher Interview -1983.htm

It seems Sarbacher had an office at the Pentagon and got much of his info from conversations and rumors he heard there.

Below are the bits and pieces which are relevant:

S: I had to run my own business, my laboratory and I couldn't go to all the meetings. Now they did have, at least I was told, that's when Karl Compton was down there.

F: Ya.

S: I was told that they had recovered a UFO with some people in it.

F: Bodies, whatever.

S: I don't know, that's what I think was told.

F: Did he tell you where?

S: Well we were having a meeting at Wright Field and I couldn't go.

F: Oooohh

S: But later on one of the fellows said to me that those guys, if they were people, were made like insects. They didn't have any skin on their bodies.

F: Hmmm.

S: So they were saying that's how they were able to accelerate and decelerate without being torn apart. You see if we were going a thousand miles a second and stopped in a minute well we would be squished.

F: Ummmm, not quite but

S: Well it's pretty bad

F: Well you can, you can receive a hell of a jolt if the force is in the right direction and if the duration is sufficiently short.

S: Yes

F: Ah but that's with the Research and Development board or did it precede that when you found this out?

S: I cant xxxxxx (?) remember and I'm not sure that they were right whether they were just guessing or something.

F: No okay, uh ... well but it is the Research and Development board meeting that your talking about.

S: Ya Ya

F: Okay. Well... who...did ya get any clue as to where the crash had occurred.

S: Well it was somewhere out west.

F: Okay, and do think that this ... any idea what year this was?

S: Well ya, let's see if Freddy was there in Washington it was in the early 50's.

F: Okay did they imply the crash had just happened or that this had happened sometime before

S: Well ya, the conversation was that it had been recovered

F: Ummm.

S: It crashed, that's what they were talking about, we were going to have a meeting going out to discuss it xxxxx overload xxxx xxxxx xxxxx (cant make out both speaking at once)

F: Let's see early fifties now the notes that I sent you from Wilbert Smith, do you remember, you do remember talking to him.

S: Ya vaguely

F: The Canadian.

S: Ya vaguely

F: Okay, that, his notes were, ah 1950 and let me see exact date September 15th where his notes 1950. He asked you a question that you didn't answer at that time which was rather fascinating (??) maybe you've just given me the answer in a sense, ah he quotes you as saying " Yes it is classified two points higher even than the H Bomb. In fact the most highly classified subject in the US government at the present time." and

S: I don't have the slightest idea why.

F: Well

S: It seems silly to me.

F: Well, his next comment, that was supposedly what you said and then his next comment was ah "May I ask the reason for the classification" and you said " You may ask but I can't tell you." Well think that (cut off)

S: Well probably cause I didn't know.

F: Oh, okay not because of this crash, you see there is no mention of a crash per say in this note. Do you think it could have happened after this?

S: I don't know there may have been several of them. Ah there was some talk that there were.

[...]

S: We had an office in the Pentagon [...]

S: That's right and I came down and I was in that, and worked on it, for a long time and I guess it was over a year, maybe a couple of years, I don't know, I don't remember. But I know it was during that time we had an office there that we all went to. You know.

F: The Research and Development Board

S: Ya the Research & Development Board. It was sort of like a little cabinet post.

F: Ok so the guys there told you about the UFO's

S: Ya it was among those fellows in conversation.

F: Remember any of those guys?

S: Not a one. Not a one. Fred would know them all. I should think that somewhere among his files he would have a list of all the men that worked there

F: Oh ya. He did. as a matter of fact he had names at his fingertips so to speak

S: Ya I know, Fred was right in the middle of it

F: Ok so you think it was one of those guys that....

S: It was somebody in that group, ya they were just yakking aloud around a water bottle or something

F: Ya

S: Whether they were talking facts or just, just be guessing because one of the big questions was if these damn things were actually not what you might call an optical illusion with some kind of light beam creating them. For they were accelerating at great speeds and they went in formation. They went you know like ducks.

F: Ya and the question was how the heck they worked

S: Ya how they worked and what are they made of and how can they go so fast, and go, speed they can go, well you could see one one minute and the next minute it was gone. I mean it was you could see it go.

[...]

F: Let me get back to Wilbert Smith. How did he happen to wind up with you as opposed to anybody else on the committee. Do you know who referred him to you or...

S: No.

F: Or were there any other Canadians that you can think of that you had any dealings with.

S: I don't remember.

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