CIA REDACTIONS by Charles Tromblee

CIA REDACTIONS         9/2012

One of my favorite ufologists is Stanton Friedman. Part of his routine in speaking about UFOs is to show a couple of pages of government released documents on the subject, and these pages shows a shockingly small amount of readable words per page, the remainder being blacked out. In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence that there is a UFO coverup, yet few people who argue the case for UFOs use this piece of evidence to any great extent. Shown below is an example of one of the UFO document’s redacted pages that I copied from Stanton Friedman’s web site. This page looks to be about 80-90% redacted. A few redaction-related quotes from Mr. Friedman are appended.* For another example, you will see Mr. Friedman paging through a redacted UFO document at the 3:18 mark at the following YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeG0RpyxE6Q&feature=related

Now, we all know that UFOs are supposed to be of no interest to our intelligence community, so what is the government’s reason for all of these redactions? The main excuse is that the agency does not want to reveal its “sources and methods.”  Obviously, even an idiot can qualitatively reason that this does not make sense; i.e. that sources and methods should not take up about 95% of any document. 

In 1972 the CIA learned that Victor Marchetti, a former high level employee of the CIA, intended to publish a book about the CIA, entitled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. It is not a UFO book. The CIA blocked its publication, citing a danger of “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.” Thus it became the first book ever to have been censored prior to its publication. Through extensive legal challenges, Marchetti got the CIA to point out what they did not like in the book, and then subsequently got the court system to allow its publication with 300 redactions. Subsequent legal work by the authors resulted in 157 of the redactions being allowed, and the book was published in 1974 **.The publication was done with all 300 of the CIA’s desired redactions highlighted in their original length, even though 143 of them were left blank. All the released redactions are highlighted in the book, and the remaining redactions are shown as the word “Deleted” in parentheses, and the size of the redaction is preserved. Therefore, if one measures the text on an average words per line basis, one can find out for the deleted portions how many words and lines were originally there and convert that to a percentage of the book’s page length. BTW, one page = 45 lines, 333 words avg.

Results of the study of this book are as follows: The median (50% above, 50% below) redaction in the book is 7.5% of a page, NOT 90% or so of a page as with a UFO document.  Now contrast this with the UFO examples that you have seen. “Normal” redactions pertaining to non-UFO subject matter apparently are much smaller than with UFO subject matter. If UFOs are not a matter of interest to the CIA, are not a security issue to the USA, and are not studied by the CIA, then what are all the FOIA extensive redactions pertaining to? Clearly, we have been and still are being lied to.

Out of the 300 total redactions, there were 8 redactions of >1 page in length, and only one redaction > 2 pages in length.

Of the 157 released redactions, 90 deal with sources and methods. The longest sources and methods redaction was 1 page, while the vast majority were 1 or 2 words each, because they were simply revealing a name or a place. Also, none of the 157 certainly could be considered as causing “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.”

Of the 143 redactions left blank, 7 were greater than one page, and the median length was 15% of a page.

Figures 1 and 2 show the frequency of page-percentage redaction lengths in 5 % increments.  I have drawn a “UFO line” at a redaction page % length of about 90-95% which is about the range that Stanton Friedman’s FOIA UFO documents (especially NSA releases) have been redacted. The intent of Figures 1 and 2 is to illustrate how ludicrous the explanation is that only sources and methods would be the reason for 90-95% redaction of a UFO released document.** Clearly, there is a UFO coverup.

At this point I will now move on to mention a few more things that I learned from The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Because this is a book about defining the CIA, there were some redactions which revealed the CIA’s size and organizational structure. There were also some that revealed various policies that they use and positions that they take on various matters. There were also some redactions that were clearly for CYA self protection and to avoid embarrassment. 57 of the 157 released redactions fell into these categories. When you think about these, you realize that in a normal CIA document, none of this type of information would be normally included because there would be no need by the CIA document’s author to define his organization to the readers of his document because they themselves would be fellow CIA employees. If I had “dis-included” these types of redactions, it still would not have changed the dramatic appearance of the “UFO line” versus the typical redaction distributions shown in Figures 1 and 2.

We know that the CIA has moles and employees embedded in universities, state governments, newspapers, etc. but what I did not know is that they also have control over various airlines that they use repeatedly to transport personnel and other mission related things. Air America and Continental Airlines were two of them. The CIA also tries to make money from some of its operations so that they can fill their coffers for mission related expenses without going to the government to ask for more. You can see why there were rumors about the CIA profiting from drug related activity. The CIA also has its own technology division, much like “Q” does in the 007 movies.

