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The original was posted on /r/ufos by /u/seabritain on 2024-09-26 16:44:17+00:00.
An important source for this research was The Taking of K-129 by Josh Dean.
I also highly recommend this excellent piece by undersc0red: General Motors, Glomar Explorer, Lockheed Martin & UAP Connections
In 1954, an agreement was signed by Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles and General Nathan Twining, then Chief of Staff of the Air Force, regarding the development of the U-2 spy plane. A small group of about six people, headed by Dulles’ special assistant Richard Bissell and Herbert Miller, Chief of the Office of Scientific Intelligence’s Nuclear Energy Division, began work under the vaguely named Project Staff. It transformed into the Development Projects Staff in 1958 and would officially become the Office of Special Activities in 1962, residing in the newly formed Directorate of Science & Technology. DPS “existed outside of the regular Agency operations, with its own security and communications system” in order to maintain the utmost secrecy.
In 1963, the Special Projects Staff was formed in the Directorate of Science & Technology, taking over the responsibility for satellite programs from the Office of Special Activities. It was officially designated the Office of Special Projects in 1965.
A new Special Projects Staff was established on July 1, 1969 within Carl Duckett’s DS&T with John Parangosky as its head and naval submarine officer Ernest Zellmer as his deputy. The unit was responsible for the planning the retrieval of a sunken Soviet submarine and the creation of the Hughes Glomar Explorer under Project Azorian. Zellmer oversaw the project’s day-to-day operations for the next six years.
The National Underwater Reconnaissance Office was formally established on August 19, 1969, its organization modeled after the NRO by Parangosky with help from Gene Poteat, who notably had headed Project Palladium. Robert Frosch, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research and Development, was named its staff director. Zellmer served as Frosch’s “special assistant”. Frosch was Director of Research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1975-1977 before becoming NASA’s fifth Administrator. He was was appointed vice president of research and development at General Motors Research Laboratories in 1982.
From a journal entry by Jacques Vallee:
Hummingbird. Friday 7 January 1994. …“The reality of an undercurrent, actively driven from Washington, is becoming increasingly obvious. The enigmatic Dan T. Smith is setting up meetings all over the Bay Area, again claiming direction from Pandolfi. He dangles money and rumors, arranging luncheons with people, taking their photographs, taping conversations. He claims that Robert Frosh [sic] (former NASA boss, now at GM) ran a secret UFO study at the Johnson Spacecraft Center in the mid-1970s along with Kit [Green], using microwaves to study their effect on human behavior.”
More from Vallee:
Athanor. Friday 8 March 2002. Now I must review the remarkable exchanges we've had with Kit over the last two weeks. On March 5th he wrote: “I never interviewed the surgeons who did the prosection (can't say “autopsy” if not done by a credited pathologist) but I read their purported notes. They looked fine. In fact, the arcanalia of the way a doctor describes dissection are weird enough, I have never believed the notes were hoaxes.... In this business, high-quality science isn't the first thought of the persons trying to find consultants. Bronk had credentials but wasn't qualified. Stahl was qualified and had credentials but was not on the inside. Hynek was credentialed but had no medical qualifications. The ‘surgeons’ were cleared but had neither credentials nor qualifications.” Later the same day, he added: “I do now recall that I spoke with one Air Force physician... Donald Flickinger MD, Brigadier General....about the Alien autopsy material. He was a consultant to me on soviet spacecraft, Apollo-Soyuz and later brought me on as his consultant on the Glomar Explorer project, where he was the medical director, and asked me to take on the job as Forensic Analyst of the remains. For about ten years he was the Executive Secretary of the VIP health program in my division of the CIA managed by Myles Maxfield, MD, PhD. Myles was ever-so-much my academic superior, but I was the Administrative Director of the program. Don told me he had seen the autopsy material, too... many years earlier, when he was the first Air Force MD to make the rank of General Officer, post the manned spaceflight effort, the medical portion of which he headed. He told me it was all real. He told me that in 1994, after I had known him well for 16 years. But he was never able to get me cleared for that program, as he was for the Jennifer program.”
A little more:
Las Vegas. Sunday 28 March 2004. …How likely is it that such a project would have 800 cleared names on its list? Surprisingly, that’s possible. Kit said that “Project Jennifer, the Glomar Explorer, had over 5,000 names. That doesn’t mean these folks knew what was going on; the levels were severely controlled. I was never cleared for it while at the Agency. General Don Flickinger kept telling me he was working on getting me cleared, but he never did. “Once I was at GM, and got the clearance, a lot of people with whom I had been working before, some of them for twelve years, tapped me on the shoulder with congratulations: ‘Glad to have you on board!’ but I had never suspected they were part of it. The funding was interesting: Jennifer was a CIA project but it was funded laterally out of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) budget, and even the Director of Central Intelligence was not cleared for it, although he knew there was ‘a project.’ This may be similar. Typically, the integrating contractor is not the operating contractor.”
Flickinger had headed the U-2 aeromedical program and served as Project Aquatone’s medical advisor for nearly a decade.
In 1961, a man named Norm Nelson had been handpicked by Parangosky, Bissell’s assistant and chief of DPS, to serve as a plant and “babysitter” in Kelly Johnson’s Skunk Works, Lockheed’s Advanced Products Development company. Nelson would report directly to Bissell during this time. He was later embedded at Azorian’s program office as the project kicked off, taking on the role of “Parangosky’s spy—his eyes and ears—and the two had daily debriefs by phone”. He oversaw Glomar Explorer project for Hughes Tool Company then returned to Skunk Works in 1976, where he became program manager and chief engineer of the stealth fighter programs under Ben Rich. He was vice president and general manager of the Skunk Works from 1984-1988.
Dick Sampson joined the Office of Special Activities in 1964. Sampson “wrote the first industrial security manual for special projects, his manual becoming the forerunner to the current manual at Area 51”, and is credited with creating the call sign JANET for EG&G’s commuter flights that transported workers between Las Vegas, Area 51, and Burbank. Sampson was swapped into Norm Nelson’s role in 1965 and established DDS&T’s Western Industrial Liaison Detachment, which was located in the same building that would house Project Azorian. He served as commander of the Area 51 test facility at Groom Lake from 1969-1971, then would later become chief of the Commercial Division, Special Projects Staff, playing a major role in the Glomar project. After leaving the CIA in 1976, he took a job as manager of Special Projects at Hughes Aircraft Company's Radar Systems Group until 1980. After Hughes, he became manager of Security and Protective Services for Northrop's Advanced Systems Division during top secret development of the B-2 Advanced Technology Bomber and would remain at Northrop until his retirement in the early 1990s.
In a 2022 interview with Bobby Ray In...
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