At the press conference, Speriglio flatly refused to reveal the identities of the two agencies, and he refused to reveal the names when questioned later, too.
The Revealing Truth of Ufos, Secret Aircraft, Cover-Ups & Conspiracies: Area 51
One of the lesser-known aspects of this story is that Speriglio made a very brief comment to the effect that copies of the document were in the hands of what he described as “two federal agencies.” At the press conference, Speriglio flatly refused to reveal the identities of the two agencies, and he refused to reveal the names when questioned later, too. So far, nothing of any substance has ever surfaced in relation to what, exactly, those two agencies may have done with the document, if anything, at all, of course.
Now let’s take a look at the contents of the document.
Most of those contents are focused on conversations between two people: Dorothy Kilgallen and a friend of hers named Howard Rothberg. The former was a well-known figure in the field of celebrity journalism in the 1950s and who was deeply interested in the JFK assassination. As an aside, when the Speriglio–Cooper document surfaced, I fired off FOIA requests to the CIA and the FBI and received copies of their files on Kilgallen. The CIA papers were few and brief, to say the least. The FBI, however, mailed me close to 170 pages on Kilgallen, demonstrating that she was someone who was watched very closely by J. Edgar Hoover’s special agents.
As for what the purported CIA document states, this is significant: “Rothberg discussed the apparent comeback of [Marilyn Monroe] with Kilgallen and the breakup with the Kennedys. Rothberg told Kilgallen that she was attending Hollywood parties hosted by the ‘inner circle’ among Hollywood’s elite and was becoming the talk of the town again. Rothberg indicated in so many words, that she had secrets to tell, no doubt arising from her trists [sic] with the President and the Attorney General.” Now we get to the crux of the story.
The document reveals: “One such [illegible] mentions the visit by the President at a secret air base for the purpose of inspecting things from outer space. Kilgallen replied that she knew what might be the source of the visit. In the mid-fifties Kilgallen learned of secret effort by US and UK governments to identify the origins of crashed spacecraft and dead bodies, from a British government official. Kilgallen believed the story may have come from the [illegible] in the late forties. Kilgallen said that if the story is true, it could cause terrible embarrassment to Jack and his plans to have NASA put men on the moon.” It is true that Dorothy Kilgallen wrote—briefly—about UFOs back in 1955.
While vacationing in the United Kingdom in that year, Kilgallen was on the receiving end of a very odd story, as she noted: “I can report today on a story which is positively spooky, not to mention chilling. British scientists and airmen, after examining the wreckage of one mysterious flying ship, are convinced these strange aerial objects are not optical illusions or Soviet inventions, but are flying saucers which originate on another planet. The source of my information is a British official of cabinet rank who prefers to remain unidentified.”
That same “British official of cabinet rank” reportedly advised Kilgallen of the following: “We believe, on the basis of our inquiry thus far, that the saucers were staffed by small men—probably under four feet tall. It’s frightening, but there’s no denying the flying saucers come from another planet.” Kilgallen had more to say: “This official quoted scientists as saying a flying ship of this type could not have possibly been constructed on Earth. The British Government, I learned, is withholding an official report on the ‘flying saucer’ examination at this time, possibly because it does not wish to frighten the public.
When my husband and I arrived here from a brief vacation, I had no premonition that I would be catapulting myself into the controversy over whether flying saucers are real or imaginary.” The references in the document to Marilyn having “secrets to tell” (secrets that were supposedly shared with her by JFK and RFK) have led a number of UFO investigators to conclude that Marilyn was killed because of what she knew about the Roswell, New Mexico, event of July 1947. The alleged CIA document goes on to refer to Monroe’s “diary of secrets,” to “what the newspapers would do with such disclosures,” and how she had “threatened to hold a press conference and would tell all.” A countdown to death, all in the name of maintaining UFO secrecy? Well, yes, that’s how it seems, but within the domain of ufology, practically nothing is as it seems.
It’s important to note that at the top of the document is a reference to a Project Moon Dust. Over the years, ufologists have given a great deal of attention to this U.S. military program, which in government circles is also referred to as Moondust. Its origins date back to the 1950s. The reason why so much attention has been placed upon Project Moon Dust is because of its potential connection to the issue of alleged crashed and recovered UFOs held by elements of the U.S. military—crash retrievals, or C/Rs, as they are generally known—but was Project Moon Dust really the key operation in secretly locating and recovering crashed ships from faraway worlds?
No, it was not. A November 3, 1961, U.S. Air Force document states: “In addition to their staff duty assignments, intelligence team personnel have peacetime duty functions in support of such Air Force projects as Moondust, Bluefly, and UFO, and other AFCIN directed quick reaction projects which require intelligence team operational capabilities.… Unidentified Flying Objects (UFO): Headquarters USAF has established a program for investigation of reliably reported unidentified flying objects within the United States. AFR 200-2 delineates 1127th collection responsibilities.…”
That all sounds very interesting, but if you take a careful look at all of the Project Moon Dust documents in the public domain (which I have done), it becomes very clear that when the military was referring to “UFOs” in their files, they were not talking about alien spacecraft. Rather, they were referencing probable space debris that originated with the former Soviet Union, which brings me back to the document that got Milo Speriglio fired up.