Incidentally, there is no mention of UFOs in the text, although I now find that Victor Marchetti did speak of the UFO issue with respect to the CIA in later years. Also, there is nothing much in his book about the Kennedy assassination either. Anybody who has read much of my stuff will know that I believe that the CIA murdered Kennedy. There is an interesting quote in the book by Harry Truman, the person under whom the CIA was (poorly) created: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.” President Truman said this in December, 1963 long after leaving office. Kennedy had been assassinated only 1 month prior. Do you think he had a suspicion that maybe his CIA creation, formed by copying a totalitarian, Gestapo secret police organizational model with no oversight, had done the job? Ironically, one of the criticisms of the CIA by the author is that it is too often used by the President as a personal tool. Clearly, they view the President as their Leader. But as we know from Roman history, many times the emperor was assassinated by his own guards. I suppose that if Marchetti did put anything about the assassination or UFOs in his book, it would never have been published at all, and maybe Mr. Marchetti would have gotten a pine box for his efforts.

*From Stanton Friedman’s website, article entitled “Debunkers At It Again”, published 2/3/2009: “No credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public? Is he really unaware of the many TOP SECRET UMBRA CIA UFO documents that have been released so heavily redacted that many pages say “Deny in Toto” or that many others are blacked out except for fewer than eight words. Is he really unaware that because of a FOIA court case, the NSA has admitted finding 156 TOP SECRET UMBRA UFO documents. When finally released, one could read about one sentence per page with the  rest being whited out. The excuse for redaction was that it is illegal to release sources and methods information. It is absurd to suggest that more than 95% of these UFO documents consisted of sources and methods information. Federal Court Judge Gerhard Gesell agreed the documents should not be released. “The Public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by the potential danger to the security of the United States should this information be released,” he wrote."

5/4/12 UFO Chronicles “The UFO Bestiary: A Rebuttal By Stanton T. Friedman”: “Perhaps you can tell me what is under the whiteout used by the NSA on better than 95% of the material on 156 pages of old TOP SECRET UMBRA NSA UFO documents? All one can read is about one sentence per page. How about the many pages of TOP SECRET UMPRA CIA UFO documents; almost all of which are blacked out? No Cover-up?”

3/9/12 UFO Chronicles: “When finally more or less released, one could read several words per page in the CIA stuff with the rest being blacked out and about one sentence per page on the 156 NSA UFO documents with the rest being whited out.”

**This is clearly an old book (1974), but one must keep in mind that FOIA released UFO documents with all their redactions are of this period as well. Therefore, I think that it is legitimate to compare these redactions to UFO FOIA redactions.

***I am using my own redaction count in this paper because the book’s count is wrong. The book’s count is 339 redactions of which 168 were disallowed, and my own count is 300 of which 143 were disallowed. The publisher used a sloppy method of counting.

CIA REDACTIONS      by Chuck Tromblee   9/2012

One of my favorite ufologists is Stanton Friedman. Part of his routine in speaking about UFOs is to show a couple of pages of government released documents on the subject, and these pages shows a shockingly small amount of readable words per page, the remainder being blacked out. In my opinion, this is one of the most powerful pieces of evidence that there is a UFO coverup, yet few people who argue the case for UFOs use this piece of evidence to any great extent. Shown below is an example of one of the UFO document’s redacted pages that I copied from Stanton Friedman’s web site. This page looks to be about 80-90% redacted. A few redaction-related quotes from Mr. Friedman are appended.* For another example, you will see Mr. Friedman paging through a redacted UFO document at the 3:18 mark at the following YouTube video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeG0RpyxE6Q&feature=related

Now, we all know that UFOs are supposed to be of no interest to our intelligence community, so what is the government’s reason for all of these redactions? The main excuse is that the agency does not want to reveal its “sources and methods.”  Obviously, even an idiot can qualitatively reason that this does not make sense; i.e. that sources and methods should not take up about 95% of any document. 

In 1972 the CIA learned that Victor Marchetti, a former high level employee of the CIA, intended to publish a book about the CIA, entitled The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. It is not a UFO book. The CIA blocked its publication, citing a danger of “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.” Thus it became the first book ever to have been censored prior to its publication. Through extensive legal challenges, Marchetti got the CIA to point out what they did not like in the book, and then subsequently got the court system to allow its publication with 300 redactions. Subsequent legal work by the authors resulted in 157 of the redactions being allowed, and the book was published in 1974 **.The publication was done with all 300 of the CIA’s desired redactions highlighted in their original length, even though 143 of them were left blank. All the released redactions are highlighted in the book, and the remaining redactions are shown as the word “Deleted” in parentheses, and the size of the redaction is preserved. Therefore, if one measures the text on an average words per line basis, one can find out for the deleted portions how many words and lines were originally there and convert that to a percentage of the book’s page length. BTW, one page = 45 lines, 333 words avg.

