The Mogul Perspective: Mogul and OPSEC
You have to love the skeptics. No matter what evidence surfaces, they’ll find a way to spin it to their advantage. As many of you know, I have been suggesting for quite a while that the Project Mogul answer doesn’t work to explain the Roswell UFO crash because it just wasn’t as secret as everyone has been claiming. I mean, we’ve learned that the members of the Mogul team did know the name back in the 1940s, the equipment was bought off-the-shelf so that it did not present a new advance in balloon technology, and we know that the launches weren’t all that classified either. I’ve said as much.
Now I learn that one of the skeptics has decided that OPSEC applies to Mogul and this is the theory under which we can retreat to the idea that Mogul was the highly classified project that has been claimed.
OPSEC?
For those not familiar with the world of military secrecy, OPSEC stands for Operational Security which means that the operation, whatever it might by, has a need for security. A bomber flight from a base outside of the war zone to a target inside, has a need for OPSEC. You don’t want the enemy to know that you’re coming so that he will be ready to oppose the attack. You want to keep the details of the mission secret for the surprise.
But we need OPSEC for a balloon launch? A balloon launch which, I might add, had to be announced in the NOTAMs (Notice to Airmen) so they would know that these aerial monstrosities known as balloon arrays would be floating through the New Mexico skies (or other skies as the winds and the project might dictate). A balloon launch which would have been known to the officers at the 509thBomb Group in Roswell because the project officers had been there to tell them about it.
OPSEC has nothing to do with this. The fact that there were people in New Mexico in June and July 1947 launching huge arrays of balloons had so little need for OPSEC, that newspapers around the country carried stories about the balloons. Not the ultimate purpose mind you, but that these arrays were being launched from Alamogordo for research purposes. So much for OPSEC.
The classified part of the mission was that they were attempting to create a constant level balloon so that they could float them over the Soviet Union, or close to it, and listen for atomic detonations. This was the big secret and this was the classified purpose. I’m not sure how highly classified this might have been, but it really is the only part of the project to be classified.
But the operation in New Mexico, the launches, had no need for OPSEC.
Troop movements had a need for OPSEC. Missions into enemy territory had a need for OPSEC. The Normandy Invasion had a need for OPSEC, but not the launch of a bunch of balloons in New Mexico in an experiment to see if they would stay at the same level for a long period of time.
Here’s the problem for those who believe in the Mogul answer for the Roswell events. They have to explain the extraordinary effort to recover the debris, and all the interest generated when the debris was found. Mogul seemed to be tailor-made for that. A highly classified project that was so secret that even the participants didn’t know the real name. But all that has fallen apart. Albert Crary, the project director, knew the name in 1946, as did Charles Moore, who would claim that he didn’t learn the name until the 1990s when Robert Todd told him. But Moore was wrong on that point just as a letter in his own files proved. Forgotten the name, maybe, but he had known it in the 1940s.
We have newspaper articles from the time telling us about the project and the launches of the balloon arrays. We even have pictures of them launching the balloons in Alamogordo, which, of course, suggests that the launches weren’t all that secret. So, what do we do? We trot out OPSEC and then lecture us all on the importance of operational security.
But OPSEC is another red herring, just as the anthropomorphic dummies and the high altitude parachute tests were red herrings. Throw out enough confusing information and you’ll have hidden the truth in the blur. This is known as disinformation, and while I’m not a big fan of claiming government disinformation on the Roswell crash, it certainly is beginning to look like it. Or at a skeptical retreat into disinformation.
The latest, of course, is not a government attempt to bury the truth. Just one more skeptic who sees himself as the keeper of the flame and he who knows “The Truth.” Throw out a term, OPSEC, because it looks good and it sounds intimidating and people will think you know what you’re talking about. OPSEC, however, is not a consideration on a mission that is transparent, as we say in today’s world. The balloon launches, the arrays, and the schedules were not classified, just the ultimate purpose and to protect that, you didn’t need OPSEC.