Background This is the write-up in the Condon report about this incident: At 11:25 a.m. (5 August or 15 August) Witness I, general manager of the Great Falls Electrics, a baseball team, was making an inspection of the baseball stadium (1,3) with his secretary, Witness II. In virtually all early publications (e.g., 3,5) the date for this is consistently given as 15 August 1950. However, Dr. Roy Craig of the Colorado project notes early correspondence between Witness I and Project Blue Book that raises an uncertainty about the date. A letter dated 9 January 1953, from Great Falls AFB (renamed…
Author: John Greenewald
Background The Ethics in Government Act of 1978, borne out of the Watergate scandal, established the Office of Government Ethics and the position of a Designated Agency Ethics Official in each executive branch agency. The Act is intended to promote the integrity of public officials and institutions. To that end, the Act created mandatory public disclosure of certain designated public officials’ financial and employment history and restricted lobbying activities of public officials after leaving office. According to CFR 5 § 2638.203, the Duties of the designated agency ethics official are: (a) In general. The designated agency ethics official shall coordinate and manage…
Background Crypto AG was a Swiss company specializing in communications and information security. It was secretly jointly owned by the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) from 1970 until about 1993, with the CIA continuing as sole owner until about 2018. With headquarters in Steinhausen, the company was a long-established manufacturer of encryption machines and a wide variety of cipher devices. Document Archive CIA GLOMAR Response on Crypto AG Documents [2 Pages, 1MB]
By John Greenewald, Jr. – The Black Vault – Originally Published March 12, 2020 On October 17th, 2019, public-benefit corporation To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science (TTSA) issued a press release that they created an agreement with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command (CCDC) to “advance materiel and technology innovations.” This collaboration is called a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement or CRADA (pronounced CRAY-DUH). Details were scarce in the original press release, but The Black Vault was quickly able to contact the Army; secure a copy of the CRADA agreement; and then publish it the next day.…
Background According to the summary of the memorandum: “Three unmanned lunar launchings this year, together with other new evidence and further analysis, clearly indicate a continuing strong Soviet interest in lunar exploration. We still cannot state conclusively, however, that the Soviets are in a race with the US for a manned lunar landing. On balance, we have no basis for changing our earlier estimate that the chances are better than even that the Soviets will seek to accomplish a manned lunar landing ahead of or in close competition with the US. It remains possible nevertheless, that Soviet lunar objectives are…