Results of the study of this book are as follows: The median (50% above, 50% below) redaction in the book is 7.5% of a page, NOT 90% or so of a page as with a UFO document.  Now contrast this with the UFO examples that you have seen. “Normal” redactions pertaining to non-UFO subject matter apparently are much smaller than with UFO subject matter. If UFOs are not a matter of interest to the CIA, are not a security issue to the USA, and are not studied by the CIA, then what are all the FOIA extensive redactions pertaining to? Clearly, we have been and still are being lied to.

Out of the 300 total redactions, there were 8 redactions of >1 page in length, and only one redaction > 2 pages in length.

Of the 157 released redactions, 90 deal with sources and methods. The longest sources and methods redaction was 1 page, while the vast majority were 1 or 2 words each, because they were simply revealing a name or a place. Also, none of the 157 certainly could be considered as causing “grave and irreparable harm to the United States.”

Of the 143 redactions left blank, 7 were greater than one page, and the median length was 15% of a page.

Figures 1 and 2 show the frequency of page-percentage redaction lengths in 5 % increments.  I have drawn a “UFO line” at a redaction page % length of about 90-95% which is about the range that Stanton Friedman’s FOIA UFO documents (especially NSA releases) have been redacted. The intent of Figures 1 and 2 is to illustrate how ludicrous the explanation is that only sources and methods would be the reason for 90-95% redaction of a UFO released document.** Clearly, there is a UFO coverup.

Now I will move on to mention a few more things that I learned from The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. Because this is a book about defining the CIA, there were some redactions which revealed the CIA’s size and organizational structure. There were also some that revealed various policies that they use and positions that they take on various matters. There were also some redactions that were clearly for CYA self protection and to avoid embarrassment. 57 of the 157 released redactions fell into these categories. When you think about these, you realize that in a normal CIA document, none of this type of information would be normally included because there would be no need by the CIA document’s author to define his organization to the readers of his document because they themselves would be fellow CIA employees. If I had “dis-included” these types of redactions, it still would not have changed the dramatic appearance of the “UFO line” versus the typical redaction distributions shown in Figures 1 and 2.

We know that the CIA has moles and employees embedded in universities, state governments, newspapers, etc. but what I did not know is that they also have control over various airlines that they use repeatedly to transport personnel and other mission related things. Air America and Continental Airlines were two of them. The CIA also tries to make money from some of its operations so that they can fill their coffers for mission related expenses without going to the government to ask for more. You can see why there were rumors about the CIA profiting from drug related activity. The CIA also has its own technology division, much like “Q” does in the 007 movies.

Incidentally, there is no mention of UFOs in the text, although I now find that Victor Marchetti did speak of the UFO issue with respect to the CIA in later years. Also, there is nothing much in his book about the Kennedy assassination either. Anybody who has read much of my stuff will know that I believe that the CIA murdered Kennedy. There is an interesting quote in the book by Harry Truman, the person under whom the CIA was (poorly) created: “For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational arm and at times a policy-making arm of the Government.” President Truman said this in December, 1963 long after leaving office. Kennedy had been assassinated only 1 month prior. Do you think he had a suspicion that maybe his CIA creation, formed by copying a totalitarian, Gestapo secret police organizational model with no oversight, had done the job? Ironically, one of the criticisms of the CIA by the author is that it is too often used by the President as a personal tool. Clearly, they view the President as their Leader. But as we know from Roman history, many times the emperor was assassinated by his own guards. I suppose that if Marchetti did put anything about the assassination or UFOs in his book, it would never have been published at all, and maybe Mr. Marchetti would have gotten a pine box for his efforts.

*From Stanton Friedman’s website, article entitled “Debunkers At It Again”, published 2/3/2009: “No credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public? Is he really unaware of the many TOP SECRET UMBRA CIA UFO documents that have been released so heavily redacted that many pages say “Deny in Toto” or that many others are blacked out except for fewer than eight words. Is he really unaware that because of a FOIA court case, the NSA has admitted finding 156 TOP SECRET UMBRA UFO documents. When finally released, one could read about one sentence per page with the  rest being whited out. The excuse for redaction was that it is illegal to release sources and methods information. It is absurd to suggest that more than 95% of these UFO documents consisted of sources and methods information. Federal Court Judge Gerhard Gesell agreed the documents should not be released. “The Public interest in disclosure is far outweighed by the potential danger to the security of the United States should this information be released,” he wrote.

5/4/12 UFO Chronicles “The UFO Bestiary: A Rebuttal By Stanton T. Friedman” “Perhaps you can tell me what is under the whiteout used by the NSA on better than 95% of the material on 156 pages of old TOP SECRET UMBRA NSA UFO documents? All one can read is about one sentence per page. How about the many pages of TOP SECRET UMPRA CIA UFO documents; almost all of which are blacked out? No Cover-up?”

3/9/12 UFO Chronicles “When finally more or less released, one could read several words per page in the CIA stuff with the rest being blacked out and about one sentence per page on the 156 NSA UFO documents with the rest being whited out.”

**This is clearly an old book (1974), but one must keep in mind that FOIA released UFO documents with all their redactions are of this period as well. Therefore, I think that it is legitimate to compare these redactions to UFO FOIA redactions.

***I am using my own redaction count in this paper because the book’s count is wrong. The book’s count is 339 redactions of which 168 were disallowed, and my own count is 300 of which 143 were disallowed. The publisher used a sloppy method of counting.

MUFON: What Is Going On There? by Charles Tromblee

MUFON: What is going on there?  

Not being a dues paying member of MUFON, I look from the outside in at their activities and wonder what might be going on there. Their website says that their mission is “The Scientific Study of UFOs for the Benefit of Humanity”. The MUFON chapter nearest to me is in Sedona, Arizona, and it is their complete lack of scientific interest that has stopped me from joining. Due to this, I even called MUFON’s main office to confirm that this chapter is really a valid chapter. It is. You have probably guessed from this that I am a nuts-and-bolts kind of UFO guy, and you would be right. Any comments that I make about MUFON are done from the perspective of an outsider.

All UFO orgs of the past have had spy scrutiny and infiltration by government agencies. In fact, this was one of the recommendations of the Robertson panel. This activity assisted the government with the dissolution of NICAP and APRO, although these groups also self-destructed to a large extent as well. It appears to me that MUFON in its formation tried to avoid a hostile government by consciously avoiding a political agenda, and that continues to this day. For example, the recent petitions to the government to reveal what it knows about the cover up came from people who were acting independently of MUFON. I happen to believe that MUFON should have a political agenda, and it should have been they, not “regular” people, who first submitted these petitions. It should have been done years ago by MUFON through a lobbying process, a role which now belongs to one lonely person, Steven Bassett.

MUFON has also undergone recent internal turmoil. The well publicized boondoggles with Robert Bigelow and the previous young director of MUFON indicate a seething, cash strapped org.  I can only hope that they survive and prosper beyond these kinds of tempests.

On the MUFON web site, several forms are listed which appear quite well done. The one I looked most closely at was the one the investigators use for sightings of “entities.” Most of my own research is based on Close Encounters of the Third Kind sightings (i.e. entities).  I was pleased to see that the four check boxes for observed alien activity started with “sample gathering” followed by “repairs”. This exactly matches my own research results for the first and second most observed alien activity during CE3 sightings.

One thing that I did NOT see on these forms was any reference to local legends and ghosts. I would like to find out if this sort of coverage area is recommended by the MUFON manual, so that is why I want to obtain one. The reason I bring this up is that I read a report written by a MUFON Star team (or is it A Team?) investigator a few years ago on the UFO Chronicles blog site. The Star or A  Team was composed of the best MUFON investigators, and the report mentioned that one of the first steps was to check into local cemetery lore such as Indian burial grounds and other local paranormal things such as ghosts. (I am going purely by memory here; I cannot find this report on UFO Chronicles anymore.) Given  MUFON’s  stated mission as being the “scientific study of UFOs …” I thought that this due diligence of investigating ghosts, etc. rather odd and unscientific. But then as time has passed, I now think, why not? Certainly UFOs have a kind of paranormal component, and who am I to restrict the boundaries of such an investigation? This investigator was thinking out of the box which is a good thing for UFOs. If I owned a MUFON Field Investigator’s Manual, I could find out if researching the spiritual and/or paranormal is discussed in it, but the only way I can get my hands on it is to pay $70 which I am not going to do.

I just saw a Richard Dolan video in which he speaks his concerns for MUFON. UFO believers need such an organization, so if MUFON falls, what are we all to do? He alludes to concerns/complaints that people have about its Board of Directors. Maybe some of these are valid, but I am sure that most are not. Having served on a subdivision board of directors for 3 years, I can assure everyone with absolute certainty that even a board consisting of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, Abe Lincoln and George Washington would still receive a ton of complaints in our litigious society.